The Alien’s Seduction by Zoey Draven

Chapter Seven

“Are you hungry?” Cruxan asked the female after what felt like a long stretch of silence. “Did he...” A burst of anger squeezed his chest. “Did he feed you?”

He’d already cleaned her wound, though she had sat as rigid and still as a statue, and brushed healing salve over it from a yixia plant.

“A little,” she replied, still staring at him from across the camp they’d made. Her back was pressed into the cool stone of a boulder and his dagger was sitting in her lap. “We didn’t eat much though.”

His lips pressed together and he stared at his own dagger for longer than he should. The sight made shame churn in his belly, made his nostrils flare with impatience, and his neck heat with anger.

His female believed that he would harm her. She’d taken it upon herself to be her sole protector. While Cruxan admired her for that, his Instinct couldn’t stand the thought. His Instinct craved to be her protector, to provide for her, to make her feel safe. He could offer her none of those things. Not right then. That cut most of all. Even her blatant dismissal after he’d told her she was his mate didn’t cut as much as this.

He’d left his travel bag in his hovercraft, a long distance away from where they were. He’d had travel rations in there.

“I can hunt for you,” he told her, “if you are hungry.”

“No,” she said, her eyes glowing in the light. “I’m fine.”

Cruxan had lit a small fire. It hadn’t taken him long to gather supplies and he had all of his senses on alert for any signs of the Mevirax, if they somehow spotted the light emanating behind the wall of stone they’d found. They wouldn’t get anywhere close before Cruxan sensed them and it would be a cold night. He needed to keep his female warm. And while he wished to keep her warm in other ways—other, more pleasurable ways—even he could sense that that was the last thing she wanted.

A part of him even questioned whether she was affected by him at all. He’d heard from the other awakened males that their females, though human, had sensed something. They’d sensed a familiarity, a longing, a knowing. While not as intense as a Luxirian male’s awakening, their human females had, at least, been affected.

This female gazed at him warily. Her scent and body language screamed her discomfort, her need to flee. But even she knew she couldn’t.

“What is your name, female?”

“Why do you want to know it?” she asked, her voice sharp.

“Why?” he repeated slowly, bewildered. She was eyeing him with mistrust and he blew out a breath. She seemed insulted that he would ask. Was that a human thing? Disappointed, he shook his head, frustrated, letting it go, and said instead, “You should rest. We have a long journey ahead of us in the morning.”

He got up from where he was sitting in the moss and edged his way from the small clearing he’d made, intending to retrieve more fuel for the fire. He kept an eye on his female. A part of him still wasn’t convinced that she wouldn’t run, but when he returned, he saw she hadn’t moved an inch.

He was just adding more moss onto the fire when she said, “I’m sorry.”

Cruxan’s gaze jerked up to her.

The golden-haired female inhaled a deep breath through her nostrils, hesitantly meeting his eyes. “I—I’ve been rude. I know I have. I’m not usually like this. It’s just been a long day.”

Cruxan’s body was still, so still like she was a skittish privixi he needed to tame. So, he simply waited, watching as the words formed on her features before they emerged from her mouth.

“My name is Crystal,” she said softly, her words floating to him from across the heat of the fire, sliding into him, warming his body.

Crystal.

She shared a name with the one thing that had the ability to take her from him, back to Earth.

His fists clenched. Vaxa’an had tasked him to find the Luxirian crystal to send the remaining females back to their home planet. Only, he’d found another Crystal, a much more precious one.

For the first time, he felt gratitude towards the treacherous bastard who had stolen the Luxirian crystal from the command center in the first place. If he hadn’t…he never would have found his fated mate. She would have already been long gone by then.

The knowledge squeezed his chest and all he did was jerk his head in a nod. He added more moss onto the fire, watching the flames grow higher, all too aware that she was watching him, studying him. He let her look her fill.

“Aren’t you going to tell me yours?” she asked after another quiet moment, her voice perplexed.

His eyes locked onto her again and he heard the way her heartbeat picked up in her throat. He heard the rustle of her fingers when they curled slightly against her thighs and watched as her throat bobbed with her swallow.

Perhaps she wasn’t unaffected by him, after all.

“Cruxan,” he said, feeling that possibility bloom in his chest.

“Cruxan,” she repeated softly.

There was nothing like the exquisite torture he felt, hearing his female murmur his name for the first time, knowing that it would be the first time of many.

Or at least he hoped.

But it wasn’t going the way he’d imagined. He’d often thought what it would be like to find his fated mate. In all his arrogance, he’d never imagined a scenario where his female could hardly stand to look at him.

As if hearing his thoughts, her gaze darted away again and Cruxan tried not to feel disappointed…or rejected.

She needs time, he told himself, his shoulders going back. She was frightened, stolen away from a place she’d deemed safe, into the wilds of Luxiria at night with a male she didn’t know. A Luxirian female would have accepted what had happened, but a human female wouldn’t understand. Not yet.

“And…” she trailed off, her voice going small again before she cleared her throat. “You’re, like, a tracker? A hunter? What do you do here, um, on this planet?”

His brow cocked. He frowned, though his chest felt suddenly very warm. Because if he didn’t know any better, his female was trying to make conversation with him, as stilted as it was.

“I am an Ambassador to the Prime Leader,” he told her slowly.

“An Ambassador?” she asked, her voice sounding surprised, her spine straightening. “You’re one of them?”

He inclined his head, watching her reaction, torn between feeling incredibly amused or insulted by her incredulousness.

“So, you really did come all the way here to bring us back?” she asked, her tone filled with…hope.

Fates, this female was maddening.

“You still doubt that?” he asked, frowning, snapping a dried vine between his fingertips before adding it to the fire. He watched the flames eat it up.

“No,” she said quickly before biting her lip. “I mean…I don’t know.”

Her luminous green gaze dropped into her lap and then she seemed startled when she saw the dagger lying there, as if she’d forgotten all about it. Cruxan watched her, equal parts fascinated and frustrated by the small, maddening creature in front of him. He couldn’t understand her, couldn’t get a read on her. And Cruxan had always read females well. He knew how to comfort them, knew how to make them feel at ease, knew all the right things to say to them.

He was failing miserably at all three of those things right then and he didn’t know why.

But with his fated female, the most important female in his life now—the reality of which was just now starting to sink in—he felt like an incompetent fool. And it was only their first night together.

As he watched her reach a hand out to touch the hilt of the dagger, he realized, for the first time that evening, that he would never mate another female but her again. He would never touch, never pleasure, never share a sleeping platform with another but her.

Even if she decides to leave, his mind taunted him. Because his Instinct, his soul, would always be with her. To mate another after his Instinct had been awakened…it would tear him apart.

Vrax.

Cruxan didn’t remember the last time he’d gone more than a few spans without bedding a female. He enjoyed sex, females enjoyed it with him, and there was never anything wrong with that. At times, one of his pleasure partners became too attached and he would need to gently extricate himself. But he’d always been upfront about his intentions in the beginning with his pleasure partners. They knew there were others. They knew there was no future. They knew Cruxan didn’t want anything more. And up until humans were discovered recently, he knew there’d been no possibility for offspring.

But now…

Everything was different.

He didn’t know how he felt about that yet. While any Luxirian male would be insane not to want a fated mate, Cruxan had to admit that he’d had trouble envisioning life with a single female before this.

Cruxan blew out a silent breath, his shoulders suddenly tense. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He oversaw the roughest outpost in Luxiria, he constantly traveled, and he didn’t know what he could offer a female beyond a good, rough, satisfying night beneath the furs. What business did he have with a fated mate? A human fated mate, who looked about ready to jump out of her skin when she touched the sharpened dagger, though she’d been the one to demand it.

Skittish privixi, indeed.

Unease made his neck prickle and he rubbed his rough palm over it.

“You should rest,” he repeated, his words coming out more gruffly than he’d intended. “I will take watch for the night. You will be safe.”