The Starfire Wars- The Complete series Box Set

by Jenetta Penner

  A dark emotion shadows Javen’s face. “Are you positive?”

  The reality is that I’m not. But knowing Dad, it’s the most likely option—and I need to stop second-guessing myself.

  “Yes.” The words come out with confidence. Fake it till you make it.

  His jaw tenses. “Okay. But we also need you to be ready for the rescue. Are you able to do that?”

  Dizziness rolls over my mind again, reminding me of the drugs Hammond must be pumping into my body. I let out a long breath and push the feelings aside for the time being. “She’s using drugs to suppress me. I don’t know what they are, but they’re making it incredibly hard for me to focus.”

  Javen’s dark eyes fill with worry. “You just do your best, and we’ll try to figure that out on our end.”

  Leaning in close to him, I kiss his cheek several times. “Thank you.” My eyes connect with his as I pull back.

  Gently, he drags his fingers through my hair, and a shiver travels my spine. A shimmer of cyan suddenly replaces Javen, and then he disappears.

  Pain returns full force, knocking the wind from my chest. But this time I’m ready. It reminds me of my humanity and what I need to do. The sacrifices that must be made. The suffering that may lead to something better.

  Embracing this pain entirely is the only way I’m going to be ready to move. To do whatever it is I must do next.

  At least a hundred years pass before the pain leaves me. And when it does, the relief is completely unexpected. I scan around through the darkness. What’s happening? Am I dead? Fear coils in my stomach, and my body trembles. The quivering grows stronger and stronger, chaos filling my ears until, finally, my eyes snap onto the ceiling and I open my mouth to release a scream. Nothing emerges, then—

  “Javen!” I shout his name, but a gurgling noise exits my mouth instead. High-pitched beeps sound in the background, and I gasp for breath while shadowy figures whoosh around the room.

  Javen! My mind screams.

  When my vision finally clears, I find a light-haired man in a white lab coat, looming over me with a syringe filled with pink liquid. I have no idea who the man is, and seeing him sends panic through my body. What if Hammond is just waking me up, and there’s no rescue operation at all?

  But as soon as the thought enters my mind, Javen appears from the side.

  “She’s awake!” he yells and touches my face.

  I stare, transfixed. Are you real?

  “Cassi, stay alert,” he says.

  I try to speak to him, but nothing comes out of my mouth.

  Muffled noises, like the electrical zap of blasters, come from the background, as if they’re outside my immediate area.

  Javen disappears from view and the man in the white coat appears again. He raises the syringe in the air and plunges it into my arm. Searing, hot pain rips through me, and a curse escapes my lips. I shoot up into a sitting position, wide awake, and whip my neck around to figure out what’s going on.

  Glancing down, I find myself in a white gown, covered by a sheet. I throw the sheet from my body without much thought and then swing my legs over the bedside. My eyes widen in horror and I freeze. Several dead bodies litter the floor. A leg sticks out from behind a cabinet to my left. Are they our people or Hammond’s?

  “Whoa, whoa . . .” The doctor, or whoever he is, grabs my arms. “If you get up too fast, you might fall,” he says in a southern drawl.

  “Where’s Javen?” I ask when I don’t see him.

  The doctor’s eyes dart to the open door, but as soon as he does, Javen races back through, avoiding a dead man on the ground.

  Javen’s eyes train on me. “You’re up!” Then he looks to the doctor. “Can she go?”

  He nods. “It appears I got the drug sequence correct, but I’m not sure yet if she’s ready to travel.”

  “She’s not in a coma anymore, so we need to move, now.”

  Blaster shots sound outside the door, followed by yelling, but I can’t tell what’s being said.

  Javen twists toward the sounds and then back to the doctor and me. “Help me get her ready.”

  Racing to my side, the doctor unhooks a few wires from my head, ones I didn’t realize were even there, each wire leading to a computer beside my bed. As he does, the screen goes dead and an alarm on the machine blares to life. I flinch from the sound but move to slide off the bed.

  Before my feet reach the floor, Javen wraps his strong arms under me and lifts me from the bed in one swoop. He pilots me out the door, followed closely by the doctor. Outside, I spot Beda and her now-wild hair. A ball of Starfire energy builds in her hands, and she throws it down the hall with the arm of a pro baseball pitcher.

  Beside her are two human women with blasters, shooting in the same direction. Yaletha, somehow looking as beautiful as ever despite the chaos, crouches to the side with Dad’s portal device in her hands. Her snow-white hair is pulled back into a tight bun.

  “We need to go to the Intersection, now!” Javen yells.

  “Took you long enough!” Beda bellows. “Leaving it up to the ladies to save the day, cousin?”

  Yaletha punches the coordinates into the device, glances up at us, and with her free hand forms a ball of energy in her palm, throwing it our way. Javen dodges it, and I whip my head around to follow the blast. It smacks into three of Hammond’s soldiers racing toward us, and they fly back and slam against the ground.

  “Could you throw that a little closer to us next time?” Javen yells at Yaletha.

  She shrugs. “That was a world away from you; all my shots hit their mark.” As she punches the last coordinates in, Yaletha looks up as the blue-green portal crackles and explodes into life.

  “Go, go, go!” Beda orders, and several more of our people I hadn’t seen before head our way, holding weapons.

  Exhaustion ripples through my body, but I force myself to remain conscious.

  “Get her out of here,” Yaletha’s voice orders from behind us.

  Javen speeds forward with me in his arms and leaps into the portal’s mouth.

  CHAPTER 4

  The room spins as I wake up on my back, stretched out onto something soft. A bed, I think.

  A blurry figure—pretty sure it’s Javen—comes to my side and strokes my hair. He mumbles some words, but I can’t quite hear the meaning.

  “How long was I gone?” I manage to eke out once the room stops twirling.

  “Three days.” He checks his Connect. “And you’ve been out for six hours since arriving here. It’s four a.m.”

  Palpable relief floods my body. Three days. Nowhere near a thousand years. Good or bad, at least I still might have an idea of what’s going on in the outside world. A fact that brings me a minuscule amount of comfort.

  After blinking to clear my vision, I scan the room. I’m back in the Intersection, inside my sleeping quarters at Dad’s lab.

  “Is my dad back yet?”

  Javen sits on the edge of my bed beside me and furrows his brows.

  My chest tenses at his expression. I try to prop up on my elbows, but doing so makes the room spin again. So, I drop back onto the soft pillow under my head.

  “Have you heard from him?” I ask, gazing up at the ceiling.

  “No,” he replies. “But we will. It could take a while to convince Max’s father to help. We’re still hopeful.”

  “Where is everyone else?” My gaze shifts to the closed door across the room.

  “Planning—and waiting for you. We couldn’t all stay at your side. Too much to do.”

  Closing my eyes, I call on the Starfire. Nothing happens. At least the pain in my head seems to be gone. That means something has changed . . . or maybe the connection is gone completely.

  I open my lids and turn my head enough to see Javen studying me. He’s wearing a cotton, or something like cotton, blue shirt that complements the natural dark tan color of his skin. The corners of his lips pull into a soft smile, worry still brewing in his eyes. My attention falls t
o the Connect on his wrist and I touch it.

  “Irene’s modifications still working? No signs of aggression?”

  Javen’s hand reaches for mine as he lets out a soft sigh. “Everyone given the modified Connect has continued to think clearly and remain in control of themselves. Irene believes that eventually we won’t need the program on the Connects to help us utilize the Mother Starfire. The hope is that our bodies will adjust to the flow of energy naturally.”

  I consider his words. “Will you do something for me?”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to take me to the Starfire field.”

  Javen’s head tips in confusion and a spark of fear ignites in his eyes. “Not yet. You should rest. Take the time you need to heal.”

  We don’t have that time, and Javen knows it. “I don’t need as much sleep as I used to because of the Starfire. And you’re letting your worry for me get in the way of what needs to be done.”

  His jaw tightens, but he takes my hand and gently squeezes my fingers. “I thought I had lost you, Cassi. When we found out what had happened to Luca, General Atkins, and the others, I didn’t know what I was going to do. No one could find you, and I couldn’t summon you.”

  “And you’re afraid to lose me again?” I whisper.

  “Of course I’m afraid to lose you. You are everything to me.”

  There’s that word again. Closing my eyes, I consider it—everything. After a moment, I prop myself up again, and this time the world doesn’t spin. “Before I left you at the mountain, something was wrong with the Starfire in me. It totally shut down and I couldn’t use it. My healing began back in Primaro when I was finally able to summon you, but I have a feeling that to finish the process, I need to go to the field.”

  A heavy sigh leaves him. “If you truly believe it’s necessary right now.”

  “I do.”

  Standing, Javen walks to the door and checks outside. “Everyone must be in the lab or out at the refugee camp. I told them I would contact them when you woke up.”

  “Will there be anyone at the field?” I ask, swinging my legs off the bed.

  “Not likely. Howard moved his operation back into the lab and is monitoring the portal activity from here.”

  My feet press to the cold ground as I glance at my clothing—a soft pair of charcoal pants and a green sweatshirt. Bare feet stick out from the end of my pants.

  I open my mouth to ask for shoes, but Javen already stands in front of me with my boots and a pair of socks.

  “Thanks,” I offer, taking them from him.

  Quickly, I pull on the socks and boots but take my time standing, just in case. When I get to my feet, the room doesn’t tilt, so I take that as a good sign. Javen steers me out the door, and when we reach the hall, I confirm that he’s correct about our current privacy. A few voices come from the lab, but the hall isn’t clamoring with people.

  “There was more room for planning at the refugee camp, so most everyone went there.” Javen pulls me through the building’s exit and into the night.

  I peer around the darkness. Being outside sends an odd sense of calm and relief to my jumbling nerves. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see the stars again.

  His hand in mine, Javen continues to lead me toward the field. Even though I know exactly where it is, I allow him. Right now, just being with him makes me feel safe. Loved. As if the time we were separated truly spanned a thousand years and I’m finally returning home to him.

  We easily make the short journey to the ridge. The earthy, mineral scent of soil fills my nose as I take in the glow. To the left is the large, darkened portal structure, and my mind shifts to Dad, Vihann, and Max stepping through the arched gateway to Earth. Are they okay? Javen slides closer next to me, and I can almost feel the nervous energy radiating from him.

  “Are you sure this is what will heal you?” he asks in a whisper.

  My gut tells me yes, so I squeeze his fingers. “Yes, but I need to do it on my own.”

  His eyebrows furrow once more with concern. He obviously doesn’t want to let me out of his sight.

  Squeezing his hand again to reassure him, I lead him down the hill to the Starfire. “Just wait for me alongside the field.”

  With a reluctant nod, Javen releases me and I smile at him, then return my attention to the land’s glow. Ahead of me, the crystals jut from the earth, some large, some small. The warm energy that emanates from them greets my body, and I know it’s time for the crystals to integrate their power with me completely.

  I wasn’t ready before, but now I am.

  Carefully, I snake my way around the crystal growth until I find myself in the field’s middle. Stopping, I close my eyes and hold my arms out from my body, palms up.

  The world immediately falls away. A cyan cloud surrounds my body, twisting and twirling before the mist seeps into me. My brain begins to flicker with memories that are not my own. My Grandfather entering the portal to Earth. His life flips through my mind until the day of his death. My mom’s beautiful face comes into view, when he tells her of his heritage—his home planet.

  The scene is whisked away and other memories quickly come into view: births, deaths, and everything in between for the other Protectors. The memories travel a path back to the first Protector. Of when he took the Starfire and hid the crystals in the Intersection. His destiny was to live out his days there until the next Protector came along to do the same, but everything changed when my grandfather left for Earth.

  Maybe it was always meant to be. Maybe the Starfire was always looking for me.

  Peace saturates my soul as I fully accept the gift—the responsibility. Offering myself and trusting myself is what is required.

  The Alku in my blood lights with fire, spreading warmth through me. I allow my heritage to flow freely through my veins. I want it to.

  I am human.

  I am Alku.

  Never more. Never less.

  Peace washes over my body and I open my eyes to the glowing field around me. The crystals pulse with light, a symphony of gentle musical notes weaving through the air. The two moons hang in the Intersection sky and illuminate a clear, cyan night.

  Across the way, at the field’s edge, Javen waits for me. The moonlight casts over his masculine figure and a slight breeze blows strands of hair from his forehead as he stands with his arms crossed over his chest. My gaze sweeps over him. Drinking him in. I’m filled with the sudden need to have Javen at my side, to share with him some of what I’ve experienced. I close my eyes and, through summoning, draw him to my location.

  Javen appears directly in front of me before the next beat of my heart. He glances down, and confusion pulls at his expression as he peers around.

  “You are healed?” he asks, a tinge of concern in his tone.

  Instead of answering with audible words, I slip my arms around his neck, drawing us closer. I touch his forehead to mine and close my eyes.

  I am healed. My mind speaks directly to his through the Starfire, and his body relaxes. The connection resolves all his questions.

  The warmth of his arm seeps through me as it glides around my waist, and his left hand moves to my upper back, pulling me tight to his strong, warm chest. As I drink him in, our minds mingle with emotion.

  Heat and anticipation travel up my chest and neck while the surrounding beat of the Starfire’s pulse quickens for a moment, mirroring the speed of my beating heart. Javen’s spicy scent makes my head spin, and my knees go weak. If I could make this moment—this feeling—last forever, I would.

  Our bodies sway to the crystal’s music, a melody only I seem to hear. And when the rhythm slows, Javen eases back. His eyes are swirling, and by the smile on his face, I know that mine are too. Releasing me, he spins me around and then brings me back to his powerful embrace.

  A grin curves my lips. Our palms touch and I twine my fingers with his.

  Javen gazes curiously into my eyes. “You’re Alku?”

  My heart picks up
the pace again. I wanted him to know so badly. “You know? How?”

  “You told me—or your mind did. You didn’t need to say the words.” His thumb moves over my palm, gently stroking my hand.

  I have no wish to lie to Javen. “I am. My grandfather was Alku. He came to Earth.” The words come out so easily.

  “But you haven’t known long.”

  “No, I only learned about it recently, but the Starfire knew I was meant to be here.”

  His hold tightens round my waist. “To be with me.”

  “To be with you.”

  Javen grows silent, simply accepting that I am part-Alku.

  My eyes caress the planes of his beautiful face and, unable to wait a moment longer, I lean into him, easing my mouth onto his. Javen’s lips are velvety smooth. My breath quivers at our touch. And honestly? It’s as if I’ve never kissed him, or any other boy for that matter. The sensation is entirely new. Right. His hungry lips meet mine, and everything is good in this world.

  Javen’s hands wander over my back, and he breaks from my mouth to kiss my cheek . . . my neck. A soft sigh escapes my lips as I revel in his loving touch.

  This boy has my heart.

  My everything.

  All around us, the Starfire energy dances and sways, surrounding us in a cloud of wisps. The force no longer urging our connection, only representing this bond we share. Rejoicing in the organic nature of my love for Javen, and his love for me.

  I guide Javen back to my greedy mouth. This time the kiss becomes more fervent. Fierce, even.

  Almost in unison, we edge toward the ground, our arms and mouths entangled.

  The Starfire’s symphony grows more intense in my mind as my soul weaves with Javen’s under a galaxy of cyan stars.

  CHAPTER 5

  Cassi is awake. Javen sends the message to Irene.

  I’m on my way to the lab! Her reply immediately buzzes back.