Page 36 of Stolen By Her Alien Mate

This woman—my mother?—is tall and stunningly beautiful. Her dark hair is piled on her head in elaborate loops. Her crimson tunic is cinched tight at her waist and hangs to below her knees, so that only a few inches of her azure leggings are visible above her boots.

Her expression impatient, she crosses to my side with quick, efficient steps.

I turn fully to face her. This close to me, her gray eyes blaze. “You think sending me away is the only option, but it’s not. I’m willing to be flayed. I can take the pain.”

“It’s not about whether or not you can take the pain…” she begins.

But I cut her off. “I know you think I’m soft. Because I didn’t fight in the rebellion, like you and father. But I can take the pain. I’m ready.”

I pull up the sleeve of my tunic and expose the underside of my forearm and the series of raised lines I’ve carefully cut into my wrists over the past month.

My mother gasps. “Elandra! What have you done?”

“I've been practicing. To make sure I could take it. I can. I’m ready. If it means I get to stay here with you. Then I can do it.”

Her gaze hasn’t left my forearm, so I can’t tell if I’ve convinced her yet.

Before I can show her the marks on my other arm, she closes the distance between us and gently tugs the fabric back down over my arm.

“My dear—” Her voice breaks. Cradling my arm in one hand, she smooths her other hand down my forearm to grasp my hand. When she looks up at me, I see more pain, more open affection than I have ever seen in her eyes. “I never thought you weren’t strong enough to withstand the flaying. I know how strong you are. But I never wanted this for you.”

At the word this, her hand flutters the azure scarf at her neck, the one that hides her scars from when she had her own marks flayed from her skin nineteen years ago.

She steps closer, her voice barely over a whisper. “This thing the Sovereignty is asking of you, that it has asked of all of us, it isn’t right. Flaying away a person’s marks to ensure their alliance… it is the worst kind of injustice.”

For a moment, her tone sounds like her normal voice, firm. Strong. But still in a whisper.

The palace may be the only home I’ve ever known, but even I know there are spies everywhere. And her words are treasonous. Even for her.

And I have never heard her voice such thoughts before.

“I went through the flaying for one reason alone. To protect you. And it worked. For many years. But now that Sorvin is insisting on these fealty ceremonies, no one is safe. And if your marks come in, he may have a fate for you that is worse than flaying.”

I barely contain my own gasp. “Worse than the flaying?”

What could be worse than having your marks burned off with an ion laser?

“Yes. Worse. And I only have one chance to smuggle you out of the palace. I have only one last way to keep you safe. But we need to leave now.”

I wake with a jolt, cold and clammy, despite the low purr of Lorraine’s air conditioner. My pulse is racing.

I’m in my bed, alone.

But that dream…. that crazy, intense dream.

It’s already drifting away, but I snatch at the memories, struggling to put words to the images.

The purple sky glowing bright with an arc of…. something. Like a rainbow, but shades of purple and gray and bigger than any rainbow I’d ever seen.

But it wasn’t a rainbow. And in the dream, I knew what it was.

Rings?

Like the rings of a planet?

Could that be right?

And there was the woman. The beautiful woman with the familiar green eyes and the scars on her neck.