I narrowed my eyes. “I do not know her.”
“Well, I think she likes you,” Edie said with a shrug. Her smile elongated into a beam as she added, “She was surprised to find out you’re an Elder.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, because you’re not wearing your robes.” She glanced at my unattired chest.
I, too, glanced down at myself as if having forgotten I was without torso dressings. “The robes draw much attention,” I informed her. “As it is a day to celebrate my brother, I elected to forego such vestment and instead mingle into the crowd. As best as I am able to, anyway.” I spoke the last statement with a note of unintentional bitterness.
“That makes sense,” she commented. The sounds of shuffling behind me drew my consideration from her, and we watched in momentary silence as a smattering of human couples and one A’li-uud pair joined the newlyweds in dancing. Edie twisted in her seat to look behind her at her awaiting Corporal, and she shifted to rise. Before she stood, however, she leaned nearer to me and hinted, “You should ask Octavia to dance.”
The suggestion startled me, and I inadvertently spouted, “Why?”
“I think she likes you,” she repeated with a mysterious smile. Then, she got to her feet, offered me a small wave of departure, and ventured through the maze of tables toward her male companion.
For a moment, I considered dismissing her advice. Dancing was not an activity I engaged in, and I was especially reluctant given the amount of cutting stares I was already receiving simply for existing within the confines of the tent. Furthermore, her estimation of the woman’s interest in me was just that: an estimation. I did not wish to subject myself to further ridicule by requesting the company of a human and being rejected for all to see. More than anything, though, I had become entangled in my new role as Elder, both to clear my name and to live up to the honor of the Elderhood. Time for frivolous socializing was not something I possessed.
Yet, I was at the reception with little else to do but sit and endure disparaging looks from those nearest me. How much more I could tolerate before my boots carried me back to the relief of the Elder palace of their own accord, I did not know, but I knew my patience was waning. In a sudden fit of defiant courage, I left my chair and wove my way through the tables toward the mane of brunette tresses. If she were to reject me, so be it. I had grown accustomed to repudiation in the last few months, anyway.
Chapter Sixteen
Octavia
Once Edie’s pseudo-boyfriend arrived, I went from feeling a little out-of-place to completely uncomfortable. She drifted off regularly, sometimes to kiss and hug her Corporal and other times to schmooze with Phoebe. I knew plenty of the people there—the humans, at least—because I was one of the few hairstylists in the colony and had seen most of them in my salon at one time or another, but there was only so much small-talk we could make before the conversation became quiet and awkward. Plus, those who shared a table with me had come with their own dates, so they had someone they were well-acquainted with to entertain themselves while I was left alone because my date’s replacement had finally shown up.
Honestly, I just wanted to go home.
The reception was gorgeous in every sense of the word, and it was thankfully easy for me to occupy myself with looking around at all the alien decorations and lights and guests. I couldn’t get over how the chairs were glowing without any apparent source, though I did know the geodes within them had some kind of scientific makeup that made them glow like plasma. The flowers on the table were breathtaking and strange at the same time, and even the plate I ate off of was unusual in that it seemed to be made of a weird wood but was as light as a slip of paper. The A’li-uud present obviously weren’t thrown by their surroundings, but they did seem confused by the goings-on of dancing and eating. I wondered what their weddings were normally like, though I wasn’t inclined to get up and ask one.
I was startled suddenly by a hand on my shoulder. It was too light a touch to be Edie, since she would’ve just hopped over to me and crashed onto a chair next to me without warning, and I spun on my seat. To my surprise, the handsome A’li-uud Elder was there looking down at me.
“Pardon me,” he said in his staccato English. “I did not intend to frighten you.”
“No, it’s fine,” I replied hastily, blushing for my rather ungraceful reaction.
“Would you care to dance?”
Immediately, I had a feeling Edie had something to do with this. It was too coincidental that, after she’d mentioned during the ceremony that I should ask him to dance and I’d blown off the idea, he would approach me. The warmth in my cheeks dissipated, and I swung my eyes around the room briefly in search of Edie’s telltale bouncing. I spotted her on the dance floor with her Corporal.
The Elder must have noticed my looking around because he added, “I will not be offended if you do not wish to dance with me.”
“No, it’s fine,” I repeated. “I mean, yes, I’d love to.”
“You are quite certain? You seem uncomfortable.” His white, slanted eyes narrowed with scrutiny. It was evident he thought it very important I didn’t dance with him because I felt obligated but because I truly wanted to, which I did.
“I was just wondering where Edie was,” I told him. “I figured she put you up to asking me.”
His vividly blue chest gleamed in the glow of my chair as he twisted to observe Edie on the dance floor. Her arms were wrapped around her date’s neck, her small body pressed to his burly one, and she was smiling as broadly as ever. Either she was trying to avoid looking in my direction, or she was too wrapped up in her man to remember I existed because no amount of staring I did drew eye contact from her.
“Your friend made the suggestion,” he admitted, “but I did so because I wished to do so.”
He held out a hand to help me up. As I slid my palm to his, I noticed how long and capable his fingers were, and they proved it when they curled around mine and pulled me to my feet with ease. He guided me to the dance floor, which was occupied mostly by humans.
“I’m not a very good dancer,” I warned.
Turning to face me, hand still holding mine, he slid his free arm around my waist. “Neither am I,” he sympathized. “And, I must admit, I know not how to dance as humans do.”
We were already dancing pretty normally, I felt. He was holding my waist, I’d looped my own arm around his shoulder, and our hands were joined beside us as we spun slowly on the spot. We probably looked like sixth graders with the half-foot of distance between our bodies and our awkward footwork, but it sufficed. I didn’t know how to dance any better than that anyway.
“Do A’li-uud dance?” I asked curiously. As we turned, Edie finally met my gaze, and she grinned smugly at me. I stopped myself from making a face back at her.
“Some,” he answered. “Much like humans, I expect.”
I nodded. “Is this different than A’li-uud dancing?” I went on, referring to what we were doing. It may not have been the most stimulating of conversations, but I didn’t want us to fall into that clumsy silence common of first dances.
“Yes,” came his reply. He was looking down at me, and I felt naked beneath his stare. “Quite different.”
“Can you show me?”
The question elicited a response from him I wouldn’t have expected. His eyebrow perked, washing away the ever-brooding expression, and he looked more like his deviant twin than ever. “You wish to dance as A’li-uud do?” he challenged.
I glanced past him to the only alien couple on the dance floor. They were engaged in a slow rotation like the humans around them, but it was clear they didn’t feel natural doing it. The male repeatedly twitched his arm like he wanted to twirl his partner around, and the female’s knees bent when they shouldn’t.
“Yeah,” I said. “Can we?”
He hesitated, his feet slowing to a stop and bringing me to a halt with him. For a second, I thought he was going to let go of me and walk away, offended by my
request. I opened my mouth to tell him to forget it, but, before I could, he jerked. My front was crushed against his, and I was instantly overwhelmed by his rich, heady, sunshine scent. He bent, and I was angled backward, then he wrenched himself away and pulled me with him. I stumbled over my feet and collapsed against him, gripping his arms with all my strength to keep my balance. He stilled again, and his hand sought mine as his arm looped once more around my waist. We were back to preteen dancing.
“Whoa,” I panted. I was unexpectedly short of breath.
“Our dance is one of instinct,” he said. He didn’t seem embarrassed, but it was clear he didn’t wish to continue showing me. “It requires intrinsic trust and soul-claiming passion.”
My heart fluttered at the words “soul-claiming passion,” but I hid my interest by tossing my head and laughing uncomfortably. “I guess it’s not something you can teach someone in a few minutes.”
“It is the opinion of many our dance cannot be taught,” he clarified. “It must come from within.”
“I thought you said you’re not good at dancing,” I teased. “It sounds like you know a lot about it.”
He didn’t laugh, nor did he look amused. His brooding expression had returned, but I didn’t find it off-putting or rude. In typical self-destructive fashion, I was drawn in by his ceaseless mystery. “The A’li-uud have only one dance, and it is unique to the individual or couple. Humans, however, have many dances, and I cannot say I have ever tried them,” he explained. “Thus, I surely cannot allege any expertise.”
“Ah,” I said. I didn’t know how else to respond.
His eyes bore into me from above, pressing into mine and commanding my attention. He was so warm I could feel his heat even with the distance between us, and it was difficult to meet his stare without my jaw dropping open at just how attractive he truly was. Everything about this alien was attracting me like a bee to a pollen-laden flower. Even his smell pulled me into him and made everything around us become hazy.
“I am Venan,” he announced without warning.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I didn’t know his name until he said it, and I hoped he didn’t think I was rude for not having introduced myself yet.
“I’m—”
“Octavia,” he interrupted. “I know.”
Hot tingles sputtered down my spine. Hearing my name from his lips was delicious and exotic and more pleasing to my ears than it should’ve been. “Yeah,” I breathed. “I’m Octavia.”
Unusual movement in the corner of my eye tugged my focus from Venan, and I looked to my left. There were other dancers, of course, as well as the bride and groom, but I surveyed past them to the farthest wall of the tent. Striding quickly along the border was an A’li-uud, the same female I’d seen at the wedding who’d been loitering at the back.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked, slipping my hand from Venan’s shoulder to point in the direction of the possible intruder. She hadn’t seen me.
He followed my gesture, and I glanced up at him. Immediately, his face became stone. His jaw hardened into a sharp line, and his ghostly eyes darkened to smoke. He released my waist, as well as my hand, and growled, “Yes, I do. Please excuse me.”
Without waiting for me to reply, he stalked across the space, slicing through intertwined couples. It didn’t quite hit me I’d been unceremoniously abandoned on the dance floor until I shivered in the absence of his body heat. Musings were rocketing through my mind at warp speed. Maybe she was his girlfriend, and he didn’t want to get caught dancing with someone else. Or she might’ve been a felonious thief looking to pilfer goods from the reception while everyone was distracted, and he needed to have her arrested. She could’ve been the groom’s ex-girlfriend who showed up with the intention of ruining the celebration.
Edie sauntered over to me, still clasped onto the Corporal and swaying to the music. “What happened?” she asked, her brows knitted with concern.
I shook my head and stared after Venan, watching as he neared the female. She’d seen him now, and her expression was just as fierce as his had been. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
Chapter Seventeen
Venan
I knew who she was the moment Octavia drew her to my attention, but she had changed since the last time I had seen her. Her face was thinner, more sunken in the cheeks and more bulbous around the eyes, and her figure had become distinctly wiry. The pleasant aura she had once emanated was no longer present; even from a distance, she was noticeably graver and certainly corrupted. If her soul had been visible, there would have been black cracks webbing through it.
She saw me approaching her before I was near enough to speak, and she stopped mid-stride to await my coming. When I drew close enough to exchange words, a dry half-smile lit her faded mouth, and she said casually, “It has been a long time, brother.”
Rather than responding, I closed my fingers around her forearm and yanked her none-too-carefully toward the tent entrance. To my surprise, she failed to fight against my force, and I easily removed her from the reception to the desert outside. Night had fallen an hour before. In the absence of the plentiful geodes, only dim starlight permitted me a view of her, but it was all I needed. I did not care to see her as it was.
“Why have you come here?” I hissed once we were far enough away from the celebration for the music to be no more than a dull undertone. A cool evening breeze lilted across my skin, and I inhaled an angry breath of fresh, unperfumed air for the first time since the ceremony.
“My kin was wedded,” she replied. “It seemed only fitting I make an appearance.”
A twist in her tone hinted she was amused by my displeasure, which served only to infuriate me further. “You were not invited to make an appearance or otherwise,” I bit cruelly. “Perhaps you have forgotten your exile, but we have not.”
“Oh, I have not forgotten,” she said, her upper lip curling into a snarl, “but how would it look if the devoted little sister failed to offer her congratulations? Besides, I have not yet congratulated you on your new role as Elder, either.”
“How do you know of that?”
She canted her head, the half-smile pasted back onto her leering face. “Surely, you do not think it would escape my notice my brother has been named our kingdom’s new leader? I am not so exiled as that.”
My crowning into the Elderhood had unquestionably been far from a private affair, but she had been absent from my life for so long I had come to believe she was either long gone from Ka-lik’et or possibly even dead. Neither thought brought me sorrow. “I require no words of false kindness from you,” I snapped.
“Of course,” she conceded, lowering her head rather mockingly. “You are well fit for the title, Venan. After all, you have devoted your life to Dhal’at. There was a time I believed you to be so focused your mind had narrowed against anything else life had to offer. I see that has changed.”
“My devotion to Dhal’at has not wavered, if that is your implication,” I coarsely contradicted.
“No,” she agreed. The half-smile was spreading to the other side of her mouth, pulling her lips back into a sinister smirk. “Yet, it seems you have welcomed a new array of fancies into your virtuous world. I saw you dancing with the human.”
The way she rolled the word “human” sounded as if she had first bathed it in waste and it now left a bitter taste on her palate, and I bristled. “Watch your tongue, Ola,” I warned.
“Oh, I do not judge you, brother,” she added with a slight jeer in her voice. “How can I? Zuran has just married a human, and you have always wished yourself to be more like him despite his moral shortcomings, have you not?”
My arm shot out toward her before I could stop it, my fingers closing around her throat just as they had her forearm. She grinned against my hold.
“It seems you have already taken a leaf from his book, Wise One,” she taunted. She sounded only mildly constricted, as I was not applying enough pressure to close her airway but only e
nough to demand her silence. Unfortunately, she was neither threatened nor obliging. “I never thought I would see the day you acted out with violence, but rumor has it this is not your first venture into the murky waters of ethics. Tell me, is it true you killed Elder Kharid to steal his crown for yourself?”
I roared with rage. My fingers tightened into the fleshy tendons of her neck, and I reacted not with reason but with anger. Lifting her a foot off the sand by her throat, I threw her on her back to the ground. A storm of powdery gold particles puffed into the air around her on impact, and I hoped she would have disappeared into nothingness by the time the cloud settled, but I had no such luck. Panting with stolen breath, she hiked herself up onto her elbows and continued to grin at me. I stepped toward her.
“How dare you suggest such an evil?” I growled. Adrenaline was coursing through me so rapidly I was unable to prevent my extremities from shaking, and my fingers were itching to seek her throat again. “I gave my life to Elder Kharid. I would have traded places with him in an instant if it meant he could have been saved.”
“I am not the source of the rumor, brother, merely the messenger,” she replied coolly.
“Your messages are unwanted,” I shot back at once. “Here or anywhere else.”
She idly brushed a sprinkling of sand from her belly and said, “I did not come to bring you or anyone else upset, Venan. Despite your feelings of me, not all my actions are borne of malice.”
I glared down at her, chewing on her words. “Why have you come, then?” I demanded. “You surely did not do so out of love, as the most loving gift you could have given our newly-wedded brother on his day of celebration would have been your absence.”
Her expression changed from amused malevolence to bleak despondency, and I realized she was hurt by what I said. There were no rueful puppeteers to tug on my heartstrings. “I miss my family,” she murmured. It was the first time since our conversation had begun she appeared completely vulnerable to her circumstance and me. “I did not want to miss such an important day in Zuran’s life. I can only imagine how many I have missed until now.”
Yahn: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 4) Page 37
