that we will be battle ready very soon, but my hands tighten on the arms of my sturdy chair. I wish more than anything that I was in our fastest fighter in the thick of the battle, for fighting is the place where I am the happiest.
Action and Adventure
Juliet
Soldiers are supposed to move silently so as not to alert the enemy when we approach. We’re taught to practice moving quietly all the time so the movements will be second nature. Today, my feet will not obey. I stomp through the shuttle, furious at myself.
Sure, I’m angry that my daughter joined their clade on the spur of the moment just to spite me. However, seeing that indigent queen with her arms around Borak sent a wave of white hot jealousy through my system, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. I hate that I only realized what I wanted once it’s no longer available to me.
Three men live in a small section reserved for Borak’s clan. If what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears is to be believed, his clade now has three women. I don’t have to be a freaking genius to work out that’s one woman for each man, especially when I already know Molly is with Eltran, Chantel told me she’s with Korak and that woman we rescued had her arms around Borak.
Ripping my com from my belt, I text Amber out the code word and head for the secret meeting site. I’m boiling mad, but what else can I do besides stick to the damn plan? It’s not Amber’s fault that I’m apparently hell bent on fucking up my life completely from the top to the bottom.
My chest feels like it’s about to crack open with grief. I guess my attachment to Borak was obvious to everyone but me. It’s the kind of emotional tsunami that will sneak up on you when you’re looking the other way. I think of all the times he’s moved silently at my side, pulled me back from the proverbial ledge when I was about to do something foolish and how he held himself in check even though his admiring, hungry eyes roamed all over me at times.
Fisting my hands at my side, I throttle back the impulse to punch the wall. Though it would feel good to release some aggression, I know the corridors of their ships and shuttles are monitored electronically. It wouldn’t due for their Earth Gov liaison to be seen losing her ever-loving mind over a romantic attachment.
When I make it out of the shuttle, I pull my respirator up and take a moment to look up at the sun. It’s barely mid-morning but the sun’s already beginning to get hot. As I head to the downside tarmac, I keep turning this situation over in my mind.
It galls me that Borak accepted someone so young into his bed. What in the hell do they have to talk about? They clearly have very little in common. She looks to be in her early twenties. Borak’s sons are all older than my Chantel by several years, which puts him at least fifty. Now I know Draconians live a lot longer than humans, so he’s kind of in the prime of his lifespan, but seriously, what can he see in her?
Images just keep rolling through my mind of her long delicate arms wrapped around his neck and how she was leaning sideways like she was about kiss him. Imaging her lips on his dark scales and her rubbing his horns gets to me. Is she as fascinated with that long tail of his as I’ve always been? Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve probably been sporadically thinking inappropriate thoughts about his anatomy for a while now. It’s like my brain works in secret to actively hide really important shit from me sometimes, maybe things I’m not ready to deal with.
Worse of all was seeing his entire upper torso wrapped in bloody bandages. He’s hurting because of the things I did. It hits me like a metric ton of bricks that he’s accepting affection from the woman I wronged in his eyes. My feet come to a stop as I mull over the implications of that for a second. Does he feel obligated to her? That thought makes me even madder. It’s just my luck to be deprived of the one male I’ve grown a liking for because he feels guilty over something I did.