The wheels turned in his mind. He glanced over Piwaka’s shoulder at Menlo standing ready to take over where Piwaka left off. Even if by some slim chance Aquilla defeated Piwaka, Menlo was waiting for his turn. Aquilla would never beat Piwaka without suffering some injury or at least exhaustion. He couldn’t face Menlo afterwards.
He hardened himself for the first assault, even knowing it was hopeless. At least he would die in open combat. No one would call him a coward. He crouched to spring at Piwaka, but all at once, a voice echoed through the trees and called his name. The voice was female.
Anna whirled around, and Penelope Ann appeared between the trees. “Stop, Aquilla!”
His eyes widened, and his arms fell to his sides. “What are you doing here?”
She strode right up to him, past Anna and Menlo and Piwaka as if they weren’t there. She stopped in front of him and peered into his burning eyes. “What are you doing? You aren’t going to fight them, are you?”
“Of course I’m going to fight them,” he shot back. “My prisoner is escaping. I have to take him back.”
Penelope Ann shook her head. “You’re not going to take him back, and you aren’t going to fight these men, either. Let Menlo go.”
Black rage erupted in Aquilla’s eyes. “Never! This man, who claims to be Captain of my Guard, colluded with these other two traitors to drug my Guards so the prisoner could get away. They have to be punished.”
Penelope Ann only shook her head again. “How do you think he drugged the Guards? He put the drug into their food. And how could he do that, when he sat at your side all night long? Anna and I did it. He gave us the drug, and we put it into your food.”
He stared at her from under his burning brows. “You—you did this? But you served that food to the Guards....and to me. So you tried to drug me too? How could you do this to me?”
She laid both hands on his shoulders with no fear. “We couldn’t let you kill this man and spark a war that would destroy our faction. Another war would kill even more men we can’t spare, and it would probably destroy the Ursidreans, too. We couldn’t let that happen.”
Menlo spoke up from behind Piwaka. “Our faction no longer has enough men to patrol our borders. Another war would cost us the lives of our young people. If we lost them, our population would collapse and we would never recover.”
“The Lycaon are in the same position,” Piwaka added. “Every year, fewer and fewer warriors patrol their border. None of the factions can afford another war.”
“You see?” Penelope Ann asked. “We did it for the good of our people. Let Menlo go, and be the savior of the Avitras. You won’t be a coward. You’ll be a hero. You can open up new negotiations with Donen and inaugurate a new era of peace between our factions. Instead of fighting the Ursidreans all the time, we can use our resources to rebuild our population the way we need to. We can build new villages and dedicate more time to preserving our histories.”
Aquilla frowned. He surveyed the faces observing him. Then his eyes returned to Penelope Ann.
“Do it for me,” she murmured. “If you won’t do it for anyone else, do it for me. Who will I lean on if you die here fighting these men? Did you think of that? I would be left alone. Who would be my Alpha if anything happened to you?”
He gazed into her eyes, but already his expression changed. The burning madness faded from his face, and the light of reason returned.
Penelope Ann squeezed his shoulders, and she dropped her voice to a murmur. “No one could ever love me the way you have. Don’t take yourself away from me now.”
His eyes blazed again, but with passionate love instead of murderous hatred. “No one will ever love you again, not as long as I’m around.”
A brilliant smile burst across her face, and she drew him to her. “You’re my hero. You’re my savior. Come home with me.”
He towered over her and took her in his arms. The next moment, his face disappeared from Anna’s view as their lips merged in a passionate kiss. He folded her in his arms and lifted her off the ground.
Piwaka waved his hand toward the trees, and Anna and Menlo took his signal and started forward. Menlo set off at a rapid stride, and Anna hurried after him.
Chapter 15
At the top of the rise, Anna caught Menlo by the hand and pulled him to a stop. “This is where I turn off.”
Menlo spun around and stared at her in the early grey dawn. “You’re not seriously striking out for Lycaon territory by yourself, are you?”
Anna nodded. “I can’t go back to the Avitras. I told you that.”
“It probably won’t be the same,” he replied. “Aquilla’s not raving mad anymore, and you won’t have me to worry about. It could be good for you again, the way it was when you first came.”
Anna shook her head. “I can’t go back, not even with Aquilla restored and you set free. I never really belonged there. I don’t know why I came over in the first place. I should have stayed with the Lycaon. No, that’s not right. I do know why came over. I came because of Frieda. Now she’s gone. I have no more reason to stay here.”
He shrugged. “I still think you should reconsider. You’ve got a long, hard road ahead of you. I hate to think of you traveling all that way by yourself.”
“Well, what’s the alternative?” she asked. “I won’t go back to the Avitras, and that’s final.”
He eyed her in the growing light. “Come with me. Come to Ursidrean territory with me.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”
He shook his head. “I’m not joking. You said you didn’t have anything left, and I don’t want to go back without you. Come with me, and neither of us will ever have to be alone again.”
She started to say something, but he stopped her mouth with a kiss. Anna froze with his lips lingering on hers. She tasted again the fear and grief of their one brief night in the store room when she never expected to see him alive again. At the same time, she tasted something new, some distant promise of lands and people she’d never seen—the promise of a real future together with him.
He pulled back to look her in the eye, but she didn’t move. She let her lips enjoy the softness of his kiss while her mind floated above the scene and looked down from above.
Emily was in Ursidrean territory with Faruk. Anna wouldn’t be alone. Menlo and Faruk were old friends. Anna and Menlo might wind up spending quite a lot of time with Emily and Faruk. That would be nice.
And the Ursidreans lived in developed cities with electricity and medical care and vehicles. Anna wouldn’t have to cook on open fires anymore or survive on nuts and seeds. For the first time since she crashed on this planet, she would actually live a life of ease and comfort. Who could say no to that?
At long last, her gaze migrated back to Menlo’s face and she found him studying her. He followed the turns of her thoughts through her expression. He whispered to her between her lips. “I love you, Anna. Don’t turn your back on that.”
She sucked in her breath. “You love me? You never said that.”
“Who could fail to love you after the way you rescued me from the Avitras?” he asked. “Who could let you walk away after the times we’ve seen and survived there?”
She blushed. “I didn’t exactly rescue you. Piwaka and Penelope Ann did most of it.”
He shook his head again. “I wouldn’t be standing here, on the border of my own territory, if it hadn’t been for you. Piwaka and Penelope Ann would have let Aquilla kill me if you hadn’t convinced them to stop him. You don’t think I’m going back to Harbeiz by myself, do you? What would Donen say, if I turned up there and told him all about you? He would say, ‘How could you let this woman walk away? How could you let her go back to the Lycaon? Why didn’t you do everything under the sun to bring her here with you?’ He would never respect me again, and I would never respect myself, either.”
She had to laugh at that, but he didn’t laugh.
“I lov
e you, Anna,” he told her. “I don’t want to go back to Harbeiz without you. If you go to the Lycaon, I better come with you.”
“You can’t do that,” she blurted out. “You’re Ursidrean. You couldn’t live with the Lycaon.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Then you better come with me.”
She stared at him. Why was she arguing with him when she really wanted to go? She took his hand. “Alright. I’ll come.”
They turned toward the east. Thousands of miles of trackless mountains stretched away as far as the eye could see, but in the distance, a tiny point of light twinkled in the wilderness. “That’s Harbeiz, our capital city.”
That light called Anna home, and warmth spread through her frozen heart. In a few days, it would welcome her as no other place had. She would throw her arms around Emily’s neck, and she would live in her own place, with Menlo at her side. She would live in peace and quiet and comfort. She would have found her place, and Angondra would be her home.
THE END
Book 5 – The Alien’s Wonderland
Chapter 1
Frieda Evans ran her hand through the tall waving grasses and wildflowers of a sun-drenched meadow. The summer wind blew her short dark curls back from her face and filled her with bliss. The pungent smell of sun-baked earth and grass imbued her with comfort and contentment.
Sunlight flashed across her eyelids from above, and she raised her face to the sky. That sky wasn’t blue, but an iridescent kaleidoscope of shimmering color and prismatic sparks. Every now and then, a dark shape wiggled across it, or a tear-drop shaped shadow interrupted the light.
Across the meadow, a high wall of white stone cut off the view beyond the grass. Groups of people milled around its base, but Frieda couldn’t make them out at that distance. Behind her, the meadow ended at the edge of a dark forest, but the tree trunks slithered back and forth in the wind with slow waving movements.
Someone broke away from the crowd by the wall and a woman with long black hair hanging down her back walked toward her. She didn’t stand as high as Frieda’s chin, but she smiled in such a kind way that Frieda couldn’t help smiling back. The woman wore a plain white dress that trailed the grass. She stopped in front of Frieda. “What is this place?”
“You’re in the deep ocean,” the woman replied.
Frieda stared at her. Then she looked around her again. “How can I be?”
“You’re with the Aqinas,” the woman replied.
Frieda blinked. “The Aqinas? But you....you’re human.”
“Yes, I’m human,” the woman replied. “But all the Aqinas look like this. Anyway, I’m Aqinas, too.”
Frieda couldn’t clear her thoughts. “Who....who are you?”
“My name is Sasha. Sasha Marquez,” the woman told her, “not that it matters much. I’m human just like you, but I’ve made this my home and the Aqinas my people.”
“But I’m not with the Aqinas.” Frieda glanced over her shoulder. “I was just.....”
Sasha waited for her to continue.
Frieda rubbed her forehead. “It’s so hard to remember what happened before....this.”
Sasha waited another moment. Then she sighed. “I’ll help you out. You were with the Avitras.”
Frieda frowned. “I was.”
Sasha pursed her lips. “The Romarie abducted you from Earth, along with a couple hundred other women. They were going to sell you in the slave markets, but they crashed here. You were rescued by the Lycaon.”
Frieda couldn’t take her eyes off the woman.
“You’re on the planet Angondra,” Sasha went on. “The Lycaon faction rescued the women from the crash and took them to their village, but quite a few of them travelled to the other factions to find homes and mates for themselves.”
A light came on in Frieda’s mind. “I remember now! I went to the Avitras faction with my sister Anna. We were visiting somebody, and I fell off the balcony, but I don’t remember anything else.”
“You fell into the stream,” Sasha told her. “Actually it was more of a rivulet, but the water transmitted your signal to the Aqinas, and they brought you here, to their world.”
Frieda narrowed her eyes. “How do you know so much about me?”
“The water forms a link between everyone here,” Sasha told her. “We all know everything about each other. Everyone here knows about you, but the truth is, I know about the Romarie ship crashing because I was on it.”
Frieda’s mouth fell open. “You were?”
Sasha nodded. “I never went to the Lycaon like you did, though. One of the Romarie survived the crash long enough to attack me and try to kill me. When the Lycaon showed up, they thought I was dead and left me at the crash site along with all the others who died.”
“So how did you wind up here?” Frieda asked.
“It rained the night of the crash,” Sasha told her. “I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the rain transmitted my signal to the Aqinas the same way it did yours, and they rescued me.”
“But Anna,” Frieda protested, “she won’t know what happened to me. She might think I’m dead.”
“You can go find her later if you want to,” Sasha replied. “You’re not a prisoner here anymore than you were with any of the other factions.”
Frieda gazed across the meadow at the people walking back and forth below the wall. “Who are they? Who are the Aqinas?”
“They’re people just like you and me,” Sasha replied. “You don’t have to fear them. They’re the most peaceful, gentle people on Angondra, and they have the same code of honor and hospitality the other factions do. They welcome newcomers as their own. I’m proof of that.”
“But look at this place.” Frieda waved her arm at the meadow. “We’re breathing air. We’re standing on dry land.”
“A black algae surrounds our bodies and transmits oxygen into our blood so we can breathe underwater,” Sasha told her. “And this meadow is part of the collective memory of all the Aqinas. We’re creating it with our minds to give us a frame of reference we can live in underwater.”
“How is that possible?” Frieda whispered.
“What you see is a remnant of your memories of Earth,” Sasha told her. “I really don’t know what you’re seeing and experiencing, but the water makes a composite of your fantasies and memories and combines them into one single reality. It makes them real for you. It also gives all the people here a human appearance so you can relate to them.”
Frieda’s eyes widened. “So the Aqinas don’t really look human? Is it all a fantasy?”
“They have two arms and two legs and two eyes, just like humans,” Sasha replied. “But they have some other features unique to them. They have a webbing of skin between their fingers and toes, and the algae forms a film over their skin to form a seal with their cells, but you can’t see any of that down here. They look like real people, and they are.”
Frieda looked around again. “I just can’t believe we’re in the middle of the ocean. This place is so....so Earth like.”
Sasha pointed up at the sky. “Do you see that? That’s the upper surface of the ocean. Those shapes are the big sea creatures swimming around above us. That one is like a giant eel, and that one is like a whale. And those trees over there—do they look like any trees you’ve ever seen before? Of course not, they’re giant seaweed. Look at the way they sway with the current. You’re underwater, but that won’t stop you from enjoying the place and making it your home.”
Frieda shook her head in wonder. “I never thought people could live like this. It doesn’t seem real.”
“It’s real, all right,” Sasha replied. “It’s just as real as the lives the other factions live on land. The Felsite have their cities on the plains, and the Ursidreans have their giant cave cities deep in the mountains. The Lycaon live in their nomadic hut villages in the woods, and the Avitras live in trees in the high forest canopy. We live here, and we have much le
ss strife and unrest than the other factions. They’re always warring and killing each other. We stay away from all that.”
“I’d like to meet some of the others.” Frieda set off walking toward the wall.
Sasha walked at her side. “You can walk that way, but you can’t meet people by walking there. You have to wait for them to come to you.”
“Why?” Frieda asked.
“You can walk that way all day,” Sasha told her, “but you’ll never reach that wall. It’s a construct of your mind, and so are the people there. If you want to meet someone, you have to stay where you are. The water will transmit your desire and bring them to you.”
Frieda frowned at her, but she kept walking. Sasha’s words made no sense to her. She walked a long way, but the wall continually hovered just out of reach. The people near it never got bigger or appeared clearer. “I don’t understand this.”
Sasha stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Take a look around you. You’re still in the center of the meadow.”
Frieda looked around and frowned.
“You’ll always be in the center of this meadow,” Sasha went on. “It’s the center of your own mind. The water keeps you here all the time and you can never leave it. If you want to talk to someone, you have to transmit your desire to talk to them through the water, and they will come to you. Here, I’ll show you.”
Sasha turned to the wall, and in an instant, another figure separated from the group and walked through the grass toward them. He was a young man, taller than Frieda, with black hair twisted in ropes down his back. Frieda had to admit he was perfectly formed, even stunningly handsome. He smiled at Sasha and bowed to Frieda. “Welcome to our world. I hope you will find yourself at home here.”
“This is Fritz,” Sasha told her. “He’s my mate, and he’s leader of this faction. He’s what the other factions call the Alpha.”
Fritz half-closed his eyes. “I’m not really the leader. We have a more egalitarian social structure than the other factions, but someone has to represent us to the other factions, so I have the job.”
Optorio Civil War Complete Series Box Set (Books 1 - 6): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance (Optorio Chronicles Book 2) Page 63