by L. A. Casey
“Are you both ready to go?” he asked. “Kol is requesting our presence.”
“Tell him a few more minutes. Nova has to see herself first in the viewing glass.”
“Females,” Nero said with a playful shake of his head. “I will wait outside. Please, do not take long.”
Surkah waved Nero on, earning another scowl from him before he left the room. I laughed when Surkah took my arm and tugged me across the room until we stood in front of a blank section of the wall. I blinked and looked at my sister-in-mate.
“It’s a wall,” I commented.
“Everything is not what it seems to be, Nova,” Surkah said before she leaned forward and placed her hand against the wall. When she removed her hand, the wall slid upwards, and it revealed a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror.
“Wow!” I gasped. “That is gigantic.”
Surkah smiled wide as my shock became evident when my eyes landed on myself.
“Holy fuck,” I exhaled as I stared at the woman in the mirror. “Surkah, how is that me?”
I had on the same wrap/dress thingy that Surkah had on, only mine was blue, and my body jewellery was black. My neck, arms, lower back, waist, and hips were exposed, but it looked… good. My skin was a beautiful porcelain white and clear with not a speck of dirt in sight. It almost looked as if it gleamed. I used to think I had a shapeless, average body but not in the ensemble I was wearing. It showcased just how feminine I was. There was a curve to my hips, a narrowing at my waist, and then slight fullness to my chest. My legs looked very long with the slits in the skirt going right up above my exposed hips.
“You’re a beauty,” Surkah beamed.
I smiled back at her. “You’re very sweet.”
Surkah’s brows shot up to her hairline. “Sweet? You know what I taste like?”
I burst into surprised laughter.
“No!” I choked. “I mean, your words are kind. Saying you’re sweet is just another way of saying you’re being kind.”
Surkah sighed. “Your human words do confuse me at times.”
“I can see,” I said, with a playful shake of my head. “I hope the Maji off the Ebony don’t have as hard a time with language barriers as you seem to have.”
Surkah snorted. “Our smartest Maji will shadow a lot of your females to learn your way and words, and they will document that information and make it available to the rest of our society to help us understand humans more.”
“Wow, who came up with that idea?”
“The Elders, of course.”
I raised a brow. “Who are the Elders?”
“The oldest and wisest of the people,” Surkah explained. “They’re my father’s Council and hugely respected amongst the people. Four of them were alive when we had to flee our original home world. They were only youngsters, barely twenty years of age, but they had to quickly become grown males and help the people find a new planet and establish a home there. They helped find Ealra and aided in the people starting our life here.”
“Wow,” I said, dumbstruck. “That is incredible. How old are they?”
“Very old,” Surkah replied. “Five hundred centuries.”
“Five hundred?”
“It still shocks you that our lifespan is so long?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Surkah giggled. “You’ll adjust. Eventually.”
“How many Maji were saved when your planet died?” I quizzed.
Surkah frowned. “Only 1900. It happened so suddenly; there was no warning when our planet began to break apart, so getting off the planet was a scrambled effort. Many of those rescued were females. Our males caring for females so greatly is what led to our race being endangered.”
“I don’t understand.”
Surkah sighed. “Many of the females who were rescued were mated, and their mates died back on our original home world. That means a few days after…”
“The females died,” I finished. “Their mates died, so their essence did, too.”
“Yes.” Surkah nodded, glumly. “My father and uncle, whom are from the same pregnancy and were just a few days old at the time, were saved. Their remaining brothers were not as they were on a hunt and too far away to make it to the crafts to flee. My father was not the firstborn, but he was older than my uncle, so when all his brothers died, he became the oldest living son and the new Revered Father. My grandmother was saved also, but my grandfather was not, so she died six days after they escaped. She stayed awake the entire time and extracted milk from her breast for her sons to drink after she died. She produced a lot of milk that would last weeks once stored in freezers on the craft they escaped on. Females can overproduce when they choose to.”
I was wide-eyed.
“How did your father and uncle survive?” I asked, astonished. “Surely, the milk would have run out before Ealra was found.”
Surkah nodded. “It did run out, but as I said, a breastfeeding mother can overproduce milk if she chooses to do so. Many females who were saved with their mates had infants and overproduced to help feed the Revered Father and prince.”
I nodded in understanding.
“Did it take long to find Ealra?”
Surkah nodded. “Our race took refuge on Vaneer, Vada’s home world, and along with the Vaneer, they searched for a suitable planet we could survive on. Ealra was discovered three years later, and a few months after its discovery, our entire race moved there.”
“Kol said Maji weren’t the only inhabitants on Ealra. What other species live there?”
“Many creatures live there, but only one other intelligent species like us call Ealra home, the Eedam. They’re tribespeople. Very primal and not advanced like Maji at all. We don’t bother them, and they don’t bother us.”
I nodded.
“What else did Kol tell you?” Surkah asked, an eyebrow raised.
“A lot.” I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “He told me about Terra, about the humans there, and about the deal your people made with Earth’s Officials.”
Surkah swallowed. “I urged him to inform you of Terra and its rulers, but he was scared you’d want to us to go to the new human planet.”
“He told me as much,” I said with a shrug. “He got what he wanted, though. We’re mated, and I’m by his side instead of on my way to Terra.”
“You… You feel betrayed, though?” Surkah pressed. “By Kol?”
I did. I felt like my options were once again taken away from me. I wouldn’t have chosen Terra over Kol, or the Maji in general, but he never gave me the choice. He made it for me, and that is what bothered me.
“I do,” I admitted. “I hate lies, Surkah, and he has lied to me. Something he has done more than once.”
“It pains him, Nova,” Surkah assured me. “He would never lie to you unless he was in fear of something.”
To me, that still wasn’t a good enough reason to lie about something that involved my very way of life.
I inhaled and exhaled, trying to force him from my mind.
“Let’s just go with Nero so we can get the introductions to your planet underway,” I said, locking eyes with Surkah’s through the mirror. “My argument with Kol is the least of my worries right now.”
“You need not worry about Ealra and the people, dear sister. Your arrival is a celebration… You’ll see.”
“Nova—”
“What am I doing wrong now?” I cut Surkah off as we stepped onto a huge ramp that was lowered to the ground of Ealra.
I was anxious and felt highly out of place, and every step I took, I seemed to do something wrong. First, I walked ahead of Nero when I was supposed to walk behind him then I smiled and said hello to a male who was also escorting us—he was so caught off guard he looked at Nero with panicked eyes. Apparently, no male is allowed talk to me without Kol’s permission.
“You have to wait for the Guard,” Nero answered.
I looked at Surkah. “The Guard?” I related.
She nodded. “They’ll be here in me
re minutes.”
I looked at Nero. “Can I talk to any members of the Guard?”
Nero gnawed on his lower lip. “By law, you shouldn’t, and they shouldn’t reply if you do speak to them, but the Guard members coming to escort us are you brothers-in-mate, so no matter what Kol says, they’ll talk to you. They’re his older brothers, and they give him a hard time whenever possible.”
I sucked in a strangled breath. “What if they don’t like me?”
That was such a trivial thing to be concerned about, but it was what worried me at the current moment.
“They’ll adore you,” Surkah said with a loving smile. “They’ll be shocked that Kol has mated, but then they’ll be joyful for you both.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because”—Surkah winked—“I know my brothers.”
Surkah was trying to reassure me, but my nerves were still spiked.
“Change the topic. Discuss something else to distract me until they get here.”
Nero drew a blank, so I focused on Surkah who was deep in thought.
“Housing,” she suddenly announced. “All the human women should be excited with their housing.”
“Housing?” I repeated incredulously. “You have housing on Ealra?”
Surkah muffled a giggle with her hand. “Of course. Where did you think we lived if not inside a residence?”
I paused. “I… I guess I never thought of it.”
I never thought about what life would be like on Ealra, which was stupid considering I had a one-way ticket to the planet. Thinking about my life there should have been on my mind, but it seemed Kol had taken up all my focus over the past six days.
Surkah vibrated with laughter. “We have modernised homesteads for our citizens. Each family builds their own on their land. The Revered Father gifts every new family a plot of land as a mating gift.”
That’s nice of him.
“But I’m the only human female who has mated so far.” I frowned. “There are no other new families.”
“That is a technicality,” Surkah said with a wave of her hand. “Each female will eventually take a mate, so my father thought ahead and had large family-size homesteads built for them in advance. Each homestead has five floors. It consists of a large kitchen, a living area, a washroom for clothing, fifteen sleep rooms, and six cleansing rooms—each has a relief pod.”
It sounded like they built mansions and not just simple houses.
I raised a brow. “How far in advance were these homesteads built?”
“Construction of the human housing started five years ago,” my sister-in-mate replied.
I whistled. “Your father was certain Earth would give its women up, huh?”
Surkah grinned. “Pretty certain.”
“So each human woman will have a home of their own?”
She nodded. “Two thousand homesteads were built in a new brand-new section of Royal City. We weren’t sure how many would be needed. We hoped for two thousand females, but we’re overjoyed to have many more. Royal City is the name of our main city, in case you were wondering. It was named by the people. The human housing section is very large itself, so it has been given its own name as it’s now an official district of Royal City.”
“What is the new district’s name?” I prompted.
Surkah devilishly grinned. “Human Burrow.”
I almost instantly burst into laughter. “Is it really called that?”
“No,” Surkah tittered. “It’s called Harmony.”
I shook my head, amused. “I’ll live in Harmony with the other humans?”
Surkah shook her head. “No, you’ll live in the palace with the rest of us royals.”
Oh.
“Right,” I exhaled. “I’m a princess now.”
Surkah’s eyes gleamed. “You don’t like being a princess… do you?”
I swallowed. “I’m just scared. I really don’t want to mess anything up.”
“You won’t,” she assured me. “You can’t beat anything I have ever done to bring dishonour to my family.”
That intrigued me.
“What have you done to bring dishonour?”
“As of late?” she asked, her lips quirked.
I nodded.
“I snuck aboard the Ebony for this mission without permission.”
I felt like the floor fell away from beneath my feet.
I screeched. “You did not!”
“Oh, she did,” Nero mumbled to himself, earning a muffled chuckle from the male beside him.
“I did.” Surkah giggled. “My brothers, Killi, Arli, and Arvi were chosen by Mikoh to watch over me while he was away on the mission to retrieve our new females, and as usual, I was not asked what I wanted, so after Mikoh bid me farewell, my brothers escorted me back to our palace where I pretended I was tired and went to my quarters. While I was there, I changed clothing, left a note for my brothers so they wouldn’t think I was abducted, covered my face and body, and snuck out. The Ebony was still boarding goods into the cargo hold, so I slipped in there and just sat down behind a large crate and waited.”
I was fascinated.
“How did no male see or scent you?”
Surkah grinned. “I sprayed fotha essence on my coverings.”
“What is fotha?” I asked, perplexed.
“It is a repellent for tiny creatures that like to eat flowers in my mother’s garden. It stinks when freshly sprayed. The tail end of the Ebony was situated right next to a flower field that was recently sprayed with the repellent, so to the males stocking the cargo, the air would have just smelled like the fotha, not a female.”
I blinked. “You’re like an evil genius.”
Surkah devilishly grinned.
“Was no alert sounded when your brothers realised you were missing?”
“My brothers know never to interrupt my sleep cycle because I can be really cranky. I knew I had at least five to six hours before they would worry and enter my quarters to check on me. I also knew, according to Kol’s flight plan, that he planned to active warp on the fifth hour after takeoff. Once warp is activated, they wouldn’t have been able to return me back to Ealra. It would have cost too much fuel and caused problems with Kol’s schedule since we already knew Earth was dangerously close to imploding.”
I smiled widely.
“I’m really impressed,” I exclaimed happily. “This is seriously great.”
“I’m glad you think so.” She chuckled.
“How did Kol and Mikoh find out you were on board?”
She giggled. “A crew member was retrieving some goods from the cargo hold, and he happened to need the goods from a crate that was behind me. I had already removed my coverings at this point and stuck them inside an empty crate, so I couldn’t scent them. The male that found me is the youngest male aboard the Ebony. He is only thirty-five years old, and he froze with fear when he realised who I was. He stared at me then said ‘princess’ before he dropped to his knees, pressed his head against the cold floor, and begged my forgiveness for his making eye contact and speaking to me directly.”
I pouted. “The poor kid.”
The irony that I was calling someone who was twelve years older than me (even older in Ealra years!) a kid was not lost on me.
“I know.” Surkah grinned as she rocked back and forth on the heels of her feet. “I pardoned him so he’d stand, and then I ordered him to the bridge so he could have Mikoh come and fetch me.”
“Surkah!” I said, giggling.
“I know,” she beamed, pleased with herself. “He was in disbelief when he entered the cargo hold with my brother and Nero right behind him.”
I lifted my hand to my mouth and lightly chewed on my nails.
“What happened next?” I asked.
She blushed, and it only caused me to squeal with delight.
“Tell me!” I demanded.
“Mikoh spanked me,” she whispered, her cheeks aflame with purple.
I su
cked in a breath. “No!”
She bobbed her head, “As my intended, he has the right to inflict simple physical punishment when I endanger myself, and the cargo hold is very dangerous. I took the spanking even though it made me cry. Of course, my tears caused all three males to lose their anger and gain a whole lot of sympathy for me. They quickly began to fret over me like a child. Mikoh insisted I strike him to take my revenge for the spanking he gave me, but I didn’t, and it distraught him even further until he apologised over and over.”
I shook my head. “You have everyone wrapped around your little finger.”
Surkah only smiled, and it made me snort with amusement.
“Will you be in trouble when you disembark the craft?” I questioned.
I hoped not.
She nodded with a reluctant sigh. “Yes, but it’s not like I can really be punished. I already can’t leave the palace without an escort. My father will refuse me food for a few days as punishment, but the second I say I am hungry and cry, plates of food will be shoved under my nose. Being female on Ealra has its advantages.”
I cackled. “As I said, you’re an evil genius.”
Surkah beamed as she stared down the ramp before looking back at me.
“You bathed?” she asked, sniffing the air.
I grinned. “I have used the cleansing unit three times a day since that first day in the medical bay.”
“Why so many times?” Surkah asked, shocked.
I shrugged. “I’m making up for lost time, I guess.”
Surkah processed this then said, “Well, you smell wonderful.”
I laughed. “Thanks.”
“Are you ready to meet some of my family?” she asked as I moved closer to her.
“Are you serious?” I grumbled. “I could wait another ten years if I was given the chance.”
“It will not be bad, I promise. They will be overjoyed that Kol has mated.”
“Even though I’m a human?” I questioned.
“It will be a shock, so expect wide eyes, but Mother and Father will not oppose the mating. They’ll celebrate it.”
My stomach churned. “I’m scared they won’t like me.”
“They’ll adore you,” Surkah assured me. “We’re already best friends, so they’ll see how wonderful you are… Just give them the chance to get to know you.”