The king hesitated.
"She is new to our compound, Bannack. She specifically asked if you would be her guide. That must mean that she trusts you."
"I understand that, but I feel that I would be better serving the tribe if I went with the warriors and helped explore the planet. I'm sure that the human women would be happy to keep an eye on Loralia and help her get accustomed to the compound. They would probably do better than me anyway."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because they're different, too."
"Different?"
The king seemed to be testing Bannack in some way, but he didn't have the patience to explore what he might mean.
"They aren't Denynso. They are a different kind, so they know what it's like to be a strange species among the tribe. It might make her feel better to spend some time with them."
"I'll give you permission to go with the warriors, Bannack, if you are able to convince the women to take on your role as protector. But listen carefully when I tell you to think about your decision, and your reasoning, carefully."
Bannack nodded his thanks and ran back across the meeting hall. He couldn't get the taste of Loralia's lips or the feeling of her body on his fingers out of his mind no matter how hard he found them, and he knew that he had to get to the women so that he could get them on his side and start preparing for the journey. He, like the other Denynso, had never ventured away from the compound, but right now getting as far away from his home, and from Loralia, as possible seemed like the only thing that he could do.
He got to the edge of the table where Pyra stood and shouted up at him over the voices of the other warriors who still seemed to be locked in a debate over whether they should go at all. Many thought that it would better serve them to concentrate on building up the defenses of the compound before they started searching for threats.
"Where's Eden?" Bannack asked.
"She's at the bakery with Samira. Why do you need her?"
"Creia says that the only way I can go with you is to get the human women to agree to watch over Loralia while I'm gone."
"Why?"
"She chose me as her protector."
A smile crossed Pyra's lips, but Bannack refused to acknowledge it. He pushed away from the table and ran out of the meeting hall toward the bakery. The smell of fresh, hot bread greeted him as soon as he opened the door.
"I need your help," he said and saw Eden jump slightly where she was sitting on a high stool near the counter where Samira was rolling out long ropes of dough to form into braided loaves.
"Is everything alright?"
"I want to go with the warriors to explore Uoria, but I need someone to watch Loralia while I'm gone. She chose me as her protector and guide, and the king says that I can only have permission to go with Pyra if you will agree to watch over her while we're gone."
The two women exchanged glances. If he didn't know better he would think that they were communicating with their minds in the same way that mates could. Eden's hand wandered to her belly like it so frequently did and she seemed to press into a certain area as if she could feel the baby through her skin.
"Are you sure that's what you want?" Eden asked.
Bannack was growing impatient with being questioned. Everyone seemed to think that they knew something he didn't, and it frustrated him. He nodded, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her seeking tone.
"I want to know what's outside this compound. I'm tired of seeing the same things and going the same places. There's more out there and I want to know what it is, but the only way I can do that is to unload Loralia."
"You're the one who brought her here."
"So I've been reminded," Bannack said through gritted teeth.
"If you're sure that's what you want, Bannack, I'll be happy to help her get used to the compound."
"Thank you."
Bannack stepped back out of the bakery and took a deep breath of the night air, hoping it would cool the burning on his cheeks. He didn't know what he wanted anymore, other than to get away.
(To be continued in Part II…)
Book 2
Chapter One
I didn't know how to feel or what to do. I stood at the doorway to the house, what was meant to be my new home, staring into the darkness for what felt like hours after Bannack left. Finally I stepped back into the house and closed the door behind me, pressing my back against it and sliding to the floor so that I could curl my knees against my chest and rest my forehead against my folded arms. Everything around me in the Denynso compound was strange and unknown, and now suddenly I was feeling a pain that I never knew existed, with an intensity that was far beyond anything I thought that I could ever feel. The air around me felt oppressive, while the places on my body that Bannack had touched now felt cold and abandoned. I felt empty inside, both in that my heart felt torn from my chest and in that my body still ached for him even though he had left so abruptly. I couldn’t understand what had just happened.
I sat against the door, letting the darkness of the coming night close in around me without moving to turn on any of the lights throughout the space. Everything had been going so perfectly. The feelings that I had experienced for Bannack since the first moment that I saw him had grown within me until they felt like they were burning in my belly and overflowing within my chest, creating a sense that made me at once overwhelmed and elated. I had been so young when the rest of my kind had died off due to the horrific plague that scourged our home that I had never had the opportunity to feel love, or even real attraction, to anyone. I had seen my parents together and how they felt about each other was obvious. I could remember even then how they would hold hands, gaze at each other, and find any excuse to be close to each other, even after they had spent more than half of their lives together. I hadn't understood that until I had seen Bannack.
Being alone in the mirrored realm that existed beneath the Denynso compound had been isolating and lonely, but I had grown accustomed to my life alone underground. Over the years I had become absolutely comfortable with not having anyone else with me, and even felt that I preferred the quiet and isolation because it meant that I could live exactly as I wanted to and have no one and nothing to tell me otherwise. When the Klimnu invaded, the terror had been more that they would change my lifestyle than that they would hurt me, and I had managed to stay completely out of the way the entire time that they were down there. Even when I saw the human woman and the Denynso traitor, and then the other human women, come into the mirrored realm, I felt no compulsion to interact with them. I had hoped that the Klimnu would simply tire of my world and leave me alone so that I could go back to my simple, independent life and not have to worry about anything else.
The moment that my eyes touched Bannack, however, all of that changed. Everything around him disappeared. I couldn't perceive the other warriors or the slimy, disgusting creatures that were battling them. It was as though nothing else in the entire world mattered in those moments but this beautiful warrior who in a single second changed everything about how I felt about life. Suddenly I didn't want to live completely alone underground anymore. I didn't want to continue on with the lifestyle that I had built and evolved into after my family and friends had died. I didn't want to be left to my own devices, or to have a life that was totally my own. In that instant I could understand why my parents spent nearly all of their time together, and why when my father died, my mother followed him only hours later even though she had barely been sick.
He, of course, didn't know it, but I had watched the entire battle between the Klimnu and the Denynso. I had followed him carefully in each of his movements, making sure that he stayed safe as he fought. I didn't even know his name then, but I could feel the intensity of his presence and the energy emanating off of him in a way that I had never experienced. In the final moments of the battle, I had saved him. He stumbled while trying to approach Jem, the incredibly courageous warrior
who had given his life to ensure the future of his people, and a moment later caught himself. He thought that he had simply managed to find his footing and regain his hold on the vine that was coming from the tree where he stood. In reality, I had reflected the surface of the tree so that he could step steadily onto it before finding his way back to his original stance.
The action had been risky. I nearly betrayed my existence in that single moment, but I was willing to do anything in order to ensure that he got through the battle safely. It was a decision that I had made impulsively, without really thinking, and it hadn't struck me until I saw him again the next day and had the compulsion to again save him from tumbling into the reflection of the sky by creating a floor of the image of the stone wall that it was him that I had saved. It was as if I was reacting to a memory that I hadn't made yet, a thought or a feeling that I had deep within me that wasn't really there but was waiting to be there. It was difficult even for me to explain, but something that I wanted to feel more of.
The glow of my skin was even more evident in the room now that I was cloaked in complete darkness and I thought about the first time that Bannack saw me. He had felt something when he got down into the mirrored realm. Something within him had told him that things were changing and that he was about to experience something that would forever change him, but no matter how hard I tried to look into him, I couldn't figure out exactly what that was. When he noticed my glow across the sky, however, that feeling had intensified and I knew that he felt the same draw and need about me that I was feeling about him.
He had trusted me then. He had given himself over to me and to the unknown that waited when he took a completely unafraid step away from the branches that crossed the reflected sky and created the only source of stability that they knew down in my world, and onto the stone floor that I had made for him. There had been no sense of fear in him, or even unsureness. It was as though he knew, even if he had no concept of what or who I was, that he was safe as long as I was there.
What had happened between that moment and the moment when he ran out of the house and into the darkness of the night without a single word of explanation? He had taken my hand in my world beneath the compound, led me out of the ground and literally into a world that I had never once seen or experienced. I had offered myself to him in the way that he had offered himself to me, stepping into something that I had only heard about and never once witnessed myself, for the first time in my solitary existence truly wanting to go above ground, and for the first time in the years since I had become accustomed to being alone that I had wanted to put that life behind me and share life with someone else.
In those moments I felt a connection between us that was only growing with each second. Resistance had begun to build inside him, though, and he had started to fight the feelings that I knew he had when he looked at me. He didn't need to say them. I could feel them when he touched me, when he rested his mouth to mine, and when he tucked his hand between my thighs to create unimaginable sensations and emotions within me. Just before I welcomed his body into mine, however, he moved me off of him and started to dress. I had dropped my dress over my head and tied the laces as quickly as I could, but it wasn't fast enough to stop him from crossing to the door, his shirt clutched in his hand, and running out into the darkness of the compound.
My own voice screaming after him was reverberating in my mind and tears like I hadn't cried since I was a small child pooled beneath my eyes and poured down the skin of my arms where my head rested. He had given me no explanation, offered no reason for suddenly leaving me in the silence aching for him, but in that moment I felt more alone than I ever had.
Chapter Two
Bannack paced outside of the bakery for a few minutes, not really knowing what he was supposed to do with himself, and trying to convince himself that the decision he had made was the right one. After all, he had been the one to bring up the fact that the Denynso, including Creia, the king who they all looked up to and thought of as being the most powerful and knowledgeable of them all, didn't really know anything about the rest of the planet of Uoria or what types of species inhabited their planet. It had been this assertion and his insistence that they find out what was going on that brought them back down into the mirrored realm that they had discovered during the final battle with the Klimnu. If that hadn't happened, they never would have found Loralia at all, and the rest of the warriors, particularly Pyra, wouldn't have agreed with him about how important it was to go out and find out more about the planet.
The fact that the warriors were now planning on leaving the compound for the first time and going on an exploration of the rest of the planet so that they could see what they might discover and potentially identify future threats to them was based entirely on his determination and his recommendations. It was only logical and fair that he be permitted to go along with them. He had not asked Loralia to request him as her guard and protector while she was in the compound. While he had been the one who had asked her to come up above ground in the compound with them, it had not been his idea for the king and queen to invite her to stay with them once they found out that she was the only one left of her kind. He should not be held responsible for the wellbeing of a creature who he didn't know and who he had not pledged his loyalty to until forced.
The more he paced and the harder he thought, the closer Bannack was to convincing himself that asking the human women to take on the responsibilities of taking care of Loralia and making sure that she got assimilated to her new surroundings so that he could join the other warriors in the quest outside the compound was not only fair, but truly his only choice. If he had agreed to stay behind with Loralia rather than going with Pyra, Gyyx, Ero, and the others, he would have compromised his position as a warrior and presented himself as being a coward. He also would have shorted himself an opportunity to learn things that no other Denynso had ever known, possibly putting himself and the rest of the compound at risk should he ever come into contact with one of the species that the warriors found during their explorations.
Even though he had made himself believe he was fully justified in walking away from his responsibilities with Loralia, he still couldn't entirely convince himself that walking away from her, or more precisely running away from her, after he brought her home was the right thing to do. He was incredibly torn, more conflicted than he had ever been in his entire life. Loralia was the single most beautiful thing that he had ever seen, and even before he had laid eyes on her, his mind and body had started responding to her presence. Just being near her made his defensive, aggressive instincts kick in stronger than they ever had even in the many battles he had faced. As soon as he saw her, he was instantly entranced by her. She was ethereal and gorgeous in a way that was truly indescribable. The gentle glow of her skin, incomparable lavender color of her eyes, and flowing silver hair made her look as though she were not quite real, as if she were a delightful figment of his imagination conjured in a moment of near-death to soothe and comfort him.
The touch of her hand and the smell of her skin, though, told him that she was absolutely not a figment of his imagination or some wonderfully lucid dream. She was incredibly real, real in a way that he could not quite fathom and was not ready to believe. Loralia created in Bannack feelings that he didn't want to admit to himself much less anyone else, and the more he felt them, the more he wanted to force them down into himself so that they couldn't be felt, seen, or experienced. This was not the way it was supposed to be. He had not waited his entire life to find his mate only to find himself falling for a creature that belonged to a species he hadn't even known existed until that day.
He hated himself for the betrayal of his mind and body, and for not being able to control himself. He hated himself even more than that lack of control had led him to nearly mating with her. If he had waited just seconds longer he would have felt her body envelope him, and he would have known for sure if she was what he feared his mind was trying to tell him tha
t she was. Bannack had not been ready for that moment of clarity. He didn’t know which answer he dreaded more, or how he would have responded to either one. In that moment all he knew was that he needed to get away from her, and that he didn't want to be in the same room with her again for a very long time.
Even as he thought that, though, he knew that he was lying to himself. No matter how hard the two sides of him struggled and fought, he couldn't deny that he still felt incredibly drawn to Loralia, and that more than anything he wanted to be near her.
"Bannack."
He heard Eden's voice from behind him and he turned to look at her. She had her hand rested protectively over her swollen belly like she usually did and the little bit of weight that she had gained in her face during her pregnancy made her look softer and gentler than she had when she first arrived on the planet.
"What's going on with you?" Eden asked, lowering her voice as though she wanted to keep the conversation private.
"What do you mean?" Bannack asked, trying to force his voice to sound casual.
"I know you, Bannack. I know when you aren't telling the whole truth, and right now a big part of you is lying. Asking me and the other girls to take care of Loralia isn't just about wanting to go wander around the planet with the other warriors. What is it actually about?"
Sometimes Bannack really hated how in tune to emotions that the human women seemed to be. The Denynso women weren't like that. They were gentler and more feeling than the men tended to be, but they were still aggressive and gruff compared to the humans. He could only imagine how much more difficult it was for their Denynso mates. Part of the mating process for their kind was creating an unbreakable link during the actual bonding. This link made it possible for the mates to communicate with one another without having to speak, which meant that not only were the human women able to tell when their mates were dealing with an emotional situation, they could actually read their thoughts and find out exactly what was going on if the Denynso men weren't careful to control what was going through their minds. It seemed overwhelming to be that close to someone else.
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