Stolen - Nhys Glover Page 0,64

every sexual thought and action,” Rian told Lain.

I could almost see smoke coming out of Lain’s ears.

“Enough!” I cried, throwing up my hands in disgust.

Everyone looked at me as tears began pouring down my cheeks. “I didn’t ask for any of this. Do you think I’d share such intimate moments if I knew how to stop them? I didn’t even know you could read me when I wasn’t around. I HATE this! All of you at each other’s throats because of me. I’m out of here. I don’t want to see any of you. I don’t want to hear any of you in my head. I’m done!”

I began to stomp from the room but turned at the last moment. “That means I sleep alone!”

My brain was filled with a cacophony of words and feelings I couldn’t handle. I threw up a barrier I didn’t know I had and stalked away. The utter peace in my head was bliss. I hadn’t realized just how busy my brain had become with three people in it at all times. On some level or other I must have been aware I could hear them when I wasn’t in the same room, because this utter absence of any voice but my own was new. Or new for the last week or more.

It was lonely, I suddenly realized. Now the voices were gone, I wondered what my guys were thinking and feeling. I wondered where they were and what they were doing now. Were they continuing the argument I’d witnessed or had my hissy-fit ended it as I’d hoped?

Whatever! I was so over the drama and danger of this situation. All I wanted was to curl up in some comfy corner and lick my nerves. Yeah, I know that should be lick my wounds. But my jangled nerves were my wounds right now.

19

NIAL

I had spent every waking moment finding complex tasks to occupy my mind. It was the only thing that stopped me thinking of our podmate sharing space with us. Sharing the Theran’s bed. And now, it seemed, sharing Lain’s.

After the general melt-down the day before, when Jenna had stomped off to be alone, the rest of us had been stepping around each other like we were a bunch of unexploded bombs. You could smell the stench of testosterone in the air.

This was not what a podmate bond was supposed to be like. We were supposed to feel closer together, not further apart, because of the bond. There wasn’t supposed to be all this jealousy and bad feeling. But then, no pod had been forced to accommodate a non-Danan before.

There were pods that were not all brothers, like Wraith and Marissa’s other podmates. But singletons, drawn to build up a depleted pod, were always Danan. This… This was a totally unique and problematic situation. And though I usually loved problem-solving, this one was way too personal for me to feel comfortable ‘solving’ in my usual ways.

Maybe once we were home we could sit down and sort this out. And home was so close I could taste it. Knowing we were only an hour out helped me keep my focus away from our parents’ mission—which was turning dicey—and Jenna’s continued absence.

Looking down at the console in front of me, I saw a flashing light I hadn’t noticed before. I quickly checked it. Navigation malfunction!

“Meida, check your controls,” I called to him, as he was piloting our vessel at that moment.

I saw him draw up a holo and study the figures there. He swiped a few times, his brows getting lower and lower with every passing second. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong! I’d been coddling the ship since the asteroid belt, going against my gut, which had said to do repairs ASAP. Now my gut was turning out to be accurate.

Meida used his body to alter the direction we were taking. Normally, the ship would respond to a twitch. Now, it was sluggish and slow to perform even rudimentary course alterations.

Lain came to stand behind Meida, studying the array in front of our brother. “That shouldn’t be happening. What’s going on?”

“There are some abnormal readings for the navigation system. Something probably knocked loose during the asteroid bombardment,” I told him.

“Is there anything we can do now, or will we need an engineer?”

We all had basic skills in ship maintenance. When you were going to be traveling long distances away from home you needed them. But what I was seeing now was way out of our