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We’d gone through this many times. “What would you have us do? There are no more mates for us here. They must come from the stars like our gods.”
“I don’t know.” His hard gaze met mine. “But it’s notthis.” With that, he rose and stomped from the central crystal structure and out into the night.
I sighed. I was the traedor, not him, though he’d fought me for the honor. That was six years ago. I thought by now he’d accepted the will of the gods and trusted me to make the right decisions for our clan. I’d remind him tomorrow that while I accepted input from everyone, my decision in this was final.
Staring into the fire, I let my distress about Krute pass. This was a time of joy for all the clan, not one of sorrow.
Would I receive the sign soon? If so, thenshe’djoin me. She’d love me as much as I did her, and I’d plant many young in her welcoming body.
Jessia stood. “It’s time for me to rest.” She rubbed her lower back. “My bones are tired.I’mtired. But not so tired that I’m ready to leave you all yet. I want to see our clan rejuvenated once more. I feel that time is coming.”
Someone gasped, and my gaze was caught by the glow outside.
We all rushed out, staring around, but we couldn’t find the source of the light.
Tepesta pointed upward, and we all crooked our heads back.
A crystal shard detached from the main structure and speared down. Something like this had never happened before. It landed in the soil between my feet. Holding my breath, I blinked down at it.
Light blazed from within the shard, and a sudden burn flashed across my right inner forearm. I rolled my hand over to expose my arm in the light, and Muzzire sucked in his breath.
A symbol—that of the Indigan Clan—was etched across my skin in every shade of blue.
At that moment, Iknew.
At that moment, I felt incredible joy.
Because my mate would arrive shortly.
Chapter 3
Vanessa
“It’s nearly time,” a lilting voice said by my ear, and I woke.
I opened my eyes and blinked up at the plate of glass so close to my nose my exhalations coated it with steam, wondering where I was and what had happened to me.
Memories rushed in of the robocops grabbing me, injecting me with something that made me pass out. Vague memories followed that, of them loading me in a vehicle and driving forever, of one of them slinging me over their shoulder and running, leaping over a very tall fence topped with electrified wire. Sirens rang out, lights flashed, but the robocop carrying me kept going. He didn’t stop until he approached . . . I frowned.
The spaceship I’d seen on TV—the one heading to Mars?
Nah, that couldn’t be right. No one was allowed close to the launchpad unless they were part of the team.
There was no way the robocop had . . . I remembered it carrying me inside something that looked an awful lot like the ship before laying me gently inside a long glass cylinder.
One like the arched glass structure encasing me right now.
“Wake,” the melodic voice said in a less soothing voice. “Your new life is about to begin.”
Whatever I lay in jostled, and with a hum, the glass overhead slid to the right. Mechanical arms lifted me out of the . . . Yes, when I looked down, I could see it was a pod like the ones the people were supposed to sleep in while the ship took them to Mars.
This . . . I couldn’t be one of them. I couldn’t be on my way to Mars.
The arms drifted across a long room, carrying me above more pods, each containing a woman dressed in a simple white gown that came to their mid-thigh just like the one I now wore. Where had my top gone? My jeans? The apron I’d worn when I worked in the diner’s kitchen?
The women inside the pods were stirring, too, and other metal limbs were lifting them, carrying them in a long row behind me.
“Ahhh!” A woman with long red hair cried out. She struggled inside her pod, but the arms only tightened their grip on her arms and lifted her into the air.
