Page 57 of Silver Slayer

“I am Jakkar, Sia of Valose,” he said. "And this is my spirit mate, Lily, and our youngling, Aurra. You are welcome here."

My eyes dropped to the belt buckle at his kilt of a winged, scaled creature rendered in hammered metal, its tail curving around the clasp. A wetlock. Exactly as Vennox had described.

Two women moved through the crowd behind them, both visibly pregnant, one dark-haired and the other with fiery red curls, each with a silver-scaled male close enough to catch her if she stumbled. Both women had the same soft glow at their sternums.

Introductions began in a rush, questions tumbling out before answers had anywhere to land.Where are you from? How longwere you out there? Are you hurt? Are you hungry?Voices layered over each other as they pressed close, bright-eyed and unguarded in a way that caught me off guard. I blurted my name somewhere in the middle of it.

Names washed over me in a single undifferentiated wave: Jane, Elise, Rowan, Gia, Bree, Alyssa, Willow, Sarah, and on. Each face was bright and welcoming and entirely impossible to attach to the right name at any speed I was capable of. Some with shawras, but most not.

“Back up, bitches, and chill. Don’t scare them off.” A dark-haired woman with a saucy grin pushed her way to the front. “I’m Marie. Sorry about all the paparazzi.”

Marie.Vennox had spoken of her. She was the woman the Spirits had brought into Draggar's life after he'd lost his first spirit mate. An impossible gift no Valosian had believed could happen until it did.

She flicked a hand toward the crowd of women. “We’re just all happy you were saved from fates worse than death out there.” She turned and gestured for us to follow. “Come with me, and I’ll show you to your rooms in the palace. When Zaku announced you were coming, we readied up the fifth floor.”

“We get to live in there?” Brooke's eyes grew comically wide as she looked past Marie toward the towering palace.

“Looks like something straight out of Atlantis,” Erin breathed, her eyes skating up the dizzy height.

“That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw it, too.” Marie smiled at us as we followed her down the path to the giant, crystal structure.

Chapter Twenty-One

VENNOX

Ifelt her reach for me, and then I didn’t.

I’d been standing near the bunk where Brunnex stood arguing despite everything I’d told him about head trauma and the benefits of horizontal recovery, and then?—

There. A soundless whisper, yet nothing so tangible, just a warmth that brushed against the inside of my chest the way sunlight touches a wall through a half-open door. Quin’s spirit, reaching for mine through the mingled essence that lived within me.

Her hand had been in mine the entire journey to Valose, and now, she had reached for me again.

It lasted exactly one heartbeat.

Then the warmth was gone. Her walls slid back into place. I could feel them rising, stone by stone, the careful architecture of someone who had spent a lifetime making sure nothing could get close enough to hurt her. The bond went quiet, and the hollow in my chest returned, wider than before. She had chosendistance again. I had hoped she had finally let me closer. Her body against mine on the ship. Her fingers in my hair. The way she had clung to me through the hyper-jump's worst moments. That she had found me worthy enough to call me hers.

She hadn’t.

“Are you listening to anything I’ve said?” Brunnex’s voice cut through the silence, rough with the impatience of a male who had been arguing for several mims straight and was losing the will to repeat himself.

"You cannot walk into Huren," I stated flatly. "Your cranial trauma has not resolved. You'll fall flat on your ass."

Brunnex pressed a hand to the gauze bandage wrapped around his temple. A dark blue stain had seeped through the white fabric, the rich cobalt hue of Valosian blood. “It’s just a graze.”

“It’s an impact trauma,” Truxxet corrected, arms folded across his chest. His scales flared the bright silver of frustration. “You collapsed just getting off the stretcher.”

“I was conserving energy.”

“You lost consciousness.”

Brunnex’s jaw tightened until his molars cracked. “I am Clan Jurigon. Sia Murrox will not see me carried through the dome’s gate like a helpless youngling. I. Am. Walking.”

Truxxet snorted. “There’s no stubbornness like Jurigon pride.”

“Fuck you, tree dweller!” Brunnex growled. “My clan has lost too many warriors already. Sia Murrox doesn’t need to see another one of us broken.”

The med bay door slid open before either of us could comment.