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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Adelina
Alpha’s Starship
The Hai Galaxy
Her head pounded and Adelina groaned as she cracked an eye open. She went to put a hand to her forehead to try and ease the pain but the motion was halted abruptly. Her eyes widened in surprise and she realized she had no idea where she was.
Then she discovered she was strapped down and couldn’t move.
Terror flashed through Adelina so hard and so fast it left her breathless and her ears began to ring. She could feel her anxiety closing in, her body already showing symptoms of an oncoming panic attack.
She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth as Nadyah had taught her; over and over until the tingling in her hands dissipated. Then when her heart rate settled a little she took a moment to evaluate her surroundings.
The first thing that came to her attention was the noise. It was the rumble of a starship engine if she wasn’t mistaken. Then it was the smell – purified air lacking any notes of sulphur or ash. Adelina was definitely on a ship.
The slight sensation in her stomach told her they were moving through space, no longer on the surface and the gravity was lighter than it had been on Hai Delta.
All these facts didn’t help her control the panic, but it did give her some clues. She sniffed again and flexed her fingers until her claws were full length. What concerned her the most was she couldn’t remember what the last thing she’d been doing was.
She remembered having that verbal match with the eldest, most cantankerous of the dragons and that she’d asked for time alone. Nothing after that.
“Oh good, you’re awake.”
Adelina turned her head and watched the male who had once been her childhood friend, companion, guard, and briefly her lover walk into the sterile room.
“Alpha, please…tell me what’s going on,” she pleaded with him, testing the bonds around her wrists. Surprisingly her feet weren’t bound, but lying flat on her back had her at a disadvantage.
“We are headed to the Khara Galaxy,” Alpha said. The way he tilted his head to study her was strange and his eyes – he looked at her with an odd raptness that concerned Adelina. “I’m delivering the Queen to the Neprijat King.”
Her throat closed up and tears pricked her eyes as she took in the full extent of his betrayal. It physically hurt, like a knife in her heart. Adelina didn’t understand how or why, but the stark truth in his voice and the way he held himself. It was excruciating. The one person she thought would never betray her to the Neprijat no matter their recent difficulties…the promise he’d made to her, twice now – had that been nothing more than a lie?
Then rage consumed her.
“Alpha,” she whispered with the promise of death in her words. “After everything? Everything!” Adelina pulled at the restraints, fighting them as she tried to get at the male.
“Shh,” he murmured, caressing her cheek ever so softly with his knuckles.
She jerked away and bared her teeth, wishing she could sink them into his hand.
“I know you don’t understand,” he told her. “But you will, I promise.”
“You swore an oath to me!” she screamed at him. “You promised you’d end my life before letting the Neprijat take me, and now this! I will feed you to their dogs.”
Alpha smiled down at her and it looked so…wrong. “You really don’t know do you?” He walked around the table she was strapped to, but he didn’t touch her again. “I am not your Alpha,” he told her, that strange smile still on his face. “I am not Alpha at all. I am Drozer – the Neprijat King’s most loyal and trusted spy.”
Her very breath left her body as she stared at him. It crystallized the hot rage in her veins into ice – making her feel brittle and frozen as Adelina tried to comprehend those words.
This male…whoever he was, he smiled down at her with so much love and dedication on his face it brought bile to her tongue. He grinned and leaned against the table on his elbows, so close to her face. “My Queen, my mind was uploaded into Alpha’s body right after your coming-of-age party. It was convenient really as you no longer needed a guard and I no longer needed Darius’s body.”
Adelina jerked away from whatever inhabited Alpha so hard her wrists protested, nearly snapping from the sudden, violent motion. She’d never heard of such tech – where one could simply move their consciousness from one body to the next like it was no more than changing clothes.
But they knew nothing about the Neprijat, or their tech.
“How?” she breathed. It was difficult to formulate thoughts – to take in all that this male had revealed to her. The shock of it made her so very cold and her entire body started to shake.
“The exact details don’t matter,” he said, pushing off the table. Whoever wore Alpha’s body turned to a closet and pulled out a plain blanket. He tucked it around her gently.
