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  “Baby-doll, why hide in the dark?” he laughed, excitedly. It made her nauseous; it made her alert. Any moment he would switch on his flashlight and burn it into her eyes.

  She cowered like the scum she had become. She deserved this. She had gone too deep into hell. And when one went too far, there was no turning back. What had been just another undercover job had become her entire life. A clammy hand shot out and took ahold of her hair.

  Yahiro shook and yanked her hand up to cover her mouth, but as she did so, her fingers brushed over the ground. A blast of light burst forth, stunning her, igniting the entire forest in gold with one long pulse before it faded back to a bubble of light that enclosed her... But she wasn’t alone. A man crouched directly in front of her.

  She stiffened and didn’t move, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat. The stone talisman she had dropped was suddenly below her fingers and it created a beam from her touch that swirled around him in a mesmerizing way. Her body heated, unwillingly, her breath caught up to her, and she inhaled the new scent greedily.

  Sugar. Sweet and sappy. She licked her lips and broke her gaze from his brown eyes, lingering over gold wings that haloed his form.

  Not a human. Not. Human. It came to her like molasses. For some reason, she wasn’t surprised, only... hopeful that there were humanoids on this strange planet. He remained still, his eyes roving over her frame as much as she did his.

  The man could be an angel. If it weren’t for his devilish eyes. Maybe this is heaven? Maybe I’m already dead. Yahiro flinched, her hand cupping her torn up foot. Heaven is dumb painful. My nightmares followed me into the afterlife.

  “Naro, Luchen...” he said, his lips forming the strange words. The translator in her head processed them but only came back with a No.

  “No?” she whispered back. His eyes twinkled and the side of his lips twitched. She caught it all as the swirling aura moved around him.

  “Luchen,” he said again. No full translation registered. Only possible words: luscious, luminous, luchar in Spanish. Several examples of famous Asian men came to mind but overall it was unhelpful. I don’t think he’s talking about the deceased Taiwanese magician. She forced her translator to stop.

  “Luchen,” she repeated, her voice rough from her earlier screams and thick with emotion.

  His eyes narrowed dangerously at her and she jerked back. He caught her hand, now holding her sunstone and keeping her in place. His touch seized her and she gasped out in shock. Burning heat and that odd connection from before gripped her, igniting and spreading like dragonfire through her body. His long, taloned fingers clenched tighter around her wrist and suddenly she wanted more.

  So much more. Yahiro leaned closer to the alien man, needing to feel more of him, her body demanding to plaster against his chest. She lowered her gaze to it, bared in front of her in all its glory, sculpted with rippling muscles so different from a human’s tonal structure yet so similar.

  A moan escaped her lips, drawing his gaze to her mouth. She watched it all, her eyes going a mile a minute, taking in everything about him.

  The alien angel wore clothes, soft ones, loose and billowy trousers that banded low on his waist and right above the crux of his thighs. She glanced between his legs, hoping to see an outline but if there was one, it was hidden well behind the white cloth.

  Do angels... alien angels have a sex? A blush warmed her cheeks. His lower arms were wrapped in golden wristbands that streaked up to his elbows. They sparkled between them, the same color as the light.

  She noticed, as she took him in, that every article he wore was either gold or white, so at odds with the darkness and the muddled green forest they were in. He had piercings, also gold, on the sides of his lower lip, his eyebrows—symmetrical—and gold bars through his nipples.

  But they weren’t human nipples. Yahiro stared. His nipples were shiny and gold, like what she could see of his drawn back hair. They weren’t round like a human's, though they were the same general size, but star-shaped, a seven-pointed star. Each point of the star was also pierced with a tiny gold bauble.

  He reminded her of a desert nomad, a desert rogue, or a bronze-skinned ninja who wore the colors to hide amongst the day instead of those that would hide him in the dark.

  His fingers squeezed, bringing her eyes back up to his.

  “Douna Luchen, mana reem?” His voice was husky. Once again her translator gave her options. One came to mind. Her eyes widened. Is he asking for my name? Yahiro hoped.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  He canted his head. “Hrrmmm...”

  She let out a small laugh. “I know that sound though.” He didn’t laugh back; instead, he drew her slightly closer until she had to shuffle her knees between his open ones.

  His heat enveloped her, bringing her comfort, more so than the stone had earlier. His hold on her changed with her nearness, and she glanced up as his also-golden wings surrounded them. Once they were entirely closed around her, a sense of safety, sweet safety shot through her.

  For the first time since she had become a cop, she felt utterly and completely safe. Yahiro hooded her eyes and lifted her head, basking in the stone’s light, and the wonderful way her alien angel made her feel.

  QUIST

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. A female... a female crouched before him. And it wasn’t just any female valos, from any number of the races that had females, but an unmarked one, a new one. He felt her rapid pulse under his fingertips. It lulled him, quickening his blood.

  Slowly, as he took in her strange appearance, her bright orange skin and mottled black hair, he adjusted his own now-alive pulse and his breaths to match hers.

  Quist looked back down at the glittering sunburst stone clutched in her hand. It was a fabled heartstone; he knew it, for Lusheenn had roared with laughter as he told his sons about the heart he had kept from them. A heart they would have to earn through loyalty and servitude.

  He took a deep, lingering breath, filling his senses with the strange valos girl, and was unable to place her smell to anything he had ever encountered before. It was exotic and delicious. It took him by surprise. He had been almost everywhere in the world, everywhere at least where natural light traveled. But her smell he couldn’t place: it was otherworldly, new, and ethereal.

  Maybe Lusheenn came back and created a counterpart to his species, a tantalizing companion to the male valos of light? Quist could almost forgive his Creator if this were true. Almost. He pulled the unusual girl closer to him, needing to be nearer. She was so small, so fragile, and he was afraid that his war-forged wings and his skills wouldn’t be enough to protect her.

  “By light, you smell delectable.” His nose hovered above her head, close enough to taunt him to bury it in her hair but far enough to keep her face in full view.

  He studied her further, his eyes trailing over her damp black hair and pronounced pale skin that abruptly shifted into a garish orange color at her neck. She was not like him or his brothers but she held Lusheenn’s fabled heart in her hand.

  Quist knew it to be so. He could feel it in the empty hole in his chest. The blissful pounding of each beat that was the music to life. But he felt something more: he felt a need. A deep-seated one that he had only heard rumor of before. A need to be within something. He bore his focus down on the female before him.

  To be inside of her.

  The thought made his body harden and his wings turn to erected stone. The sexual appendage between his legs moved. Upward. It made him growl as a violent demand to strike this girl with it overcame him. He pushed his hips forward, following the spear between his legs that now pointed straight at her. It points me where it needs to be.

  He hadn’t felt the like since Lusheenn walked the world. But even then, it was different than what he felt now.

  Quist reached forward and touched a wayward strand of her silky hair that had fallen forward. Their breaths mingled as he rubbed its fine threads between the pads
of his fingers.

  The deepest shadows and darkest waters could only come close to its color. It was utterly strange against his lustrous skin. Lusheenn would never create a female so unlike himself. He released her hair and pulled away. The female followed him, magnetized, until he made it clear with steering her away from him that he didn’t want to be close to her.

  But every fabricated speck of his being fought him. Moving even an inch from her presence, from the stone she held, hurt like a spear to his empty chest.

  Or like one of his brothers succumbing to sleep. The image of Annahs flittered over his vision, his younger brother, and the first time he took flight.

  That would never happen again.

  Quist dropped her wrist and shifted further away, although he kept his wings enclosed around them both. If the girl is a gift to appease me, Lusheenn, it won’t work. I’ll take her regardless for my own but will continue to hate you until my final crumble into the dust.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He narrowed his gaze back at her, not understanding the gibberish that came out of her mouth. The more he stayed in her presence, the more he realized how little they resembled.

  Why?

  “If you’re not from Lusheenn, then who are you?” The question was more for himself than her. He itched to capture her hair again but chose to keep still and watch as she brought the heart to her chest. His sex hardened at the gesture until it tented the loose material of his pants.

  She didn’t immediately answer; her eyes were glazed. They had done that several times now and he didn’t know why. He didn’t like that her eyes saw something he couldn’t see. He wanted the strange female to only see him.

  When her eyes cleared and came back into focus, it took all his power to not take her in his arms and press her slight body against his. Her lips pursed and he zeroed in on them and barely heard her next words...

  “My name’s Yahiro.” She tapped her chest, between her breasts. “Ya-here-ro,” it came out slower this time, softer.

  “Yahero,” he copied her. The female nodded excitedly.

  “Yes! Yes, that’s my name!”

  His eyes didn’t leave her mouth. “Yahero-Yesyesthasmanme.” What a strange language she speaks. The glee on her face morphed and he didn’t like it. Why would you create a female, Lusheenn, who can’t speak my language!?

  “Yahiro,” she responded again, curtly.

  “Yahero.”

  “Close enough.”

  Quist raised his head to stare at the black sky beyond his sight, frustrated anew regardless of his rapidly growing attachment to the unmarked girl. I’ll kill you yet, Lusheenn. Something warm and slight poked his chest, bringing his sudden rage at the hidden sun to a halt. He looked down to see the female freely touching his torso.

  “Your turn.”

  He ignored her strange words and clasped her hand, pressing it against his body. His jaw slackened and if he were standing, his knees would’ve given out from the contact. Never had he been touched by a female before. Never had he thought he ever would. There were no females created from the light and the rest... were incompatible with his kind.

  When the valos mixed... Sonhadra wept.

  “Yahero. You are mine.”

  He didn’t recognize the possessiveness in his voice.

  YAHIRO

  He had taken her hand prisoner again and she relished it. She bit down on her tongue. Some thoughts that lingered on the edges of her consciousness told her she wasn’t thinking straight, that this wasn’t her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  His warmth felt right and she wanted more of it. Her body ached, and it warred with her mind. She didn’t even know the man’s name.

  Or if he would rather eat her than talk to her.

  “Yaheroo, nar muno nis.” Yahiro. You are beholden. Her lips parted in shock. The translator was learning! It was learning a different language.

  “More!” She rose up on bruised knees, startling him. “Say more! I can understand you.”

  “Er doono arstinbac,” he uttered, rising with her. She felt the caress of his wings against her back, stroking. Er do not know arstinbac.

  She licked her lips. It wasn’t enough to understand, but it was progress. He doesn’t know what I’m saying. Yahiro looked around and pulled her hand back, no longer afraid of the night; it was outside the shell of his wings and outside her mind. She looked for something to share between them. I still don’t know his name... Her eyes landed back on the gold decorating his nipples. She poked him again.

  “You? You?” Keep it simple, Hiro. She pointed at her chest, “Yahiro,” and then pointed back at him. “You?” She did it again. “Yahiro. You. Yahiro. You?” And waited.

  The stone cupped in her other hand grew brighter. Excitement.

  He lifted his hand slowly and patted his chest. “Quest.”

  “Quest?”

  “Quuesst,” he repeated the word like she had with her name. Her smile widened into a grin.

  “Quist?”

  His lips drew up to match her own. Finally!

  Back and forth they reiterated their names, sharing an awkward laugh, over and over again until it made sense and became familiar. They pointed at various objects around them until they shared their words with each other and with each word her translator ticked in her head, cataloging what she knew was right and cataloged his language beyond her abilities.

  Minutes passed, possibly hours, even days but they didn’t stop. She lost track of time as the tech in her head processed his language and began relaying its translations for her to use. If she could kiss advanced technology, she would’ve at that moment.

  “Yahiro, you are aan uunnusual valos.”

  “Quist, I have no idea what that last word means,” she said in his language, using the words her translator fed her. She eyed him, now practically inches from being enveloped by his body.

  “You speak the light!”

  “I don’t... think... I don’t think that’s right.” His eyes snapped back to her lips. His focus made her shiver. It was almost too much, too heated, and she was teetering on the edge of a true meltdown. Even now, as she sat back with her eyes moving from his face to trail over his wings and back down to his pierced body, she thought she may have truly lost her mind. I didn’t fall... she thought to herself. I have to be in a drug-induced stupor.

  Yahiro chewed on the inside of her cheek as her surroundings faded. If she was hallucinating again, it meant she was back in Hell.

  If she was seeing phantoms again... that meant she was high, out of her head, truly mad because no one survived William’s drugs, not without consequences. She'd never been the same once she'd been hooked.

  “Your eyes have faded.” Her translator was silent. She understood it and she blinked back the sheen of tears that had formed. When her vision cleared and the strange man—hallucination?—reappeared, comprehension dawned.

  One of his fingers lifted to swipe across her upper cheek, breaking her heart, as he lifted an escaped tear away and studied it. He looked at it as if he had never seen a tear before. Her heart thudded painfully as his features went hooded...

  This is too much. Too intimate.

  “You created a wet jewel,” he said, cupping his other hand around her tear like he was trying to save it, to keep it.

  “It’s a tear,” she responded softly. This isn’t be real. It’s not.

  He slowly lifted his gaze back to hers. “The sky makes these... Yahiro, what are you?”

  “Human.” Her eyes lowered back to the pulsating stone in her hand. “Just a human.”

  He placed his hands against his chest, pressing her tear into his skin. She looked away, unable to take anymore, wishing her mind didn’t feel so muddled. It’d never been the same since that day... but when his arms wrapped around her and pulled her into his glorious body, the smell of sugar filling her nose, she sighed and gave in.

  She liked Quist, somehow she felt safe with him, safe in a way that
she had never been since she was last with her parents. Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it was the way the light of her stone trailed around his frame, like a lover’s caress.

  He was also warm. And she adored warmth.

  Exhaustion hit her all at once as she succumbed to the safety of his embrace. Waking dreams skittered across her mind. The giant feathered wings that created her and Quist’s bubble from the rest of the universe folded in closer until it wrapped around her like a second skin, a silken one that she wished her entire body was privy to.

  “Am I safe with you?” she breathed, already half asleep.

  “Yes, Yahiro of Quist. You are safe.”

  QUIST

  He rose to his feet slowly, his focus entirely on the female sleeping in his arms. She had yielded to him willingly, and until she went pliant against his chest, he hadn’t realized her submission was what he wanted. The fact that she had spoken his language, as if a Creator’s power fueled her, so quickly astonished him. Each valos race had their own words and it had taken him years to learn and understand all the spoken languages on Sonhadra.

  She was powerful. At least against him. Quist didn’t know why. He didn’t know where she came from.

  He knew what to do with his sexual organ, knew that it was meant to thrust into a little hole that was between her thighs. The other valos who had female counterparts had shown and shared this information with him over the many dawns, noons, and dusks of his life. It was another reason why he hated his Creator. Why give him the tools to mate but not give him a mate?

  It burned him.

  Lusheenn was his to kill.

  From the day he was brought forth, he knew he was different from his older brothers. They never felt wronged. At least had never voiced it. But ever since the day he first opened his eyes, there was a twinge of hatred seeded within him, but he hadn’t understood it at that moment in time. It had made him feel incomplete, unwhole, and different than the rest of Lusheenn’s creations. Galan remarked to him once that their Creator was angry the day he sculpted Quist.