Velvet Cataclysm (Princes of the Underground 1)

“Taking you while you slept was an unpardonable sin. I don’t think I used my ascendancy on you to get your consent, but I wanted you so much in that moment. I might have pushed—”

Christina made a sound of disgust and moved out of the haven of his arms. She felt his gaze boring into her as she stared out the curtained window onto the new day. When she thought she’d gathered herself sufficiently, she turned around and met his stare.

“I wasn’t accusing you of making love to me without my consent. Waking up in that park was the worst experience of my life because I was alone. I’d felt what it was like to be with you, only to wake up and know on some deep level the experience had been ripped away from me. That’s what I’m not sure I can forgive you for, Saint. It was damned selfish of you.”

Christina had to admit that it felt wonderful in those rare moments when she saw Saint at a loss for words. He could do things that were beyond her ability to comprehend, he possessed super-human strength and speed, he could enslave with his will…love like a god.

But he was such a child when it came to understanding the heart of a simple human woman.

He stood there, his stark, handsome face still frozen in disbelief at her words. The need to go to him in that moment nearly overwhelmed her.

Instead, she shook her head and headed for the door. She didn’t know who she felt more disgusted with at that moment—herself, for getting so much satisfaction out of seeing him floundering when it came to what was as obvious to her as the sun in the sky, or Saint himself for being such a frustrating puzzle. Weren’t men in general a conundrum?

Leave it to her to have fallen for an alien who was even thicker than human males when it came to matters of the heart.

She paused in the process of reaching for the door handle.

“I guess you were wrong about that whole infertility thing,” she said archly over her shoulder.

He stared at her, still looking steamrolled. He shrugged helplessly. “It’s never happened to the soulless before. I’m as confused by it as you are.”

She shook her head and laughed mirthlessly.

“I’m not confused by it, Saint. It all seems pretty cut and dry to me. I’m going to find Aidan,” she said before she turned and walked out of the room.

Chapter Nineteen

Christina sat beneath a maple tree next to Kavya, both of them watching as Fardusk solemnly instructed Aidan in the yard. The first time she’d seen Aidan shift into his wolf form, a scream had tickled her throat. She started to rise off the ground when Aidan gave a yelp of pain…a yelp that more resembled her human son than the young wolf he’d nearly morphed into. Kavya put his hand on her, stilling her.

“It pains him because he fights the transformation. He will learn not to. Pain is a good teacher,” Kavya murmured.

“Mothers cannot idly sit by and watch their children while they hurt,” Christina snarled.

“Indeed. But pain is a good teacher for a mother as well as her child.” He nodded toward Aidan. Christina watched, mouth hanging open in amazement, as the young wolf frolicked, nipped, and played with the larger, more sedate wolf by his side.

It hadn’t necessarily been pleasant sitting there while Aidan familiarized himself with his wolf-nature, but Christina had to admit that doing so alleviated many of the fears she’d acquired during the night. And when the young, sleek brown wolf with the tawny chest and bluish-green eyes trotted toward her later that morning and rested its head on her shoulder, Christina had wrapped her arms around him.

Her heart slowed and she sighed as a profound sense of acceptance went through her. She’d known Aidan was different from the day he was born—no, even while she carried him in her body. Her acceptance at that moment wasn’t as surprising as it might seem.

It’d been a long time in coming.

She lifted her face from the soft, sun-warmed fur, and the young wolf raced back into the yard to join Fardusk, who was still in his wolf form. Across the stretch of the wide yard, Christina saw Saint standing in the shadow of an oak. A stream of sunlight filtered down through the branches, turning strands of his tousled brownish-blond hair into pure gold. She felt his eyes on her, even from the distance.

“Why does he deny himself?” Christina asked Kavya quietly, referring to Saint.

“Why does he deny his soul, do you mean?”

Christina nodded.

“He cannot feel it, Christina. And so, in a sense, he is right to say he does not have one.”

Christina knew that the wise, otherworldly male who sat beside her sensed her puzzlement and frustration, so she didn’t bother to put it into words. He gave her a sad smile.

“Yes, you are right. Saint does possess a soul…one that he created for himself through centuries of self-discipline, pain and suffering. In many ways, his soul is more refined than most, because he created it from the terrible friction that comes from the honing fires of restraint, pain, self-doubt, and prayer. Yes, prayer,” Kavya repeated when he saw her upraised brows. “He prayed even when he thought it the equivalent of a cockroach asking for a golden god on high to grant him deliverance.”

Kavya paused, the expression on his face as he stared across the wide lawn toward his charge both sad and amazed.

“He is a true miracle, and not of my doing. What you must understand, Christina, is that the Magians robbed their planet of its soul over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, mindlessly and foolishly raping fair Magia until the once glorious and powerful song that emanated from her mighty planet-soul throughout the universe became a barely audible whimper. Like your fellow humans, the Magians didn’t understand the connection between their own souls and that of the soil from which they sprang. We had become known throughout the galaxy as a planet of cloners, but once the soul of Magia was silenced for an eternity, we were horrified to realize that our clones were missing something crucial as well.”