The Alien's Revenge - Ella Maven Page 0,8
called them loks, and the matching pattern on my wrists and this unknown warrior meant we were mates, picked by their karma-like Fatas.
Just as the pattern finished, the loks glowed a bright yellow before dulling to a gold which stood out prominently on my dark skin. My head spun as my mind felt crowded with something else. Someone else. The girls had told me about this benefit of the loks—they could feel their mate’s emotions in their head at all times.
That had sounded exhausting to me. I had enough of my own damn emotions. This warrior’s aura, as the girls called it, appeared like a cloud of gray smoke. It shifted and churned violently. His emotions were hard to decipher, because while I could detect shapes behind the smoke, they were murky and blurred. Fragmented.
He grabbed my wrists and tugged me to his side in a not so gentle manner as he compared our loks. I sucked in a breath at the heat coming off his body, and his utterly dominating presence. Only Gar and Daz exuded an alpha strength like this guy.
I’d been told not all Drixonians could be trusted. Hell, we’d just fought a battle with another clavas who had every intention of harming us women. Where did this guy fall on the good and evil scale? As much as I didn’t want a mate, my first priority was survival, and I could only hope these loks meant he wouldn’t harm me. Right now, his grip was a little too tight on my arms, and his body felt coiled like a spring. I hoped when he set himself free, it wasn’t to my detriment.
Of course, Fatas hadn’t mated me with someone calm like Hap or Nero. Oh hell no. My mate was some scarred loner with a death grip.
For a moment, he didn’t move, and despite the fear coursing through my body like electricity, I met his gaze. Just when his smoky aura seemed to reach a boiling point, it suddenly fell flat. The warrior’s eyes cleared for just a moment, and a curl of purple danced across his black pupils. I couldn’t look away, entranced by the beauty and the sudden calmness of his aura.
He blinked, as if surprised, and reached out a trembling hand toward my face. I was shocked too, because despite my fear, I found I wanted to feel his touch. My fingers itched to chase away that choking smoke of his aura to see what lay behind it.
Suddenly, a rustling sounded in the distance. The warrior’s head went up, and his entire body went still. Then, before I could blink, he picked me up off the ground and sprinted through the forest.
We moved so fast everything was a blur. I wanted to call for Gar, but my throat still hurt like hell, and I was using all my strength to keep from puking as we whizzed by blue trees.
He ran for what felt like miles until he reached the base of a massive tree trunk and launched himself up the trunk. While holding me with one arm, he climbed the tree with his other three limbs. I glanced down, glad for once I couldn’t see well because I didn’t want to know how high off the ground we were.
He leapt from branch to branch and just when I felt I couldn’t take much more, he stopped abruptly and placed me on my one good leg. Thankful for his arm still bracing me, I swayed with dizziness. I blinked a few times before I was able to figure out where we were. Or more importantly, where we were not. We were not safe on the ground. We were in a tree and before us was a structure supported by a web of tree branches. A house, complete with four walls and a room.
This warrior had fashioned himself a Swiss Family Robinson life in the trees. The structure was large for a treehouse, at least two hundred square feet. The door lowered like a drawbridge, and he carried me across it until we were inside. There, he immediately strode toward a pallet of furs against the far wall. He laid me down and immediately reached for my ankle.
The minute he touched it, I cried out in pain. I couldn’t help it, but the damn thing hurt like a sonofabitch. He immediately stopped and studied me. I could tell he was conflicted. His aura pushed and pulled like he warred with himself. Finally, he leaned toward