Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Taurex didn’t argue. He didn’t demand to know why she couldn’t stay for breakfast or remind her that they had originally planned to spend another day on the Mother Ship. He simply lowered his gaze for a moment and nodded.
“Of course.”
The lack of resistance surprised Terra so much that she almost didn’t know what to say.
Taurex pushed himself slowly to his feet, and that was when she realized he really was still wearing the same sleep trousers he’d had on when he came to her room the night before. Had he even gone to bed? Looking at the deep circles beneath his eyes, she doubted it.
“Let me get dressed and I will take you back to Earth,” he said. Then he hesitated, his golden gaze meeting hers briefly before sliding away. “Unless you fear me too much to allow me to pilot you there. In which case, I can call a fellow Monstrum to take you home.”
Terra stared at him.
She had been braced for anger…had prepared herself for persuasion, wounded pride, maybe even some attempt to make her feel guilty for rejecting him after everything he had done for her.
Instead, Taurex looked like a man who had already accepted that he’d lost something precious and had no idea how to get it back. There was no anger in his face at all—only sadness and a kind of bleak defeat that made Terra’s chest tighten unexpectedly.
He seemed almost like a man who had lost his will to live, and suddenly she remembered the way he had obeyed her the night before when she asked him to leave. No argument…no threat…no raised voice. He simply left when she asked him to.
“No,” she heard herself saying. “You don’t need to get someone else to take me home. I trust you.”
Taurex looked at her then, and for just a second something flickered in his tired golden eyes.
“Thank you for that,” he said softly.
Then he nodded once and brushed past her on his way back toward his sleeping chamber, leaving Terra alone in the kitchen with her suitcase, the untouched plate of green eggs and ham, and a confusing ache in the middle of her chest she hadn’t expected to feel.
32
TERRA
The ride home was silent. Terra didn’t know what to say and Taurex didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk at all. If she’d thought he was a male of few words before, now he seemed to be a male of no words at all.
The trip back to Earth was nothing like the journey to the Monstrum Mother Ship had been.
On the way out, Terra had been practically glued to the viewscreen, exclaiming over the moon and Mars and the vast golden Mother Ship while Taurex patiently answered every question she threw at him. Now she sat quietly in the passenger seat with her hands folded tightly in her lap, watching the stars streak past without really seeing them.
Taurex didn’t try to make conversation either. He piloted the shuttle with his golden eyes fixed on the controls, his broad shoulders rigid beneath the dark shirt he had changed into.
Terra found herself glancing at him when she thought he wouldn’t notice. He still looked exhausted. If anything, he looked worse now than he had at breakfast—as though every mile they traveled toward Earth was taking something out of him.
She had expected him to explain himself again once they were alone in the shuttle. In fact, she had almost expected him to try to convince her that she had misunderstood what being his fated mate meant, or to tell her that the strange Bond he wanted wasn’t as invasive as she thought.
Instead, Taurex said nothing about it. He asked once if the temperature in the shuttle was comfortable for her and once if she wanted anything to drink, and when she declined both offers, he simply nodded and went back to flying.
The silence should have made Terra feel relieved, but instead it left her increasingly uncomfortable with her own thoughts. The night before she had been so certain that she had finally seen a dangerous side of him—the side he had hidden beneath all that gentleness and courtesy—but the more she replayed everything that had happened, the less certain she became.
He hadn’t shouted when she rejected him. He hadn’t threatened her. He hadn’t tried to touch her after she told him to stop. When she had begged him to leave her alone, he had left, and this morning when she had asked to go home, he had agreed immediately and even offered to find someone else to fly her because he was afraid she might be uncomfortable with him.
None of that sounded like Viktor Orlov.
None of it sounded like Jackson, either or any other man she’d ever dated.
Terra shifted restlessly in her seat and looked out at the blackness of space again, unwilling to follow the thought any further. Maybe Taurex was simply good at hiding his anger. Maybe all of his patience was some elaborate act that would eventually disappear if she let herself get too close.