by Mary Auclair
Arlen jerked his head to the Relany officer, who quickly grabbed his commu-link.
“No!” Jonah interrupted, placing himself between Arlen and the officer. At one nod from Arlen, the Relany stopped his communication. “This is not my doing. Why would I instruct those people to cut off communication with the main base?”
“Because you still don’t trust us.” Arlen studied the human’s face, his features easily read. He was genuinely scared, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t betrayed Arlen. “And because you think humans will be safer on their own. You cannot be more wrong.”
Jonah swallowed and for a moment, Arlen thought the human would defy him, but then he inclined his head in surrender.
“You’re right.” His gray eyes lifted to meet Arlen’s, not defeated like he thought they would be, but full of resolve. “I don’t trust you. But I also know the Eok nation’s protection is the only thing that keeps us safe from another round of people like Knut. I might not like it, but we need you.”
Arlen stared hard at Jonah, then nodded. He saw truth on the other’s face, and trusting his instincts was second nature.
“If not you, then who?”
The door to the command center opened to reveal Khal, who for once was serious looking as he came forward.
“We have a problem.” Khal spoke as he walked, nodding quietly to Jonah and the Relany officer. “It’s the reconnaissance team I sent to the Southern Hemisphere to complete the census.”
“Let me guess,” Jonah spoke. “Can’t reach them?”
Khal stared at Jonah in surprise, but didn’t ask any questions. All he did was nod.
“How many?” Arlen asked as Officer Shetak turned to his control panel, pulling up the record of the mission.
“Three Relany clerks.” Khal shook his head. “And one Eok. I wasn’t expecting any danger.”
All eyes went to him, and Arlen straightened. His decision had to be made carefully. “Do you have a weather report for the area they were last in?” Arlen asked the Relany officer.
“Yes.” Officer Shetak’s face was both relieved and worried in a strange, quick succession of emotions. “The Southern Hemisphere is subject to abnormally strong magnetic storms. Their transports locator and communications devices could have been affected.”
“As could the communicators of Facility Twenty-One.”
Silence descended over the room and Arlen considered his options. A magnetic storm would explain a lot—explain everything, in fact. But it didn’t explain the suspicion that had settled in the pit of his stomach. There was something else going on. Something he couldn’t ignore, but he had seen enough violence, had lived through enough combat to know his instincts were usually right.
“Send another team.” Arlen turned to Khal. “Four Eok warriors, full combat gear.”
“Full combat?” Jonah intervened, his face panicked. “Those are humans—civilians. They’re not enemy combatants.”
“You don’t know that.” Arlen shook his head as Jonah’s face twisted in outrage and outright fear. “For all we know, the Fourth Quadrant is under attack and all communications are down. Knut has a lot of resources left.”
Jonah took a step back, his face ashen and his hands trembling. “You think he’s come back?” His tone told him all Arlen needed to know. To these people, Knut was the monster in the shadows, the source of all evil. “But it can’t be. He’s in hiding, pursued by bounty hunters from every corner of the Ring. There’s no way he can hurt us now.”
Khal and Arlen exchanged a quick glance. Humans like Jonah had lived their entire lives cut off from the Ring, from its wonders, but also from its darker side. They didn’t know the extent of Knut’s power, or his resources.
“He’s not coming back, if that’s what you fear.” At Arlen’s words, Jonah bristled a bit but didn’t contradict him. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t still be a threat. Him or someone like him. Humans can still be valuable, even if their trade is illegal.”
As silence descended again, possibilities made their way into Arlen’s mind. Mercenaries, pirates, sabotage—all orchestrated by a disgraced but still rich Trade Minister Knut, hiding so deep somewhere in the vastness of the universe beyond the Ring that he could never be found.
What if he comes after Ava? What if he seeks revenge on her?
Something fierce and feral bared its teeth inside Arlen. That, he would never allow. He would keep that infuriating, purple-eyed female safe from everything—even herself—if he had to.
Ava
Ava was ready to fall down and die of exhaustion but a wide smile stretched her lips. “Come get me if she needs anything,” Ava told Edmila as she picked up her medical equipment and put it back on the tray. “Christie needs to rest most of all, but she can also eat as many rations as she wants. No rationing for the new mother.”
“You did a wonderful job, Doctor Ava,” Edmila said with a smile.
“We both did,” Ava corrected her. “You stayed here just as long as I did.” She reached for Edmila’s arm and wasn’t surprised when the girl flinched slightly. They always did.
Not all of them. Arlen didn’t, did he?
No, Arlen hadn’t flinched. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t as repulsed by her as the rest of them.
It didn’t matter. Ava smiled and looked at Christie.
“But I’ve already been eating double rations for months!” Christie spoke softly, never lifting her eyes from the tiny, wrinkly infant in her arms. “There must be other people who could use the food.”
“None more than you do,” Ava answered simply. “Your body needs as much nourishment as it can get for the milk. This little girl deserves it.”
A movement on the other side of the door made Ava turn to see golden eyes peering through the small window.
“Do you mind if Uril comes in to meet your baby?” Ava turned careful eyes to Christie, speaking low so Uril wouldn’t hear. She didn’t want his feelings hurt after his encounter with Arlen the other day. One heartbreak a week was enough.
Christie smiled softly, then nodded, still too fascinated by the sight of her child to look away. “Of course,” she whispered, cooing to the baby as it yawned, the toll of the birth making her sleepy.
Ava turned to Uril and beckoned him inside. The boy entered eagerly, then moved closer in a series of slow, careful steps, his face full of wonder as he looked at the baby girl.
“She’s beautiful.” He stood near Ava, looking down at Christie and her baby. “What are you going to name her?”
“I’m not sure,” Christie answered, tracing the line of a plump cheek with her finger, making the baby scrunch up her little face comically. “But I like Ava. Ava seems like a good name to me.”
Christie lifted her tired brown eyes to meet Ava’s for the first time since she had been handed the tiny bundle, and smiled. Ava felt choked with emotion as she watched mother and child. She couldn’t speak.
She wants to name her baby after me?
“Yeah,” Uril answered for Ava, getting closer to the mother and baby. “Ava is a wonderful name.”
Quiet settled over the little room. It was the only private room in the clinic, apart from the one Ava shared with Uril. It wasn’t even a bedroom but a storage closet that Edmila had helped Ava clean out in preparation for the birth. But Christie and her baby deserved somewhere safe where they could get rest and privacy.
“Can I touch her? Her skin looks so soft.”
Christie’s smile faltered for just a second, then she nodded. Uril hadn’t seen it, as he’d been looking at the baby, but Ava did. He reached for the baby, his pale green skin contrasting sharply with the pink tones of the infant.
“Take your filthy fingers off my child!” a male voice boomed and the door slammed open. The baby started to cry, startled by the sudden noise as a man stood in the open doorway. He was young, maybe in his mid-twenties, muscular and well built, his dark hair falling over his brow and dark, almost black eyes glaring with fury at the room.
No, not at the room. At Uril.
“Declan!” Christie’s voice was full of alarm and she cradled the infant closer to her breast, pulling the blanket over its face protectively. “Uril was just looking at her. He wasn’t hurting her.”
Declan didn’t seem to hear Christie’s protests and he stormed forward, only to stop abruptly as Ava stepped in his way.
“Stay where you are.” She lifted her chin even as her heart raced and her back pearled with cold sweat.
“You think you can order me around?” Declan spoke with his lips pursed and the contempt plain on his broad-featured face. “You might be the only doctor here, but you’re not irreplaceable.”
Danger hovered in the air as Declan squinted his eyes, his hostility filling the air.
“Stop it!” Christie spoke from her bed and Declan’s eyes lowered to her. His face relaxed some, but his body was still tense. “Doctor Ava saved my life just four hours ago. If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t have a wife—or a daughter—to come visit.”
Christie’s harsh words stopped Declan’s hostility and he had the good sense to look chastised as he shot Ava a sideways glance.
“This true?” His voice was gruff but also full of fear. A fear Ava knew only too well.
“Yes,” Edmila answered for Ava from the other side of the bed. “Christie’s contractions went on and on, but the birth passage wasn’t opening. Her heart was beginning to fail and the baby’s, too. Doctor Ava had to remove the baby surgically.”
“You cut her open?” There was a heaviness to the way Declan asked the question, and all Ava could do was nod, once.
“I saved them both, if that’s your question. They’re both safe now, and Christie will recover completely. Maybe you should focus on that instead of looking at Uril and me like we’re monsters.”
Declan’s eyes widened and his cheeks reddened. Silently, he nodded, then made his way around Ava. As soon as he met his daughter, he seemed to forget all about their presence. Ava watched, a slight pang of jealousy in her gut.
They were a family. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered.
She would never have that. Because no one ever would want to have a child with a woman who was an abomination.
“Come on, Uril, let’s get back. I want to go outside for a bit before going to sleep,” she said.
Ava wrapped her arm around the boy’s shoulder and they left. Blazing sunlight greeted them as they stepped outside into the small clearing. But Uril didn’t rush around, catching bugs and smelling flowers. Instead, he stood by her side, his golden eyes looking far away and yet seeing nothing.
“Why do they do that?”
Ava looked as his face settled in harsh lines. A stab of pain shot through her at the sight of it. Uril was good, generous and funny. She didn’t want other people’s ignorance to rob him of that.
“It’s because they’re scared, that’s all.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Uril shook his head then, when he looked back at her, he wore an expression that he was starting to have more and more. Like there was nothing bad that could happen that would surprise him. Like he was ready for the worst. Her stabbing pain came back with a vengeance. “I mean, why have a baby? Giving birth to someone, not even knowing what her life will be like. It just seems so cruel to me.”
Ava stared, taken completely aback by the turn of Uril’s thoughts. As she watched him, taking in the serious, closed-off expression, so uncharacteristic in his usually carefree face, she saw the shadow of the man he would become. A man with sharp wits and a depth that came from knowledge of both the worst and the best in people. A man Ava would give everything for him to have the chance to become.
“Maybe it was because they needed something to love more than anything.”
Her answer made Uril frown and a shadow flickered across his eyes.
“Do you suppose our mothers felt like that when we were born?” There was a depth of pain, a gaping wound in his voice as he spoke, and Ava realized just how much she had strayed from him in the last month. How alone he had been. “I don’t think they did. I think they looked at us the same way Declan did. Like we were monsters.” His golden eyes met hers, brimming with tears. “Maybe he was right. Maybe we are monsters.”
Abominations.
Ava’s voice was as silent as her mind as she looked at the boy who had been her only family for most of her life. When had he started thinking like that?
She opened her mouth to answer, but what was there to say? The women Knut had selected to carry the embryos had had no choice. They had probably been horrified to give birth to hybrid babies. That thought summoned a pain so deep, so acute, she almost doubled over like she’d been hit in the chest.
Because there, too, Uril was right. She closed her hand around his frail shoulder and they looked at each other. Two hybrids, two people whose very existence was forbidden. They were family, but not quite so. Nothing was quite so in their lives. Except their love for each other. Because, brother or not, Uril was all she had.
“What are we going to do now?” Uril sounded sad, but also hopeful. He looked up to her; always had. He needed her to tell him everything was going to be all right.
And she was going to. Again, Ava opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut short by the two silhouettes walking out of the deep cover of the forest. She didn’t recognize them but she recognized the looks on their faces. Hatred. Hatred… and something else.
“Uril, get back inside.”
She grabbed the boy’s hand and pushed him behind her body. She turned to the door back into the building, only to see another figure emerge from it. This one, she recognized. It was Will Harl, and the look on his face was taken straight from her worst nightmares. Her face grew numb as Uril’s hold on her hand turned painful.
This wasn’t a coincidence, it was an ambush.
“Well, well, well.” Will Harl sneered at her as he limped on the leg Ava had recently repaired in a surgery that had lasted five hours. “If it isn’t abominations one and two. Just in time for a little chat.”
Ava’s jaw clenched hard, and the metallic tang of blood registered on her tongue. A quick glance over her shoulder told her exactly what she already knew. The two other men were already halfway across the clearing, walking in a leisurely, confident pace.
Because they already had their prey. Neither Ava nor Uril stood a chance against three of them.
“We never did anything to you.” Uril spoke loudly, trying to be strong, to sound like a man, but his voice broke and he sounded young, so heartbreakingly young. “Just leave us alone.”
“Listen to that. Little freak can speak.” One of the unnamed men from the forest spoke, a cruel grin on his lips. He was young, maybe twenty years old, and his eyes glittered with a hatred so deep, Ava knew there was no talking their way out of this. This was going to go down ugly and violent.
“I’m not a freak, and I’m not a monster,” Uril answered, and this time, his voice was deeper and stronger, more like a man’s than a boy’s. “You are. Threatening a woman and a child like that.”
“Oh, boy, we are not threatening.” Will Harl took control of the conversation, limping forward with a triumphant grin. “Threatening you would be saying we’ll beat the both of you until you’re nothing but a pile of broken bones, then leave you for all to see. Or that we’ll use this one until she bleeds out of that sweet, monstrous little hole she’s got. It’s only a threat if you offer an alternative to it.”
Uril’s face seemed to melt, wretched fear spreading across his features in an instant.
Ava moved, ruled by pure instinct. Her fist went up and connected squarely with Will Harl’s hard jaw. At the same time, she kicked, viciously, at the breaking point in his injured leg. The effect was instantaneous. Will Harl howled in pain as he crumpled to the ground.
Ava lost no time. She turned to Uril, grabbing his arm with both hands. “Run!”
She pulled, but Uril resisted her hold.
His golden eyes, so young, yet so old, stared at her with what she could only describe as a sad kind of fondness.
“You run. Save yourself, you deserve it.” He spoke too low for anyone to hear over the shouts of the others. “I’m dead already.”
“No.”
Everything faded into the background. The shouts of the men, Will Harl, the promise of death in his eyes as he staggered back to his feet—none of it had importance. Everything that was important was those golden eyes, full of sadness and love.
I’m dead already.
Then something—or someone—closed its fingers around her throat and she was pulled back. The shock of the fall shot through her skull as her body hit the ground, feet away from Uril. Her mind was spinning as she tried to figure out which way was up and which way was down, there in the thick grass.
Ava found herself on her hands and knees, staring blankly as Uril was suspended six inches from the ground, held by the throat by a tall, thick man who sneered at him like he was a rat in a trap. Uril’s feet swung wildly and his eyes bulged, his fists striking uselessly at his attacker’s face as the life was smothered out of him.
He’s going to kill him. He’s choking him to death.
Ava screamed, a primal, hollow sound blooming out of her like a river of pure anguish. Hands grabbed at her body, running along her legs, up to her breasts, but all she could see was Uril. Pain exploded in her face as a fist connected with her cheekbone but still, she screamed.
Then, as if answering her cries, the door exploded outward and a hissing, roaring, sapphire blue giant stormed out in a rage.
6
Ava
A blur of sapphire color passed in front of her, too fast for her eyes to focus on. The hands left her body and the sound of something wet and broken beyond repair filled the air. The next instant, screams came from the spot where Uril was, shrill and full of terror. Then time felt suspended as Uril dropped to the ground in a heap at the blue giant’s feet.