My words and gestures do nothing to reassure her as she keeps backing toward the edge without knowledge of what lies beyond. My hearts stop in horror as visions of her accidentally tripping and falling into the storm and off the cliff fill my mind.
I just discovered my fated mate—I refuse to lose her to a misunderstanding. On the same day that I found her, no less.
Drawing in a deep breath, I rush forward and scoop her into my arms, pulling her back into the cave and away from the dangerous cliff.
She flails wildly in my grasp, kicking, hitting, and biting at me. Her smooth, flat teeth latch onto my arm and a panicked thought flits through me that she may not be as defenseless as she seems. After all, many creatures in the desert appear harmless until they attack you, like the adorable sorana with its wide eyes and fluffy tuft of orange fur. She might carry a paralyzing agent or deadly venom in her saliva.
But I refuse to let her go and risk her running off the cliff edge and tumbling to her death. Holding on tightly, I close my eyes to steady my breathing, waiting for the poisonous toxin to kick in and end me.
“If I am going to die,” I tell her, “Let it be protecting you, my cherished one.”
She stills, then unclamps her jaw from my arm and peers up at me with wide eyes. “I can understand you.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Because I am touching you. You do not seem to have a translator chip. Unless,” I run my hand behind her ear, feeling for the small device, “it has been damaged somehow.”
She bats my hand away. “What’s a translator chip?”
I blink at her, stunned. For one so defenseless, she is very brave to strike a Drakarian warrior. My female is fierce, and I admire this in her. It concerns me, however, that she does not have a chip. “Your species must be very primitive indeed.”
The words escape my mouth before I even realize I’ve spoken them aloud.
“Primitive?” She gestures to the space around us as she glares up at me. “Who are you to talk? You live in a cave.”
Despite my best attempt to hold it in, a bellowing laugh escapes me.
She narrows her eyes. If that is her angry face, I find it rather adorable. “What’s so funny?”
I arch a teasing brow. “I’ll have you know that I do not—and have never—lived in a cave.”
“Then why are we here?”
I gesture to the storm raging outside. “A sandstorm was approaching, and we needed shelter. This was the closest place.”
“Let me go,” she commands.
“Fine, but if we are to communicate, we must remain touching.”
With a slight huff, she nods, and I loosen my grip on her forearm.
“I am Varus,” I place a hand on my chest. “What is your name?”
“I’m Lilliana. Lilly for short,” she adds.
“Lilliana,” I repeat her name softly. It is lovely, just like her.
I am a lost male indeed.
Chapter 9
Varus
Lilliana. Such a strange, yet beautiful name. I long to know everything about her. “Where do you come from?”
She lowers her gaze. “Earth,” she replies, and I cannot help but notice the sadness that steals across her features. Inhaling deeply, she lifts her green eyes back to mine. “What’s the name of this planet?”
“Drakaria.” I cock my head to the side. “Have you not heard of my people?”
“No, I haven’t,” she replies, stunning me. She must be from a very distant and remote place indeed to not know of Drakarians, for my people are among the most feared in the quadrant.
Standing in such close proximity, my gaze travels down her form. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe her species does possess natural defenses, but she has not yet grown into them. She is much smaller than Drakarian females. “You are rather small. Your fangs are flat, and your claws are blunted. Are you fully matured?”
Her jaw drops. “What kind of question is that? Yes, I’m mature. I’ll have you know I’m average height for my… species. And,” she looks down at her hands, “my claws,” she accentuates the word, “are normal for my people. We don’t have fangs—we have teeth.”
This news is very disconcerting. My concerns for her safety have now grown exponentially. I’d hoped she would at least grow a few more tarems in height so she would not be so much smaller than my people.
She looks down at my hand on her arm. “So, this is how your species communicate?”
“Some of us,” I reply with a half-truth. I do not tell her that this is how fated mates communicate. She thinks I am ugly; she will not be pleased to learn that we are fated to one another just yet. “Tell me. How did you come to be in the desert?”
“Our ship was attacked by pirates,” she replies. “We evacuated on an escape pod and landed here.”
I cock my head to the side. “We? Are there more of you?”
She nods. “Twenty-five.”
Alarm bursts through me as I dart another glance toward the storm. If her people were caught in this storm, they are likely dead. “Where is the rest of your crew?”
“Not far from where you found me,” she answers. “It was less than an hour’s drive in the rover from our campsite.”
With a slight clench of my jaw, I struggle to understand this unit of time she has given me as my translator tries to equate the word to something familiar.
As if sensing my confusion, she offers, “It wasn’t very far.”
I meet her eyes evenly and ask the most important question. “Did they have adequate shelter?”
“Yes. A large part of the escape pod remained undamaged. They could hold up in there if a storm came along.”
