Warriors Of Cadir (A Sci Fi Alien Romance Collection)

by Maia Starr

  That was hell for me. But that had a time limit.

  When someone goes missing—correction, when someone is taken—there is no time limit on that.

  I was inconsolable. I had to move back home for months just to try and get my shit together.

  Then I had to make a plan. Get back on my feet, behave like a put-together, well-respected human being, and go back to work… praying that when the time came for the SAEW to choose their first team to go to Cadir, I would be at the top of the list.

  Alecia was studious and tough. I was the weak one, back then. Losing her hardened me, and not for the better. Sometimes I felt so damaged that I thought even if I managed to somehow find her, maybe we wouldn’t be friends at all. Maybe she would say I changed too much.

  “Did they show you pictures?” Harper said, crossing her legs on the small chair she sat on, eyes dazed as she dug in for a heaping spoonful of ice cream.

  I shook my head.

  “Of the Parduss? You’re kidding!” She set the bowl back on the ground and walked barefoot into our mini living room. She pulled out a small tablet barely bigger than a cell phone and turned it on. “This is the folder they gave me on them,” she said, handing the tablet to me.

  I took it in my hands, noting the bright gray ‘PROPERTY OF SAEW” lettering stamped across the back of the device.

  I stared down at the footage with intensity. There were news clips of the Parduss that we’d seen: video of them flying through the sky as dragons, immense and terrifying as they clouded out the sun. But all that I could see was a man: dark skin and an angular jaw.

  “Where is it?” I asked, and Harper offered me a wry grin.

  “That’s him!” She cheered. “Sartillis,” she said the creatures name. “They’re shifters!”

  “Yeah, I know that but…” I frowned deeply and scrolled through the collection of photos: different men with vague scaling down their arms: features that were a little too sharp. They were just human enough that you’d never guess what sort of creatures they truly were.

  “I know, they look so… human, right?” she said with some excitement. “I hope they…” she went to finish her sentence but caught my eyes and then thought better of it. “Well… I just hope they’re nice.”

  I didn’t say anything at that but handed her back her tablet. I’d seen enough.

  “You heading off to bed?” Harper asked, getting up from her chair and whipping her long brown hair behind her shoulders.

  Finally, I smiled. “No,” I shook my head. “I’ll sleep on the flight out.”

  “It’s never the same, and you know it,” she warned with a laugh. “Well, I’m gonna hit the hay. Goodnight, Quinn.”

  “Goodnight,” I said, offering her one last smile before turning my attention back to the rain as it pelted against the thirteenth story window.

  I was ready to get my life back. To get my friend back.

  There were thirteen hours until I had to be at the Nyholm station and until then, I would be here. Eating my ice cream.

  Chapter Two

  Scashra

  The Dendren, my father, sat down in the high council chair next to his advisor and looked up at her as she whispered something to him.

  My family had been ruling over Cadir for centuries. We’d won wars, ravaged the Earth and taken their humans, made alliances with neighboring planets, and annihilated the Berugian race. We were champions, through and through.

  Our bloodline wasn’t something to turn one’s nose up at. So, despite him being my father, I still had to refer to our ruler by his royal title: Dendren.

  I watched my father talking with his most favorite advisor, Pash. She was only of the only females involved in our politics and was held in high regard by all of Cadir. They knew she was favored by the Dendren and thus they had to show her due respect.

  With a flash of a fang I smiled up at her, and she made coy eye-contact with me. Brief, but real.

  “The humans will arrive soon, and I want a representative to greet them,” the Dendren said, turning to one of his warriors—Illox.

  Illox was a long and wiry shifter, probably ten times younger than the rest of us.

  I twitched at the thought of him being the one to introduce the humans to our race almost as much as I twitched at the thought of the humans coming here to begin with.

  “Why not Scashra?” Pash said, running a smooth palm over the top of my father’s hand.

  My father looked at her, smoothing his hand through his long, black and gray beard. “Scashra?” he said, musing to himself as he looked me over.

  “A diplomat of Dendren blood would be more flattering to the humans, if we’re looking to win their favor,” she suggested, giving me a toying smirk.

  I was the middle child of three. Fenris, my brother, myself, and then my young sister Amlodesh. She looked at me from across the council rooms circular seating and rolled her eyes playfully. She knew I hated the idea of the humans coming to Cadir.

  Pash did, too, and it was just like her to use this as an opportunity to get under my skin.

  “Yes,” my father nodded dismissively, as though he had thought of it himself. “We will send Scashra!”

  A group of us, the privy council, stood in a large glass room nestled in a massive cliffside. The room mumbled in agreement, and just like that, the decision was made.

  Funny, I didn’t even agree to it.

  With that, the meeting was over, and everyone rose from their spots. I waited by the door, watching as my brother Fenris walked by me. We exchanged a furious glare until my sister approached.

  I watched Fenris leave through the double-doors and with a sigh I turned to my sister.

  “Still fighting?” she asked, brows rising.

  “As always,” I said. Fenris and I had taken a hiatus from out brotherhood for the last few years, it seemed, though the reasons had become hazy with time.

  “So!” Amlodesh cheered scornfully. “I suppose you’re the new Illox,” she said with a charming laugh.

  My sister was beloved. By me, by Fenris, by my father, and by our people. Since my mother died, she was the only one who brought our family together.

  She and my brother looked like my mother: fair hair and dark eyes. So similar looking they nearly seemed like twins, save for the fact that eniwan, Parduss females, were always white, whereas Fenris was a black dragon.

  Amlodesh was sweet and, unlike most of the eniwan, she actually showed kindness to the humans that had been brought back to Cadir in the L7 war.

  Which was a good thing, since she was the one who would be accompanying the humans out to the mainlands for their research.

  “Don’t say that,” I shivered. “I’d much rather go back to being a spy.”

  “Right,” she rolled dark her eyes. “Doing nothing under the guise of collecting intel does seem to suit you.”

  “Shut up,” I laughed and watched from afar as Pash stood from her chair.

  Amlodesh stared at me before waving her hand in front of my eyes, knowing exactly how I felt about Pash.

  As the room began to clear out and my father grew busy in other matters, Pash made her way over to me and briefly slipped her hand into mine before leading me into the expansive halls of my father’s immense glass castle.

  “You catch all that, about the peace treaty?” she asked as we strode down the long hallway.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well, one can’t be sure when one comes in late,” she teased in a harsh tone.

  I laughed and offered her a shrug, brushing my hand up my arm nervously.

  Amlodesh rolled her eyes at me and slapped me hard on the shoulder. “I’m leaving,” she said, and I barely paid her any notice. “Have fun with your humans!” she mocked, drawing out her vowels on the word humans.

  “Ahara,” I said absent-mindedly, our native goodbye.

  Pash approached me, and my heart began to speed up. She was ethereal: beautiful. She had long, silver-white hair and a long, leggy
body to match. I had been in love with her for as long as I could remember. But Pash wasn’t something to be touched or explored. She was my father’s council. That meant she wasn’t meant for anyone.

  “I don’t have to complain about it.”

  “No, all I had to do was look at your face when the Dendren said it,” I laughed.

  Her nearly invisible top lip curved into a slight smirk and I felt proud of my comment. It took a lot to get Pash to emote. That’s why her expression at the council spoke volumes about how she felt about the humans coming to Cadir.

  Awful.

  “Pash is unhappy,” I teased, and she narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Look what happened to Fenris,” she said of my brother.

  I raised my brows dismissively. “He’s happier than ever.”

  “Oh stop, you can’t stand him either,” she said smoothly. “Plus, once he got involved with one of those stolen humans, your father completely disregarded him. Think he ever gets sent out on missions? He’s barely even a warrior anymore!”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that,” I laughed.

  It was true, though. Years ago, back when we invaded the Earth, we’d come home with a prize of human females. A bundle of them.

  Apparently, Fenris had made one fall in love with him—somehow.

  After that, my father wanted nothing to do with him. With his precious eldest child. Fenris was in line to be Dendren, and yet my father did nothing anymore to teach or train him.

  In fact, I had been the one called into council meetings since then. Fenris showed up, of course, but he was no longer taken into account by my father.

  Which was strange, considering my father was the one who wanted the human females to come here in the first place. To help us with our procreation problems.

  “I won’t have them come,” Pash said finally, stopping in the middle of the hall.

  “The humans?”

  She nodded and then it occurred to me. Pash was trying to ask me for a favor. I’d never seen Pash ask anyone for anything before, yet here she was, trying to bat her long lashes at me and hoping I could do something to fix her problems.

  “If you’re expecting me to change my father’s mind then you seem to have forgotten who I am,” I smirked. “You have more sway with him than I do.”

  She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, not enough,” she said, and then the conversation was dropped.

  Pash dismissed herself, and I made my way back to my father to get the details of my meeting with the humans worked out.

  I didn’t see Pash for the rest of the day. Not until I was already asleep in my bed.

  The sound of her feet hitting the smooth floor sent perked my ears, and I sat up, still feeling half-asleep.

  Such an occurrence had never happened before. I looked up and saw her there like a dream, standing in my room in a long white nightdress that was just sheer enough for me to see her curved breasts.

  “Pash?” I said: feeling disoriented at the sound of my own voice hitting the air. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want them here,” she reiterated, as though we were simply picking up our conversation from earlier.

  No mention of her sudden entrance into my space or how odd it was to be alone together.

  My room was dark, with only the starlight casting shadows into my space. The air was hot and muggy: shirt-stuck-to-you sweaty.

  “And you’ve… what?” I asked with a breath. “Come here in the middle of the night to complain about it without anyone hearing you?”

  Her eyes widened, and she ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back.

  The bedroom only had a nightstand and a bed in it, giving her plenty of space to wander before sitting down next to where I lay. I wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten this far into my house before it woke me up.

  She sat on the bed next to me and held out a small device about the size of a fingernail. A nanodat.

  Nanodats were small, dissolvable sheets created to store information you wanted kept private. She held it out on the tip of her finger, and I looked down at it in the darkness, only guessing what it might be.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked

  “Mind-meld with it,” Pash said sarcastically. Then she took the sheet and pressed the device into my tongue, allowing me to taste the information—tech specially designed for my father’s spies—which is what I had been back on the Earth.

  I looked down at her long, smooth legs and felt something stir in me. I forced myself to look back up into her dark blue eyes, and with drawn-out vowels I said, “Pash, no.”

  They were coordinates, mapping out a quick route from the landing zone where the humans would meet me right down to our dungeons.

  She wanted me to kill them.

  “Please,” she said, throwing her leg over my waist and aligning herself against me, grinding up against the growing hardness she found there. “Don’t let them come here.”

  “Pash,” I said, feeling lightheaded and breathless at the sight of her body writhing against me. “He doesn’t listen to me!” I reasoned again.

  She ran her warm middle up and down my clothed body, and I could feel her soft legs against my skin with alarming cold.

  “No?” she questioned. “And yet he’ll make you king?”

  I looked up at her, setting my hands on her hips and following her sweet eyes, glancing back and forth from their deep blue until what she said finally hit me.

  “…When he’s dead,” I said carefully, my brow twitching as the whispered words came out.

  Pash stopped her grinding and leaned down until her breasts grazed my chest. She bit her lip and met my eyes. Then, slowly, she whispered, “Right.”

  My mind was reeling. I had wanted her for years: watched her from afar until I had the nerve to befriend her. We’d been friends for so long… and that was fine. That would do. Because that’s all I was allowed to have.

  Receiving the smallest hint of a flirtation back from her was enough to give me life: renew my strength.

  But now she’d come in and let me feel her: pressed her body close to mine and expected me to… what? Kill my father? What was she asking me to do? What was the implication?

  She assumed my father would make me king over my elder brother?

  “Pash… I want you to think carefully about what you’re asking me,” I said cautiously.

  “I’m asking you to help me,” she whispered back.

  I swallowed. “By killing my father?”

  “What?” Pash sat up, her alluringly sexy expression suddenly turning back into my friend: humorous and scolding as she smacked me on the arm. “No, idiot. By attacking the ship!”

  I watched her laugh, a rare sight, but still felt unsettled.

  It was no secret that her relationship with the Dendren had become tense, and though she made light of my misunderstanding, I still wasn’t sure I believed her. A hard knot had formed in my stomach and seemed to settle there for the time being.

  “They rendezvous over the Manaxula district. It’s isolated there. Now that I’ve assigned you as the diplomat, you can meet them there,” she explained quickly, no longer concerned with using my body. “Then let the scientists come back here to Renden and kill the breeders.”

  “Just like that?” I said flatly. “Kill the breeders?”

  She cocked her head to the side and looked annoyed. “Problem?”

  “A little cold, even for you, Pash,” I said, hoping it sounded more like a tease than a scold.

  “Because you’ve been promised one of them?” she snipped.

  “Because we need to breed, or we die,” I said, brushing my hands along her hips once more. “And I’m not a fan of dying.”

  Pash looked at me, her calculating eyes flicking back and forth, oozing sexuality. She was studying me, but I couldn’t figure out why. She leaned forward so our faces we close enough that I could feel her breath ghosting over my lips.

  “Have you been promise
d one of the breeders?” she asked, softer this time.

  I watched her. “Would it make you jealous if I were?”

  “All the Dendren bloodlines have been promised breeders in the first round. I know that.”

  I offered her a wry grin and raised my hand up to her face, brushing a silver blonde strand out of her face. “That’s not what I asked.”

  She leaned in, pressing my hand against her cheek and nearly kissed me. Then she relented, “I would be jealous.”

  “I love you, Pash,” I said nervously.

  She smiled. “I know.”

  “You…do?” My heart sped up.

  “You’re not as mysterious as you like to think you are,” she said.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Ouch.”

  “Please,” she said, pleading again with me to murder the humans as though it were as simple as asking me to go for a swim.

  “How many times do I have to say no?” I laughed. “I’m not happy about the truce, either. You think I want to share our resources with them? Believe me; I know how you feel—”

  “You don't know anything!” she interrupted abruptly, quickly removing herself from my body and brushing her dress down as she paced my bedroom floor. “How would you feel if I said we were getting new soldiers? That you weren't allowed to fight for the Dendren? That your honor meant nothing anymore? That's what this does to the Eniwan!”

  “Shh…” I hushed, partially because I didn’t like seeing her upset and also because I didn’t want anyone to hear her in my room.

  “We aren't top choice any longer because we are thought of as defective. We're not even tried!” She looked disgusted. “Now you want to share Cadir with a human?”

  “But that's not even your circumstance. Look at you, Pash! You are second to the king! His most trusted advisor! You have rank over everyone else here. H’sk, over me!” I swore.

  She stared at me, no longer looking like the strong warrior or sexual vision I had always imagined her as, but like a small girl. Afraid.

  “I could make you do it,” she dared.

  By sleeping with me, I wondered?