Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“What?” Nate gave her an uneasy look. “I don’t…don’t understand.” He shook his head.
“Tell me—what were you doing before she collapsed?” the old woman demanded. As she spoke, she was pulling things out of her bag—boxes of herbs and a vial of some strange dark blue liquid.
“I…I mean…” Nate didn’t know how to answer. But as it turned out, he didn’t need to.
“Look at this!” The old woman pointed down to one of Lan’ara’s bare breasts. On the tip of her nipple was a golden droplet of nectar. “Were you sucking the Healing Nectar from her breasts?” she demanded, glaring up at Nate. “Were you?”
“Yes, all right.” he growled. “But she told me to—she told me she made it just for me.”
“Of course she did. Any Empath woman will make the Nectar to heal her mate if his body or his mind is broken,” the old woman snapped. “I told her that she should try to keep from it! I told her you weren’t worth trading her life for yours! You…you human.” She spat the word like a curse.
“I still don’t fucking understand,” Nate said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you drained her life-force when you drained her nectar!” The old woman was adding several powders into the vial of blue liquid, stirring the mixture furiously as she spoke. “You literally sucked her life away!”
“What?” Nate was horrified. “That can’t be right! How is that even possible?”
“It’s possible all right. When a female has a broken mate—one who’s dark on the inside. One like you.” The old woman lifted Lan’ara’s head gently and placed the vial of blue liquid to her lips. “I just hope I can bring her back. If not, you just remember that you’re the one who killed her by taking all she had to give and giving nothing in return!”
Nate watched numbly as she coaxed the liquid down Lan’ara’s throat. The beautiful Kindred woman looked so helpless and still. Like a broken doll, lying on the bed they had shared together.
And I’m the one who broke her, he thought, feeling sick. I hurt her with my darkness, with my pain. My fucking past. I drained her like some kind of a fucking vampire, just being near her!
Now he understood why she had fainted in the Singing Woods—he’d been triggered by the sounds in the underbrush and she had managed to bring him back. She’d done the same thing in the caverns as they swam together. It had weakened her so much she had almost drowned afterwards.
And then I bring her back to the hut and drain her even more—sucking the life out of her and getting off on it the whole time!
In that moment, Nate hated himself with a dark, all-consuming hatred that filled him like black, polluted water.
Lan’ara stirred weakly and cried out—a sound of pain and distress.
“What are you doing, you great idiot?” the wrinkled old woman demanded, slapping his arm angrily. “Here I am trying to heal her and you’re spewing your negative emotions all over her! Go—get away from her! You’re hurting her!”
Horrified at the idea of making things worse, Nate rose hastily.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he muttered, looking down at Lan’ara. “So fucking sorry.”
Then he turned and ran from the hut, trying to put enough distance between them that his pain wouldn’t hurt her. He saw clearly now what had been going on—Lan’ara was like a beautiful bright light—a fragile flame—and he had been smothering her with the darkness inside him.
Just recently he had been thinking of building a life with her…of Claiming her as his wife and his mate, which was what she seemed to want so desperately. But now Nate saw that it couldn’t be.
I’m like poison for her, he thought grimly. I can’t let myself get close to her again…not even a little.
He would have to leave Lan’ara strictly alone from now on.
As difficult as that would be, he could never touch her again.
THIRTY-FIVE
SONYA
The monster was coming for her—the troll out of the fairytale book. Somehow he had come to life and escaped the bounds of the book and now he was reaching for her, a hungry grin on his hideous face…
“No! No, please! Leave me alone!” Sonya screamed breathlessly. She was trying to run but she felt frozen in place—her feet were stuck to the floor and the troll was getting closer and closer.
Suddenly he changed—growing two more heads, both of them drooling with hungry greed. A huge metal object appeared in his hand—a cold, hard phallus that Sonya knew he wanted to put inside her.
“Shove it up inside yourself, girly!” the middle head demanded, leering at her. “Grox wants to see it stretch your little cunny! Just like we’ll stretch you when we breed you later!”
“No!” Sonya moaned. Between her legs she ached fiercely—it felt like someone had shoved a thick icicle inside her and she couldn’t get it out and the troll was coming for her…