Page 63 of Dark Gambit: The Play

Heaven. That was what being with her felt like.

Sofia didn't want anything from him other than his love. She didn't expect him to go to war for her, to betray his people for her, and in her own way, she'd protected him.

He would have loved to believe that she'd been sent to him by the Fates, but he didn't deserve a boon. He was a sinner, and he deserved eternal condemnation from them, not a reward.

Still, she was a daughter of a hybrid Kra-ell female, and if the Kra-ell were indeed a race similar to the gods, he might be able to activate her.

They'd had unprotected sex several times, and he'd bitten her twice. If it was at all possible to activate her, she could enter transition. And if they kept at it, which he planned on, then her transition might be imminent.

Should he warn her?

The clan had clear guidelines on that, and a potential Dormant needed to be told about the possibility of her immortal genes getting activated by having sex with an immortal male. Well, in Sofia's case she would only be long-lived, not immortal, but he would take a thousand years over her human lifespan.

Maybe that was his punishment.

Perhaps she was his one and only, but she wouldn't live as long as he did, and he would have to mourn her death or find a way to join her on the other side of the veil.

He had to find out whether it was possible.

Aliya was a female Kra-ell hybrid, and yet no one was sure whether her children could be activated, or so he'd heard. Perhaps Bridget had looked into that already?

Would Kaia know? She was a bioinformatician, and she was researching Okidu's journals, so maybe she'd gleaned some information that might shed light on Sofia's prospects?

Pulling gently out of Sofia's arms, he slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom. After taking care of his bladder, he washed his face, brushed his teeth, and pulled on his pants.

Checking that his phone was in the pocket where he'd left it, he walked into the living room, sat on the couch, and sent Kaia a message.Are you busy? I need to ask you a couple of questions.

48

JADE

The summons from Igor took Jade by surprise. There were no official rest days in the compound, but things slowed down on the weekends, and she seldom visited his office on Saturdays or Sundays.

A long time had passed since she'd sent the fable to Emmett, and she hadn't dared to send anything more. She'd spent some time reading through the submissions by other contestants on the Safe Haven website and had even found one that could potentially mean a request for more information, but even if Igor followed her every move on the internet, which he most likely did, he wouldn't have found anything suspicious.

If she couldn't be sure that the fable had been directed at her and what it meant, he certainly couldn't.

Besides, other than his initial response to her winning the contest, he'd acted as if nothing was amiss.

Still, she wasn't in her fertile cycle, and he sure as hell didn't enjoy her company for anything other than breeding, so why had he summoned her?

Her nerves in turmoil, she strode toward the office building and contemplated stopping by the human quarters and purchasing one of the home-brewed elixirs they concocted over there.

One of the young humans was studying chemistry, and he was mixing potent drugs and selling them to humans and Kra-ell alike. They were less effective on the Kra-ell, especially the purebloods, but they still carried a kick, and some of the other females swore by them as an antidote to frayed nerves and a general feeling of ennui.

Jade wasn't a fan of chemical mood enhancers, and she handled her bad moods with intensive training and hunting, but now and then, she was tempted to take the edge off with the help of those drugs. Hell, sometimes she was tempted to buy copious amounts of them and imbibe as much as it took to end it all.

How long could she continue living with the rage, with the grief, with the humiliation of sharing her body with the murderer of her people? The rage was the antidote to the grief and self-loathing, but she'd been consumed by it for so long that there was not much left to burn.

She felt empty, resigned, and Mother forgive her, ready to call it quits.

It was a sin in the eyes of the Mother to give up. Her chosen daughters were supposed to fight till their last breath. But lately, Jade felt as if her last breath had been expelled a long time ago, and she existed as a wraith. Not dead yet, but not alive either.

Death would be a liberation, but unless she died honorably, she wouldn't ascend to the higher spiritual realm of heroes and would be sentenced to forever walk the valley of the shamed.

The guard didn't stop her as she walked past him, and as she knocked on Igor's door and walked in, she found him sitting on his couch, not behind his massive desk as he usually did.

"You summoned me?"