Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion Read Online Free Page B

time they could safely make a home on this world. The fourth, under constant surveillance by the other ships, changed orbit frequently but had yet to show aggression or any sign of retreat.
    In her darker thoughts, Talla sometimes wished Roden would order the core ships to bomb the largest cities to thin out the human population and even the playing field. Once the humans fully understood Draeken firepower, perhaps then her people could live in peace on this planet, free from the desolation of the Etzee.
    But core ship weaponry was a sledgehammer to a world’s landscape. It would be difficult to destroy the human population without devastating the planet. And so they continued to let the humans believe that they were in control while Roden and the other Draeken and Sephian leaders negotiated for a parcel of land they could call home.
    What, then, would happen to Jax? Every muscle in her body tensed. She frowned. Why did she have that thought? Why should she worry about what happened to a human?
    Suddenly a wall of gold stood before her. Talla looked up to see two large Sephians, one looking downright pissed, the other betraying no expression, standing there.
    “It’s time,” Legian, who
always
looked pissed when in the company of Draeken, said.
    Wync curled his upper lip and then nodded, slowly. “Yeah, Goldilocks. Let’s go.”
    Wync and Qan stepped out of the line.
    A hand brushed over Talla, and she turned to find the other Sephian grinning. “Well, hello, sexy.”
    Forcing back the urge to roll her eyes, instead, she blew him a kiss. “Always a pleasure, Bente.” Then she stepped away from the Sephian and the food line. “I’ll see you back at the trailer,” she called out to Laze over her shoulder.
    As the unlikely group of four Draeken and Sephians headed off, she walked the other direction. It was time to get jumbled thoughts out of her head. And the only way to do that was to confront the man responsible for them. With her head held high, she started walking toward Jax only to stop cold. She frowned.
    The shadow he’d stood within was now empty.
    • • •
    Jax slammed the door of his Jeep and slipped the key into the ignition. He wanted to rev the engine, and peel the fuck out of there, taking Talla with him. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel, then slammed a fist into the dashboard.
    He pulled out the flask from his leg pocket and took a long draw. The whiskey burned but it felt good. It grounded him, in a way like Talla did. No, in a different way. Where the booze numbed him, she made him
feel
. Too damn fucking much.
    Red bled over his vision when images from last night flashed in his mind. Jax had seen that type of scene a hundred times before. It was nothing new to him. Where there were slums, there was crime. And that’s exactly what the Etzee was becoming. But to see it happen to Talla … damn, he wanted to see the bastards suffer for hurting her. He wanted to pull their fingernails out one by one, and feed them to them.
    Instead, he’d killed them quickly and stashed the bodies in the dumpster so conveniently located in the alley. The same dumpster where the men had likely planned to dump Talla’s body when they’d finished with her.
    With the confusion of the evac, Jax was counting on the three amigos’ CO assuming the fuck-ups had gotten mixed up and loaded onto another truck. It could take them hours, if not days, to figure out the three never left the Etzee, and by then, it would be too late. Not that anyone would care. The important thing was that no one would ever know the truth.
    Jax tried to convince himself he was only there to protect her but that would be a lie. She was beautiful.
Beautiful
in the Etzee wasn’t a good thing. She was tall for a female; at six foot she was nearly his height, with glistening silver hair. Even with her wings banded tight against her back, he could recall every tattoo that covered them. Every fucking day he imagined tasting each intoxicating