“There’s no end to the places you could take me, is there?”
“Not really, no. We are both finally free. We can do whatever we like.” Apex tipped his lips down toward mine and stole a kiss. “So. Would you like to go with me then? To Palanthia, to Rynon?”
I kissed him again, deeper this time, and moved his hand to my belly where our child was growing inside me.
“As long as we’re together…” I smiled at him, and my heart fluttered as he smiled back. Teeth and all. “Like you said. We can do whatever we want.”
22
Gallix
Apex and Atlanta’s love story ended same way they all did: It did not end at all. As Ronan and I trudged through the halls of the royal palace, I could hear their damned sex noises echoing after us from behind their door. Loud as they could be, fucking like wild animals in heat, with no regard at all for the rest of us who were going without.
Typical. I knew how this went, because I had seen it before. Kloran and Bria. Haelian and Sawyer. Nion and Alyse. Blood, even Coplan had managed to snag his chosen mate, and I had always assumed he had all of the charm of an empty wine bottle. Still, he had found some way to seal the deal in the end. They did not just have happily ever afters, the way the human females talked about reading in their romance novels and their fare-ee stories. They would have lives beyond their marriages and their cubs, filled with fucking and fighting and love and loss and joy, and what were Ronan and I left with?
Fuck. All.
“All I am saying is, it is not fair.” I had been trying to explain this to Ronan the whole way to Leonix’s room after we had gotten the call, but no matter how I phrased my indignation, he did not seem to understand me. Baz-terd.
“There was once a time when none of us had any hope for mates at all,” Ronan reminded me sagely. Oh, he was a baz-terd all right. Not that I could get away with explaining that to anyone else. How in the moons’ names could he be so serene about all of this? I would never understand it. “You should be happy for them, Gallix. Apex has been a friend to us—”
“When he was not busy getting us thrown into the dungeons, sure.”
“—and Atlanta’s cub will help repopulate our planet. Is that not what we have all been working toward? Saving our race?”
“Saving our race is all fine and good,” I grumbled, “but when do we get our mates, huh? When is it our turn to have a couple of busty females cooing and swooning in our arms?”
“When the moons deem it fit to provide them,” Ronan said with a smug little smirk. Of course, he, in all his ancient faith, could trust in the moons to make a pretty maid appear whenever they decided the time was right. But, me—I had no such faith. Never had been given any reason to. No big, glowing rocks in the sky determined my fate. I made my own luck—but I was damned tired of watching everyone else couple up while my good fortune turned up dry.
“You can have your moons, then. I hope they summon up a real stunner. Me, though—I think it is high time the two of us got put on a mission where we could be the heroes for once.”
“What do you mean, the heroes? We have helped so many others become so happy, Gallix.”
“We have been sidekicks, Rone. I am talking about some real first-class heroics. Explosions. Murder. Intrigue.”
“That…does not sound so pleasant.”
“It will once we have a couple of grateful, nice-looking human females throwing themselves at us for once,” I assured him. “Whatever mission Leonix has for us this time, it had better be good.”
“Congratulations, warriors.” Leonix paced before the windows of her suite with her hands tucked behind her back. She looked regal as ever—so regal that it almost did not seem right that she had not taken King Brixta up on his offer to make her queen. “It seems that we have won.”
“Well, that sure is swell,” I grumbled. Of course, I was happy that we would be rescuing the rest of the humans that the Rutharians had taken from Earth. I would have needed a particularly black heart not to be happy about it. But still, I was in a black mood. Probably, I reckoned, from lack of sex, but I wasn’t about to tell Leonix that.
“Queen Lieja is dead. Lady Idria is dead. Even the Rutharian king did not make it off of Nightmoor alive,” Leonix continued. “All marks of a job well done.”
“And now here you are, ready to offer us a nice long vacation on a pleasure planet to reward us for all our good deeds?” Admittedly, I had never really enjoyed myself much on pleasure planets. Too many prostitutes faking their orgasms before I even so much as touched them for my taste. What I really wanted was something visceral, something real. But still, it would have been a nice gesture.
Not that I actually expected that was what Leonix had called us to her chambers for, but moons—a soldier could dream.
“Not quite, I am afraid.” Leonix’s lips curled inward until they formed a pale, thin line. A bad sign if I had ever seen one. “Our victory comes at a cost. While Kloran, Haelian and Nion busy themselves with captaining their rescue ships and recovering the remaining kidnapped humans, we have…other problems on our hands.”
“Such as?” Ronan asked.
“Such as the first shipment of human slaves to Lunaria, which has just left Earth.” Leonix shook her head. “I
