"But you said that they had some sort of conflict with your king. How did that happen if they left Uoria for another planet?" Rey asked.
"They intended on staying on Ynn permanently. That is where they gave themselves the name of the Klimnu and trained their warriors. After several generations passed, however, they realized that they had destroyed the planet. Their greed and lack of regard for anything but themselves turned the entire planet of Ynn into a wasteland. It started to become uncomfortable even for them, so they decided that it was time that they returned to Uoria."
"Why Uoria? If you think that they fled to Ynn because they were so afraid of the Covra and didn't want to put themselves in a position of ever having another species take them over again, why would they come right back to the planet where it had happened to them, and where they knew that they would encounter other species who were just as strong?"
"They knew that they were already familiar with the planet. It would be easier for them to establish themselves, regroup, and possibly collect a few slaves of their own. Maybe they intended to only be here for a short time before finding another planet to take over. The point is that they came back here to take over and take advantage of the comfort and resources of the planet, but Uoria itself fought back almost as soon as they arrived."
"The flowers," Maxim said softly.
Ivy's stomach turned. The accusations had seemed so wild, so completely unfounded when she first heard them, but now Pyra's words were sinking into her brain, coming together and forcing her to acknowledge that what he was saying was true. These beautiful, peaceful people, including Maxim, were what had turned into the vicious and disgusting Klimnu.
"The flowers," Pyra repeated. "They were scouring the planet for a new place to settle, and naturally they moved toward the area of the planet where they would be most comfortable, near where their ancestors had lived. Where they chose to settle, though, put them in contact with the one thing that they didn't know would be a danger to them; lovely purple flowers."
Pyra ended with a tone of mocking in his voice and Ivy saw Maxim's jaw twitch.
"Once they came into contact with those flowers, the reaction began. They knew that Creia, the king from the nearby compound of Denynso, had healing powers. They went to him to ask that he stop and reverse the reaction so that it would restore their beauty," Ciyrs continued. "Creia had no tolerance for their behavior since they arrived on the planet, however. He told them that he would heal them if they agreed to stop their plans to take over the planet and leave Uoria. Instead, they chose to embrace the brutality that was coming over them. It was not just taking over the planet any longer. They would also eliminate the powerful Denynso warriors. They had discovered something about them that made it even more appealing to stay and wage war with them rather than establishing their own planet."
"What do you think they discovered?"
"Leia said her captor told her that the Klimnu thrived off of the anger, torment, and blood of the Denynso."
Rey shook his head, stepping back as if the words forced him backwards.
"No."
Chapter Four
Ivy's hand covered her mouth as she fought the sick feeling that welled up within her at the words.
"No," Rey said again.
"Yes," Gyyx said. "The Klimnu knew that if they could take over the Denynso they would have the strongest and most feared warriors in the galaxy to do their bidding, and the harder they fought us, the stronger they got. They thrived off of the anger, fear, and anxiety that they were able to instill in us, and when we fought, they had access to the greatest source of power and strength that they could ever find: our blood."
"No," Rey said again, sounding more desperate with each word that tumbled from his slightly quavering lips, "our kind hasn't resorted to consuming the emotions and the blood of others to survive since the earliest of our days when survival was all that mattered. It isn't done anymore. It isn't what we are."
"It is exactly what you are!" Pyra roared, all of the aggression and anger that had been fairly well controlled up until this point suddenly exploding out of him and silencing everyone in the room. "Your kind took over another planet and then destroyed it because of your greed so you came back here to try to start over. When the toxins from those flowers started to dissolve away the beauty that you hold so precious and Creia refused to help you because of the darkness and cruelty in your hearts, you vowed to take revenge of him and the rest of the planet in the best way that you could, by feeding off of the emotional torture and the blood of the Denynso that came after him."
"We did nothing of the kind!" Rey argued.
"Yes, you did! We always wondered why the Klimnu didn't wage war on us like the other species did. They came in droves, fighting us in tremendous battles over short periods of time until they fell. The fighting didn't end until we had defeated them. The Klimnu, though, were different. They came slowly and periodically, one or two creeping into the compound and assuming the appearance of one of our own in order to gain trust and then attacking, or engaging in brief battles that could be months or even years apart. It never made sense why a species that had proclaimed themselves as our most hated enemy wouldn't just engage themselves fully in combat with us. It was because we were too strong. We fought back harder than anyone else the Klimnu had ever encountered and you needed the time to restore your strength. Keeping us constantly guessing and wondering when the next attack would be, where it would happen, and how severe it would be kept all of us anxious and made the fighting even angrier and more aggressive. As we fought you, we were feeding you."
"That wasn't us!"
"If it isn't you now, it will be. Those flowers only changed their skin, not who they were inside. It was their own twisted minds and the way that they let the Covra get into them that changed them into the vicious, cruel monsters that we have fought for as long as we can remember, and that we thought we had eliminated in battle. Coming into contact with those toxins only made them look the way they should. All of you may still be as beautiful and perfect as they once were, but inside you are all the same. You are all Klimnu."
The roar that came up from the Denynso warriors shook through Ivy and contracted around her heart, making it difficult to breathe. She could feel the tension of the room building even more intensely around her, as if the fury, fear, and aggression from all of the men in the room were pouring out of them so that it could crash and struggle together without the benefit of their physical bodies. The wall of warriors and human men was starting to crumble as the massive warriors stepped down into the crowd of beautiful, confused men being declared Klimnu and the human men took a step back, unsure of what was happening.
"We are not Klimnu!" one of the men yelled, trying to scramble away from Gyyx's tremendous hand as it reached down to grab him by the front of the shirt and yank him up to face him.
Ivy anticipated fear and horror from these men, but what she was seeing was a chaos of emotions. Some seemed paralyzed in place, staring ahead of them as if watching images that no one else could see as they grappled with their own emotions and tried to make sense out of everything that was happening around them. Others stood, the fear in their eyes mixed with a level of anger that rivaled even that in the eyes of the Denynso. Others pulled together, standing in clusters and looking around them as if planning an escape. The warriors closed in, their chests heaving with ragged breaths of anger. As she looked at them, Ivy noticed something that she hadn't before. Some wore black bands around their upper arms, a sign of mourning. She wondered if those were worn for the warrior she had heard them mention, the man who had lost his life in the final conflict with the Klimnu.
Was this why Maxim had been so reluctant to tell her how the humans arrived on the planet in the first place? Did he know that if he told her about the Valdicians and their alliance with the Covra that she would eventually realize what he really was? Her eyes lifted to him standing on the platform in front of her and his
eyes met hers. She could see the torment in his gaze as his hand moved to cover the place on his arm that proved their origins. Guilt filled her painfully. If she hadn't brought him out of the settlement and into that field of flowers, this wouldn't be happening.
"We came on this quest because of the Klimnu," Pyra told them. "We left our compound and came out onto Uoria because of the war and what was lost in it. The blood, the betrayal, and the death was too much for us to bear and continue to remain right where we had always been. It was our mission to come out onto the planet and find what other threats might be here so that we could eliminate them before they could invade our land and threaten our families. We were prepared to encounter creatures that we had never seen and threats that we didn't understand. Who would have known that this journey would bring us face to face again with the very enemy that brought us here? Our warriors failed to purge Uoria of the scourge of the Klimnu once. We will not make that mistake again."
Ivy's eyes snapped to the huge Denynso warrior leader and saw his eyes flash. His hand moved to the dagger at his side, but just before he was able to raise it, Zuri flung herself onto the platform, stepping between him and Rey.
"What are you doing?" she screamed.
Her sudden appearance on the platform and the power in her voice made everyone in the room fall silent. All movement stopped and the divisions in the species seemed even starker than they had before.
"Zuri, come back here," Ero demanded.
"No," Zuri said, not even turning to look at her mate. "What the hell do you think that you are doing, Pyra?"
Ivy stood and ran down the steps toward the platform, suddenly mobilized by the silence in the room. She pushed through the people in the well indiscriminately, not caring who she was shoving past to make her way to Maxim. He reached his arms out to her and Ivy fell into them, clutching him to her chest as she finally allowed the tears that were building in her eyes to fall.
"Get her away from him!" Pyra growled.
Ivy felt Maxim pull her back several steps and when she looked over her shoulder she saw two of the warriors advancing toward her.
"Leave her alone!" George said, standing from his position on the steps and advancing toward them. "You have no authority over her. She is a citizen of Earth, not of the Denynso compound."
"She is a visitor of the Denynso compound," Pyra said, "which means that she is under the command of our rules and our authority."
"No," Zsilvia said, stepping up beside her mate. "She is under the command of her guard and protector. She must only abide by that protector and the king and queen themselves. Those are the terms of the treaty with Earth, you should know that. You have no command over her."
"Who is her guard and protector?" Pyra asked slowly, his teeth gritted so hard that Ivy felt certain they would break.
She could see the bands of muscle and tendons in Pyra's arms straining against the skin and his hand flexing and relaxing around the handle of the knife that he held. Through her studies Ivy had learned that it was not the tradition of the Denynso to carry their weapons with them, and they rarely even used them in battle. They far preferred hand to hand combat, yet somehow since their time leaving the compound these warriors had turned to their weapons as their constant companions.
"I am." Zsilvia said evenly.
She showed no fear of Pyra and Ivy felt her heart lift. George looked at her softly and turned to his mate, touching an appreciative kiss to her cheek before whispering something in her ear.
"Then control her," Pyra demanded.
"She is doing nothing that requires control, Pyra. We are not in a sanctioned state. No crimes have been committed. There is no war."
"And there won't be, because I won't allow it," Pyra responded.
Chapter Five
"What are you talking about, Pyra?" Zuri asked, still keeping herself firmly positioned between the two men.
"Our entire lives we have been fighting the Klimnu. We have lost people who we love and nearly lost many others. These creatures are the bane of the existence of all who live on this planet and I will not allow them to continue on and put all of our kind, and anyone else, at risk."
"Kill them all!" a voice shouted from one side of the platform.
Several more voices joined the first, shouting for them to kill off all of the men who the warriors had declared where the predecessors of the Klimnu. Zuri felt her stomach clench and a bitter taste flooded her mouth as she realized that she was hearing nearly all of the voices of the warriors. These were men who she had grown to know and trust in even her short time on the compound. She had seen them as powerful and protective, but now she was watching as they crowded on a people who they had known only a matter of days, dissolving into a frenzy of wanting to simply cut them down.
"No!"
Ivy's scream cut through the uproar of voices and Zuri looked around Pyra to see her clutching the man beside her, a look of sheer terror on her face.
"Stop!" George yelled, holding up his hands to stop the warriors who were moving toward the men.
"These are the creatures that we have hated more than anything in our entire existence," Pyra said, his voice now a snarl that seemed to perfectly embody the coldness and anger that he was expressing in his words. "Each and every one of you saw how the skin on this one's arm is changing. He said himself that it is happening because of his reaction to the flowers that he touched when he was outside of the settlement. You know what they are."
"We can't let them live," one of the other warriors agreed. "We fought too long and too hard to just let them live."
"You went to them for help," Ivy said, her voice choked with emotion.
"Ivy's right," Zuri said. "When you needed help to rescue the humans from this settlement, you went to their kingdom and you asked them to help you. They came here to give you that help. They have been nothing but kind and supportive since they arrived."
"It doesn't matter," Pyra said. "I will admit that they came to help us, but we can't let that influence us. We have to protect what is ours. We have to be loyal to the Denynso and do what is right for our kind."
"Is it truly loyalty?" Ivy asked. "Or are you mistaking fear for what you think is loyalty?"
"Denynso fear nothing."
"Yes, they do." Zsilvia said.
Zuri felt her heart skip at that statement. She knew exactly the fear that Zsilvia was talking about and the thought of it still made Zuri feel slightly sick.
"Denynso warriors fear nothing," Pyra said, slowing his voice as if in concession to the statement.
"Yet you are so willing to kill off an entire species because of what part of their group did. Something that started hundreds of years ago and didn't involve any of these people," Zuri said.
"You saw his skin," Pyra repeated. "You weren't around during the attacks, Zuri. You don't have any idea what they were like. You don't know what we went through."
"I most certainly was there," Zuri said, her fists clenching with anger as she realized that Pyra could so easily forget her contribution to the war against the Klimnu. "I was attacked by one in the forest and I was there when the women explored that tunnel that led down into the mirrored realm where you fought the final battle. The only reason that I wasn't there for the battle was that I was recovering from the wound in my chest one of the Klimnu created. I wasn't there to watch Jem die, but I was certainly there to watch him sink into that whirlpool. I cried the same tears as everyone else. Don't tell me that I don't know what the Denynso went through. I might not be one of you and I might not have lived on the compound for as long, but I have lived it every second that I have been there."
The silence in the room was so deep that Zuri could hear her own ragged breathing.
"None of our kind knew what happened to the rest of our group when it split off," Rey said. He seemed to be fighting to control the emotion that he had to be experiencing at that moment and was speaking in a voice that was slow and contro
lled. "I am being honest with you when I tell you that those of our kind who were living at the time and every generation that has followed thought that they had died out in the wilds of the planet. There are areas of Uoria that are not nearly as beautiful and welcoming as this area, and we feared that with the avarice and cruelty that had taken over them since the conflict with the Covra they would have gone straight for those areas, hoping to conquer them and enslave whoever may live there. You have to know that we are not the same as those creatures."
"We know nothing about you," Pyra hissed, his voice filled with offense that Rey would even suggest some sort of camaraderie between the groups even though this was exactly what had been building just days before.
"You knew nothing about the humans of this settlement, and yet you were willing to risk your lives to help them."
"That's different."
"How?"
"We stayed here to help the people we found here because one of our own discovered his mate in their number. If we had not helped and had left Rain here to suffer and die, Lynx would have lived out the rest of his life alone. Several of us have humans as mates, including me. Our connections with that species are strong."
"It seems that Ivy has found her mate among these people," Zsilvia pointed out.
Pyra turned and Zuri watched as he locked eyes on the pair, their arms entangled around each other. Though it didn't seem to soften him at all, it did make him pause.
Alien Romance Box Set: Uoria Mates II Complete Series (Books 1 - 10): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance Page 42