It wasn’t meant to be.

It could never be.

But Zarya could heal him. He knew it.

And deep down, he suspected Darling knew it, too. Why else would he have kept her here tonight? He could have easily ordered one of his soldiers to take her away. Or he could have killed her.

Instead, he’d taken her to the kitchen to work where the entire staff was female.

That said it all.

Even in his drunken rage, Darling had made sure she went untouched by another man and that she’d been put some place safe. That wasn’t the action of someone who didn’t care.

In time, Darling would forgive her for being stupid, and Maris would do everything in his power to make sure that happened sooner rather than later.

Zarya sat in her new room, completely mortified. So this is how Darling felt in our hands…

After the kitchen staff had finished dinner and then cleaned up, they had turned on her with a passion.

Everything on her body had been stripped off and stolen while they’d laughed about it. Even the pins from her hair. They’d left her with nothing, not even her undergarments.

Take that back. She still wore her damnable slave collar. Who in their right mind would want that?

Then they’d locked her in a spartan, closet-size room with the promise that they’d bring her new clothes in the morning—something Clarion had failed to do for Darling when he’d been in their custody.

There was no window, not that it mattered. She wasn’t about to try and escape with no clothes on. And while she sat on the floor with no light or blanket, all she could see was the way Darling had looked when Clarion and crew had been callously dragging him naked through the landing bay like some prized stag they’d shot in the wild.

Because of the tricom he’d made to protect her, Darling had been paralyzed. Completely unable to defend himself from them.

I spit in his face.

Tears blurred her vision. She was no better than the bitches who’d attacked her. True, his uncle had murdered her parents and sister. That her other sister and brother had been killed in the fight against his uncle.

But Darling had done nothing to deserve it. Over and over, she saw the images Maris had shown her of Darling’s wounds. Heard him telling her about Darling’s brutal past.

And that mask…

As scary as it was, it’d been nothing compared to the unreasoning hatred she’d seen in his eyes.

Eyes that were steel blue. All these years, she’d wondered what color Kere’s eyes were. She’d imagined everything from exotic humanoid species to dark like Maris’s.

Tonight that knowledge gave her no comfort at all.

It was a wonder Darling hadn’t killed her on sight. She wasn’t sure she could have held herself back if she’d been in his place.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. No one deserved the indignity they’d put her through. Never mind what had been done to him. At least the women hadn’t dragged her naked through public grounds.