Page 47 of Decadence

People surged forward. The sinister human mercenaries, warriors, soldiers—whatever the fuck they were—disappeared into the crowd.

Sirens blared. The flying traffic above scattered in all directions, and she tensed as she witnessed several close calls between drones and cars.

It was utter chaos.

And she was being taken further and further away from it all, up into the dark winter sky.

“Don’t kill them.” Her voice rose to a shout above the roar of the wind. “Don’t harm my people. Don’t hurt the people in the crowd. They don’t really know what they’re doing… what they’re really dealing with. You have to make sure my people are safe. You have to. I’ll never forgive any of you if you fuck this up.”

I’ll never forgive him.

I don’t want him to die.

Her thoughts and emotions were a swirl of confusion and contradictions.

Her Kordolian guards said nothing. Concealed by their pitch-black armor, they were faceless and impenetrable and alien.

She was alone again.

The snow started to fall. Held tightly in a cold, hard stranger’s arms, all she could do was freeze in fear as they were pulled up into the dark, gaping maw of the alien ship.

Why did everything on Earth feel so fragile all of a sudden, like the fabric of human existence could be torn apart as easily as gossamer?

Chapter Thirteen

The pain was everywhere. It was in his skull and in his back. It was in his arms and his legs and in his face. It stabbed right through the bases of his horn-buds.

But most of all, it was in his chest, twisting around his heart like a thorny vine, viciously digging in its poisonous thorns.

He opened his eyes…

And saw blue.

His entire body was encased in blissful, soothing coldness.

He was in a stasis tank.

Ah, shit.

Memories flooded back, hitting him like a bolt of searing plasma.

Sienna… the Silent One…

Kaiin’s Hells.

Rage coursed through him.

He’d come so close to losing her, but somehow, he’d fought off the deadly assassin, a Silent One that was capable of using qim, the forbidden ancient technique that granted the user temporary invisibility.

That meant their attacker was one of the most skilled of the Silent Ones. Ikriss shouldn’t have been able to best him, but he had. How the fuck had he managed to do that?

It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was…

“Where is she?” he demanded, his horn-buds throbbing like crazy. His breath misted the transparent helmet that encased his head and provided him with oxygen and the ability to speak and see.

He had to know. If anything had happened to her, he would kill the fucking—

“Safe.” A familiar voice reached his ears through the oxygenated helmet.

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