20. Noelle

My heartbeat startedto calm a bit when Ryklin groaned and shifted, as if he were merely sleeping. I was getting used to this bad Detyen habit of passing out at inopportune moments, and we needed to get to the bottom of this if we were going to do that again.

And I definitely wanted to do that again.

My body still hummed with pleasure even as the vestiges of fear tried to take hold.

There was something wrong with my mate, and I needed him fixed.

Mate.

Me and Ryklin.

Hells. What was I supposed to do with that? If it had been someone else, I might have dismissed those words as the passion that came from sex, but not him. If I hadn"t been so caught in the moment I might have realized it. Everything happening between the two of us suggested something special, something huge.

But would he still be mine when he woke up?

I was braced for rejection. Not the kind that came from some jerk getting what he wanted and discarding his partner, but the worse kind, the kind that went soul deep and told you the universe was against you.

I was ready to fight for Ryklin. Would he fight for us?

His eyes opened, and he groaned, curling in on himself as if he"d been punched. He was still gorgeous, all that naked skin on display just for me. My hands ached to touch, but I held myself back. We needed to have this conversation, and touching basically guaranteed it wouldn"t happen. I probably should have put some clothes back on, but when Ryklin looked at me, his eyes going red and his nostrils flaring, I didn"t regret my nakedness.

"Noelle," he rasped. He didn"t say anything else.

That meant I had to do the talking. Fine. "I don"t like it when you pass out like that."

He reached for me, and I surrendered against his embrace. "Nor do I." There was more depth to his voice, layers I hadn"t heard before, no longer the monotone he"d spoken in for all the time I knew him.

His lips trailed down my neck, soft enough that I shivered.

"We"re talking right now," I said, though my words were more breathy than anticipated.

"We can talk later." His hand splayed out over my stomach and started to move downward.

I moaned into the touch but forced myself to cover his hand and stop its progress. "Talk first," I insisted. Even I could hear the complaint in my voice.

Ryklin let go. "Very well."

"You called me your mate." It was the word echoing around my mind. In the midst of our lovemaking, I didn"t think too hard about it, but with the clarity that came afterward, all I could do was wonder if it was true. And there was only one person who could tell me that. "You said you didn"t have a mate, that you couldn"t. What"s going on?" I wasn"t accusing him of lying, not quite, but I had to know.

He heaved out a deep breath. "You remember that I told you that I"m nothing like Drex?"

"Yes."

"I appear to have been mistaken." He took my hand and laced our fingers together. "It no longer hurts to touch you."

A sense of relief washed over me. That was one less thing to worry about. "And the rest of the explanation?" My emotions were all tangled up. Joy, relief, fear, even a little anger. I didn"t think Ryklin had lied to me, at least not intentionally, but the doubt was still there, too strong to be completely ignored.

"I only recognized you as my denya when they tried to part us as we entered the village." He raised our joined hands and kissed my fingers. "There wasn"t a moment to tell you until we were alone. And then …"

And then, indeed.

"How is this possible?" My heart had broken when he explained what it meant to be soulless, as if I"d known that he was the missing piece of me.

"I don"t know." His arm tightened on me. "But some part of me must have recognized you from the beginning. It was why I couldn"t stay away."

"The stalking." I"d been so angry about that, at least a little because part of me had come to anticipate the meetings, to want them. That forbidden want was nothing like the inferno raging in me now.

"I am sorry for causing you discomfort."

I smiled. "Is that what it was?"

He spun me around so that we were face to face. His expression was grave, but there was no hint of the emotionless man he"d once claimed to be. "You are my denya, Noelle."

A sense of rightness settled in me. But there was also worry. We were going to make it home, I was determined. I didn"t want to live out the rest of my life in a shack on a mostly abandoned planet, even if I"d have Ryklin at my side. But would he still be this caring, dedicated man when we were up there, when there were expectations on who"d he"d been and who he was supposed to be?

I kissed him and let him pull me down to our pallet and put the worries aside until morning.