Shattered by the Sea Lord - Starla Night Page 0,16
you switch sides.” Val patted the seat across the aisle from Dannika. “You can move back once we’re in the air.”
He changed to the opposite side and followed Val’s instructions to fasten the seatbelt. The sheaf of binder-clipped bride profiles rested on the seat where he’d left it.
Oh, he wasn’t getting out of it so easily.
Dannika unbuckled to hand the sheaf to him. “If you won’t look for yourself, why not look for your warriors?”
He took it reluctantly. “I receive no useful information from these flat images.”
“You can picture which of your warriors might look good with one of these brides.”
“Their looks do not matter. Only souls.” He fixed his hot, gorgeous gaze on her. “Only resonance.”
Want hummed beneath her skin. He plucked her desire like a string. And it took all of her will not to tear off the seatbelt, clamber into his lap, and plaster herself to every square masculine inch.
Whew. A hot shiver traveled up her spine. Mm, licking his skin and feeling the teasing bite of his kiss on her neck…
No, no.
No.
Dannika sat back in her seat and opened her own folder of notes while Val completed the pre-flight checks with a cheery monologue. “Suit yourself.”
This was going to be a long flight to Miami.
Dannika flipped through her papers.
Ciran flexed his fingers over the bride papers.
If she could make herself no longer be his soul mate…
What a nightmare.
An abyss of blackness.
“Look at the bios,” Dannika said, without looking up from her papers.
Ciran opened the folder.
Squiggly patterns—human letters—lined the white papers. Small, glossy square papers captured female torsos and heads. Faces froze in…what? Smiles? Hard to know for sure without seeing a soul light.
And humans saw this every day.
Knowing no one’s true feelings, how did humans mate? How did their race survive?
And yet, humans had survived. Blind, confused, and guessing, they had even thrived.
No wonder Dannika could not respond to him.
He must not let her cut off their resonance. He must reach her another way.
Zoan said to focus on Dannika’s words. She expected him to hear her meaning and ignore the fluctuations of her soul light.
How?
The airplane doors closed. Val strode through for one last check and then disappeared into the front of the plane. The engines revved. The metal body of the plane reverberated with discomforting fragility, and they rolled forward. Bumps jostled him in the seat.
He gripped the rests.
Dannika glanced over. “Don’t worry. The plane is like a large car.”
He raised his voice over the engines. “But more isolated. You avoid all attacks from rivals.”
“Right.” She knitted her fingers together and pressed them against her chest. “If someone attacks up here, you crash.”
The silver ornament of her husband glistened. Once, she had accepted the claim of a male. She had believed that male’s words. And she had loved him.
Ciran needed to become as worthy as that warrior.
Patience.
He would have all the time together on the mainland to convince her.
They had all the time in the world.
Chapter Seven
Their plane bumped along the long, flat ground at the human airport. The gray and green landscape outside the windows moved faster and faster. Then, a gust of wind whooshed and Ciran’s stomach dropped. The ground fell away. They were flying.
How strange.
The cluster of islands shrank into the turquoise ocean. Low clouds puffed outside his window. The engine made a new sound, both low and unsettling, like the current across a particularly depthless cavern. It numbed his chest.
But the isolation was a key point. Warriors always had to calculate their safest route between points in the ocean to avoid meeting rivals. No wonder humans were always taking airplanes.
“Hello and good afternoon, you all.” The pilot’s voice sounded tinny from overhead. “Flight time to Miami today is three hours. The weather doesn’t get any better, and we refueled in Bermuda. You are free to move around the cabin and help yourselves to drinks and snacks. This trip was brought to you by your friendly host, Cal Ryerson of Ryerson Enterprises.”
Ryerson Enterprises constructed things known as oil platforms on the coastline of the United States. The sea platform over Atlantis, in the middle of the Atlantic, was one of the largest projects in the world. It anchored over the deepest water humans had ever attempted.
But after it was complete, the warriors would have their floating island, and they would be able to once more meet with sacred brides.
How had the ancient warriors built the original city? It could rise to the surface or sink beneath the waves with the push of