Black interiors and the lights across the front dash threw light across the small ship that contained a small bed and table in the back but loads of buttons which I assumed were all about revealing stored items.
Zeni was in the driver’s seat, swiveling around to face me, her horns throwing shadows on the walls that looked demonic. “What do you think?”
I shrugged, unsure what she referred to. “It’s a nice spaceship.”
She jumped to her feet. “Well this small cruiser is yours. I called in a lot of favors to make it happen. Isn’t that exciting?”
“What? How can this be mine?”
She snatched my hand and dragged me to the front, pushing me into the driver’s seat, and I flopped down.
“It’s all programmed and it practically flies itself.”
I stared at her blankly, trying to work out what was really going on? Was this a friendly thing to do in Veon? Give people spaceships?
“You have no clue, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Ella, you’re so slow sometimes. This ship can take you back home to your planet, Earth. You can leave right now and no one will stop you as I’ve got a few guards ready to turn a blind eye.”
Her words swirled in my mind, over and over, still not sinking in. “I can leave now?”
“Yes!” she boomed and danced over to me, taking my hand. “Isn’t that exciting? You can be home in under one human month, and put everything here behind you.”
My brain numbed for a moment, and my heart should have leapt at the chance, yet something in my chest sank through me. A sorrow for leaving behind what I’d found.
“What do you think?” she was jumping up and down in front of me like an excited child.
“I...I need to think about it.”
“Well you only have a short window to make that decision. And you don’t want to miss this one time opportunity only.” She paced toward the rear and back again, letting me think.
Thoughts shot through my head like a ping pong ball. How I’d dreamed of nothing more than going home, how it might give me a chance to put distance and hide from the Vepar once and for all… but did I really want that? We had the blood bond, but maybe such distance between us would break it. I could find another job.
But they wouldn’t let me go. They’d return and hunt me down… and what about the Khonsu roaming on Earth? What if they found me.. Who would come to my rescue?
Trying to organize the chaos of my life seemed useless because every time I thought of never seeing Corran’s smile again, feeling Thane against me, smelling Derrial’s sexy scent, I felt sick to my stomach and tears pricked my eyes. Uncertainty spreads across my mind like running ink.
The feelings roaming inside me told me everything, even if my brain screamed the opposite, telling me to accept the offer, to head home. But then what?
Freaking hell. This should be an easy decision, yet I slumped in my seat, my chest aching. Had I really fallen this deep for the Vepar? And if I left now, they’d be forced to select one of those five females as their mate. Then they’d hate me, and my heart would be ripped to shreds to imagine them with another woman.
Struggling to breath from the sheer stress pressing down on my chest, I got to my feet, needing to follow my instinct. Right now, it was yelling at me to get out of the ship as fast as possible.
“Zeni, thank you for the chance, but I’ll pass.”
Her mouth gaped open. “Are you crazy? I’m giving you a free ride home and you want to stay here where most people want to see you imprisoned and everyone else would love to see you experimented on so we understand why you don’t have horns or a tail.”
I shuddered at either of those options, noting that she didn’t seem to know about the fertility procedures yet. “You don’t need to understand why, but I am doing this for me.” Without waiting for her response, I climbed out of the cruiser and walked away, my knees knocking together, my throat choking with tears falling down my face.
I just walked away from returning to Earth.
Hell!
What was I thinking?