A frustrated and confused scream escaped her, but at that moment, a great weight struck her and threw her back against the wall. She closed her eyes under her arms. She couldn’t watch death take her. A rocket must have struck her, and in a couple of seconds, she would be dead.
Her head slammed back into something solid, and her mind swam into semi-consciousness. Her body went limp, and care and anxiety evaporated. Nothing else mattered. Her struggle was over. She hovered over the battle scene and gazed down.
Renier hammered Donen with his massive fists. Renier’s guard closed with Donen’s men, and the two factions fought with all their might for supremacy. Where was Turk? Then, out of the clear blue sky, a velvet touch intruded on her foggy brain. Fingers as soft as downy fur stroked her cheek and cradled her shattered body. She lay back and took a deep breath.
Her eyes groaned open, and something big and black blocked out the light. She blinked and tried to sit up, but her head pounded and spun. A voice reached her ear from a great distance. “Don’t move. You might be hurt.”
Chris fought to open her eyes, and there he was, kneeling over her. She frowned. “How did you get here? I thought you were with Renier.”
He laid her back on the ground. “Renier doesn’t need me. You do.”
Chris looked around. Renier knelt over Donen with the Ursidrean’s collar locked in his fists. “But how did you....?” He couldn’t have crossed that distance in the fleeting instant before the rocket struck.
Turk touched her cheek again. “What are you doing down here? You should be up in the city where it’s safe.”
“I thought you were in trouble,” she replied. “I had to help you.”
“I wasn’t in trouble. You’re the one who was in trouble. Take a look.” He helped her sit up and pointed. A wide crater yawned in the ground where she once stood next to the wall. “If I hadn’t knocked you away, it would have flattened you.”
Chris stared at the hole. He’d crossed the plain in a second and thrown her out of the path of the rockets. He’d saved her life when his own life was in danger.
He rubbed her arms and legs and massaged her shoulders and head. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”
For once in her life, she relaxed into his touch. She would find shelter here and nowhere else. “I’m fine as long as I’m with you.”
He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Across the river among the trees, bands of Felsite went after lone Ursidreans and drove them back toward their cannons. The battle had turned. Renier pinned Donen’s arms to the ground with his knees and raised his heavy club to finish him off. What would become of these two factions when one Alpha killed another? They would continue in perpetual war for all eternity.
Chris closed her eyes and turned her face into Turk's shoulder. She couldn't watch this. “Let's get out of here.”
He didn't answer, but she felt him nod. They turned together, away from the battle and toward the dark. No lights blazed out there, beyond the city, beyond the inhabited part of the planet. The black forest called them home, and they would answer the call.
Without taking his arms away from her, Turk quickened his pace away from the city and the din of battle. Chris matched his stride, and when she looked up next, the blaze of rockets and the crash of weapons sounded weak and far away. A weight lifted off her shoulders, and her breath evened out.
At the top of the rise, they paused and surveyed the countryside all around. From up here, the lights of Melnili and the Ursidrean army dotted the black expanse of plain like fireflies in an enormous black night. They amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things, and they didn't affect Chris and Turk at all. The farther they got from those lights, the more insignificant they became until they would blink out of existence altogether.
Turk took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. The first streaks of dawn struck his face, and he stared into her eyes with curious intensity. “Are you ready to go? I mean, are you ready to go down there?” He nodded toward the pass leading back to Lycaon territory.
Chris pulled herself up straight. “If I’m going anywhere. I’m going with you. I’ll go where you go.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure? You don’t belong with me if you don’t want to be on this planet.”
“You’re on this planet,” she replied. “That means I belong here, too. I belong with you.”
He frowned, but a clear light shone in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“You don't want to leave Angondra anymore?” he asked.
Chris shook her head. “I thought I did, but when you left, I realized there was no point in me going back to Earth. I don't have anything on Earth to go back to that's as important to me as you are. If I went back, I would spend my life dreaming about you and wondering what might have been with you. I'll be much better off staying here and living those dreams in real life than searching for a way to get away from them.”
“And Carmen?” he asked. “And all the other women? What about them? What if they want to get back to Earth? Don't you want to help them?”
“None of those women want to leave,” she replied. “No one wants to go back to Earth. What's the point of trying to help them do something they don't want to do?”
“They don’t want to leave their mates,” he told her. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Chris gazed toward the rising sun. “I had a picture of her in my mind. After Sasha died, I had this idea about the way she was when she found me at the crash site.I held that picture in front of my eyes all the way here, and even when I talked to Carmen. Sasha was my model, my hero, and she was dead. She died fighting back, and I was going to fight back, too, to make good on her sacrifice.”
He listened in silence.
“But that’s all gone now,” she murmured. “Sasha doesn’t want to go back to Earth.”
He inclined his head toward the west, and she fell in at his side. She slipped her hand into his, and they started across the plain toward the pass. The sun lightened the morning sky, and tiny creatures scattered before their feet through the waving grass. Chris lifted her face into the sunlight. Just over that hill, between the rocks and down the mountain, the trackless forest would swallow them up, and the canopy would hide their footprints.
Epilogue
Epilogue
Chris and Turk walked hand and hand through the forest, and Chris started to recognize the terrain. She'd passed this way when she first left the Lycaon village. She hung back until Turk stopped and regarded her. “Is anything wrong?”
Chris lifted her head to the promontory rising above the trees. “Let's go up and take a look—just one last time.”
He frowned. “Who said anything about one last time? We can go wherever we like. You can go up there whenever the fancy strikes you.”
Chris tugged at his hand. “Come on. I want to see it.”
She strode up the slope and along the rocky outcropping to the summit. The vast expanse of Lycaon territory stretched out before her in a dark green carpet. The mountains far away separated the Lycaon from the Felsite and the sea.
Then Chris turned around and studied the flat country behind her. A dozen wisps of smoke rose out of the trees and mingled with the clouds. Chris's eyes widened. “There's the village.”
A smile touched Turk's lips. “Are you ready for this?”
Chris scanned the forest. “Maybe we could take a few more days before we go back.”
He raised his eyes and chuckled. “You are so transparent.”
She couldn't help but laugh. “It's pretty nice out here, just you and me, and I'm enjoying learning all your survival tricks. After we go back to the village, I'll want to go out into the forest to test myself every now and then.”
“Nothing's stopping you,” he replied. “If you like, I can follow you the way I did before, just to make sure you're all right.”
“
That might be nice at the beginning,” she replied. “But later, I'll want to go alone, just to make sure I can really do it.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
She drew closer and kissed him. “Let's not go back just yet. Let's spend a few more days out here alone.”
His arms snaked around her and crushed her against his body. “You don't have to ask me twice.”
“Your family won't worry about you, will they?” she asked.
He let her go, and they gazed down at those whispers of smoke again. “Don't go back to village until you're ready. I'll stay out here with you as long as you want, but once we go back there, you have to be ready for everything that means. You have to be ready to take your place in the pack, and you have to be ready to mate with an Alpha. Do you understand what that means?”
Chris nodded. She couldn't take her eyes off those trails of smoke. The village scene played out in front of her eyes. “We have to be ready to take over if anything happens to Caleb.”
“And that means any child of ours could become Alpha after me,” he told her. “The pack will want to get to know you. They'll want to touch you and smell you, and they'll never stop asking, every time they see you, when you're going to get pregnant.”
Chris snorted. “That's got to be hard.”
He nodded. “She had an especially hard time since she had no family before the pack. She wanted to run away from them every time they came around to get to know her. She wanted to be alone with Caleb the way you want to be alone with me.”
Chris shook her head. “I don't want to be alone with you to get away from them. I want to be alone with you for you—for you and me.”
He swept her up in his arms, and his lips crushed against her mouth. Then he peeked into her face. “Can you keep a secret?”
She cocked her head. “What?”
“The pack won't bother Marissa again,” he told her. “She's pregnant.”
Chris's eyes flew open. “What? Really? That's….” She broke off.
He nodded. “Her children will become Alphas after Caleb. If anything happens to him while the children are young, I'll take over and help Marissa raise them to take over after me.” He hesitated. “There is a good chance, if everyone lives long, healthy lives, our own children won't ever become Alpha. Could you handle that?”
Chris looked back down into the valley. All those political dramas remained so far away. As long as she and Turk stayed outside the village, they didn't even exist. “I wouldn't mind at all if our children never became Alpha. I'd almost prefer if they didn't, so they could live normal lives.”
He nodded. “They'll grow up to be warriors, anyway.”
“The boys will,” she countered.
He shook his head. “The girls can become warriors, too, if they want to. Anyone can become a warrior or a scout to protect their pack.”
Chris smiled at him. “I can handle it. I can handle anything that happens now.”
He kissed her again. “You'll be fine.”
Chris took his hand, and they started down the hill. “I already am.”
( The End )
Book 3 – Saved by an Alien
Chapter 1
Emily Allen tried to sit up, but a hand pushed her back. “You’ll pass out if you try that again.”
Unimaginable pain ripped through her body. Even breathing hurt. She sank onto the pillow. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the infirmary,” the voice replied.
Emily tried to blink, but her eyes wouldn’t work. She fought her way up through clouds of delirium until she knew for certain she was thinking straight, but pitch blackness still blocked her sight. She strained to see any glimmer at all. “Am I blind?”
The voice chuckled low and husky. Now Emily recognized it as female. “It’s after light’s out. You’ll see everything when the power comes back on.”
Emily’s mind whirled, and her memory came rushing back. “Are you Romarie?”
The woman didn’t laugh this time. “No, I’m human. I’m just like you.”
Emily focused her eyes and her ears on the woman’s voice. “The last thing I remember I was on the Romarie ship. They kidnapped me and my two sisters and my cousin from a family reunion in Seattle. They planned to take us to a slave market somewhere out in space.”
The stranger sighed, and her voice moved to one side. “It’s the same old story. I wish I had a nickel for every woman they’ve stolen from Earth.”
Emily cocked her head, but she didn’t dare lift it off the pillow for fear the blinding pain would come back. “How do you know about them?”
“I’m one of them. They kidnapped me, too. That’s how I got here.” She was American—whoever she was—and she sounded African American, maybe from somewhere Back East.
“Where is here?” Emily heard her own voice rising in alarm. “Where is this infirmary I’m in?”
A warm, soft hand touched her arm. “You’re on the planet Angondra. Don’t worry. You’re safe from the Romarie. You can relax in that bed until you get better. You took one doozy of a beating, but the good news is you’re in the most advanced medical facility on the planet. You have doctors and nurses tending you day and night, not that you really need them. You just need to heal from your injuries.”
“What happened to me?” Emily asked. “How did I get here?”
The strange woman moved closer. “You were in a crash. The Romarie ship you were on crashed on this planet. It broke up in the atmosphere, and you fell out. You landed here, in our territory.”
“Who’s territory?” Emily asked.
“You’re in the territory of the Ursidrean faction,” the woman told her. “There are five factions on this planet, and you happened to land here. The wreckage of the Romarie ship landed in the Lycaon territory, so your sisters and your cousin will be with them—if they’re still alive.”
Emily caught her breath and tried again to sit up. “I have to find them.”
The woman pushed her down again. “You can’t get up. You have a shattered pelvis and several broken ribs. Your brain is swollen. You’re not going anywhere for a long time. You don’t have to worry. We got word that almost all the women on that ship survived, and they’re recovering with the Lycaon. We can send word to find out if your sisters and cousin are with them.”
Emily fought against the woman’s restraining hands. “I can’t just lie here. I have to get up. I have to find out if they’re okay.”
“Even if you could get up,” the woman told her, “you can’t leave the infirmary until the power comes back on. It is pitch dark throughout the whole city, and you’ll need a guide to show you the way to get out. Stay where you are and concentrate on getting better. Then you can decide what you want to do.”
Emily fought her off. “I can’t.”
Something clicked in the dark, and an alarm rang in the distance. The woman took hold of both her arms and held her down on the bed. “You’ll make your injuries worse if you don’t lie still.”
Emily’s mind went into a maelstrom of confusion. “I have to get out of here. I can’t stay here.”
A door opened, and footsteps pattered into the room. The woman’s voice breathed next to her ear. “You’re going to go to sleep now, but we’re going to do everything to help you get better. We’ll talk again when you wake up.”
Her own struggling sent lightning bolts of pain rocketing through her body. Even before the syringe slid into her arm, a tide of pain swept her into unconsciousness. She reeled and fell back on the pillow. With her last breath, she whispered, “Who are you?”
She barely heard the woman murmur back before she succumbed to the darkness. “My name is Aria.”
Bright light woke her up. She blinked and took a deep breath, but breathing didn’t hurt now. She turned her head right and left and found herself in a clean, bright hospital room. On the other side of the room, a man knelt in front of a cabinet of rolled cloth dressings.
He selected a bunch of them and stood up. He closed the cabinet and turned around.
He lifted a clipboard off the counter and jotted something down. Then he gathered his dressings and started out of the room when he noticed her watching him. His eyes widened. “You’re awake. That’s good.”
Emily stared at him. The creature she mistook for a big-shouldered man couldn’t be human. Rough brown hair hung down to his shoulders and covered his forehead and neck in a thick ruff. His shoulders dwarfed his head, and he moved with a slow, rounded gait.
He noticed her staring at him and smiled. “How are you feeling?”
She couldn’t stop staring at him. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Even when that strange woman’s voice came back to her, she couldn’t make sense of the evidence right in front of her eyes. This creature was an alien. She was on another planet. Not even her experience with the Romarie prepared her for the shock.
He smiled at her. The twinkle in his eyes was exactly the same as any human. Her mind started to clear. “What…..?”
He put down the clipboard. “What am I? I'm Ursidrean. I'm Angondran—not that that means anything.”
Emily raised her head, and when she felt no pain, she tried to sit up. To her relief, she found she could. She rubbed her head. “That woman…..she told me about this.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Someone from the infirmary must have explained it to you. You’re on the planet Angondra. You’re in Ursidrean territory.”
Emily nodded, but her mind still reeled from the shock. “How long have I been asleep?”
“You weren’t asleep,” he told her. “You were in a drug-induced coma. The one time they let you wake up, you couldn’t be restrained, and your injuries were dangerous enough the doctors decided to sedate you until you got better.”
Angondra Holiday Special Page 27