Ignition: Alien Ménage Romance (Phoenix Rising Book 2)

by Amelia Wilson

  “I’m fine,” he told her, taking a step back and leading her to sit on a sort of chaise lounge. “They hit me with the vaccine, too, and took blood. I wonder what they’re doing?”

  “I don’t know.” She leaned into him, relieved beyond words that he was there and she was no longer alone. “The bitch who poked me said that it was for ‘simple study,’ whatever that means.”

  He put his arm around her and pulled her closer. “They probably never saw a full-blooded human before.”

  “Maybe.” She closed her eyes and let herself relax for a moment. “Have you seen Sera or the guys?”

  “Not hide nor hair.”

  Joely smiled. “God, I love it when you talk Texan.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was not much to do in the room they’d been locked into. Sera, Theyn and Beno took turns pacing around, prodding the blank walls in a futile search for hidden compartments or anything that would give them something they could use. Beno scanned the whole place with his trained soldier’s eye and declared that there were no bugs or cameras, which made Sera feel marginally better. It was bad enough to be a captive. She didn’t want to be a zoo display, too.

  The fatigue of the days’ events was catching up with her, and she could see in their faces that her mates were feeling the effects as well. She stopped pacing and looked at them both. Theyn, sitting on the bed, looked up at her expectantly, knowing that she was about to speak. Beno was on the floor leaning his back against the wall, and he looked up at her, too.

  “I’m absolutely exhausted,” she said. “I know I should probably stay awake and on my guard, but I’m tired. I have to sleep.”

  Beno responded telepathically, which was easier for him than speaking out loud. ‘There’s no reason for any of us to stay awake. I’ll rig the door with something to warn us if someone starts to come in, and we can all get some sleep.’

  Theyn agreed. “It’s more important that we keep up our strength, and part of that is resting.”

  “Part of it is eating, too, but they don’t seem to be real keen on us doing any of that,” Sera muttered. “And how are you going to rig the door? We don’t have anything you can use.”

  Her dark-skinned mate stood and smiled at her. ‘We have what they gave us.’

  She watched as Beno pushed the divan across the room, using it to bar the door. It was too light to really hold up to any determined effort to break in, but it was heavy enough that it would scrape on the floor and alert them when someone tried to move it.

  ‘Good thinking,’ she congratulated.

  He smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  Theyn turned down the single white blanket on the bed, and she bared her feet and sat down. She missed Kira. If they’d been together, it would have been time to nurse. Now she just had discomfort and empty arms.

  Her emotions exploded inside her, and she abruptly burst into tears, her face in her hands. She sobbed her fear and her horror at losing their child, the trepidation about their current situation, and the pain of the probe inside her head. Her mates sat with her, one on each side, and they held her in their arms as she wept. Theyn wept, too, and Beno wiped both of their tears and tried to send soothing feelings through their link. Her pain was too deep and too hard for anything so gentle, though, and she cried for a long, long time.

  Ultimately, she cried until all of her strength had flown, and she let her loves guide her down onto the bed. They stretched out beside her, making their usual Sera sandwich, and held her as tightly as she held them. Theyn whispered something to her, but she was too tired to really hear him. Her exhaustion claimed her, and she fell asleep.

  *

  It started as a tiny spark, a dim point of light in the blackness of the void, and when she saw it, Sera knew that she was dreaming. The light began to expand, growing brighter and closer. She was standing in total blackness, not really floating but not standing on anything, either. There was nothing but her, the growing dot of light, and darkness.

  The light was the size of an orange, now, and it was white and hot. She could see sparks flashing around its surface, arcing off to whirl around in circles like the electrons in a model of an atom. Sera held out her hand, and the light sped toward her. She could almost reach it. She stretched farther, trying to will the light to come to her.

  Just a little more…

  Then the light was gone.

  *

  The divan scraped against the floor, and Beno was out of the bed like a shot, standing between them and whoever was coming in. Sera and Theyn, startled out of their own sleep, sat up and watched with apprehension.

  One of the braceleted guards came in, shoving the furniture out of the way. He glared up at Beno. “Your handiwork, I suppose, Commander?”

  The dark-skinned Ylian lifted his chin but gave no other response.

  Another two guards followed the first, and behind them was a full-blooded Ylian female pushing a cart that hovered above the ground on anti-gravity repulsors. The cart looked to Sera like some sort of room service job, with three covered plates, glasses and eating utensils arranged just so. There was even a tiny vase with a fake flower, shaped like no flower she had ever seen, sitting on the tray between the domed lids that concealed the plates.

  She was ravenous, but she was also afraid of what their captors might be serving them. After all, this was a place where people were used as food. She watched the cart warily as the woman pushed it closer. The guards arrayed themselves around the doorway, their bracelets at the ready.

  “You know, I really hate you guys,” Sera muttered.

  The apparent leader of the group smirked. “Good.”

  The woman smiled at them and bowed reverently. “Your Highness. Companion. Selected. It is my honor to bring you nourishment.”

  She pressed a button, and the three lids neatly folded themselves into the plates they concealed. Beno eyed the food suspiciously. “What is that?”

  “No meat,” the woman answered. “Fruit and legumes, all of it appropriate for Ylian and human digestion. There is also liquid refreshment for appropriate hydration.”

  “’Liquid refreshment?’” she asked, hinting for more details.

  “Yes. A delicious blend of plant-based proteins, sugars and carbohydrates in solution with distilled water.”

  Sera snorted. “Wow, when you put it that way, how can I resist?”

  The woman apparently didn’t recognize sarcasm, because she smiled broadly. “I’m so glad you’re pleased, Selected.”

  One of the guards looked fixedly at the serving woman, and she stepped back with a bow. Sera assumed that the guard was a telepath and had told her to stop being so friendly. The woman turned away and left the room at a brisk walk, taking one last sheepish look at the guard as she passed him. He glared at her, and then all of them left, sealing the door behind them.

  ‘I’m getting really tired of all these locked doors,’ Sera said. She crawled across the king-sized mattress and swung her feet over the side, taking a disparaging look at the rumpled clothes that she had slept in.

  ‘As am I,’ Theyn assured his mates. ‘Maybe there’s something I can do to minimize it.’

  Beno laughed and pushed the cart closer to the bed. ‘Like what? Vouching for our good behavior again?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he hedged. ‘I’ll think of something before I speak with Alaia again.’

  Sera took one of the plates and sniffed it. The food looked abhorrent, mostly a grayish-green mush, but the scent was appetizing. “I guess I can eat it with my eyes closed.”

  Theyn smiled. “It can’t be any worse than baby food. I’ve seen some horrible things in those little jars.”

  Kira wasn’t ready for solid foods yet, but on a lark, Joely had purchased them one of every flavor of baby food in the local supermarket outside the camouflage installation. Sera remembered when her best friend had brought the bags into their apartment, and how she’d made such a big deal out of trying to guess what the contents were by looks alone.
None of them could read Cyrillic.

  The memory of happier times made her mist up again, and Theyn put a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’ll find her,” he promised. “We’ll find them all.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent. With a total lack of enthusiasm for the task, she took a bite of the mushy stuff on the plate before her. Its taste was closer to the scent than the appearance, which was a blessing.

  “It’s not bad,” she told her mates, “although someone should tell the chef that people eat with their eyes.”

  Theyn looked horrified. “Eat with their eyes? What?”

  Beno chuckled, and Sera burst into laughter. “Not literally! Oh my God, you have so much trouble with figures of speech! I meant that food is more appetizing if it looks pretty.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I forget that you don’t know that much about humans.”

  The prince, embarrassed, took a bite of the food, himself. He wrinkled his nose. “It’s not bad, no, but it’s not good, either.” He pushed the plate away.

  Beno pushed it back at him. “Eat it anyway. They haven’t exactly been generous with food, and we don’t know when they’ll feed us again. That’s a valuable lesson I learned when I was a prisoner before.”

  He reluctantly returned to eating. They were all silent until the meal was nearly finished, and then Theyn spoke without looking up.

  “Will we be all right?”

  Sera frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He sighed. “This Burning One nonsense. I know you don’t believe, Beno, and Sera, your religion, if you have one, is something else entirely. I don’t want it to put a distance between us.”

  Beno smirked, trying gamely to reassure his mate. “The only thing that will cause distance is if you keep more secrets from me,” he teased. “Brat. I should beat your ass for that when we get out of here.”

  “If we get out of here, I’ll let you,” Theyn promised.

  Sera smiled and sat back from her empty plate. “Nobody is kicking anybody’s ass until I get to take a round out of Nima.”

  The blond Ylian nodded. “Agreed. And I get to knock Alaia around.”

  “I have no problem with that.” She looked at Beno. “What about you? Whose ass do you want to kick?”

  The soldier chuckled. “I’ll just clean up whatever’s left when you two are done. Take out the trash and all that.”

  When her mates had finished choking down the paste that passed for food, Sera pushed the hovering cart back toward the door. She stood and considered it for a moment, hands on hips, and an idea occurred to her.

  “Guys, do you think we can scavenge something out of this cart that can disable the probes in our heads?”

  Theyn looked startled. “Do you really want to risk that? Assuming we can even get anything out of the cart’s workings, what if we do something wrong and your frontal lobe is destroyed?”

  She sighed. “Well, it was an idea.”

  “Full points for creativity,” Beno told her.

  She crossed her arms and paced through the room for the hundredth time. The circuit was just as unsatisfying as all of the other circuits she had made before. Exasperated, she flopped down on the bed, flinging her arms up over her head.

  “Now what?” she asked. “I’m going to go stir crazy in here.”

  Theyn leaned his elbows on his knees and propped his chin in his hand. Beno stretched out beside Sera, his arms over his head, too. His hand found hers and their fingers interlaced.

  “What did you do to stay sane when you were in the Taluan prison?” Sera asked him.

  He sighed with a hint of a smile. ‘Who says I stayed sane?’

  Theyn chuckled. ‘All right, how did you stay what passes for sane for you?’

  ‘I slept. I slept a lot. You see, in dreams, you’re free.’

  The prince said, ‘I don’t feel very tired.’

  ‘There are ways to get tired,’ Beno suggested. Warmth spread through them from him, a token of what he had in mind.

  Sera shook her head. “No… We don’t know if they’re watching, or if they’re going to come in, and it’s just… skeezy. I’ll pass. You guys go ahead, though, if you want.”

  Theyn echoed, “Skeezy?”

  “Inappropriate. Sort of dirty.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Yes, I can see how you would think that. This certainly isn’t a place for optimum privacy.”

  Beno reeled his heat back in, disappointed. ‘Well, it was just an idea.’

  They fell silent, each one of them either lost in their own thoughts or staring blankly at the walls. It felt like hours passed, and none of them spoke or moved so much as an inch. To Sera, it was as if they’d been put into hibernation, like Theyn and Beno had done centuries before. She didn’t like the feeling.

  *

  Sleep eventually overcame her, and again she dreamed.

  She was back in the darkness, standing alone. In the distance, the pinpoint of light was approaching, moving more quickly this time. It got bigger and closer with every beat of her heart, and soon she was dwarfed by a dazzling white orb of light. She shielded her eyes with her hand, her osteoderms reflecting the light like a scattering of stars on her skin. In the center of the light, a shadow moved.

  She knew that shadow. She knew that shape. Excited, she reached into the orb.

  “Kira!”

  *

  She cried out loudly and sat up, waking herself out of her dream, her hands reaching out.

  The room was still brightly lit, but not because of the shining orb around her daughter. She dropped her hands into her lap and closed her eyes in sorrow and frustration.

  Theyn sat up beside her, his hand on her arm. “What is it?”

  “I was dreaming about her. I saw her. I almost touched her.” Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she wiped them away angrily. She had never been one for crying before, and she didn’t like doing it now.

  “Kira?” he asked.

  “Of course Kira.” She regretted snapping as soon as the words left her lips, and she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. It’s understandable.” He ran his hand over her arm, gently stroking her skin and the Ylian scales that had grown there. “I’m sorry your dream was so disturbing.”

  Beno spoke from where he lay on Sera’s other side. “What if it wasn’t a dream?”

  She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “My words were fairly self-explanatory,” he said. She didn’t know if he was joking or being a jerk, so she didn’t respond. “I mean, what if that really was Kira, reaching out to you? We already know that she has telepathy. I believe she reached out to aid us when we were escaping Itzela with the males. I think she could be looking for you as much as we’re looking for her.”

  “Why wouldn’t she look for you?” Sera asked. “You’re the telepath.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but you’re her mother.”

  She closed her eyes. “So how do I reach her? I never seem to be able to get through.”

  She could feel Beno’s mind lightly touching hers. ‘May I look at your memories of the dreams?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He eased into her mind, sifting through until he found the remembered images that he was looking for. His mind-to-mind touch was as gentle as his physical caresses, and she appreciated the tender way he moved inside her head. It was still strange to her to feel someone else’s consciousness inside her, but with Beno, it was intimate and comfortable. She enjoyed the sensation when he and Theyn spoke to her this way.

  Beno nodded and pulled back. “She’s been getting closer every time. I believe that you’ll be able to touch her in the next dream, and if you do, you’ll establish a telepathic connection with her – or more accurately, you’ll be accepting the telepathic connection she’s trying to establish with you.”

  “So after my next dream, I should be in contact with her?”
r />   “I think so, yes.”

  Theyn, excited, said, “Well, that’s a good thing. We’ll be able to find her then.”

  “We’d have to get out of here first, but if I could connect with her, at least I’d be able to know if she’s all right.” Sera ran a hand over her face. “At least we know she’s alive and well enough to be trying to find me. That has to be a good sign, right?”

  Beno nodded. “The best we’ve had yet.”

  “Well,” she said, “it looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time sleeping.”

  She lay back down, and her mates curled around her. Theyn kissed her cheek. “I hope you find her, or she finds you.”

  “So do I.” She closed her eyes and sighed. Find me, little girl. Please.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Days passed, but it felt like years. Every day, a cart with more reasonably good-tasting paste arrived, and every night Sera dreamed of Kira in her ball of light. She was coming closer all the time, but she had not been able to touch her yet, and it was frustrating almost beyond endurance.

  They hadn’t been feeling amorous, but their anxiety was high enough that none of them were feeling the lack. It was the wrong time to be thinking about sex, anyway. They adjusted, slowly, to the blankness of the walls and the strange open-air bathroom. They were given clean clothes – black utility jumpsuits, mostly, like the ones the soldiers wore – and toiletries for bathing. When Sera combed her hair, she could feel the probes beneath her skin, and the physical discomfort almost rivaled the emotional pain of knowing that she was one button press away from a grisly demise.

  On the fifth day of their confinement, after the cart had been delivered and retrieved, the door unexpectedly opened again. This time, instead of a Bruthesan cook or nurse, their visitor was Alaia, her eyes surrounded by heavy black cosmetic lines that made them seem to glow more than usual. She had a pendant around her neck shaped like a bird in a flaming nest, and her long white mohawk had been intricately braided. With her were six armed guards.

  “What’s the occasion?” Sera asked. “Is there a Burning One cotillion or something?”