“Come for me, my queen,” he demands, and I do, his power stroking over my clit, lapping at it, even as he plunges in and out of me.

He keeps going, finally flipping me onto my back, picking up the pace until he’s fucking me across the stone dais, driving into me like his life depends on it.

I make an animalistic noise, scratching down his back.

“Mine, my flame,” he says, and he buries his face in my hair as he surges into me, his arms locked tight around me.

I feel it when he comes, hotter than any man I’ve ever been with. It seems endless, near-scorching, and I whimper, my eyes wide, fear threading through me.

“It’s hot.”

“Take it,” Nydo says. “You’re my mate. Take it all.”

His power flicks my clit, and I tumble over the edge again, stars exploding behind my eyes, glimmering through my skin.

It’s not until several minutes later, when I’ve started to come back to reality, sweaty and worn out, that I realize it’s not the orgasm after-glow.

It’s not even the shimmering oil.

There are things… under my skin.

Marks.

My stomach roils, and I stare in horror at my arm, still wrapped around his grey, velvety neck. Dark golden, nearly bronze markings swirl under my skin… matching his charcoal-grey ones.

His ash marks.

Roghat’s strange words whisper back through my brain. No markings.

This is what he meant.

He smiles down at me, wonder and pleasure in his eyes. I slide out from under him, staring down at my naked, transformed body. This is what they meant.

“Mine,” he says. “Forever mine.”

“You bastard,” I whisper, sick to my stomach, feeling like the biggest fucking idiot in the universe.

He frowns at me, reaching a hand out to grab me again, but I scuttle out of his grasp, panting, on the verge of tears.

“What did you do to me?” I want to scream. I want to rage. I can barely form words.

He blinks, confusion stealing across his features. “You said you were mine.”

“You… changed me. You marked me. Literally. You can’t just… You lied to me.”

“I never lied to you about this,” he says gravely.

I blink, processing his words, tears threatening, stinging the back of my eyes. “You didn’t tell me. You avoided telling me. You manipulated me. It’s a lie of omission. I’m such a fucking idiot.” I’m crying now, pressing my palms against my eyes and trying to staunch the flow. “I thought you meant it when you said you loved me.”

“I do love you,” he says, his voice ragged, anger and despair warring across his face.

“You don’t deliberately mislead the person you love. You don’t change them permanently, fundamentally, to get your way.”

“Now the Roth will accept you as my true mate,” he says, tilting his head, his eyes narrow, suspicious slits. “This was the only way.”

“You could have told me!” I cry out, completely fucking humiliated. “You could have asked me what I wanted. You said you were taking me back to Earth. I can’t go back to Earth like this.”

“So stay with me,” he says quietly.

And that’s when I realize it.

He meant to do this all along. To mark me, so I looked like a Roth, knowing humans would see only the species they hate when they look at me.

He meant to make me an outcast from my own people, so I wouldn’t be able to go back.

“You never intended to send me back to Earth.”

My stomach clenches.

“Earth won’t be safe until we dispatch the Overlord,” he says easily. “You will realize in time this was the only way to make me king and to save your people.”

“No,” I shake my head. “No.”

“I don’t see the problem. You are more beautiful than ever. You are safe now. This was the only way.”

“No, Nydo. It was the only way you wanted it to happen. You never intended to give me a choice. You manipulated me every step of the way…” I go quiet, staring at the now healed scar where the energy plas pulse from the destroyer ripped into his stomach.

“How did the Overlord know where we were every time we stopped?”

His eyes turn black, his expression cooling completely.

“You fucking bastard,” I snarl. I want to hit him.

I don’t. I don’t stand a chance against him, anyway. I never did. And that’s the worst part. I trusted him. I thought he’d earned it.

The whole thing was a goddamned lie.

“You’re the one who tipped them off about where we were.”

I expect him to deny it, but he just watches me with that guarded, expressionless face. I hate it. I hate his masks and his lies and his fucking manipulations, and I have never felt more used and idiotic in my life, with his cum still leaking out of me, sticky on my thighs.

“It was the best way to pave our way as returning champions and secure my throne,” he says, his tone arrogant in a way I haven’t heard in days. “The Roth understand might and power. It is the only thing that matters. We displayed our might, as a team. It was all recorded and sent back here. Now we are truly a team, bonded and mated for life. We have everything we wanted.”

“No,” I shake my head. “You have everything you wanted. You made it so that I never had a chance to decide what I wanted. What I want. You… You’re every bit the villain Niki said you were.”

“But I love you,” he starts.

I hold up a hand, disgusted. With him. With myself.

“Love isn’t holding someone so tight you crush the life from them. Love isn’t tearing their wings from them and putting them in a cage so you can keep them close.” I shake my head, furious tears tracking down my face. “Love is letting them go, letting them fly.”

“You said you were mine,” he rasps, and there’s a glimmer of confusion on his face, but he quickly locks down any hint of what he’s thinking—what he’s feeling—behind a scowl.

“Well, then,” I say, a humorless laugh slipping out of me. “I guess we both lied, then, didn’t we?” I stare down at the strange markings swirling under my skin. “Because no matter what you did to force me into a life by your side, it doesn’t make me yours.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

OceanofPDF.com

NYDO

Despair. Darkness.

I cannot even touch my magic, can’t do anything but stare in horror as the temple entrance fills with the all-too-few remaining Roth.

Leigh stands by my side, her movements wooden, her green eyes watery. Her skin shimmers and gleams, the ash markings moving rapidly across it. Her dress is back on, but enough skin is exposed in the garment that the Roth assembled can clearly see she’s mine. That we are mated.

Even if she so adamantly denies it.

Mine.

It pains me. The hurt still etched on her face, the fact that she refuses to cry, or smile, or do anything but stand there, living proof the human females have been found worthy of bearing a Roth mate bond.

A bond she doesn’t want. Never wanted.

I don’t understand why she is angry with me. I love her. I would give her the world, all the worlds. I am keeping her people safe through this. Doesn’t she understand this?

My thoughts tumble through my mind, the Roth below cheering at the sight of my mate.

At the sight of a future where we do not go extinct, a future where we have families again.

“The Overlord would defile our sacred bonds,” I finally shout, knowing I cannot just let this moment slip away. “He would force worthy females into breeding pens, when they could be our mates, if we only give them the choice—”

Oh.

I pause longer than I intended, realizing what I’ve said. What I’ve done. I thought she had chosen me, though, didn’t I? Still, I never let her truly know what I was up to.

I was too afraid to lose her.

Perhaps I am no better than the Overlord, after all.