KRAVING DRAVKA

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THE KRAVE OF EVERTON BOOK 3

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ZOEY DRAVEN

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 CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Kraving Tavak
Bonus Epilogue
Thank You!
About the Author

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
Cover Design: Aria at Resplendent Media
Copyright © 2021 Zoey Draven

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 CHAPTER ONE

M orning was breaking over Everton.

Like a cracking egg, Valerie mused as she watched, spilling
yellow and gold over the horizon. Her insides felt slimy and
wrong as she gazed out the small, circular window.
She was standing in the Cluster. It was what they called the top floor of
Madame Allegria’s infamous brothel on the Earth colony of Everton. It was
where the Keriv’i—more commonly known as the Krave—rested and slept
and ate…mostly.
The center of the Cluster was comprised of a common sitting area, one
they all shared. The walls were made of bricks, ranging from deep reds to
rusty oranges and browns. Old World sconces cast the room in a warm,
flickering, darkened glow. It wouldn’t get much brighter. There was a
circular window in the sitting area, a single window, that faced the back of
the building opposite the brothel. But the Keriv’i, Valerie had learned, could
see better in the dark than humans. They didn’t seem to mind the lack of
light. Sometimes they seemed to prefer it.
The floor was lined with a plush rug that had seen better days, though
Valerie knew how pricey it had been to import from the Genesis colony.
Valerie’s lips twisted. Madame Allegria had always had expensive
tastes. The trader had bragged it had been brought from Old Earth itself,
from a country called Morocco. The orange and green dyes were beyond
faded now. It looked grey to her. Bleached of its vibrancy.
There were five doors that surrounded the sitting room. One was the
washroom. The four others led to small bedrooms, though one lay
permanently empty now, with Khiva’s departure.
 It had been three months since then. Three endless, sleepless months
since Khiva had left the brothel and the colony with Evelyn, the human
woman he’d fallen in love with.
Valerie’s fists squeezed tight, feeling that sense of panic and
helplessness rise within her again. These days, she was always a nervous
wreck. But of course she never showed it to the clients that frequented
Madame Allegria’s brothel. She was always expected to be unflappable,
calm, and should always—always—wear a smile, so the clients would feel
comfortable, so the clients would never suspect what evil lurked long after
they departed.
A week ago, Valerie had had a vivid dream of her sewing her own lips
together. Of them never opening again, never laughing or speaking or
smiling again. When she’d woken in a cold sweat, gasping for air, rubbing
her fingers over her lips, it had disturbed her how relieved she’d felt in that
dream.
The door to the Cluster opened.
A little hitch in her breath came and she swung to regard the male
entering the common room.
The male she’d come to see.
The Keriv’i paused on the threshold of the doorway when he saw her
but his hesitation only lasted a moment before he closed the door behind
him. His gaze flicked to Tavak and Ravu’s doors—both closed, which
meant they’d already returned from their clients and were likely resting—
before resettling on her.
Anticipation, relief, warmth, and crippling grief and guilt came over her
like a wave as she watched him.
“You should not be here,” Dravka murmured, keeping his voice low,
though that deep, husky voice made her shiver.
I am right where I want to be, she thought. With you.
That thought cut her like glass. Could words shred a heart? She thought
it very possible.
Clearing her throat, Valerie said, “Aren’t you ever tired of saying that to
me? You know how stubborn I am.”
Dravka grunted, stepping into the heart of the Cluster. His shirt was
balled up in his large palm. His feet were bare, treading over the worn rug.
Black pants encased his long legs, clinging to his muscled thighs.
 His chest was bare, revealing his sculpted, hard flesh and his dark
nipples. His skin was dusky blue with the occasional patch of black and
grey, which she knew was slightly rough in texture compared to the rest of
him.
The first time she’d seen him, she’d been terrified because he was
massive. A little over seven feet tall with thighs like tree trunks and
shoulders so broad she almost couldn’t see past them.
Yet, she’d been intrigued. Especially by his eyes. Mesmerized might’ve
been a more accurate description of how she felt during their first meeting,
over five years ago.
Dravka looked at Valerie now, his eyes like dark, swirling opals. Pine-
tree greens and cerulean blues shimmered in his gaze as his dark pupils
flicked over her.
Longing burst in her chest, quickly followed by guilt, and she
swallowed hard, her hands beginning to shake at her sides.
She clenched her palms. If she lusted after him, she was no better than
the women he slept with every night. She would be no better than those
women who paid Madame Allegria for the chance to take an infamous
Krave to bed.
Her stomach turned sour, a bitterness rising in her throat, especially
when Dravka drew near enough that Valerie could smell Mrs. Pafford’s
cloying perfume all over him. The silver-haired woman had floated down to
the lobby of the brothel only twenty minutes before, her cheeks still pink,
which told Valerie all she’d needed to know as nausea had burned up her
throat.
And yet, Valerie had fucking smiled at her. That small, delicate little
smile Madame Allegria—her aunt, her own blood, her mother’s only sister
—had taught her to use with the clients.
Mrs. Pafford, one of Dravka’s regular clients, had booked another visit
and then departed the brothel in the early morning light. Valerie had come
straight up to the Cluster after she left.
Underneath Mrs. Pafford’s perfume, which seemed to coat Dravka’s
skin, she smelled sex and sweat and the musky scent that came from a
Keriv’i’s teela, which was what all the human women came to the brothel
for.
Because a Keriv’i’s teela could trigger orgasm after orgasm within a
variety of species, humans included. An endless stream of orgasms until
their semen was neutralized or cleaned away.
And women on Everton paid 900 credits for a single visit with the
‘Krave.’
Valerie craned her head back to meet Dravka’s eyes. There was a rigid
tightness in his features that only seemed to intensify the longer he looked
down at her. There were only a couple feet of space between them but
lately, ever since Khiva had left, it had begun to feel like miles upon miles
of distance.
Dravka had purposefully been putting a wall up between them. For five
years, he’d been her friend. Her best friend. Valerie had never felt what she
felt for Dravka before. Not with anyone else. He made her feel centered. He
made her feel whole in those little moments when they both forgot who and
where they were. He made her feel desire. He made her laugh. Sometimes,
when they were with each other—at least before Khiva left—all they would
need to do was look at one another and know.
They knew that their friendship, their relationship, their whatever-the-
hell-this-was…was rare. It was special.
And Dravka was purposefully letting it tarnish and crumble away.
And Valerie was letting him.
She loved him. She’d always known that. At one point, she’d believed
Dravka had returned her feelings.
Now, she wasn’t so sure. Something had shifted between them.
Last night, she’d finally decided to ask him what had changed.
Only, standing in front of him now, her treacherous tongue felt glued to
the roof of her mouth as a heavy stretch of silence slammed between them.
It wasn’t news to her that she was a coward. Growing up, she’d always
thought she was brave. She’d always thought she could do whatever she
wanted, could conquer all the Earth colonies and beyond if she desired.
Partly because her mother made her feel like she could, partly because
Valerie believed that she could.
Since her mother’s death, however, since leaving Genesis and coming to
live on Everton, that brave girl she’d once been was nothing but a whisper
of a memory. A whimsical fairy tale, a falsehood that she couldn’t believe
now that she’d grown up and seen the universe for what it truly was. An
ugly, greedy, unfair place.
Dravka had made that place a little more wonderful. With nervous
butterflies in her stomach, she remembered that he’d once told her she was
all he wanted to look at, for the rest of his life.
So why did those butterflies feel like knives in her belly now?
“Dravka,” she murmured, taking in his swirling eyes, the sharp bridge
of his nose, the high slope of his cheekbones. His features resembled a
human man’s…yet they didn’t. “Are—are we okay?”
His lips parted and Val’s gaze went to them. Soft and full. Lips hundreds
and hundreds of women had kissed, no doubt. Yet, she’d never felt them on
her own, though she’d watched them carefully with tears in her eyes as
Dravka had told her of his family, his sister and his father, and his home
planet of Kerivu, grief threaded through his tone.
“What do you mean?” he questioned, but the gruffness in his tone told
Valerie he knew exactly what she was speaking of.
Her gaze went to the two closed doors across the Cluster. Behind them,
Tavak and Ravu were likely asleep. She didn’t think they’d care to
eavesdrop on their conversation anyways.
When she turned back to regard him, he was looking away. His gaze
was out the small window and her breath hitched at the fucking despair she
saw etched across his features. Fine little lines of anger and grief, drawn out
like ink across a page. There was a restlessness inside him.
She’d always been able to read him well. He’d always been able to read
her too. He knew she saw it.
“Dravka,” Val breathed, stepping forward, reaching her hand across the
space between them, raising it higher so she could cup the side of his face.
He stilled when she touched him. She very rarely did, fearing that it would
unleash something untamed between them. “Tell me what’s wrong. What
can I do?”
The husky laugh that barked out of him made her recoil and her hand
withdrew, though she remained frozen in place.
His eyes turned to her, his pupils flickering back and forth between her
own.
The silence that stretched between their faces was charged and it made
her shiver. That prickling of desire bit at her belly but she snuffed it out
quickly.
They were both miserable. They’d found solace within one another…
but even that seemed to be fading away.
His words were tight and hardened.
“I’m tired, Valerie,” he said. “My client kept me up all night.”
 Bright heat, stemming from anger and disgust, stabbed through her
chest. That, too, she snuffed out quickly as Mrs. Pafford’s perfume once
again bloomed off his skin.
Sometimes, Valerie wondered how much she could extinguish before
the raging inferno within her became too overwhelming. She almost feared
what would happen then, if it was unleashed.
“You should go,” he finished, already turning his back on her. “We can’t
do this, Val.”
“Dravka—”
He entered the washroom and shut the door on her words.
We can’t do this, Val.
His words rang in her head.
Val stared at the door, her face draining of color, and she wrapped her
arms around her body. She’d lost some weight the past few months. She
hated that she could feel the brittleness of her bones underneath her palms.
Broken.
So broken.
I want to be whole again.
She couldn’t even remember the brave girl she’d been before. The one
who would’ve marched to the washroom door and tore it off its hinges so he
would speak to her. The one who would’ve demanded answers and not let
him skirt around the distance that had been building for months.
The one who would’ve confessed her love the first minute she’d
realized it, years before.
The one who would’ve left Everton…when she’d had the chance.
I want to be that girl again, she realized, that thought blooming inside
her, filling up space that she hadn’t known lay empty until it felt suffocating
but right. She struggled to hold onto it as her feet brought her before the
washroom door. Her fist raised, about to knock, to demand.
Then the back of her neck prickled…
And that bravery left her all at once, freezing her in place, the old scars
across her back beginning to throb in memory.
She smelled Madame Allegria’s heavy perfume before she heard her
voice.
“I knew I’d find you up here,” her aunt chimed.
Most people, men especially, would do anything for a voice like that.
Seductive and lilting. Often, Valerie had wondered if her aunt could’ve
become one of the most influential and wealthy citizens of the colonies if
she didn’t have that voice. The one that made men beg and made women
envious.
If only they knew the monster that lurked underneath.
“Come,” Madame Allegria ordered, her tone hardening. “We have a
party to go to this afternoon. And I won’t be seen with you looking like
that.”
Unease curled in her belly. A party? Valerie had never been to one.
Madame Allegria preferred that no one knew of her existence.
“Now,” her aunt snapped when Valerie hesitated too long, staring at the
washroom door. “And don’t let me come searching for you again. You
won’t like it when I do.”
Valerie’s mother had always told her that hatred was a disease. It
festered and ate at you until there was nothing left. It had always been her
mother’s wish that Valerie would never know hatred.
Now, she wondered what her mother would think, knowing that all of
Val’s hatred was directed at her mother’s only sister. That she had felt
hatred’s sharpness and acrid sourness for years.
Other than Dravka, hatred was the only thing Val had left to hold onto.
And now, Dravka was slowly slipping away.
What would remain of her then?
Valerie turned away from the washroom door and left.

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 CHAPTER TWO

T he hot water did nothing to soothe the tension thrumming through

Dravka’s body.
He leaned back in the Keriv'i-sized washing tub in the Cluster’s
shared bathroom. The look in Valerie’s eyes was haunting him until it was
all he could see in the swirls of steam clouding his vision.
A spark of regret made his fists clench underneath the water. If they had
met anywhere else but Everton…
If Valerie wasn’t Madame Allegria’s flesh and blood…
If Dravka wasn’t a Krave whore working in her brothel…
If they had both left Everton when they’d had the chance…
It’s too late now, Dravka thought. For everything. For anything to be
different between them. It was too late.
And Dravka had always known that their relationship was doomed from
the start. She was a human. He was a Keriv'i on a New Earth colony. He
should’ve been beneath her notice entirely.
If they had been two entirely different beings, in an entirely different
place…Dravka would’ve taken one look at her and never let her go again.
He would’ve marked her in the Keriv'i way, with his bite on her neck and
his teela shimmering across her skin, gotten her heavy with his children,
and they would’ve been happy together until their dying days.
“Vauk,” he whispered in the quiet.
Regret mingled with his desire. That desire, those visions that plagued
him once he returned from his clients, made his cock thicken beneath the
water. True desire. Desire that heated his blood, that made his belly clench
in anticipation, that made his fingers curl in longing.
 Physically, Dravka could thicken his cock at will. Something he’d
learned while working as a whore was that if he couldn’t service his clients’
needs at night…it meant punishment. Physical arousal meant nothing to
him. It was a means to an end.
He hadn’t felt true desire when he was mating since…possibly since
he’d been a younger male on Kerivu. Before his home planet was
destroyed.
But for Valerie…vauk, he desired her.
Dravka growled and propelled himself from the washing tub, not caring
that he was drenched. He didn’t need to be alone with his thoughts or his
desires. They were dangerous things.
Instead, he needed sleep.
When he left the washing room and entered the sitting room of the
Cluster, he found Tavak seated in the cracked leather armchair, looking
down at a thin scratch on his arm, no doubt from his client the previous
night. Last week, one of Dravka’s clients had raked her nails down his back
as she came. Perils of the job.
Tavak’s gaze flashed up when Dravka exited the bathroom. He eyed
Dravka’s thickened cock for a brief moment but didn’t blink.
“Ah,” Tavak murmured in Keriv'i, their language. “I thought I heard
your female’s voice earlier.”
Dravka grunted. “Not my female.”
“Done with her then?” Tavak asked, his lips twisting in bitterness. Out
of the three of them that remained at Madame Allegria’s after Khiva’s
departure, Tavak had always been the most unpredictable. There was an
edge to him, a roughness that had perhaps always been within him.
His brother, Ravu, was the last of the Krave at the brothel. Tavak was
the eldest. Dravka knew the brothers hadn’t had an easy life, even on
Kerivu. Their mother had abandoned them young and they’d grown up
hungry and homeless. Long before Everton, Tavak had already been
exchanging sex for credits on the seedy colony Madame Allegria had found
them on.
“Vauk off,” Dravka bit out. Tavak had never trusted Valerie to begin
with. Tavak didn’t trust anyone except Ravu.
“You think she will leave you alone now?” Tavak continued, shaking his
head. “Don’t think I have not noticed you pushing her away the last few
months. We all have. Including her.”
 “Since when do you care about anyone but yourself and Ravu?” Dravka
asked, his teeth gritting. Even still, his irritation at Tavak was helping to
edge out the desire and longing for Valerie, a welcome reprieve, at least so
he could sleep that morning. “Stay out of my business.”
Tavak snorted but didn’t answer him.
But Tavak surprised him by asking, “Do you think Khiva ever regrets
leaving this place?”
Dravka’s brow bones pulled together, his frown deepening.
“No,” he replied truthfully.
Khiva had fallen in love with one of his clients, a human named Eve.
When Madame Allegria had found out…she’d whipped him so badly
Valerie had been scrubbing his blood off the floor for days after.
Eve had connections and had able to get them both off Everton. Khiva
had extended the offer to the rest of them—to Tavak, Ravu, Dravka, and
Valerie—but only he and Eve had gotten off the colony. Last Dravka had
heard, they were settled on a neutral colony in the Second Quadrant.
He hadn’t heard anything since. It had been three months since they’d
left.
The fact that Tavak was bringing Khiva up now was strange in itself.
His question was even stranger. Tavak was the first to decline Khiva’s offer,
given his past. In Tavak’s mind, work was hard to come by on the colonies.
In Tavak’s mind, he would always be a whore, one way or another. And
unlike Khiva and Dravka, Tavak and Ravu knew the sharp sting of hunger
and desperation.
At least on Everton, they were fed and housed. They knew what to
expect, day in and day out.
“You regret not going with him?” Dravka asked, cocking his head to the
side, watching the other male closely.
Tavak blew out a breath. His expression grew guarded once more. “I
didn’t say that.”
But he was saying something.
Dravka shook his head, casting the other male a speculative look. “I
need sleep.”
But as he was heading for his bedroom, Tavak said behind him, “She
deserves a straight answer.”
Dravka froze, a scowl spreading across his lips. He glared at Tavak over
his shoulder, knowing he was speaking of Valerie.
 But Tavak didn’t back down from his glare. Instead, the male said, “If
you truly love her, why prolong her pain? Cut her free.”
His words struck a sensitive ache in Dravka. He’d always known that.
He’d always known that Valerie could have a life beyond Madame
Allegria’s. She could marry, she could have a family, the one she’d always
wanted. She could have the children she’d always wanted. Children that
Dravka knew he could not give her.
But selfishly, for five years, Dravka had kept her tethered to him,
perhaps unknowingly at first.
After Khiva’s departure, however, it had become all the more obvious
that a future between them was an impossibility. With Khiva gone, Madame
Allegria would never let another of her Krave go. She was already
searching the outer colonies for his replacement, seeking another desperate
Keriv'i male who would whore himself for safety and a full belly.
Many would.
But this life had started to tear at all of them, Tavak and Ravu included.
Tavak thought he should cut Valerie free?
Though the words felt like blades torn from his throat, he rasped, “I
know.”

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 CHAPTER THREE

“W
Garden District.
alk straight,” Valerie’s aunt hissed as her high heels
clicked on the Old World cobblestones, which lined the
pathway leading to the grand, palatial home in the

Madame Allegria was strangely on edge that afternoon. The sun was
shining bright overhead, making Valerie squint. Yet, they were both dressed
in extravagant evening gowns, with tall heels and curled hair. The makeup
that was plastered all over Val’s face made her eyes water and her nose
tickle. She suppressed the urge to sneeze.
Bewilderment and unease had risen within her chest all throughout the
morning after her aunt had whisked her away from the brothel in a
driverless car. She’d taken her to High Street, where they’d both gotten
their hair and makeup done. When they finished, Madame Allegria had led
her down a few shops to a dress store with an elegant and dazzling window
display—of a floor-length dress encrusted completely in diamonds.
Madame Allegria had been warm and inviting with everyone they’d
encountered that morning. Practiced charm and practiced interest in others,
and Valerie had clenched her jaw tight as she watched the same act over and
over again. Madame Allegria had even smiled at her, numerous times,
announcing to everyone that she was her beloved niece, all the way from
Genesis.
Which only made more dread fill her.
Because in the five years she’d been on Everton, Madame Allegria had
never told anyone about her. Not even the clients that frequented the brothel
knew that Valerie was related to the infamous madame.
 Word would get out.
Which led Valerie to wonder just what in the universe her aunt was up
to.
Now, looking at the Garden District mansion that was coming into view,
with its white columns and grand staircase entrance, Valerie was close to
vomiting her nerves all over the cobblestoned walkway.
Madame Allegria’s sharp nails cut into the skin at her elbow as they
hurried along. In front of the house, she saw people socializing. They were
drunk, laughing loudly in broad daylight, and stumbling across the bright,
emerald-green lawn with shimmering flutes of teal-colored champagne
clutched in their hands.
The long dress that encased Valerie’s body got trapped underneath her
heels, causing her to stumble. It was bright pink—garish and harsh—but it
was the height of the current fashion on Everton, or so the shop girl had
proudly claimed. As Valerie got a better look at the partygoers, she saw the
girl had been right.
Madame Allegria snagged her up, her nails digging so deeply into her
arm that Valerie bit her lip in pain.
“Don’t embarrass me,” her aunt hissed, a smile plastered to her red-
rouged lips, her white teeth flashing underneath the bright sunlight. She
lifted her hand. “Oh there you are, Nadia! So lovely to see you again. Love
that dress. The mayor’s wife on Genesis wore a similar shade during the
Kibredian charity dinner last week.”
Nadia—a large woman with color-altered eyes and blonde hair too light
and cool-toned for her complexion—simpered, practically oozing her
thanks all over the cobblestoned walkway. Madame Allegria never stopped
walking, tossing over her shoulder that they must get drinks soon and catch
up.
“Keep up,” Madame Allegria snapped. “And do everything I say once
we are inside.”
“Where are we?” Valerie finally managed to ask, her heartbeat
thrumming in her throat, making her feel like she would choke. “Why am I
here?”
Madame Allegria ignored her. There were two men manning the two
doors to the regal house and they bowed low before swinging the white
doors open.
Valerie’s eyes went wide.
 A massive foyer greeted them, teeming with people. It was a ball, she
realized. Couples were dancing in the foyer, old music floating from
somewhere unseen, echoing around that massive space, coupling with
boisterous laughter and the clinking of glasses.
That wasn’t what surprised her, however.
Inside, it was night.
The foyer was warm and inviting as projections of bright, silver stars
twinkled overhead. Dark, wispy clouds floated in front of the stars every so
often, giving the foyer the illusion of being outside at nighttime. It even
smelled like the crisp air at midnight, lingering scents of dewy grass and
pine trees from the Lake District.
Hundreds of Old World candles, dripping in thick, silky white wax, lit
up a chandelier in the very center of the foyer and more lined the walls and
the tables that were laden with food and drinks.
It was beautiful.
Heads turned to regard them as they entered the makeshift ballroom,
Madame Allegria stepping in front and Valerie falling into place behind her.
She felt uncomfortable, like one of the Old Earth possessions that her aunt
bought from traders, something to be scrutinized and turned and studied and
bought. Hundreds of eyes crawled over her flesh, over her hair, over her
dress—one that bared her cleavage and her arms but kept her back entirely
covered. One that kept her scars covered.
All Valerie wanted was to be with Dravka right then.
What she wouldn’t give to go back in time a few months, when she
would creep into his room in the late afternoons and they would smile at
one another and whisper about things Valerie couldn’t even remember as
golden sunlight crept across his walls.
Longing went through her and she stumbled after her aunt unseeing, a
blur of faces passing by, her aunt’s voice lilting and beautiful as she greeted
everyone around her.
Her aunt seemed to have a destination in mind since they never stopped.
She was heading for the back of the foyer, to a small group of people
talking and laughing in a circle.
An older man from that group, dressed in a lilac suit, saw Madame
Allegria first and a grin spread over his face.
“Derek,” Madame Allegria greeted, going to him first, kissing him on
the cheek three times—telling Valerie they were friends. “What a wonderful
party you throw. I’m so glad the sky projections turned out so beautifully.”
“With your help, they turned out spectacularly. I can’t thank you
enough,” Derek said. He had a head of thick, black hair, though Valerie
spied a little grey peppering through the temples. He was handsome, though
he had the look of altering, especially around his eyes. “And is this who I
think it is?”
His eyes came to her. His teeth were blindingly white as they flashed in
the low light. There were three others among the group. An older couple to
her aunt’s right and a woman with blonde hair at Derek’s side, her arm
looped in his.
A woman Valerie realized she recognized.
Mrs. Larchmont.
Mrs. Larchmont’s lips were pressed tightly together as they locked
gazes. Her crystal-blue eyes—unaltered in color and beautiful—were
widened but the woman recovered quickly, plastering on a small, even,
pleasing smile that Valerie recognized. It was often one she used herself.
Mrs. Larchmont was a regular client of Ravu’s. She came to Madame
Allegria’s brothel every two weeks, usually on Thursday nights. Valerie had
just booked her another visit with Ravu a couple mornings prior on her way
out.
Belatedly, Valerie realized her aunt was introducing her to the group. All
she managed to catch with her blood rushing in her ears was niece and
death and Genesis, which had been her home colony.
Madame Allegria, with her clawed nails digging into her arm, pinched
her in warning and said, “Valerie, this is Mr. and Mrs. Larchmont. Our hosts
for the evening.”
Valerie didn’t know how she managed to do it but she managed to give
them both a half-smile and a pleased to meet you.
When her aunt pinched her harder, Valerie’s spine straightened and she
said softly, “You have a beautiful home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a
chandelier so eye-catching.”
Her aunt’s pinching lessened, meaning she was pleased. As was Derek
—Mr. Larchmont—because his smile widened.
“It is from Genesis actually,” he said, though Valerie’s mind had already
begun to glaze over his words. “I managed to snag it at a charity auction.
Let me introduce you to Gabriel. I regret that you have not met until now,
but, well…there is time to get to know one another afterwards. Naturally.”
 Gabriel?
To a passing waiter carrying a tray of the blue-colored champagne, with
bubbles that glimmered and fizzled gold, he ordered, “Find my son. Bring
him to me.”
“Right away, sir.”
The older couple, whose names Valerie couldn’t recall, floated away
after Madame Allegria had subtly edged them out of the circle, leaving
them with the Larchmonts. Mrs. Larchmont still hadn’t spoken a single
word and her gaze kept straying to the dancing couples on the floor. If not
for the white-knuckled grip around her delicate champagne flute, Valerie
would’ve thought she was the picture of calmness and ease. Any more
pressure around the stem, however, and the glass would snap in half.
“Your aunt was quite right, Valerie,” Derek murmured, giving her a
wink when she refocused her gaze on him. “You are a great Everton beauty.
I think Gabriel will be most pleased.”
Her blood started to rush harder in her ears. She didn’t know what made
her more uneasy: the fact that her aunt had called her beautiful to a stranger,
or why this Gabriel would be pleased because of it.
Though she feared she knew the answer to that and suddenly, the room
seemed to sway as black dots erupted in her field of vision.
Valerie must’ve unconsciously taken a step back because Madame
Allegria’s hand tightened and kept her from stumbling.
A large body in a dark blue suit with white, glittering lapels emerged at
Mr. Larchmont’s side.
“I believe I was summoned,” the man said, a wide grin as big as his
father’s spreading across his face. He had blue eyes—his mother’s eyes,
Mrs. Larchmont’s eyes—beautiful and shimmering in the candlelight, and a
lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, curled slightly.
He was tall and handsome, no doubt a very popular bachelor among the
Everton female population, though Valerie had never seen him before—
though of course, she had no reason to. She rarely left the brothel. Her room
was in the basement, after all. And given the tracker implanted in Valerie’s
shoulder, Madame Allegria would know if she left. She’d be displeased.
Gabriel’s gaze was on her, those bright eyes trailing across her flesh,
down the dip of her breasts, over her slim hips, and then back up. Nausea
built in her belly, saliva pooling in her mouth.
 “Gabriel, this is Valerie,” Derek said. “And of course, you know
Madame Allegria.”
Gabriel’s gaze lingered on her aunt in a way that made Valerie’s neck
prickle. She recognized that look, one of possession and longing.
“Yes, of course,” Gabriel murmured, flashing a megawatt smile, leaning
forward to give her aunt three kisses.
Then his blue eyes returned and he stepped into her. His lips brushed
Valerie’s flesh and she felt the heat of his palm rest at her waist.
“So pleased to meet you. Finally,” Gabriel murmured across her cheeks,
a low tone, only meant for her ears. “You look very much like your aunt.”
Valerie’s face felt hot. Her whole body felt overheated. She had the
strangest sense that she was a doll, a shell of a person, and she was
watching herself move from outside her body. Like a puppet with strings,
being tweaked and jerked.
“Pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Larchmont,” she managed to stumble
out and she would never know how her words sounded so effortless. But
working for Madame Allegria, plastering on a small smile and making
pleasant small talk with women who fucked the male she loved all while
she was screaming inside…surely, she’d had enough practice faking it.
Valerie was a liar and a coward and she was the first to admit it. She
was the first to admit she hated the person she’d become.
“Call me Gabriel, please,” he said, stepping back, though his hand
lingered at her waist. “You don’t have to be so formal considering the
circumstances.”
Madame Allegria was smiling broadly when Valerie met her gaze,
though she swore she could see a hint of annoyance lingering under its
surface.
Then that annoyance turned to mockery when her gaze flickered to Mrs.
Larchmont.
“What do you think, Celine?” Madame Allegria murmured, in that
husky purr of a voice, a small smile on her lips. “Should we plan for a
summer wedding?”
Valerie’s knees trembled briefly. If not for her aunt’s grip on her arm,
she would’ve fallen.
Celine Larchmont took a sip of her teal champagne, regarding Madame
Allegria over the rim. When she swallowed the liquid, she was smiling.
“I think a summer wedding sounds lovely.”
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER FOUR

I n the car back to the brothel, Valerie watched as the Garden District
flew by. They passed through the Business District, then High Street,
then Restaurant Row. Like a voyeur, from the safety of the tinted
windows of the car, Valerie watched the people that talked and walked and
laughed together and she wondered about their lives. She wondered what
kinds of lives they must have led in order to walk freely and smile freely.
Madame Allegria hadn’t said two words to her on the ride back to the
brothel. They hadn’t been at the party for very long at all. Their hair had
taken longer to do than the amount of time they’d spent speaking with the
Larchmonts.
But evening was falling over Everton and she knew why Madame
Allegria had to get her back. Clients would be coming soon. And Valerie
was always the one that greeted them.
Valerie felt like she was in a hushed trance. Still in shock, perhaps. Then
again…nothing really shocked her anymore.
She wondered if she should be worried about that. Her mother had
always said that life was full of surprises. Hopefully happy ones. Valerie
didn’t think those surprises should include a hasty arranged marriage to a
stranger. Her mother had married for love. Valerie had always wanted to
until she realized just how foolish that ideal was.
“I can’t do it,” Valerie said, though she hadn’t realized that she’d said it
out loud until she felt the heat of Madame Allegria’s gaze on the side of her
face.
“Yes, you will.”
 Her words were final. She didn’t even bother to raise her voice. If
anything, the quietness of her aunt’s words were more frightening.
“Why do you want this?” Valerie whispered. “Why are you doing this?
You never wanted anyone to know about me.”
“The Larchmonts own half of Everton’s importing business, not to
mention their Genesis and Edinton branches. Gabriel is the heir to it all, but
his family’s tradition is written so that he can only begin to assume control
once he marries. His father wishes to retire to Genesis soon. You should be
thanking me.”
A sharp snort escaped Valerie’s nostrils, anger rising within her. There
was only a brief moment before her aunt slapped her across the face.
Valerie’s cheek stung as her head jerked to the side. She bit her tongue in
the process and she tasted her metallic, coppery blood.
This was about money and position and power. Madame Allegria was
too old to marry Gabriel herself without raising a few eyebrows among
their social circles, on Everton and elsewhere. She couldn’t afford the
scrutiny.
The next best thing?
Marrying off her niece, whose life she controlled entirely.
A pawn and nothing more.
Not to mention the fact that Mr. Larchmont probably had no idea that
his beautiful wife was visiting a Krave every couple weeks. Madame
Allegria had a little black book full of names of the rich and powerful, one
she had used before to blackmail members of higher society for her own
gains.
She did it sparingly but Valerie knew that the Larchmonts’ wealth was
reason enough to use her influence.
“You will marry Gabriel,” her aunt hissed softly, though they were in a
driverless car and no one could hear them. Or see them, for that matter.
Ever since Khiva had left, Madame Allegria’s temper had been more
mercurial than ever. Her patience was almost non-existent now.
Even still, Valerie whispered, “Or what?”
The smile that crossed her aunt’s face was wide and wrong.
“Or I will whip Dravka every night until you agree.”
Bile rose in Valerie’s throat.
“I may even fuck him every night too. It’s been a while since I had a
Krave and I do so love Dravka’s perfect, perfect cock,” she purred.
 Like salt in a wound. Madame Allegria knew what it would take to bend
Valerie’s will easily. And it was only Dravka that would make her cave in
like a house of falling cards.
“Are we in agreement?” her aunt asked as the car slid in front of the
brothel, coming to a stop. Valerie looked at the Old World brick façade of
the buildings, at the quiet street. Her tone turned mocking. “Or should I call
Derek and tell him you’ve got a little case of cold feet?”
Valerie wiped at the tears that spilled down her cheeks, streaking
through the thick makeup.
Then realization washed over her calmly. Madame Allegria, for once in
her life, actually needed Valerie to be amenable to this. Valerie could ruin it
all. All it would take was a public declaration at one of their fancy parties,
in front of the high society members, people whose opinions her aunt cared
for.
So, her aunt could threaten Dravka all she wanted. But if she laid a
finger on Dravka, Valerie would ruin all her plans.
Anger was burning in her gut, a fire that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Slowly, she turned to face her aunt, who looked so much like her mother
that sometimes it was sickening. Her mother, who had been Madame
Allegria’s polar opposite. Who had been kind and loving and sad. Who had
tried to give Valerie everything growing up, though they were poor, though
people looked at them like they were nothing. And still, Valerie had been
happy.
“You will never touch Dravka again,” Valerie said, her tone soft and
careful. “You will never lay another hand on any of them.”
Valerie had managed to surprise her aunt, for once in her life.
Then that fury whipped across her face, red coloring her cheeks. “How
dare—”
“In a single moment, I can ruin all your plans. With a word. With a
public scene in front of your friends,” Valerie continued, though her voice
began to shake. With nerves, with hatred, with fear, she didn’t know. “So
let’s come to an agreement, one that benefits the both of us and not just
you.”
Madame Allegria was stewing, her eyes narrowed dangerously. She
hadn’t expected this, Valerie knew. She hadn’t expected her meek little
niece to actually fight back for once.
 She was doing this for Dravka. She’d been given an opportunity here—
one she would never get again. A bargaining chip. Power.
Valerie wouldn’t waste it.
She’d always known that there was little chance of a future for her and
Dravka on Everton. No matter how often she’d dreamed of a happy life
with him elsewhere, she knew that that was all it was.
A dream.
A beautiful fantasy that they could both escape to when their reality
became too…everything. The reality was that Madame Allegria would
never let Valerie go. She was chained to this place, possibly even more so
than the Keriv'i males in her brothel. Her aunt would let them go free before
her.
The Larchmonts wanted their son to marry—well, at least Derek
Larchmont did. A summer wedding would mean it would happen quickly,
within the next month. The Programmers would change the seasons soon.
The air would heat and warm. The projected sun would linger in the sky
longer.
Valerie’s will was not her own. Since her mother’s death, since coming
to live on Everton with her last remaining relative in the universe, a monster
in a beautiful mask, it had never been her own.
But Dravka and Tavak and Ravu…there was still hope for them. There
was still a possibility of a future, away from Everton. A happy future.
One she could help secure them.
“When I marry Gabriel Larchmont,” Valerie said softly, turning her
head to look straight into Madame Allegria’s eyes, ignoring her stinging,
reddened cheek, “you will close the brothel. Permanently.”
Her aunt’s face didn’t change, though her eyes flashed.
Though it tore at her heart to say it, she continued with, “You will
provide passage for Dravka, Tavak, and Ravu off Everton to a neutral
colony of their choosing. You will give them the credits that you owe them.
All of them. You will never bring another Keriv'i to the New Earth colonies
again.”
Valerie had surprised her aunt again. She actually seemed…speechless.
“How would it look?” Valerie continued softly. “For a Larchmont heir
to be married into a family who owns an infamous brothel? I don’t know
how you got Derek Larchmont to overlook it. But you know how your
circles talk.”
 Valerie knew how she’d accomplished it, however. Her aunt’s influence
reached beyond Everton. Those that knew she was the infamous madame of
the Kraves kept it quiet…because they were usually the ones visiting them.
They would do anything to keep that knowledge from their husbands, from
their tittering friends and acquaintances. There were rumors, of course, but
not many believed them.
After all, Madame Allegria was seen at too many charity events, too
many balls and dinners, where she played the part of charming, wealthy
philanthropist who was generous with her credits. The brothel wasn’t the
only thing she owned. It wasn’t her only source of income. She made more
credits on Genesis in a single month, through her investments, than she did
during the whole year on Everton.
She didn’t need the brothel. She only wanted it because she was cruel
and controlling and it brought her a sick kind of satisfaction. It brought her
pleasure. But it was a double-edged sword. Her weakness.
“I could ruin you,” Valerie whispered, holding her gaze, “and you know
it.”
Madame Allegria’s eyes narrowed.
“But if you agree to close the brothel,” Valerie continued, swallowing
the thick lump in her throat, “I will do whatever you want. I will smile at
the Larchmonts. I will kiss their son and dance with him at parties. I will
make them like me. I will make pleasant small talk with your friends and
pretend that you were my savior after Mom died. I will tell them how much
I love you, how great you are. I will never mention anything about the
Keriv'i, about this place. I will never mention anything about what you do
to them, in the darkness, with your cabinet of whips and chains. I will never
mention what you did to me.”
I will never mention that you almost killed me.
Those unspoken words lingered in the air between them, souring the
space. Madame Allegria heard them and Valerie swore she saw a flash of
regret in her eyes.
But this was her aunt, who never felt anything for anyone unless they
could get her something she desired.
“So,” Valerie voiced softly, sitting stiffly in her seat, her heartbeat
pounding in her throat, “are we in agreement?”
“I think you are more like me than you care to admit, my vicious little
niece.”
 In that moment, Valerie almost felt sorry for her aunt.
“I am nothing like you,” she corrected.
Madame Allegria’s jaw set. Her gaze flitted out the window of the
driverless car. London Street was empty. Not many ventured to this quiet
little area, which was behind the much more enticing and bustling
Restaurant Row.
“Very well,” Madame Allegria said. “You see? I am a reasonable
woman. Don’t forget that.”
Valerie was wary, watching her closely.
“You’ll close the brothel?” she asked again, needing to hear it from her
lips again. “You’ll give them their rightful credits and let them leave?”
“Yes,” Madame Allegria snapped, her gaze whipping across the cold air
between them. “Isn’t that what I said?”
Valerie swallowed. She hated that the thick sound echoed around the
car’s enclosed space.
“Only after you’re married, however,” Madame Allegria said, casting
her a small, cold smile that sent a chill up Valerie’s spine. “On your
wedding night, I’ll send them away from Everton. And you will not say
anything about it to them. At all.”
Valerie’s lips pressed tight.
With a slight incline of her head, Valerie never looked away from her
aunt’s gaze.
“Now, get out. I have to be on Genesis later this evening,” Madame
Allegria ordered.
Relief threaded through Valerie’s chest.
“I’ll return in three days,” she continued. “And when I do, we have an
engagement dinner to attend. The Larchmonts will be announcing it
tomorrow morning.”
Valerie’s hand trembled as she blindly sought the button for the door.
She stumbled out onto empty London Street as evening was descending,
her heels twisting underneath her. The car sped off the moment she stepped
away.
Her eyes trailed up to the brothel, to one of the small circular windows
on the top floor. Dravka’s room.
Her heart felt twisted and it ached terribly in her chest. She wanted to
scream. She wanted to scream until her throat was raw, until she couldn’t
feel or hear or see anything anymore.
When she lifted her hand to her cheek, she realized she was crying.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER FIVE

D ravka frowned, pressing closer to the window when he spied

Valerie climbing out of the driverless car. At least whom he
thought was Valerie.
The car sped away, leaving the human woman standing in the middle of
the street, clad in a long pink gown, her hair wild and curled, blowing with
a slight breeze. It was too far away to see her face clearly but even from that
distance, he could see the defeat in her shoulders, which were shaking
slightly.
A rough growl tore from his throat, a restless panic climbing with it.
Something was wrong. Who had she been with? Where had she gone?
Evening was blanketing itself over Everton, a dark hush that slowly
creeped over the colony like a fog. The three clients for the night would be
arriving in a couple hours. Dravka hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d thought
of Valerie, of what Tavak had told him—to cut her loose—and nothing else.
Tensing, he leaned forward, watching as Val began to slowly make her
way towards the entrance of the brothel. His ears twitched, hearing the
sharp click of heels on the cobblestones, shoes his clients often wore when
they came to visit, though Dravka thought the fashions of the New Earth
colonies were strange.
Valerie disappeared from view and Dravka stepped back from the
window. They were tinted from the outside. She wouldn’t have been able to
see him standing there. He wondered if she would come up to the Cluster
now that she was back. Dravka wanted her to, if only so he could make sure
she was all right.
 He strode out to the sitting room. Tavak and Ravu were there, though
they weren’t speaking. Ravu inclined his head in a brief nod when he saw
him but frowned as he watched Dravka pace slightly. His eyes kept straying
to the door, keeping his ears perked for the dull thud of heels on the
carpeted hallway outside.
Only it never came and Dravka grew more and more impatient.
Tavak was watching him as well, setting aside the Nu device he’d been
reading on. He kept up with the universe’s news. It was what he did most
evenings before meeting with clients.
“What’s wrong with you?” Tavak asked quietly.
“Nothing,” Dravka bit out before going to the door himself and
swinging it open.
His head craned out but the hallway was empty. The brothel beyond it
was completely silent, though at that time, he usually heard Valerie
speaking on the phone, ordering food from Restaurant Row just in case
their clients preferred to eat when they arrived.
“I’m going to check on Valerie,” Dravka announced.
“Why?” Ravu asked, but his question faded as Dravka strode from the
Cluster.
It was a risk. If Madame Allegria happened to be there and found him
wandering the halls, punishment would surely follow. But Dravka didn’t
care. Something was wrong. Valerie was upset about something and Dravka
intended to find out what.
He navigated his way from the only hallway that led to the Cluster and
jogged down four flights of winding stairs until he reached the lobby. A
beautiful, glimmering chandelier revealed that Valerie wasn’t present in her
usual place behind the mahogany desk. The lobby was empty and echoing.
Dravka frowned and his gaze turned to the single door to the right of the
lobby. He strode over to it, his gut churning just looking at it. He tried the
handle and it swung open, revealing a darkened stairwell that led to the
basement.
He blew out a rough breath through his nostrils and descended quickly,
anger and unease mingling within him. The fact that Madame Allegria made
Valerie live down here…right next to the room where she—
Veki. No, he wouldn’t think of it now.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he only kept his gaze on the
door at the end of the short hallway. Underneath it, he saw a crack of light
peeking through.
He knocked shortly, once, before opening the door.
“Val—”
Her rough, surprised inhale met him first as his eyes adjusted to the
light. Then he swallowed, thick, a muscle in his jaw jumping when he saw
she was dressing.
She was facing a small wardrobe, clad in nothing but the underwear
human females wore to conceal their sex. His gaze caught on her breasts,
unbound, and exposed.
Lust and desire and longing and guilt hit him hard, all at once, making
his mind spin as his palm squeezed the handle of the door. Her breasts were
small but full, her nipples taut and pebbled. Her belly was smooth, leading
to slim hips. The band of her underwear was white, a mesh-like material
covering her there.
Only a few candles were lit inside the small room and the warm glow
bounced off her skin as she clamored for the pink dress pooled at her feet,
lifting it to cover her nude front.
“What—” she gasped, “what are you doing down here?”
Dravka, for more than a brief moment, couldn’t seem to make his
tongue work. Though he’d seen countless human women naked, through
he’d been intimately acquainted with their bodies, never had he been
rendered speechless.
And Valerie wasn’t even fully naked.
“Vauk,” he rasped, his eyes darting to her own. “I—”
She swung so that her back was to him, hurrying to slip into a bra that
she’d been in the process of putting on.
And all the blood seemed to drain from his body. Without realizing it,
Dravka stepped into the small room. It was small enough, smaller than his
own bedroom, that he only had to take a few steps until he was standing
behind her.
Valerie froze when his fingers reached forward to touch the scars across
her back.
He hadn’t seen her back in almost four years. He’d last seen it when it
had been bloodied and whipped. Khiva had found her after Madame
Allegria left her, but it had been Dravka that had tended to most of her
wounds.
 Familiar fury and hatred and regret swarmed him. Valerie shivered
under his touch, meeting his gaze over her shoulder briefly before she
turned and hurriedly finished dressing.
Dravka’s hand fell away but there was a thick tension in the small room,
the only sound being that of Valerie frantically dressing.
Only when she was wearing a black dress, one with capped sleeves and
fitted to her slim form, did she turn to face him.
Though…she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Her face was caked in cosmetics, the kind that Madame Allegria wore
on a daily basis. Her face looked blurry. Not real. The color across her
cheeks was too bright, the red on her lips too distracting.
Valerie seemed to notice him staring because she grabbed a cloth,
dipped it in the water basin next to her bed, and scrubbed at her face.
“What…” she started before clearing her throat. “Was there something
that you needed?”
Dravka very rarely ventured down here, which was no doubt why she
was bewildered with his presence. And pax, he avoided coming here not
only because the bottom floor was where Madame Allegria delivered her
‘punishments’…but also because Dravka didn’t trust himself to be alone
with Valerie down here.
In the dark. In the quiet. When it was all too easy to imagine that it was
just them and no one else in the universe existed.
Even now, as she swiped at the reddened color of her lips, he physically
had to keep himself still so that he wouldn’t be tempted to snag her towards
him so he could taste them.
“Where were you?” Dravka asked. It was abnormal that Valerie had left
the brothel. Madame Allegria didn’t like her to leave, liked to keep her here,
with the rest of them.
She didn’t answer and she still hadn’t met his gaze. Instead, she cleared
her throat, tossed away the cosmetics-covered cloth, and said, “She’ll be on
Genesis for the next three days. She’s already on her way there.”
Relief threaded through Dravka. Unconsciously, he took a step closer
towards her and he noticed her swallow.
She turned to the side, moving to a small table, which held a golden
mirror and a small vial of perfume, though he was certain Valerie had never
worn perfume in her entire life. She took a slim elastic from the table and
he watched, rapt, as she gathered her curled hair, neatly wrapping it in a bun
on top of her head.
“Valerie,” Dravka rumbled, stepping towards her, unease beginning to
thread through him. Just earlier that morning, it had been her that had been
trying to speak with him. He felt ashamed of that now. For months, there
had been a distance between them that hadn’t been there before…and it had
only made them both miserable. “Will you look at me?”
Dravka caught her wrist gently once she smoothed her hair back, once
she looked more like herself. She paused at his touch and her eyes flashed
up to meet his.
He frowned, seeing something that the cosmetics had hidden. The area
around her eyes was reddened, as was the tip of her nose. Her face seemed
leached of color.
“You’ve been crying,” Dravka rasped, stepping closer. “Why? Tell me
what’s wrong.”
Immediately, her gaze flitted away. Unable to take that again, he cupped
both sides of her cheeks in his palms, gently lifting her face so she couldn’t
hide from him. Up until recently, they had never hidden from one another.
Valerie closed her eyes. Briefly. He watched her swallow. When she met
his gaze again, her eyes were slightly glassy but then she quickly blinked
the moisture away.
“You’re freezing,” he rasped, frowning. Though it was warm in the
room, her skin felt like ice beneath his hands. Without hesitating, he pulled
her into his body, his arms draping around her.
She was so much smaller than him. Her forehead pushed into the middle
of his chest, though her arms remained at her sides.
He didn’t know how long they stood there before he finally felt her
arms coming around him, hugging him to her, her grip tightening with
every passing moment.
Dravka struggled with the control over his body, taking care not to
breathe in her scent.
She relaxed, ever so slightly, in his arms, burrowing her face deeper into
his chest. Some primal part of Dravka liked that she sought comfort with
him…even when his treacherous mind knew that it was dangerous.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded with her softly, his fingers trailing
down her back, over the unseen and covered scars he’d once helped heal.
 Valerie let out a shuddering sigh. But just when Dravka thought that she
would confide in him, she pulled away.
Stepping out of his arms, she retreated, her gaze flitting away from him
once more. Suddenly, he felt very, very cold without her, though his two
hearts were pumping quickly.
“Valerie.”
“You were right, Dravka,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her arms
wrapped around her middle, like she ached. “We can’t do this.”
“Valerie—”
“Who were we fooling?” she continued morosely, peering up at him, her
eyes becoming glassy once more. “Only ourselves. And even then, I think
we always knew.”
The sight—of her sad eyes and slumped form—damn near killed him.
“You should go,” she said, repeating the words he’d said to her just that
morning after he returned from his client.
His brow furrowed. In his gut, he knew something had happened.
Something was wrong.
“Please,” she begged, standing next to the pooled pink gown on the
floor. “Dravka.”
He hesitated, his hand rising between them as if reaching for her.
When she saw it, she took another step back.
Then she took a deep breath and said quietly, “If you love me, Dravka,
if you’ve loved me at all, you’ll leave right now.”
His jaw clenched, his expression no doubt thunderous and dumbstruck,
as his hand dropped.
Of course, he loved her. But that word had never been spoken between
them. Not once. Not in the five years they’d known each other.
“P-please.”
That was what broke him. That quiet, broken plea coming from her lips.
Dravka backed out of the room, keeping his eyes on hers. It killed him
to leave her when she was obviously hurting, when she was in distress
about something.
Before he could say anything, she rushed forward the moment he was
over the threshold of the room and close the door behind him. Blocking her
from his view.
Within, however, he could hear her shuddering gasps and sniffles. Next
came her gentle sobs.
 And as he listened, Dravka realized the last time he had felt that
helpless, that useless, was the day his home planet had been destroyed.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER SIX

T wo years earlier…

“STOP,” Valerie whispered, trying to hide her smile but failing.

“Stop what?” Dravka asked, his tone lazy and innocent as he took
another bite of his meal, spread out on his bedroom floor.
Valerie was sitting against the wall, her legs straight in front of her,
crossed at the ankle. She’d taken off her shoes and her toes twitched
whenever Dravka’s gaze alighted on her. She hoped he didn’t notice.
But who was she kidding? This was Dravka. He noticed everything.
Especially everything about her.
“Stop doing that,” she said.
“Doing what?” he purred, his voice warm and amused.
“Looking at me!”
His lips curved into a grin, one that sent her heartbeat racing. “Why
would I ever want to stop looking at you?” he teased.
Valerie’s cheeks heated and she could do nothing about it. Dravka
enjoyed watching her blush. Case in point, a husky laugh escaped him,
further heating her face.
“You’re being annoying,” Valerie mumbled, looking away, down to the
heaping mounds of food sprawled out on trays across his floor.
Keriv’i only ate two or three times a week, so their meals tended to be
gigantic. In order to distract herself from the tingling buzzing that seemed
to fill Dravka’s bedroom, she asked, “Did you have a favorite food on
Kerivu?”
Dravka’s lips twitched, which told her he knew exactly what she was
doing. Changing the subject. Ignoring the tension between them…as they
always did. Valerie kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her legs
pressed together, though more than once, she’d caught Dravka’s gaze on the
hem of her black dress, which ended just above her knees.
“My sister made a dish called livuru’ky.”
Valerie repeated softly, “Livuru’ky.”
“Pax,” he rumbled, his eyes flashing. Valerie had the strangest suspicion
that he liked hearing his language from her lips.
“What is it?”
He lifted his shoulder in a small shrug, a purely human gesture he’d
picked up over the years. Mostly from Valerie.
“It is a meat dish, cooked for weeks, and seasoned with Keriv’i spices.”
“Weeks?” she questioned, raising a brow.
“Pax,” Dravka said. “She would make it for us, for my father and I, a
few times a year.”
Valerie bit her lip, regretting bringing up the question entirely. Because
Dravka’s grief was something that would never end.
“It’s strange,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to the food before
him...the rare steaks, the gummy potatoes in a gravy sauce, the lab-grown
Brussels sprouts topped with mushroom shavings, “to think that I’ll never
have it again. It’s been over twelve years since I’ve had it…but I don’t think
I realized it until now.”
Valerie’s stomach knotted. Her toes twitched.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Dravka, I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” he murmured, sliding his gaze up to her own. “Of course I
know, Val.”
He resumed eating, cutting one of his five steaks into smaller pieces. It
was one thing they had in common, their grief. They’d both loved their
families so much. And they’d both lost them.
“If we had meat that would survive cooking for weeks,” she whispered,
peeking up at him from underneath her lashes, “I would make it for you.”
Valerie felt relief when his low chuckle filled the room. His eyes came
to her, those beautiful eyes that she’d always thought resembled dark opals.
All blue and green swirls.
 “I know you would,” was what he replied. “Maybe one day, you will.”
Valerie’s heart fluttered in her chest. She swallowed. “What do you
mean?”
The corner of his mouth lifted but his expression was almost hesitant.
He didn’t say anything, not a first, but Valerie knew what both of them were
thinking.
Then Dravka finally rumbled out, “We could settle on a neutral colony.”
Valerie’s breath hitched.
“All of us, I mean,” Dravka amended. “Away from Everton. Away from
the New Earth colonies’ reach.”
Valerie’s eyes slid down to her lap and watched as her fingers twisted
together. Her fingernails were bitten down, a nervous, anxious habit that
made Madame Allegria look at her with disgust.
“We could have a home. Somewhere with land, somewhere quiet. You
could have a garden,” he murmured quietly. “I would build one for you.”
Longing lodged in her chest, even as her nose began to sting. She was
fascinated with growing things. Back on Genesis, her mother had managed
to acquire seeds from the Trader Market, seeds of a type of flower that had
grown on Old Earth called a daisy.
They had planted one together in a little pot of soil in their little home.
Valerie had often watched it for long hours, swearing that she could see a
little bit of movement beneath the soil. Everything on the New Earth
colonies was grown in labs. So it was a forbidden excitement to have seeds
of something and to try to grow life from them.
The daisy had grown, slowly. Valerie had lovingly watched it and her
mother had lovingly watched her. Valerie had stroked its yellow petals with
gentleness and gave it a little bit of water every day. They kept it next to a
small window in their apartment, so it might get a sliver of light every
afternoon—though the sun was only a projection.
All too soon, the petals started to wither. They began to fall into the
little nest of soil. Slowly, Valerie had watched it die.
It made her sad but it didn’t deter her. Valerie recognized that beauty
was fleeting. And with enough tending, she could make something grow
again.
They were some of her favorite memories, growing things in little pots
—sometimes cups or jars or pieces of scrap her mother had found—until
their home had been littered with them.
 After her mother died, however, Valerie had never grown anything
again. Not that she could find seeds on Everton anyways. But she would’ve
liked to try. If only to remember…
Dravka remembered all this. He remembered because she’d told him
over a year ago, just one of their whispered late afternoon conversations.
And he offered to build her a garden. Just the thought brought her such
a sharp, aching, stinging kind of joy.
“You would?” she whispered, meeting his eyes once more.
“Pax,” he murmured, holding her gaze, never looking away. “As big as
you would want. You could grow your daisies. Your vegetables. Your
plants.”
Valerie smiled. It was a strange sensation, to feel such sadness and
longing and excitement over his words. Because she knew that it would
never happen…but it was nice to dream that it could. It was nice to dream
of a life with Dravka, away from Everton, where they might be free to…
To be with one another. To love one another, openly. To touch him when
she wanted. To smile at him. To know that he was safe and happy and free.
She decided to play along.
“And what would you want?” she whispered, her toe twitching with her
bold question. “What would you want for our quiet little home with the
garden that you’d build for me? A working area for all your inventions you
would create?”
Dravka had told her about his hobby when he lived on Kerivu. He’d
worked as a trader, within the city limits of Kerivu’s capital, to keep his
sister and his father supported. But during his work, he came across little
trinkets and spare parts that he would bring home and craft into something
new.
He’d told her of a light he’d made for his sister, made of piping and
shards of broken glass. When lit, it spun slowly and reflected shimmering
stars through the glass, onto the walls of her room.
Dravka looked at Valerie now, his gaze intense and steady. She
swallowed, feeling something in the room change, as it always did, and
warning bells went off in her head even as her belly fluttered.
“Isn’t it obvious what I want?” he rasped.
Valerie’s lips parted at the guttural emotion she heard in his voice. All
ragged and raw.
 “Dravka,” she whispered, the heat in her belly blooming, trailing over
her, warming the room and making her shift in her place on the floor.
She saw his gaze drop to her lips and she couldn’t help but nervously
lick them, knowing that they were entering dangerous territory, as they
often did. Those opal eyes flared to life, his pupils visibly dilating in the
low light of the room. Valerie shivered at that look, her nipples pebbling to
tight peaks underneath the band of her bra. She hoped her dress was thick
enough to hide the evidence of it.
With a rough sound in the back of his throat, he tore his eyes away and
silence dropped over them. All she could hear was her heartbeat in her ears,
frantic and desperate.
“I want…” he started after a moment, his head tilted towards the wall in
front of him, where the sole window in his room was.
It was getting dark. The shadows across the room were deepening.
Clients would be arriving soon and Valerie would need to be downstairs to
greet them with a smile on her face, as much as it shredded her insides. In a
few hours, Dravka would be inside another human woman, releasing his
seed inside her, and it made her want to crawl in his arms and never let him
go.
But she couldn’t.
“I want a lot of things, Val,” Dravka finally finished.
She sobered.
What went unspoken was that he would never find what he wanted on
Everton. Not while he was working in Madame Allegria’s brothel, not while
he was one of the infamous Krave.
Their dream was just that. A dream.
And sometimes, they both didn’t want to wake up from it.
She wanted a home with him. She wanted to be safe and free with him.
She wanted him to build her a garden so she could spend long afternoons
with her hands deep in fragrant, black soil. She wanted to watch him make
new things from old things and watch his hands and his mind create
something beautiful. She wanted a family, she wanted children with him—
children with beautiful opal eyes like their father.
She wanted to love him without feeling shame for it.
“Me too,” Valerie whispered, blinking back her tears so he wouldn’t see
them.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER SEVEN

V alerie knew it was morning when she woke, though it was pitch
black inside her windowless room.
Next to her small bed, a lamp flared to life when she tapped
the base. She squinted, blinking, allowing her eyes to adjust as she stared up
at the ceiling of her room.
She’d made the small space her own over the last five years. It was
meant for storage, but it fit a small bed, a dresser, and a console table that
she used to place her knick-knacks. She’d taken a rug that Madame Allegria
had ordered her to dump when it grew too threadbare for the clients’ rooms
and placed it on the hard flooring. The walls were dark in color but Valerie
had hung old photographs she’d found years ago, photographs of Old Earth.
Landscapes of hills and blue skies, of wildflower-ridden fields, of misty,
mysterious forests.
Valerie was grateful for the room, though it was next to the room where
Madame Allegria had whipped her, had nearly killed her. The room where
she punished the Keriv’i too if they displeased her.
A room her aunt would never use again.
With that thought in mind, Valerie swung her legs out of bed and she
dressed in loose black pants and a white t-shirt, soft with its use. She pulled
back her hair, wrapping it up with an elastic, and toed on her shoes. After
rinsing her face with cold water from the basin and toweling off, she took a
deep, determined breath and left the room.
All the clients from the night before had left before midnight. All of the
clients were married and they no doubt didn’t want to raise suspicion if they
were absent from their beds. Some women didn’t care, or were divorced or
widowed. Those were the ones that stayed into the early hours of morning.
And because all the clients had left before midnight, Valerie had gotten
much-needed sleep. Despite the events of the day before, she’d slept like
the dead. She felt surprisingly well-rested. Refreshed.
Determined.
She’d felt sorry for herself yesterday. She’d cried, long after Dravka had
left her room, after she’d begged him to leave. She’d cried until she didn’t
have any tears left. She’d mourned this life. She’d mourned her mother, her
death that always felt like a festering ache. She’d mourned ever living on
Everton in the first place. She’d mourned Dravka, knowing she could never
love him the way she wanted to. She’d mourned her future and the
marriage, a loveless marriage, that she’d never wanted.
But now it was morning.
A new day.
Yesterday seemed like a distant memory but what remained within her
was fierce determination. It consumed her. It lit her blood on fire.
I owe this to them, she thought, walking from her bedroom, staring
down the dark hallway.
Valerie could finally help them. She’d been a coward for the last five
years—though, at one time, she had tried to help them. And she’d nearly
gotten killed for it.
But now, Valerie had something she’d never had before over her aunt:
power.
Her aunt needed her to secure a future with the Larchmonts.
Valerie would keep her end of the bargain…but she would make sure
that her aunt kept to her promises as well.
Stalking to the only other room in the basement, Valerie entered the
cold, darkened space. She flipped on the lights. Chains dangled from the
ceiling, chains she’d cleaned more times than she cared to admit. The floor
below them was spotless. On the far wall lay a tall, black cabinet, wide and
heavy and expensive, one she went to and opened.
Whips and ropes and crops of leather. All different sizes, all different
materials. Her aunt’s personal and prized collection.
Bile rose in Valerie’s throat. Her eyes alighted on the whip her aunt had
used on her. A slim one, brown in color.
 Shortly after arriving on Everton, Valerie realized that her aunt was
exploiting the Keriv’i that she’d lured to Everton with the promise of
payment. Sex work wasn’t illegal on the New Earth colonies. But what was
illegal was not paying them. Madame Allegria, in her business license
application, in the documentation she’d had to provide to the Earth Council,
and on her books, claimed she was paying half of all credits received from
client visits to the Keriv’i in her employment.
Only, Madame didn’t pay them the 450 credits that they should’ve
received every single night they worked. Instead, she paid them a single
credit for every client.
One.
Single.
Credit.
Dravka, Tavak, Ravu, and Khiva—before he’d managed to leave
Everton—had been robbed of a small fortune, one that should’ve rightfully
been theirs to claim. Credits they’d worked for, credits they’d been
promised.
When Valerie had discovered all this, she’d gone straight to the Earth
Council, meeting with a councilman in secret to avoid drawing her aunt’s
notice. And the councilman had been very concerned and had promised that
he would present the case to his colleagues…until he saw his wife’s name
among the list of Madame Allegria’s clients.
After that, Valerie had waited anxiously for the trial to begin. The
councilman, however, had betrayed her. Instead of going to the Earth
Council, he’d gone to Madame Allegria and struck a deal with her. He
would make the inevitable trial and subsequent criminal charges go away
and she would erase all record of his wife ever visiting a Krave brothel. It
would’ve spelled disaster for him since his bid for reelection was drawing
near.
His wife never returned. The trial never came to fruition.
As for Valerie? Once Madame Allegria realized she’d been an inch
away from prison, she’d dragged Valerie down to this very room. She’d
taken the brown whip from this very cabinet and she’d…
Her aunt’s punishment had been brutal and vicious in her rage. If Khiva
and Dravka hadn’t found Valerie there, she would’ve died from the blood
loss alone.
 But Khiva and Dravka had been there. Dravka had lasered her wounds
closed himself as Khiva cleaned her back. It had been the both of them that
had seen to her recovery.
Since then, Valerie had never been the same. Since then, Valerie had
been a scared, timid creature, one that bore no resemblance to who she’d
been before Everton.
Now, however, that determination rose fiercely.
Staring into the cabinet of whips, Valerie grabbed that slim, brown
leather one first, throwing it onto the gleaming floor. Then her hands
snatched at the rest, ripping them from their slots, and chucking them onto
the growing mound on the floor.
When all of them were gone from the cabinet, she went upstairs to the
small sitting area that clients sometimes used if they came too early. She
snagged a bottle of orange brandy and an Old Earth lighter that still worked.
Back in the basement, she poured the brandy over the whips and ropes.
Then she tossed the flared lighter onto the pile and watched as the flames
grew, licking at the material, feeding on it.
Valerie watched from the doorway, her jaw set as she watched the
flames grow and grow. Something unleashed from her, some small part of
her that had always felt trapped and frightened, as she watched the ropes
curling and blackening. Smoke drifted up her nostrils but she wasn’t
concerned about the fire growing. It would smolder on the slick floor and
die out.
But it was a message to her aunt. It told Madame Allegria that Valerie
expected her to keep her word. That she would never touch the Keriv’i
again. That she would pay them what she owed them. And that she would
let them go.
Unhooking the chains from the ceiling, she tossed them onto the
flickering pile too for good measure, though they wouldn’t burn.
Then she turned her back, pressing her lips together as she imagined her
aunt’s face when she found the ruined collection that she’d built up through
the years.
Next on her list that morning was going to Eve Tesler’s townhome in
the Garden District. The townhome that Eve had left to Valerie before she’d
departed Everton with Khiva. A townhome filled to the brim with furniture
and collectable items that were worth a small fortune. Not to mention the
property value itself.
 Valerie hadn’t wanted to sell it based on principle…that it wasn’t hers,
that it had belonged to Eve and her late father, that it had been a home of
love and safety.
But now…Eve was gone and Valerie intended to use the townhome as
her Plan B.
Valerie ascended the steps from the basement floor and walked into the
lobby, and she froze when she saw Dravka, her footsteps momentarily
faltering.
He was sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting area, next to the gold
trolley cart she’d snagged the bottle of brandy off of. His arms were
outstretched across the thick Old Earth-style leather armchair, his fingers
drumming across the material.
Madame Allegria was off colony, after all. And when she was, the
Keriv’i were free to…wander.
When he saw the basement door open, his gaze flashed up to hers, those
dark opal eyes hitting her like a punch in the gut. Why did looking at him
make her want to scream? Why did looking at him make her want him so
much, want what could’ve been…in another life?
Acceptance and resignation mingled with her fierce determination was a
strange sensation. It weighed heavily on her shoulders, but filled her with a
sense of freedom and lightness and bravery that she hadn’t felt in years.
“What are you doing up so early?” she asked, shutting the door to the
basement behind her firmly, not wanting the scent of smoke to escape. The
open-cage elevator also went down to the basement but she couldn’t help if
the smell drifted up through the shaft.
After last night, she knew she owed him an apology. He’d only been
concerned for her and she’d turned him away. But his presence had been
almost too much to bear after the events of yesterday, after having all the
hope for a better future ripped out from underneath her.
What she could guarantee, however, was a better future for Dravka. For
Tavak and Ravu. She could ensure that no more Keriv’i were brought to the
New Earth colonies.
That was her purpose now.
Her question was a foolish one, but his unexpected presence had caught
her off guard. The Keriv’i didn’t need as much sleep as humans did. And
given that his client left before midnight, he’d had plenty of time to rest
through the night.
 “Is there anything you need?” she asked, clearing her throat, swallowing
as he stood from the armchair. “Or do Tavak and Ravu need anything? I can
send for food if—”
“Val,” Dravka voiced, cutting her sentence short.
She stopped talking and rubbed at her bare arms. Despite the seasons
changing soon—thanks to the Programmers—and despite summer being
just around the corner—and her inevitable wedding to Gabriel Larchmont—
the brothel felt cold that morning.
Dravka stepped forward, his eyes trailing over her form. At her loose-
fitting pants and thin, old, comfortable t-shirt. Suddenly, she realized that it
had once belonged to Dravka, the shirt. Earlier on, during her first year at
the brothel, she’d been in charge of laundry collection. Dravka’s shirt had
gotten stuck in with her own laundry…and she’d simply never returned it to
him. She kept it tied and knotted at her hip, or else the length would trail
well to her knees.
It swamped her in size, but it was her favorite item of clothing. It only
mildly embarrassed her that he saw her wearing it now.
If he recognized it, he didn’t say anything, but she watched as his
nostrils flared.
A stray thought hit her then, one that brought a new wave of regret and
sadness over her.
I’ll never know what it’s like to kiss him, she realized.
She ducked her head to keep him from seeing whatever it was that
flashed across her features at that thought. But it felt wrong to her…that she
had loved this male for close to five years—almost since the first moment
she’d seen him—and she would never know what it felt like to kiss him, to
cuddle with him, to embrace him the way she craved.
“I came down to check on you,” he murmured in the echoing quiet of
the brothel’s lobby. It was a cavernous space. The brothel had once been the
mansion of a merchant trader who had since moved to Genesis. They were
in its foyer, similar to though smaller than the Larchmont’s foyer where
they’d held their night ball yesterday. Above them was a twinkling
chandelier and behind them was a grand staircase leading to the upper
floors.
“Right,” Valerie murmured, clenching her fists at her sides, before
putting on a small, wavering smile and looking up at him. “I’m sorry about
yesterday. It was…it was a long day and I…”
 She trailed off, not quite knowing how to explain. For some reason, the
engagement didn’t seem real yet. They had obviously been discussing it for
a while, without Valerie knowing. Gabriel had known who she was, after
all, and had seemed to agree to this arrangement.
Not only that…but she couldn’t actually imagine saying the words out
loud to Dravka: I’m engaged to someone I barely know. It would feel final.
Done.
It had barely been twenty-four hours since she’d found out that her aunt
had essentially sold her into an arranged marriage.
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” Dravka said, walking a
few steps forward until they were an arm’s length away.
He was barefoot, his feet padding on the soft rug underneath him. He
wore pants and a t-shirt, just like her, and she wondered what he’d worn
when he lived on Kerivu. She’d never asked about Kerivu fashion. It
seemed like such a silly thing to wonder about now.
“I’m all right,” she said softly, holding his gaze purposefully when all
she wanted was to shy away. She could barely look at him last night. She
didn’t want him to worry now. “I just needed sleep and rest. I haven’t gotten
much this week.”
After a long moment of tense silence, Valerie relaxed slightly when he
nodded, seeming to accept her answer.
“Where did you go yesterday?”
Valerie licked her lips, highly aware that Dravka’s gaze followed the
quick movement. “Madame Allegria wanted me to accompany her to a…a
party.”
He frowned. “Why?”
Valerie only shook her head, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. Her eyes
strayed to the door, the main entrance to the brothel. She had a long day of
cataloguing Eve Tesler’s townhouse and she wanted to get everything sold
off within the week. Madame Allegria would return to Everton in two days
and she needed to make the most of her absence. She rarely tracked
Valerie’s movements, after all, when she was off colony.
“Val,” Dravka said again, catching her attention. Her breath hitched
when he stepped closer and reached out a hand, strong and warm and
gentle, to touch her cheek. “Come take your breakfast upstairs. We can talk.
We have all day.”
 He knows, was what Valerie thought. He knew something was wrong.
Of course he did. Valerie was a terrible liar and Dravka knew her too well.
“I—I can’t,” she said. “I have to go somewhere.”
She winced, knowing that now she would have to explain.
“Where?” he asked. The look on his face was serious. As serious as
she’d ever seen him.
She decided to tell him a little bit of the truth.
“I’m going to Eve Tesler’s townhouse,” she said softly, trying to judge
his reaction.
Dravka blinked, his dark pupils flickering back and forth between her
own.
“Why?”
“She left it to us,” Valerie told him, though he already knew that. In
addition to that, Eve and Khiva had given them a credit card loaded with
2700 credits, though Dravka had that hidden away in his bedroom. It was
the amount that Eve Tesler had believed Khiva was being paid for her visits
to him, credits that she believed were owed to him.
It was enough to buy passage off Everton for the Keriv’is, but wouldn’t
last them much longer. The townhouse, however, and the credits that
Madame Allegria would be paying the Keriv’i—Valerie would make sure
she did—upon their departure from the brothel would be enough for them
to live off of, all three of them, for the rest of their lives. In peace. Without
ever worrying about their livelihood again.
“What are you planning to do there?” Dravka asked, that serious
expression never leaving his face.
“I’m selling everything,” she whispered, feeling the pad of his
forefinger stroke her cheek. Longing went through her. Affection. No one
touched her but Dravka. “And putting the credits into a universal account.
One she can’t find.”
“Val,” he rasped, “if she finds out that you’re—”
“She won’t,” she told him. “And even if she does, I refuse to be afraid
of her. No more.”
His brow bone lowered but she took a step away from him, his hand
sliding away from her cheek. Being around him was stoking that desire
within her. It was making her shake. It was allowing that fear to rise again,
fear that things were never going to be the same.
 There would need to be distance between them if Valerie didn’t want
her heart to shatter into a million pieces when this was over.
Not letting Dravka touch her would be a good first step to moving
forward. His touch was a reminder of…
Of everything. And it was too wonderful and too painful to bear. Not
right then.
“You don’t have to be afraid of her either,” Valerie told him, watching
his brow bones slam down even further. “She won’t touch you anymore.
Any of you. I promise.”
“Valerie, what are—”
“I have to go,” she told him. “I don’t have a lot of time before she
comes back to Everton.”
“Let me come with you then.”
“No!” she said quickly.
Even Dravka seemed taken aback by her abrupt response.
But the thought of being alone with him, freed of this place with all its
ugly memories…Valerie feared what would happen. They’d never been
alone outside the brothel before. Together. In some ways, it would feel like
an unshackling. An unshackling of the tensely restrained desire and want
and need.
“No,” she said, though this time more softly. “You should stay here,
Dravka. And you know why.”
His nostrils flared at those last words.
“I’ll be back later this evening,” she said, turning to the door.
Behind her, Dravka’s words made her freeze, her hand stilling on the
knob of the entrance.
“I’ll find out what it is, Valerie,” he murmured. “I’ll find out what’s
wrong. I’m the last being in this universe that you can hide from, mellkia.”
If he had been speaking to anyone else, his words would’ve sounded
like a threat. But they weren’t. She didn’t know what mellkia meant in
Keriv’i, but she heard the way his voice softened as he said it, as if there
was beauty and reverence in that single word, beauty and reverence he had
saved just for her.
Valerie’s hand twitched and the door pushed open. A shaft of light
peeked in the lobby of the brothel and she stepped outside into the early
morning.
 With Dravka’s words of promise ringing in her ears, she fled to the
Garden District.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER EIGHT

T he moment Valerie left, Dravka stood in silence for a brief moment.

Then his gaze turned to the door that led down to her room…
and the other room that lay below.
Keriv’is’ senses were better than humans’. He’d smelled the smoke
shortly before Valerie arrived on the lobby floor.
Pressing his lips together, he journeyed down to the basement, his bare
feet padding on the smooth stone of the staircase. The smell of smoke filled
his nostrils and he turned left at the base of the stairs, slowly striding
towards the black door at the other end of the hallway.
When he pushed it open, his eyes focused on the smoldering pile of…
He frowned, his mind beginning to whirl.
Why had Valerie burned her aunt’s whips? Those same whips that they
had all felt lashing across their backs now were blackened from fire. A
horrible stench was in the air. There was very little ventilation down in the
basement and Valerie would smell the lingerings of smoke for many weeks.
Fear made him freeze.
Not for himself. But for Valerie. Her aunt was vicious. A sadistic
monster who hid behind her smiles and her lies. Dravka was ashamed to
admit that he’d fallen for those lies once. But the promise of a better life on
Everton, of the life and promises that Madame Allegria had made to him
and the other Keriv’is, had been too tempting.
Madame Allegria would no doubt punish Valerie for this.
What possessed you to do this, Val? Dravka wondered, staring at the
smoking pile. The fire wouldn’t spread. There was nothing for it to catch on
down here, but Dravka watched it in disbelief until the majority of it was
snuffed out.
The only thing he could do was take Madame Allegria’s fury in place of
Valerie. He would tell the older human female that this had been his doing.
There was no way around it.
He left the basement with his mind made up and he ascended the
staircase back up to the Cluster in partial relief, knowing that at the very
least, Valerie would be spared from this.
When he entered the Cluster, he saw Tavak and Ravu in the main sitting
room. When the two brothers saw him appear, their heads snapped up from
the Nu device they’d been reading from, strange expressions on their faces.
“What?” Dravka growled, his mood already taking a turn for the worse.
Valerie was acting strange. He was worried about her. And her actions
downstairs…they were reckless. Not for the first time, he wanted to know
every little thought that ran through her mind. Even then, Dravka didn’t
think that would satisfy him.
Ravu leaned away from the Nu device, exchanging a look with his
brother that irritated Dravka. The two brothers were exceptionally close.
Dravka, on more than one occasion, had felt envious of their bond, had felt
envious that they’d escaped Kerivu together when it was destroyed…when
so many had been lost. When Dravka had lost his own sister and father to
that senseless crime.
“Have you seen Valerie this morning?” Tavak asked, watching him
carefully.
The back of Dravka’s neck prickled, unease beginning to curl in his
belly. The smell of smoke was still in his nostrils, smoke that Tavak and
Ravu could no doubt smell coming off his clothes and skin.
“Why?” Dravka asked quietly.
Tavak hesitated. The Nu device, the slim tablet that he read from
whenever he had a spare moment, was clenched in one of his palms.
Then Tavak tilted the device towards him. Dravka stepped forward to
take it.
And right there, on the screen, was a flickering image of Valerie with a
human male. A brief, five-second moving picture that played over and over
again, underneath a headline that read: Gabriel Larchmont, heir to
Larchmont Imports, to wed Valerie Browen.
 The Cluster seemed to shift around Dravka, his claw scraping across the
Nu device’s surface. He couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing in
his ears and the thundering of his two hearts, which had momentarily
stopped before speeding up rapidly.
“This…” He trailed off, his gaze flickering to the looped picture and the
headline. “This has to be a mistake.”
“Dravka…” Tavak started.
But he didn’t hear whatever it was that the other Keriv’i male said
because his gaze shifted to the short and brief statement below the picture.
Derek and Celine Larchmont announce the engagement of their son
Gabriel Larchmont to Miss Valerie Browen, niece of socialite and
philanthropist Madame Allegria North. The wedding is set for Summer Date
0615 on Everton.
Two sentences.
Two sentences that made Dravka’s whole world turn upside down, until
nothing seemed right.
His eyes flickered up to the picture again.
The human male had dark hair, blue eyes, and a wide grin. Valerie was
wearing the pink dress he’d seen her in yesterday. Dravka’s hands around
the device squeezed when he saw the way the male’s arm was snaked
around her waist. Her side was pressed into his.
She was smiling, staring into whatever camera had been shoved into
their faces.
And yet…
Dravka knew her well enough to know which smile of hers that was.
Realization went through him, but it was the kind that made his stomach
lurch and his shoulders sag.
Her mood last night—the way she’d pushed him away, her gentle sobs
coming through the closed door between them, her wide and glassy gaze—
now made sense.
Even still, staring at the picture, watching it loop back around, watching
the male’s hands on her body, filled Dravka with a rage that he hadn’t felt
since his planet was destroyed, since his family was taken from him.
Isn’t this what you wanted? came that treacherous voice inside him. It
was that voice that prevented him from throwing the Nu device across the
room and storming from the brothel to find Valerie at that very moment.
“Dravka,” Tavak said.
 The other Keriv’i male was in front of him, had been trying to get his
attention, it seemed. When Dravka refocused his gaze on him, Tavak’s lips
were turned down into a frown.
“This is good,” Dravka said, his voice quiet. Level. Lifeless.
“Kruvu?” Ravu asked, disbelief in his tone.
“She…she can finally get away from her,” Dravka said, the words
falling from his lips even as his chest felt like it was being torn to shreds.
“She can…she can have everything she wants now.”
He didn’t know who Gabriel Larchmont was but the human male could
sure as hell give Valerie more than Dravka ever could.
Tavak’s lips pressed together firmly, his pupils flickering back and forth
between Dravka’s. Dravka couldn’t tell what the other male was thinking.
Frankly, he didn’t care. All that mattered was Valerie. All that mattered to
him was her future, a happy one…and she would never find it here. She
would never find it with Dravka.
Dravka reminded Tavak, “You said to cut her loose.”
“Pax, but…” Tavak trailed off, his tongue darting out to wet his slim
lips.
“Vauk,” Dravka rasped, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, his mind
still whirling. He still smelled smoke, all around him. “I need a drink.”
He needed to get out of this room. He couldn’t stand to feel the stares of
Tavak and Ravu on him. He couldn’t stand to feel their pity.
Dravka was already stumbling towards the door, dropping the Nu
device on the threadbare rug with a gentle thud.
The door to the Cluster slammed shut behind him and he stalked back
down the staircase, the brothel’s hallways and walls going past in an endless
blur. Once he was back down to the main lobby level, he eyed the cart of
glass decanters in the sitting area, filled with the golden, thick liquid he
sought.
He sank down into the armchair, snagging a heavy bottle off the trolley
cart. He didn’t bother to pour himself a glass of it. He hadn’t had alcohol in
a long while but he took a healthy swallow of it now, letting the liquid burn
down his throat.
It took a lot to get a Keriv’i male drunk.
Dravka intended to find out how much of Everton’s liquor it took to get
him there.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER NINE

“D ravka?” Valerie breathed, incredulous and wary as she eyed

the slumped figure on the floor of the lobby.
His back was to the desk that Valerie greeted the clients
at. An empty glass decanter of sweetened brandy was tipped over on the
floor next to him.
“What in the world—what are you doing?” she asked, closing the door
behind her.
She was exhausted and drained but content and pleased with the
progress she’d made at the townhouse that day. She’d gotten in touch with
an experienced and discreet trader, who knew a wealthy collector of Old
Earth items on Genesis. She’d taken brief videos of the contents inside
Eve’s townhouse and the collector had immediately responded with his
interest.
If most of the items sold, she was looking at at least 250,000 credits for
the lot, not to mention the credits from the sale of the townhouse, which
would go for a steeper price.
Of course, Madame Allegria owed the Keriv’i in her ‘employ’ much,
much more than 250,000 credits—each—but it was a small fortune that was
their back-up plan at the very least. If anything went wrong, at least they
would have access to it.
The rest of the day had been spent inventorying the contents and
furniture, packing away any knick-knacks and personal items that Valerie
didn’t think would sell—items that one day, she hoped she could send to
Eve and Khiva. Tomorrow, she was planning on going back, to get in touch
with a property agent to see about selling the townhouse.
 She was running out of time. Her aunt would be back in a couple days
and there was no telling if she would leave Everton again before the
wedding. Valerie had an inkling that she wouldn’t, if only to ensure that
Valerie kept her mouth shut and quietly married Gabriel Larchmont in a
drama-free ceremony in front of her wealthy, tittering friends. It was a small
blessing that she’d had to be on Genesis this week to give Valerie time to
prepare.
So, after such a day, it surprised and worried Valerie to see Dravka
sprawled on the floor near the main entrance. It was evening. Night had
already fallen and clients would begin arriving, which was why Valerie had
needed to rush back.
Approaching Dravka, she wondered how long he’d been there. Casting
her eyes to the trolley cart of alcohol, she saw that all the bottles were
emptied.
“Dravka,” she said softly. His gaze focused on her but instead of the
bleary, glassy gaze she’d expected, the look was steady though intense.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought it would be obvious,” he said, shrugging, lifting the bottle
next to him, bringing it to his lips, only to find it empty. He frowned.
“Did you drink all this?” she asked, dumbfounded, concerned. It was
probably enough liquor to kill someone. Then again, Dravka was a Keriv’i.
She’d never seen him drink a drop of alcohol before. Not even with his
meals. None of the Keriv’i did, for that matter.
“Pax,” he rasped. “And still it wasn’t enough.”
“Enough for what?”
He blew out a sharp breath, his hand reaching out to curl around her
ankle. The touch startled her, though his hand was warm.
“To get drunk.”
Maybe he wasn’t drunk by Keriv’i standards but to Valerie…he
certainly seemed like it.
His eyes went down to her lips when she said, “Come on. Let’s get you
upstairs.”
“Veki,” he murmured, his voice lowering. No? “Let’s go to your room.”
Something pinched in her belly, sharp and hot.
“Cancel my client for the night,” he went on, still looking at her lips, his
palm still curled around her ankle.
 That was a given. He was in no state to meet with his client for the
night.
She shook her head, her face heating. “What—what are you saying,
Dravka?”
He blew out another sharp puff of air.
“We need to talk. We have a lot to talk about, Val. Don’t we?”
Valerie barely suppressed the shiver that raced down her spine. A
pleasurable one. Dravka’s voice was husky and deep. Like how it was when
he was in his Rut…
That particular Rut. When she’d…when they’d come close to crossing
that invisible line between them.
Her nostrils flared and she rose, stepping away so his hand fell from her
ankle. Rounding the desk he was leaning against, she picked up her Nu
device and patched the line into the Cluster.
Tavak’s face appeared in the projection above the tablet.
“Valerie?”
“Can you come downstairs?” she asked. “Dravka is down here and I
need help.”
She heard a rough groan on the opposite side of the desk. Dravka was
no doubt annoyed that she called Tavak in the first place.
Tavak said, “I’ll be down.”
Once the line dropped, she called Madame Sung, a wealthy widow and
Dravka’s client for the evening.
“Is he all right?” Madame Sung asked, her lips turning down into a
frown, when Valerie told her about the cancellation for tonight.
Valerie’s own lips pressed together. She couldn’t find it in herself to
paste on her usual fake smile.
“Nothing serious,” Valerie replied. “He just feels unwell tonight.”
Madame Sung nodded, the projection flickering for a brief moment.
“Please send him my well wishes for a speedy recovery then. I’ll call this
week to reschedule.”
It was on the tip of Valerie’s tongue to tell her not to bother. She had
been planning on phasing out the clients in the next couple days. She knew
that Madame Allegria wouldn’t pull the plug on the brothel. But Valerie
sure as hell would.
“Are you all right, dear?” Madame Sung asked next. “You look a little
peaked.”
 Valerie bit her tongue. Madame Sung had always been kind, even
though Valerie disliked her on principle—because she was one of Dravka’s
regular clients. She was a lonely, older widow…and by the looks of it, had
already gotten ready for the night if her curled hair and red lips were
anything to go by.
Hair she’d curled and lips she’d rouged with Dravka in mind. For
Dravka?
Valerie’s fingers clutched harder to the Nu device.
“I’m fine, Madame Sung,” Valerie said, giving her a slight nod. “Enjoy
the rest of your evening.”
Before the older woman could reply, Valerie ended the patch connection
just as Tavak made it to the lobby floor, his feet padding softly across the
grand foyer.
Tavak leveled Dravka a strange look, stopping near his outstretched
legs. Tavak said something to him in Keriv’i, a long phrase that blurred off
his tongue, that even Valerie could not understand.
Dravka’s response?
“Vauk off.”
Tavak’s gaze connected with Valerie’s. She swore the other male looked
slightly amused, though there was something strained in his gaze as well.
He took her in, looking at her dirty, dusty clothes and frizzed hair.
Valerie rounded the desk to peer down at Dravka once more. “Come on,
let’s get you to bed.”
Dravka began to laugh, the sound echoing around the foyer. The corner
of Tavak’s mouth lifted, though Valerie didn’t know what was so funny.
“Pax,” Dravka rasped, “let’s go to bed, Val.”
She swallowed thickly, her mouth suddenly very, very dry.
When she threw a look of exasperation at Tavak, he leaned down and
pulled Dravka up, getting him onto his feet. He might not think he was
drunk but he swayed on his feet, leaning on the other Keriv’i male.
“I didn’t actually think it was possible,” Tavak remarked, guiding
Dravka to the stairs. The elevator would be easier—but Valerie knew it
wasn’t designed to bear the weight of two Keriv’i males.
“What?” Valerie asked, walking next to them. Dravka reached out to
snag her hand, keeping her close, and she…didn’t know how to feel about
it. He’d touched her more in the past two days than he had in the last three
months.
 “That a Keriv’i could get drunk on weak human liquor,” Tavak replied,
grunting a little with Dravka’s heavy weight.
“He claims he’s not,” Valerie told him.
Tavak leveled her a look over Dravka’s head, a look that said yeah right.
They said nothing more as they went up flights of stairs before turning
down the hallway that led to the Cluster.
Ravu’s door was closed when they entered but he poked his head out
when he heard the commotion. Tavak steered Dravka towards his room but
Valerie pulled her hand away.
Dravka’s head swiveled and he rasped, “Stay with me.”
He would never know how her heart stopped at those words. How
terrible and sweet the longing was that went through her.
“Please,” he added.
“I’ll be in in a second,” she found herself saying before she could think
better of it. After the words left her, she wanted to snatch them back. She
was supposed to be keeping her distance.
Valerie heard Tavak help him into the room. She heard a thud against
the wall. A moment later, Tavak appeared, closing the door partially behind
him. A flickering glow from inside Dravka’s room appeared. One of the
sconces on the wall that resembled a candle had been flipped on.
Her eyes returned to Tavak and to Ravu, who had stepped out of his
room.
“Is he drunk?” Ravu asked, bewilderment in his tone. “How?”
“He drank about five full bottles of brandy, from what I can tell,”
Valerie said, sighing. Looking at them, she asked, keeping her voice low,
“Did—did anything happen? Why was he drinking? I’ve never even seen
him drink before.”
Ravu exchanged a glance with Tavak.
“What is it?” Valerie asked again, worry like a stone in her belly.
“Your engagement announcement was in the Everton Gazette this
morning,” Tavak finally said, his tone gruff. “I came across it on the Nu.”
Valerie could feel the color leaching from her face. She remembered
Madame Allegria mentioning something about it, but she hadn’t thought…
she thought she might have more time.
“Oh god,” she whispered, bringing a hand to her forehead.
The announcement made everything seem so real.
 And that was how Dravka had found out. How Tavak and Ravu had
found out as well.
The Cluster went a little wavy and she reached out her hand behind her,
seeking the firmness of the brick wall. The cool stone helped center her
thoughts, if only a little.
“He—he knows?” Valerie asked, shaking her head.
Tavak quirked his brow bone. “Obviously.”
His dry tone did nothing to help soothe her sudden nerves or the nausea
rising in her stomach.
“It’s true then?” Ravu asked, his voice rough.
Valerie looked up at them both. The two brothers had never fully trusted
Valerie. She didn’t think they trusted anyone but each other. But in their
own way, they cared for her. She knew that. They’d known each other for
five years now.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But…but it’s not…”
She trailed off, not knowing how to explain the circumstance. Madame
Allegria wanted to keep the terms of their agreement quiet. Her aunt didn’t
want her telling the Krave that soon they would have their freedom from the
brothel. Except Valerie didn’t really care about what she wanted.
But looking at them now, she didn’t know how to tell them. It didn’t
seem right to make some half-rushed explanation of the past day and a half.
They would know soon enough when Valerie began cancelling their clients.
And once Eve’s townhouse sold, once the collector on Genesis wired her
the credits for what he was claiming, she would be able to give them
something. Something concrete. Something tangible.
Not just more empty words.
“It’s true,” she told them, her eyes straying to the door of Dravka’s
room. “But there’s more to it, things I’ll explain to you in the coming week.
Just not right now.”
“What are you up to, Val?” Ravu asked, his eyes narrowing on her.
“I’m—” She licked her lips, rubbing at her arms when the flesh prickled
into bumps there. “I’m trying to make things right. For all of you. I just
need time to do it.”
Tavak’s brow bones slammed down, his slim lips pulling into a frown.
His and Ravu’s eyes were different than Dravka’s. They were golden and
silver in color, those strands weaving through their irises, instead of blue
and green.
 “Just trust me on this, okay?” she whispered. “I’ll tell you everything, I
promise.”
After a moment of hesitation, they both inclined their heads in a brief
nod. They stood there in silence until Tavak finally said, “We have to go
prepare for the night.”
Valerie hesitated but then nodded. Swallowing, she said, “I need to
check on him but I’ll be downstairs later.”
They both left the Cluster. They preferred to bathe and prepare for the
night in their client rooms. They called them the ‘mating rooms.’ It kept
things…separate in their minds. They became whatever their clients wanted
of them in the mating rooms. And that took time. Every time they stepped
inside those rooms, they became something different. They slipped into a
role that they were expected to play, a role that they were used to.
That was how Dravka had explained it to her once. One of their more
painful conversations.
Valerie stood in the quietness of the Cluster. It was dark. Through the
small window, she saw the beginnings of the silver projection of the moon
lightening the sky. The only other source of light in the Cluster was coming
from the slit in Dravka’s ajar door, from the flickering candle sconce on his
wall.
Taking a small breath, she walked towards it and pushed inside.
“Dravka?”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER TEN

H
her.
e was lying on his back on the bed, staring up at the flickering
shadows playing along the ceiling.
“So it is true then?” he rasped, not turning his head to look at

Valerie bit her lip. Had he overheard what she’d said in the sitting
room? Of course he had. Keriv’i had better senses than humans. They could
see better in darkness, hear things from farther away, smell things that
humans couldn’t.
She went to his bed, sinking down onto the floor next to it, her knees
pressing into the thin rug.
“I didn’t mean for you to find out that way,” she said softly.
Slowly, he turned his head to regard her. Their faces were close. All
Valerie had to do was reach out a hand and stroke his face. Keriv’i males
were hairless but their skin was—supposedly—very sensitive. And to her it
felt like soft suede.
“Who is he?”
Valerie licked her lips, her gaze sliding away briefly. Her breath hitched,
however, when Dravka reached across the distance and made her look at
him, his thick thumb caressing her cheek.
His gentleness was enough to make her want to cry. Couldn’t he
understand that looking at him was painful? Couldn’t he understand that his
touch made her want to forget everything and just curl up in his arms and
wish for more?
It was too hard.
 “I don’t know,” she whispered, finding she couldn’t lie to him. She
might be able to lie to herself but she could never lie to Dravka. “I met him
yesterday.”
The muscle in his jaw squeezed and released, those eyes intense and
pinning her in place.
“He’s the son of a wealthy importing family. His mother is a client of
Ravu’s,” Valerie found herself saying. “I think that’s how she made this
happen.”
There was no question of who ‘she’ was.
“Demav,” he rasped, turning his face back up to the ceiling. His hand
left her and he brought his palms to his eyes, rubbing at them. “You…”
“What?” she whispered.
“You don’t have to do this.”
The words were torn from his throat, ravaged and raw. His voice was
still husky from the alcohol, curling in her ears.
He dropped his hands and sat up quickly. Valerie leaned back, watching
him turn so he faced her, his long legs sliding over the bed’s edge in front of
her.
“You don’t have to do this,” he repeated, his eyes flashing.
Her smile was sad. Of course she had to. If she didn’t, it meant that they
would stay here. It meant that Madame Allegria wouldn’t pay them what
she owed them.
“I do,” Valerie said.
“Why?” he snarled.
She swallowed, feeling the waves of anger rolling off him. He was
drunk. She couldn’t talk to him about these things now. It didn’t help that
she felt that little ball of desperation and panic rise up the back of her
throat, however.
“Dravka,” she whispered.
“Why?”
Her nostrils flared, her breaths coming quick.
“Because I want better for you!” she exclaimed.
He blinked, tilting his head back to rest along the brick wall behind him,
exposing his throat. She watched it bob as he swallowed.
“What does that mean?”
“This is my choice,” she told him. “I agreed to this.”
“Agreed to what?” he growled, his impatience brimming.
 She didn’t want to talk about this now. Not when he was drunk and
angry.
She cast a desperate glance at the door, beginning to rise from the floor.
“Dravka, I have to—”
“Veki,” he rasped, catapulting himself from the bed with surprising
grace and fluidity just as she reached for the handle. He slammed the door
shut, hard enough to rattle the flickering sconce on the wall.
He turned her around so her back was pressed to it…and then he
pressed into her.
To keep her in place?
Valerie’s heart began to hammer in her breast, hard enough that she
knew he felt it against him. His arms rested on the door above her head, his
body bowed over her because he was so much taller. She felt cocooned in
the heat and warmth and bulk of his body.
It had already been dark in the room but his body blocked out the light
from the sconce. Valerie’s swallow was audible, as were the little exhales
that fell from her lips.
“Dravka,” she whispered. “What are you doing?”
His opal eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. Valerie could smell the
brandy on him, though underneath, she smelled that familiar musk that
made her fingers curl. She loved his smell.
“Tell me why you’re doing this, Val,” he rasped.
Tears welled in her eyes because she heard something in his voice.
It was hurt.
It was anger and torment.
“Because I know you,” he continued. “And this better not be for us.”
Us. He meant the Keriv’i.
“Tell me.”
He swayed a little around her and Valerie closed her eyes.
“You burned the whips and ropes,” he went on quietly, speaking into
their small circle of space.
So…he’d found them.
“You say you’re selling Evelyn Tesler’s townhouse, making hidden
accounts for the credits. You tell me that Madame Allegria will never touch
us again, that you’re not afraid of her anymore. You come home in a dress
and then I hear you crying behind a closed door.”
Valerie opened her eyes.
 “Then I find out you’re engaged to a human male you met yesterday,”
he grated. Valerie didn’t know if he realized it but he pressed closer as the
words left him, until his thighs were against her own. “So tell me. Don’t lie
to me. Not to me, Val.”
She wondered if all Keriv’i were like this when they were drunk. Or if
this was just Dravka. Her intelligent, no-bullshit, impatient Dravka, who
had always seen her so clearly.
“She agreed to close the brothel,” Valerie whispered, keeping her
shoulders back against the door, lifting her head to regard him and his
reaction.
His expression was thunderous, his lips pressed into a smooth line, his
eyes flickering. The darkness, however, softened the hard line of his
sculpted jaw, the high points of his cheekbones.
“Kruvu?” he asked.
“She agreed to close the brothel, to pay for your passage off Everton to
a neutral colony of your choosing, and to pay you the credits that are
rightfully yours,” she told him, keeping her voice steady. “All of you. You
would all be free of this place.”
“Veki.”
That wasn’t what she expected him to say almost as soon as the words
left her lips.
“No?” she whispered, her brow furrowing.
“Why would she agree to that?” he growled.
Valerie swallowed. “Because the Larchmonts are one of the wealthiest
families not only on Everton but among all the colonies. Their son is the
heir to it all…and by extension, when I marry him, I will be as well. It’s
always about credits. Credits and social standing. It doesn’t matter that
Celine Larchmont hates my aunt’s guts, that she’ll be tied to this family
forever. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t what I want. She needs me. For once,
she’s at my mercy. And this is what I demanded from her.”
“Veki. You will not go through with this.”
Her chin lifted. “I will.”
Grief tore through her then at her sudden realization.
“And you won’t be here to stop me,” she whispered. Those tears welled
in her eyes again, knowing that very soon…she would never see him again.
“You’ll be gone, Dravka.”
 Once he left Everton, he would be lost to her. Lost in the stars. On a
flickering little planet, far away from here.
She cleared her throat, bringing the back of her hand up to wipe at the
tears that leaked down her face, suddenly furious that she was crying. She
should be happy he would be gone soon. It would mean she’d succeeded. It
would mean he might be able to find some semblance of peace and
happiness in this life after everything that he’d endured.
He deserved happiness. They all did.
His grin was a little feral, a little wild.
“If you think I’m leaving this terrible little colony without you, you’re
solely mistaken, mellkia,” he growled.
There was that word again.
She ignored him, sniffling. “I’m planning to get in touch with Eve and
Khiva. She gave me a patch number for a contact of hers. They settled on a
colony named Dumera, remember? Maybe you can—”
A gasp escaped her lips.
Dravka’s hands settled around her waist and he stepped forward until
there was no space left between them.
Then…
His lips were on hers.
Dravka was kissing her.
Dravka was kissing her!
Valerie’s eyes were open and she stared, shocked, elated, angered,
bewildered, into his own eyes. His gaze was a challenge. Up close, even in
the darkness, Valerie saw swirls of color in those eyes that even she hadn’t
noticed before. Glimmers of gold threaded in the green. Hints of teal in the
blue.
Dravka was kissing her?
At first, it seemed he’d decided to kiss her so she would stop talking. A
simple way to seal off her words.
But then…
A rough sound chuffed in the back of Dravka’s throat. He crouched, his
hands squeezing at her waist. Then, heaven help her, his lips began to move.
The kiss started out soft. A mere brushing of his lips across hers, gentle
after the shock had worn off. Valerie sucked in a long breath through her
nostrils, desire lighting within her, her hands curling into his chest. When
had she placed them there?
 If possible, Dravka pressed closer. His head slanted and then those soft
lips were taking her own with more force, moving over her leisurely but
skillfully.
One of his hands moved to cup the swell of her ass, squeezing, another
roughened, dark sound emerging from his throat, one that seemed to light
her blood on fire like a match had been struck. He used his grip to lift her
up, holding her against the door. With her feet suddenly dangling, she
instinctively latched her legs around the back of his thighs and it gave him
more room to press.
Now their faces were level and Dravka took full advantage of that. In
her temporary madness, she couldn’t remember why this was such a
terrible, terrible idea. In her temporary madness, swimming in her surprise
and her desire, her eyes closed, getting lost in his kiss, beginning to respond
to him.
Both his hands were cupping her ass now in an almost possessive grip.
Her legs were around him and she felt the hard settling of his cock between
her parted thighs. She began to pant, her heartbeat thundering in her ears,
her hands clutching him, afraid that he would pull away.
And when he nibbled at her bottom lip, taking advantage of her small
gasp to delve his long, dark tongue inside her mouth, her body began to
throb. He groaned into her, his hips hitching ever so slightly, rubbing his
cock against the seam of her pants, over her own sex and—
Brandy. She tasted the brandy on his tongue.
Valerie’s eyes shot open.
Panic was beginning to rise, reality returning to her though his drugging
kiss had temporarily made her forget.
This was Dravka.
Her best friend. The male she loved. The male she had never, not once,
kissed in the five years that she’d loved him.
And he was drunk right now on Everton’s sweetened brandy, drunk
because he’d learned of her engagement to another man.
Valerie knew he wouldn’t be kissing her otherwise. He’d had all the
opportunities in the world to kiss her—when they’d been alone, in this very
room, with sunlight streaming across the walls, as they spoke in whispered,
low tones so no one else could hear them.
So why had he chosen to right now?
It felt right. So, so right and wonderful.
 But it also felt wrong.
This wasn’t…this wasn’t what she wanted.
This wasn’t the right moment, not when they were angry and sad. Not
when Dravka had only kissed her in the first place to quiet her words, words
he didn’t want to hear.
Valerie broke the kiss, turning her head away.
Dravka’s hot breath fanned across her neck. He suckled and bit at the
flesh underneath her jaw.
“Val,” he rasped into her skin.
Suddenly, she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Put me down,” she whispered.
Dravka froze against her, though his lips were still pressed to her throat.
“Put me down, Dravka,” she repeated quietly. Overwhelming sadness
overcame her. Kissing him would accomplish nothing. It would only make
it hurt more.
It was a mistake.
This was a mistake.
“Please.”
Dravka lowered her back down to the floor and her legs released around
him. Her knees felt a little wobbly. She kept her head ducked because he
hadn’t moved away. He was still pressed against her. She could still feel the
way his cock throbbed between them.
“I—I have to go,” Valerie told him, her voice sounding strangled and
high to her own ears. She turned to the door, her forehead practically
pressed against it as she fumbled for the handle.
“Val,” he rasped.
Her hand stilled when she felt his forehead come to rest on her shoulder.
His arms came around her in an embrace, keeping her in place for long
moments.
Silence descended between them. He only hugged her from behind, his
head heavy. She felt his warm breath through the t-shirt she’d stolen from
him.
“Please don’t,” he voiced. His tone was ragged and raw and husky.
Her eyebrows drew together, more tears beginning to well up in her
eyes.
Please don’t…what?
Please don’t go?
 Please don’t marry a stranger?
Please don’t try to help them?
Please don’t run away from him?
Or all of those things?
“I can’t,” she whispered. “You know that. We can’t.”
She felt his jaw flex against her back at her words.
Then her hand was fumbling for the handle again, afraid that if she
didn’t leave now…she might never want to.
Valerie got the door open and managed to wiggle through it, forcing
Dravka to release her.
Then she fled from the Cluster like the coward she was.

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN

“V auk,” Dravka cursed, leaning his forehead on the closed door

that Valerie had escaped through.
Everything in him was telling him to go after her. To find
her. To kiss her again. To hold her and never let her go.
But his mind was swimming—partly from the alcohol, partly from that
kiss.
His hands shook when he pushed away from the door, stumbling back
to his bed pushed against the wall.
We can’t.
That was the last thing she said before she left. Words that Dravka
himself had told her. Words that didn’t make any sense to him now.
Because why couldn’t they?
Staring up at the ceiling, he groaned, feeling his unyielding cock
throbbing against his belly. Then he cursed again, thinking he might have
fucked everything up.
It was a selfish thing to kiss her.
So why didn’t he feel sorry?

THE NEXT MORNING CAME SLOWLY.

The alcohol burned through his system quickly, leaving Dravka sober
but morose. He remembered everything. He remembered everything about
their kiss.
 That following morning, he was annoyed and frustrated with himself.
In the light of day, with that fresh dawn that broke over Everton—a fake
sunrise that he watched from the Cluster’s single window—he had never
felt more caged.
For the first time, he realized that he hadn’t felt a fresh breeze on his
skin in almost ten years. It had been twelve years since Kerivu had been
destroyed but ten years since he’d come to Everton.
He hadn’t seen a real sunrise in ten years. Only artificial, programmed
ones. He almost felt sorry for the Earth colonists. Because many of them
had never known any different.
And Valerie…
His Valerie.
She had never seen a real sunrise either. She had a picture of one on the
wall of her room downstairs, an old photograph of her home planet.
But she’d never seen one.
Dravka paced in front of the window, feeling like something was trying
to crawl its way out of his skin. For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t
stand being there. He couldn’t stand never being allowed to leave.
Ten years of his life were gone.
Wasted in this artificial place where nothing was real except her.
And for the first time, he was enraged with himself. He was enraged
that he hadn’t gone with Khiva and Eve when he’d had the chance. He was
enraged that he hadn’t taken Valerie, in the dead of the night, and just gone.
What had he been thinking, all those months ago?
The restlessness was buzzing under his skin.
And now, he was almost out of time.
Tavak appeared then, emerging from his room in the Cluster. Casting a
look at Ravu’s open door, however, he asked, “He’s not back yet?”
Dravka shook his head, “Veki.”
Clients could stay the night until eight in the morning. He would be
back soon.
Tavak dropped into the armchair, a deep sigh escaping him. Though
Dravka kept his gaze out at the dawn, he felt Tavak’s stare.
He waited for him to say something, but finally he heard Tavak shift,
heard the slide of metal and knew that he’d taken out the Nu device instead.
Dravka began to pace again, his nostrils flaring when a sudden flash
from last night came into his mind. Of Valerie, of her soft gasps and even
softer lips. Her taste, vauk. The firmness of her backside underneath his
palms. The way she’d responded to him so eagerly before…
He cursed underneath his breath just as he heard the door to the Cluster
open. His hearts stopped briefly, hoping to see her standing on the
threshold, but it was only Ravu.
Tavak greeted his brother with a sharp jerk of his chin. Ravu’s gaze slid
to Dravka, pacing at the window. His brow bone lifted, his gaze catching on
the tented material of his pants.
“Hope that’s not for me,” Ravu said dryly, though Dravka caught a hint
of amusement in his tone. “My client drained me for the day.”
Tavak chuffed out a small laugh, already scanning through the news on
the Nu, while Dravka adjusted his inconvenient erection, blowing out a
sharp breath.
Tavak’s laugh suddenly stopped.
A creaking sound came from the armchair as Tavak leaned forward, his
lips parting, his brow furrowing. His eyes were scanning rapidly over the
Nu device. Even Ravu noticed and approached.
“What is it?” he asked.
Not again…
Dravka’s throat was suddenly dry. He half-expected to hear more news
about Valerie’s engagement…but not even that would cause the sudden
change in Tavak so dramatically.
“What is it?” Dravka repeated, edging towards the chair, the sunrise
forgotten.
“Tavak?” came Ravu’s quiet voice.
Tavak’s gaze flickered up to his brother then came to Dravka before
they lowered once more on the Nu.
A sharp breath escaped Tavak’s lips. “Firestones are in circulation
again.”
Shock froze Dravka in place, feeling something pinch in his gut at the
name.
Firestones.
“There’s an article here about Kerivu’s history,” Tavak rasped, shoving
the Nu into Ravu’s waiting hands. “About how the firestones brought the
end of the Dark Age. And that they are being made once more.”
“Kruvu?” Dravka breathed. “By Khiva?”
 “It has to be,” Ravu murmured, his eyes furiously scanning over the
words they’d all learned to read during their time on Everton. “He’s the
only one that knows how. Demav, he’s done it.”
Dravka sank into an empty chair opposite Tavak as Ravu finished
reading whatever article his brother had stumbled across.
Firestones?
Firestones had fueled Kerivu’s economy and some believed that they’d
brought about Kerivu’s destruction. Firestones were one of the most
powerful fuel sources across the universe. Pure energy that had fueled
merchant vessels, transport vessels, that had helped power colonies and
planets. They were even more powerful than Luxirian crystals and they
were what had brought prosperity and wealth to Kerivu.
Khiva’s family had been the makers of them. As such, Khiva’s family
had been one of the wealthiest and most powerful families on all of Kerivu.
Khiva himself had once been called the Prince of Firestones.
But with that power and wealth came outside greed and interest. Many
tried to replicate the firestones with little success. Greed turned to anger and
envy, which led to war. And it was war and hatred that had destroyed their
home planet.
“You think it is him?” Tavak rasped. “He said he’d never make them
again.”
It’s in his blood, was Dravka’s first thought. Khiva believed he’d had a
hand in the destruction of Kerivu, but Dravka had never believed that.
“You think it’s a coincidence that firestones are in circulation again, a
few months after Khiva escaped Everton?” Dravka asked quietly. “I don’t.”
Valerie had said Khiva and Evelyn Tesler had settled on a colony named
Dumera. His mind started whirling. They were obviously building a life
there. Khiva obviously thought it was safe enough, if he kept his female
there.
Why didn’t I leave with them? Why didn’t I take Valerie with me and
never look back?
Regret swarmed in his mind before he pushed it out. Regret
accomplished nothing. It only kept one trapped, frozen.
Which is what I’ve been for the last ten years, arguably longer, he
thought.
Ravu finished reading and handed the Nu to Dravka. The slim device
felt abnormally heavy in his hands. He didn’t read the article. He slid the
device onto the table instead before rubbing at his eyes.
“There’s nothing about Khiva,” Ravu said quietly. “The article says that
small batches of firestones are being produced. The first orders are already
sold out everywhere. They are originating from the Second Quadrant.”
Most neutral colonies were in the Second Quadrant, so it made sense.
Dravka assumed that was where Dumera was.
His hearts were suddenly pounding in his chest. The three Keriv’i males
in the Cluster were all quiet as they processed this new information—as
they processed what it meant.
“There’s something else we have to talk about.”
Dravka swallowed, knowing that he needed to tell them about what he’d
learned last night. He’d heard Valerie tell Tavak and Ravu to trust her, that
she was trying to make things right, to give her time.
But this involved all of them. This was too much for Valerie to have to
bear alone. Not that Dravka would let her go through with this.
Determination shot through him as Tavak and Ravu regarded him,
waiting for him to speak.
Ever since Kerivu’s destruction, he had been…idle. He had grown
stagnant. A part of him had been resigned to die on Everton, to live out the
rest of his life here, fucking hundreds of faceless human women who only
wanted him for his teela.
Truthfully, a part of him had always known that he would have to watch
another male take his place in Valerie’s life. She was a beautiful female with
a beautiful heart…and he had always believed that another male would
discover that, that another male would take her from this demav-forsaken
brothel, take her from Dravka, and give her everything that she deserved.
He wanted that for her. He wanted her to be happy because she deserved
to be.
Yet he had the startling realization that maybe…he could be that male
for her. That he could make her happy and give her everything she wanted.
And that maybe, she’d only ever wanted him to begin with.
Because that was why she was doing this—she wanted that same
happiness for Dravka. For them all.
Dravka loved her. Demav, he loved her. He had loved her since the very
first moment he’d seen her, on that cloudy, wintry day she’d first set foot in
the brothel.
Gabriel Larchmont wouldn’t love her like Dravka did. No male could.
 If Dravka wanted Valerie to be happy, then he would make her happy.
If he wanted to have a life with her—if he wanted to build her a home
on a peaceful colony, if he wanted to build her her garden, and give her the
children he knew she craved—then he needed to fight for it.
Because he could give her those things.
Regarding Tavak and Ravu, Dravka’s nostrils flared. They were running
out of time.
With the news of the firestones, however, it gave Dravka renewed hope.
Hope that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“We have to talk about Valerie,” he said, “and Dumera.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER TWELVE

V alerie watched the property agent slide into a driverless car at the
end of Eve Tesler’s walkway.
She was leaning against the front door, shaded by the
overhanging porch, a Nu device clutched in her hands with the contract for
the closing. There was a buyer who had already made her an offer for the
townhouse.
The number shone up at her, more credits than she’d ever seen in her
lifetime at once.
1.2 million.
It had taken all of a day and a half to have an offer drawn up. Property
was scarce on the colonies. A detached townhouse in the Garden District of
Everton was even more rare. The tree-lined streets of the quiet, exclusive
neighborhood had made it an easy sell.
And all Valerie had to do was sign the documents on her Nu device,
send them to the property agent, and the credits would be threaded into a
private account she’d set up yesterday. An account that Madame Allegria
would never know about, one Valerie had made for Dravka, Tavak, and
Ravu, which they’d be able to access once they left Everton.
Valerie knew she could probably get more for the townhouse, which
was what the property agent had told her a few moments before. This was
only the beginning, she’d said with a small smile on her ruby-red lips.
But Valerie didn’t have the time to wait for more offers. 1.2 million
credits were enough for now. She would only add to that number once the
buyer from Genesis sent her the credits for the collections and furniture
within the townhouse.
 It will be enough, Valerie thought, swiping her signature on the
numerous documents flooded across her Nu device. The property agent
wasn’t even down the street by the time she was finished.
Madame Allegria was on her way back to Everton at that very moment.
As if in reminder, her left shoulder ached a little. She pressed her fingertips
to the back of it, skimming them across the bone where her tracker had been
implanted years before.
Valerie sighed, knowing she needed to hurry.
It was the late afternoon, two days after Dravka had kissed her with the
taste of brandy on his tongue. And like a coward, she’d avoided him since.
Every spare moment she had, she was at the townhouse, making final
preparations.
And now that she’d agreed to its sale, she felt like a weight had been
lifted off her shoulders. She felt like she could breathe.
Turning back inside the townhouse, she saw the carefully packed boxes
were lined up in the sitting room, boxes that would soon be shipped off to
Genesis. The top floors were already bare. She’d already hired a transport to
take the boxes away. She wouldn’t need to return.
Valerie reached out her palm to run across the wall. For a time, it was
nice to be free of the brothel. To be within a house that had obviously held
special memories. Love. Valerie could almost feel it.
But now, she’d picked the home clean. She’d sold it off quickly. She
didn’t even feel guilty about it.
With one last look, she left and ordered a driverless car to return her to
the brothel. Just as she slid inside, she received a call from the property
agent, who told her the buyer would wire the credits that night and would
give her time to get the boxes shipped off before taking full possession.
When the car slid up to the front of the brothel, which had been her
home for over five years, she felt…hope. For the first time in a long time.
Things were working out…almost flawlessly. A part of her couldn’t
help but wonder when they would start to go wrong again.
Once inside, she snuck down to her bedroom with a quick glance at the
stairs. It shamed her that she was hiding from Dravka but she didn’t know
what else to do. That kiss changed things between them.
Once down in her bedroom, she changed out of her dirtied, loose
clothes just in case Madame Allegria came early. The smell of smoke still
permeated the basement level. It had seemed to thread between the fibers of
her clothes. It was in her sheets, in the walls.
But it made Valerie smile. She wasn’t even afraid of what her aunt
would do when she found the burned ropes and whips lying in a useless
heap next door. Because she couldn’t do anything. Not anymore.
She was just smoothing back her hair, wrapping it up into a tight knot
on the top of her head, when a knock came at the door of her bedroom. Just
one…and then it was opening.
Valerie froze. It was Dravka.
He was dressed in a black, soft shirt and black pants. His feet were bare.
And his eyes were on her, intense and observing her carefully as he stepped
into the room.
Slowly, her hands lowered from her hair but since she hadn’t finished
tying it up into a knot, it fell down her back, a few tendrils drifting across
her cheeks.
“Dravka,” she said quietly, her eyes flickering to the open door behind
him. “What are doing down here?”
Twice now, he’d come down to her private room. Twice in a week when
she didn’t think he’d come down here that many times in the past two years.
He must’ve thought her darted gaze behind him meant she was thinking
of bolting…because he shoved the door closed, trapping the both of them in
that small space.
Dravka leaned back against the door for good measure. He had to hunch
a little because the ceiling was lower closest to the frame…and Valerie
didn’t think the small room had been constructed with a bulky, seven-foot-
tall Keriv’i male in mind.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he remarked.
Valerie felt the shamed flush that crept over her cheeks. Swallowing,
she tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear, a ridiculous excuse already on
her tongue.
“I’ve been busy at the townhouse,” she informed him. “I—I sold it
today. 1.2 million credits that will be in the account I set up. And I have
more coming in from the collections that Eve and her father—”
“Valerie,” Dravka interrupted, pushing off the door and approaching her.
Her swallow was audible and she barely stopped herself from taking a
step back. She looked up at him, but not without remembering his tongue
stroking against hers…and those lips on hers…and those hands clutching
possessively around her ass…and that hardened thickness between his legs
pressing—
Stop! she mentally screamed. This was Dravka. Her friend, who had
never kissed her until a couple nights ago. Hell, he’d barely even touched
her. He’d just been drunk and sad and maybe a little angry.
With sudden realization, she thought that the kiss really hadn’t meant
anything.
“I don’t give a damn about the credits right now,” Dravka rasped,
approaching her until the backs of her knees hit the edge of her bed. He
stopped within arm’s reach of her, still blocking the view of the door with
his broad shoulders. “I want to talk to you.”
Her heart gave another furious little pump before she tried to settle it
down again.
“About what?” she asked quietly.
“About why you’ve been avoiding me,” he said, his head dipping
slightly, his voice dropping deeper.
A shiver raced up her spine, one she couldn’t hide.
Valerie thought it was obvious.
Then again, as she looked up at him, she thought it was possible he
didn’t remember. She knew some humans, if they drank too much alcohol,
could have lapses in memory. Valerie had never had a drop of alcohol in her
life but maybe Keriv’i males reacted the same.
Somehow, the thought that he didn’t remember the kiss only depressed
her more.
“Do you…” she started, licking her lips.
His eyes dropped to her mouth for a brief moment. “Do I what?”
“You had a lot to drink,” she commented softly. “Do you remember it?”
His eyes flared, his pupils going blacker and wider. Then his eyes
narrowed. “Remember what?”
Suspicion rose in her just as readily as confusion. Was he going to make
her say it? Or was it that he really didn’t remember?
“Do you remember what we talked about in your room?” she
whispered, frowning. “And…and what happened afterwards?”
“What did happen afterwards?” he asked, his voice dropping even more,
a slight smile quirking up at the edges of his mouth, which baffled her. “Tell
me.”
Did he think it was…funny?
 Suddenly, Valerie felt her temper snap. Suddenly, she felt anger rise
with her confusion and sadness. She was disappointed. With him, with
herself, with believing that the kiss meant something at all, when it was
obvious that Dravka was just…was just toying with her.
She knew him. She could read him well. Did he think this was just a big
game? Because if he did, maybe she didn’t know him so well after all.
She’d dreamed of kissing him for years. Now that she finally had—
feeling those lips glide along hers, feeling his warm palms digging into her
hips, and his heavy breaths against her—he thought it was…amusing?
It hurt.
There she’d been, worried and embarrassed and wanting more of that
kiss for two days…and he found it amusing.
“Never mind,” she bit out, her hands going back up to her hair,
clenching her teeth hard to keep from saying anything she might regret.
“Nothing happened.”
She scurried around him, part of her arm hitting his chest as she
attempted to finish securing the bun on her head. Her throat felt tight. Her
face felt hot.
Valerie heard his sharp exhale followed by his murmured curse.
It mortified her when she felt her eyes begin to sting, when her vision
went blurry with her sudden tears. Every part of her longed to flee. To race
through her door and run upstairs…to another place she’d be trapped. Then
again, she’d been trapped in some way or another all her life. From poverty
on Genesis, to her mother’s sickness and watching her slowly die because
they were too poor to get her help, to Everton where she had to rely on her
aunt to stay fed and housed.
And her future?
Marriage. Trapped again. Chained and trapped.
Her heart was racing in her chest and when she swiped at the tears
spilling down her face, she found her hands were trembling.
“Did it…” she whispered, suddenly more saddened than angry. She
cleared her throat, staring at the door, feeling his heat close to her back.
“Did it really mean that little to you?”
She didn’t know what possessed her to ask. Maybe because she was
tired of beating around the bush with Dravka—for five years now—or
maybe because she realized he would be gone soon. Maybe she realized
that for once, she wanted straight, honest answers from him. Then she’d
know if she had made up the last five years in her mind or not.
“Did it mean anything at all?” she continued, turning around slowly to
face Dravka. His brow bone was furrowed when she looked at him. And his
expression was thunderous, but at least he wasn’t giving her that amused
smile anymore. “Or was it just because you were drunk and…I was there?”
The anger that stole over his face was enough to steal her breath.
“Do you really think that little of me?” he asked quietly.
“What am I supposed to think?” she whispered, dashing away more
tears. “You come here now and it’s like you’re amused about the whole
thing.”
“And what am I supposed to think, Val?” he asked, running a hand over
his smooth scalp. “You ran away that night and avoided me for two days. I
was beginning to think it was you who wanted to forget that kiss ever
happened. Or that you regretted it. Or you were ashamed of it.”
Valerie’s eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, closed, opened—but no
sound came out.
“I don’t regret it,” Dravka said after a lengthy silence, his voice soft yet
deep.
His words seemed to echo around that small space, bouncing off the
walls until they were all she could hear. He took one, two, three steps closer
until Valerie had to crane her neck to meet his eyes.
“You don’t?” she questioned.
“Veki,” he murmured down to her. “I remember every moment.”
A soft exhale escaped her.
“The only thing I regret,” he started and she tensed slightly, “is that we
kissed for the first time when I’d been drinking. I should have kissed you
long before that. Because it was a long time in the making, don’t you think,
mellkia?”
Valerie imagined that the expression on her face was part bewildered,
part dazed, part wary, part elated. But when Dravka’s hand came to cup the
side of her throat, a small breathy gasp escaped her, her nipples pebbling
hard underneath the dress she’d slipped on.
Then that hand slid up to her cheek, his thumb brushing her bottom lip,
his eyes going to them. She watched his eyes flare and a muscle tic in his
strong jaw.
 When he spoke again, his voice was huskier, gruffer. “Which is what I
came down here to rectify when I saw you’d returned.”
“What?” she whispered.
A million voices were screaming in her mind why it wasn’t a good idea
to be alone with him right now, down in her basement room, when he was
looking at her like this, and talking to her like this.
Dravka didn’t answer her. Not at first. Instead, he stepped into her,
dropping his head down while guiding her face up.
A hushed quiet descended over them when his lips met hers. Another
kiss. Only this time, he didn’t have the taste of brandy on his tongue. Only
Dravka.
A shuddering sigh left her. As for all those voices inside her head
ringing warning bells, she silenced them. Against her better judgment, her
hands gripped his shirt to keep him in place…and she kissed him back,
moving her lips with his.
Dravka made a rough sound in the back of his throat when she pressed
closer. His tongue met hers and he worked it expertly against her, drawing
little sounds from her throat, building up heat in her belly. His palm left her
cheek and then his arms were around her, pulling her closer, as Valerie’s
head swam.
“This is how I wanted to kiss you for the first time, Val,” he rasped
against her lips. “Just like this.”
“Dravka,” she whispered, her hands sliding down his chest, taking
liberties she’d never allowed herself before. Because she knew they had
little time left? Perhaps.
His hands gripped her harder and she felt his length pressed to her belly,
thick and impressive. Dravka groaned, biting out something in Keriv’i
when she brought their bodies even closer.
She felt his two hearts throbbing endlessly. She heard her own blood
rushing in her ears. She heard the gentle whisper of clothing across flesh.
She heard the rough rasp of his hands against her as they slid down and
down.
Which was perhaps why she didn’t hear the clicking of high heels down
the corridor in the basement. Which was perhaps why when the door to her
room opened, it was already too late.
“How darling,” drawled a familiar voice.
 With a ragged gasp, Valerie broke away from Dravka, jerking her head
to the door.
Madame Allegria stood there, dressed in a floor-length, silky black dress
that molded to her ample curves. Her painted red lips—that had always
resembled the color of blood in Valerie’s mind—were curved in a mocking
kind of smile, though there was a sharp, icy glint in her gaze when she saw
Dravka’s hands curled around her hips.
Valerie pushed at Dravka’s chest until he reluctantly released her.
“You’re back,” Valerie said, as if it weren’t obvious. Her voice sounded
breathless even to her own ears.
“And you’ve been playing while I’ve been away, Niece,” her aunt
taunted, her eyes returned to Dravka’s, before trailing down his body with a
possessive, knowing gaze that made Valerie’s stomach churn.
Valerie stepped in front of him, forcing her aunt to look at her instead.
Madame Allegria smiled again as she assessed her kiss-reddened lips,
widened eyes, and heaving chest.
She tossed something at Valerie, something encased in velvet and on a
silk hanger. A dress of some kind. She managed to snag it, just keeping it
from falling on the floor.
“Get dressed and make yourself presentable,” her aunt said, her eyes
narrowing. Her gaze flicked up to Dravka behind her, that smile turning
mocking, and then said, “We have a dinner with your fiancé and your future
in-laws tonight.”
Behind her, Dravka stiffened, a harsh breath escaping him.
“I’ve done you a favor and cancelled all the clients for tonight since you
won’t be here to receive them,” Madame Allegria went on, which surprised
Valerie. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”
Valerie didn’t say a word, only stared across the short distance between
them, her hands clutching the dress harder.
“Be upstairs in twenty minutes,” Madame Allegria said, her voice
hardening. “You don’t want to keep Gabriel waiting.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“W hat’s the use for a long engagement?” Derek Larchmont’s

voice boomed around the dining room. It was grand and
tastefully furnished with Old World pieces Valerie knew
must’ve cost a fortune.
Plush red velvet dining chairs. The long and flawless stretch of a
mahogany wood table with gold inlaid beneath the silky varnish. It could
easily seat twenty people, though only five were in attendance that night.
Another shimmering chandelier dangled over the wood and Valerie
wondered what would happen if it crashed down onto the table, breaking
dishes filled with rich food and thick gravies.
Derek Larchmont’s wide smile and his twinkling blue eyes came to
Valerie. “This is an arranged marriage, after all. In our circle, they are
expected. There is no shame in getting married soon. We can wait for
summer, in a few weeks’ time, since it will be more fashionable.”
“Dear,” Celine cut in, placing a palm on her husband’s forearm. “I think
you underestimate how much time goes into planning a wedding. There are
expectations. An event of the season, you see? We are Larchmonts. We
mustn’t disappoint.”
Celine’s lips twisted a bit as she said those last few words, her eyes
coming to Madame Allegria briefly before dropping away.
The beautiful blonde was seated next to her husband at the dining table.
Valerie was across from her, Madame Allegria was to Valerie’s right, and
Gabriel Larchmont, her intended husband, was seated next to her aunt. It
was a small reprieve that Valerie had no reason to look down the table at
him and she did her best to not meet his gaze too often.
 Valerie swallowed and she reached for her glass of wine to soothe her
suddenly dry throat.
“I think a quick wedding is ideal,” her aunt cut in, leaning back in her
seat slightly, baring a glimpse of cleavage from her plunging neckline.
“This is a matter of business, Celine. You said yourself Gabriel cannot
claim his share of the company until he is married. You have a busy import
season coming up, do you not?”
Valerie took another sip of wine before setting her glass down on the
table. She’d barely opened her mouth once. Only to eat, though the food
tasted like ash on her tongue. Which was fine because her shimmering teal
dress was so tight across her abdomen that eating a lot was simply not
possible.
“I agree,” Gabriel chimed in, though he smiled at his mother. He leaned
forward, his eyes catching on Valerie, and he winked. “Can you blame me
for wanting a quick wedding? Just look at my bride.”
The flush that bloomed across Valerie’s neck and cheeks had nothing to
do with pleasure and everything to do with the fact that her gut was
churning.
Celine was outnumbered. She seemed to realize that and pasted on a
small smile, reaching for her wine. She’d already drained three glasses at
the dinner table and motioned for more to the server lingering at the door.
“Of course, my dear,” she said quietly. “Whatever you want.”
Gabriel leaned back. Out of the corner of her eye, Valerie saw motion in
Madame Allegria’s lap.
Her ears started ringing when she saw Gabriel’s fingers slide up the slit
in her aunt’s black dress…and then his hand disappeared between her
thighs.
Madame Allegria shifted, ever so slightly, a small smirk playing over
her lips as she regarded Celine across the table. Gabriel’s fingers moved
underneath the silky material of the dress.
Valerie jerked her head forward, more nausea rising in her belly.
Her aunt and Gabriel were sleeping together. Was that how she’d gotten
Gabriel to go along with marrying her? Just another of her twisted mind
games?
Of course it was. Madame Allegria was in the business of sex. And she
knew how to use it to get what she wanted.
 And now…her fiancé was running his fingers over her aunt’s sex, right
at the dinner table, in front of his parents. This was the man she would be
marrying, tying her life to.
Valerie stood from the table, pushing her chair back so suddenly that it
nearly toppled over.
Everyone’s eyes cut to her but it was Celine that Valerie was looking at.
Did she know?
“Everything all right, darling?” Derek Larchmont asked.
“Y-yes,” Valerie replied, before clearing her throat. She pasted on a
smile that felt as brittle as Celine’s. “I need to use the powder room, if you
don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Derek said. “Our server will show you the way. For the
rest of us, let’s retire to the sitting room for the night. We can have our
dessert served in there.”
Valerie was unseeing as she followed the server from the room. He was
silent as he led her down the hallway, up the grand staircase she’d seen on
her first visit to the house, and halfway down another hallway.
“In here, Miss,” he said before opening the door and then backing away.
“Do you need me to wait for you, to show you—”
“No,” Valerie said quickly. “That’s all right, thank you.”
She locked herself inside the small room, leaning her back against the
door. It was hard to breathe in the dress so she stood there for long
moments, staring at herself in the reflection of the mirror. Like everything
in the house, it was gilded and heavy, leaning against the wall, and…
expensive.
Valerie thought of Celine, feathering her gilded little cage. And she
wondered if that was her fate too. To smile at people across the table at
dinner parties and pat her husband’s arm and call him dear.
She smiled, a bitter twist of her lips, but in the reflection she saw her
face begin to crumble.
She stifled the small sob that escaped her throat, clasping her hand over
her mouth, and her mind went to Dravka.
Dravka, who had kissed her again just a few hours earlier. Just thinking
about him, thinking about his dark eyes and gentle hands, quieted her sobs
until she felt centered again.
She remembered the first time she’d ever seen him. It was the first day
she’d been on Everton. A week after her mother had died. Madame Allegria
had told her to go introduce herself to the Krave in the Cluster of the
brothel. Alone.
Back then, Valerie had still been quite numb. She didn’t remember
walking down the hallway to the Cluster, she didn’t remember opening the
door, or standing at the threshold, seeing four pairs of eyes staring back at
her as she hollowly introduced herself.
But then, her eyes had found Dravka’s. She remembered her heart
giving a little throb at the sight of him and all at once, her breath had
seemed to return to her. He’d been watching her carefully as she’d
introduced herself. And once she was done? A small smile, secretive and
knowing, had passed over his lips…and he’d never looked away from her.
As if he knew.
As if he’d always known, from that very first moment, that they’d…
Valerie blew out a long breath, regarding herself in Celine Larchmont’s
gilded mirror.
Pull yourself together, she told herself. You can do this. You have to.
She patted her face, smoothing over the streaks of saline that had trailed
down her cheeks. She used the toilet—which was nearly impossible in her
tight dress, but she managed—and then washed up, taking deep, steadying
breaths every few moments.
You can do this, she thought as she exited the powder room. Down the
hallway, there wasn’t a soul in sight. As she navigated her way back to the
staircase which led down to the lower level, she passed an ajar door.
A small moan made her freeze and made her turn.
It had been left open on purpose, Valerie realized. Because when she
turned, her eyes darted through the door, into an office of some kind, with
dark bookcases lining the walls and a darker desk the size of a car before
them.
And on that desk was her aunt, her black dress pulled up around her
waist, her legs wrapped around Gabriel Larchmont’s hips. He was driving
those hips into Madame Allegria, his pace frenzied as he grinned down at
her.
Val must’ve made a sound. A surprised sound. Because both Madame
Allegria’s and Gabriel’s eyes found her.
Neither stopped.
If anything, Gabriel’s grin grew wider when he saw her watching. If
anything, his pace quickened further, thrusting harder, like he was putting
on a show. As for her aunt? Her eyes narrowed, as if trying to tell her
something. Her expression wasn’t gloating. It was calculating and shrewd
as it always was.
Gabriel’s groan broke whatever had kept Valerie rooted in place. His
pace grew choppy, flesh slapping against flesh, and Valerie fled, knowing
what would come next.
You look very much like your aunt.
That was what Gabriel had told her when she’d first met him a few days
ago. Right in this very house.
The words weren’t all that strange, but something about his tone had felt
off to her. Now she knew why. Now she knew why he’d agreed to marry
her in the first place. Not only could he take part in his family’s company,
but he would always be tied to Madame Allegria. And his wife? Well, she
looked like the woman he was in love with, the woman he couldn’t have the
way he wanted.
Valerie wondered what he’d do when he found out her aunt wasn’t
capable of love.
Something shifted in her, cold and icy.
You can do this. You have to, she repeated to herself, finding that her
hand was on the bannister of the staircase she didn’t remember finding.
Behind her, Madame Allegria and Gabriel were no doubt making
themselves presentable again.
Once on the main level, she searched for the sitting room, wandering
aimlessly around that grand, empty house. It was beautiful from the outside
but rotten within, Valerie thought. Priceless art hung from the walls, every
inch was polished to perfection, everything chosen with careful precision
and taste, meant to impress.
There was an open door at the end of the hallway, silvery light spilling
out from within. Curious, Valerie ventured towards it, pushing it further
open to step inside.
Her lips parted, her eyes going wide…but this time with awe and envy.
It was a conservatory.
The walls were made of glass, the silvery light of the moon shining
inside. The fragrance of the flowers were heavenly, perfuming the air with a
strange but addicting scent. White and red and pink and lilac and orange
blooms met her gaze wherever she looked. There were even fruit trees,
something she’d never seen before. Oranges and pomegranates and
peaches.
Greenery mixed with the colorful flowers, creating a beautiful effect
that overwhelmed her senses. Valerie thought she could get lost in there
forever. She might even find some kind of happiness there.
Her eyes alighted on a white flowering bush a few paces ahead of her,
tucked into its own gilded pot.
“Gardenia,” she whispered, recognizing the flower from pictures and
research she’d done over the years. Its scent was said to be unparalleled.
“It’s my favorite,” came a voice, a voice she recognized.
When Valerie turned, there was Celine Larchmont, watching her from a
bench nestled underneath a massive tree. A willow tree, she realized, though
not as big as the ones she’d seen in pictures.
Celine stood from the bench, swaying a little, perhaps from the wine
that night.
“You know them?” Celine asked, stepping up next to Valerie, her eyes
going to the gardenias.
“I—I’ve read about them,” Valerie said softly, a little embarrassed to be
caught there. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Larchmont, I didn’t mean to intrude.”
Celine waved away her words, though her usual smile wasn’t present.
“Go ahead,” Celine encouraged, nodding towards the flowers. “It took
me a long time to get them to bloom.”
This was Celine’s conservatory?
“You planted all these?” Valerie asked, wide-eyed, seeming to see the
woman for the first time.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking around her endless little garden, silvered
in the moonlight. “I did.”
Valerie stepped forward and leaned down to inhale the soft blooms. Her
lips parted at their beautiful scent and the first genuine smile of the night
crossed her features when she turned back to Celine.
“They’re lovely.”
Celine nodded, brushing her fingers over the delicate white petals. She
stared at them in silence for a long time.
“They are,” Celine agreed. “Though I imagine their scent is only a
fraction of what it was on Old Earth. I’ve often dreamed of what they
smelled like there. These are hybrids, crossed with other flowers to survive
within our colony. Pieces of what they once were.”
 There was a sadness in her voice.
“Celine,” Valerie said softly, lowering her voice when she glanced at the
open door, into the darkened hallway beyond. “I—”
Celine stepped towards her until Valerie could smell the wine on her
breath. With a steady gaze, the older woman said, “I don’t want you to
marry my son.”
Valerie’s lips pressed together.
She’d pieced that together herself.
“I don’t want you…or your family,” Celine continued, sneering out that
last word, “anywhere near mine.”
Of course, she meant her aunt.
“You think I want to?” Valerie asked, keeping her voice quiet. “You
think I asked for this?”
Surprise went through Celine’s eyes.
After what she’d witnessed tonight, Valerie wanted nothing to do with
Gabriel Larchmont or his family. But she didn’t have a choice.
Celine went quiet and looked back at her night garden.
“Our marriage was arranged,” she said softly. “Derek’s and mine.”
Valerie figured as much.
“It works,” Celine said. “But only with a lot of understanding and
forgiveness. And lies.”
Valerie’s lips pressed together. She understood what she was saying.
“So he doesn’t know?”
About Celine going to the Krave brothel.
“He’d kill me if he found out,” Celine whispered, not even bothering to
hide her response. She said it so easily, as if mentioning the weather. “And
she knows that.”
Madame Allegria.
“I do love him,” Celine said, “in my own way.”
Valerie nodded hesitantly.
“But this whole ordeal has spooked me,” she confessed and Valerie
wondered if her tongue would be so loose without all the wine. “I want my
son to marry. But not like this. I don’t want him to live this life.”
Valerie thought that ‘this life’ suited Gabriel Larchmont just fine, but
she kept her lips closed.
“And I don’t want to be married to someone I barely know,” she told
Celine. “But that’s the hand we’ve both been dealt.”
 Celine’s eyes cut back to her. “Why are you doing this? For the money?
For our family name?”
Valerie didn’t answer.
Instead, she asked a question she’d long wondered. “Do you care about
him? About Ravu? You visit him almost twice a month. Every month.”
The color from Celine’s face drained, her eyes going stark.
“There you are!” came Gabriel’s voice from the doorway of the
conservatory.
And all at once, their reality came rushing back around them.
Gabriel sauntered into the conservatory, as if he hadn’t been fucking
Madame Allegria on a desk upstairs just moments before. He grinned at
Valerie, like they shared a little secret now, and it made her flesh feel like it
was crawling.
Celine turned to her son and reached up to brush a dark lock away from
his forehead. Her touch was gentle, loving.
“Father sent me to find you two,” he told them both. “Dessert is waiting
in the sitting room.”
Then he wrapped his arm around Valerie’s waist, his other going around
his mother, as he steered them from the conservatory.
His grip on her was possessive. Valerie stiffened under his touch,
especially when she caught a whiff of her aunt’s perfume.
“Shy?” Gabriel murmured to her when he felt her stiffen, whispering in
her ear so his mother wouldn’t hear. His hand squeezed her hip, his palm
hot through the thin layer of her dress. “You’ll get over it, bride.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

F ive years ago…

DRAVKA WAS TIRED. So fucking tired.

He was coming out of a Rut, a particularly intense one at that. All
Keriv’i males in their prime were plagued by them, like clockwork.
Khiva was standing at the window in the sitting room of the Cluster,
staring out across the space colony of Everton. Whatever he was looking
for, Dravka didn’t know but Khiva often stared out that window.
Unlike them, Khiva still had hope. To find his lost brother and mother,
somewhere among the stars. Dravka wondered what that felt like. Hope. He
couldn’t remember feeling it for a long while.
Ravu was lounging across the space in a wide armchair while his
brother read from the single Nu tablet they all shared.
By all accounts, it was another normal day. In a few hours, they would
go to their respective mating rooms, where they were visited by their clients
every night. They would fuck them until they were satisfied and then they
would return to the Cluster, where they’d bathe and perhaps sleep. But
mostly, they waited.
For what?
Dravka didn’t really know anymore.
But on that particular late afternoon, they heard the light tread of
footsteps in the hallway outside of the Cluster. There wasn’t a knock, not
that Madame Allegria ever knocked, before the door pushed open.
And there stood a human female. Lithe and beautiful with light hair and
piercing green eyes.
Sad eyes.
She wore a simple dress, a dark green in color that matched those eyes.
The lines of it were stark, though they ran over the slight curves of her body
perfectly. He swallowed and though his Rut was over, he swore he felt
something awakening within him again.
Khiva was the first to react, approaching the door. In a calm, even tone,
he said, “I think you are lost, little one. We are not seeing clients until the
evening—”
“I’m not a client,” the female said and Dravka almost felt
disappointment at the words. “I’ve come to introduce myself as Madame
Allegria just hired me to run this establishment for the foreseeable future.”
His hearts began to pump harder, blood circulating through his veins.
“She did?” Khiva asked, frowning, his eyes running over her, regarding
her with new eyes. Dravka felt a flare of something that felt like envy.
“My name is Valerie Browen,” the girl said. She couldn’t be older than
21 or 22. Young…and yet her eyes were old. So fucking old. “I’ve just
come from Genesis. I—I’ll be running the front desk downstairs and seeing
to all your needs on a daily basis. I’ll be living on the property as well.
What is your name?”
“Khiva,” was his response, though his name sounded like a question
itself. Valerie nodded once.
From across the Cluster, Dravka caught Ravu’s bewildered look and
Tavak’s shrewd one.
“Why did she hire you, Miss Valerie Browen?” Tavak asked, his tone a
little mocking as he said her name.
But Valerie wasn’t rattled by the male’s question. She simply regarded
him.
“I suspect because I’m her niece,” came her dry response. The ripple of
tension in the Cluster was palpable. Even Khiva’s face seemed to darken
ever so slightly. “And what is your name?”
“Tavak,” he finally said, after a long moment of strained silence. He
jerked his head over to his brother, who was still sprawled across the
armchair. “This is my brother, Ravu.”
Finally, Valerie’s eyes caught on the last Keriv’i male in the room.
 Him.
Dravka stood from his seat and watched carefully as her eyes seemed to
widen on him. Her pink lips parted, though they were still downturned. She
blinked once, twice.
His hearts were still beating quickly. Her voice was stirring something
within him and when he stepped close, he caught a whiff of her scent. Clean
and smelling of lemon soap. Underneath that, he smelled her warmth and
his jaw tightened with want. He needed to consume that warmth.
His pupils dilated on her until the light in the room seemed to glow.
In the back of his mind, he had a suspicion of what was happening.
The nuvur’u drava.
The linking.
His kind formed strong bonds and attachments. Then again, the Keriv’i
had always believed that the demavs, their deities, led them to these bonds,
to their mates.
He’d never responded to a female like this.
And when he caught her gaze with his own, the corner of his lips lifted.
His hearts were thundering. He felt…excitement. Something other than
numbness and the endless feeling of waiting.
Because maybe this was what he’d been waiting for.
She was what he’d been waiting for.
“You look sad, Valerie Browen,” Dravka murmured, approaching her
until she had to crane her neck to regard him.
He saw her throat bob with her swallow.
“I’m sad,” she whispered, her brow furrowing, “because my mother just
died. And now I’m here. And I don’t know what comes next.”
Ache bit at his chest.
Grief was highlighted in her gaze. Grief he was very, very familiar with.
Even still, there was a strength in her eyes too. Shining and bright, just
hidden. She was an honest being, unapologetic for her feelings,
unapologetic about her grief or why she was here.
“I know that sadness well,” he told her, dropping his head in a gesture
of respect.
“You do?” she asked quietly.
Dravka remembered the others in the room. He sensed their presence
though he never lifted his gaze from her.
“We all do,” he told her, his voice gruff, “in one way or another.”
 Valerie blinked.
Every last being in that room was a lost soul. But maybe they’d all
found one another for a reason.
“What is your name?” Valerie asked, her eyes large and wide and
beautiful.
Dravka had the strangest thought, as he rubbed at his aching chest, that
he wanted to make those sad eyes happy. That he would do anything to see
her happy. And he’d only just met her.
“Dravka,” he rasped, his name floating between them. “My name is
Dravka.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W hen Valerie returned to the brothel later that night, she was
alone and found she didn’t want to be.
Madame Allegria had gone straight to her penthouse in the
Downtown District, preferring to live among the bustling nightlife rather
than the quietness of the Garden District. Which gave Valerie leave to do
whatever she pleased that night.
Once inside, she went straight up to the Cluster, her feet retracing the
steps she’d taken thousands of times during her five years there. A cold
ache had lodged itself in her chest, one she hadn’t been able to shake, one
she hadn’t felt since she’d found her mother dead in her bed, her eyes open
and unseeing, gone to a place that Valerie could not follow.
She thought of her mother that night as she walked to the Cluster, as she
walked towards Dravka.
The sitting room was empty when she pushed it open, though slivers of
light were peeking out from Tavak and Ravu’s doors. And Dravka’s.
She walked to that door and knocked once before pushing it open.
His scent hit her hard, as it always did. Greedily dragging it into her
lungs, Valerie stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
Dravka had been standing at the window, the one that faced the front of
the brothel. Had he watched her come inside? He turned to regard her. He’d
left her room earlier, after their kiss, tense and angry. He carried an amount
of that tension now, in his shoulders, in the lines of his face.
But when he saw her, he approached her without question and
hesitation. It was dark in the room, only the flickering sconce on the wall
was lit, casting long shadows across them. She walked into his arms, which
came around her, and she pressed her face into the strong wall of his bare
chest. His skin felt velvety soft underneath her lips.
“I was waiting for you to get home,” he told her, his voice husky and
deep in her ears.
Always watching out for me, she thought, longing going through her at
his words. For a moment, she got lost in a daydream of him saying those
words to her, in a life that was their own and no one else’s.
Her lips were pressed into his chest, his warmth heating them. Her core
squeezed with aching want. Unconsciously, she remembered the sad
desperation in Celine’s voice—spoken in her beautiful night conservatory,
in her beautiful house surrounded by beautiful things—when she told
Valerie that she loved her husband, in her own way, whatever that meant.
Was that her own future? Desperately trying to convince herself that she
loved someone she didn’t?
Her lips moved of their own accord.
When her tongue flicked out, Dravka froze, a rough sound escaping his
throat. His hand grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her away until he
could meet her gaze. In the darkness, those eyes were watchful and careful.
She held them, her lips parted, her heart beginning to throb in her throat.
His nostrils flared and then she was leaning forward again, holding his
eyes as she kissed his chest again.
A sharp exhale escaped him, his swallow echoing in the quiet room. Her
hands stroked over him, gliding down his muscled back, feeling the sharp
slabs and ridges of strength there. When her fingers reached the waistband
of his pants, he sucked in a breath, snagging her grip away.
But she wouldn’t be deterred. Determination thrummed through her,
determination he no doubt read in her eyes. She went onto the tips of her
toes, dragging her mouth up until she was kissing his neck. Then she
nibbled at the column with her teeth before soothing the bites with her
tongue.
“Val,” he growled, his hands coming to grip her hips. She wanted to
forget that Gabriel’s hands had ever been on her. “What are you doing?”
She felt his cock rising against her, more quickly than she’d thought
possible. Thickening and heating against her belly. She could feel it through
the thin material of her teal-colored dress, the one with the neckline that
plunged to her navel, revealing the valley of her breasts. She wanted his
fingers to stroke her there. She wanted his mouth to kiss her there.
 Valerie didn’t answer his question. She stepped into him until he
stepped back…and then the backs of his knees were hitting the edge of his
bed. She pushed him down onto it until he was sprawled.
Dravka looked up at her with an unreadable expression. One of lust and
darkness and bewilderment and need. His eyes ran over her, maybe
assessing her in the way he assessed his clients every night. What did he
see? He saw her in a tight, low dress. He saw her hands trembling. He saw
her wet lips. He saw the determination and desire in her gaze.
He saw her fingers come to the single tie at the back of her neck. Valerie
pulled and the straps that wrapped around her shoulders fell away. The
material encasing her breasts dropped—and a ragged, harsh groan tore from
Dravka’s throat when Valerie peeled the dress off to pool at her feet. Until
she was almost naked, clad only in a thin scrap of material between her
thighs.
“Mellkia,” Dravka murmured, swallowing, already trying to push up
from the bed—a dangerous place to be with him, no doubt. “We shouldn’t
—”
Valerie crawled over him, placing her hands on his chest, throwing her
legs over his thighs to keep him in place.
“Vauk,” Dravka hissed, stilling. A muscle in his jaw was jumping and
she placed her lips there, feeling it twitch against her. Her bare nipples
dragged over his chest and he moaned, holding himself very, very still.
“Valerie.”
She frowned, hearing the ragged hesitation in his voice.
“Don’t you want me?” Valerie whispered in his ear, catching his gaze.
She caught his hands, brought them to her breasts, and she gasped when his
palms squeezed around them almost unconsciously. His hands. Roughened
and warm and perfect against her. “Don’t you want this?”
She could actually hear his hearts thundering in his chest, could feel
them against her.
“How can you ask me that?” he growled, his hands gripping her breasts,
his thumb just nudging against one of her nipples, making a flood of
wetness rush between her legs. He took his hands away, grabbed the back of
her neck again, and angled her head down until she could see…
Her lips parted.
The tip of his cock was peeking up from the waistband of his pants.
 “You see that, mellkia?” he rasped in her ear, his sinful, rich voice
making her shiver. The head of his cock was flooded with pre-cum,
dripping down the tip, wetting the front of his pants. He was a mess. A
perfect mess. “Only you ever do this to me. Vauk, I could come just petting
your breasts, Val. So don’t ask me if I want you. Because I’ve never wanted
anyone more than I want you.”
She didn’t know why but her eyes flooded with tears at the words.
Maybe because she knew he wasn’t just talking about sex.
And suddenly, she couldn’t stop crying. The tears just kept streaming
down her cheeks and she was so fucking mortified and sad and happy and
wanting him that she didn’t hide it.
“Val,” Dravka murmured, swallowing, his brow furrowing as if in pain.
“Vauk, mellkia. Don’t do that.”
He shifted their positions until his back was to the wall his bed was
pushed up against. Then he dragged her forward, turning her so that she was
draped across his lap, though he was careful to keep her away from his cock
and the mess in his lap.
She curled into him, pressing her cheek to his chest, listening to his
heartbeats, clutching him to her. As for him, he cradled her close, pressed
kisses to the top of her head, and then stroked his fingers down her hair
until…
Until she calmed down and the tears began to taper off.
Valerie didn’t know how long they sat there, in the quiet darkness of his
room. But eventually, her tears stopped and she just felt stuffed up with a
slight headache…and embarrassed. But…strangely accepting of that
embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, meeting his gaze through her shimmering
vision.
Shame bit at her. She’d pawed at him like she’d always imagined his
clients did. For so long, that was why she’d kept her distance physically.
Because she didn’t want him to think she was taking advantage of him,
especially when he had sex with a different woman every night, save for
when he was deep in his Rut.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, holding his eyes though she
wanted to hide. She wanted to flee but…that was what she’d always done.
And maybe it was the sadness on Celine Larchmont’s face or that she’d
discovered the relationship between her future husband and her aunt…but
Valerie found she wanted to be honest with Dravka.
Possibly for the first time. Utterly and completely honest. And she
wanted to be brave and not hide away from him. Not hide away from her
wants and feelings. Because soon those things wouldn’t matter anymore.
She would be marrying Gabriel Larchmont in a few short weeks, maybe
less, considering their conversation over dinner.
A few short weeks left with Dravka.
“Why do you think you shouldn’t have done that?” he asked, keeping
his voice low. The shadows flickered over his face, softening his features,
and Valerie had the strongest urge to reach up and trace the lines she saw
there. “For years I thought…”
He trailed off, his jaw ticking.
Her brow furrowed. “Thought what?”
“That you didn’t want me that way.”
Shock made her lips part.
“There were times when I suspected you wanted more,” he continued
softly, reaching out to touch her cheek. “But sometimes, you’re so vauking
hard to read, Val.”
“You thought I didn’t want you?” she whispered. Just the thought, the
realization, made tears pool in her vision again.
“I could never be certain,” he told her, smoothing the tears away. “I
thought it was easier to remain friends. I didn’t want to ruin anything
between us. Sex always has a way of ruining things.”
Of course, he would think that.
She wanted to be honest with him?
Well, now was her chance.
“I’ve always wanted you,” she told him, her heart throbbing in her
chest. He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Always. But I didn’t want
you to think—I didn’t want you to think that I was like your clients. Like all
the rest.”
“You believed I would think,” Dravka said, his tone incredulous, “you
were using me for sex?”
When he said it like that, it sounded strange. But he was a Keriv’i male.
He’d told her that even before Madame Allegria had brought him to
Everton, Keriv’i males were always sought out for sex. He’d been groped in
cantinas and bars on various colonies. He’d had strangers murmur dirty
things in his ear, in hopes of arousing him. He’d been pursued and harassed
endlessly by packs of females—and sometimes males alike.
They all had. Tavak had been a sex worker long before Everton.
Because it paid to be a Keriv’i male.
It made her sick, just thinking about what they’d all experienced, but
she didn’t want to be another female in his eyes, just angling for sex.
Dravka’s jaw was tight.
“I thought that maybe things had changed between us,” he told her.
“Four months ago.”
Valerie felt her flush blooming. She knew exactly what he was referring
to.
“Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Of course, I do.”
She saw Dravka’s lips twitch.
It had been during one of his Ruts. All the Keriv’i were usually chained
to their beds during the most intense parts of it. Dravka especially, though
she’d never known why.
Until a few months back.
Khiva had chained Dravka up and Valerie had gone in to check on him
and keep him company. She’d found early on that talking to him while he
was in a Rut helped calm him down. And—she’d thought—made the need
less intense.
But during that particular Rut, Dravka hadn’t wanted her anywhere near
him. And she’d been hurt, wondering why. She’d started crying when he
yelled at her to get out, all while straining against the chains on the bed.
Desperation had crossed his face when he’d seen her tears.

“WHY DO you want me to leave?” she asked him, kneeling beside the bed,
frowning through her blurry vision. Khiva had told her to leave the door
open, but she closed it regardless.
He wasn’t fully naked. His chest was bare, but he wore thin pants that
did nothing to shield the erection straining against the material. The whole
front of him was wet, which had surprised her when she’d stepped inside.
And there was a scent in the air that made her nipples tingle and her belly
squeeze.
“This one is bad, Val,” he growled. “If you stay…”
All the while, his eyes had run over her. Running over her breasts, her
waist, her hips, her legs. She felt his gaze like it’d been his fingers instead.
It shocked her, his possessive gaze. He’d never looked at her like that
before. She was only wearing a simple shift dress but the way his gaze
heated made her feel like she was wearing nothing at all.
He’s in his Rut, she reminded herself. He’d probably look at any female
who stepped inside the same way. His control was already very thin.
“It’s all right, Dravka,” Valerie soothed. “I’ll help you through this
Rut.”
For some reason, Dravka groaned at her words, his hips hitching
slightly. Her brow furrowed, her lips parting, though she kept her gaze
firmly on his face, ignoring the way heat bloomed between her thighs.
“These look uncomfortable,” Valerie said, reaching up for the clasp of
the chains.
“Veki,” he snarled, panic morphing his features. Her hands froze.
“Don’t touch them. Leave them.”
“Why?” she asked, frowning.
His jaw ticked, frustration evident on his features.
“Because you’re in here,” he bit out.
She frowned.
None of the other Keriv’i males acted like this during their Ruts.
Dravka’s had always been particularly intense but…she’d never thought it
was because of her.
“Me?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“Don’t touch them,” he repeated again, sweat dotting his brow, “unless
you want to know how females really help Keriv’i males through a Rut.”
Shock made her freeze.
Pain crossed his features.
“Vauk, you need to leave. I can smell you,” he rasped.
It felt like she was in a daze. Confused.
“Do I smell bad?” she asked, embarrassed.
A laugh burst from his throat and his gaze met hers. This Dravka was
different. Intense and dark. Frustrated and impatient yet focused.
 “Veki, Val. You smell good. Too good. That’s the problem,” he growled,
all humor gone after his laugh. “And I really need to come soon or my
taxxa might fucking explode.”
Valerie’s lips parted, her ears ringing.
“So I need to unchain myself and you cannot be in here when I do,” he
finished.
He was trying to scare her, Valerie realized. Even though her skin felt
prickly and her spine tingled from his words—and his implication—she also
didn’t like the pain on his face. She’d known that a Keriv’i male’s Rut could
be painful…and this one seemed different.
She didn’t know what possessed her to say it, but she whispered, “I can
help you, Dravka.”
The male froze, even as a trickle of sweat ran down his temple and onto
the bed underneath him.
Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest. Her cheeks were flushed
—partly from embarrassment, partly from her arousal—and when she
licked her dry lips, Dravka’s nostrils flared.
“You can what?” he rasped.
“I can help you,” she said again. “What do you want me to do?”
Another groan escaped him, his back bowing when another wave hit
him, his hips rolling. More moisture wetted the front of his pants. His pre-
cum, she knew.
“And what are you gonna do, Val?” Dravka purred when the wave left
him panting. His brow furrowed, his eyes bleary with his need. “Are you
gonna touch me? Talk to me? Are you gonna say filthy things in my ear to
make me come?”
Her mind swam. In some ways, this felt like a surreal dream. Like she’d
landed in one of her numerous fantasies starring Dravka. But this was real,
wasn’t it? They were in his darkened room in the Cluster. He was deep in a
powerful Rut. In the morning, would he even remember this?
He’d never spoken to her like this before. He’d never eye-fucked her the
way he was doing right now. Was this how he was with his clients? This
sensual and intense and roughened?
Jealousy pierced her, just thinking about it.
“I-If you want me to,” she whispered.
His eyes flared to life and he licked his lips. When he tried to reach for
her—making her heart lurch in excitement and fear—the chains rattled and
he cursed.
“What would you tell me?” he purred, keeping his voice low. Testing
her? “Come closer and tell me something.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” she asked. Her whole face felt like
it was on fire and her hands were trembling when she tucked a strand of
hair behind her ear.
Her hand touched his side, stroking his sweat-slicked skin there. He
groaned, throwing his whole body into her touch.
“Tell me,” he rasped, “about the last time you touched yourself.”
Valerie’s breath hitched and she squeezed her thighs together. She was
still kneeling next to the bed and she feared that there would be a wet spot
at the back of her dress when she left.
He wanted to know about the last time she’d masturbated?
She swallowed. Was she really going to do this?
Valerie licked her lips and Dravka’s pupils blew wide when he saw her
pink tongue dart out.
“I was in the bath,” she whispered to him.
“When?” he groaned.
“A few days ago,” she said, hardly able to keep his gaze, turning
unbearably shy even though she’d offered to do this—she wanted to. “And
the water was warm and it was dark and quiet.”
She heard Dravka’s swallow. Another wave of the Rut hit him and he
hissed out a curse, his back bowing from the bed again. When it was over,
his breathing was ragged, but his eyes were rapt on her.
“I always start at my breasts,” she told him, the heat in her belly
beginning to spread to seemingly every inch of her body.
“Pax?” Dravka rasped.
“They’re sensitive,” she confessed, finding it easier to hold his gaze the
more aroused she got, liking that he looked so eager to hear more. She felt
her nipples pebbled tight against the material of her dress even now and
when Dravka’s gaze dropped to them, another ragged groan escaped his
throat. “I like to stroke my nipples.”
“Vauk,” came his panting reply. His eyes seemed brighter in the
darkness, glowing. “You like to tease them, mellkia?”
Her belly clenched. “Yes,” she whispered. “I like to stroke and then
pinch them. I touch them until I can’t take it anymore. Until I feel so hot that
I’m throbbing.”
 His breathing was coming in thick pants, punctuated by sharp groans.
His hips jerked every so often and when her eyes slid over the wet material
of his trews, she saw the outline of his cock—thick and hard and pulsing.
A desperate little sound escaped her throat, a sound she’d never heard
before. She’d seen his cock before, uncovered and bare, of course.
Nakedness was a fact of working there. She’d seen more Keriv’i cocks than
she ever thought she would.
But somehow, seeing just the outline of him was more erotic.
“I can feel your eyes on it, Val,” he rasped.
Her gaze slid back to his. Every part of her was throbbing. The ache in
her sex was becoming almost unbearable. She imagined it was like what
Keriv’i males felt during their Rut, though perhaps a little less intense.
This sizzling want, this painful need. Was this what he felt? Right now?
“I’m pretty sensitive. Down there,” she whispered, her eyes flickering to
his lips. “It doesn’t take much at all.”
“You like to play with your clit?”
“Yes,” she said, swallowing, feeling that very part of her pounding
between her thighs.
“How?”
“I-I make little circles around it. Gently. Until I’m shaking and
moaning.”
His hips were rolling almost constantly now, like he was trying to fuck
the air. He groaned, frustrated, his brows furrowing, his nostrils flaring at
her words.
“Let me smell you. Come here,” he ordered.
Smell her?
She leaned forward until their faces were close. She turned her head so
her lips were pressed to his ear—and then a gasp escaped her when he
dragged his nose up the column of her neck, burying it in her hair.
“And when I’m close,” she whispered in his ear, exhaling warm breath
over it, letting him hear how turned on she was, “I stroke my clit harder.
And I pinch my nipples with my other hand. And when I come—” His
breaths were coming quicker, ragged and rough, “sometimes it feels too
good and I moan. Sometimes I think that you’ll be able to hear me even
from that floor.”
“Val,” he bit out.
 Her lips brushed his ear. But her eyes were unfocused, recalling that
pleasure, wanting to give him some of it. “And sometimes, I can keep
coming. Sometimes, my orgasms go on for a long time. Sometimes, another
comes after the first.”
A rough sound escaped his throat, a short bellow following it. Her head
turned to look down his body, her hair trailing over his chest.
With parted lips and blooming heat, she watched his hips jerking,
watched as the outline of his cock seemed to grow and expand…watched as
a torrent of seed burst from his tip, soaking the material of his pants.
The ejaculation was so hard that his cock lifted the band of his pants
with every pulse, allowing his come to seep over and spurt across his hard
abdomen, milky white against his dark blue skin.
He came so hard, his seed shot all the way to his chest…and all the
while, Dravka’s eyes never left her. She could feel his gaze burning into her
as she watched, wide-eyed and aroused, as his teela, what the Keriv’i called
their seed, covered him.
Dravka groaned and twitched when his orgasm was done, falling limp
and panting back to the bed.
Silence stretched between them. Valerie met his eyes and she imagined
that her own expression was one of shock and lust and…maybe even
trepidation.
“Val,” he breathed. Some of the intensity had left his gaze, that ultra-
focused lust and desire.
And suddenly, she realized what she’d done. What had just happened.
Suddenly, she couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t listen to him say that
it was a mistake, that he was in the midst of a powerful Rut and that was
why that moment had just happened.
It had been the most erotic, mind-numbing moment of her life.
But for Dravka?
It may have meant nothing, especially in his state.
“Feel better?” she asked, rising quickly from her kneeling place next to
his bed. Her knees were trembling, her breaths coming out in quick,
panicked pants.
“Pax, but—”
“Good,” she breathed. “I’ll go then.”
She needed to flee.
And before he could say another word, that was exactly what she did.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

D ravka knew that Valerie was remembering the same thing he was.
The Rut. The things she’d whispered into his ear, naughty
things that had made him come in his pants just imagining them.
He remembered that orgasm. Vauk, how could he not? It had been the
most powerful one of his life and he hadn’t even touched himself. He’d
come like a youth during his very first Rut, fucking the air with his hips,
desperate for friction and touch.
After that moment, he thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d given him
the sign he’d been looking for all those years. That she was ready to take
the next step with him.
Only, she’d flown out of his room so fast, her face leached of color like
she’d been horrified by what she’d witnessed.
And afterwards?
“You never brought it up,” he murmured to Valerie. She was still sitting
in his lap—almost naked—in his bed, where that life-changing orgasm had
happened. “I thought you wanted to forget it ever happened, so I didn’t say
anything either. I feared…I feared that I had ruined everything. You barely
looked at me for weeks.”
Then Khiva left with Eve. And everything seemed to shift between them
again.
“I was surprised by what happened,” she murmured to him, that same
flush still coloring her cheeks. “I was surprised by…how I acted, how you
acted. I didn’t want to…”
“Want to what?” he rasped.
A look of desperation crossed her face, making him furrow his brow.
 “You’re my best friend, Dravka,” she told him. “Besides my mother,
you’re the one being in my entire life that I ever allowed myself to get close
to. To…to love.”
His hearts filled to the brim at her words.
“You know I love you,” she whispered, those damn tears filling her
vision again. “I love you in every way possible.”
“Val,” he murmured, his grip tightening on her.
“And I know you love me too,” she said. “But I didn’t know in what
way. And that day, I thought that our friendship would be changed. A part of
me couldn’t deal with that because—because...”
Dravka murmured soft words to her in Keriv’i, telling her she was
beautiful and perfect, while she shivered in his arms.
Her fingers clutched at his sides and she buried her face into his chest,
until he could feel the wetness of her tears.
“So yes, you’re right,” she whispered. “Sex would’ve changed
everything. I wasn’t certain I was ready for it.”
She lifted her face.
Her eyes were so vauking beautiful. Though there was a sadness in them
that made him want to bellow in frustration.
“So, I’m sorry for pawing at you just now,” she said, trying to smile a
bit. “I know I shouldn’t have—”
He cut off her words with a growl and then he was pulling her forward
to kiss her, to silence her, to taste her, to feel her.
Valerie let out a shuddering gasp but then her lips were soft and
tentative against his own. She shifted in his lap, making him aware that he
still had a raging erection that had refused to die down and that his pants
were soaked in pre-cum like an untried youth.
“Sometimes,” he rasped, breaking their kiss, pressing his forehead
against her as she let out little pants and gasps, “sex can change everything
for the better.”
And Dravka knew that when—not if—they had sex…it would be life-
altering. Dravka had known his feelings for her since he first laid eyes on
her. Sex wouldn’t destroy them. It would lift them to where they were
always meant to be with one another.
Tie them to one another, for the rest of their lives.
The nuvur’u drava. The linking. Just like Dravka had always sensed,
always known.
 Her eyes were shy as she absorbed his words.
“Yeah?” she whispered.
Dravka almost groaned at the curiosity in her gaze.
He shook his head, knowing that if he didn’t act now, he would end the
night buried between her thighs—a place he’d always meant to be.
But he didn’t want that.
“When we have sex for the first time, mellkia,” Dravka told her, feeling
his chest fill with sweet anticipation and determination and purpose, “it
won’t be on Everton.”
Valerie’s eyes widened.
“Dravka—”
“And it certainly won’t be in this room, or any other room in this
building, in this demav-forsaken place,” he told her.
Not in the place where he’d fucked hundreds of women in the years
he’d been there. The mere thought of having sex with Valerie in the brothel,
within these walls, made him feel restless.
He pressed a kiss to her nose, across her cheek.
“Pax?” he whispered, needing her to understand.
When he met her eyes, his belly dropped. She was wearing a soft, sad
smile. And her gaze was…disappointed.
“Val?”
She was quiet for a long while and then she sighed, leaning into him,
pressing her forehead into the crook beneath his jaw. Dravka marveled at
how right it felt, holding her like this, her bare flesh pressed into his.
Then she said, “I’m getting married in a few weeks, Dravka.”
He tensed, just the mere thought unleashing fury and panic inside him.
They were running out of time.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be rid of Everton.”
She pressed the words into his skin like a brand, her lips soft on his
neck.
“You won’t be marrying him, Valerie,” was what Dravka replied.
She only sighed.
Then she asked, “Can I sleep here tonight? With you?”
He growled and maneuvered her so that she met his eyes. He cradled
her face in his palms.
“I’m serious, Val,” he said, his tone soft and even. Certain. “We’ll take
care of everything. You don’t need to worry.”
 “We?” she asked, frowning.
His jaw ticked. “I told Tavak and Ravu.”
She pressed her lips together. “I thought you might.”
“We have credits, Val,” he said. “Maybe not as many as we are owed,
what we were promised, but she did pay us.”
“A credit a night,” Valerie said, her jaw tensing. “That’s hardly
payment.”
“Regardless,” he said, “I’ve been saving mine. So have Tavak and
Ravu. With the 2700 credits that Khiva and Eve gave us, with the money
from the townhouse and the collections…we have enough, Val. To get
passage off Everton, to start over somewhere. Together.”
The longing was evident on her features.
He paused and said, “Maybe even on Dumera.”
“Dravka,” Val said, shaking her head.
“Khiva and Eve are there. We heard that he started creating firestones
again.”
“Firestones?”
“I’ll tell you all about them sometime,” he promised her. “But if they
are in circulation again, then he will need workers. Many of them if he
wants to expand. He would hire all of us. You know that. And then we could
have our home, Val. The one I said I’d give you. The one with—”
“Dravka, stop,” Valerie whispered. “Please.”
He took a deep breath but she pressed her fingers to his lips.
“You know how powerful she is. How many connections she has. She
won’t let me go,” she whispered. “You know she won’t. Not when she
needs me this much. She can and will find me anywhere in the universe if I
try to leave.”
“I’ll take care of this, of you,” he continued, shaking his head. “You
don’t need to worry. And you certainly don’t have to worry about Gabriel
Larchmont.”
Celine Larchmont was one of Ravu’s clients. One who had a booking
with him in two days’ time. They had a plan. Because sometimes, Celine
Larchmont only visited Ravu to talk, according to him. He cared for her and
he believed she cared for him. Ravu even believed them to be friends. He
believed she had reason to help them, that she would help them if he asked.
“You don’t believe me,” he murmured, though a small smile quirked the
edges of his lips. “But in time, I’ll show you that I am a male of my word.
And I promise that I will make everything right. Pax?”
Valerie pressed a small kiss to his jawline. She gave him a small smile
and Dravka hated the doubt in her eyes.
“Will you hold me tonight?” she asked softly, the words so sweet in his
ears.
He inhaled a deep, long breath.
Then he maneuvered them on the bed, placing both of them underneath
the blanket on his small bed and stretching out next to her.
He reached under the covers and slid out of his still-wet pants, using the
material to clean the remaining pre-cum from his cock before he tossed the
bundle to the floor.
Valerie was watching him in the darkness and he swore he caught her
small blush. Now she knew he was naked—and she only wore that little
patch of material between her thighs.
His hand slid across, pulling her into him. His palm rested on the swell
of her ass, squeezing softly, eliciting a small gasp from Val. He tucked her
close, as she’d requested, threading his arms around her.
Cold hands rested on his chest, which he quickly warmed. She sighed, a
puff of hot air blowing across his neck, and she buried her face there.
They lay in silence for a brief moment. Her breath was beginning to
even out, her heartbeat beginning to slow.
At least until he said, “And when we are settled on Dumera, in our little
house with your garden…”
He felt the way her lips parted against his neck.
“I’ll hold you like this every night. Only, on Dumera, it’ll be after I’ve
mated you thoroughly and filled you with my teela. I’ll hold you through
your orgasms. Just like this. Every night.”
He grinned when he felt her heartbeat double in pace against his chest.
“The wicked things I’ll do to you there, mellkia. I can hardly wait,” he
rasped into her ear, rubbing the little tip of it with his chin. “Now, sleep.”
Dravka heard her swallow. For long moments, her heartbeat never
slowed.
Then she asked, “What does mellkia mean?”
He clutched her closer. He’d wondered when she would ask. He’d
called her mellkia for years now.
“It means,” Dravka told her, “my love.”
Her heart sped even more.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

4 5341.
Valerie repeated the numbers in her mind, numbers she’d
memorized the moment Eve Tesler had told her them.
Winding through the Downtown District, she dodged a group of
businessmen on their lunch break. A couple of their heads turned to regard
her, one even smiling. But Valerie paid them no mind, continuing on her
way on the busy street.
Driverless cars slid past in endless lines. Shouting and boisterous
laughter from the seemingly hundreds of people on the streets at that time
made her feel antsy and jittery. Her heart was pounding, short gasps
escaping her.
She hated this part of town.
45341.
It was the patch number for Eve Tesler’s friend on Dumera. A male
named Gorkan, who had helped Eve and Khiva get off Everton. He was the
one who had helped find them a home there.
However, universal patch numbers could only be accessed through the
main Coms building in the Downtown District.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the towering building to her left
called The Plaza. Luxury homes and flats. Madame Allegria owned the top
floor of it. Valerie had never seen it in person, but she’d seen pictures of it
in an article spread, run by a magazine that highlighted ‘luxury living’
throughout the New Earth colonies.
So, Valerie knew that it was a large penthouse, with glass windows on
all sides, spanning over three floors. It had five bedrooms and six
bathrooms—though Valerie didn’t know why anyone would need that
many. It boasted a heated pool, the largest closet in existence on all of
Everton, and it was staffed by two personal butlers.
Valerie’s lips pressed together as she eyed the top of the building. It
made her sick, knowing that some of the credits Madame Allegria had
stolen from the Keriv’i males had helped pay for it—credits that were
rightfully theirs.
She had a similar home on Genesis too.
Valerie rubbed the back of her shoulder through the thin, plain top she
wore. She’d chosen this hour to sneak to the Coms building because she
knew that every afternoon, Madame Allegria had lunch with her socialite
friends. Every afternoon, without fail. She wouldn’t even think to track
Valerie’s whereabouts, or at least she hoped she would be too preoccupied
to.
Regardless, it was a risk she would take.
The Coms building loomed overhead and Valerie hurried towards it,
feeling a warm breeze brush over her bare arms, just another reminder that
summer was approaching fast.
Once she stepped inside the Coms building, however, Valerie wished
she’d dressed in something thicker and warmer. It was freezing inside, no
doubt to keep the expensive equipment and wiring cool.
There was a receptionist at the greeting desk and Valerie got in line,
waiting for her turn. Overhead, there was a projection of a looped
commercial for Bell Tech—the company that owned and ran and oversaw
all the Coms.
When it was her turn, the girl behind the front desk greeted her.
“I need to make a universal call,” she told the girl, whose name plate
read ‘Sienna.’
“To which Quadrant?” Sienna asked, typing on her Nu device, not
looking up.
“The Second, I believe,” Valerie replied.
“Calls to the Second Quadrant will be 50 credits each,” Sienna informed
her, finally looking up. “Or would you like to rent the box per hour? If you
do, then the calls are free and unlimited.”
Of course. Because universal patch numbers were dodgy and
unpredictable at best. And the call would only go through if Gorkan
happened to be at his patch line at that very moment and saw the signal
coming through.
“How much to rent?” she asked, smoothing her fingers over the loaded
credit card in her pocket. From the account she’d set up for the Keriv’i.
Half the credits from the townhome had already come in.
“150 credits per hour.”
She sighed. The newly acquired credits were all she could use. Madame
Allegria didn’t pay her. At all. Her ‘Krave’ got one credit per night, but
Valerie didn’t have any money of her own.
“I’ll rent then,” she said, sliding her credit card over the scanner.
“Great,” Sienna chirped, though she didn’t smile. “Box 245. You can
take the lift to the second floor.”
Valerie nodded, taking the key that Sienna slid over the desk, and then
turned towards the hallway of elevators.
She took the lift up one floor, following the glowing placards on the
walls to her assigned box for the afternoon. When she found the correct
room, she slid her key inside and then stepped in.
Box was right. It was tiny and narrow. A basic Coms unit was set up at a
small table, a single chair next to it. A fake plant was in the corner, limp and
faded. A fan palm was what she believed it was called.
There were instructions for how to use the unit, ones Valerie read
carefully. Then she smoothed her sweating palms down her thighs and
dialed the patch number, using the correct prefix code for the Second
Quadrant.
X94X567-45341.
She held the receiver to her ear, waiting for the line to signal that it had
connected.
Her breath hitched when she heard the computerized chirping sound, to
indicate it had located the patch…but then a moment later, it dropped.
Great.
Valerie blew out a breath, charging the receiver back up and inputting
the patch number again.
Again, it chirped a few times…then dropped.
It was going to be a long afternoon, she knew.
AN HOUR DRAGGED BY, given the timed clock on the door, which had
activated the moment it had been unlocked. Valerie had tried the patch
number over fifty times in that hour with no luck, a little under a call a
minute.
And as the time dragged, her mind began to wander. She’d long
memorized the full patch code and she dialed it on autopilot, all while she
thought of Dravka.
That morning, she’d woken in his arms. It had been just before dawn
and he’d still been asleep.
Valerie had been very careful not to move a single inch in his arms,
wanting to prolong the sensation until she couldn’t any longer. Her head
had been using his forearm as a pillow. Their thighs had been entangled
with one another, his still-erect cock had been pressing low on her exposed
belly.
His scent had been all around her as she remembered the night before—
as she remembered his promise to her, that he would take care of her, that
she didn’t need to worry anymore.
And wouldn’t that be wonderful? He’d sounded so sure, so certain and
determined, that a part of Valerie had begun to believe him.
It had felt so right, lying in his arms that peaceful, quiet morning,
watching his eyes flicker behind his lids in sleep. Valerie wondered if
Dravka had watched her during the night as she slept, since she knew
Keriv’i didn’t need as much as humans did. So, when had he fallen asleep?
It had felt intimate and warm and wonderful.
And it had needed to come to an end all too soon.
Valerie rubbed at her tired eyes, recharging the receiver as she typed in
the patch number for seemingly the hundredth time. She’d somehow
managed to sneak out of Dravka’s arms without waking him. Quietly, she’d
snuck a fresh tunic from his drawers, dressed, and left his room in the early
hours of morning. Waking up with him, seeing his beautiful eyes lit by
sunlight, would’ve been too painful.
Last night had been a series of highs and lows for her, starting with the
dinner at the Larchmonts. Despite sleeping a good portion of the night,
Valerie was exhausted—but she needed to do this.
She was still so lost in thought in that second hour that she didn’t realize
when the chirping of the patch connection went on a little longer than usual.
And she almost hung up the receiver unconsciously.
 Except a crackling, husky sound—a word, in another language, she
realized—came over the line.
A gasp tumbled from her lips and she straightened in her chair, her back
aching in protest.
“Hello?” Valerie asked, her voice sounding breathless. “Hello, is
someone there?”
A pause. A static-filled pause.
“Who is this?” came that same voice, except this time it was in the
universal tongue.
“I’m—I’m Valerie. I’m a friend of Eve Tesler. And Khiva,” she said
quickly, fearing that the connection would drop. “Is this—are you Gorkan?”
“Yes, I am Gorkan,” came the staticky voice. “You know Eve?”
“Yes,” she said excitedly. “She gave me your patch number before she
left Everton. I’m trying to get in touch with her. Do you know how I can
reach her?”
Her heart was pounding in her breast and she laid a palm over it.
A long pause came and then the voice said, “You are in luck. She
happens to be right next to me.”
Valerie’s breath hitched.
Then she heard a familiar, shocked voice come over the line.
“Valerie? Oh my god, is that really you?”
Eve.

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 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

W hen Dravka blinked his eyes open to late morning light, he was
momentarily bewildered.
But then he scented Valerie, dragging her into his lungs, a
low groan tumbling out of his throat. When he looked next to him, however,
he found his bed was empty, the sheets cool where she’d lain throughout the
night.
Dravka sat up, feeling half-drunk on sleep and Valerie’s scent. He didn’t
remember the last time he’d slept this long but he felt refreshed. Though, he
strongly suspected that sleeping next to his female—feeling her warmth
against him and her even breaths drifting across his chest and her soft belly
pressed into his aching cock—had something to do with that.
And he had a lifetime of it to look forward to. If only his stubborn little
female would trust him.
In the morning light, Dravka realized that they hadn’t spoken of her
dinner engagement. He’d meant to ask but something told him that she
wouldn’t speak of it.
It doesn’t matter, he thought. She won’t have to worry about the
Larchmonts much longer.
With a deep, chuffing sigh, Dravka rose from the bed. He was still
naked from the night before—still hard, too—but his skin was sticky with
the pre-cum that he’d tried to wipe away.
He left his room to bathe quickly, intent on finding Valerie. He was
loathe to wash her scent from his skin, but he figured it couldn’t be helped.
Soon, she would be all over him, her scent mingling with his own, until
they were both covered in one another.
 When we get off Everton, Dravka thought, rising from the bathing tub,
drying his body off. He marveled at the determination rising in him and a
hope that he hadn’t felt in years.
He’d been a fool to wait this long. He’d been a fool to not leave with
Khiva a few months ago and drag Valerie with him, despite her protests.
But he would do right by her now.
Once he exited the washroom, he found Ravu and Tavak in the sitting
room.
Ravu tilted his chin up when he saw him, his eyes sliding to the door of
his bedroom.
“Was Valerie here last night?” Ravu asked, his eyes glinting with…
amusement? “I thought I heard her.”
Dravka stiffened. The possessive Keriv’i in him didn’t like that his
female had been sleeping so close to other unmated Keriv’i. Then again, it
couldn’t be helped.
When we are on Dumera, I will build us a house far away from other
males, he promised, feeling a little of his possessiveness drain at the
thought. He couldn’t help it. Keriv’i were singularly jealous creatures when
it came to their chosen mates. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for Keriv’i
males to mark their females’ necks in their teela, especially if they would be
around other males.
He ignored the question, knowing he would have to put off locating
Valerie for a little while longer. The three Keriv’i had matters they needed
to continue discussing.
“On Jrika,” Dravka started and Tavak’s head whipped up from the Nu
device, “I heard rumors about you, Ravu.”
Jrika had been the backwater colony that Madame Allegria had found
them all on. A seedy one, only good for drinking away sorrows and perhaps
fucking them away as well. Unlawful merchants, space pirates, bleary-eyed
miners, criminals, thieves from all over the universe frequented the colony.
And those unfortunate enough to live there?
Well, there was a reason the Keriv’i had chosen Everton, after all. Jrika
had been a hellish place to call home.
Ravu’s gaze narrowed. “What did you hear?”
“That you ran with space pirates and scrappers,” Dravka told him. “That
if they needed stolen tech unlisted, if they needed data extracted, then you
were the one to find.”
 Ravu exchanged a small look with his brother, his lips pressing together.
Then he shrugged, a human gesture they’d all seemed to pick up over the
years.
So Tavak had been selling sex and Ravu had been helping to sell stolen
goods off raided vessels. Dravka didn’t blame them, didn’t judge them.
Hell, Dravka had sold himself once or twice on that colony when he
needed to eat. It had been surprisingly easy, that first time. And he had
turned a blind eye to some goods that had passed through his hands. It had
been a difficult life back then. They’d done what they needed to do to
survive.
It had been why all of them were so unwilling to follow Khiva and Eve
to Dumera, after all. Because of the memories of Jrika, the fear that all
neutral colonies might be the same.
“Celine Larchmont’s visit with you is tomorrow night,” Dravka said. “I
told you that Valerie mentioned Celine hates Madame Allegria. That she
doesn’t want this marriage to happen.”
That word…marriage. It felt like acid on his tongue.
“And what does that have to do with what I did on Jrika?” Ravu
questioned softly.
He was protective of Celine Larchmont. A part of him cared for the
older woman. They’d all had clients that they cared about—and though
those feelings weren’t romantic, there were still clients that had shown them
kindness.
Then again, there were always the clients that were the opposite. Clients
whose visits left them feeling used and…lesser.
It wouldn’t be a feeling he would miss once they left.
“Are you able to get copies of the records downstairs? From the main
Nu terminal in the basement?”
Copies of business records. Copies that Valerie had once tried to take to
an Earth Council member and had gotten punished for it…her back
whipped and raw.
Sometimes, Dravka swore he could still feel the warmth of her blood
dripping across his hands as he lasered her skin closed. Sometimes, he
could still feel that burning hatred and self-loathing for not saving her from
this. Sometimes, he still felt that nausea churn in his belly whenever he
thought of it.
 “It will help incentivize Celine Larchmont,” Dravka said. “If she has
blackmail over Madame Allegria, it would give her control back. She
doesn’t want this marriage to happen. This would ensure that it doesn’t.”
“And what makes you think that Celine could do anything with that
information? Look at what happened to Valerie,” Ravu argued, though his
eyes were narrowed—as if he was already working through how he’d
extract that information.
“Because unlike Valerie, she has money and power here on Everton,”
Dravka said. “Valerie said the Larchmonts are one of the wealthiest families
on the New Earth colonies. Richer than Madame Allegria by far…and thus,
more powerful. She could do something with that information if she chose
to, get it into the right hands, but you’d probably have to wipe her name
from the records first.”
They all knew money meant power. It was why they’d been left
powerless for so long.
Tavak said, “You’ll need a Nu device to access the terminal.”
He held the slim device out to his brother, who took it slowly.
“I would also need a Coms upload wire link of some kind,” Ravu said
quietly. “And something to store the data on. A microchip would work but
I’d need a processor. A Blue Light drive would be better.”
“We can check downstairs at Valerie’s desk and in the back office,”
Tavak said. “There has to be something you can use.”
Ever since he’d learned of the firestones, Tavak had been more
determined to leave Everton than he’d ever been before. Because now they
all had tangible proof of a better life. Maybe for the first time, all the
Keriv’is were imagining better ones.
They all looked at one another for a long moment, realizing that…this
might work.
“What are we waiting for then?” Tavak asked, rising from his seat.

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 CHAPTER NINETEEN

T hough she knew she shouldn’t, Valerie took the staircase up to the
Cluster that night.
It was a quiet night in the brothel since Valerie had cancelled all
the clients once again. Tomorrow she was planning to inform all of them
about the brothel’s closing.
The chandelier made the staircase glimmer as she slid her hand over the
solid bannister. She was nervous, she found. Her belly was curling and
fluttering with anticipation, just at the thought of seeing him again after last
night.
Things were falling into place. A weight had been lifted off her
shoulders after she was lucky enough to make contact with Eve on Dumera.
The Keriv’is would have a home, a place to belong once they left Everton.
They would have jobs. They would work with Khiva on these firestones
she’d heard about. Eve had promised her that.
Even still, there was a profound sadness in her that night, mingling with
the sweet anticipation and nerves and excitement she felt.
When Valerie reached the Cluster, the sitting room was dark and quiet.
Tavak and Ravu were nowhere to be seen, but Dravka…
He was standing at the window in the Cluster, his strong, bare back to
her. The scars that adorned his flesh there were light in color, slightly
raised. When Valerie had first come to the brothel, her aunt had liked to take
Dravka down to the basement level the most, as if she’d known even then
that Valerie cared for him.
The thought sobered her and she approached him quietly.
 He regarded her over his shoulder, those eyes tracking her in the dark.
When she reached him, she leaned her forehead on his back. When her arms
came around his front, he gripped her wrists.
She inhaled his warm scent. Memorizing it, though she’d had it
committed to her mind years ago.
“Where have you been all day?” he asked quietly in the darkness,
stroking his long fingers over her forearm.
She shivered and couldn’t resist pressing small kisses to the scars on his
back. Some of them had been because of her, after all. Because she’d loved
him and Madame Allegria had known that.
Dravka’s breath hitched when he felt her kiss.
“Val?” he asked, before turning, cupping her cheek and turning her so
she could see him.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, licking her lips, still nervous. “After,” she
added.
His eyes darkened as a lengthy silence drew out between them. His
voice was dark and husky when he asked, “After what?”
“I need to wash,” she whispered, her heart hammering in her chest.
“Will you join me?”
Valerie heard his audible, thick swallow.
He told her last night that he wouldn’t have sex with her on Everton.
But maybe they could…do other things. Last night, Valerie had realized that
she might not ever get to explore him otherwise.
And she thought she might scream if she never touched him the way she
wanted. After last night, she couldn’t stay away. She didn’t want to
anymore. She didn’t have the willpower to stay away.
Not now.
Her heart was a thundering mess as she waited for him to reply.
In the end, he didn’t say anything. He only led her to the washing room,
closing and locking the door behind him, and then they were encased in that
cool, dark, small space.
This bathroom was like most in the brothel. The bricks were painted a
matte black. The sink and washing tub—Keriv’i sized—were gold. The
floor was marble, though an Old Earth rug adorned it to keep the chill out.
A round gilded mirror sat above the sink counter and in it, in the dim light
from the single sconce on the wall, Valerie saw her eyes were wide and her
cheeks were flushed.
 In the darkness, it felt intimate. It felt like just the two of them…and it
was a place in the brothel that they’d never been together before. It felt new.
Dravka was next to her. He came behind her, running a hand through
her hair. He turned them so they were looking in the mirror and the sight
stunned her. Because she’d never seen them standing together, side by side.
He was so much taller than her. So much larger. His skin looked bluer
against her flesh.
And for the first time, she saw the way she looked at him. Wide-eyed, a
little dazed, but happy. She looked at him like they shared some great
secret, just the two of them.
She supposed they did.
In the mirror, Valerie saw—and felt—his hands trail down her front, the
sides of his palms skimming over her breasts, just barely, just enough to
make her breath hitch, before coming to rest on her hips.
“Look how beautiful you are,” he rasped in her ear, crouching down so
their faces were next to one another’s. “Vauk, I’ve loved you since I first
saw you.”
Valerie’s lips parted, her heart freezing in her chest at his sublime
words. He’d never said them before, though it had always been unspoken.
Of course, she knew that he loved her in some capacity.
But up until this last week, she hadn’t known for certain it was like the
way she loved him.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, mellkia,” he murmured.
Valerie didn’t think she could make her tongue work if she wanted to.
His eyes were burning into her through the mirror, dark and teasing and
wanting.
Last night, he’d pointed out just how silly her fears were about intimacy
with him. Though he might not want sex now, she still wanted to show him
how much she desired him, no doubt the cause for her nerves that night.
She feared she was running out of time to show him.
And she wanted these memories to last her a lifetime. Because they
would need to.
Valerie turned her face, saw a flash of those dark eyes, and then she was
kissing him. Fiercely. Possessively. She wanted to show him what she was
thinking because she didn’t think she was capable of words.
Dravka growled, his hands squeezing around her hips, and his tongue
flicked out, darting between her parted lips. A sharp intake of breath
whistled between them when she sucked on his tongue. Opening her eyes,
she met his and saw they were narrowed. The wicked promise that gleamed
in them was enough to make her whimper.
Suddenly, she was up on the counter, her back pressing into the mirror.
Dravka stepped between her thighs and her legs wrapped around his waist.
Sometimes, Valerie forgot just how strong Keriv’i males were. How quick.
He’d flipped and lifted her up like it was nothing.
Valerie’s hands squeezed into his shoulders, dragging him closer as their
mouths connected again. Dravka bit at her bottom lip, sucking and nibbling,
as he pressed closer, until she could feel the way his cock fit perfectly
against the junction of her thighs.
Valerie did whimper that time, rocking her hips ever so slightly against
him.
“Vauk,” he hissed out, tearing his mouth away. Then he was licking and
sucking at her neck, steadily making his way to her ear. “The moment we’re
off Everton, mellkia, I’ll give you everything you want. I promise.”
Desperation made her hands slide to the waistband of his pants. Hot
desire curled in her belly. This had taken too long. Why had they waited so
long to do this?
“I’ll give you everything,” he rasped in her ear, making her moan. “I’ll
give you my cock and my teela until you can’t take it any longer. And then
I’ll give you more. If you’ll wait, I’ll make it so good for you, I promise.”
Valerie swallowed.
He didn’t want to have sex, she knew. He’d told her as much last night.
She could respect that, even though it made her want to cry in need and
frustration.
“No sex then,” she whispered into the darkness, feeling him kiss the
sensitive lobe of her ear. Her scalp felt tingly and she felt a shiver run all the
way down to her tailbone as he kissed her there. “But I can still touch you
tonight.”
Dravka stilled, his palms splayed flat on the counter on both sides of her
thighs. As if he didn’t trust himself to touch her?
The thought made her wiggle on the cold marble, trying to get closer.
“How about I touch you tonight?” Dravka whispered, his breath
threading through her hair.
“I want to touch you too,” Valerie said, pulling back to look at him. His
expression was almost…apprehensive. Conflicted. She leaned forward,
brushing her lips over his own, and she felt his cock throb against her.
“Won’t you let me?”
A strained laugh tore from his throat. “If you touch me, mellkia, I might
lose control when you’re already making me lose my vauking mind.”
His words gave her a flush of pleasure. His hand came up to cup her
cheek, his thumb brushing her lips. He groaned when she caught the tip of it
between her teeth, when her tongue flicked against it.
A flood of wetness rushed between her thighs.
“You’re going to make me come in my pants again, mellkia,” Dravka
growled, a warning.
A smile crossed her lips when he abruptly pulled his thumb away.
“Veki,” he murmured, seeming to make up his mind about something.
“The moment you touch me, you’ll end me. I’ll touch you tonight only.”
Disappointment almost made her pout but she would do everything she
could to change his mind.
A gasp tore from her throat as he tugged her thin dress off—one of her
nicer ones, made of a silky, light material, one she’d worn just for him—
and dropped it to the floor of the bathroom.
Her breasts were bare, her nipples pebbled and tight. She only wore
underwear, if it could even be considered that, considering it was barely
more than an inch of material that covered her there.
“My mouth has been watering for these for years,” he voiced, dropping
his head. “I won’t wait any longer.”
And Valerie was wholly unprepared for his mouth and his tongue on her
breasts, flicking one of her nipples before drawing the tight peak between
his lips and sucking. She cried out, her hips bucking against him.
He growled, pressing closer, releasing her breast with a wet pop before
turning his attention to the other. Her hands clutched at his back, wanting to
keep him in place, as her sex throbbed between her thighs. It was almost as
if she could feel his kiss on her breasts everywhere. That wicked, flicking,
wet, hot tongue. The gentle scrape of his sharp teeth. The way he soothed
his little bites with his kiss.
“Dravka,” she whimpered, heat shooting through her blood, making her
feel restless.
When her hands dropped to the waistband of his pants, he growled,
pushing her hands away and dropping to his knees in front of her.
 His eyes burned into hers when he wrapped his arms around her thighs,
pulling her to the very edge of the bathroom counter. In another moment, he
snapped the tiny string holding her underwear together and tossed it away
near her dress.
Oh!
Then he held her gaze as he dove forward, as his tongue pressed against
her sex, as he gave one long, deliberately slow, and wicked lick.
A ragged gasp echoed in the small bathroom. Dravka’s own eyes shut
briefly, a shudder racking his body.
When his eyes opened again, those twin opals were on fire. “Vauk, your
taste, Val.”
Her lips parted, suddenly worried. “Is…is it bad?”
A strained laugh came next.
“I’ll never get enough of it,” he said. His voice sounded different.
Deeper. Rougher. Darker. “I’ll need this every night to be satisfied.”
“Oh,” she whispered, her fears assuaged. Then a strangled groan tore
from her as he lowered his head again, this time sucking.
Wet, obscene, delicious sounds echoed in her ears, mingling with her
ragged gasps and desperate moans.
“Oh god,” she whispered, her hands coming to the back of his smooth
head, holding him there, fearing he’d leave. Then her hands trailed to his
jaw, feeling the way it flexed as he ate her out. Feeling it move as he laved
and licked her clit. Feeling his cheeks hollow ever so slightly as he sucked.
“Dravka!”
And his eyes never left her. He watched everything from between her
thighs, those eyes gleaming with need and arousal. No, she needed to touch
him tonight too. She needed to.
When she felt him dip his head slightly, a new sensation bombarded her
as he snaked his tongue up her tight sex. She felt the very tip smooth and
flick against her inner walls, wiggling to get deeper.
Dravka groaned when he felt her clench down.
“Come on my tongue, mellkia,” he rasped before delving back inside.
Valerie watched him in a daze, her lips parted, her legs tightening in his
grip.
He was watching her and she sensed just how much he loved to watch
her. Like this. At his mercy with his head buried between her thighs, doing
naughty things to her with his tongue and those eyes.
 Dravka didn’t even need to touch her clit because she was coming
around his tongue a moment later, the orgasm taking her by surprise. Her
brows drew together, her abdomen tightening, as she exploded around him,
her body breaking down into millions and millions of pieces. Shivers raced
up her spine. Through it all, she still felt that hot, seeking, greedy tongue,
lapping up everything she gave him.
When it was finished, she came down from that high, panting and
gasping and flushed. She stared down at him in surprise. When he pulled
back, he flashed her a feral-looking grin and then rose, prowling up her
body, pressing her back against the mirror.
And when he kissed her? He devoured her.
Tasting herself on his tongue, Val felt her belly begin to heat all over
again.
“Now, let’s get you cleaned up,” he growled against her lips, picking her
up from the counter in one swift movement, his palms clasped in a
possessive grip on her ass.
Then he moved towards the bath.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY

D ravka didn’t think he’d ever been more aroused in his life and
needing to mate.
But vauk…that was what Valerie did to him. Even when he
was in a Rut, even when he dreamed about her, or thought about her when
he wrapped a fist around his aching cock, it had never felt like this.
This desperate need, this pinching almost punishing desire. Because he
knew he couldn’t have her the way he wanted. Not yet, at least.
He wanted to wait. Though Dravka had been a whore for a good portion
of his life, in terms of sex with a mate, Keriv’is held it in the highest regard.
When Valerie and he joined together for the first time, when he released his
teela deep inside her for the first time—a sacred, intense experience with a
chosen mate—it wouldn’t be on Everton.
Not when there was a glimmering future in front of them. So damn
close he could see it.
They would wait.
Until then, however, Dravka would do everything else he possibly could
to her body without that last final act.
Valerie was clinging to him so sweetly when he finally lowered them
into the hot bath. Humans liked the water a little cooler than Keriv’i
preferred and Valerie sighed when he settled her between his thighs, her
back to his front.
Only she wiggled around, making him groan, seemingly unhappy with
the fact that she couldn’t see him.
So, Valerie straddled his thighs instead and wrapped her arms around his
neck. Through Dravka’s intense arousal, he felt the warm bloom of
affection and partial amusement, taking note that orgasms made his little
female very, very happy.
And vauk, she was so beautiful. Her light hair seemed to glow around
her, her green eyes shimmering, her cheeks and lips flushed an enticing
pink. His hand stroked down her body and she let out a small gasp when he
thumbed her nipple lazily.
“Now you,” she whispered.
It was the only warning he had before her quick little hands trailed to
his exposed, engorged cock.
“Vauk!” Dravka barked out, the tendons in his neck straining when he
registered her heat on his cock. He was so damn sensitive in his arousal that
he watched as pre-cum trailed from his tip, which was jutting out of the
water.
Her grip tightened on him.
“Please,” she whispered, leaning forward to pepper kisses across his
jaw. “I want to touch you like this.”
Dravka gritted his teeth. And he had no willpower because he caught
her lips in a punishing kiss, feeling her smile against him, just as she began
to stroke his cock, squeezing in a way that made his taxxa tighten against
his body, laden as they were with seed for her.
He was going to embarrass himself in front of her again because he
already felt the beginnings of his orgasm. She must think he had no control
over his own body, no endurance…but vauk, he might not when it came to
Valerie.
His Valerie.
Always.
What he didn’t expect to feel was jealousy. Because Valerie knew how
to stroke a male and she stroked him well. He knew on Genesis, she’d had
what she called ‘boyfriends,’ when she’d been younger. She’d told him a
couple years ago. Had she explored this with them?
Dravka huffed out a hissing breath when she encircled the crown of his
cock, rubbing her thumb underneath the rim, where he was most sensitive.
When his hip jerked, she watched with glowing eyes.
“Here?” she asked. Her voice was husky and warm, a voice that would
vauking haunt him with wet dreams until the end of his life.
“Pax,” he hissed, his breaths coming quicker, his hearts pounding in his
chest. “Right there, mellkia!”
 She clenched around him harder, using her index finger and thumb to
make a tight ring around him as his hips punched forward, sloshing water
over the rim of the tub.
She gasped, feeling his pre-cum on her hand, no doubt. Even that would
react with her body, making her arousal that much more potent, like she was
hovering on the edge of release but not able to get there.
“Can I lick you here?” she asked, those green eyes of hers dazed,
flickering from his own to his cock jutting between them.
“Veki,” he growled. No.
She almost pouted. “Why not?”
Val was going to be the end of him.
Dravka closed his palm around the back of her neck and brought her
forward for a rough kiss. She squirmed against him, trying to get closer, and
he felt the drag of her peaked nipples across his chest. He suckled her
tongue before giving her lower lip a hard bite, which she seemed to like,
given the way she rocked against him.
“Because when you take my teela into you for the first time, it will be
deep in your cunt,” he growled against her.
A ragged gasp tore from her throat and Dravka pulled away from her
lips to regard her, his hand slipping between her thighs.
“And if you put that little mouth anywhere near my cock,” he
continued, “then I’ll come all over your tongue.”
Her gaze darkened, her pupils dilating until the color of her eyes seemed
black.
“Vauk, you want that?” he rasped, his voice ragged with the thought.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“One day, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me,” he murmured,
eliciting a moan from her when he dragged his fingers through her folds.
The pre-cum coating her hand would make it very easy to make her orgasm
again. He might just need to brush her clit. “There will be no boundaries
between us.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Pax?”
He needed her to say it. Needed to hear that she believed there was a
future away from Everton for them both. Needed to hear her say that she
would leave with him and not look back.
 A little desperation entered her gaze when he placed his thumb over her
clit and pressed.
“Dravka!”
“Pax?” he growled.
“Oh god,” she whispered, out of breath.
His thumb twitched, just slightly, and suddenly, her surprised cry filled
the bathroom, echoing against the walls. She was coming. Again.
As she orgasmed against his hand, her own squeezed tighter around his
cock and he slipped through the tight grip, imagining it was her cunt—
where he wanted to be most.
His own bellow joined hers, though disappointment mingled with the
pleasure. She wouldn’t say what he wanted her to. Because she didn’t
believe it. But it didn’t matter. He knew they’d be together. Soon. In the
way they were always meant to be together.
She would realize that eventually. He just needed to have patience.
His teela shot high from his tip, arching and lashing across his chest in
thick, hot spurts. He groaned, feeling his taxxa clench tight, as one of the
hardest orgasms of his life coiled through him.
Valerie watched him, her lips parted, her gaze greedy and hot.
When they were both finished, he was careful to keep her hand away
from the teela drenching his chest. He snagged the nearest towel and wiped
himself clean before dropping it to the floor of the now-wet bathroom.
Valerie’s hand was still curled around his cock in a possessive little grip,
as if she feared he’d take it away from her.
“Mellkia,” he rasped, his voice hoarse, his fingers drifting down to her
hand. He kissed her as he made her release him.
Dravka gave a harsh groan when his cock twitched, a little more seed
pooling at the crown.
“Vauk, that was…” He trailed off, not quite knowing the word in the
universal tongue.
“Good?” Valerie whispered, a shy little smile crossing her lips, one that
made him crazed.
He licked at her tongue, a small chuckle rising from his throat.
“Sublime.”
“I quite agree,” she said, her voice soft as she caught her breath.
He leaned his forehead against her own, a deep trilling purr vibrating his
chest.
 When she went a little quiet, he asked, “Does it feel strange to you?”
He knew she had doubts about this. About changing their relationship
with physical intimacy, about changing what they’d built with one another
over five years.
She swallowed and relief filled him when she shook her head.
“No,” she told him. Then with a sheepish smile, she admitted, “It feels
strange how not strange it feels.”
He laughed.
“I wonder why I ever feared it. When this is you,” she went on, her eyes
softening. “It’s always been you.”
He felt his hearts give a dull throb and he huffed out a sharp breath,
bringing her closer. Water trickled around them as he stroked his hand down
her scarred back, tracing the raised edges from her aunt’s abuse.
He loved this female. With every part of himself. She was the only
reason he’d survived this long, the only reason he vauking lived.
Everything with her had always felt different. He’d had sex with
countless females, countless times. And yet, he felt untried with her,
discovering everything again for the first time. And they hadn’t even had
sex yet.
He wanted to discover everything with her, including a new life, one
they would build together. He wanted a family with her, he wanted to see
her big with their child.
Dravka growled at that thought, feeling his cock twitch between them.
Valerie sighed then gave him a small, sad smile, one that set warning
bells off in his head.
“I went to the Coms building in the Downtown District today,” she told
him quietly, her eyes tracing over his face, lingering on his lips.
His brow furrowed.
“I managed to get in contact with Eve.”
Dravka stiffened underneath her.
“You talked to her?” he asked, pulling back to study her face properly.
“You talked to Khiva?”
“Not Khiva,” she told him. “He was working apparently. On the
firestones. They have a workshop, one they are hoping to expand.”
“Tell me everything.”
“They like Dumera,” Valerie said. It broke Dravka’s hearts that she kept
her expression neutral, though he sensed a deep sadness within her. She was
trying not to show him her despair because she believed she’d never see
Dumera. “Eve…she’s pregnant.”
A shocked breath whistled out of him. Though, he supposed that the
contraceptive injection Madame Allegria gave them every year would’ve
worn off for Khiva already.
That was when Valerie’s lip trembled. Just slightly.
“Oh mellkia,” he rasped, pulling her forward until her face landed in the
crook of his neck.
His chest ached for her. He knew how much she wanted children. A
family. Though she was undoubtedly happy for Eve, it was obvious to him
how much that knowledge might hurt her. Because Eve had been able to
leave Everton with Khiva. They were living happily on a far-away neutral
colony. They were building a family.
It was everything Val wanted, everything Dravka wanted.
And she believed she would never have that future.
“I’m s-sorry,” she whispered. “Do…do you ever…?”
“Kruvu?” he murmured, keeping his touch gentle on her back. “Tell
me.”
What he didn’t expect her to ask was, “Do you ever resent me?”
“Kruvu?” he rasped, his brow furrowing.
When she pulled back, her eyes were shimmering with tears. “Do you
ever resent me…for not trying harder? For not trying to expose her more?
For not trying to—”
“Stop,” he growled. “Of course not, Val! How can you even ask that?
You did try. Look what she did in retaliation.”
Her head dropped again, but he tilted her face up until she was forced to
meet his eyes.
“I have never and will never resent you, Val,” he told her firmly, his
brow furrowed. Was this what she thought? What she worried about? He
pressed his lips to hers and murmured, “Ever.”
Relief filled him when eventually, he felt her slight nod.
“Pax?” he rasped, regarding her carefully.
She nodded again.
“Pax,” she whispered.
He made a sound in the back of his throat, his arms sliding around her
again.
 “What else did Eve say?” he asked, steering the conversation back
towards where they left off.
Valerie sniffed a little, running her fingertip underneath her lower lash
line to catch a stray tear there.
“That she can help all of you find homes,” she murmured. “That you
can stay with her and Khiva until arrangements can be made.”
“Val,” he growled, feeling his belly churn. “For the last time, you will
be coming with us. If you think I’m leaving you here, you’re sorely
mistaken. I don’t care if I have to sedate you myself and take you on the
vessel, I’ll do it.”
She thought he was joking by the small, melancholy smile she gave
him. But he wasn’t. He’d do whatever it took to get her off the colony.
“Regardless,” she continued, “Eve and Khiva will help. You’ll all have
work and a safe place to live. On a respectable, peaceful colony, far away
from here. What you’ve always wanted.”
“What I want,” he murmured, “is you and only you. None of it matters
if you’re not with me.”
Her brows drew together and she licked her lips.
And it vauking depressed him just how resigned she looked just then.
When she was cradled in his arms, after what they’d just done.
Dravka, thinking of nothing else that he could do, simply kissed her,
pouring everything he felt for her into that single kiss.
She gasped, gripping his shoulders.
At the very least, it would erase that expression off her face.
Until Dravka could convince her to come—or until he could kidnap her
off this demav-forsaken place—it was the only thing he could do.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

W hen Valerie woke the next morning, Dravka was watching her,
stroking his thumb across her shoulder.

and happiness.
Her heart did a strange pitter-patter, a stuttering of surprise

“Kasunu, mellkia,” he rasped, his voice husky and deep. Roughened

with sleep.
She was lying in the crook of his arm, their legs entwined underneath
the thin coverings of his bed.
“Good morning,” she replied back, knowing that that was what kasunu
meant in the Keriv’i language.
And now she knew what mellkia meant as well.
My love.
Her heart did the little stuttering again and she tried not to grin as she
rolled away. It was so strange, waking up happy.
But all too soon, reality would crash back in, a reality she needed to
return to.
“Where are you going?” Dravka asked, pushing up onto his elbow, the
sheets sliding away from his chest, showing off the sculpted muscle
underneath. Muscles she’d dug her nails into last night as he’d caressed her
in his bed.
She cleared her throat, standing from the bed, dressing quickly in her
discarded silk dress, the one she’d worn for him last night. Her underwear
were nowhere to be found, however.
When she looked back at him, she scraped her messy hair into a quick
bun on the top of her head. Dravka watched her with interest, his lazy gaze
flickering over her in a possessive way that made her blood heat. Because
she wanted to be his. That was all she wanted.
He watched the hem of her short dress slide up her thighs as she
smoothed her hair. His hand reached for her, his fingers sliding up her inner
thigh.
Valerie gasped, quickly stepping away, shooting him a look that made
his deep chuckle fill the room.
“Val,” he murmured, rolling on his back. “Come back to bed.”
God.
Those words.
Valerie’s hands dropped from her hair and she regarded him, trying to
memorize everything about that moment because soon, it would be gone.
The way the morning light beamed across the walls, a shaft of it lighting up
the center of Dravka’s chest. She wondered if he could feel the warmth of it
there.
Underneath the sheet, his body was relaxed. She could see the outline of
his strong legs, his thighs, one leg curled to the side. And just above that,
she licked her lips briefly when she saw the teasing outline of his cock,
thick and long…and hard.
His full lips were quirked in a small, knowing smirk, his darkened gaze
watching her. When his hand lazily brushed away the sheet, letting her see
his arousal, her heart picked up in her chest, her mouth beginning to water
for it as her fingers curled—as if imagining it in her grip.
This is why they always come back, came the stray thought.
His clients.
Because he was…beguiling. Seductive. Confident. Mesmerizing.
“You’re…” She trailed off, not quite knowing how to explain the way
she saw him. “You’re wonderful. You know that, right?”
And one day, he’d make a female very, very lucky when he took her as
his mate.
Something flickered in his gaze. He sat up from the bed, swinging his
long limbs over the edge and reaching for her.
And because Valerie was weak, she went to him, stepping between his
thighs. The bed was quite low to the ground so he pressed a kiss into her
belly before looking up at her.
Valerie reached forward, stroking his cheek. She felt it then. Reality
coming back in. A depressing reality, of memories from the night before, of
the dinner at the Larchmonts’, of Gabriel and her aunt.
She licked her lips, her gaze sliding away. “I have to finalize the
shipping of Eve’s collections today. I have to meet with the transport
representative in an hour, so I should probably leave.”
Touching the back of her shoulder, Valerie thought that…maybe it
didn’t matter if Madame Allegria tracked where she was. The credits were
hers, in an untraceable account that her aunt wouldn’t be able to touch.
Dravka regarded her in a way only he could. As if he could read
everything going through her mind. He could read her better than anyone.
Finally, he nodded, standing from the bed. He followed her as she
walked to the bedroom door. But when she opened it, her steps faltered
slightly because she saw Ravu and Tavak were already awake. Ravu was
standing at the window, which looked out towards the Lake District, his
hands behind his back. Tavak was scrolling through the Nu device, his
mouth pinched down into his ever-present frown.
Both males turned to look at her when she emerged from Dravka’s
bedroom…with a very naked Dravka behind her.
Valerie’s cheeks flamed, wondering if they’d heard her cries last night,
echoing through the bathroom and then later, from Dravka’s bedroom.
She cleared her throat. “Um, good morning,” she murmured, her voice a
little raspy.
Dravka’s hand came to snake around her waist, partially shielding her
from the other Keriv’i males’ knowing gazes. Perhaps because her dress
was short? Or perhaps because her nipples were pebbled underneath the
silky material?
Ravu was the first to speak.
“Val,” he said, stepping towards her, though a short, strange, trilling
sound from Dravka stopped him in his tracks, making him freeze. He
leveled Dravka an impatient look, though he didn’t move towards her again,
before looking back at her. “Celine Larchmont is my client for tonight.”
Valerie started and Dravka stilled beside her.
“Yes,” she said, trying to run a hand through her hair though she
realized she’d already secured it in a bun. “I was going to call and cancel.
You won’t be receiving anymore clients from now on. None of you will.”
The thought filled her with relief.
At least until Ravu said, “Don’t. I need to speak with her tonight.”
Valerie frowned, her expression becoming guarded. “You do? Why?”
 Ravu’s gaze slid to Dravka.
Valerie sighed. “Look, if it has anything to do with…with the
marriage…I don’t think she—”
“I just wanted to say goodbye,” Ravu said softly.
Surprise made Valerie look up at him.
“Oh,” she murmured.
Ravu gave her a small smile and a small shrug. “She was always good
to me. I would like to say goodbye before…”
Valerie thought of Celine’s melancholy at the dinner the night before,
how she’d stared across her blooming night garden with a semblance of
pride but also sadness.
“I see,” Valerie said, feeling her throat suddenly tighten. “Well, all right.
If you’re sure, I won’t cancel the visit.”
Ravu nodded, his eyes straying back to Dravka.
“Thank you.”
Silence descended around the Cluster. It felt strained and Valerie wasn’t
quite certain what had caused it.
“I’ll go then,” she said quietly, glancing back up at Dravka. Then her
cheeks flushed when he pressed a kiss to her lips, in front of Tavak and
Ravu.
“Come back tonight,” he murmured in her ear. “Pax?”
Valerie made a small sound in the back of her throat. She might’ve
nodded, she wasn’t entirely certain. Regardless, she scurried from the
Cluster quickly, pressing the backs of her cool hands to her warm cheeks
once she made it to the staircase.
She descended quickly, knowing she needed to dress and make herself
presentable before meeting with the transport rep. After this day, more
credits would be placed into her account and it would be another weight off
her shoulders.
Valerie was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice
Madame Allegria sitting at the reception desk on the main floor of the
lobby.
“Don’t you look…” Madame Allegria started, peering at her over the
Nu device in her grip, “chipper this morning.”
Valerie swallowed, feeling the happiness from that morning turn icy and
hard in her belly. Immediately, she felt herself withdraw a little, before she
reminded herself that her aunt no longer had power over her. At least not in
the way she did before.
“I found my little collection downstairs,” Madame Allegria said. Valerie
remembered. The burned whips and ropes she’d left for her to find. Her
aunt quirked a brow, her expression even, but Valerie saw the fire in her
eyes, the burning embers of fury. “Your doing, I imagine?”
Valerie said, “When we came to that deal, you didn’t need them
anymore.”
Madame Allegria’s ruby-red lips pressed together before she released
them with a loud pop. Her blue eyes—altered in color—ran over Valerie’s
form again. She wished that she was standing in anything other than a silky,
short dress, but regardless, she kept her aunt’s hardened gaze.
“Dipping a toe in my Krave pool?” Madame Allegria asked, a small
smirk coming over her lips though Valerie still sensed her barely leashed
fury underneath the careful words. “Did Dravka make it good for you, at
least? I suppose I could charge you. Then again, you’re family. So you get
the family discount.”
Valerie stiffened, her breath leaving her in a loud whoosh.
Suddenly, and strangely enough, Valerie looked at her aunt for the first
time and felt…pity.
How did someone become so…so monstrous?
Valerie looked around the lobby of her aunt’s opulent little brothel as
silence stretched between them. She heard the tapping of Madame
Allegria’s long nails on the Nu device screen, no doubt going over the
accounting, something she did quite regularly. She would see that Valerie
had been canceling clients ever since they struck their deal.
“What happened to you?” Valerie asked quietly.
Suddenly, the tapping stopped.
When she turned her gaze back to her aunt, she was staring at her, her
eyes narrowed, the blue of them flashing.
“Excuse me?” Madame Allegria asked. Her tone was deceivingly
pleasant and calm.
“What happened to you?” Valerie repeated. “What happened to you to
make you like this? So unnecessarily cruel? So ruthless and uncaring? So
spiteful?”
Madame Allegria’s expression morphed then.
 “How is it that you came from the same womb that my own mother
did?” Valerie asked, that deep sadness she felt shifting into her tone. “You
are polar opposites of one another. My mother was kind and loving. She
helped people while all you do is hurt them. It’s…it’s unfathomable to me,
that you share your blood with her, that it’s even possible you do.”
“She was also poor,” Madame Allegria bit out, spitting out that last
word like it was diseased. “And maybe you understand a little of what that
feels like, Valerie, considering your mother barely had two credits to rub
together. Even still, you’ll never know the poverty that we grew up in. You
never knew hunger so painful you’d eat paper to soothe it. You never knew
the disgusting looks thrown your way, as if you were no better than dirt.”
“So that’s it?” Valerie whispered. “You’re cruel because you don’t want
to be poor? It’s always about credits?”
It was true. They had been poor on Genesis, but not in the way Madame
Allegria was describing. Her mother had never really talked about her
childhood, about her parents. Over the years, Valerie had been able to piece
together bits, little slivers of conversations and spare words that came
together to form a broken picture.
And if what Madame Allegria was saying was true, that the two sisters
had grown up in extreme poverty…it made sense. But her mother had also
hinted at abuse. Hell, Valerie had seen the marks on her mother’s back,
though she’d desperately tried to hide them from Valerie.
For the first time, Valerie wondered if Madame Allegria held the same
marks across her own back—the marks that Valerie and her mother had
worn.
Had their father…?
Pity and empathy came. But then anger did too when Valerie
remembered.
“She was your sister, your blood,” Valerie whispered, tears pooling in
her vision. “My mother. You had all the credits you could ever possibly
need. It would’ve taken no effort at all for you to help us when she got sick.
But you didn’t care.”
For the first time, Madame Allegria’s mask slipped and Valerie saw an
expression on her face that was neither confident nor infuriated.
“You let her die,” Valerie continued, holding her aunt’s gaze, even as
tears slipped down her cheeks. “You let your sister die even after I begged
you to help her, to pay for her to get the medicine she needed.”
 The expression on her aunt’s face was one of…resignation. As if she
had accepted her decision long ago and had to live with the knowledge that
she could have helped.
“Just one injection! One injection would’ve saved her life. 1000 credits
would’ve saved my mother’s life. It would’ve been nothing to you. And you
turned your back on her. On me!”
At least until Madame Allegria had brought her to Everton.
Maybe Valerie could understand her aunt slightly. Because the fury and
bitterness that had been swirling within her for years felt tainted and wrong
and permanent.
Valerie would never forgive her aunt for this. Never. She would be
marked by this hatred for the rest of her life, just as Madame Allegria had
no doubt been.
“You really are a monster,” Valerie whispered, shaking her head. “And
while I understand hatred, while I understand never getting something you
want more than anything, I will never understand your cruelty.”
For once, Madame Allegria didn’t say anything. She sat behind the
reception desk, her fingers still tightly clenched on the Nu device, staring at
Valerie across the wood. Her eyes were like shards of ice. She was cold-
hearted to her very core.
“You don’t have anything to say?” Valerie asked her, wiping her cheeks.
She didn’t care if her aunt saw her cry. At least Valerie could feel something
that made her cry. Like grief.
“Your mother made her choice,” was what Madame Allegria said,
“when she decided to marry for love and not security. And look where that
got her when her husband died. Look where it got you. She was
irresponsible.”
Valerie’s breath left her.
“I won’t make that mistake when it comes to you,” her aunt continued.
“You should be thanking me.”
Her lips parted.
Valerie shouldn’t be surprised. Did her aunt truly believe that she was
doing right by Valerie? That by marrying her off to one of the wealthiest
families on Everton, she was somehow…making things right?
“You’re delusional. And twisted,” Valerie said, stunned. “I feel sorry for
you.”
 “Think what you want,” Madame Allegria said, her voice hardening.
“But early on in my life, I learned the hard lessons that your mother refused
to even consider. I loved my sister, make no mistake about it. But I also
knew that she was a fool, one that would be eaten up by this world. Now
you have a choice to make. If you want to end up like her or if you want to
survive like me.”
Valerie laughed.
The sound was loud and heartbreaking and humorless.
If it surprised her aunt, she didn’t show it.
That laughter turned into sobs, deep, aching sobs that racked her entire
body and made it hard to breathe. She marveled that just mere moments
before, Dravka had kissed her and she’d felt so…light. So wonderful.
“Make no mistake about it,” Valerie rasped when she finally managed to
catch her breath, her throat aching and hoarse, “I will never be like you.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

L ater that night, long after Madame Allegria departed her dying
brothel, long after Valerie returned from Eve Tesler’s now-emptied
townhouse, she sat at the desk in the lobby.
The Nu device was open before her and she was tempted to do a search
for the Dumera colony, but she knew it was too risky. Madame Allegria
monitored everything. Instead, she pulled up her own personal storage file,
entering her access code, and stared down at the one picture she had saved
there.
The one of her mother. The only one of her mother that she possessed.
The Nu devices that Madame Allegria had purchased for the brothel
were out-of-date, an older model, so the shafts of blue light that projected
her picture into the air before her were grainy and blurred.
Even still, she felt a dull ache in her chest as she stared at her mother’s
smiling face. A content happiness was in her eyes, but ever since Valerie’s
father passed away—when she’d been a child—there had always been an
underlying sadness there as well.
Her mother and Madame Allegria looked very much alike, though her
aunt had had altering procedures done over the years. Her mother had green
eyes, like Valerie, and deep auburn hair. The smiling lines around her mouth
and eyes were untouched and natural. The clothes she was wearing in the
photo were old and threadbare. Valerie remembered going to the salvage
yard with her to find them. Her mother had always said that people were
wasteful, that they threw away things that still had plenty to give.
She’d found those clothes that day…and she’d been right. She’d worn
them for years before they’d started to show signs of wear.
 Valerie sighed, zooming in on her mother’s face, before her gaze strayed
to her own. Proudly grinning next to her mother. Valerie had been around
13 or 14 then. All gangly limbs and frizzy hair and crooked teeth.
We’d been happy though, she thought, a soft smile on her face. For
years after this too.
Then her mother had gotten sick. Breast cancer. A common enough
disease, easily curable with a single injection, though it was pricey. Too
pricey for them, when they could barely afford their weekly meals.
Valerie closed the storage file and the photo disappeared. In its place
was the image that would haunt her forever. The one of her mother, lying on
her bed, pale and sweating, her eyes seeming too big for her face.
“I love you more than anything,” she’d said, voice brittle, eyes wet.
“I’m so sorry, Val. So sorry.”
Her mother’s last words to her. She could still hear them clearly in her
mind as if her mother had just spoken them.
Valerie shut her eyes, taking a long breath in through her nostrils.
Suddenly, she heard the whirring of the elevator and she straightened at
her desk before standing. Her eyes drifted to the clock. It was ten in the
evening.
The elevator gave a bright, mechanical ding before the doors slid open
and Celine Larchmont stepped out. Valerie looked for the telltale signs of
sex—flushed cheeks, trembling limbs, wrinkled clothes—but saw none.
Instead, Celine looked pensive. Almost focused as her gaze settled on
Valerie, standing at the reception desk.
“Mrs. Larchmont,” Valerie greeted, inclining her head. She’d seen her
just a few hours before when she’d arrived at the brothel at Ravu’s request.
It hadn’t occurred to Valerie that the Keriv’i males might have preferred to
say goodbye to select clients. A spear of jealousy went through her,
wondering if Dravka had wanted to say goodbye to any of his.
“Valerie,” Celine replied, stepping up to the desk.
This was when Valerie was supposed to say, “I hope your visit was
pleasant,” and other such bullshit. Now? An uncomfortable silence
stretched between them. She simply stared, wondering if Celine would say
anything about the night before at dinner or about the fact that she was there
now.
“Sometimes,” Celine started softly, “I would just come here to talk with
him.”
 Valerie frowned, her brows furrowing.
With Ravu, she meant.
“It wasn’t always about the sex,” the older woman continued, her
features contorting into a strained expression, “though that was nice with
him too.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Valerie said quietly. “I’ve
heard it all before.”
Celine sighed, her well-manicured hands sliding over the beautiful
wood between them. Then her eyes settled on Valerie, spearing her with a
long look. “You care for them?”
Her brows furrowed further.
“Them?” she asked, gesturing upstairs. “Of course, I do.”
“And I care about Ravu,” Celine told her. “I’ve been coming here for
three years, Valerie. I might not love him. I’m too…jaded for such
sentimental notions like that.”
Her words surprised Valerie.
“But I do care for him. He’s been a friend to me and I can’t say I have
many genuine friends. He’s listened to me. He’s comforted me. He’s been
good to me,” Celine said, a small smile crossing her lips. Her eyes flickered
up to Valerie when she said, “I’ll miss him when he’s gone.”
Valerie wondered just how much Ravu had told her.
Something pulled at the back of her mind, of Dravka saying that she
wouldn’t have to worry about Gabriel Larchmont, that ‘they’ would take
care of everything.
“What…” Valerie licked her lips, lowering her voice. “What did he tell
you?”
Celine inhaled a long breath through her nostrils before sighing.
“Everything.”
Valerie’s heart stuttered a bit in her chest, panicked that Celine might go
to Madame Allegria, panicked that Ravu might be—
Suddenly, Celine held something up between them.
Something Valerie recognized.
A Blue Light drive that had been in her desk. A slim, thin stick, no
bigger than a pen.
“Did you know about this?” Celine asked.
“About what?”
 “Ravu said the financial records of the brothel are on this,” Celine
continued. “The untampered ones. The client list. The rushed business
licenses, paid under the table. The accounting with false numbers. All of it.
He told me everything about Madame Allegria, about what she’s been
hiding.”
Valerie’s lungs didn’t seem to be working.
“I know why he gave it to me,” Celine continued, still regarding Valerie
carefully. “Because of who my son is, because of you. And because I have
the resources to help.”
What had Dravka been thinking? she thought, her mind whirring. She
pressed her palm into the desk, the whole lobby seeming to sway a bit.
They’d planned this, that much was obvious. And while Valerie hadn’t
been on the premises, they’d obviously managed to hack into the records
downstairs and store them. But how? How would they have the knowledge
to do something like that?
Suddenly, it made sense why Ravu was insistent that he meet with
Celine that night. Because none of it would matter if he didn’t give her the
Blue Light drive.
The Blue Light drive, given to a powerful woman who could actually
make herself be heard, that had enough incriminating evidence on it for
serious criminal charges to be brought against Madame Allegria.
Madame Allegria, who had no doubt blackmailed Celine Larchmont
into agreeing to this marriage. Madame Allegria, who Celine Larchmont
detested, who was sleeping with her son, which she also might know about
or at least suspect.
Valerie stared at the woman across from her, her lips parted though no
sound came out.
“For the record,” Celine said, “I never wanted you anywhere near my
son. I never wanted her anywhere near my family.”
“What…what are you going to do?” Valerie asked softly, realizing that
they were completely at Celine Larchmont’s mercy.
Because with the information on the Blue Light drive, Celine would
have power over Madame Allegria. She would cancel the engagement since
Celine never wanted the marriage to happen at all. Valerie would lose her
leverage. What did that mean for the bargain she’d struck with her aunt?
That Madame Allegria would close the brothel and pay the Keriv’i what she
owed them…and her promise that she’d never harm any of them again?
 Valerie swallowed. Suddenly, everything was vanishing around her like
smoke.
“Like I said,” Celine murmured quietly, “I care about Ravu. And I want
to help my friend.”
Celine slid something over the desk. A thick paper card, rectangular in
shape.
On it, she’d written an address and a patch number.
It was a private dock number at the Port, one she knew was used for
private charters because Madame Allegria often used them herself.
“Call me whenever you need to make use of it. We have a pilot on call
for such things,” Celine explained. “He can be ready to fly on short notice.”
Shock made her stare at Celine.
“What about your husband? Wouldn’t he—”
“Don’t worry, I know how to handle my husband,” Celine told her.
“I’ve had a lot of practice over the years.”
Valerie took the card, pocketing it quickly before the older woman
changed her mind.
Celine glanced at where she’d placed it in her dress. After a brief
moment of silence, she regarded Valerie carefully and said, “Consider that
the end of your engagement to Gabriel. I don’t want you anywhere near my
son. It has nothing to do with you, you understand, Valerie? In fact, I quite
like you. It has everything to do with…everything else.”
Madame Allegria. Everton. Their family’s lineage and money. What was
expected in society. The future of their company.
Celine Larchmont, when plotting out her son’s future, had never
accounted for Valerie.
Valerie would deal with the fallout of the failed engagement later. Her
priority would be getting Dravka, Tavak, and Ravu off Everton before
Madame Allegria ever learned of this.
“And what about that?” Valerie asked, gesturing to the Blue Light drive,
still in Celine’s grip.
Celine’s lips pressed together. “I haven’t decided yet. It is an
intoxicating thing, to have one of Everton’s most powerful citizens under
one’s heel.”
Valerie took a shuddering breath in.
“Will you give me a few days?” Valerie asked quietly. “Before you
announce anything about the engagement, before you inform her? It’ll give
me enough time to get them off Everton.”
Celine frowned. “You aren’t going with them? Ravu said—”
“I can’t,” Valerie said, thinking of the tracker imbedded in her shoulder.
If Valerie went with them, Madame Allegria would follow. She always
would. She didn’t want to think of the consequences when that happened.
Celine looked at her carefully. Finally, she nodded. “I’ll give you a few
days before I force her to retract the engagement in the Gazette.”
A small reprieve.
“Thank you,” Valerie said, inclining her head, rounding the desk as
Celine started towards the door.
Valerie walked her outside into the pleasant night air. The breeze was
warm, another sign that summer had almost arrived at the Programmers’
discretion.
“The private vessel can’t go far,” Celine murmured once they stepped
outside. “But it will take them as far as Nimida.”
The Nimida colony was a transport hub, one that catered to all beings
from all corners of the universe. If the Keriv’i reached there, they could
easily catch transport to the Second Quadrant. From there, Dumera was in
reach.
Valerie nodded, seeing a driverless car waiting at the end of the
walkway, idling at the curb. Celine must’ve called one before she came
downstairs.
“Good luck,” Celine said, surprising Valerie when she reached forward
and squeezed on her hand.
The woman turned, walking forward a few steps, her high heels clicking
on the pathway.
“Celine!” Valerie called out.
The blonde turned, quirking a perfect brow.
Valerie blew out a small breath, not quite sure what she wanted to say.
“Your night garden really is beautiful. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see more
of it,” she said softly, inclining her head to the woman who would’ve been
her mother-in-law.
The smile that Celine gave her was possibly the most genuine one she’d
ever seen from her. Something passed between them. An understanding, one
that went beyond Everton, beyond the situation they had both found
themselves in.
A simple understanding.
 Celine nodded at her once more, her smile still lingering.
Then she departed, walking quickly to the driverless car, keeping her
head down, before sliding inside.
The moment she was in, the car sped away…and then Valerie was alone
outside, in the dark alleyway leading towards the brothel.
She took in a deep breath, tilting her head back to the night sky, at the
projection of the moons—two tonight—and of the stars, fake, ancient
constellations she’d only ever read about.
What just happened? she wondered, still in disbelief.
To reassure herself, she fished out the heavy card that Celine had
written on, reading the address listed there, the docking bay number, and
Celine’s personal patch number until she had it memorized.
Suddenly, a soft, angry voice came from the entrance of the alleyway.
“Was that my mother?”
Valerie froze.
A dark figure approached her, stumbling slightly, but the voice was
easily recognizable.
Gabriel.
A very drunk Gabriel at that, Valerie thought, when his reddened face
and bleary eyes finally came into view.
Damn.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“W hat are you doing here, Gabriel?” Valerie asked, trying to

keep her voice calm.
“What,” he snapped, continuing his approach, “is my
mother doing at a fucking brothel?”
So he knew what this place was and where it was located. She
wondered if Madame Allegria had let that information slip during their
pillow talk.
“You’re drunk,” Valerie said, recognizing the tone she used as the one
she usually used with visiting clients. Polite, calm, yet sterile. “Let me call
you a car and—”
A gasp left her when Gabriel grabbed her arm, tugging her forward.
He must’ve been at Restaurant Row, which was the street just behind
them, because she could smell the liquor on his breath, sour and pungent.
His grip on her was rough and though her heart began to race, realizing
that they were alone in a darkened alley and he was very angry and very
drunk, her tone never changed as she said, “Let me go, Gabriel. You’re
hurting me.”
If anything, his grip tightened as Valerie struggled against him.
All her breath left her when he shoved her up against the alleyway wall,
his eyes flashing in the darkness.
“What was my mother doing here?” he roared in her face, shaking her,
her back pressing painfully into the wall.
“Gabriel, calm down,” she said, though her tone sounded a little higher
in pitch than it had before. “She just came to see me. To talk…about the w-
wedding.”
 “Do you think I’m a fool?” he hissed, his brows furrowing, growing
more and more angry by the second. “I’ll have her head for this.”
Whose? His mother’s? Or did he mean Madame Allegria’s?
The thought of Gabriel, as rich and powerful as his family was, going
up against her aunt made her want to laugh. Perhaps it was because this
situation was growing more and more worrisome.
“Tell me what you’re doing here,” Valerie said, trying to calm him
down, even as she tried to edge out from underneath his grip. Her back was
digging into the brick façade of the opposite building.
Thanks to the scar tissue there, however, she didn’t feel much. Just an
uncomfortable pressure. If anything, the shoulder where her tracker was
hurt the most. He’d slammed her into the wall hard. She swore the tracker
pushed deeper into her shoulder.
“Is my mother fucking a Krave?” Gabriel asked her, keeping his voice
terrifyingly low. Then, suddenly, his mood seemed to change. His eyes
moved over her face. He pressed his body closer. His voice dropped until it
was like a purr. “You can tell me. I’m to be your husband after all, my
pretty little bride. We will have no secrets.”
A little shard of icy fear seemed to stab down her throat.
She tried to swallow, the sound audible between them.
“Tell me!” he snapped, a lock of his dark hair falling over his eyes as his
sour breath drifted across her cheek. For someone so handsome, he hid his
cruelty well. Just like her aunt.
Maybe they are perfect for each other, she couldn’t help but think.
“I told you,” she said, hating the way her voice trembled. “She just
came to talk about the wedding. About—about the flowers! Which ones I
preferred and—”
Valerie saw the exact moment when he grew frustrated with her and his
patience ended. She saw it snap in his eyes and his hand darted out, quicker
than expected, just as she heard a loud boom, something splintering across
the ground.
Valerie had been hit enough times by Madame Allegria that she wasn’t
surprised by the sharp flash of pain, the blooming heat across her face.
Except Gabriel hadn’t slapped her. It was his fist that had connected with
her temple and bright white spots seemed to dance in her vision afterwards,
her hands coming up to ward off any further blows.
That was when she heard it.
 A strange, trilling growl that seemed to echo through the alleyway.
Belatedly, she realized the loud boom she’d heard had been the door to
the brothel. Part of it, as heavy as it was, was lying on the pathway.
Splintered. Broken. Half of it was off its hinges.
And standing on the threshold was Dravka.
An enraged Dravka, with fury in his gaze.
Valerie barely had time to cry out before he lunged for Gabriel.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

R age and hatred like he’d never known seemed to choke him. Even
losing his father and sister hadn’t felt like this. There had been
grief there, an overwhelming depression combined with his
helpless anger, but it hadn’t felt like this.
But the moment that Dravka had seen the human male strike Valerie, the
moment he heard the thick, sickening thud of it landed across her temple, a
place he’d kissed the night before, that rage snapped and lashed at him, like
a whip across his back.
He didn’t remember lunging for him. He didn’t remember tackling him
to the ground.
But before he knew it, the human male was underneath him, looking up
at him with fear and bewilderment and perhaps a little bit of disgust.
So this was Gabriel Larchmont.
Dravka unleashed that fury, finding its channel, and his fist connected
with the human’s face, that same sickening thud echoing through the
alleyway. Dravka didn’t feel the dull ache from the bones compressing in
his hand. He hit him again, a growl rising in his throat.
This male dared to harm his female!
“Get the fuck off of me!” Gabriel cried out, his nose leaking red blood,
his tone nasally, bucking underneath him. Like he could squirm his little
body out from underneath a Keriv’i. As if he was stronger than a Keriv’i.
Gabriel’s fist caught Dravka across the jaw in his flailing and Dravka
responded with two more punches across his cheeks, quick and clean.
There was a strange rushing in his ears. All he could see was Valerie,
pressed against a wall, her hands coming up to defend herself, her back
hunching.
And I wasn’t there to protect her, he thought.
He bellowed, trying to tear that memory from his mind.
But I’m vauking here now, he finished, three more rapid punches falling
across Gabriel’s face, his whole being seeming to lock in on him.
This male had hurt his mate, his female! The one he loved! He would
have his vauking blood. He wouldn’t be satisfied—he wouldn’t rest—until
it coated the entire path leading up to the brothel. A warning to others. To
never come near his female. To never think about harming her, touching
her.
No one would ever dare—
“Dravka!” came Valerie’s panicked, shaky voice, her soft hands tugging
at him. “Stop, you’ll kill him!”
Clarity returned, her fear permeating the foggy haze that had descended
over him with a singular purpose.
Vauk.
Vauk…because for a moment, he’d wanted to kill him.
Dravka froze, growling, his arm cocked back, angled down for another
blow.
That was when he felt it.
The warm blood coating his fist. The metallic scent in the air. Valerie’s
rapid breaths. Hands on him.
Hers?
Veki.
Tavak’s.
Tavak and Ravu were trying to pull Dravka off Gabriel underneath him.
The human male was limp and unmoving, his face bloodied.
“Stop,” Tavak growled in his ear. “It’s done. He won’t hurt her. It’s
enough.”
Dravka stumbled away from Tavak, dragging the warm night air into his
tight lungs, though it didn’t seem like he could get enough.
Valerie.
He turned towards her when he felt her tentative touch on his arm. His
hands were covered in blood but he still cupped her face, turning it to
inspect the reddened spot at her temple.
She flinched when he brushed it, a wince escaping her. That fury rose in
him again. He almost swung back towards Gabriel to finish the vauking
job…
Only Valerie reached up, tugging his gaze away from the human lying
on the ground, Tavak hovering over him, checking for a pulse no doubt.
“Dravka, look at me,” Valerie ordered, her voice shaking. She still
sounded afraid. Of him? “Dravka.”
He realized he was still growling and he made an effort to stop, though
the Keriv’i in him was still thirsting for blood.
“Look at me,” Valerie whispered and Dravka focused his gaze on hers,
locking eyes. “That’s it.”
Suddenly, he felt his hearts begin to slow. His pupils contracted from
their dilated state, his vision darkening. His chest was bare but he felt a
streak of rapidly cooling blood across it.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his cheek. “I’m
okay.”
A massive breath escaped his lungs and he wrapped his arms around
her. A part of him felt relieved when she returned his embrace without
hesitation. A part of him had worried that the fear in her voice had been
because of him, because of what she’d witnessed, that feral, violent part of
him.
But he would vauking destroy anyone who sought to hurt her.
He felt the way her heart thundered against his chest. Then Tavak’s
voice cut between them.
“He’s alive,” the male said. “Just unconscious. He might wake soon.”
Vauk.
Valerie pulled away and Dravka turned his gaze to the two brothers,
hovering over Gabriel’s limp form. They must’ve followed after him once
he’d stormed from the Cluster. Then he remembered…he’d been watching
the little courtyard in front of the brothel, had seen Valerie escort Celine
Larchmont away.
Then he’d watched with trepidation as a male figure had approached
Valerie, who’d been alone and unprotected. His voice had been raised,
booming against the walls. He’d heard ‘mother’ and knew that this was
Gabriel Larchmont, the sorry excuse for a human male who dared to lay his
hands on a female.
His female.
He’d raced from the Cluster, hearing the anger in Gabriel’s voice, and
he’d burst from the brothel, nearly blowing the entire door off its hinges…
just in time to see Valerie pressed against the alley wall and Gabriel’s fist
connect with her head.
“Dravka,” Valerie whispered, pressing a hand to his chest. He realized
he was growling again.
He made the effort to stop, closing his eyes.
She doesn’t need this right now, he told himself. Pull yourself together
so you can be useful.
He took a few more calming breaths. When he opened his eyes, while
the rage simmered underneath, he didn’t feel like it would control him. Not
any longer.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped to her. “I’m sorry you saw—”
“It’s okay,” she told him, biting her lip, worrying it when she cast a
glance to Gabriel on the ground. “But we have a serious problem.”
Realization seemed to dawn on all of them at once.
“Vauk,” Ravu rasped, raking a hand over his head. He’d just finished
with Celine Larchmont, had just given the woman the Blue Light drive…
and now her son was bleeding all over the pathway she’d just walked down.
“When he wakes up,” Valerie said quietly, “he’ll have you imprisoned.
Or worse.”
Vauk, vauk, vauk.
“There’s an easy way to make sure he won’t wake up,” Tavak
murmured.
“Not helping,” Valerie snapped quietly, not taking Tavak’s words
seriously…though Ravu and Dravka knew better.
“What the vauk are we going to do?” Ravu rasped.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

D Right.
amn it, think!
“We need to get him inside,” Dravka murmured, his tone low
and guttural. Roughened. “Someone might have heard…”

Valerie nodded and then watched as Tavak and Ravu hoisted a limp
Gabriel up. She ran a hand down her arm, over the tender place there where
Gabriel had gripped her roughly. She felt a headache blooming across her
temple where he’d hit her.
And Dravka…
She’d never seen him like that before. He would’ve killed Gabriel if she
hadn’t managed to stop him, if Tavak and Ravu hadn’t been there to pull
him off.
Dravka was watching her, studying her. As if he was worried that he’d
frightened her.
And while she was frightened, it wasn’t of him. It was for him.
She would never be scared of him because she knew that he would
never hurt her. But she knew what he thought…
To help assuage his fears, she went high on her toes and pressed a kiss
to his downturned lips. He blinked, his shoulders seeming to relax. There
was a little splattering of blood across his cheek. It was a dark red, so she
knew it wasn’t his.
“I need to think,” she whispered, almost to herself.
Dravka nodded and they both went inside the brothel. She cast a look
over her shoulder, hoping there had been no witnesses. But London Street
seemed quiet enough and the brothel was set back far enough into the alley
that no one strayed too close.
Dravka shouldered the broken door closed, as much as he could. Once
they were inside the walls of the brothel, once she breathed in the familiar
scent of leather and brandy, of Celine Larchmont’s lingering perfume, she
thought she could focus.
Celine.
A small breath left her and she reached for the card she’d managed to
tuck back inside her pocket when she’d spotted Gabriel weaving down the
alley.
She stared down at the address, at the patch number. Celine had just left
moments before…
But if she discovered that Gabriel was half-beaten to death, unconscious
in the brothel, would she be so willing to help them anymore?
Somehow, Valerie didn’t think so. Celine Larchmont loved her son
fiercely, despite the type of man that he was. She was his mother, after all.
A mother’s love was sometimes blind.
Her breaths were coming quick and she fastened her eyes on the Keriv’i
males in the lobby. Tavak and Ravu had deposited Gabriel in one of the
leather armchairs next to the glittering cart of booze Dravka had once
helped himself to.
“You have to leave Everton,” she told them, her voice oddly…calm. She
felt her heart beginning to splinter when she met Dravka’s eyes. “Tonight.”
Dravka’s frown deepened.
Tavak and Ravu exchanged looks.
“Celine will help you get off the colony. She gave me an address to her
private docking bay. If I call her now, she can have a pilot there soon,”
Valerie continued.
Her gaze strayed to Gabriel, his head lolled on the back of the chair.
Blood was leaking from his nose and was beginning to dry. Already, dark
bruises were blooming under his skin. The place around his eyes looked
reddened.
“It has to be tonight,” she whispered. “If she finds out about Gabriel…”
She cleared her throat.
“If she finds out about Gabriel, she won’t help us,” Valerie finished, the
plan coming together in her mind, snapping and locking into place. “Tavak,
can you go get a sedative injection from a med kit? We have to make sure
he won’t wake up. Not until you are safely on Nimida.”
This would work but they had to act quickly.
“Nimida?” Ravu asked, watching as his brother immediately left,
heading towards one of the mating rooms on the second floor, which always
had fresh medical kits on hand.
“Yes, I’ll explain on the way,” Valerie said, already rounding the
reception desk, her hand fumbling for her Nu device. She blew out a breath,
calming her features, smoothing her hair into place. “Take him into the back
office.”
Ravu nodded, lifting Gabriel’s still form himself as Dravka rounded the
reception desk towards her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, studying her.
“I’m thinking that if you are still on Everton by the time Gabriel
Larchmont wakes up,” Valerie said, placing Celine’s card down on the desk
in front of her, staring down at the patch number, “then you will be taken
away by Patrol and charged. Imprisoned. Or worse.”
She grabbed his hand, her thumb brushing over his knuckles, which
were raw and bloodied. He didn’t even flinch.
“I need to get you off Everton tonight, Dravka,” Valerie whispered, her
heart aching at the thought. “All of you.”
Whatever Dravka saw in her gaze, he knew better than to argue with
her. He could read her well. He knew she would not be swayed from this.
“Go change,” she whispered, trying to keep a level head. “You can’t
show up to the docking bay covered in blood, okay?”
Dravka’s jaw clenched but eventually he pulled away from her. Valerie
watched him race up the staircase, rounding the corner just as Tavak
returned from the second floor, a fresh med kit in his hands.
He nodded at her and then went into the back office when he heard
Ravu call out for him. They would get Gabriel injected with the sedative.
Everything would be fine.
Blowing out a sharp breath, she dialed Celine’s patch number into the
Nu.
It rang once, twice—Valerie could feel her heartbeat in her throat—and
then the blonde’s confused face popped up in the blue light of the hologram.
“Valerie?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
 Judging by the hushed sound in the background, Valerie knew she was
still in the driverless car, probably still on her way home to the Garden
District.
“That, um, pilot you have on call,” Valerie said, keeping her voice light,
“do you think you can have him meet us tonight?”
Her brows rose in surprise. “Tonight?”
“Yes, soon actually,” Valerie said, trying to think up a quick excuse.
“Madame Allegria just called to say she’ll be out to dinner with a friend all
night. I think it would give us enough time. She won’t expect it. It’s the
perfect opportunity.”
Celine was still confused. And Valerie hated that she was lying to her,
that her son was lying in the next room bleeding all over the place and
unconscious…then again, Valerie could still feel the pounding headache
from his punch reverberating down her spine. So, she didn’t feel too guilty.
And as for Dravka?
Valerie would do anything.
“If you’re certain,” Celine finally said and Valerie almost sighed in
relief, even as her ears remained perked for any signs of Gabriel. “I’ll give
him a call now. He can meet you within thirty minutes, if need be.”
“Thank you,” Valerie said quietly, inclining her head. “That would be
great.”
Celine’s lips pressed together. She inclined her head too and then
disconnected.
Valerie released a shaky breath, reaching up a trembling hand to run
through her hair just as Dravka raced back down the stairs, a small bag in
hand.
Tavak and Ravu emerged from the back office, closing it tightly, the
med kit still dangling from Tavak’s grip.
“He’s sedated,” Tavak said. “I gave him two doses. It should keep him
under until the morning.”
“Good,” Valerie said, although she knew it would just need to keep him
under until she returned from the Port and could figure out the next step in
her plan. “Pack anything that you need and quickly. Celine is calling the
pilot of the vessel and he can meet us shortly.”
Ravu blew out a breath.
“Are we really doing this?” he asked quietly. “Tonight?”
 There was a strained expression on his features, one that Valerie hadn’t
expected. But maybe one that she could understand. All of them had been
here well before she’d arrived on Everton. For over 10 years, these walls
had housed them. They had a routine. They knew what to expect, day in and
day out.
And now?
They were hurtling towards the unknown quicker than they’d
anticipated…but ultimately, they were going towards the possibility of a
better, more fulfilling life. Filled with decisions they could make on their
own, not decisions forced on them by others.
Maybe it was a scary thought. Maybe that was why Ravu suddenly
looked so unsure.
“Pax,” Tavak murmured, clasping his brother on his shoulder. “We’re
doing this tonight. Let’s go.”
Then they went up the stairs, taking three at a time. They wouldn’t be
long. They hardly had any possessions to pack and that thought alone made
Valerie sad.
“What do you need to bring?” Dravka asked. “Want me to—”
“Dravka,” Valerie whispered.
“Don’t,” he growled, suddenly rounding on her with furious eyes.
Though with Dravka, she didn’t feel the fear she’d felt with Gabriel. “Don’t
argue with me. I’ve already told you.”
“Told me what?”
“If you don’t get on that vessel with me tonight,” he said, stepping up to
her until there was hardly any space between them, “then I’m not going
either.”
“You have to,” she whispered, trying to give him a small smile.
“And I will,” he said, cupping the back of her neck. He was wearing a
thin, soft shirt that molded to his chest and he’d cleaned up his hands and
the blood spatter across his cheek. When she touched his chest, it was warm
and hard, his heat blooming across her palm. “I will because you’ll be right
beside me.”
Then he kissed her and she gasped into him, suddenly desperate to get
closer. Valerie’s hands clutched at his shoulders, gripping him tight, afraid
he would pull away. His tongue swept between her lips and she couldn’t get
enough of his taste, of his smell.
 Valerie made a little whimpering sound in the back of her throat and she
felt his hearts beating, strong and quick, against her breasts.
When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers and
murmured, “Tonight, we’ll leave Everton behind. Together. And then I can
finally give you the life you deserve. I’ll make you happy, mellkia. I
promise you.”
Valerie let out a shuddering sigh against him.
“Now, tell me what you want packed and I’ll go downstairs and get it
for you,” Dravka murmured.
And because she knew he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, not again,
she said, “My mother’s perfume. Just that. It’s in a little vial on my dresser.”
At least he would have something of hers—one of her most cherished
things. Valerie wanted him to have it.
He nodded once, relief in his gaze, and turned, heading towards the
basement door before disappearing down the staircase.
When Valerie was alone, she closed her eyes, knowing that she would
have to say goodbye to the male she loved tonight, knowing that she might
not ever see him again. She might not ever hear his voice, feel his touch, his
kiss.
She didn’t think she had the strength to say goodbye…but she needed to
be brave. For his sake. For his future.
She nodded, opened her eyes, blowing out a small breath.
Then she returned to her Nu device, calling them a driverless car,
though she made sure it was the largest vehicle size. It would need to be to
accommodate three Keriv’i males.
And once Dravka returned from her room, shouldering his satchel?
Once Tavak and Ravu returned to the lobby once again? Once she got an
alert on her Nu that the car was waiting outside?
It was time.
“Let’s go,” Valerie said softly.
She sounded more brave than she felt.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T he private entrance to the docking bay was, fortunately, not

guarded.
The Port itself was a large, sprawling area that took up
approximately three square miles of space on Everton. It was massive. And
it was responsible for the majority of the jobs on Everton, like most
colonies.
Valerie swallowed when she saw a towering building in the midst of it
all. It read ‘Larchmont’ on the face, another reminder of Gabriel back at the
brothel, a reminder of Celine.
A reminder of everything they had to lose if this failed.
Dravka squeezed her hand as the driverless car came to a stop in front
of the gate. Beyond the black iron, Valerie could see a pleasure vessel,
larger than she expected—much larger than the public transport she’d taken
to Everton from Genesis for that matter—and she heard the dull whirring of
the engines.
The pilot was already there. On their approach, the gate slid open but
the car didn’t move since it was only programmed to journey to that
specific marker of the address.
“Let’s go,” she told the three Keriv’i males crammed in the car.
Dravka buttoned for the door and it swung open silently. He stepped
from the car, helping her down, and she was followed closely by Tavak and
Ravu.
The air felt colder in the Port and she shivered. Thankfully, however, it
was dark and she didn’t see anyone around, considering it was nearly
eleven at night.
 Valerie led them through the gate, her flat shoes clapping on the
unmarked pavement. When they approached the vessel, the slim silver ramp
lowered and a man descended it, coming to meet them. He was tall and
handsome, with grey peppering his temples.
Blowing out a small breath, Valerie gave the man a small smile, nodding
her head in greeting, as if this was a regular occurrence, as if this wasn’t
strange in the slightest.
“Miss…Browen?” the man asked, his gaze darting to the three Keriv’i
males that surrounded her.
“Valerie, please,” she told the male.
“Ben Vanner,” he said, introducing himself.
Valerie had to hand it to Ben. After his initial surprise at seeing the
Keriv’is in her company, he didn’t blink. She wondered if Celine had
warned him. But he’d have to be discreet, right? Working as a private pilot
for the Larchmonts?
That realization made her shoulders loosen, though only slightly.
“Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice,” she told Ben,
flashing him another smile, one she hoped didn’t waver with her nerves.
“Did Celine tell you the destination?”
“Nimida,” he said, inclining his head. “I’ll have you there in about four
hours.”
Four hours. The pleasure vessel must be fast then. That was how long it
had taken her to reach Everton from Genesis. And Nimida was much farther
away.
“That would be great,” she said.
“Come aboard,” the pilot said, stepping back into the vessel after he
ascended the ramp again. “I have a few last checks to run but we will be on
our way shortly.”
Valerie nodded, watching as he disappeared from view.
And sorrow descended over her when her gaze connected with
Dravka’s. Because this was it…
Tavak and Ravu had already begun to climb the ramp.
Dravka saw whatever it was in her gaze and his own hardened.
“Veki.”
Tavak and Ravu paused when they heard the word and Valerie felt her
bottom lip tremble.
 Tears began to flow in her vision, the back of her nostrils stinging, a
lump rising in her throat. She didn’t want to cry but how could she not? It
all suddenly felt so real. Too real.
“I have to stay behind,” she told him. “She’ll find you otherwise.”
“We can come to a deal with the pilot. He won’t say a word,” Dravka
said, his tone still unyielding. “No one will know where we’ve gone, except
Celine Larchmont. And she has more reason to make us disappear than
anyone. What are you so worried about?”
Valerie’s gaze slid to the dark sky behind him.
“Do you…do you not want to come? With us?” Dravka asked quietly.
“With me?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, her gaze swinging back towards him. “I
want nothing more than that!”
“Then tell me why,” he snapped, frustration and confusion eating at
him.
Valerie’s hand reached up to the back of her shoulder. When she
shrugged it, she could feel that little device wedged against the bone,
pressing uncomfortably. A constant reminder.
“She put a tracker in me shortly after I arrived on Everton,” Valerie told
him, not shying from his gaze. She sensed Tavak and Ravu coming back
down the ramp and her eyes went to them. “That’s why I can’t go with you.
She can find me. She will always find me. And if she does, that means
she’ll find you.”
“She put a tracker in you,” Dravka repeated quietly, his eyes flashing
with rage.
“Yes,” Valerie whispered. “In my shoulder.”
Tavak cursed, the sound low and guttural. Dravka’s nostrils flared.
“All this time…” he murmured, shaking his head. “This is why?”
“You’ll never have peace, now that the engagement is over,” Valerie
continued softly. “I have no power over her anymore, which means I can’t
protect you. And once she finds you gone…”
She didn’t even want to think about Madame Allegria’s rage. Her rage
once she found out that her engagement to Gabriel Larchmont was over.
Her rage once she found out that Celine Larchmont had a Blue Light drive
full of information that could have her imprisoned, that would bring her life
and wealth crumbling down, burying her…
Dravka’s jaw set. Maybe now he finally understood why—
 “I told you,” Dravka murmured, “that if you don’t get on that vessel, I
won’t either. And I meant it.”
Her breath hitched in disbelief. Her brows furrowed. “Dravka—”
“So I’m going to ask you something,” Dravka continued, cutting off her
words.
Valerie frowned, her eyes going to Tavak and Ravu in confusion.
“What?”
“Will you be brave for me, mellkia?” Dravka asked, his eyes pained.
“For us?”
“What?” she whispered, staring at Dravka.
“You love me, Val,” he continued. “And I love you. Deeply. Always. I
want us to start a new life. Together. On Dumera. Like we always talked
about, pax?”
Her heartbeat tripled.
“Yes, I remember,” she said, her eyes going glassy again.
“You want that?”
She swallowed, her throat tight. Her voice was ragged when she said,
“More than anything.”
She began to cry, fat tears dripping down her cheeks, her breaths
coming quick.
His nostrils flared again and his back straightened. He came to her,
wiping the tears away. Gently, he said, “Then tell me one thing, mellkia…”
“Yes?”
“Where is it in your shoulder exactly?”
Ravu cursed this time. Blood started to rush in Valerie’s ears.
“And will you be brave for us?” Dravka went on, his own voice
dropping, his tone strained. “This will hurt you, even with a sedative. And I
wish to the demavs that I could take the pain for you, but I can’t. I do,
however, have very steady hands.”
He…
He wanted to cut the tracker out of her?
Valerie’s eyes darted back and forth between his own. Trying to think.
Trying to read him.
That was when she felt it.
Hope.
Fucking hope.
For the first time…
 That…they might actually have a chance at this. That she might actually
get to be with Dravka, to live beside him, for the rest of their lives.
Valerie had looked into the surgery that would remove the tracker once.
Not that she’d ever be able to afford it, given that Madame Allegria had
never paid her a single credit…but she’d still looked. She’d still hoped that
maybe one day, she would be rid of it. She’d hoped that one day she’d leave
and never worry again about her aunt finding her.
Back then, she knew it was foolish. She had no credits. Even then, she
had nowhere to go, not that she’d ever leave Dravka behind.
She froze with understanding.
So why had she expected him to leave her behind?
“Dravka,” she whispered, realizing that she’d asked him an impossible
and selfish thing.
Well, now she had somewhere to go. She had a vessel, fueled and ready.
She had credits.
She had Dravka.
And the price to have all of it?
Some pain, fleeting and temporary.
He would never leave her behind.
That left only one option…a risk they would have to take.
“Do it,” she whispered, nodding, reaching forward to take his hand. “If
you think you can, then get it out of me. Make sure she never finds us
again.”
Relief—and dark determination—flashed over his face.
In the next moment, he was kissing her, a desperate, wild thing that
made her want to smile and laugh.
For their future?
She could handle anything.
“You have to do it quickly,” Tavak cut in, making the both of them pull
away from their kiss. The other male looked pensive, focused. “If the
tracker sends its transmission for too long, she might be able to determine
our course.”
Valerie sobered, her fingers digging into Dravka’s shoulders.
“We also can’t afford to wait here,” Ravu argued, exchanging a look
with his brother. “We should leave Everton now. Get the tracker out within
an hour of our flight. That should be fast enough.”
Valerie blew out a breath. Her gaze returned to Dravka’s.
 He gave her a small nod.
“Are you ready?” he rasped.
“Yes,” she said, her voice firm, though her hands shook. It wasn’t from
the fear of pain, however. It was the excitement and possibility, and the
adrenaline of finally leaving Everton. With him.
Nothing else mattered.
She wanted to scream her happiness, her relief, up to the sky and let it
echo around Everton.
But they didn’t have time for that.
“My brave female,” Dravka murmured down to her, clasping her hand
in his own. “I’ll take care of this. I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to
worry anymore.”
And because she believed him, trusted him more than anyone…Valerie
had never heard sweeter words in her entire life.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

O nce they got on board the vessel, they were greeted by expensive,
clean, modern furnishings. There was a row of seating for takeoff
and landing, ten in total and none that would seat a Keriv’i male
comfortably. Beyond the seating area was a large open space, complete with
a small bar—the bottles of sloshing liquor magnetically secured—the
largest Nu device that Dravka had ever seen mounted on the wall, and plush
white couches that made an ‘L’ shape around the room.
They hadn’t been in the vessel for more than a couple minutes before
Ben, the pilot, returned and informed them they were ready to launch and to
strap in. Valerie had squeezed his hand—her cheeks flushed, her eyes
glittering—and they’d taken a seat next to each other while Tavak and Ravu
strapped in on the opposite row.
“Is this really happening?” Valerie whispered to him, stroking her
thumb over his hand.
“Pax,” he murmured to her, but his mind was elsewhere. “Let me feel
where the tracker is. Show me.”
She brought his hand to the back of her shoulder and pressed his
fingertips into the hard bone. She wiggled his grip, flinching slightly when
he felt a little groove there.
His nostrils flared again. He might not ever see Madame Allegria ever
again but it didn’t stop him from wishing he could…if only to seek the
vengeance he needed. She’d had her niece implanted with a tracker. He’d
heard of this kind of surgery before.
And feeling where it was placed now? He worried he wouldn’t be able
to get it out. It felt like it was in the bone.
 Dravka took his hand away.
What if he couldn’t get it out? he wondered.
Would Madame Allegria hunt them across the universe?
Yes, he knew. She undoubtedly would. She was spiteful and controlling.
She wouldn’t take kindly to the knowledge that they’d all snuck out from
under her nose, that they’d planned to betray her by giving all her secrets to
Celine Larchmont.
She would want revenge for that alone.
And Dravka knew that the first being she would take out that anger
on…was Valerie. Not them.
“Hey,” Valerie whispered, reaching up to turn his face towards her. “You
have that look on your face.”
Dravka’s shoulders loosened slightly just seeing her, scenting her close,
feeling her warmth against him.
“What look?” he grunted, reaching up to brush his thumb across her
lips. He’d never get over how soft they were, how they felt against his own.
Unable to resist, he leaned forward to kiss her and Valerie sighed into
him.
“Like you’re a million light-years away,” she whispered.
Which was odd because Dravka had never felt more centered than when
he was with her.
He felt his ears pop, felt pressure descend in the cabin. He looked up,
confused, frowning when he felt an artificial gravity weighing down his
bones, heavy and unnatural. He hadn’t felt that since he’d journeyed to
Everton. But surely they weren’t already in—
His hearts tripled in pace when he looked out the long, rectangular
window at the back of the lounge space. Inky blackness, sprinkled with
bright flecks of stars.
“Wow,” Valerie murmured. “This is an expensive vessel. I didn’t even
feel the take off.”
An expensive vessel, paid for by a very wealthy family.
His lips pressed together, thinking about the rust bucket he’d journeyed
to Everton on. He’d remembered thinking he’d burn up on takeoff, that the
protective heat panels would fly right off, or that the whole vessel would
combust under the pressure.
Across from them, Tavak and Ravu seemed to be remembering the same
thing, judging by the looks on their faces.
 “We’re off Everton,” Valerie said quietly, a soft, disbelieving awe in her
voice.
Dravka didn’t have time to dwell on that fact. As soon as the gravity had
kicked in, they’d been free to unbuckle and free to roam.
Free to cut out a tracker in his female’s shoulder. Free to dig into her
flesh, cause her pain, and make her hurt.
Vauk.
But he would do this. He needed to.
“Dravka,” Tavak said, already unbuckling from his seat and standing,
swaying a bit with the heaviness of the gravity. “Vauk, I haven’t missed
that.”
Keriv’i didn’t do well during space travel. It wasn’t pleasant. It never
had been, no matter how expensive and smooth the vessel was. Valerie
seemed fine, however. Then again, she’d grown up with artificial gravity
her entire life, in one form or another. She’d never felt anything different.
“Med kit,” Tavak said, rummaging through the bag he’d brought with
him and pulling it out. “I used two of the sedatives on the male but there are
two left in here. Along with a healing laser.”
Valerie unbuckled from her seat, blowing out a determined breath.
“Where should we do this?”
Dravka gestured to the white couch in the lounge and he pulled out a
large tunic from his own bag before laying it down there. Despite
everything, Celine Larchmont was helping them. The least they could do
was try not to get blood all over her private vessel. Especially considering
he’d beaten her son into a bloody pulp—though rightfully deserved.
Focus, he ordered himself.
Valerie lay down flat on her stomach and Dravka kneeled at her side,
flipping open the med kit that Tavak had—thankfully—brought. His eyes
strayed to the door that separated them from the pilot. Closed. And
hopefully it would remain that way.
Valerie was wearing a thin-strapped dress, given the warm weather on
Everton. He slipped the strap off her left shoulder, catching glimpses of her
scarred back when he did. His nostrils flared but…that was when he was
reminded.
He’d tended to his Valerie before. He’d helped her then. He would help
her now.
 As if reading his thoughts, Valerie reached out for his hand and
squeezed, giving him an extra jolt of confidence.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered to him.
He nodded.
He sensed Ravu and Tavak lingering behind him, but staying far enough
away that it wouldn’t be a distraction.
“Need anything?” Tavak asked.
“Veki,” he said, fishing out a scalpel wrapped in sanitation film from the
med kit. “Just stay close.”
There were no numbing agents, however, though he took out a sedative
injection, breaking the seal. When he held it up to Valerie, she pressed her
lips and nodded. It wouldn’t be enough to take away the pain, but it might
be enough to knock her out for a brief while.
“Everything will be all right,” he told her as he pressed the small needle
tip into the back of her neck. A small hissing sound broke out as the liquid
seeped into her. “I promise, mellkia.”
“I know,” Valerie whispered, giving him a soft smile, her eyelids
immediately beginning to droop.
After another steadying breath, Dravka took up the scalpel again,
waiting a few more moments for the sedative to kick in.
Then he started.

IT DIDN’T TAKE AN HOUR.

But it was undoubtedly one of the longest spans of time in Dravka’s
life…those ten minutes.
Ten minutes of his hearts pumping, of watching blood seep from his
female, feeling her jerk and groan when the sedative couldn’t keep her
under long enough.
He’d needed Tavak to soak up the blood with gauze. Humans bled. A
lot. He hadn’t realized how much but their blood must be thin. And he’d
only made a small incision, just large enough so he could reach the tracker.
He felt it with the tip of the blade. A grating metal sound, though he
couldn’t see it. And he hated that he’d had to drag the blunt edge of the
blade across her bone, so he could be sure about where the tracker lay.
 At times, Dravka wanted to roar with his frustration, with the wrongness
of this…causing her pain. But it was inevitable.
He kept his hands steady, however. They’d never been steadier. All
those years of tinkering with things, all those years of making little trinkets
for his sister and his father were paying off. They’d made him careful.
They’d made him precise.
Keeping his voice low, sensing that Valerie had passed out again, he told
Tavak and Ravu, “It’s fused to the bone.”
Which was what he’d been afraid of.
He was also afraid that they were running out of time. Not because of
the transmissions the tracker was pinging back to Everton…but because he
was worried Valerie would bleed too much. Soon, he would need to laser
the incision closed after he disinfected it.
“Vauk,” Tavak cursed.
“Let me see,” Ravu said, pressing a hand onto his shoulder.
Dravka hesitated, keeping the tip of the blade steady inside Valerie’s
shoulder, poised just over the tracker.
“She’s my friend too, Dravka,” Ravu said quietly. “I’ll try not to hurt
her. But I need to feel if there is a vulnerable patch on the tracker. If there
is, I can simply destroy it if I can slice through the chip. Destroy it so we
don’t have to remove it. Not now at least. We just need to stop it from
sending transmissions to her.”
He was right. And Ravu had no doubt seen and worked with these kinds
of things—black market tech, trackers included—back on Jrika.
Though he was loathe to do so, Dravka growled and let Ravu take over,
knowing that it was the best decision for Valerie, for them all. Ravu might
not have as steady hands but he would know what to look for.
Dravka stayed at Valerie’s side, however, wiping a cool cloth from the
med kit over her forehead when he saw her perspiring, though her eyes
were closed. Her whole face was pale, leached of color, and it made him
feel powerless.
“Everything will be all right, mellkia,” he murmured to her, smoothing
his thumb across her cheek.
After this, he would give her everything she deserved, everything she
ever wanted. Her freedom. A home. A garden. Children. Dravka would
make her happy, just as she would make him happy.
That was the future they were looking forward to.
 But she was so pale. So vauking pale. And her blood looked black
against her flesh, soaking through her dress.
“Ravu,” Dravka growled.
“Give me a moment,” Ravu said, his teeth gritted. “I feel it. I just need
to—”
Valerie flinched in her sleep, her eyes popping open briefly, a hiss
escaping her lips.
“Vauk,” Ravu rasped.
Valerie’s eyes connected with his own. Though his expression was no
doubt thunderous with his worry and frustration, he pressed a gentle kiss to
her forehead and then felt her entire body slump once more.
His hearts froze but then picked up in speed when he felt her breaths.
How much blood could humans lose before it was fatal?
Dravka had no intention of finding out.
“Ravu, we have to stop,” Dravka growled. “She’s—”
“I almost…have it,” Ravu grated, his eyes focused above Valerie, on the
wall the couch backed up against. He held himself very still. “Almost.”
Dravka blew out a harsh breath, his hearts still thundering. He looked
across towards Tavak, whose lips were pressed tight together.
Vauk, they didn’t have that much time anymore.
More blood pushed from Valerie’s wound, trailing down her side and
hot against his fingers when he blotted at it.
“There,” Ravu rasped.
A sharp click came after his words.
In the next moment, he extracted the tip of the blade from her shoulder,
gleaming red.
“You destroyed it?” Dravka asked, taking Ravu’s place when the male
jumped back. Immediately, Tavak poured disinfectant over the wound as
Dravka powered on the healing laser.
“Pax,” Ravu stated, his voice sounding strained. “I’m sure I got it.”
Sure?
Or unwaveringly certain?
It didn’t matter, Dravka realized. Not right then, as he started to laser
the incision closed, a small tendril of smoke rising from the slim device. He
knew what it felt like. Hot and burning against the flesh. It was a small
mercy that Valerie was unconscious at that moment, though she hadn’t been
when he’d had to laser the wounds on her back from her aunt’s whip.
 My brave female, he thought, his admiration for her strength surging.
It didn’t take long for Dravka to laser the wound closed. Once they
reached Nimida, the first thing he’d do would be to purchase a numbing
agent for her and something to help with the pain.
He blew out a long breath, sitting back on his heels when it was
finished. Quiet descended in the cabin, the pressure from the gravity
bringing on a pounding headache.
Then he leaned forward, brushing a strand of hair away from Valerie’s
face.
“You’re certain?” Tavak asked his brother quietly, his voice cutting
through the quiet.
Ravu nodded. “We can have it scanned on Nimida. Just in case. But I
felt the chip snap. It shouldn’t be transmitting anymore. The signal should
be dark.”
A small relief then.
That meant they were lost in the stars.
Away from Everton, on the cusp of a new life.
Untouchable.
For now, Dravka’s mind whispered, staring at the blood on his female’s
back.

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“M ellkia,” came his voice.

It sounded incredibly far away but as Valerie’s heavy
eyelids lifted, as her blurry vision came swirling into
view, so did the pain and the throbbing headache.
Her mouth felt dry, an after effect of the sedative, she knew. She was
disoriented and felt like there was a heavy pressure weighing her down.
“There you are,” Dravka murmured as he came into focused view. He
was above her. No, she realized. She was cradled in his arms, though he
was careful to keep his touch away from her left shoulder.
The tracker, she remembered.
“Did,” she started, though her voice sounded hoarse, “…did it work?”
They were moving, she realized. There was a heaviness that she wasn’t
used to, weighing her down.
“Is it gone?”
“We couldn’t take it out,” he answered quietly, making a jolt of panic
wash through her, “but Ravu managed to destroy the chip. We can see about
removing it once we are settled on Dumera. But for now, the transmissions
should have stopped.”
Her relief was bright.
“Really?”
He nodded, his eyes softening when he looked down at her. “We will
check it once we find a place to stay for the night. Ravu thinks he can find
someone with a scanner.”
As more clarity returned, so did the uncomfortable throbbing of pain.
 “Are we almost to Nimida?” she asked next, blinking against the
heaviness of her eyelids. There was still sedative running through her
system, however. She needed to sleep it off, but it would probably take a
little while longer.
“We are already here, mellkia,” he said next.
Her breath hitched and her heavy eyes swung around to take in her
surroundings. They were already off the vessel? When had that happened?
What had happened to the pilot?
“You’ve been asleep for a while,” came a voice and she turned her head
to regard Tavak. Next to him was Ravu.
All of them came to a stop at…what looked like a port door. The
docking bay of Nimida? It was quiet, dark. So why had they stopped?
“There is a customs check up ahead we have to pass through,” Dravka
said. “We don’t want to arouse suspicion by carrying an unconscious human
female into a transport colony.”
“Right,” she breathed, understanding dawning on her. She’d heard the
stories ever since she was a young girl. Human females were high up on the
trafficking list. Always had been. Naturally, Valerie had never needed to
worry about it on the colonies since she never went anywhere. But here?
She would need to be careful. More mindful.
Dravka seemed to realize this too. They’d never had to navigate this
part of their relationship before: being together, in public, when her safety
might be compromised. But they would figure it out.
Hell, even the Keriv’is in her company needed to be careful. Their race
had always been sought out for sex.
“I can walk,” she told them and after a moment, Dravka lowered her to
the ground. The customs checkpoint was a short walk away, an entrance
point to Nimida. That was when she realized she didn’t have her New Earth
ID on her…or anything at all really. She’d left everything behind on
Everton.
So, they all approached the checkpoint, Dravka straightening his
shoulders, and Val saying a little prayer to every deity she’d ever heard
about.
There was an alien at the checkpoint, seated on a wobbly stool of all
things, and half asleep, by the looks of it. A Killup, she recognized, eyeing
her grey flesh and the slits like gills in her neck. She straightened when she
saw them, making a chirring sound in her throat, and smoothing a webbed
palm down her wrinkled blue vest.
“Destination?” she asked, the universal tongue word heavily accented.
If she was startled to see a human female traveling with three Keriv’i
males, she didn’t show it…which made relief thread through Valerie.
Nimida was a transport hub after all. All kinds of beings passed through
there.
Dravka answered for them. “Second Quadrant.”
The Killup female made a small sound. “Nzonito is the transport colony
for the Second Quadrant. A vessel will leave for there in two days. You can
purchase passage at the kiosk, though it won’t open until morning. It’s quite
late,” she said, sounding a little put off at that fact.
“Sorry,” Valerie said, giving her a small smile. “Late flight.”
The Killup made another sound, blinking her large black eyes at her.
“Where are you coming from?”
“Fourth Quadrant,” she replied, not specifying the New Earth colonies.
She thought it would make her suspicious since Keriv’i weren’t known to
be among the New Earth colonies. New Earth was notorious for its closed
borders. “We are on our way to meet friends in the Second Quadrant,
friends we haven’t seen in a while.”
Another sound from the Killup. She studied each of them in turn while
Valerie forced herself not to fidget.
“You are with them willingly?” the Killup asked next, eyeing her.
Valerie’s brows raised. “Yes,” she said, swallowing when she felt
Dravka’s hand drift to her lower back. She touched Dravka’s wrist, feeling
his heat, an action that didn’t go unnoticed by the Killup. “Of course.”
“He’s your mate?” the Killup asked, gaze narrowing.
“Pax,” Dravka rumbled, the word making Valerie flush with pleasure,
despite the circumstance. “Yes,” he corrected. He gestured to Tavak and
Ravu. “These are friends of ours, traveling with us.”
Another chittering sound.
“Kiosk opens at dawn. Book your seats early because they sell out,” the
Killup finally said, seeming to decide that they posed no major threat and
that Valerie was, indeed, not being trafficked by three Keriv’i males. “Be
sure to check out our gift shop while you are here, yes?”
From the way Dravka’s brows furrowed, Valerie could tell he was
perplexed at whatever a gift shop was, but the strange words coming from
the Killup almost made Valerie laugh.
Valerie smiled, though her shoulder twinged when she shifted forward
slightly, and said, “We sure will.”
“Last inn open right now is down the third corridor, on your left,” the
Killup said, hitting a button against the wall.
The door behind her suddenly slid open, releasing a gust of cool wind
into their faces.
“Welcome to Nimida.”

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 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

V alerie sat perched on the edge of the bed, her fingers thumbing
over the soft fabric that covered it, her eyes looking out the small,
rectangular window that overlooked part of Nimida’s main depot
and the main street below.
A part of her could scarcely believe that she was there. Sitting in an
unfamiliar place. The air smelled pleasant, though artificial. Something
sweet mingled with the engine fuels that seemed to permeate Nimida.
The room at the inn was surprisingly spacious, a large bed pushed
against a corner, its headboard smooth and silver and modern-looking. A
small table was pushed against another corner and the dresser drawers were
hidden in the walls. They popped open with the slightest wave of her hand.
The washroom door was still slid open, steam from her shower billowing
out, though she’d been careful not to get her shoulder too wet.
It ached something fierce and the bone felt like it was throbbing. Dravka
had told her she’d been bleeding a lot, that they’d had to hurry to close it. A
part of her was uncomfortable that the tracker hadn’t been removed entirely
—though she understood why. Dravka had told her it had been fused to her
bone. They couldn’t take it out without seriously injuring her shoulder.
Once we’re on Dumera, she thought, I’ll look into having it removed.
A part of her knew she wouldn’t feel right until it was. A permanent
severing from her aunt, from the control and abuse that had plagued her for
five years.
Though she winced, Valerie stood from the bed, standing at the window,
peering down at the narrow corridor below for any signs of a Keriv’i male.
Tavak and Ravu were staying down the hall. They’d been lucky enough to
snag two of the last rooms available for the night. The male at the desk—
whose species she didn’t know though Dravka had told her he was a Laoti
—informed them Nimida was always busy this time of the week. Dravka
had passed over the credits that Khiva had given them to pay for the rooms.
There was movement at the door and she tensed. A moment later, it slid
open to reveal Dravka. Dangling from his hand was a satchel and in his
other was a platter of food.
When he closed and locked the door behind him, Valerie sighed and
went to him. She was wearing one of the tunics he’d packed, the material
dangling down to her mid-thighs.
“How do you feel?” he rumbled down to her, depositing the food on the
table, which he’d gone out in search of with Tavak.
“A little sore,” she admitted, letting him guide her back to the bed.
“Tired?”
“Not really,” she said. She joked, “I think meeting with the customs
agent burned away whatever sedative was left. I was a little nervous.”
“It didn’t show,” he assured her, smoothing his palm over her cheek
before he turned to the satchel. “There was a shop still open. I got you
something to numb your shoulder and this for the pain.”
He held up a vial of blue liquid, which he passed off to her.
“Only take half,” Dravka said, watching as she uncapped it. “The male
said humans only need that amount. You can take the rest in the morning.”
Valerie nodded and tipped the vial back. It didn’t taste like anything,
though once she swallowed, there was an acrid bitterness at the back of her
tongue.
Dravka took the vial from her, setting it down on the table, and then
took out the numbing injection from the satchel.
“Take off your shirt,” he murmured, making her eyes dart up to his.
Despite her pain, she felt her nipples pebble underneath his tunic.
Something flickered in his eyes, his nostrils flaring a bit.
“Mellkia,” he said, a slight warning in his voice, which, strangely, made
her want to smile.
Valerie dropped her gaze though it suddenly felt much warmer in the
small room. It had just occurred to her that…they were alone. On Nimida.
In a cozy little run-down inn.
Her fingers went to the hem and she tugged off the tunic, draping it over
her lap to conceal some of her nudity. For Dravka’s sake. Especially since
she could actually feel some of the tension in the room.
Turning, she bared her back to him, the only person she’d ever willingly
and easily do that to. Because she trusted him. He’d already seen her scars
—hell, he’d tended to those wounds himself.
He’d been there for her. For a long, long time.
There was a prick from the numbing injection and as Dravka pressed
down on the cap, a hissing sound released the liquid into her.
Immediately, Valerie sighed in relief, both the pain medication and the
injection working quickly. Until she could barely feel anything. Next, she
heard rustling and felt Dravka press a soft bandage to her shoulder, adhering
it neatly to the skin she’d carefully cleaned.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him, feeling something pull at her chest
at his gentleness. The moment they were in the room after the innkeeper
had shown them to it, he’d gone off in search of supplies for her. Always
looking out for her, taking care of her.
Valerie felt his fingers trail up the back of her neck, stroking the
column, and her breath hitched, her head tilting slightly. He touched her
hair, still damp from when she’d washed it, and that single, almost innocent
touch made her feel dizzy.
Dravka’s swallow echoed in the room. Then a soft curse escaped him
and he said, “I’ll go bathe. Eat while I do, mellkia. Pax?”
Before she could say another word, he left her, quickly striding to the
washroom door and sliding it shut—firmly—behind him. She heard the
shower tube start, heard his clothes dropping to the floor.
Valerie licked her lips, exhaling a long breath, still sitting naked on the
edge of the bed.
Now that her pain was at bay, now that she couldn’t feel the throbbing
bone in her shoulder, it was easier to think. To want.
She smoothed a hand through her damp hair.
Did he want…did he want her that night?
Because she sure as hell wanted him. Now that they were off Everton,
the realization that they’d actually done it—that they’d actually escaped
and Valerie had gone with them—was staggering. She didn’t know what to
do with herself.
But she was in a little room with Dravka. He’d called her his mate to the
customs agent and that was what Valerie wanted to be to him. She’d never
felt anything more right than Dravka calling her that.
 Then again, he’d also just escaped Everton, a place where he’d been
exploited by human women for almost ten years. Not only that, but the
journey to Nimida couldn’t have been easy for him. There had been a strain
in his eyes when she’d woken. From having to cut into her?
Valerie sat there for so long, debating, that she heard the shower turn
off. In fact, she was still sitting on the bed, still naked, when he emerged
from the washroom. His brow furrowed, his eyes flickering to the table, to
the platter still full of food she didn’t recognize. He was naked too when he
stepped out, though that wasn’t anything new. She’d seen him naked more
times than she could count over the years.
“You should eat something, mellkia,” he murmured, closing the
washroom door behind him, the light automatically shutting off on the
inside. It darkened the bedroom slightly but there was enough light
streaming in through the window—a red-hued light—to illuminate him
clearly enough. “Are you not hungry?”
Quiet stretched between them. Dravka stayed near the washroom door
though he was watching her. Carefully. Those dark eyes trying to read her,
no doubt.
Taking in a deep breath, Valerie rose from the bed, the tunic she’d taken
off sliding to the floor. Dravka’s nostrils flared again, his gaze flickering
down her body, completely exposed to him.
“Val,” he bit out as she approached him.
His cock had been hard since the moment he stepped from the
washroom. But she watched it twitch as she stepped closer, watched it bob
when she placed her hands on Dravka’s chest.
She stroked the strong, shifting muscles there, heard his audible
swallow.
“Dravka,” she started softly. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”
“You’re still healing,” he rasped, his voice husky. He was warm from
the shower and smelled like he always did. Clean. Like pine, like the trees
in the Lake District.
Again, a jolt went through her, realizing she’d never see it again. She’d
never see Everton again.
“I don’t feel any pain,” she whispered up to him, reassuring him. “And
I’m not tired. But I understand if you are. If you’d rather just go to bed
and…”
 She could feel his hearts pounding underneath her fingertips. And when
she had stepped close enough? The tip of his cock dragged across her belly
and he hissed out a small word she didn’t catch.
Valerie licked her lips and murmured, “It’s just that…well, we aren’t on
Everton anymore, Dravka. And I’ve wanted you for so long.”
His eyes flared, his body tensing.
“But if you don’t want to, of course—”
For a moment, she thought she’d said the wrong thing. That her words
had upset him in some way.
But in the next moment?
Dravka had her up in his arms and she gasped, twining her legs around
his waist in response.
Which made his cock settle against the warm junction of her thighs,
making them both groan.
Then his lips were on hers and Valerie felt sharp relief, followed quickly
by rising want and need. His hands were on her. All over her, stroking down
her back, squeezing the flesh of her ass, his grip possessive. But it was his
lips that she focused on, his tongue.
The way it stroked hers, lapping and tangling with her own. The way his
kiss made shivers run down her spine until his touch felt pleasurably
electrified across her skin. Her head began to swim. Her sex throbbed.
“How could you ever think I don’t want you?” he growled against her.
“I always will.”
That was when she felt his pre-cum, slick and wet, soaking into her
skin. And when it did?
For a moment, Valerie had forgotten. Forgotten that the male she loved
was a Keriv’i.
His pre-cum reacted with her body, just slicked across her flesh. It was
that powerful. And tingles burst through her. Her clit began to feel like it
was fluttering and throbbing.
Like…like…
She was just hovering on the edge of orgasm.
Like one little touch would be all it took to get her there.
“Dravka,” she gasped.
He made a rumbling, trilling sound in the back of his throat and then he
was moving them. Valerie sensed him sinking down onto the edge of the
bed until she sat in his lap, her legs straddled around his waist.
 Valerie’s hands petted over his strong chest, his wide shoulders. His
indigo skin was like suede under her touch.
“Demav, I can scent you, mellkia,” he rasped, briefly breaking away
from her lips to suckle the skin on her neck. She moaned, arching into him.
His pre-cum made it feel like his lips were all over her body.
She didn’t want to wait. Not any longer. Valerie needed him right then
with a desperation that had been five years in the making.
“You need me, Val?” he rumbled against her neck, as if he could read
her thoughts.
“Yes,” she whispered, panting, squirming against him.
“You want everything?”
“Yes!”
If he was intent on teasing her, she didn’t have the patience. Her hands
reached underneath her, fisting his cock, making his hips buck and a hoarse
cry escape his throat.
A growl came from him, his dark eyes narrowing on her in a way that
made her belly burn.
“I can’t wait anymore, love,” she told him. “Please!”
Valerie shifted her hips, maneuvering the head of his slick cock until it
was poised at the entrance of her sex.
She pressed down just as Dravka bucked up.
Valerie moaned, biting her lip, never taking her eyes off his. A few
inches of him were wedged inside. She was wet enough that he could slip in
easily, aroused enough that she stretched around his heat, especially when
he pulled out and then thrust back in.
But damn. He was still large. Impossibly thick and long. Valerie wasn’t
a virgin—she’d lost her virginity when she was a teenager on Genesis,
when she’d been carefree and young—but it had been a long time since
she’d had sex. Over seven years.
It had been so long that she felt like she was relearning it again with
Dravka, though he was no stranger to sex himself.
His hands spanned around her waist, his strength evident when he
brought her down on him harder, and Valerie moaned, wiggling her way
down his shaft until he was…there. So deep. And she was so full of him.
Her lips were parted in disbelief, her widened eyes on him.
“Demav, you feel…” He groaned, his hips hitching again, sliding in
even deeper. “Vauking incredible.”
 She knew what he meant. She’d had sex before—so had he, obviously
—but this…this felt different. This felt like everything. All those moments
leading up to this—all those lingering looks, innocent-enough touches, the
way the air had always felt thick between them, especially when Dravka
looked at her a certain way—culminated in that very moment.
Dravka pulled her up, shifting her body so that he could thrust upwards
in one fluid, smooth, mind-numbing motion.
“Uhhh,” she cried out, that cock seeming to hit every sensitive and
glorious place inside her. And his pre-cum? It coated her inner walls,
making those tingles explode across her body tenfold.
She would come like this. She would come in another moment. Maybe
not even that long, she realized, panicked and desperate and wanting it so
much.
Leaning forward, she caught his lips in another kiss as he began to build
up a steady rhythm between her thighs. Her legs were tensed and tight,
wrapped around his body, allowing him to sink as deep as possible inside
her.
“Oh god,” she whispered, his lips trailing across her jaw. Then she felt
his hands stroke up from her waist, his fingers going to her nipples,
caressing the hardened buds almost lazily.
“You’re gonna come for me, mellkia?” Dravka rasped in the tiny
amount of space between them.
“Yes,” she breathed, trying to hold it back, closing her eyes when she
felt the beginnings of her orgasm.
“Veki, look at me,” he growled.
Valerie opened her eyes, half-lidded and heavy. Her back arched, her
hands gripping his shoulders.
Those opal eyes pinned her in place, anchoring her. And the love she
felt for him?
God, it was beautiful.
“You’re mine,” she whispered. His pupils dilated, his hips snapping
against her, that cock sliding deep. “And I’m yours.”
“Pax,” he growled. “Always!”
“Is this real?” she whispered, her abdomen beginning to clench with her
orgasm.
It felt like too much. It felt too wonderful. Surely this couldn’t be real.
Surely, his heat, his scent, his kiss, this reality—a reality where he was hers
and only hers—couldn’t be real. Any moment now she’d wake up in her
bed, alone, on Everton.
But Dravka brought her back. Anchored her to that moment as he slid
deep inside her body, a place he’d always been meant to be.
“Pax, this is vauking real, Valerie. My Valerie,” he rasped, pressing his
forehead against her own, those dark opal eyes connecting with hers deep,
just as her orgasm crested and she felt it explode within her.
Stars burst in her vision but she never looked away from him. She
wanted him to see what he did to her. She wanted him to see it all as the
most beautiful pleasure swam through her very veins.
Against her lips, he said, “This is real and it always has been.”

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 CHAPTER THIRTY

D ravka felt her clenching around him, felt her orgasm rip through
her body like it was ripping through his own.
He growled before a trilling hiss escaped his throat.
“So vauking good,” he breathed, driving his hips up. But his range was
limited, which frustrated him. He wanted to stroke into her so deeply. He
wanted to be seated between her thighs for hours, as he watched her take his
teela, as he watched her take it deep.
She was still orgasming when he flipped them, pinning her to the bed in
a way that made the dominant Keriv’i in him trill in satisfaction. A gasp
escaped her, her cunt clenching down on him harder, so hard she almost
forced him from her body.
“Demav,” he rasped. His mellkia was tight.
And once Dravka settled between his mate’s thighs?
“Oh god,” Valerie moaned, her voice choked and high-pitched, as he
began to thrust into her. Long, deep strokes, building up a steady rhythm
that left him with tightly aching taxxa, needing to release their seed.
He knew he never wanted to leave. Dravka would never leave her body
again.
Never.
And they had so much time to make up for. So much lost time.
Their flesh slapped together as Dravka drove inside her, bucking and
snapping his hips, pounding into his female unrelentingly. He held himself
above her, his arms straightened on both sides of her head. Through her
pleasure, she reached up to stroke his chest, her touch igniting little licks of
heat across his flesh.
 He groaned when her fingernails teased over the flat discs of his dark
nipples, fucking her harder in response, making her lips part and her eyes
slide shut.
Dravka was right at the very edge of his control. He could normally last
so much longer than this…then again, this was Valerie. When had he ever
had control around her? She’d made him come in his very pants before, just
whispering things in his ear. She hadn’t even touched him and he’d come so
hard, his eyes had rolled into the back of his head.
But this orgasm he felt coming on?
It would blow that one right away. He felt it. Felt its power and its
strength starting, sizzling down his spine, tightening his taxxa, thickening
his cock even further, which Valerie no doubt felt.
Readying.
“Vauk, you’re gonna make me come so hard,” he growled, lowering
down to capture her lips again in a sinful and wicked kiss.
She gasped into him, their tongues tangling together. And when she
teasingly bit at his bottom lip, holding it between her teeth? When she
wrapped her legs around him tighter, sucking him even deeper into her
body, as if afraid he’d leave?
He felt that cresting wave begin to crash.
“Vaaauukkkk,” he bellowed. “Pax!”
In the rushing and roaring of the orgasm that followed, he heard
Valerie’s sharp intake of breath, just as he felt his teela begin to burst from
his tip. He thrust into her with hard, sharp little jabs, trying to get deeper.
He needed to be deeper.
When he could move no more, as the pleasure made his back bow and
his arms shake above her, he seated himself inside her and held. Hot lashes
of his come bathed her inner walls.
She would finally feel his teela, something he’d only ever dreamed of
giving her. Wicked fantasies that, at one time, he thought might never come
true.
The gasp that escaped her signaled the beginnings of it working inside
her tight sheath. Her back arched from the bed, making her nipples jut up,
and Dravka growled, unable to resist leaning down to suckle one between
his lips, tasting her skin and heat.
Her hips bucked, her nostrils flaring, as her mouth parted in a silent cry.
 Valerie’s hands were clumsy over him, trying to hold onto him, to
anchor herself as she went higher and higher. He felt her nails dig into his
flesh and the possessive male in him was pleased that he would wear her
little marks for a short while.
And the Keriv’i in him?
The Keriv’i in him wanted to mark her in return. He wanted to bathe her
cunt in his teela. He wanted to mark her flesh, her breasts, her belly with it.
He wanted it to coat her skin. He wanted to cover her with his essence, so
other males wouldn’t dare approach, so that other males would know she
was his and his alone.
He felt his still-hard cock already stirring inside her at the thought. A
shuddering gasp escaped Valerie when she felt it, her eyes widening even
further as a dark smirk crossed his face.
“D-Dravka?” she asked, her voice raspy and husky after her moans and
cries. “Again?”
When he began to thrust into her, rolling his hips slowly, her expression
was one of stunned disbelief.
“This is what it will be,” he rasped into her ear, nibbling at the sensitive
shell of it, “to be a Keriv’i’s mate, Val.”
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Valerie met his gaze. Still in the
throes of her teela-induced orgasm—which wouldn’t stop until he cleaned
most of it from her body—she looked beautiful. So vauking beautiful.
“Give me everything you have,” she challenged, her voice breathless.
His dark chuckle filled the air between them. She wanted to see
everything a Keriv’i male had?
“You might regret those words by the end of the night, mellkia,” he
warned her.
Then he rose to his knees between her thighs, capturing her ankles and
widening her legs, pressing a kiss there.
“Ready?” he rasped.
Her cheeks were flushed pink. A similar flush colored her full, heavy
breasts. Her eyes almost looked like mirrors, as glazed as they were from
her pleasure.
“Always,” she replied.

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 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“D -Dravka, p-please,” she groaned, her voice sounding nothing

like her own. It was scratchy and raw from her hoarse cries
and screams that Dravka had had to silence with his kiss.
It felt incredible. Valerie could feel the endless amount of teela he’d
pumped inside her, slick and hot against her walls. She was more aware of
her body, of the little places she’d never even known existed, than ever
before.
She felt like someone else entirely. Writhing on the bed, as orgasm after
orgasm after orgasm crashed down on her, stealing her breath from her
lungs, making her heart thunder in her chest, her nipples pebbled so tight
they were almost painful.
Valerie was rolling her hips across the damp blanket, seeking, searching
for him—but Dravka was at her side, propped up on his elbow, watching
her with glowing opal eyes. His fingers stroked lazily over her flesh,
starting at her hips, up across her belly, before lightly thrumming his nails
across her peaked nipples. It made her gasp, made another orgasm rear its
head and shatter her.
Sensitive.
So sensitive, she thought in disbelief, surprised she was even capable of
thought at that point when her mind and body felt like mush.
A wonderful mush.
“Dravka,” she whispered, her panicked gaze flying to his, catching his
wrist when his fingers started to stroke over her clit, making her belly
contract in helpless pleasure.
 “You’ve had enough?” he rasped. His own voice sounded
unrecognizable to her as well. Smooth and dark, sinful velvet, with just a
hint of roughness.
Never, she thought. She would never have enough of him to be satisfied.
But right then?
As much as she wanted to please him—and Valerie had found that he
loved watching her in this state—her body couldn’t take much more.
What are bones? she thought, huffing out another breath when another
orgasm made her back arch off the bed. Because I can’t feel mine.
His hot teela throbbed inside her, like it had its own heartbeat.
“Y-yes,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek across his palm when he
cupped it. She sucked on the tip of his thumb when he brushed her lips,
making him growl, making his still-hard cock bob against his abdomen.
He’d come inside her four times that night. And he still wanted more?
Dravka pushed off the bed, taking his sweet time heading to the
washroom, sliding open the door. He collected something from inside, she
heard the water turn on briefly, and then he was back, watching her at the
edge of the bed, watching as she rolled and squirmed, her thighs squeezing
together, her whole body flushed pink.
“Vellka,” he murmured, trailing his finger across the swell of her breast.
Valerie moaned.
Beautiful, he’d called her.
Then his eyes saw something on the bed and he cursed. When she
turned her head to where he was staring, through her blurry vision, she saw
blood. Red blood. Her blood.
She frowned in confusion just as another orgasm made her jerk and cry
out.
Dravka knelt between her thighs. She felt the warmth of water, she felt
his fingers, gentle inside her. His touch made a sizzle run down her spine,
made her moan and writhe.
Then, all at once, Valerie felt like she could breathe again. Air invaded
her lungs and she gasped, panting. She still felt Dravka between her splayed
thighs and she realized he was cleaning his teela from her body.
Back at the brothel, Madame Allegria had always had a steady supply of
neutralizers for the clients. Once inserted, a mist was released and the
effects of the teela would immediately cease.
But of course, they didn’t have access to those here.
 Which was why, even after he went to dispose of the washcloth in the
washroom, Valerie still felt the slight warmth and pleasure of the lingerings
of his seed. Not nearly as intense as before, but certainly still noticeable.
When Dravka returned, he motioned for her to come to the edge of the
bed. He was still frowning.
The blood.
Her shoulder.
Right.
“I am sorry, mellkia,” he rasped, his voice quiet. “I should not have
pushed you that hard. Not when you are still recovering.”
Valerie stared up at him. Though her body was completely exposed to
him, though he’d seen her that night as he’d never seen her before, there
was an intimacy in this moment, one that hadn’t been there prior.
“I loved every moment,” she told him, not wanting him to think he’d
hurt her. “I don’t feel any pain.”
Dravka still frowned. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling up at him, reaching up her hand, though it felt
boneless and jelly-like. “But I know you’ll want to check anyways.”
That elicited a small smile from her male. He took her hand, gentling
pulling her to sit at the edge. He took off her bandage at her shoulder,
making a small grunting sound in the back of his throat when he saw her
wound. She saw that the blood had soaked through it. Their vigorous
activities must’ve aggravated the lasering seal.
“Come,” he murmured. Then she was up in his arms and growing more
sleepy by the second, now that most of his teela was out of her system.
He brought them both into the washroom and he turned on the flow of
water in the shower tube. It was a small, cramped space, but Dravka kept
her in his arms when he stepped inside, only sliding her down onto the floor
when he needed to wash her front.
There was a small, exhausted smile on her face and she leaned her
cheek into his chest as he washed the wound on her shoulder carefully. She
didn’t feel anything though, no stinging pain, no aching throbbing, because
of the medicine he’d brought her.
A few minutes later, he turned off the water and stepped from the tube,
grabbing a clean towel to dry both of them off with. Once they were back in
the bedroom, he stripped the thin blanket from the bed, got a new set from
the secret cabinets in the wall, and only once everything was clean and
fresh again did he let her lie back down.
Valerie’s eyelids felt heavy but she watched him, her cheek pressed to
the mattress. Watching him made her heart throb with happiness and
excitement. He didn’t look like human men. Keriv’i were hairless, for
starters. Their skin was a dark indigo blue, with patches of mottled grey and
black. His eyes were dark and swirling with color. His cheekbones were so
sharp that sometimes she thought she might cut her hand on them if she
stroked his face. His lips were full and soft, his nose incredibly structured
and straight.
“Kruvu?” he murmured as he reapplied the bandage to her shoulder, his
brows furrowing as he concentrated on the task.
“You’re so handsome, is all,” Valerie told him softly, feeling drugged
and delirious. She wondered if she could get drunk off sex because that was
how she felt.
A flash of an expression crossed his face. If Valerie didn’t know any
better, she’d have thought he was embarrassed. Shy.
But this was Dravka.
She couldn’t quite picture what he would be like shy.
He didn’t say anything and Valerie felt her eyelids sink. A moment later,
when he was pleased with her bandage, he crawled into bed beside her,
moving her so she was tucked in his arms. Her lips pressed against his chest
and she felt his chin settle on the top of her head. His legs threaded between
and around her own as his cock settled against her belly.
This feels so right, she thought, blowing out a long breath. Finally.
“Was it good for you?” she whispered, the question slipping out before
she even realized it.
But maybe that question had been inside her all along. She wanted it to
be as good for him as it’d been for her. Given that he worked at the brothel
on Everton, he’d had his fair share of sex, something that had burned and
clawed at Valerie as surely as it had burned and clawed at him.
A part of her had been afraid that sex would just become sex to him.
That sex with her would be no different than the sex he’d had with the
others.
Thinking that now, Valerie knew it was ridiculous. She was a little
ashamed, actually, that she’d thought such a thing.
 “Good?” he asked, grunting. He leaned down to peer at her, his eyes
narrowed, as if he could read her mind. “Try vauking amazing.”
Valerie chuckled, relieved, slightly breathless with her tiredness.
“Still, I should not have pushed you so far,” he murmured after a brief
silence. “I forgot myself.”
Valerie sighed. She brought her fingers up, traced them over his lips and
pressed a small kiss to his bottom one. She recognized the heat flaring in his
eyes, felt his cock twitch against her belly.
“You’re impossible,” she whispered.
“You make me crazy,” he countered.
She chuckled again and his eyes went all warm and molten, that look
enough to steal her breath entirely.
God, she loved him.
How could she not?
“It’s weird being here,” she murmured quietly. “It’s weird feeling this
happy.”
Dravka swallowed, reaching up to stroke a hand through her hair.
“You’ll get used to it,” he told her, his lips quirking. “And then, you
won’t remember what it’s like to feel unhappy, pax? I’ll make sure of it.”
Another small laugh left her throat.
She heard some laughter coming from outside their window, echoing up
and around. Drunken laughter by the sound of it, and not human in the
slightest. Their room was situated on the third floor of the inn so it sounded
close, yet far away, given the way the colony was structured.
“What’s it like out there?” Valerie asked him. She’d barely been able to
see Nimida. It was made up of long corridors, like streets on Everton, but
they all seemed to be in a circular shape, one big lap around the colony, all
ending in the very center, which was where she knew the transport depot
was.
“It’s surprisingly clean,” was what Dravka replied with.
She frowned. “Clean?”
She wouldn’t have even thought to look at the surroundings for
cleanliness. Then again, she’d grown up on the New Earth colonies her
entire life.
Dravka, on the other hand…
“Jrika was filthy,” he rasped, his arms tightening around her ever so
slightly at his admission. “Filth and disease and greed. Everywhere.”
 Jrika was the colony Madame Allegria had found him on. It was the
colony she’d found all of them on, actually. Desperate and jaded. No
wonder they’d agreed to come to Everton.
“I never told you,” he murmured, something in his voice making her
look up at him, “but on Jrika, I had just started to sell myself.”
Her heart ached at the thought.
“Really?” she asked quietly.
She’d known that Tavak had already been selling himself for credits
before Everton. He’d needed to, for his and his brother’s sake.
But she hadn’t known that Dravka had.
She didn’t judge him for it. From what little he’d told her of his life
before Everton over the years, she knew that Jrika had been hell. He’d been
hungry. Homeless for a time before he could find shelter. He couldn’t find
steady work and so he didn’t have savings for passage off Jrika to find
better work.
Valerie didn’t fault him for his decision.
“It was only twice by the time your aunt found me,” Dravka said. “And
it had been surprisingly…easy. The money was good. But I should’ve told
you. A long time ago.”
Valerie frowned. “It doesn’t change anything, Dravka. You thought it
would change how I felt about you?”
His sharp inhale told her that he feared it might have.
“You did what you had to do to survive. The same thing you did on
Everton,” Valerie whispered, stroking his cheek, the knowledge of what
he’d had to endure on Jrika making her throat feel tight. Her kind, strong,
confident Dravka. “I would never judge you for it. Ever.”
“The others feel it too, I think,” Dravka murmured.
“Feel what?”
“The uncertainty. The fear,” he murmured, swallowing. “We don’t want
Dumera to be like Jrika. That was what we feared when Khiva first asked us
all to go with him. But now…”
“Everything’s different,” Valerie whispered. “You know Dumera’s not
like that now. Thanks to them.”
Dravka inhaled sharply. “Pax. So when I look around Nimida now, all I
can think is how clean it is. How clean it feels. The shopkeeper tonight was
kind to me. He helped me pick out your medicine. I didn’t feel threatened. I
didn’t feel like he would rob me. It’s different.”
 Valerie swallowed hard.
It was tragic to her that a small bit of kindness felt different to him, but
it only showed her why the Keriv’i had been so hesitant to leave the brothel
before. Because this was unknown territory. There had been a level of
safety on Everton. A familiarity.
“You’ve been through so much,” she said. “You all have.”
“You too,” he murmured.
She sighed, nuzzling deeper into him, pressing closer.
“I think, for once, we should try being optimistic,” she said. “For once, I
think we should actually expect that good things will happen to us now,
instead of always fearing the worst.”
Especially her.
Just twelve hours ago, she was certain that she’d be marrying Gabriel
Larchmont and that she’d have to say goodbye to Dravka forever, that she’d
never see him again.
“Because good things are in our future,” she whispered, smiling. And
maybe it was just feeling a little drunk on sex, on him, or lying in the safety
and warmth of his arms, but she said, with unwavering certainty, “I can feel
it. I know it.”
Dravka pressed a kiss to her lips, lingering a bit.
“I love you, Val,” he murmured. “Have I ever told you how much
before?”
Her throat tightened and she blinked away the glassy tears that had
begun to form in her eyes.
“You never needed to,” she whispered.
Dravka chuckled softly, the sound warm and making her shiver with
pleasure. She loved his laugh. He didn’t do it nearly enough but she
promised that she’d make him laugh every moment she possibly could.
“Sleep, my little mate,” he murmured to her, brushing his lips over the
shell of her ear. “We have all day tomorrow to spend in this bed and I intend
to take full advantage.”
Meaning…she’d need her rest.
Valerie fell asleep that night with a smile on her face.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

T he next morning, Dravka woke to heat and throbbing desire. He felt

a tug and groaned, scenting Valerie all over him, all over his skin
and the blankets they’d slept on.
As for Valerie…
His little mate was between his thighs, all the blankets kicked to the
floor.
A rough growl escaped his throat, his nostrils flaring when he met her
eyes. There was a playful expression illuminated in them, especially when
she licked a slow line from the base of his cock, all the way to the very tip.
“Demav,” he groaned, his voice husky and guttural with sleep. “The
best vauking way to wake, mellkia.”
She laughed, her hot breath floating across his sensitive tip, which was
weeping with his pre-cum. The clear substance coated her palms, her lips
parting when she felt it sink into her skin.
Then, he bellowed out a roughened cry, his body tensing with pleasure,
as she lowered her head, sucking the head of his cock between her lips.
Hard. Her cheeks hollowed and when she straightened, a loud, sinful-
sounding pop filled the room.
“Vauk,” he cursed, his chest heaving. His taxxa were already boiling
with seed. He wondered how long she’d been teasing him as he slept. Or if
she’d just begun…
But judging by the mess of his pre-cum, Dravka guessed she’d been
down there for a little while.
Dravka swallowed hard when she lowered her head again. His cock
hadn’t been sucked in years. He’d had a client once who enjoyed the act,
but most of the women who had come to the brothel had only come for his
teela.
But doing this with Valerie…
His Valerie pleasuring him this way? Because she wanted to…because
she liked to?
It was something entirely different.
Something magical and vauking incredible.
She sucked him hard, moving her head over his shaft in a way that
almost made him jealous—because he couldn’t help but wonder how she’d
learned to do this. Because he couldn’t help but wonder who she’d
perfected this on.
Dravka was lying to himself. He was vauking jealous.
But quickly, she chased the feeling away when she released his cock
and gave him a wicked smile that wiped his mind entirely of thought.
Vellka.
So beautiful.
“You’re going to make me come,” he warned, “if you keep looking at
me like that.”
“Just by looking at you?” she whispered. “Not even when I do this…?”
Dravka’s stunned whimper turned into a roar when she fisted his cock
with both of her hands, when she jerked him while also lowering her head.
She suckled hard on his tip, her little tongue lapping at the sensitive place
underneath the head, while her fists twisted down his length, his pre-cum
making her grip slippery and mind-numbingly wicked.
“Vauk pax!” he hissed, his hips jerking.
He didn’t even have time to warn her.
But vauk, she made him crazy. She drove him beyond reason.
“Val,” he bit out, the muscles in his throat tensing, his whole body
stiffening. His hot seed was starting to rise in his shaft, pushing, pushing,
pushing.
When he came, Valerie’s surprised sound turned into a moan and
Dravka writhed on the bed, feeling her hot grip on him, feeling the way her
tongue stimulated the bottom of his cock as she swallowed. As she
swallowed the hot pumps of his teela, taking it inside her body, drinking it
down…
And when she couldn’t take anymore? When she leaned back, catching
her breath, her hands never stopped moving on him and the last spurts of his
seed landed on her cheek, dripping down her jaw.
The sight almost made him come again.
But vauk, the Keriv’i male in him responded to that sight. Of her
marked in his teela. Especially when drops of it slid from her jaw and
landed on her full, exposed breasts, her pink nipples upturned and peaked,
begging to be sucked.
As Dravka caught his breath, he traced his finger across her jaw,
catching the teela. He purred and trilled when she immediately sucked that
finger between her lips. The pressure, the wicked gleam in her gaze, the
way her tongue lapped at the seed, made his cock ready again…mere
moments after she’d drained his taxxa.
More was taking its place. More that he would give her.
And they had all day.
Tavak was taking care of their seats for tomorrow’s departure. Dravka
and Valerie wouldn’t even need to leave this bed.
And I don’t intend to, he thought, hearing her gasp as his teela started to
warm in her belly. It wouldn’t affect her the way it would had it been inside
her cunt but it would keep her on edge. He could gently nudge her little clit
right now and it would be enough to make her come.
Dravka grinned.
In fact, he’d do just that.
“Come up here,” he growled. “Get my cock inside you now.”
Valerie’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes were luminous with desire
and want. On trembling limbs, she slid up his body until she straddled his
hips. Her hands came to rest on his wide chest as he reached between them
and lined his cock up with her entrance.
She moaned when his fingers brushed her clit, a sharp inhale following,
her whole body tensing as he smirked. She was right on the edge.
And when Dravka thrust inside with one deep, powerful, quick motion?
She immediately began to come, her desperate cries filling his ears, the
room, as he pounded into her mercilessly.
He leaned up to suckle her nipples, tasting a few drops of his teela there
from where it’d dripped down her jaw. She stared at him through a half-
lidded gaze, her lips parted, brows furrowed in her pleasure as she
orgasmed.
“We’re not leaving this bed today,” he growled, his hips thrusting up
more quickly, harder, their flesh slapping together. “Pax?”
 “Oh yes!” she cried out. “Dravka!”
He grinned.

A PERFECT DAY.
Dravka had never thought such a thing had existed.
But he’d found perfection in that little room, with his beautiful mate,
and her moans and smiles and looks of disbelief as he did all the things he’d
fantasized about doing to her for five vauking years.
Her taste was all over his tongue. Her come was all over his skin and his
teela was all over hers. In between their bouts of sex—the most intense and
primal and real of his entire life—they rested and talked and kissed and
touched. His hearts went all melty anytime he heard her laugh, musical and
light, and he loved to see the blush across her cheeks whenever he teased
her.
The sunlight on Nimida was artificial just like on Everton, but Dravka
told her everything he wanted her to feel on Dumera. A fresh breeze. A
sunrise and a sunset. Natural air, natural gravity, though it might feel heavy
to her at first.
And as he told her the things he’d loved most about Kerivu—which had
had the most beautiful sunsets he’d ever experienced and the kikiru
creatures had crooned and sang towards the sky as the last bits of sun
disappeared—she’d absorbed his words like she was starved for them.
Dravka had always known that Valerie was his.
But even then, Dravka had never known he could feel like this about
another being. He’d never known that every part of himself could love this
deeply, for another being that was not of his blood.
It was humbling. It scared him and delighted him and made him silently
vow that he would spend the rest of his life protecting her, making her
happy.
He felt like he had a new purpose in life.
Though…hadn’t she always been his purpose?
From the very first moment he’d seen her, she’d been his purpose in
life.
A knock late in the afternoon interrupted them, but it was only Tavak.
 When Dravka opened the door to their room, keeping it slivered so
Tavak wouldn’t see Valerie in the bed, the other Keriv’i male had knowing
eyes as he regarded him.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Tavak said in their language, “but I know
Valerie needs to eat every day. I knew you probably wouldn’t want to be
away from her to get her some food.”
In his hand was a brown satchel of food he must’ve purchased from a
shop.
Dravka swallowed, feeling a pang of doubt spreading through him.
Vauk, he’d nearly forgotten that she hadn’t eaten the food he’d brought the
night before. She must be ravenous but she hadn’t said anything.
Because unlike humans, Keriv’i could go a long time without eating,
though their meals tended to be very large in portion when they did break
their fasts.
“Thank you, my friend,” he murmured, clasping Tavak on the wrist
before taking the satchel.
Tavak nodded, embarrassed by Dravka’s gratitude.
“I purchased our seats to Nzonito,” Tavak told him next. “The transport
leaves tomorrow morning. Time is strange here but I believe the bells we’ve
heard track the hours. The sixth ring is when our flight departs.”
Dravka hadn’t heard any bells, so he frowned for a brief moment. Then
again, he’d been so wrapped up in Valerie, in her touch, in her kiss, that the
whole universe could’ve ended outside these walls and he wouldn’t have
noticed.
“We’ll be ready,” he promised Tavak.
A small smirk crossed his friend’s face. “Get it all out now. The flight to
Nzonito is a two-day stretch, or so the Luxirian female at the kiosk told
me.”
Dravka grimaced, already feeling that thought pang in his gut. Two days
without her? When they’d just begun to explore sex between them?
Unfathomable.
Tavak’s gaze strayed past him briefly and Dravka pictured Valerie on
the bed, waiting for him to return.
“I’ll let you get back to her,” Tavak said. “See you in the morning.”
“Before the sixth bell,” Dravka said, inclining his head.
Tavak retreated down the dark and narrow corridor of the inn, back to
his own room. Dravka wondered if it was strange for him too…to be able to
leave and roam freely. The thought had occurred to Dravka last night when
he’d been speaking to the shopkeeper about Valerie’s medicine. That, for
the first time in ten years, he’d had free will to go wherever he wanted.
It was a strange sensation.
But one he would get used to once again. One he looked forward to
getting used to again.
When Dravka had shut the door and locked it, he turned back to his
mate, lounging naked on the bed, her knee drawn up, her hair fanned out
across the pillow, watching him.
“What did Tavak say?” Valerie asked, her voice husky and soft. After all
the screams and cries he’d wrung from her that day, he was surprised she
hadn’t lost it entirely.
“He brought you food,” Dravka said, holding up the satchel for her
inspection. “I’m sorry, mellkia. The thought slipped my mind. I should’ve
—”
“How could I be hungry?” she started, crawling over to him at the end
of the bed, going up to her knees to twine her arms around his body. “How
could I be hungry when I’ve been feasting on you all day?”
A startled laugh escaped him, mingling with her own.
“Regardless,” she said sheepishly, “I am a little hungry. It was nice of
him to bring something by. Did he book the seats all right?”
“Pax,” he told her, watching her sink back onto the bed, opening the
satchel. Inside was a kind of fruit—at least what he thought was fruit—
along with a wrapped skewer of meat—at least what he thought was meat.
He watched her inspect it before nibbling a piece, her face lighting up in
delight. “Good?”
“Yes, very good,” she said. “Wanna try?”
She held it out for him and he leaned forward, chewing off a small
piece…only because she made it so appetizing.
Keriv’i preferred their meats spicier, but he could see why his little
human enjoyed it.
“Good?” she asked.
“Very good,” he murmured, smiling, not wanting to disappoint her.
“Now eat, little mate, so you can recover your energy. Because Tavak told
me the flight to Nzonito is two days long. Which means…”
“Oh god,” she whispered, eyeing him with the same realization he’d
had. “How are we going to…”
 Keep their hands off each other?
“I have no idea,” he admitted, rubbing the pad of his thumb over her
smooth ankle.
In the next moment, Valerie had shoved her food back inside the satchel
and plopped it to the ground.
Then she pushed him forward and he toppled off the bed in surprise,
landing on his back on the floor. When she climbed down onto him,
straddling his hips, the startled laugh died in his throat.
“No time for eating then,” she told him, determination sketched into
every line of her face. She kissed him, her tongue lapping at his lips, and he
groaned, his hands gripping the flesh of her ass possessively.
The problem was…
Dravka didn’t think this desperate need for her would ever pass. Not
tomorrow, or in the next week, the next year, the next couple decades.
For the rest of their lives together.
Dravka grinned.
It was a good problem to have, he decided, especially when he had such
a tempting mate.
“How did we ever go so long without doing this?” she breathed against
his lips.
Dravka remembered the last five years. The whispered conversations in
his room, the lingering glances, the touches that felt like electricity over his
skin.
Again, he rasped, “I have no vauking idea, mellkia.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

V alerie was standing at the window in their little heaven-filled

room. Yesterday drifted in and out of her mind, eliciting a
ridiculous grin across her face, as she looked out at Nimida.
Her body felt different. She’d had sex before when she was younger, but
she’d never had sex like what she’d shared with Dravka. Life-changing,
consuming, magnificent sex. Lovemaking, though, she corrected silently…
because wasn’t that what it was?
She shivered, though she was already dressed in her clothes. A simple
shirt and pants from her closet, which she’d discovered that Dravka had
packed for her when she’d asked him to retrieve her mother’s perfume…
when she still believed that she could let him go.
He’d packed a week’s worth of her clothes, along with his, in that small
satchel he’d taken from the brothel. Enough clothes to see them through to
Dumera.
But her skin felt different in these clothes. She felt sensitive, the fabric
caressing her in a way she’d never been aware of. There was a sensual
awareness now, at the forefront of her mind, that hadn’t been there before.
And she knew it was from Dravka, from his touches, his kisses, the way his
body stroked expertly and perfectly inside her.
She shivered again, her heartbeat picking up. She could hear him in the
shower tube, washing. She’d already been bathed and dressed by the time
he woke. Valerie knew that they needed to catch the ship to Nzonito on time
and showering with him would…be a distraction. It would make them very,
very late.
 Dravka had mentioned something about six rings and that was when the
ship would depart. She hadn’t noticed before, so wrapped up with him in
bed, but now that she listened, she could hear them. Loud bells that rang
over Nimida at certain intervals of time. The loudest and longest of the bells
started at the top of every hour, whereas quieter bells rang every half hour.
Well, she’d already heard the fifth bell, chiming as the artificial sunlight
began to spread over Nimida. It was what had prompted her to wake
Dravka.
Despite the early hour, it was bustling down below on the street
corridor. Beings of all species—some she recognized, others she did not—
strode along, all heading around the corner to the main depot, the
beginnings of which she could just make out. Most had luggage and bags
and satchels. All travelers.
The shopkeepers, those that lived on Nimida, watched the travelers
pass, leaning outside their shops, talking to one another, passing a long pipe
that smoked between them. When someone entered their shop, they’d help
them and once they left, they’d go back to smoking and chatting.
A simple way of life, she supposed. Wonderful in its simplicity. She
could do with a simple life from now on.
And we’ll have it. Together, she thought, her grin widening.
Then she saw something that wiped that grin clean off.
Val felt the color drain from her face.
Down in the corridor, she caught sight of flaming red hair.
The color of rubies and bright blood.
Shimmering in Nimida’s early morning sunlight.
Valerie’s breath left her and she froze, her limbs going cold, her heart
stopping in her chest before beginning to beat wildly.
“No,” she breathed, pressing closer to the window, praying to all the
gods and goddesses in the universe that her eyes were playing tricks on her.
But when Madame Allegria stopped in front of the inn they were
staying at, when her color-altered blue eyes flashed as she peered up at it,
frowning at the sign, Valerie knew that this was real.
Her aunt had found her.
Which meant that the tracker in her shoulder hadn’t been destroyed as
Dravka, Ravu, and Tavak thought. Which meant that Valerie had led her
right to them.
 This was what she’d been afraid of. All her worst fears crossing over the
barrier into her reality.
Behind her, she heard Dravka still in the shower tube. Down below, she
saw Madame Allegria motion to two human guards she’d brought with her,
waving her hand to the inn. So, she knew where they were staying. Of
course the tracker had led her here.
Madame Allegria and the two human guards strode into the inn and
Valerie lost sight of them.
And she knew what she had to do.
Valerie spun in place, knowing she didn’t have much time. She felt
determination rise in her.
She can’t find them, she knew.
Madame Allegria would have them arrested, especially if she knew
about Gabriel. Her aunt would take any excuse to take possession of the
Keriv’is again, her Krave.
The thought made Valerie sick.
She couldn’t find them…but for the first time, Valerie knew that she
would fight like hell so that Madame Allegria wouldn’t get her either.
Her words to Dravka returned to her. That for once, she wanted to be
optimistic for their future together, that she didn’t want to constantly be
thinking that the worst would happen.
Well, the worst had happened.
Madame Allegria had found them on Nimida.
But Valerie would do everything in her power to ensure that she would
be leaving on that vessel for Nzonito at the sixth bell.
Her eyes landed on the only small table in the room, laden with an
empty tray of food, spare bandages, more numbing injections, a vial of pain
medication…and the last sedative injection that Tavak had given Dravka
from the med kit in case she needed it. The first two had been used on
Gabriel, the third had been used on her on their journey to Nimida.
Right then, Valerie pocketed the last. The water was still running in the
shower tube but she knew that Dravka would be done soon.
After a moment of hesitation, she unlocked the door and left the room.
If he looked at her face, he would know something was wrong. He couldn’t
be involved in this and Valerie was determined to make it back to him.
They would figure out the tracker in her shoulder once they landed on
Nzonito. Valerie would cut it from the bone herself if it meant that they
would be safe, that Madame Allegria would never be able to locate them
again.
Valerie raced down the dark, quiet corridor. For the first time, she
realized the doors were somewhat thin. She heard beings talking quietly in
their rooms, the sounds muffled. She could only imagine what people had
thought when Dravka had been making her scream with pleasure…but she
didn’t dwell on that now.
As luck would have it, just as she reached the stairwell which led down
to the lobby—their rooms were on the third floor of the inn—Tavak
emerged from his room. He paused when he spotted her, his lips
downturning.
“Val? Where’s Dravka?” he asked.
Valerie felt the length of the sedative injection in her pocket, heavy and
cold. A slight inkling of panic began to fill her. He couldn’t leave his room.
If he did, Madame Allegria would see him.
“He’s showering,” Valerie said. “I—I have to go down to the lobby for
something.”
Tavak frowned and Valerie was acutely aware that every moment they
wasted, her aunt might be that much closer to discovering their room
numbers, or she might be climbing up the stairs with the two guards she’d
brought with her.
“What do you need?” Tavak asked. “Dravka wouldn’t want you
wandering around without him. I’ll go with you.”
“No!” she exclaimed, her breath hitching. Then her shoulders sagged
because she realized that she wouldn’t be able to get past him without
telling him something. “Please just…just go back in your room. I have to
take care of something. Tell Dravka that I’ll meet you out front in fifteen
minutes, okay? Be ready to leave then.”
His brows furrowed. “Val—”
“I’m going to the shop, just across the street,” Val said, her tone
sounding exasperated though really, it was just panic at that point. “For…
human female things, all right? I’d like privacy.”
Realization dawned on Tavak and she saw his expression shift
towards…well, not suspicion, at least.
His lips pressed together, but Valerie was already flying by him, her feet
hitting the stairs.
 “I’ll be back soon,” she tossed over her shoulder, hoping that her tone
sounded breezy enough, when really it was breathlessness.
“Vauk,” she heard Tavak curse, indecision in his voice, but she didn’t
wait to hear anymore.
She raced down the stairs, her heartbeat thumping in her throat. The
staircase down to the second floor was long and winding. Valerie didn’t
even remember coming up it but then again, she remembered that Dravka
had carried her up when they’d arrived two nights ago.
This has to work, she decided. It has to.
She just had to believe that it would.
She just had to believe that this would be the last time that she’d ever
see her aunt.
The landing on the second floor was narrow and looked identical to the
one on the third floor, a long corridor stretching out both ways, dark and
quiet, doors to about a dozen rooms on either side closed tightly.
Valerie was just about to descend towards the lobby when she heard the
echoing of…heels. Quiet voices, one she recognized, and heels.
Madame Allegria was coming up the stairwell from the lobby. In the
echoing, the words started to become clearer the higher they climbed. Her
aunt was saying, “…need to find them at the perfect moment. The vessel will
take time to refuel. We need to stall. And don’t kill any of them, I want them
alive.”
Hatred burned through her at the words, making her scowl, paused on
the second-floor landing.
Her aunt wanted to stall?
Well, Valerie had every intention of getting out of there on time. She
could handle her aunt, she believed, but what would she do about the
guards? Especially if they were armed.
I’ll figure it out, she knew.
Valerie didn’t want to hide but she also didn’t want her aunt to believe
she’d willingly come to meet her. That would only make her suspicious.
So Valerie started to descend the stairs, her heart pumping steadily and
hard. Her teeth were gritted together as the sound of heels became louder
and louder. She could almost smell her aunt’s perfume. Just one more turn
and…
There she was, climbing the steps and looking put out because of it. Her
red hair was swaying behind her. She was dressed in a bright magenta dress
that molded to her curves. Her red lips were pursed in a frown. And behind
her were the two guards, younger men, with the unmistakable outline of
stunners strapped to their hips.
Valerie made her eyes go round when Madame Allegria glanced up at
her. Valerie froze on the steps but her aunt recovered first, lunging forward
to grab her arm, her nails digging into her flesh, hard enough to draw blood.
“Well, if it isn’t my little niece,” Madame Allegria hissed, pulling her up
the flight of stairs with renewed vigor until she was back on the second-
floor landing. “How wonderful to see you here on Nimida. Enjoying your
little vacation?”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

M adame Allegria was pissed. Furious. Valerie could hear it in her

tone.
She had to know about Gabriel too. About the engagement.
Valerie kept silent though she struggled in her grip, to make a good
show of it, which would undoubtedly delight her sadistic aunt.
Madame Allegria motioned forward at her guards, who went down the
left corridor and forced open the nearest door, breaking the lock.
Mercifully, the room was unoccupied and Madame Allegria dragged her
in there, tossing her towards one of the two chairs that flanked the small
table. For a moment, Valerie was disoriented because the room was almost a
perfect replica of the one she’d shared with Dravka. Everything was
positioned the exact same.
“One of you stay out there and guard the door,” Madame Allegria said.
The blond guard nodded his head and stepped out into the hallway while the
darker haired one stayed inside the room with them, his hand straying to the
stunner on his hip, watching her carefully, though his expression remained
blank.
The door slid closed and silence stretched, uncomfortable and thin, as
Madame Allegria seemed to regain her careful composure. She frowned
down at the only other empty chair in the room, then regarded the bed with
the same distaste, before deciding to take a seat at the table.
Her aunt sat straight and rigid, as if every surface in the room was
incredibly filthy. She took one deep breath in, one deep exhale out, and then
she turned those blue, cutting eyes on Valerie.
 But Valerie was immune to such a look now. Once, it might have made
her cower. Once, it might have made her afraid to be whipped and abused
again.
Now, Valerie had purpose.
“Where are they?” her aunt asked, her words clipped.
Valerie ignored the question.
“How did you find me?” Valerie asked quietly, glaring at her aunt across
the table.
Madame Allegria settled back in the seat, keeping her icy eyes on her,
narrowed. Observing. Watching.
Valerie wondered what it was that she saw.
“Celine Larchmont is a bitter bitch of a woman,” Madame Allegria said.
Valerie’s stomach dropped slightly. Had Celine betrayed them? “She
thought she could sneak you all off Everton and I wouldn’t find out?”
Valerie kept her confusion well-hidden.
So…maybe Celine hadn’t betrayed them?
“Though you destroyed your tracker,” Madame Allegria said, her tone
changing, becoming light like they were discussing the weather, “maybe
you didn’t realize that the last transmission came from the Larchmonts’
private port.”
Relief went through Valerie. So Ravu really had destroyed it after all.
Valerie had been mistaken.
It only strengthened her resolve to be free of this disease of a woman.
Because if she managed to get away, Madame Allegria would never find her
again.
“And pilots aren’t always so discreet, especially when…incentivized,”
Madame Allegria continued.
“So you tracked us to the Larchmonts’ port and paid off the pilot when
he returned,” Valerie said. “Isn’t bribery a little beneath you?”
“Not when it gets me what I want,” Madame Allegria said, a satisfied
smirk crossing her features.
“How’d you know we were here at the inn then? The pilot didn’t know
that,” Valerie said, continuing to glare.
“No, but a shopkeeper did. When I told him I was looking for three
Keriv’i criminals traveling with a human…well, that would be easy to
remember, wouldn’t it? He told me he’d seen some Keriv’i coming and
going from here.”
 So it hadn’t been the customs agent, Valerie thought. Which meant that
her aunt might not know where they were heading. A small relief.
It didn’t matter, as soon as they landed on Nzonito, they would need to
take a departing flight off the transport hub anywhere, just to be safe.
“You will be returning to Everton with me,” Madame Allegria said, her
features taking on a cold, unyielding expression. “You and the Krave. After
what they did to Gabriel, I’ll have them imprisoned.”
Valerie’s brow furrowed. That didn’t make any sense to her.
“Why?”
“Because if they are, we can explain to Derek what happened,” Madame
Allegria snapped, her impatience growing. The dark-haired guard behind
her shifted on his feet at her tone and Valerie felt the slim sedative injection
pressed against her thigh. “We can say the Krave attacked Gabriel and
kidnapped you in an effort to escape Everton, using you as a hostage, that
Gabriel bravely tried to stop them.”
“That’s not what happened! And Celine would never agree to—”
Madame Allegria cut her off, growling, “Don’t you understand, you
foolish little girl? It doesn’t matter what she wants. It doesn’t even matter
what Gabriel wants. It matters what Derek wants and what he wants is his
little brat of a son to be married and settled.”
Breath escaped Valerie’s lips. Her aunt still thought the engagement and
the marriage could be salvaged.
Then again…her words revealed to her that Madame Allegria still had
no idea that Celine Larchmont—that bitter bitch, as her aunt had called her
—was now in possession of information that would destroy her.
There would be no wedding.
And Valerie had no intention of leaving Nimida with her.
“Gabriel’s pride will be saved, looking like a hero, and Derek gets what
he wants,” her aunt continued, smoothing her features once more. A
monster in a mask. Like a striking snake. Ugly one moment, calm the next.
“We all get what we want.”
“Except me,” Valerie said, catching her aunt off guard with the small,
bitter smile that crossed her face. “Except Dravka and Tavak and Ravu.”
Madame Allegria checked the time on her Nu device and Valerie’s
fingers nudged into the pocket of her pants, curling around the sedative. She
would have to distract the guard somehow before she would get a chance to
use it. Or maybe she could use it once they left the hotel, when Madame
Allegria’s guard was down and she thought Valerie would go willingly.
Maybe then she could run. It would be easier to escape the guards at least.
“Our deal still stands,” Valerie tried, if only to buy a little more time. “If
I marry Gabriel Larchmont, you will leave the Keriv’i alone.”
“Our deal was forfeited the moment you left Everton,” Madame hissed,
narrowing her eyes on her, standing from the table, making Valerie’s heart
jolt.
“You want me to go with you?” Valerie asked quickly. “Then we leave
alone. Now. Dravka, Tavak, and Ravu will stay here. You won’t touch them
again and I’ll return to Everton with you.”
“Oh my dear,” Madame Allegria said, her tone condescending and
overly sweet, “that ship has sailed. From now on, you’ll do exactly as I tell
you and if you don’t then I’ll lock you up until the wedding and—”
Her words cut off abruptly when there was a loud thump outside the
door, a pained human shout following.
Another thump came, as Madame Allegria edged back from the door,
towards the bed.
“Go see!” she hissed at the dark-haired guard in the room with them,
waving her hand towards the door, pulling out a stunner of her own from a
strap attached to her thigh.
Valerie clenched the sedative in her lap and stood from the table, her
aunt grabbing her arm so she didn’t try to flee.
The guard had his stunner in his hand and was just opening the door—
It crashed inwards with a splintering force.
And on the threshold was Dravka, his face furious yet focused. Behind
him, she caught a quick glimpse of Tavak and Ravu—and the still body of
the blond guard on the ground.
Quicker than she could blink, Dravka punched the guard right in the
throat, his fist flashing out, making the human male clasp his neck,
wheezing and gasping for air, the stunner falling to the ground.
Tavak came up behind Dravka and used the discarded stunner to zap the
guard, who cried out—and then fell limp to the floor, a crashing of heavy
limbs and dead weight.
Was he...?
Valerie didn’t have time to dwell on it because Madame Allegria tugged
her closer, staring down the three Keriv’i males that were stepping into the
small room.
 Her two guards were down and dispatched. It was only her and them…
and even her aunt knew a losing battle when she saw one. She was no
match for the Keriv’is.
“Stay back, Kraves!” her aunt said, her voice hard and cold. “Attacking
a human is a criminal offense.”
“We’re not on Everton,” Dravka growled, continuing to approach, as
did Tavak and Ravu. “Release her now.”
Valerie tried to shake off her aunt’s grip, tugging, all while trying to
uncap the sedative, but it was difficult to do with one hand. She heard the
stunner in her aunt’s hand flare to life, the slim black device glowing blue
for a brief moment when she powered it on.
Dravka looked at it and then back to Madame Allegria.
“I have never harmed a female in my life,” he said, his voice quiet, his
eyes focused, “but I will make an exception for you if you don’t unhand my
mate right now.”
“Your mate?” Madame Allegria laughed, her lips twisting bitterly. “How
cute.”
“If you think you’re leaving here with her, you are very mistaken,”
Dravka continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.
Ravu was edging towards them and Madame Allegria’s eyes flickered,
retreating farther into the room. Valerie was still struggling to flick off the
cap on the sedative, but her thumb kept slipping over it, adding to her
frustration.
She must’ve made a small sound, one that Dravka might’ve mistaken
for pain, because her male lunged towards Madame Allegria immediately—
just as Valerie finally flicked off the seal!
She saw a bright flash from the stunner, a male grunt filling the room,
and Valerie moved quickly, yanking her arm from her aunt’s grip as she
plunged the sedative’s needle deep into the side of her neck.
A gasp came from Madame Allegria, her hand flying up to her throat,
her stunned gaze turning onto Valerie.
But Valerie was already rushing to Dravka’s side, the scent of burned
flesh filling the room. His flesh. Dravka was breathing hard, his hand
landing on the wall to steady himself. But he was still standing upright. In
his shirt there was a large hole, the edges burned away, and beneath it was a
wound, slightly bloodied, on the left side of his abdomen. Thankfully, it
looked superficial, not deep.
 “I’m all right,” he assured her, wrapping his hand around her waist,
tucking her close. It must take a lot more than one stun zap to bring a
Keriv’i down…though the same couldn’t be said for the unconscious
human guards.
“What—what was that?” Madame Allegria hissed. “What did you put in
me?”
Her stunner had been dropped to the ground in her surprise and Tavak
scooped it up quickly, destroying it in the palm of his hand, the pieces
scattering across the floor.
Dravka was straightening more by the second, though his wound had to
be painful.
Her aunt was beginning to blink heavily, reaching a hand out to steady
herself on the window ledge behind her.
Ravu was dragging the guard in the hallway into the room just as
Madame Allegria slid down the wall, her legs beginning to give out. She
landed in an ungraceful heap on the floor, her head lolling around her
shoulders.
Valerie stepped closer, her heart hammering in her breast, realizing
that…they’d done it. They just might be free of her.
“It was only a sedative,” Valerie said, crouching down in front of her.
“But it will keep you under for a good while.”
Madame Allegria’s nostrils flared, her eyes shutting briefly before she
struggled to reopen them.
“Be glad it wasn’t poison. You’ll still wake up,” Valerie said softly,
sensing the Keriv’i males hovering behind her, watching the exchange.
“And when you do, know this…Celine Larchmont—that bitter bitch of a
woman, as you called her—has copies of your business records. The ones
you had to keep stored in the Nu terminal in the basement, with all your
whips and chains and blood, where you thought no one would find it.”
“Wh…what?” Madame Allegria hissed softly, her eyes going wide with
disbelief.
“All of it,” Valerie said, though she didn’t quite know what the Keriv’i
males behind her had managed to pull from it. “And I have a feeling she
isn’t your biggest fan.”
“You…you can’t. That’s not…”
Her aunt’s words were beginning to slur.
 Valerie stood, looking down at her aunt. The same woman who shared
her mother’s blood, who didn’t lift a finger to help her own sister when she
needed help the most.
Valerie didn’t feel sorry for her. She never would.
“You deserve every terrible thing that is coming your way,” Valerie said
quietly, feeling her throat tighten. “I’ll be reading about your trial and
imprisonment in the coming year, somewhere far away, somewhere you
can’t touch us. I would say good luck…but I wouldn’t mean it.”
Madame Allegria looked up at her from her position on the floor, hatred
and fear and fury burning in her gaze.
Then her body slumped, her eyes closing, her mouth going slack.
Valerie stared down at her, feeling a familiar, warm hand touch her arm.
“Mellkia,” Dravka murmured. “Are you—”
Just then, they heard it.
The sixth bell…ringing out over Nimida.
Her breath hitched.
The vessel to Nzonito!
They had a flight to catch. And they needed to be on it.
“Let’s go!” Dravka growled.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

T he pain in Dravka’s side was only a brief nuisance as they sprinted

through Nimida.
Because nothing could compare to the relief he’d felt when he’d
seen his female, unharmed, standing in that room with her aunt.
After he’d strode from the washroom earlier, intending to convince his
stubborn little female to mate one last time before they journeyed to
Nzonito, instead he’d found their room empty.
He’d dressed quickly, only for Tavak to knock on his door, a frown on
his face.
“Valerie was acting strange,” the male had told him. “She went down
the stairs.”
“Kruvu?” Dravka had rasped.
“She said to meet her outside in fifteen minutes. That she had to go to
the shops. But she was…different. She looked nervous.”
Dravka had frowned, immediately sensing that something wasn’t right.
That was when he’d looked at the table, noticing that something he’d laid
out there was gone. The sedative injection. Everything else was untouched
and she’d even had the satchel of their clothes packed up and ready.
He’d snagged the bag and immediately left the room, going in search of
his mate. They’d met up with Ravu at the end of the hallway and quickly
jogged down the stairs.
On the second landing, however, they’d heard voices coming through a
nearby door and when they’d looked down the corridor, they saw a human
male wearing the Everton colors, a uniform of navy blue and green.
 Fear had gone through Dravka at that moment. It didn’t take him long to
piece together what had happened. Tavak and Ravu seemed to come to the
same conclusion because they rushed the guard together, dispatching him
quickly before breaking into the room he stood in front of.
Everything had happened so fast.
Focus, Dravka ordered himself, feeling Valerie’s hand clenched into his
own as they raced through Nimida, Tavak and Ravu right behind them. That
was then. This was now…and right now they needed to catch that vessel
before it left Nimida.
His side burned, the flesh sensitive and sizzling…but Dravka had had
worse. It would heal. It was the least of his worries. His top priority was
getting his female off that colony and onto a safer one, one far away from
her.
The transport depot was bustling and crowded.
“Over here!” Tavak bellowed, dodging a Luxirian with chipped black
horns, who growled at him when he clipped his shoulder. “This way!”
Dravka pulled Valerie through the crowd, weaving quickly, teeth
gritting, unused to crowds of beings. Up ahead, in one of the docking bays,
there was a larger vessel. Judging by the sound, the engines were on and
roaring. The whole depot seemed to shake with them.
They quickened their pace.
Almost there…
If only they could escape this place, they would be free.
There was no line. Everyone must have been on board already. He could
see the doors coming into view and he felt Valerie’s hand squeeze in his
own, could hear her ragged breaths.
The doors were closing.
“Vauk!” Dravka exclaimed.
But then Tavak was racing ahead, sprinting faster than they were able
to. He reached the doors, holding them until a Killup attendant appeared
with an annoyed expression, motioning for him to step back, her voice
raised. Tavak shook his head, his chest heaving, digging in his satchel to
procure their boarding passes.
The attendant’s lips were pursed in a scowl the moment Ravu, Dravka,
and Valerie reached the doors.
“Fine, go, go,” the attendant grunted, snatching the passes from Tavak’s
hand when she saw the group of them come running up. “Next time, don’t
be late! Or you forfeit your seats!”
“Thank you,” Valerie gasped out. “Thank you!”
The Killup frowned but said nothing, waving them on board
impatiently, murmuring something into her Coms device attached to her
vest. Tavak and Ravu went up the ramp. Dravka and Valerie followed
closely behind them…just as the doors to the vessel closed, sealing them
inside.
“We made it,” Dravka breathed, his shoulders sagging, leaning against
the wall. “Thank the demavs.”
A laugh bubbled from Valerie’s throat, hysterical but relieved. Even
Tavak and Ravu couldn’t contain their small grins. All of them seemed in
disbelief of their good luck.
Dravka pulled Valerie towards him, silencing her laugh with a desperate
kiss, one that made her gasp.
“You’re in trouble,” he growled into her mouth. “But we’ll talk about it
later.”
When he pulled back, her expression had sobered, but there was still
bright relief in her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t let her find you and—”
“When are you going to understand that we’re in this together?” he
asked. “That you don’t have to do everything on your own anymore?”
Something flashed in her eyes, her lips parting in realization.
“You’re right,” she said after a moment. Her gaze softened and she
stood on her toes to press a soft kiss to his mouth. Dravka groaned. He
could never be mad at her, though she’d endangered herself. “We’re in this
together. I promise I won’t do anything like that again.”
He pressed a hard kiss to her forehead, his hearts still pumping at the
thought that he could’ve lost her that day.
But she was in his arms now. They were leaving Nimida, leaving
Madame Allegria in an unconscious heap on the floor of an inn, none the
wiser as to their destination.
Or was it possible that…
“How did she find us?” he asked, frowning. “Did the tracker—”
“No, she bribed the pilot. Ben Vanner wasn’t very discreet after all,”
Valerie said, shaking her head, knowing where his thoughts were headed.
“And she found out we were staying at the inn because a shopkeeper had
spotted us. She shouldn’t know that we are heading to Nzonito.”
 Dravka nodded, his gaze going to Tavak and Ravu over her head.
“We’ll need to be cautious. I don’t want to take any chances,” he said.
“Not with you.”
Once they reached Nzonito, they would take a quick flight out to
another transport colony. From there, they would journey to Dumera. It
would take longer but they would all feel better in knowing that they
wouldn’t be followed.
Tavak and Ravu nodded, seeming to be in agreement.
“Hey!” came a voice, gravelly yet soft, from the top of the ramp. When
they all turned, another Killup stood there, dressed in a grey uniform the
same color as his skin. “We have to leave port soon. Find your seats and
strap in.”
“Sorry, we’re coming,” Valerie called back.

THE VESSEL WAS LARGER than it appeared on the outside. On both

sides of the vessel were a series of circular tables. Four seats surrounded
each of them, two on both sides. There was a wide aisle between all of them
and privacy screens were available for all the table clusters, a luxury he
hadn’t expected. A bar with food and drinks was at the back of the vessel, a
series of washrooms next to it.
It looked respectable and clean.
The vessel was filled with all kinds of beings traveling to the Second
Quadrant. Like them, however, most were minding their own business, not
even batting an eye when they saw three Keriv’is on board with a human
female. Those that did stare felt Dravka’s glare right back until they looked
away.
“Here’s ours,” Tavak said quietly, coming to a stop at an empty table
cluster, sliding into the seat next to the window, Ravu sliding in beside him.
Dravka nudged Valerie to the seat opposite of Tavak, also closest to the
window, and Dravka slid in next to her. He winced, his side aching, but he
would bandage himself up once they took off.
Instead, he enabled their privacy shield, a thin, translucent film rising
around their cluster. They could see outwards at the vessel cabin but no one
would be able to see them inside.
 Valerie let out a deep sigh after they all got strapped in. Dravka reached
out his hand and took hers, comforted by her heat and scent, though hers
was mingled with traces of Madame Allegria’s perfume.
“Is it over?” Ravu asked quietly.
Tavak made a grunting sound in the back of his throat and Dravka
squeezed Valerie’s palm, rubbing his thumb over the back of her soft hand.
“I truly believe so,” Valerie said quietly.
Then they felt a vibration. The engines firing hotter. Though it was a
larger vessel, it wasn’t as smooth as the private one they’d taken from
Everton.
As they pulled away from the docking bay, as the transport depot of
Nimida, with its bustling crowds, pulled away from view and they were met
with a metal shaft that led out to space…they all seemed to breathe a
collective sigh of relief.
The takeoff was bumpy. Dravka held onto his female’s hand tightly, a
loud roaring booming in his ears when the engine catapulted them forward.
Everything vibrated, even the teeth in his skull.
It didn’t take long for the vessel to even out and when he could actually
hear again…he heard Valerie say, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Dravka looked out the window, placing his arm on the back of her seat,
leaning towards her. The mysterious beauty of inky, star-riddled space
greeted him. Nimida was rapidly shrinking behind them. Soon, it would be
nothing more than a speck before it was erased entirely. Like it’d never
been.
But his eyes went to her, feeling something settle deep in his chest at the
sight of her. When she looked back at him, her green, glittering eyes went a
little shy when she saw his gaze was only on her.
“Pax,” he murmured. “Vellka.”
Beautiful.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

O ne week.
One long, exhausting, seemingly never-ending week.
There were two days on the trip to Nzonito, one of which was
spent in hyperdrive, which Valerie never wanted to experience again. Once
they reached Nzonito, though they were tired, they took the first vessel they
could find off the transport colony, to another transport colony about half a
day away called Twon’ia. They spent three days on Twon’ia because it was
a smaller transport colony and didn’t have regular flights running out of it.
It was more of a watering hole and the Keriv’is had taken watch in shifts,
looking out for any sign of Madame Allegria, in case she’d had the balls to
attempt to follow them.
Another day was spent backtracking towards Nzonito because it was the
only colony with direct transport to Dumera—unless they wanted to hop on
another three vessel flights.
And finally…
After a week...
“That must be it,” Dravka murmured in her ear, pressing a kiss to her
temple when she turned her face to look out the window. They were on the
tiniest little vessel imaginable, hurtling towards a little speck in the distance
that had grown larger and larger with every passing moment.
“I think so too,” she whispered, smiling, excited, relieved. Because
while Dumera was classified as a colony, it was really a planet. An actual
planet, as small as it was.
A planet with natural weather patterns. With sunrises and sunsets. With
—hopefully—plant life and rich soil so that she could create a garden.
 And Eve and Khiva were already there. They’d managed to patch
through to them while they’d been on Twon’ia, so they knew they were
coming. According to them, they’d already managed to procure housing for
them.
Within the hour, they would be on the ground. Valerie would step out
onto an actual planet for the very first time in her life. Dravka would be
returning to one twelve long years after Kerivu was destroyed.
Behind them, though Valerie couldn’t see them, she knew that Tavak
and Ravu were watching their arrival just as curiously. She knew that the
brothers still had doubts about the kind of place Dumera was—but after
speaking with Khiva through the patch number on Twon’ia, Valerie knew
he had put most of their fears to rest.
Valerie turned her face to Dravka. Her mate. Her lover. Her love.
“I’m so ready to be alone with you again,” she whispered, just between
them. There were only ten other beings on board the small vessel and over
the roaring of the engines, she knew Dravka was the only one who heard
her words.
Dravka growled, capturing her lips in a swift kiss, one that made her
chuckle and smile.
“I’m so ready to have you all to myself,” he rasped.
A warmth spread in her chest, one she’d grown used to this past week.
Truthfully, it was one she’d grown used to in the past five years, whenever
Dravka looked at her like that…like she was the only female in the entire
universe. The only female for him.
Just to be sure, she asked, “Is this real?”
She had the strangest urge to pinch herself, the closer the planet out the
window came into view.
Dravka’s opal eyes glittered with amusement, with certainty, with their
future together, with his love for her. It was all there. Right there. Beautiful
in its honesty. Absolutely perfect.
“This is real, mellkia,” he rasped, his voice sending pleasurable shivers
down her spine. “It always has been.”
Out the window, suspended in a bed of stars, Dumera was waiting for
them.

OceanofPDF.com
 EPILOGUE

T wo months later…

“DRAVKA,” Valerie murmured, trying to hide her impending smile with a

stern expression. “You’re distracting me and I’m losing sunlight here!”
Valerie was on her hands and knees, her palms deep in the dark,
fragrant, rich soil of Dumera. The last tendrils of sunlight were disappearing
on the horizon but she could already tell that a magnificent sunset would
soon take their place. Over the last two months, she’d become very well-
versed in sunsets. And sunrises. She never missed a single one.
Just that morning, Dravka had woken her with kisses across her neck,
just as the rays were beginning to spear across the thin furs that lined their
bed. He always woke her for the sunrises and they watched them together…
before his hands started to wander, of course. And since they slept with the
windows open, they had a perfect view of it, every morning, high up in their
house in a jivera tree.
Valerie had always dreamed of being surrounded by plants, of watching
things grow and live and thrive. And now on Dumera? She lived in an
actual tree. A jivera tree house, strong and surprisingly spacious and roomy,
since each jivera tree was massive. The whole planet, for that matter, was
home to all sorts of plant life. Plants she intended to spend her days
studying because it was all so new and exciting to her.
 And because Dumera’s weather was humid and since, according to Eve
and Khiva who had been on Dumera for five months now, it rained a lot, it
was a green haven. A perfect place, one that Valerie could never have
imagined.
Sure, Dumera was small. There was a ‘city center,’ though it mostly
consisted of a couple bars, which served the plethora of beings that worked
in the mines every day. Dumera was rich in minerals, which were its
primary source of income—or at least, they used to be.
Khiva himself had worked in the mines when he’d first arrived on
Dumera, but it was dangerous labor. Eve had told her, amid one of their
many ‘afternoon tea’ sessions, that he’d often come home bloodied, with a
new wound, and sore muscles.
Now, however, since he’d begun to create firestones again, he’d created
new jobs on the planet and brought in a lucrative source of income for their
little colony. Firestones were selling faster than they could produce them
and there was a buzzing of life and excitement on Dumera because of it.
In the city center, there were also the archives, which was where Eve
worked during the day—at least when she had the energy to. She was going
on five months pregnant now and seemed to get bigger and bigger every
day. She’d known that Keriv’i were large, so it made sense that Keriv’i
babies would be as well, but according to the healer she saw in town, she
still had many more months to go until she delivered.
Dravka and Valerie had spoken of when they wanted to start having
children. They both wanted them, very, very much. But Dravka’s
contraception implant—which all of the Keriv’i had been given annually on
Everton—wouldn’t wear off for another six months and Valerie was content
to wait. She was content to have him all to herself for a little while longer.
Dumera was a perfect place to raise a family, however, when they
started having children. It was small and quiet. They lived on the outskirts
of the center, close to Eve and Khiva, and close to Tavak and Ravu’s jivera
dwelling as well.
Sometimes, Valerie would wake up in the mornings, or lie in bed at
night, and marvel that she was so fortunate. That everything had worked out
in a way that she’d only dreamed of.
But as Dravka often reminded her…this was real. This was their life
and it would be for the rest of their days.
 So, right then, Valerie was wrist-deep in Dumera’s soil, in the garden
that Dravka had made for her. It was the first thing he’d done once they
were settled in their tree house. He’d built fences for her—the posts of
which he’d had to cut extra long because the ground was soft on this planet.
Things sank into it easily, which was why the majority of homes were built
in the trees.
Then again, as she was finding, that same soil was perfect for plants.
Dravka came to crouch in front of her, examining the little holes she
was digging out for the scraps of roots from last night’s dinner. She was
experimenting, to see if they would regrow if the root tips were replanted.
One of her many experiments that were scattered through her plots.
Dravka had just gotten home from the labs in the city center, where he
worked with Khiva, Tavak, and Ravu. Khiva had put Dravka in charge of
the firestone exports now that they were expanding their operation, since
Dravka had been a merchant trader back on Kerivu. He had specialized
knowledge that the others didn’t have, old connections through the
Quadrants, and he could read trade lines and run numbers like no other
Keriv’i.
Seeing him return home every night with a quiet determination and
satisfaction after his day was a reward in itself, one Valerie would never get
tired of witnessing. She loved watching him pore over trading figures at
night before she dragged him to bed, loved seeing the way his mind worked
away from Everton. It was a side of him that she’d never experienced
before, one she’d never seen, and it had only made him more attractive to
her when he’d already been absolutely devastating before.
“Have you been out here all day?” he asked, eyeing her in a way that
made her shiver. She knew that look. It was a look that told her her male
would be ravenous that night. The fact that she was on her hands and knees
before him didn’t help matters. Her male particularly loved that position
and if they weren’t at the base of their tree house right now, he’d probably
already be deep inside her.
“I took a break for lunch,” she said, giving him a smile. “But I’ve been
out here since you left, yes. I got all the seeds of the flowers planted. I hope
they grow.”
There was a market on Dumera. Traders from off-planet would
sometimes come and bring goods with them. Last week, a trader came with
an assortment of seeds. Of vegetables and fruits and flowers from another
world. Valerie needed to be careful just in case the seeds actually took root
and grew. She needed to be careful that they didn’t spread beyond her plot.
She didn’t want to disrupt the balance of Dumera whatsoever, but it was a
fun little project, one that might bring a new food supply if the seeds were
successful.
“Almost done?” he murmured, eyeing her in her dress, one she’d bought
from the market when they’d first arrived. Since it was humid on Dumera,
the less clothes, the better, she’d found.
Valerie straightened once she was finished burying the root, wiping a
hand over her forehead, no doubt getting dirt on her face.
“Pax,” she said, her tone teasing.
Dravka smirked and helped her up. Her legs were covered in dirt and
she swiped it away.
“Don’t worry, I’ll clean you up,” he purred, snagging her around the
waist, leaning down to give her a proper kiss.
Valerie’s breath hitched, her arms threading around his shoulders,
pressing up on her toes to get closer. They kissed a million times a day and
still, every time felt like that first time. His kiss made her shivery and warm
and wanting. It made her feel safe and loved and protected.
Valerie pulled away when Dravka’s hand began to creep up the back of
her dress.
She grinned, her body already readying for him, the place between her
thighs beginning to throb.
“You’re insatiable, you know that?”
“My Rut’s coming,” he rasped.
“Oh,” she whispered, excitement curling in her belly. “When?”
“In a couple days, I think,” he said.
His last Rut happened about a week after they’d settled on Dumera. The
first Rut she’d helped see him through. Properly, at least.
If Valerie had thought that Dravka’s sex drive was incredibly high
normally, it went into overdrive around his Rut. For three days, it had
seemed like she’d been suspended in a never-ending orgasm. Morning to
night, he’d taken her in every possible way, every possible position. Once
he released his teela inside her, he only needed a moment’s rest and then he
was ravenous for her again.
They’d nearly destroyed their tree house those three days. Every inch of
their home had been christened during that Rut.
 And by the end of it?
Dravka had been a very, very satisfied male and Valerie had felt like
she’d just returned from battle. A very pleasurable, intense battle that she
wanted to do all over again.
But she’d loved seeing him through it. She was his mate, after all. She
took great pride in the knowledge that she had seen him through it and
made it out alive on the other side.
Death by sex?
Not a bad way to go. Especially when a Keriv’i was involved.
So, if Dravka’s Rut was T-minus two days…it made sense that his sex
drive was ramping up again.
“A long bath sounds nice,” she told him softly, tossing her words over
her shoulders as she went through the gate of her garden and towards the
ladder that led up to their jivera tree house. “Doesn’t it?”
A growl met her ears.
Dravka was close on her heels. When they reached the ladder, he jerked
his chin up. “Females first.”
She gave him a knowing look that made him chuckle, wicked and deep.
But she would play along. So up she went. And when she was only up a few
rungs?
She heard his groan.
Underneath her dress, she was bare and from this angle, he could see
her clearly. And since Dumerians had no concept of underwear—something
she was realizing had been very human—she didn’t wear any anymore
because they weren’t available for purchase. The few pairs Dravka had
packed from Everton she’d decided to save for her periods because she
could easily slip in an absorbent cloth.
But right then, all Dravka saw was her bare flesh.
She felt him begin to climb up after her. A moment later, she gasped
because his hand landed on the back of her thigh, stilling her in place. He
climbed higher and her breathing went a little ragged in anticipation.
She felt his head dip beneath her dress, felt his hot breath across her
thighs, and then—
A shocked moan released from her throat before she bit her lip to quiet
it, casting her eyes around for any neighbors that might see.
Her eyes went wide in disbelief, a gush of wetness flooding between her
thighs at his brazenness.
 Because he’d just licked a long, wicked line up her slit.
“Dravka,” she breathed.
“Mmm,” he groaned under her dress. “Pax?”
Then he did it again and her knees trembled.
“Dravka!” she whispered, her whole body tingling in awareness. “What
if a neighbor sees?”
It was unlikely, but still possible. The jivera trees were spaced pretty far
apart. Their nearest ‘neighbors’ were actually Eve and Khiva and their tree
was a good quarter mile away.
“Then you better get inside now, mellkia,” he growled.
She squeaked and darted up the ladder quickly. He followed in pursuit
and once she reached the main platform of their home, a startled laugh
emerged from her throat because he caught her around the waist and carried
her inside, kicking closed their heavy door.
But they didn’t make it to the washroom. Instead, he lowered her down
to the entrance rug she’d found at the market a few weeks ago, pushing up
her dress until it was bunched around her waist.
“Dravka,” she breathed, watching him kneel between her thighs as he
spread them wide.
Her shameless cry filled their jivera tree when he lowered his head,
when that long, dark tongue darted out and flicked between her folds.
“Oh god,” she breathed, her hands coming to rest on the top of his
smooth head before stroking down towards his jaw. She felt it shift and
move as he ate at her, as he lapped and laved and suckled.
He was much too good at it because a couple moments later, she felt the
telltale signs of her impending orgasm. She began to squirm on the rug,
feeling his dark purr vibrate her in places that he’d explored thoroughly.
“Dravka, please!”
“Not yet, mellkia,” he growled, pulling away, making her grunt in
frustration. “I want to feel you come on my cock. Hands and knees, Val.”
She bit her bottom lip when a grin began to show. So her position in the
garden had given him ideas. She loved when he got a little demanding and
to further tease him, she took her time rolling over as she heard him untie
the laces of his pants and shove them down.
He groaned when she positioned herself in front of him, arching her
back a little as she looked over her shoulder at him. He stroked his cock a
few times as he watched her sway, a puddle of pre-cum already dripping
down his length.
Delicious.
Her male was impatient tonight though. Ravenous, just as she’d known.
He ran the head of his cock up and down her slit, making Valerie rock
her hips.
“Vauk, I want you,” he growled. “I need you so badly right now.”
“Then take me, love,” she whispered, meeting those opal eyes of his.
“Because I’m all yours.”
With a growl, he thrust inside her, deep and hard. A breathless moan
tumbled from her lips as she rocked her hips back against him. Her gaze,
however, never left his.
It was a fast and needful and satisfying mating. He took her hard, their
flesh slapping together, as he worked those hips expertly between her
thighs. Valerie was huffing and moaning endlessly when her orgasm finally
crashed over her, feeling his pace quicken.
It was all he was waiting for because when he felt her begin to squeeze
around him, a loud bellow released from his throat and he began to pump
his seed inside her.
And as the intense pleasure began all over again, she still kept his eyes.
Because she never wanted to look away from him again. When they were
together, he was all she wanted to see.
“Vellka,” he rasped.

MUCH, much later, they were in the bathing tub together.

Valerie was leaning back against him, her back to his front, encased
between his thighs. His hands were stroking her leisurely, water trickling
whenever he lifted his arm from the bath.
Her hair was pinned to the top of her head to keep it from getting wet
and every now and again, Dravka would press his nostrils into it and drag
her scent deep into his lungs.
Quietness stretched between them because it was sundown. The window
that their bathing tub faced was perfect for watching the sunsets and their
bedroom window was perfect for sunrises. Lavender and lime and swirls of
forest green threaded through the sky, the colors intense and beautiful.
She’d never seen anything like a Dumerian sunset. Even Dravka had said
they rivaled Kerivu’s.
Valerie felt a sense of awe and peace whenever they watched one. As if
everything was right in the world.
Well, almost everything, she knew.
There was still no word on her aunt’s trial. Tavak often combed through
universal news but nothing yet had come from the New Earth colonies
about Madame Allegria. Perhaps Celine Larchmont hadn’t exposed her yet.
But Valerie knew that the day she learned of her aunt’s downfall would be a
very relieved day indeed. A weight off her shoulders.
“I made you some solar lights for your garden,” Dravka murmured in
her ear. “There were some leftover firestone pieces at the labs, ones that
were imperfect. So I chipped them down and used them as a power source
for lanterns. I can install them tomorrow.”
“Really?” she asked, giving him an excited grin. “That would be nice.
Then I could be out there at night.”
Dravka let out an amused huff.
“You spoil me,” she teased.
“Mmm,” he murmured, accepting her kiss when she leaned closer. “You
deserve to be spoiled.”
As always, his kiss left her breathless and lightheaded when she finally
pulled away.
“I love you,” she whispered, leaning back against his chest, returning
her gaze to the sunset in front of them. The last rays were beginning to die.
She would have to wait until tomorrow for her next one.
“And I love you, my beautiful mate,” he rasped in her ear, trailing his
lips down the side of her neck, making her smile.
His arms wrapped around her tighter, his hands beginning to wander a
little more.
“Wait, it’s almost my favorite part,” she breathed.
“Of course,” he murmured, chuckling. “How could I forget?”
And then, as the last rays of sunlight disappeared from the sky and it
darkened quickly, white flowers along the jivera tree branches began to
unfurl and bloom.
Night blooming flowers. The branches of the jivera were littered with
them and they gave off a beautiful fragrance that reminded her of the
gardenias she’d smelled in Celine Larchmont’s conservatory.
Simple and glorious in their beauty. Almost as beautiful as the sunset.
Valerie sighed happily.
“Now?” Dravka growled.
Valerie laughed, her hand stroking up his thigh underneath the water.
“Now,” she whispered, smiling, “I’m all yours.”

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 KRAVING TAVAK
(T he K rave of E verton B ook #4)

PRE-ORDER NOW!

BLURB:

A female is the last thing I want or need.

Doesn’t matter if they’re Laoti, or Luxirian, or human….females mean

trouble and I’m so vauking tired of trouble.

What I want is to spend my days in peace. After years of working in a

brothel, of being pawed at and owned and consumed by women, I want to
 be left alone.

Then I see her.

A human female who makes my hearts pound, who makes my blood rush,
and my wicked desire flare to life. She’s not intimidated by my scowl or my
cold indifference meant to keep her away. She grins when I snarl. She
teases me when I’m surly and angry.

I can’t give her the forever she wants.

But I can give her right now…and she’ll spend it in my furs where she
belongs.

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WANT MORE SEXY, ALPHA ALIENS FROM ZOEY DRAVEN?

Warriors of Luxiria:
The Alien’s Prize
The Alien’s Mate
The Alien’s Lover
The Alien’s Touch
The Alien’s Dream
The Alien’s Obsession
The Alien’s Seduction
The Alien’s Claim

Warrior of Rozun:
Wicked Captor
Wicked Mate
 The Krave of Everton:
Kraving Khiva
Prince of Firestones
Kraving Dravka
Kraving Tavak

Horde Kings of Dakkar:

Captive of the Horde King
Claimed by the Horde King
Madness of the Horde King

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Love, Zoey

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zoey Draven has been writing stories for as long as she can remember. Her love affair with the
romance genre started with her grandmother's old Harlequin paperbacks and has continued ever
since. As a Top 100 Amazon bestselling author, now she gets to write the happily-ever-afters—with
a cosmic, otherworldly twist, of course! She is the author of steamy Science Fiction Romance books,
such as the Warriors of Luxiria and the Horde Kings of Dakkar series.

When she's not writing about alpha alien warriors and the strong human women that bring them to
their knees, she's probably drinking one too many cups of coffee, hiking in the redwoods, or spending
time with her family.

Visit her at www.ZoeyDraven.com.

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