Stolen and Seduced - Christine Pope Page 0,329

things started to make sense.

My entire life, I’d always felt … off. Something was never quite right. Health, mind, beliefs. Everything.

“It’s true, Gia.” Kai stood in front of me, wanting desperately to hold me, but knowing that would be a very bad idea right now.

“So, our whole marriage has been a lie?” I stared into his eyes which suddenly began to look very different from how I remembered them.

“It’s because we’re off planet. On Earth, we look human. Like the others, but here, we don’t,” he said. “You don’t.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean, I don’t look like the others? What do I look like?”

He held out his hand to me, begging me to take it, but I refused. Feeling betrayed, I kept my arms crossed over my chest.

“I am so sorry, Gia. Dhior is right, you deserved better than this.” His head dropped as he fell to his knees in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. “Get up.”

“He cannot. By Thoruken code, not until you decide what to do with him.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means as our queen, it is your choice,” Dhior said.

“What is?”

“If he lives or dies.”

I looked down at my husband, kneeling in front of me. This whole thing was just wrong. All of it.

“I’m not doing this.” I started moving about the cell, running my hands along the cold metal walls, feeling for some sort of door or window, or something. Anything to get me out of there before I lost it. “I have to get out of here.”

My breathing intensified, and I found myself hyperventilating.

Having found the sliding doors, I felt around for some sort of latch or anything that would open the thing. I was convinced this whole thing was a joke or a lie or just a really bad dream.

Nothing.

With clenched fists, I started banging on what were the doors a few minutes ago. The sound echoed through the chamber we were in, and suddenly, the doors slid open. There was a long corridor in front of me that seemed to never end.

I didn’t care where it led, all I knew was I needed to get out of there. If I didn’t, I was going to lose my shit. And let’s face it, I’d already lost my dinner, and that already wasn’t a pretty sight.

Without a second thought, I sprinted down the dark corridor, Dhior and Kai following behind me. It seemed to never end … until it did, and I ran into a glass partition.

The last thing I remember was seeing nothing but the ether surrounding me before the world went dark.

Kai

“I am so angry with you,” Dhior told me as I scooped Gia’s limp body up of the floor of the space craft. “What were you thinking?”

Clearly, I was thinking of my wife. The woman I was never meant to fall in love with.

They don’t warn you of such things at the legion academy.

I was specifically chosen for this mission because I was “the job,” as they said on Earth. Because I didn’t let such petty things as emotion cloud my judgement.

Until I met Gia Caruso.

That’s when everything changed. All my training, all my resolve faded like the wind. She was the most beautiful combination of Earth and Thoruk. Her eyes were wide, like the humans, and her female body was of Earth. Her breasts and her curves resembled humans. Her skin was so soft.

Everything about Gia was perfection. I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.

“How could you do this to me?” Dhior said, trying to take Gia from my arms, though I refused to set her free. “I admit, she is beautiful. But she is your queen. And you were already spoken for. Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through?”

“I am sorry, Dhior. I never expected to fall in love with our queen. Or a woman.”

“Yes, well. You will pay, I promise you that. The king is livid. Even in his deteriorated state, he’s out for blood—your blood—and as soon as this ship lands, I promise you, the last thing you will see is your queen releasing the lever of the guillotine.”

“You don’t understand,” I said as my body slid down the wall, and I sat on the floor, holding Gia tightly in my arms.

“No, you don’t understand. This is a death sentence for you, darling. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get you out of this one.”

“I had five glorious human years with Gia. It’s more