Cax went and sat on Kiri’s other side. “Right now, I’ve been working on adding to our numbers.”
“And after that?”
“I want to free as many adults who are from El Centro as we can. They’ve been spread out over a number of ships. And the mother ship.”
Kiri’s eyes widened. “Are you telling me there’s an even bigger ship than the ones over the major cities?”
“Yes. It’s behind your moon. All the Atres traveled on it from our planet.”
“That’s where your father is, isn’t it?”
“Correct. He hasn’t been to the Earth’s surface yet, and he doesn’t have any plans to at the moment. That’s why the rebellion has to be started before he arrives. Once he does, there’ll be even more troops and your people will more than likely be segregated.”
“So yours can take over even more and claim everything as theirs.”
Cax gave a curt nod. “Yes.”
Kiri blew out a breath. Didn’t that just suck? She was about to say something along those lines when the doorbell rang. She stood and headed for the door. She hoped it wasn’t any more Atres. It wasn’t. It was Meg. She pushed her way inside.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Meg said once she closed the door behind her.
Kiri gave her a questioning look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Sean was out with his younger brother and saw two Atres warriors go inside your house. He thought they’d come to take you away because of your night hunting. He was worried and told me.”
“He wasn’t wrong about the warriors. Come and meet them.”
Meg gave her a shocked look. “What? They’re still here?”
“They aren’t like the others. You’ll see.”
Kiri took hold of Meg’s wrist and pulled her toward the living room. Her friend dug in her heels and tried to break out of her grasp, but Kiri was stronger and kept her moving.
Inside the living room, Kiri stopped walking and positioned Meg at her side. “Meg, meet Lemeah and Drace.” She pointed to each of them. “They’re brother and sister. Lemeah is staying in the house across the street. And lastly, that’s Cax.”
Meg’s gaze shot to Kiri. “You mean Cax as in-your-dreams Cax?”
“Yes. And he also happens to be the son of the Atres leader.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.” Kiri turned to the others. “Everyone, this is my friend, Meg. She knows all about my night hunting, and was part of the neighborhood alien watch. I’m sure she’ll want in on the rebellion we’re planning. And there are sure to be a few more teenagers I know who will as well.”
Meg gave Kiri a guarded look. “Rebellion?”
“Yup. You’re looking at some of the Atres who don’t agree with their leader’s way of thinking. They want our people to live alongside them as equals, not as cattle. What do you think, Meg? Will you help?”
Her friend nodded. “Of course. And I’m sure Luke will want to help, and Sean and Tim. Though they won’t be able to do much since they have their younger brothers to take care of.”
“I don’t mind looking after their siblings when it becomes necessary,” Lemeah said. “I can’t fight, but I can help out with situations like that.”
“That would be great,” Meg said. She went and sat next to Lemeah, and struck up a conversation with the Atres female.
Cax stood and came to stand next to Kiri. “Are you sure you want your friends involved in this?” he asked softly.
“Meg would be pissed at me if I didn’t let her.” She looked at Cax. “Besides, you need the numbers. They aren’t warriors, but they’ll do what they can.”
“All right. I trust your judgment.”
For some silly reason, hearing Cax trusted her like that gave Kiri a warm feeling. If it’d been anyone else telling her that, it wouldn’t have caused the same reaction. Maybe it was this whole mate thing they were supposed to have going on. She would have to watch herself around him until she sorted out her feelings for him and how she wanted their relationship to go. She wouldn’t be jumping in with both feet just because he was back in her life again.
Chapter 11
Kiri and Cax managed to find some time alone after Meg left and Drace went across the street with Lemeah. Kiri figured Cax had asked Drace to leave with his sister.
She and Cax were upstairs in Kiri’s bedroom, which had now become his. She worked on emptying her dresser drawers so he could use them. She decided to go through her clothes while she was at it and get rid of the things she didn’t wear anymore. He sat on the bed, watching.
“I guess this is as good a time as any for our discussion that you wanted to have,” he said.
Kiri turned to face him. “Okay.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Explain this dream walk thing to me.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Of course you’d want to start with that. Well, as Lemeah said, it’s rare amongst my people. So it’s kind of a big deal when it happens.”
“All right. How did you find me to dream walk with me? How did you know you could?”
“I didn’t know I could, and I didn’t purposely set out to find you. It just happened one night. I’d been listening to my dad make plans to go to Earth, and I was thinking of your planet when I went to sleep. Suddenly, I traveled through space and arrived at your world. I found you. I didn’t try to talk to you or anything, but I knew at that moment we’d become connected. That I would be able to interact with you.”
“When was that?”
“A month before we first met in our dreams. I watched you during that time, getting to learn what you were like. That’s when I realized how vulnerable you’d be when we finally arrived at Earth. So I came up with the plan to train you.”
“I’m thankful for that, though you should have told me what was going to happen. I know we’ve been over this before, but it still bugs me that you didn’t.”
Cax grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him before he tugged her down to sit beside him. “It was a mistake. I know that now. I kept it from you mostly because I was afraid of how you’d react. I didn’t want you to stop seeing me.”
“How could I have done that? You were the one summoning me. I had no control over it.”
“You’re wrong about that. I didn’t always summon you, not after the first time we met. You came because you wanted to see me, and I wanted to see you.”
“Since you’ve come to Earth, we haven’t dream walked. Not once. Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I was in stasis for so long it weakened our bond.”
Kiri thought back to what Cax had said about her wanting to see him had made it so she dream walked with him. It might not have been the stasis that had caused them to stop. It more than likely was because of her. She’d started to believe he hadn’t been real. Finding out what he truly was had made her not want to see him at all. She decided not to tell him any of that.
“So we’re mates. What does that mean for us?”
Cax looked her in the eyes. “Exactly what you think it means. We’re two halves of a whole.”
“Which means what? That I’m supposed to just marry you, have your kids, and live happily ever after? I’m too young for all that. Just because we dream walk doesn’t mean you’re the right guy for me. Earthlings don’t have mates. We go out with members of the opposite sex, in my case, until we find the one we can love, then we have the whole happily ever after. Though sometimes that doesn’t always work out and people get divorced.”
“My people have something similar to your divorce. With mates who can dream walk, that never happens. We can have a relationship much deeper than your marriage.”
Kiri stood and turned to look down at Cax. “I still won’t let you push me into anything I’m not ready for. Plus, remember, I’m an Earthling and you’re Atres. Your people wouldn’t like it if you had me as your mate.”
“They would have to accept it. What we have is ch
erished, and nothing can keep us apart.”
“Seriously? You think that way? For someone who wants to start a rebellion because you know your people are treating mine unfairly, you aren’t seeing the whole picture. Do you think your father would be so accepting if he finds out? Do you actually think he’ll stand by and let us become mates without trying to do something to stop it? It wouldn’t be hard for him to arrange to have something happen to me.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“The man who wants to subjugate all the people on my planet would let his son take one of the cattle as a mate to become part of his family? You can’t seriously believe that.”
Cax didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When he finally did, he nodded. “You’re right. He wouldn’t allow it.”
“Of course I’m right. And there’s the fact I’m not sure I want you as my mate.”
His gaze shot to her face, a look of hurt flashing in his eyes before it quickly disappeared. Kiri gave herself a mental kick. She shouldn’t have just blurted that out. Nothing like stomping on a person’s feelings. As they’d spoken about his father, how her mother had died had played through her mind, bringing up the old, familiar anger toward the Atres to the surface. She hadn’t thought before she’d opened her mouth.
“That’s why we no longer dream walk,” Cax said in an emotionless voice.
Crap, he’d figured it out just as she had. “I didn’t want to bring this up.”
“Yet you have. You might as well get it all out in the open.”
“I’ll admit I’ve been angry with you before I saw you again.”
“Why?”
Kiri couldn’t sit still any longer. She stood and paced in front of Cax. “For the secrets you kept and abandoning me.” She looked at him to find him giving her a questioning look. “You were gone for two years. I get that you were in stasis and you probably didn’t dream much during it.”
“I didn’t.”
“That I can understand, but once you arrived on the planet, you did nothing. You didn’t come looking for me. You trained me, which was great. Only you did it and expected me to be able to survive what your people have done to mine with no support. No backup from you.” Kiri stopped pacing to stand in front of Cax. “During those two years that you were in stasis, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that maybe I’d made you up. Your people came on your spaceships and they have the same hair and eye color as you, and I knew you couldn’t be a figment of my imagination. After spotting you on TV before it stopped working, I wanted nothing more than to see you again, but you never came. The kidnapping of people in the middle of the night started, and my mother was killed. What do you expect would happen? I figured you were just like the others.”
“Do you still wish not to see me?”
“No, but I can’t bring myself to think we’ll be anything more than what we are now. At least for the time being. As long as the Atres treat my people the way they do, it will never work out. You can’t indefinitely stay here. I doubt your father would allow that. And it’s not as if I can live with you on one of your ships. I’m nothing but a food source, remember?”
Cax refused to meet her gaze. Obviously, he hadn’t liked what she’d said, but it had to be in the open. Maybe today hadn’t been the ideal moment, but it would have come out sometime in the future.
Kiri went and gathered up some of her clothes into her arms. “I’ll get rid of my things and leave you alone.”
He didn’t say anything as she left. Nor did he speak to her when she had to make a few more trips to get everything. Kiri told herself not to let his silence get to her. She had needed to make him understand how she felt. She couldn’t lead him on and later realize it wouldn’t work out between them.
She took her time folding her clothes before she put them into her mother’s dresser. That finished, she cleaned up the mess she’d made earlier. Kiri listened for movement in the hallway or from the direction of her bedroom, but there was nothing.
Kiri set to work stripping the king-sized bed. Cax could brood all he wanted in what was to be his room while he stayed there. She wasn’t going to take back anything she’d said. Since his people had arrived, her life had been turned upside down and torn apart. He couldn’t expect her to snap her fingers and get over that or act as if it’d never happened. She wasn’t the same girl who he’d dream walked with. She’d died right along with her parents and been replaced by someone who was tougher and who could look out for herself.
* * * *
Kiri stayed in the master bedroom until the dinner shuttle was due to arrive. She wasn’t going to hide in there anymore. She’d heard Drace return to the house and join Cax about a half hour ago. They hadn’t come out of the room yet.
She stepped into the hall and walked down its length to the top of the stairs. The door to her bedroom was shut. Kiri didn’t bother knocking on her way by to see what they were up to.
The sound of the shuttle arriving sounded her ears as she reached the main floor. Kiri headed outside in time to watch it land in the middle of the street. Kids and non-warrior females left the houses and before they formed a line to get their food. She joined it, even though she had no intention of actually eating what she was given.
Kiri spotted Cax and Drace leaving her house as she inched up to the next space in line. They completely avoided it and went straight to the front where a warrior handed Cax a large square box that reminded her of an insulated cooler. That had to be the bagged blood he’d told her about. Drace took two food containers from another warrior. She hadn’t known Atres ate solids as well. The two of them didn’t even bother looking in her direction as they headed back to her home. Nice, she thought. She figured she was now to be given the silent treatment for speaking her mind.
Once it was her turn, she held her hands out for her food container. She walked to her house. Inside, she closed the door behind her before she went to the kitchen. She slowed her steps when she found Cax and Drace there. The box they’d been given sat on the counter with the lid off next to the fridge. They’d obviously put the bagged blood in there. The microwave ran with two mugs inside. How had they learned to use it?
Kiri placed her container of food on the center island, took a seat on one of the high stools, and waited for them to finish and leave. She had to see what she could actually scrape together for her dinner. It was getting slim pickings in the pantry.
Instead of leaving after the microwave finished, Drace and Cax went and sat on the other two stools. She looked at them. “Aren’t you two going to eat in your rooms?”
“No,” Drace said. “Isn’t the kitchen where you Earthlings have your meals?”
“Yes, but you’ll be in the way when I try to make my dinner.”
Cax, who sat on the stool next to hers, glanced at her food container before he focused on her. “You have your meal right there. Why would you need anything more?”
He and Drace pulled the lids off theirs. Their food wasn’t anything like what she’d been given. She had to admit it smelled good, and actually looked appealing. Her stomach growled.
She took off her lid. She shoved the container into the middle of the island for them to get a good look at it. “Would you really want to eat that?”
Cax answered. “It’s what the Yaletians ate. It has all the nutrients your body needs. They liked it.”
Kiri pegged him with a hard stare. “I’m not Yaletian. To me, that is nothing but disgusting slop. I wouldn’t even class it as real food.”
“Technically, it isn’t,” Drace said. “We use food replicators to produce it.”
“One more reason I won’t touch that crap even if I’m starving, which I will be soon since I’m just about out of supplies.”
“It isn’t that bad.”
She gave Drace a look that said he was nuts. “Really? Try it.” Kiri pushed the container closer to him.
He picked up the spoon that had been supplied with his food cont
ainer, dipping it into her slop. He brought it to his mouth and ate it. He chewed once, not that he’d needed to, before he swallowed it down in a loud gulp. He gave her an expression that said he’d eaten something god-awful. He picked up his mug of heated blood and took a big swig as if to wash the goop off his tongue.
“I told you so,” she said.
Drace turned his gaze to Cax. “She’s right. That’s disgusting. I wouldn’t eat it even if someone threatened my life if I didn’t.”
Kiri had to smile at that last part. She quickly hid it as she spoke. “I’m sure I’m not the only Earthling who thinks that food is garbage. Most are probably eating it because they have nothing else. Especially the younger kids. They can be picky eaters, anyway.”
“It can’t be as bad as you two say it is,” Cax said mildly.
She pulled her food container close to her, picked up the provided spoon, scooped some onto the utensil, and held it in front of Cax’s mouth. “Open.”
“What?”
“Open your mouth.”
He hesitated for a few seconds before he did as she’d told him. Kiri saw a flash of fangs before he closed his mouth around the spoon. She pulled it out and waited for his reaction. It was fast in coming, and was the same as Drace’s. Cax washed it down with blood.
Cax gave her an apologetic look. “You’re correct. That isn’t fit to eat. I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Kiri nodded toward his food container. “Why would you when you get to eat like that.”
He put the lid on her food container, stood, and took it to the box next to the fridge. He dumped it inside it before he returned to his seat. Cax pushed his meal toward her. “You eat mine. I’ll be fine with just the blood. I’ll make sure you get the same food that Drace and I get from now on.”
Kiri wasn’t about to turn it down. She picked up the fork and took a mouthful of what was a chunk of some kind of meat. It tasted as good as it smelled. She tried the other items and found them just as tasty. After a few more forkfuls, she pushed the container back to him.
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