by Stacy Jones
Shoulders slumping slightly, sure they were going to tell her about some new emergency or problem, Aria sighed but took their offered hand.
She waited for the feeling of vertigo to pass then asked resignedly, “What’s wrong?”
They cocked their head. “There are no wrongs. We have prepared rooms for you and your mates. Would you follow u— me?”
Aria eyed them a little skeptically then leaned to the side to scan the nearly empty room behind them. “Everyone’s settled? No more crises to deal with?”
A sense of amusement tickled her mind. “All are content for this moment, and we have begun the reformer to accommodate the aquatics on the ship. Should problems arise, we will try to resolve them while you take rest. We do not require but a few turns of sleep.”
“Thank fuck,” she sighed, the tension melting out of her shoulders.
Tirox and Kix both chuckled, but she could tell they were just as ready to call it a night as she was.
When they released her hand and started off down a hallway to the right, instead of back to the elevator, Aria frowned but followed, curious to see where they were going.
Aria turned in a slow circle, gazing at the suite the Gaelli had set up for them. It was… extravagant. And big.
There was a huge bedroom through the door to the left, sporting a bed that would easily fit ten people comfortably. The door on the back wall led to a bathroom the size of her apartment back on Earth, and through the door to the right was an unreasonably massive office with a wall of windows that showed a spectacular view of the alien planet beyond the arena.
“Whose rooms were these?” she asked suspiciously, once she’d stopped gawking.
The Gaelli leader tilted their head in such a way that told her the answer without needing to say a word.
“Zhrovni,” Aria answered aloud.
Closing the distance between them, they took her hand and clarified, “We sterilized every surface, changed the platform coverings, and removed the cages. We also stocked it to suit your, and your mates’, needs. Do you find these room displeasing?”
“Cages?” she repeated then shook her head, deciding maybe she didn’t need the nightmares. “I’m grateful for all the effort you went through and the rooms themselves are great, I just… ”
“I see your hesitation. I chose these rooms for their location, both central yet apart. But, also because they designate you the leader. A great number of the minds we touched revealed that such accoutrements hold meaning and will encourage them to view you with respect and deference. I believe this will aid in ensuring they adhere to the rules you set.”
“Damn,” Aria breathed, impressed. “You’re sharp as a knife.” An idea had her narrowing her eyes consideringly. “Would you be willing to help Kix and Rellik pick out some people who’d make good proxies? I need more people I can trust to help me run this place.”
She got the feeling she’d surprised them.
“To ask such implies you trust us to make this decision.”
“It does, yes.” Frowning, she asked, “Can you not feel that?”
“I did not ask to look.”
That told her their ability and Kix’s did have some differences, even if they were very similar. Her firefly would’ve been able to tell immediately if she felt trust, or anything else for that matter. The Gaelli had to intentionally look for something to be aware of it.
“So, yes? No?”
“Yes. We would be very pleased to aid you in finding those worthy of trust.”
“Good,” she smiled. “Thank you… uh, any thoughts on a name?”
“Ah… we— I was considering… ”
Instead of a name with sounds, they sent her a flash of soft purple with the feeling of happiness.
“Lilac?” she tried to interpret.
They paused and tilted their head, before that tiny smile lit up their face. “I enjoy that. Yes. I am to be Lilac.”
Grinning widely, Aria nodded. “I do, too. It’s very nice to meet you, Lilac.”
After Lilac left, Aria wandered into the office to stare out the windows while her mates did something sneaky, zooming from the bedroom to the bathroom and back again.
She was having a hell of a time resisting the urge to dip out and take off in one of the runners to continue the search for Skaa and the others herself, but she knew Tirox and Kix would be furious, rightly so. She just couldn’t bring herself to do that to them.
Gazing at the seemingly endless stretch of desert beyond the city, she felt her stomach clench. Skaa and the others could be anywhere out there. Raising a hand, she laid it on the surface, still warm from the light of the two suns.
“You better be okay, Skaa. And you damn well better fight your way back here,” she whispered, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
A scuff behind her alerted her to Tirox’s approach. When he wrapped his big arms around her, she relaxed back against him, sighing deeply.
Dipping low to rub his cheek over her hair, he murmured lowly, “She is nearly as fierce as you, my heart. She will find her way back. Of this, I am sure.”
Aria stiffened slightly, her pulse picking up speed. “Your stones?”
“Mmm, they whisper to me. There is danger, yes, but the possibility of happiness, as well, and healing of the spirit. She will return. Have trust. Now, come. We have prepared something for you,” he coaxed.
Instead of waiting for her to comply, he scooped her up into his arms and strode out of the office. Aria just chuckled softly and settled in for the ride as he headed for the bathroom, the tightness in her chest easing after his words.
After a luxurious and stimulating bath, where Tirox and Kix took turns driving her absolutely insane by touching, licking, and kissing her until she was ready to climb one of them like a fucking tree, they finally carried her—delirious and spewing threats—into the bedroom.
One after the other, they took her, fucking her until the only worries left were whether or not she’d be able to walk the next day. When Tirox pulled out of her with a groan and collapsed onto the bed beside her, Aria sighed blissfully as he and Kix enfolded her between their bodies.
Just before she fell into an exhausted sleep, she thought she caught a flash of white eyes watching her hungrily from the darkness outside the bedroom, but they were gone when she drowsily blinked her eyes back open. She was asleep before she could decide whether they were a figment of her wishful imagination.
Epilogue
Two weeks passed in a flurry of activity. The breach in the wall was fully repaired, thanks to Lilac knowing where Zhrovni kept the construction robots.
Aria found their faceless faces, gaping midsections, and too-human gestures damned unsettling, but Lilac assured her they were just programmable machines, no different than the various fabricators.
She watched them suspiciously anyway, and had fallen into the habit of resting her hand on the gun she always carried, just in case one got any ideas of enslaving their creators. She’d seen that movie. Paranoid, and highly unlikely or not, she was ready to shoot if needs be.
Besides, if being abducted by aliens had taught her one thing, it was that virtually nothing was impossible.
Ship repairs were coming along nicely, especially once Rellik found a couple of engineers among those they’d rescued, and an actual spaceship pilot among the gladiators they’d woken so far.
There were more gladiators left in stasis than she was at all comfortable with, but the Gaelli were hard at work reversing the dangerous genetic manipulation that had been done to them. Because of their hard work, Aria was able to free a new gladiator every couple of days.
After Thrasin came back shot that night, she’d ordered him to stop searching, told him she’d find a safer way to look.
He hadn’t listened, the stubborn man, determined to bring her friend back.
Kix told her it was his way of unnecessarily apologizing for the incident in his cave, which she found insane, bordering on suicidal.
&
nbsp; She discovered he was going farther and farther out each time when he didn’t come back one night. She’d stayed up, waiting for him, worried sick until the suns were peeking over the horizon.
When he finally returned, bleeding and weak, she lost it.
Aria tore into him, mercilessly, yelling loud enough to lure a crowd. He was attracting attention out there. The bad kind. The kind they couldn’t afford. His stubborn, selfish obstinacy was going to get people killed if he didn’t stop, himself included.
Her parting words still rang in her ears.
“Find some other way to kill yourself if you’re determined to die! But don’t you fucking dare pretend it’s for me. I won’t carry the burden of your death, Thrasin. I refuse.”
He’d been stone faced and left without a word. She knew from others that he hadn’t left again, but she hadn’t seen him since. She felt him, though. Sometimes it was a spike in her pulse or a whisper of his dark chocolate and vanilla scent, but she felt him when he was near and knew he followed her.
Knowing he didn’t trust himself with her, and preferring to haunt her from the shadows rather than take a chance that she could handle the darkness with which he struggled, hurt. It left an ache in her chest that grew a little more every day.
She wanted him, badly. But, she wouldn’t push him. It had to be his choice.
In an effort to distract herself, and everyone else, she was holding mandatory combat and weapons classes, with some of the more patient ex-gladiators acting as instructors.
Of course, not everyone appreciated her efforts.
The smartass, Bree, who’d made the snide comment about humping when Victoria said the males she was with were nice, decided combat wasn’t for her. Rudely.
Aria had cocked a brow and shut that shit down, fast.
“You’re on a slave planet, Bree. I will not allow you or anyone else to be victims, because that means some poor fool will be put in the position of having to save your sorry ass. We’ve all got better things to do than go out and rescue you, because you wanted to be either lazy or a naive idiot, got it?”
When she’d sputtered angrily, yelling something about Aria having a god complex and that someone needed to knock her down a peg, Aria just cocked a brow.
But, when Bree started yelling out derogatory thing about her mates, other her rose up in an angry rush, Aria lost her temper… and threw the practice blade at the woman’s head.
Probably not her best moment, and definitely an impulse she should’ve tried harder to resist, but her aim was perfect so that was a win. She hit Bree square between the eyes with the plastic blade, which knocked her down at least four pegs.
Aria strolled casually up to where the woman was sprawled in the sand, blinking at the sky, stunned to blessed silence. Finally.
“You done being an asshole?”
Bree had shaken off her stupor enough to glare up at her, but the woman wasn’t without a survival instinct entirely because she clenched her teeth and nodded.
“Good. Now, get up and get back in position. I’m going to teach you to protect yourself, if it kills you.”
While she was busy holding combat classes, Kix was working with the Gaelli and anyone who showed an interest or aptitude for technology, mechanics, and engineering. Another of the humans was in that group, a woman by the name of Ahura, who obviously had very nerdy parents.
From what Kix told her, Ahura was one of the brightest in the group and was picking up on the technology at light speed. Which was great. Really.
What Aria found less pleasing were the besotted gazes she kept giving Kix when she thought he wasn’t looking. Aria may or may not have, briefly, contemplated shoving her ass in a stasis tube.
Her other side, which was becoming more and more entwined with her, offered the more permanent solution of killing her outright, taking serious offence that another female was eyeing her mate.
Obviously, Aria wasn’t going to do that, but Ahura must have caught the murderous twinkle in her eyes, because after that, she kept her besotted looks to her damn self.
Tirox was holding classes to help those from less technologically developed worlds acclimate to this one. They ended up doubling as group therapy, but her barbarian was a natural at helping people, especially those he understood.
He became someone anyone could go to for help, advice, or to just talk out their troubles. It surprised her. She would’ve thought people would naturally be drawn to Kix for that, seeing as he was an empath, but her firefly was much more comfortable with electronics, mechanics, and working on his inventions than he was with people.
He said since his abilities were continuing to grow that he was struggling to filter out the emotions and stray thoughts bombarding him, so inviting them to pour their troubles on him would be draining and painful.
The Gaelli had done what they could for the aquatic people and animals, using the reformer to create both saltwater and freshwater oceans for them that now took up almost half of the arena. That only gave each group a body of water roughly twelve square miles in which to live, so it was far from perfect, but it would have to do until she could take over the arena that specialized in underwater tournaments.
To address the issue of the animals left in the hold, Aria decided to make an enclosure for them. She’d been ready to put them all together, but the little pixie-faced female with purple eyes, Meribah, gasped in shock and said that would be a terrible idea for a lot of reasons that she passionately listed for a solid ten minutes.
In answer, Aria gave her a dozen construction robots and put her in charge of the animals and how they were grouped.
Meribah almost fainted, the poor, delicate, high strung thing that she was.
Aria caught her before she hit the ground, set her back on her feet, told her to ask around for volunteers to help her, then gave her a wink and left her to it.
There’d been half a dozen volunteers before Aria made it two steps. All male. Last she’d seen, Meribah looked happy and a hell of a lot calmer. She was also being stalked by four men, at last count, who were all very obviously determined to woo her.
While all that had been going on, Aria was on edge waiting for someone to show up about the crash or to question where Zhrovni had been for the last few weeks—cops, the Federation, city workers, an Overlord from a different arena planning to come steal Zhrovni’s slaves. Hell, she had sentries keeping watch for just such an occasion. But, no one showed up. Instead of easing her worries, that doubled them.
Someone on the planet was going to find out there were a bunch of slaves running free and take exception to it.
It was inevitable, because somehow, some way, word about them was getting out to other slaves, so it was only a matter of time before their masters heard the same whispers.
The first time a runaway slave entered the complex, he was almost killed, the guards thinking he was an enemy. When word was brought to her about what was happening, she’d immediately taken him to be healed then questioned him at length. She still didn’t know who the leak was, and more slaves showed up by ones and twos, seeking sanctuary.
She welcomed them, of course, but only once Kix and Lilac cleared them. So far, everyone who showed up passed vetting, but she took steps anyway, just in case.
With her mates’ help, she selected a dozen people in secret to be her eyes and ears within the population at the complex.
Their job was to befriend everyone, listen to what was said, and keep a sharp eye out for anyone scheming against them from the inside, bad apples who repeatedly caused problems, and anyone who might be a closet serial killer or rapist.
She put Rellik in charge of them, trusting him to be her early warning system. Her handsome devil could spot a conspiracy and manipulative behavior a mile away.
Secondary to being lookouts, they were to collect information: good, bad, and indifferent. Aria needed to have a firm understanding of the ever-shifting tone within the complex in order to keep so many different species living
in relative harmony.
While she was hunting for spies, she’d also asked Kix to point out anyone who might be skilled at covert work and willing to venture outside the arena.
That led her to four individuals: a human woman named Sparrow who’d worked for the CIA back on Earth and insisted she be called Spar; Arek, a male who never failed to set her on edge, despite his outwardly serene, quiet demeanor; Lor, a handsome male who was quick to smile and unbelievably talented with a blade; And Hasson who was shockingly good at appearing and disappearing at will, a skill even more astonishing seeing as he had metallic bronze skin and huge, black, feathered wings.
Aria put them through an intensive test of skills to ensure she wasn’t sending people out there who couldn’t take care of themselves. They all passed, and Arek came very, very close to beating her during a spar.
When she finally pinned him with a blade to his neck, he’d gotten a glint in his eyes that made her seriously contemplate slitting his throat while she had the chance. It was a look she’d seen once in the eyes of a serial killer after she’d arrested him. It was base, animalistic, yet layered and complex.
There was respect there, admiration, but also the almost irresistible need to eliminate the person who’d just shown themselves to be a better predator.
Instead of killing him, she’d leaned down so only he would hear her, keeping her eyes locked on his and whispered, “You should resist that urge, if you want to keep breathing. Find someone deserving to take it out on, if you can’t bury it, but keep it out of my house.”
He’d hesitated long enough that she’d pressed the blade down harder, resigned to killing him, before he finally gave her a single, small dip of his chin and answered through sharp teeth, “Your will, Queen.”
He seemed fine after that, but Aria kept an eye on him to make sure he didn’t… play while in the complex.
After deeming them capable, she sent them out to see what people in the city were saying about them, look for escaped slaves to bring back, and to evaluate the layout, defenses, and security of the nearby arenas and pleasure lounges.