Page 68 of When the Universe Sings

He nodded, eyes sparkling in the dim light. “Yes.”

Though his joy slipped through the bond, I found it could not touch me. “So you have no choice.”

The fingers around my hand tightened. “In a thousand lifetimes, June, I would choose you. With or without this bond.”

But I was shaking my head, trying to pull my hand from his. “No, in a thousand lifetimes you would still have no choice. You don’t even know me.”

“No…I don’t, not fully—not in the way you mean,” he agreed. “But I want to.”

I thought back now to every time he’d touched me, the understanding I’d thought we’d had. Bitterness tinged the memories as I realized it was merely this forced connection between us. His choice had been taken, just as mine had. There was still no such thing as freedom, even in our hearts.

In our hearts.

The thought was a tap at the back of my skull and I remembered the confusion I’d felt with the stone. How I’d been able to fly the fighter so easily, how I’d just seemed to know where the outpost was to remove the tracker. “It wasn’t the stone that helped me.”

The curve of his shoulders hiked ever so slightly, trepidation slipping across my skin. “The stone strengthened your bond tome even without the bite, allowing you to draw on my knowledge and skills to protect yourself.”

But there was something else, something he wasn’t saying.

“Did you use the bond to influence me?”

Asher’s face fell and I didn’t need his next words, gentle as they might have been. “I used it to guide you to me on Wuaxia, yes.”

To guide you to me. My stomach twisted and I ripped my hands from his, refusing the apologies that he pressed through the connection.

“That is…wrong,” I rasped, twisting my hands into the sheets and leaning away as he reached for me again. “You manipulated me, just like you manipulated all those people on Louxuria, didn’t you? Convincing them of your plans, your role and status. Is what I feel for you even real, or is it just another byproduct of your power?”

Asher reared back as if I’d struck him, mouth agape. “I would never do that to you, June?—”

“Don’t call me that.”

He raised his hands in supplication, as if I had trained a blaster on him. “You have to trust me?—”

“Trust you? Idon’tknow you.”

“Yes, you do.” He stood, gripping my chin. “You know me. I am the same male you have tormented from day one with your silence, the same male who danced with you on the observation deck, who held you in his arms, who tasted you.”

I shook my head, fighting against his grip. It wasn’t painful, but it was enough to hold me in place.

“Deny this bond all you want. Use whatever excuse you need to try to push me away. But there is nowhere you can go in this universe that I will not follow, no corner you can hide in where I will not find you.” He leaned down until we were eye to eye. “Iam your mate and I will wait as long as it takes for you to realize it.”

Jerking my chin out of his grasp, I forced a sneer to curl at my lip. “It sounds like you’re my yeska.”

His answering grin was deadly in its sincerity. “I would rather spend a lifetime supplicating at your feet than a second missing your warmth.”

We stared at each other for one long moment, the implication of his words pounding at the back of my skull. There was no one I could rely on in this universe beside myself and lately, even I had proven to be a bit of an unknown given the way I’d wielded the stone. But I didn’t know this male—he was more of a stranger to me than ever before. As the silence lengthened, my heart beat so painfully in my chest I couldn’t help but put a hand over it.

“Leave.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-SEVEN

A knock echoedon my door.

I sighed, pushed myself up from where I’d perched at the end of the bed and tugged my hood up over my hair. But when I pressed the release for the door, it wasn’t Asher waiting, but Kal. “You ready?”

He was dressed similarly, the hood casting his face into shadow. After Asher left the night before, Kal had appeared only minutes later, crushing me to his chest and muttering over my stupidity.What were you thinking, June?