Page 36 of Tricked By the Alien Prince

ChapterTwenty-One

MAYA

The skin on my neck prickles at Volan’s sudden change of demeanor. He’s demanding. He’s suspicious.

And I’m suddenly very much aware that I’ve left the safety of Eve’s Rest to go off with a mysterious alien that could very easily kill me if he wished to. No one even knows I’m here.

For someone so smart, I can sure be an idiot.

“I can trust you, right?” I ask, my body suddenly trembling before him. “It’s not like we’re enemies or anything… right?”

Right?

I trust Volan, don’t I?

I’m going to have to trust him.

I don’t have a choice. Have I ever? All my life has been one desperate move after another. Have I ever had the opportunity to actually decide anything for myself, to control my own fate?

I hate it. I haven’t trusted someone this thoroughly for a long time. Volan could hurt me, seriously. Not just physically either. The problem is that over the last few days, I’ve come to actually like the guy. And the problem with that is that it means I actually have started to care what he thinks.

I want him to like me.

I don’t have any choice but to trust him.

But maybe he deserves my trust too. He’s answered every one of my questions, often letting me ramble and talk, content to just listen. He has guided me somewhat safely here and even protected me from danger… twice. It’s my own experiences and hangups that cause me to not trust men. I’m always seeing the worst in men, going so far as to find reasons not to trust them.

But he’s not a man. At least, not a human man. He’s definitely male—last night proved that.

Volan deserves more from me.

“It’s a long story,” I tell him. “I don’t even know where to begin, to be honest.”

“We have time, halvi,” Volan replies. He has a pretty good poker face, but the guy can’t seem to help the way his eyes soften whenever he looks at me. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that his species uses luminae to communicate emotions more than they do facial expressions. Or maybe I’m just that good at reading him.

Still, it seems the very fact that I’m willing to talk to him is enough to release some of the energy within him. His shoulders relax ever so slightly, like he had been holding his breath and suddenly found a reason to let it out.

Did he expect me to lie to him, just as much as I expected him to trick me? All of my reservations… they aren’t his fault. They are simply a product of my life experiences.

An excuse is on the tip of my tongue. An excuse to just walk away from him and block him out from my life, like I do so many people. Yet, he’s just as nervous as I am about my response. It’s like he actually cares. It’s like he thinks that I am worth waiting for. It’s that reason alone that gives me the strength to finally talk.

“When my friend, Ariana, went missing from the colony, everyone thought she was dead. Caught and eaten by some wild beast, they said. It didn’t help that Eve went missing several months before this, either.”

I shake my head at the memories that rush through my mind. She’d been gone for weeks.

“Wait, two females went missing, and not a single male went searching for them?” Volan asks, his once expressionless face turning aghast. “What about your warriors, or hunters?”

He looks about ready to flee the room. To start a manhunt, I realize. Unlike the humans who couldn’t be bothered to get off their asses and search for people they claimed as friends, this alien is ready to drop everything for people he never met.

His reaction only furthers the belief I have in him. I can trust Volan.

“Ariana was supposed to marry this guy called Walter. Instead of being worried out of his mind, he insisted she was dead. In fact, he immediately tried to seize all her assets for himself.”

I grit my teeth, remembering how cold Walter Sullivan had acted after it was discovered that Ariana was missing.

“I’m pretty sure he only arranged a search party after a lot of people threw a fuss. He basically did it to save face with the colony residents, not because he cared for her at all.”

Of course, when he asked for volunteers for a search party, a whole host of people suddenly were willing. Not a single one of those people cared about Ariana. They only wanted the money Walter offered as a reward, or a chance to rub shoulders with one of the rich of the colony.

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