Terra was surprised, to say the least, and Isolde got to spend some other happy hours with her friends watching holocalls from people who still thought the Brions had kidnapped her. For a short while, she was horribly tempted to take Diego to her reunion prom, but decided against it. The first drunken insult and there would be a decade’s worth of political tension.
Honestly, Isolde didn’t miss Terra. A part of her had never belonged there, not really. Once she confided that in Angus, the ambassador for Terra, who merely smiled and asked why she thought he had spent more than half his life stationed over a strange alien planet. Neither of them missed home. Space was, as they said, fun.
Above all, Isolde had feared that the butterflies would still, eventually, go away. That Diego would get used to her and even Brion warlords could grow dull with all the blood and killing, the Brion equivalent of drinking on the couch.#p#分页标题#e#
Only it didn’t happen. As days and weeks and months went by, Diego looked at her the same way he had when they’d only known each other for a day. If anything, his eyes grew more loving as they grew closer. As did hers.
Brion warlords work out, she thought, lying on their bed on the Triumphant and watching her general undress for the night. It was true, of course. She desired him with the same fervor that tormented her in her first week aboard Diego’s ship. But it wasn’t just that.
The Brion bond didn’t let the fated get to know each other much before it flooded them with lust and desire, but all her fears had been dispersed when the war was averted and she finally found that bonds for bonds, love for love, she and Diego had truly come to like each other.
Her gerion caught her staring, smirking their secret signal. “Do you want to go home?” he asked, catching Isolde in his arms and kissing the air from her lungs. “We can return to Briolina and stay there for a while, if you want to. No wars seem to call to me these days. You did too good of a job. Soon I will have to fight Faren just so I do not get bored.”
“Just you try that, Eleya will exile us both,” Isolde laughed. “No, I don’t want to go to Briolina. That’s not my home.”
Diego seemed taken aback. “To Terra? I understand you have not seen your home world in a while. We can go there if they can stand seeing a Brion warship in their orbit…”
“Terra? No,” Isolde said. “And it’s probably a good idea not to give Terra a collective heart attack and have you and the Triumphant show up.”
“Where is your home then?” Diego asked, teasing, though Isolde saw a hint of concern. She was getting better at reading him too, developing almost Brion-like senses for her general.
“What do you mean?” Isolde laughed. “Here. On the Triumphant. With you, in our rooms.”
“Do not do that,” Diego said accusingly, biting her lip gently before kissing her. “For a moment I thought you wanted to leave.”
“I wouldn’t mind going somewhere,” Isolde admitted. “But only with you. I don’t think I can stand to be apart from you for too long.”
“Where do you want to go then?”
“Can we finally go to Rhea, like you promised?” Isolde asked. It was a real question, since while the Galactic union had agreed to let the Brions once again take their part of Rhea’s vast resources, it still might not have been the best idea to have Diego Grothan turn up.
“We can go,” Diego promised her.
“Mm,” Isolde said, completely and utterly at peace with the world in that moment, held close by Diego’s strong arms, feeling safe and loved. “I want to walk under those trees again.”
“You are mine and mine alone,” her general said. “It will be if that is your wish.”
“It is,” Isolde said, thinking on it for a moment. “It really is. I feel like I need to truly finish the trip I started.”
At Diego’s command, the Triumphant broke away from Briolina’s orbit and Isolde Fenner was on her way to Rhea once again.
Did you miss the first book in this series? Check it out here!
Alien Warrior’s Mate
Alien Warrior’s Wife
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ALIEN GENERAL’S CHOSEN EXCERPT
Yes, she’d guessed. Known, even. All through her daydreaming haze, she’d actually already known, but her mind was apparently quite good at protecting her.
She nodded, finding no words to do her feelings justice. She had never been that scared in her life.
“Will you come with me to the Unbroken?” Faren asked.
At least in this, she knew what she had to do.
“No,” she said, her beautiful, trained voice shaking again despite herself.
She would have no escape from this, not truly, but at least she could delay it. Could delay being the gesha of this monster before him, as dreamy as his eyes might have been. A chance to gather her thoughts, at least –
“I’m afraid I wasn’t really asking,” Faren said.
What?
“But…” Leiya began, but then she remembered that people didn’t really argue with Faren.#p#分页标题#e#
The general was waiting for her to continue, but words simply refused to leave her lips before him, it seemed.
“It is not safe for you here,” said the man she’d heard ripped the still-beating hearts out of his enemies’ chests.
He held out his hand for her and she hesitated. Not for a second did she doubt that he could read her every emotion straight from her pulse. Apparently, she hesitated for a moment too long. The next thing she knew, she was staring down at the ground with her hands kicking at Faren’s rock hard back.
“Oh my… Faren! Put me down!” she protested at the top of her mighty lungs.
But the general clearly had no intention of listening to her. With her over his shoulder, Faren moved just as easily as he had when he first approached and if Leiya hadn’t been so steaming mad at him, she might have even seen the poetry in it all. A determined lover, a reluctant maiden, brought together despite misunderstandings and uncertainty…
But screw that. He was carrying her off into gods know where and she doubted that was the end of it.
At least he couldn’t read her mind. Usually it was filled with new ideas, and melodies, and dreams. At that moment there was only one thought bubbling under the current of surprise and irritation at her apparent lack of clarity with the Monster of Briolina. Only one thing she knew for certain.
She’d absolutely won the opposite game.