Page 60 of When the Universe Sings

I climbed, eyeing the small lip in the metal. “Left or right?”

“Left,” he answered.

“Shift change happening in three…two…” Rys murmured.

Through the communicator there was the rumble of voices, a soft groan, and athump.

“One,” Asher finished for him. “You’re clear, June.”

I unsheathed my quara blade. The hilt hummed in my hand, ripples of electricity threading up my arm. But I didn’t have time to examine the sensation. Instead I punched the blade through the thin metal, dragging it down slowly. There was resistance, but in a few minutes I’d created a hole big enough to slip through. I waited for the bright orange edges to cool back to silver before I slipped in.

My gloves caught on the melted metal and I tugged for a few moments before they ripped and I was forced to abandon them. Standing, I surveyed my surroundings. I stood behind a large white panel, almost as if someone had put it there to hide the chute. When I stepped around it, rows and rows of items in glass boxes and metal containers fanned out in either direction. Across from me sat a large door with a square window, big enough for someone to look through to check on the floor. Asher looked back at me through it, helmet still in place, but I felt the moment his eyes met mine even through the layers.

I tugged down my cowl so he could see my lips while I pulled the communicator from my ear. “I’m sorry.”

I threw it to the floor, smashing it beneath my heel.

“Juniper!” His voice was muffled through the door, but I didn’t answer before I ran down the row to my right, counting in my head until I found the fifth case.

There, on a bright red velvet cushion, lay a shiny black stone. I flipped the blade and slammed the hilt down on the top until the glass cracked, then shattered. Rys must have turned off the electromag field, because no alarms sounded as it fell around my feet.

Asher screamed again, pounding on the door so hard I was sure it would cave in. “Don’t touch it!JUNIPER, DO NOT TOUCH THE STONE!”

But I was fixated on the black, glossy surface, so shiny I could see a tiny version of myself in it. My hand lifted of its own volition. Asher’s cries were the first note of a song in my mind.

The stone was cool against my palm.

The stone seared against my skin.

Light splintered behind my eyes.

My back bowed.

A scream tore from my lips.

Galaxies burst behind my lids. Worlds crumbled only to begin again. The endless cycle of life and death, of decay, of power and greed over and over. I heard the laughter of children and the wails of grief. Someone tapped a finger to my temple, then my lips, before wiping tears from my cheeks. My bones broke then mended; my skin ripped then sealed. And I knew now what Asher meant, because I could hear it too.

I heard the song of the universe, its unending melody, and the sound was so fucking beautiful I wanted to weep.

CHAPTER

FORTY-ONE

A few minutes earlier.

“What’s she doing?”Hudzon mumbled behind me.

I slipped off my gloves, keeping an eye on Juniper while she rose to her feet. She’d lost her own on the molten metal edges of the hole she’d made. My palms spread wide against the door and I pushed outward, energy rippling down my arms and into the metal. There were locks—so many locks it would take a moment for me to get through them all.

Goddess, she was beautiful. Those green eyes stared right at me from behind her cowl. Tingling spread out from the back of my neck, the awareness of what she was, the need for her so acute it ached. And last night, when she had been spread out beneath me? It’d taken everything in me not to devour her, not to sink my teeth into her flesh and seal her to me, to make her mine completely.

Juniper tugged down her cowl, a few tendrils of hair floating around her temples. For once her face showed all the emotion she kept locked up tight: eyes glassy, lips moving with the barest tremble, a muscle working in her jaw.

“No…” I breathed, slamming a fist on the metal. “Fuck.”

She dipped her fingers beneath her hood and pulled the communicator from her ear, dropped it to the floor. It smashed beneath her heel with a whine of feedback through the line. Those soft lips formed an apology, lashes glittering with unshedtears. Heat crackled through my veins and I almost bowed forward with the force of it.

Our mating bond setting into place.