Page 46 of Venomous Heart
Ava stared at him for a long time, her intelligent eyes on him like she was trying to decide what to tell him. How much to tell him. He stayed silent, giving her time to decide for herself whether she trusted him.
“I might have an idea of where the Vault is.” She spoke in a low voice, then bit her lower lip. “It’s nothing certain, just a hunch. Knut has only one residential facility in the entire Southern Hemisphere, right?”
Arlen nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“But why is it so far away? Facility Twenty-One is so remote, it’s dangerous for those who live there. He would have had no reason to build a facility that far into magnetic storm territory. Unless he wanted to cover something up.”
“You think the Vault is near Facility Twenty-One.” The revelation hit him all at once. It was a brilliant deduction. “But there is no other building on the entire continent down there.”
“Not on the surface.”
As Ava spoke, Arlen inhaled deeply. She was right. She was more than right. How could he have missed it?
“I will task Khal with scanning the entire continent for any signs of underground activity. If there is so much as a lost transmitter, he’ll find it.”
“Tell him to hurry.” Ava smiled but it was a pinched smile, full of sadness. “I don’t think Uril can wait too long.”
So many worries, such a fierce heart. Ava was strong—stronger than him or any other Eok. Stronger than anyone he knew.
“You care for him more than you care for your own life.” The statement was simple, but Ava lifted wet, glistening eyes to him. She bit her lip, then nodded.
“He’s all the family I have. I can’t give up on him.”
“I know. And I won’t ask you to.”
She lifted eyes of pure amethyst to him, so beautiful they took his breath away. The way she looked at him: so open, so strong… never in his life had he felt for anyone what he felt for Ava.
“I have to apologize to you.” When she tilted her head, those striking eyes still on him, he continued. “The Mating Venom comes to an Eok, not by choice, but when he finds the one female who is perfect for him. The one female who will make him whole. You, you are that female, and much more. It is extremely rare for a male to find a female so perfect that her very life essence is linked to him. My father had that chance, then my two older brothers, but I never thought it would happen to me. You see, when my brother Karian claimed his bloodmate, I already had a mate.”
Ava’s eyes widened in shock, then squinted in suspicion. “What happened to her?” She looked at him intently, her full, pink mouth just slightly pursed. “Where is your mate now?”
“Her name was Maral.” Arlen spoke the name he hadn’t allowed himself to say since her death. “She was Avonie, and she had been my mate for ten years when she died.”
“You must miss her a lot.”
Arlen shot her a sharp look. Ava’s expression was downcast and she tried to keep her face still, but he saw the way her lips were pulled taut and her gaze fixed to the floor. She thought he still missed Maral, that he still loved his first mate and that was the reason he didn’t want to talk about her.
How wrong she was.
“Maral came to Eokim in the summer I became a warrior. She was the most beautiful of all the females, and she knew it. I was entranced by her beauty, but she wanted nothing to do with me.” It was the truth, as cruel as it was. “She only had eyes for my older brother, Karian, as he was the one who was supposed to become chief of the Erynian tribe after my father. It was only when Karian rejected her that Maral accepted my advances.”
Pain shot through him at the memory of that day, when the Mating Venom had come to him. He had felt so triumphant when she’d accepted his offer of mating.
“I didn’t see what she was back then, or what she did to me. She put Merphysio in a drink we shared.”
“But Merphysio is a powerful aphrodisiac.” Ava’s eyes widened. “It would make any male of any species mad with lust. No wonder the Mating Venom came to you. It would have gone away, though, wouldn’t it?”
Arlen nodded sadly. It was the first time he had talked about this to anyone. Not even his parents knew.
“That’s why she insisted we had to be mated immediately, despite my family’s objections.” Arlen shook his head against the bitter memories. “It was only the next morning that I found the bottle hidden inside her clothing. She laughed at me, called me gullible. An Eok mates for life, and I knew I had made the most terrible mistake of my young life. Every day for the next ten years, I tried to fix it, to mend a bond between us that was never real in the first place.”
“I am so sorry.” Ava reached for him and as her small hand rested on his arm, a flood of warmth invaded his body and mind.
“She wasn’t all bad, like my brothers think she was. They all saw her as this pampered, capricious female, but she wasn’t always like that.” Arlen closed his eyes against the vision of Maral’s face. “I think she honestly thought that by tricking me into producing the Mating Venom for her, I would love her the way all Eoks love their mates: unconditionally, absolutely. But it didn’t work that way.”
“But you tried. You tried every day to make things work.” Ava’s eyes, so similar to an Avonie’s, gazed at him, full of trust and innocence.
Guilt and pain flooded his mind as another face came back to him. He didn’t want to talk about Maral, but he knew he owed it to Ava. Even at the risk of having her reject him for failing his previous mate.
