Page 2 of Adored By the Alien Warlord

Our gazes locked.

A jolt of recognition shot through me, and I almost lost my grip on the bar. Just like the most cliched thing in the world, everything around me faded. Warmth flickered inside me, replacing the stark fear that had wrapped around my soul ever since I was taken.

The urge to understand who he was clawed at my mind. I reminded myself that wondering wouldn’t change my situation. I was still dancing for monsters, still trapped in a nightmarish life that was no longer myown. But there was something about him, something I couldn't explain away as me noticing someone different.

I forced myself to rise to my feet, to swirl my body around the pole, responding to the music while my mind spun with thoughts of him. I caught glimpses of his intense, teal-eyed gaze, sharp and intelligent, and I let myself dream.

He was here to save me.

He would protect me with his own life.

And he would see all the pain I kept hidden beneath the surface.

I was a foolish woman. I'd given up on dreams when my parents died. Our struggle to hold onto our home and finish our education had stomped flat whatever misty wishes I might've held in my heart.

But in a place where I felt like an object, this male made me feel seen as a person.

I couldn’t let thoughts of him distract me.

My survival lay on this stage and in staying out of Wortek's grasp.

Chapter 2

Davon

The moment I stepped into the club, gritty sand crunched under my heavy boots, the sound out of place in the middle of the Veerenad city made up of stone, mortar, and more stone. I frowned down at the pile drifting over my boots, wondering where it had come from and why I hadn’t seen it when I paused, my gaze captured by the female dancing on the stage.

There was no other sand on the floor around me . . .

I towered over the lizard patrons, though I wasn't stupid enough to think my Zuldruxian strength would provide much challenge if more than one attacked. I'd only battled a few while living in the desert, and I was lucky I'd made it out of those fights alive.

The cramped atmosphere pressed in on me, and it was all I could do not to turn around and flee. I belonged to the wide-open spaces, not tight, sweltering bars like this one.

Two days ago, a silver vessel traveled across the sky,landing hard in the desert some distance away. I knew what it could mean. The gods were delivering a human female to a Zuldruxian who would adore her for the rest of her days. Could this be the person I was seeking? I ran across the desert to the place where the craft went down, but I arrived too late, finding the vessel empty.

I would not give up. On a mission with only one goal in mind, I would find the woman who'd laid in this craft. Stooping down, I studied the tracks of Veerenads. She’d been captured then, not claimed.

Rising, I followed the tracks, and I nearly lost them before their city loomed ahead. They'd taken her there, and I would find her.

Again, I was too late, arriving at the auction after she'd been sold.

I would not give up; I followed the male who bought her to this bar and the next day, I applied for work, accepting his offer of managing unruly and misbehaving patrons before they destroyed it.

Now, on my first day of work, I stood in the entrance, studying the customers but barely able to keep my gaze off the woman dancing around a pole on the stage.

Seeing the sand deepening until it covered the tops of my boots made me think.

The gods many clans worshipped had made us a promise, saying that when they sent their fated mate to a Zuldruxian, they'd give that person a sign. I'd scoffed at such a thing until I met a human woman bound by love and a fated mate bond to a fellow traedor. The leader of this other clan insisted his water god sent him a signmoments before he met her. A rogue wave crashed over him, saturating his body, and then he sawher.

I was traedor of the Browze Clan, cared for by gods who lived among the sand of the vast desert I called home.

Sand below my feet could not be a sign from my clan god.

Could it?

As I stepped farther inside, leaving the sand behind. Sensations pulsed against me: the thumping music grating across my bones, the air thick with sweat, and the smell of cheap alcohol. Lizard males sat at tables or leaned against the bar, while others shivered and swayed on the open dance floor, lost in the sounds and lights, their eyes glazed with tetradon fever. They sold the drug cheap here, and once tasted, the Veerenads couldn't stay away.

My gaze remained on the stage, where the person I’d bet anything was the woman I sought, Maggie, moved with a grace almost too painful to watch. She looked like her sister, yet not, and I couldn’t drag my eyes off her lithe form.