Page 18 of Fractured Souls

She was in control again.

Wordlessly, Alexis followed as he turned on his heel. The strange metal-fiber doors unravelled, and they walked out into a narrow corridor that led into impenetrable darkness.

She stared at his impossibly broad back as his body shifted and flexed beneath his sculpted armor. She stared until the shadows grew so deep she couldn’t see anything but the pale halo of his tousled snow-white hair.

Oh, he was a specimen, all right.

Her heart was racing again, and she didn’t know if it was from fear or something else.

“You okay, human?”

“Alexis,” she corrected. He must have a sixth sense or something. A chilling thought struck her. What if he’s a mind reader? “I’m fine.”

Even though she was anything but.

“I’m Nythian,” he said curtly, staring straight ahead. “You don’t have anything to fear from me. I’m here to protect you.”

“Protect me? From what, exactly?” Nythian’s words sounded too good to be true. She couldn’t let her guard down just yet. How could she just trust a man—no, alien—who could so easily snap her in two with his little finger if he wanted?

“The thing inside your head, apparently.”

He didn’t say anything else after that.

The man who’d held her so gently in her moment of desperation, who’d prevented her from doing any further harm to herself, who’d spoken to her with such familiarity, as if he were an old colleague from the HPA…

That man was gone. In his place was a cold, hard, inscrutable alien warrior who walked as quietly as a ghost.

Who’d just casually mentioned the voice in her mind as if it were no big deal.

He was confusing her.

He was nothing like the Kordolian she’d expected.

Who the hell were these people?

Five

She wasn’t what he’d expected.

Oh, she was still terrified—he could tell by the rapid patter of her heartbeat—but there was a certain toughness to her that surprised him.

She hadn’t complained one bit; not even a whimper of pain escaped her lips when she’d cracked her hand. Nythian knew all too well what it felt like to break something. Fucking agony. It happened to him all the time, only he had cursed black nanites that could repair the damage in an instant.

And a long, nightmarish history of pain tolerance training.

This human didn’t have those things.

But even though it was stupidly self-inflicted, she handled the pain like a seasoned warrior.

He couldn’t help but like that about her.

Nythian stopped as he reached the entrance to Zharek’s lab. Behind him, the human came to an abrupt halt, reflexively putting out her good hand as she nearly crashed into him. Her hand touched his arm for the briefest moment before she jerked it away… as if he were poisonous.

“A little warning?” she grumbled, and he sensed that her prickly demeanor hid something—vulnerability, fear.

He turned and looked down. Ah. He’d forgotten that humans didn’t see too well in low-light conditions.

She stared back at him, her startling golden-brown eyes narrowed and unfocused, her expression annoyed, fierce, and fragile, all at the same time.

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