Deceived Page 4

  “Give me the beacon.”

  Something in my voice must have let her know how serious the situation was because she didn’t argue. She just tugged it out of her bag and gave it to me.

  I took it and felt it.

  The damn thing was heavier than I thought it would be, and larger. The Gideon king couldn’t have gotten something a bit smaller? It was a bit bulky, to be fair.

  I shook my head. This tiny gadget would be the death of me. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them. I threw the beacon toward the ocean. That was where it really belonged: far away from the two of us.

  I didn’t wait to see whether it landed on the rocks or in the water. It didn’t matter. Whoever she’d signaled would be here soon. They’d already have my cave’s location marked on some sort of map, which meant that this was a home I’d never be able to come back to.

  Paige didn’t complain.

  She just stared at the ocean with a sad sort of understanding, and then I gripped her hand a little bit tighter.

  I started running, hauling her along with me.

  “What’s the rush?” Paige yelled as we scurried away from the cave.

  “Gideon,” I managed to say, but then I kept running. I was impressed that she managed to keep up with me as I moved. It wasn’t every day a human could run as fast as a Malum warrior. She managed to move swiftly, though, and soon we had put a large gap between us and the cave where I’d been living.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone from Gideon wanted your ship to crash,” I told her. “We need to get as far away from that cave as possible.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Just keep moving,” I said.

  The area outside of my cave was wide, open, and flat. It took us five minutes to reach the cover of trees. There was a thick, wide forest that stretched for miles. We’d have to trek through it before we reached one of the nearest towns. Even if someone from Gideon managed to find us in here, it would take them awhile to navigate their way through the dense forestry.

  “Wait,” Paige suddenly yelled. We had just reached the trees and I was about to tug her into the woods, but something in her voice grabbed my attention.

  “What?”

  “There,” she was pointing back toward the cave, and I turned to look. Sure enough, there was a ship hovering above the cave. It hadn’t been there just a moment ago, which meant we’d left just in time.

  “It’s a Gideon ship,” I said. I’d recognize it anywhere. Their planet had a very specific style of ship that was nearly impossible to miss.

  “It’s my brother-in-law,” she said, grinning. “He’s come for me. You were wrong,” Paige spun around and glared at me. “You said someone wanted to hurt me.”

  “Paige,” I said slowly, looking toward the ship.

  “No,” she snapped. “I don’t know what your beef is with Gideon, but we aren’t the villains you think we are.”

  Paige took a step toward my home, the place where we’d just vacated, but I grabbed her, hauling her back behind a large tree. Without a word, I covered her mouth with my hand. I held her against my body. Her back was to my front, and she wiggled, trying to fight me.

  She wasn’t going to stop trying to escape, so finally, I spoke.

  “Paige, I’m not going to hurt you, but shut the fuck up and watch, okay?”

  She wiggled again. Her body was rubbing against mine in all the best ways, and as much as I hated it, I felt myself starting to grow turned on.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Just watch.”

  She listened. To my total and utter surprise, she actually listened, and we watched. The ship didn’t even land. It just hovered above the cave. Then it moved to the part of the cave that overlooked the ocean. It hovered there, far above the water, and it lined up with the cave.

  Whoever was in the ship would get a perfect view of the area Paige had climbed. They’d be able to see the opening that she’d managed to wiggle through. Just minutes ago, we’d been sitting in that very spot, enjoying our food.

  Now there was something leering into my private space.

  Paige’s body tensed a bit. She thought they were going to land and come rescue her, but they hadn’t. Nobody had gotten out of the ship, and she hadn’t noticed what I had.

  As a warrior, I’d trained to protect Malum at all costs. I knew the ins and outs of Gideon ships, and this wasn’t an ordinary spaceship. This wasn’t the type of ship that was going to launch a rescue mission.

  Instead, this was the kind of ship that would destroy you.

  The guns lowered, and the ship circled my home once more, carefully calculating how much ammunition it would need to use. If Paige and I had been inside, we wouldn’t be able to escape. I had no secret back entrance. There wasn’t a hidden tunnel to run into.

  Paige stilled completely, and if I hadn’t been covering her mouth with my hand, I knew she would have screamed. Before either one of us could say anything, the guns started firing, and within seconds, my home was completely destroyed.

  Yeah, it seemed pretty damn safe to assume someone on Gideon didn’t want Paige leaving Malum. They’d sabotaged her on purpose, and now that she had survived, they’d returned to finish the job.

  The ship circled my home a few times, shooting it from different angles. It was hard to believe that if we’d left five minutes later, we would have both been blasted to utter shit.

  Finally, the ship seemed like it was done, and it flew away. My cave – the place where I’d spent the last two years hiding – was completely obliterated.

  I released her mouth.

  “What?” Paige’s voice was a whisper.

  I spun her around and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “You’re safe,” I told her. It was important to me that she understand that.

  “What happened?” Paige whispered.

  “You’re safe,” I repeated.

  “But the...the...”

  “Someone came to kill you,” I nodded, letting her know that I understood she was frightened and scared.

  “It was Jax,” she said, looking up at me. “Why would he want to kill me?”

  “Who is Jax?”

  “He’s my brother-in-law...well, not yet...he’s going to be...”

  “Explain.”

  “He’s marrying Piper next week,” she said, looking up at me. “He’s the reason I’m here, actually. We had a fight, and I hopped in my ship and flew off. I wanted a few days to blow off steam before I went back to deal with the wedding.”

  “What’s the problem with Jax?” I needed as much information as she could give me.

  “What’s not the problem? That would be a better question. He’s a dick. He’s a total and complete dick.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “He’s mean to everyone. I don’t know what my sister sees in him.”

  “What was the fight about, Paige?”

  Maybe if I knew what they’d been arguing about, I could better understand how I could help her.

  She looked up at me, eyes wide, and she blinked.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  “He said I wasn’t going to be a very good queen,” she whispered, “and he said Piper would do a better job.”

  Chapter 5

  Paige

  I was an idiot.

  Apparently, Jax wasn’t just a dickhead. Apparently, he was also a murderer. Why the fuck had I trusted him? Why had I trusted any of them?

  Ryssi looked at me like I was completely stupid, and that was just wildly embarrassing to me. I didn’t want him looking at me like that. I didn’t want him thinking that I had brought this upon myself even though I knew that it was probably true.

  The homing beacon...

  “Jax must have intercepted my beacon,” I told Ryssi. “If my father had been the one to receive it, he would have saved me.”

  Ryssi raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you sure about that?”
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  “Of course,” I nodded. “I’ve always been my father’s favorite.” It sounded terrible even as I said it out loud. I was the firstborn. With that came certain obligations, as well as certain privileges.

  “I bet your sister doesn’t like that too much.”

  “She doesn’t,” I agreed.

  Ryssi looked at me for a long time, staring at me like he couldn’t believe I still didn’t understand what was happening. The truth was that dealing with something like this was kind of a big deal, and more than a little overwhelming.

  I mean, attempted murder wasn’t something that happened to someone like me every day.

  Not by a long shot.

  “My sister couldn’t have known,” I said.

  Ryssi just looked at me. I hated the way he was staring at me. He looked at me like he pitied me, like I was the most pathetic girl on the face of the planet, and in that moment, I felt it. I knew it. I felt like no matter what I was facing, it wasn’t going to be okay because I’d lost something.

  I’d lost my hope.

  When my ship crashed, I’d truly believed that someone was going to come to my rescue. Anyone. When Jax’s ship had appeared, that should have been my way home. Instead, it had shattered something deep inside of me.

  “I’m sorry,” Ryssi said gruffly.

  “Me too.”

  “We can’t stay here,” he said. “There’s no time to wallow.”

  I nodded, and I followed him deeper into the woods. The forest here on Malum was a lovely one. The trees were close together, but there was still plenty of space for us to walk easily.

  “Does your planet have a lot of trees?” I asked, trying to get the man to talk to me. The forest itself was pretty, but from what little I knew about the terrain, I thought most of Malum was flat and plain.

  “Some.”

  “Do you like to climb trees?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a favorite kind of tree?”

  “No.”

  “Do you come into the woods a lot?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck, Ryssi, give me something,” I snapped, irritated.

  He stopped walking, grabbed my shoulders, and spun me toward him. Instantly, I felt heat deep inside of my core and I bit my lip to keep myself from groaning at his touch.

  I shouldn’t have angered the beast. I shouldn’t have upset him like that. My comment was rude and disrespectful, and I shouldn’t have pissed him off.

  Was he going to try to kill me now, too?

  Or was he going to do something else to me?

  He was looking at me with a very serious look that said he wasn’t sure whether to kill me or kiss me. I wasn’t sure which one would be better in that moment. I just didn’t want him to stop touching me.

  I licked my lips, looking up at him. Ryssi wasn’t ugly. If anything, he was too beautiful. I hated that. If I was being led to safety by a guy who was so gorgeous that I just wanted to lick him.

  “Stop your bitching,” he said quietly.

  “I’m not bitching,” I whispered.

  I was.

  We both knew it.

  I was wildly fussy since I’d almost died, which was probably a little pathetic considering that Ryssi was the one who had lost his home.

  “I’m sorry about your house,” I whispered.

  “It was a good cave,” he agreed gently.

  “Are you going to build a new one?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Paige, stop with the questions,” he said. Then he pulled me close to himself, and he kissed me.

  I squeaked, surprised, but I instantly relaxed into his arms. My hands found their way around his neck and I simply melted into his body. He was big and strong and there was incredible power contained in that insane kiss.

  He was touching me in a way I’d never been touched before. I’d kissed plenty of people on Gideon. I didn’t even know how many people I’d kissed, but none of them had ever made me feel the way I felt in this moment.

  Ryssi’s kiss shot straight from my lips to my toes and everywhere in between. My body ached for more, wanting him to strip me out of my clothes and take me right here in the forest. I practically purred, pulling him closer to myself, and then he pulled away.

  “No more questions,” he repeated, and then he kept walking like he hadn’t just kissed me.

  I reached my hands up, touching my lips.

  Had that really just happened? Had I really just made out with a big, bad alien in the woods? Had I really just fallen apart right here?

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  “Paige,” he called out, looking over his shoulder. “Keep up.”

  He flashed me a dangerous smile, and my heart started racing.

  Okay, so maybe this adventure wasn’t going to be all bad.

  Chapter 6

  Paige

  The planet of Malum was quite similar to Gideon in some ways.

  Both planets had a ton of clay, for one thing. Once we made it through the rest of the forest, it became very obvious. I realized that we were going to have a lot of walking to do before we reached anything that resembled a civilization.

  Awesome.

  Luckily for me, Ryssi was a capable guide, and he seemed to know exactly where we needed to go. He required no guidance from me. He didn’t even require talking, which was kind of nice. I wasn’t really used to being around someone I could just exist with.

  Back on Gideon, everyone needed things from me.

  People were always asking me questions, forcing me to give interviews, inquiring about royal decisions, and wondering what I was going to wear to different events.

  In some ways, being here with Ryssi was peaceful.

  Quiet.

  As Ryssi and I left the cover of the forest, I kept swinging my head around, looking at everything I could. There was a huge, wide-open plain. There was purple-tinted grass amidst the red clay. I could still see the clay peeking out, though.

  “How does that even grow here?” I asked.

  “It’s not real,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The grass,” he said. “It’s not real.”

  “Then why is it here?”

  He shrugged, and we walked. I was glad for the jacket he’d given me because outside of the woods, it was windy and chilly. He’d been right. It really was cold. We marched away from the cover of the woods, which had sheltered us from the nippy wind, but I didn’t know what we were walking toward.

  As far as I could see, there was just...nothing.

  A thought crossed my head, but I pushed it away. If he was going to kill me, too, he would have done it in the cave.

  He’d protected me.

  He’d protected me over and over, and I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I was now depending on him, and I sort of hated that. I wasn’t used to depending on other people. In my world, I was the one people depended on.

  I didn’t have much of anything left with me except for my wristlet and my tiny knife, so I really had no way to defend myself. I knew perfectly well that Ryssi could snap my knife in half.

  Nope.

  I just had to trust Ryssi, and I was filled with dismay at this realization.

  I was weak.

  I was weak and I was alone.

  And my brother-in-law had tried to kill me. Piper might have even been helping him. How screwed up was that? I didn’t want to be dealing with that sort of thing. I didn’t want to be dealing with the realization that my family didn’t love me as much as I loved them.

  I suppose I’d always just thought that all families were a little bit dysfunctional and broken.

  I’d never thought there was anything especially terrible about mine.

  The communications functions on the wristlet still didn’t seem to be working, so I couldn’t call home again to try to reach my father. I couldn’t call to let anyone know that I was okay.

  Was my family worried about me?


  Was Mom?

  Maybe Dad and Jax were fighting about my disappearance. Dad might be worried, but Jax was such a smooth talker. He’d probably tell my father that I was throwing a petulant childish tantrum.

  Did my dad know Jax had come to Malum?

  Maybe Jax had promised to come and try to save me.

  “You’re anxious,” Ryssi suddenly said.

  “No.”

  “Your heartrate is elevated.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, looking up at him. Even in the sunlight, Ryssi was beautiful. I sort of hated that about him. A giant creature like him should be ugly with snarling fangs.

  He should smell bad, too.

  Only, he didn’t. He smelled nice, and he looked good. I liked his scars, too, but I’d never tell him that.

  He sighed again.

  “Seriously?” Ryssi asked, shaking his head. “You know nothing of the people of Malum.”

  “Look,” I said, stopping.

  I turned to him and put my hands on my hips. Despite wearing the huge coat-thig he’d wrapped me in, it was easy to move. I didn’t feel too hot or sweaty or weighed down, and that was important to me.

  “Why don’t you just fill me in?”

  “Fill you in?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “Just give me a crash-course, okay? It seems like it’s really important to you to keep bringing up everything I don’t know about you, so just spit it out.”

  Ryssi’s eyes darkened, flashing black. For the very first time, I had the slightest inkling of fear. He towered over me, and he seemed beyond angry with me. I mean, I probably deserved it, but I definitely didn’t deserve to feel scared.

  I shrunk back as he moved closer, and he reached for my throat. He placed his hand there, resting it. His message was clear to me. He could kill me right now if he wanted to, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nobody would come for me. Nobody would ever find me. As far as my family knew, I was dead.

  “Please don’t kill me,” I whispered.

  “Why not?” Ryssi asked. “You’re ungrateful,”

  “I didn’t do anything to hurt you.”

  “You were rude.”

  “You were pretty short with me yourself,” I said.