“You are correct,” he agrees on a sigh. “The other women should know how to properly prepare themselves for today, too. I trusted Lyko and Ayro to clue them in, but perhaps I was wrong to assume my brothers remember anything about the females of our species.” He frowns, his eyes dull and dark again.

This whole morning has been weird, and I have a headache returning around my eyes.

“Why wouldn’t they remember when you do?”

The counter makes an odd sound as he grips it, his knuckles whitening beneath the grey.

“Because I was old enough to remember our mother. To remember what they did to her. They were too young to.” His voice is even, calm. Deceptively so, considering when he leaves the bathroom, there are melted handprints on the metal countertop.

I stare at the door he disappeared through.

What the hell happened to his mother?

I’m not sure I want to know.

But seeing as how I’m stepping into her shoes as the first human female royal, fake or not… I probably should make it my goal to find out.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

OceanofPDF.com

LEIGH

Nydo’s all but disappeared, and I quickly toss the bed sheets that smell like sex into the sterilizer, finding fresh bedding and remaking it with military precision earned fair and square after my years with the Federation. It’s kind of nice, actually, the routine, the familiar thrum of the deep-space engine… as long as I systematically forget the fact I’m on a Roth ship and that the Roth King fucked the daylights out of me with his mouth and hand alone.

The door hisses open and I jerk up guiltily, patting the pillow.

Nothing to see here!

“Hey,” Billie says, lugging a tote, her muscles bulging at the effort.

“What’s in that?” I ask, foregoing a greeting.

“All the stuff you had sent back to the ship for the three of us,” Piper announces, filing in behind her with another tote, although this one doesn’t seem to be as heavy, seeing as how she’s beaming and as fairy-princess as always. We used to tease Piper that she was a total princess, until she told us she actually had played a princess at a theme park during the summer before the Roth invaded.

I swallow hard, the stakes running through my mind.

And now we’re all playing at it.

“You don’t look good,” Billie informs me. She tosses the crate on the bed, and it leaves an indentation.

Piper frowns at me. “It smells like sex in here,” she says, cocking an eyebrow. “Are you still having hormone issues?” Her tone is sympathetic, and I breathe a covert sigh of relief.

“Yep. Way to make it awkward,” I say.

“Nydo sent us in here so we could all get ready together.” Billie rubs her hands together. “Can’t say I’ve ever gotten all dressed up for a mission before.”

I choke on a laugh, and Piper and Billie cast me concerned looks.

“What?” Billie says, her brow furrowed in suspicion. “Something’s wrong, and it’s not your weird masturbation practices or your concussion. You’re worried.”

“Yeah, I absolutely am. Do we have any real idea what we’re walking into?”

“What do you mean?” Piper asks slowly. “I thought we were just going to see some Roth.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know.” I brush my hair off my forehead, and a little thrill goes through me as I remember how Nydo raked his fingers through it. “He hinted that something bad happened to his mom, and we have to ‘dress the part’, and I just… we don’t know anything about how women in their culture are treated. The Suevans worshipped the ground their wives walked on, but what if the Roth are totally backward or, like, want to collar us or something?”

“We’re just here until we can get back to Earth,” Billie says, but it doesn’t sound like she believes herself, either.

Piper’s mouth pinches, and she runs her fingers through her long, blonde hair. “I trust Lyko,” she finally says.

I gape at her.

Billie looks between us, then throws up her hands.

“What do you mean you trust Lyko? You barely know him.” I frown at her, pacing in front of the door. “And it’s Nydo we should be worried about.” My face heats and my pussy tingles at the mere mention of his stupid name. “He’s… super-powered.”

“They all are,” Piper informs me, clearly perplexed I didn’t know.

“Of course they are.” My headache pounds behind my eyes. “I just… I have a bad feeling about this. It’s going to be dangerous, and if anything happens to you two… I feel like I made you come with me and—”

“This is just now occurring to you?” Billie snorts, one eyebrow raised. “You’ve been unconscious for nearly a day and a half. We saw what happened. We knew we would be targets too, that was the whole reason the Suevans wanted the three of them, the brothers, to act as a diversion—to divide the Roth Overlord’s forces. Why are you acting weird about this now?”

Because I fucked up and took things to the next level, I want to yell at her.

“Because we’ve already been through so much together and I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you two,” I say instead. It’s also true, but there’s a large part of me that knows I’ve crossed a line. I can’t unlick that particular stamp.

The door hisses open behind me, and I know, in every fiber of my being, that Nydo stands behind me.

“Nothing is going to happen to any of you. I’m the most powerful Roth in living history. My brothers are too. We will protect you. And you will play your parts, and then we will deliver you safely to wherever you want to go,” he says smoothly, walking inside.

The back of his hand brushes mine, and the barest contact makes me shiver. Yep, that stamp is definitely on the envelope.

“To Earth,” I make myself say. “That’s where we want to go. That was the deal.”

He turns back to me, arrogance lighting his eyes as he raises one cocky eyebrow. “I do know how you love deals,” he growls.

I glare at him, ignoring the way my whole body’s gone hot and cold at once. “To Earth,” I repeat.

Piper casts Billie an uneasy smile, setting her crate down on the small, bare desk attached to the wall.

“If that’s what you still want, my mate.” Nydo raises an eyebrow at me, ignoring everyone in the room.

Everyone but me.

His nostrils flare, and my cheeks heat, because I’m one hundred and one percent sure that he knows exactly how turned on I am, again.

“It turns out, I love your deals, too,” he says in a low voice, taking a step towards me.

“What happened to your mother?” I force myself to ask, my voice unnaturally high. It’s a low conversational blow, but I need to know. “We all deserve to know.”

I hold my chin high despite the guilt surging through me.

He stills, the orange flames in his eyes glowing hot before banking entirely. Billie and Piper freeze too, watching us with huge eyes.

“She was taken by the Overlord. Forced to serve him. She was already sick with the virus that took out most of the females of our species. She’d put us in hiding as soon as my father died, and if it weren’t for the fact the Overlord realized she was his brother’s wife, our mother would have at least been able to die of the virus, and not what he did to her.”

“His brother’s wi—”

He chuckles, and it’s a dark sound, devoid of any humor.

“That’s extremely fucked up,” Billie tells him, disgust written across her face.

“Our family history has always been bloody, and violent, and filled with pain,” Ayro’s massive body fills the door, and Lyko edges past him.

The room is way too full now, and Nydo steps closer to me. If I squint at him sideways, he seems… protective. No sooner has the thought crossed my mind than he drags his palm across my back, pulling me into his big, warm body.