The door swung open.
"Mercury." The soft, feminine sigh shattered her as she stared back at the other woman in horror.
Shoulder-length golden hair, hazel brown eyes shadowed with a light dusting of bronze over the lids. High cheekbones, exotic eyes and a smile that trembled. And a face Ria had seen in her nightmares over the past weeks. Except that face had been younger, softer and death had taken her years ago. Or it was supposed to have.
"Alaiya?" Shock filled Mercury's voice, and seared Ria's heart.
She stood still. Frozen.
Another woman's arms touched his face, caressed it, though he almost pulled back. Another woman's arms wrapped around his neck, and another woman snuggled against his chest.
"Oh, Mercury. It's been so long."
Those eyes blinked back at Ria, and for a moment she could have sworn she glimpsed malicious pleasure in the eyes of Mercury's mate.
CHAPTER 18
She was going to disintegrate into a million pieces. Shards and fragments of her soul would be found on worlds light-years from Earth before the pain completed its journey.
She had been so certain she was his. So certain she had finally found a place to belong, because he owned her soul, and no one else ever had.
She felt Mercury pull away from her. His hand slid from the small of her back, and she heard a growl. An angry sound of pain that she wondered if she might have made herself.
She wanted to smash her fist into that perfect face. She wanted to tear all those perfect hairs from the woman's head. She wanted to howl in rage, fear and pain.
"Ria, sweetheart." Dane's voice was at her ear. She could have sworn it was thick with grief. "Darling. Hold on. You don't want to break here."
She shook her head and stepped back, pulling her arm from his grip. She didn't want him touching her. She couldn't bear to be touched, not right now. Not while the pain was exploding in her brain, shattering her heart, nearly stopping it.
The slow, sluggish beat reminded her. It had done that the moment she realized her mother was never returning to her. That she would always be alone. She should have remembered, should have known it couldn't be real.
"If you break here, you'll never forgive yourself." Dane's voice lashed at her, a quiet male hiss of fury as Alaiya tilted her head up to Mercury and spoke.
"I knew when I read the tabloid stories what happened." She sighed against Mercury. "Mates. That's what we are, aren't we? That's why I never forgot you, Mercury."
Ria couldn't breathe. Oh God. It hurt. It was knifing through her chest, shredding flesh and bone, and she was going to scream with the rage and the pain of it.
Don't touch him!
The words were whipping through her mind as Mercury gripped the other woman's wrists and pushed her back. Just a little. Just enough to keep Ria from collapsing, from begging him not to hold her.
"Alaiya?" There was a wealth of surprise, shock and perhaps anger.
Of course he would be angry. Eleven years they had been separated and here she was, mere hours after he had pledged himself to another woman. To some stupid human that just couldn't understand where her place was.
"Ria." Dane's arm was around her shoulders.
He was trying to shelter her. He had done that when she was a little girl, every time he saw her. He would wrap his arm around her shoulder and try to shelter her from whatever had hurt her while he was away. There was no way to shelter her from this.
Ragged, gaping wounds tore through her soul. She could feel herself bleeding from the inside out, ripping apart and not a sound was made.
"What the f**king hell is going on here?" Guttural, ragged and filled with fury, Mercury's voice echoed around her. Sliced into her. She looked into his eyes, and they were nearly blue. They weren't amber. They weren't hammered gold. They were blue, the color they had been when he showed the first signs of mating Alaiya in the labs.
Alaiya was back. And, it appeared, so was Mercury's animal.
"You need to take care of this," she whispered to him, glancing at Alaiya. "I know it's been a long time." She backed away from him. "You'll need to" she waved her hand helplessly"talk." She couldn't imagine anything else. If she did, she would die. Right there, she would lose her will to live.
She couldn't bear it. It hurt. Nothing no desertion, no vicious words from cold, cutting lips had ever hurt as this hurt.