Two weeks later

The warm desert wind whipped around her as Layla set foot on solid Earth ground for the first time in months. She looked up at the cloudless blue sky and blinked furiously, reaching for her shades. After seeing nothing but artificial light for so many months, her eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness.

Beside her, Enki was already equipped for the harsh conditions, wearing a pair of dark glasses that hid his eyes. With his flawless silver skin, aristocratic features, and cropped white hair, the shades gave him a slightly rakish appearance. He would have been absolutely dazzling as a leading man in a Virtuariwood production.

Apparently, Kordolians were highly sensitive to ultraviolet light. It actually made their skin burn. Zharek had devised a workaround by inventing an invisible gel that adhered to their skin, covering every exposed inch with a UV-blocking nanolayer.

Advanced sunscreen for aliens. That’s what it was, enabling them to go around uncovered in broad daylight.

It was just another quirk she’d discovered about these strange and dangerous silver creatures. To think that they’d arrived in Earth’s orbit and quietly established strategic networks and even their own bases, right under the noses of Earth’s unsuspecting human population.

Really, they could pull the trigger and take over Earth at any time if they wished, but they were playing a sneaky long game, pulling the strings of power from the shadows.

If she weren’t mated to one of them, Layla would be absolutely terrified of what these Kordolians were capable of, but everything was different now.

Before she’d left for Miridian-7, Layla had known very little about Kordolians. The never-ending news cycle had reported their sudden appearance in Earth’s orbit, but very little was known about them, and wild speculation had lit up the Networks.

Layla had been insulated from it all, swimming in a world of high-profile celebrities and designer clothes and mega-budget production shoots, until Damien had pulled the fucking trigger and blown her life apart.

Vindictive bastard. She’d trusted him with her career and he’d used her. If only she could run into him now. She’d probably punch him in the face.

“Welcome to The Ranch.” Enki’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts as he took her hand, leading her away from the Kordolian stealth cruiser that had brought them here. “This is one of our entry points to Earth. Insufferable place, but this vast tract of land is owned by a relative of the General’s wife, and she has granted us indefinite use. It is a strategic location.” He frowned, clearly unhappy about the hot, sun-baked environment.

“Meanwhile, back at The Ranch,” Layla quipped, looking around. In the distance, she could make out the shimmering outline of a low-set house, and beyond…

Black domes, hundreds of them.

“Some of our people have settled here,” Enki said, following the direction of her gaze. “They rest by day and take advantage of the cold, clear nights. There is plenty of food in the form of those large jumping creatures. Also, the large long-legged feathered ones are good eating. I believe some of the settlers from Kythia have come to view this place as home.”

Layla didn’t say anything. She was too busy taking it all in, because although Abbey had described the place to her in great detail back on the Fleet Station, nothing could have prepared her for seeing it in real life.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

She was on Earth.

She was home.

And it occurred to her that she hadn’t passed through the usual Federation immigration checkpoints. Technically, nobody knew she was here, except the Kordolians.

Enki squeezed her hand.

Layla’s boots kicked up red dust as she strode across the dry ground, passing clumps of dry spinifex. Eventually, they came to a gravelly path that joined a sandy road. Fresh tyre tracks were imprinted in the red dust.

Huh. Someone around here must be using an old land-vehicle. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Behind them were the impossibly sleek jet-black ships of the Kordolian fleet. In front of them was an old house, with old-fashioned tyre tracks leading to it.

It was a bit of a walk, and it was hot and dry and dusty, but Layla reveled in the feeling of solid Earth beneath her feet.

As they stepped off the cruiser, Enki had offered to summon a hover-thing for her, but Layla had insisted on walking. She wanted to feel the solid Earth beneath her feet. The roughness. The gravelly crunch. The sun-baked realness.

The two weeks it had taken them to travel from the Fleet Station to Earth had passed by like a surreal dream, filled with Enki—a sensual, insatiable beast—and quiet conversations about the past, future, and present. It was no coincidence that Layla, with her newfound relish for life, was a perfect match for this quiet, deliberate, and complicated man.

Two survivors, hardened in different ways by the inevitable forces of the Universe.

Crap, was she really choking up right now? She brought a hand to her eye, trying to discreetly wipe away the single tear that threatened to fall down her cheek. “Hey, Enki,” she whispered, her voice stolen by the wind.

“Yes, Layla?” But he heard. Of course he heard.

“Thanks.”

“Oh?” He inclined his head, his expression perfectly inscrutable behind those dark glasses.

“For saving me. For listening to my bullshit and not judging me. For bringing me home.” She stopped, turned, and looked up at him. “Don’t you ever get homesick for Kythia?”

“No,” Enki said bluntly, ice entering his voice. “Never. My place is with my brothers, but more importantly, it is with you.”

She remembered the chilling cries that had erupted from his lips in Zharek’s labs, just after the Tharian had left his body. How wildly and inhumanly he’d fought. At one point it had taken all three warriors just to hold him down. Trapped on the other side, all Layla could do was watch in horror until they released the Qualum door. She’d rushed inside, and the General had beckoned her to Enki’s side.

Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, the cracks in his armor were gone, sealed up like the impenetrable exo-armor that could coat every inch of his body.

He never spoke of that incident afterwards, and Layla didn’t push him.

But she always wondered where he’d come from. What had happened to him to make him so scary-cold, hiding his secret heart beneath layers of silence and ruthlessness?

His secret heart was only for her, so did it really matter?

“We are made of fragments,” he said at last, leaning in so that his forehead touched hers. He caressed the back of her neck with his bare hand as the warm wind whipped at stray tendrils of her hair. “I learned of my past from information inside a datacube. Sometimes, true memories break through, but only rarely. Apparently, I have the look of a true Kythian highborn, but I have not lived the life of one, and I do not want anything to do with their ilk. I have witnessed first hand their mindless cruelty as they destroyed the entire Tharian civilization with their bombs, because the Tharians would not bow to Kythian rule. They did not seem to care that myself and an entire Division were stationed on Tharos, holding the Tharian Royal Family hostage while negotiations took place in low orbit above us.”

Layla stared at him through her dark lenses, horror unfurling in her heart. “That’s why you ate Anuk’s heart, isn’t it? You were the only one to…”

“Survive.” His tone became heartbreakingly bleak. “I had been requested for that particular mission. The nobles liked having our kind at their disposal, because we strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, and because they liked to believe they could control us.”

Layla shook her head. How the hell did anyone control you?

Her question must have been obvious, because he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “We were originally conditioned to obey our masters, but over time, the effects of the conditioning lessened. The creator of the program intended for that to happen. At the time, I was under the illusion that the Empire was supreme. After the bombs hit, I was no longer their son. It was then and there that I understood the Universe we had helped build was worse than than any of Kaiin’s Nine Hells, and I vowed to kill the one who was responsible for the destruction.”

“And what happened after that?” Layla held her breath, enthralled by Enki’s dark story. She desperately wanted a happy ending for him, but it seemed that in the old Kordolian Universe, there was no such thing as a happy ending.

“They never expected me to survive. Lies were told. An accident. A miscommunication. They gave us ample warning. We did not evacuate on time. Lies. But even they did not understand how hard it is to kill one of my kind. Only General Tarak understood. Of course he refused to believe them. He is one of us, after all. He came to retrieve me. I was insane by then, a shell of my former self, starved and haunted by thousands of enraged, bodiless Tharians… and the incessant voice of the Tharian that had possessed me.”

“Enki…” Layla leaned into him, inhaling his heady scent. His presence was an addictive drug; she could never get enough of it. And now she was caught up in the terrifying tangled web of his past, trying to understand the unimaginable. “Did you do it, in the end?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, did you kill the one who did this to you?”

“I did not.” He stiffened. “I was still insane at that point. They placed me in a containment chamber for many cycles, and it took the longest time for me to come back. General Tarak took the blood-revenge on my behalf, killing Vethal in front of the entire High Council. Choked him to death with his bare hands. It was a lesson to them, and they did not retaliate, because they knew it was his—my—blood-right.”

“Oh.” Somehow, Layla understood, and she felt relieved.

“But I killed the other.”

“Other?”

“The one who sired me.”

“Your father?”

“In blood only.” His voice was arctic, and his face was a perfect mask of stone—all except for his lower lip, which trembled ever so slightly. Actually, his entire body was trembling. “He was the one I shot on the bridge as we escaped the Ristval V.”

Should she be horrified? Shocked? Afraid? All of these were normal, logical, human reactions to what he’d just revealed, but she didn’t feel any of those things.

The Kordolians she’d encountered on that dark ship had been inhumanly cruel, and Enki had killed several of them. She doubted the man on the bridge would have been any different.

Slowly, Layla put her hands on his shoulders, sensing the deep pain that was trapped inside him, warped, crystallized, unable to be expressed. Enki remained perfectly still, his forehead resting against hers, his hands on her neck, his eyes hidden behind impenetrable black lenses. The sun was so bright, and yet she stood in his shadow, wondering what the hell she could say.

There were no words.

But perhaps just being here with him was enough. In the middle of the desert—parched, sun-baked, exposed—he revealed another side of himself, making Layla fall for him all over again.

Enki glanced in the direction of the homestead, some inexplicable emotion crossing his face. “Is this what you want, Layla?”

She read between the lines.

Is this what you want? To spend the rest of your life with this lethal, quiet, deliberate alien, who keeps Pandora’s box in his heart?

This sweet man.

Who needs you as much as you need him.

“I want you,” she said simply, knowing it was the purest truth in the Universe.

All of the tension seeped out of his body then, and he took her hand into his. “Then come.”

And he led her across the dusty ground, a creature of darkness walking through the brilliant sunlight.

Taking her home.