by Cara Wylde
Now, they were all sharing their stories, silently or loudly, with the ones closest to them, or with whole groups that listened and offered comfort.
“Maybe we should… take a break?” suggested Avery.
Kaylee sat down and shook her head. “This isn’t going as I’d hoped.”
Grace sided with Avery. “They need time to process our suggestion. And their grief. They’ve never gathered like this before, together, and with no one watching their every move. Anyway, we can’t press. All we can do is say what we need to say and let things unfold on their own. We’re not Araime.” When Kaylee remained silent, Grace turned to her. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“If this doesn’t work and the captains still want to leave, then I’m going with Eldav,” Ginny said.
Avery leaned over the table to look at the blonde girl past Grace’s baby bump.
“Are you okay, honey?”
Ginny nodded. “I don’t have kids and I’m not pregnant. Yet. I could go back home, no problem. But… there’s nothing waiting for me there. Nothing good. Eldav has always been cold and distant, but he’s treated me well from day one. And when he took that serum and we touched…” Tears flooded her blue eyes. “He loves me. No one has ever loved me before. And I love him.” She looked up at Avery, Kaylee, and Grace. “If you truly believe that we can all live on Earth in peace, then I’m with you. But if the wives vote against, then I’m going with Eldav and I don’t care where we end up.” She shrugged. “My decision is made anyway.”
Avery sighed and ran her hand through her wavy hair. Studying the other women and catching some of their conversations here and there, she knew Ginny wasn’t the only one who felt that way. It was hard for them to forgive, let alone forget, and there were some who still wanted revenge more than they wanted peace and compassion. Avery understood. But, if she looked closely, she could notice how after a little over half an hour of crying and sharing their pains and sorrows, most women started talking about their children and unborn babies.
“It’s easy for us,” she said to Kaylee, Grace, and Ginny. “We know how it feels to share a deep, undeniable connection with our men.”
Grace furrowed her brows in suspicion, and Kaylee leaned in, suddenly more curious about Avery than ever.
“Poppy, what are you saying? Did you try the serum yourself?”
“I… I…” Damn it! She’d completely forgot that she’d never told her friends the whole truth about her and her Kralian captains. “I… didn’t have to… The connection with the Kralians is… natural.”
“You and Kryan?” asked Grace.
Avery shook her head. She couldn’t believe she’d dug herself into this stupid situation when there was so much at stake.
“You and Aedar?” asked Ginny, somewhat excited.
Avery shook her head again.
“Both,” Kaylee concluded.
“Guys, I… don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“You lied to us!” Kaylee’s creamy cheeks were turning red with anger. “First, you lied to us about being their pleasure slave. Then, you lied to us again when you said that, in fact, you were never their slave and you were just pretending to help cover them in front of the Alliance. What’s the next lie up your sleeve?”
“I’m not an FBI agent?” She didn’t say that out loud. Thank God one of the Valgan wives spoke up and drew Kaylee’s attention away from her.
“This isn’t over,” Kaylee hissed between tight lips.
“Just so you know, I’m with you guys. All the way. Since the beginning.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“We’re ready to vote.”
Kaylee nodded, stood up, took the huge bowl of small tumbled stones she’d prepared before the meeting, and went around the table and through the crowd, asking the women to each take a stone. They were in various colors, ranging from reds to blues, greens, yellows, and shades of purple. Some of them had more than one color, but the colors didn’t mean anything in this particular context. When they were ready to cast their vote, all the women had to do was place their stones in one of the bowls at the end of the table. The white bowl was for the positive votes, and the black one for the ones against.
The wives seemed to hesitate, though, still looking around at each other as if they were waiting for someone to tell them exactly what they needed to do to make things right. But no one and nothing could have made things right. What was done was done, and all there was left was dealing with the consequences and choosing the better option out of two rather disappointing paths ahead.
Grace sighed, then pushed her chair back and stood up.
“Why not go first?”
She walked to the white bowl and dropped her reddish stone in it. The sound it made was hollow, but it didn’t feel as ominous as most of the women in the conference room had expected. When a Minarian wife dropped her stone in the black bowl, the atmosphere changed. As the women started moving around and making their way to the two bowls, they relaxed, cleared their minds, and tuned into their intuition. Many of those who’d thought they’d decided minutes before felt compelled to change their vote when faced with the two bowls, as if everything they had found out, talked about and argued over was finally starting to become real to them. This was it. This was their moment. Right then and there, they were being asked to step up and create their own fate and the fate of their children.
Avery was the last one to cast her vote. She’d waited intentionally because she wanted a chance to peek at the bowls. The stones were going to be counted in a minute, but she couldn’t wait that long. She needed at least a hint at what the result might be. To her disappointment, the two bowls seemed evenly filled. She bit her lower lip, dropped her yellow stone in the white one, then switched from intuitive to rational to calm herself down. “The stones are too different… some are bigger, others are smaller. Anyway, just one or two in the white one will make all the difference. It’s all fine. It’s going to be fine.”
If she were to be honest with herself, she had definitely expected for the white bowl to end up almost full while the black one held only five stones or so. She felt stupid for having underestimated these women’s rage.
“Are you okay?” Ginny asked as she sat down before the black bowl. “We’re counting them now.”
Avery took a step back and nodded distractedly. She pulled a chair for Grace to sit down before the white bowl.
“Yeah. I’ll just… I’ll be over there.”
She walked to the other side of the room, expertly avoiding Kaylee. There was a small group of women talking in hushed voices near one of the larger windows, but Avery wasn’t interested in them. She just needed to stare into space – into actual space – for a while, until all this was over, and she could go home. By this point, all she wanted was to go home. Not to her apartment, and not to the Walsh Residence. Home. Her parents had kept her room in exactly the same state as she’d left it when she’d moved out, and now, as if out of the blue, she caught herself wondering why she hadn’t slept a single night there ever since.
“What a random and oddly sad thought to have at such a time…”
She was two steps away from the window when she heard an explosion and found herself hurled back with nothing to grab on to. A ship-wide alarm went off. She winced and grunted in pain when her left side hit the edge of the table, her ribs screaming in protest. She didn’t have time to find her footing before an arm hit her across the face and a young redhead ended up practically on her lap. Everyone was screaming in shock, confusion, and pain. The loud, unforgiving alarm added to the fear and chaos.
Avery cursed, grabbed the first thing she could – a table leg – and tried to pull herself up. No luck. The redhead was now crying and clinging to her middle for dear life, causing such a sharp pain to shoot through her left side that tears sprung at the corners of her eyes.
“What’s happening?!”
“They’re
killing us!”
“They want us dead!”
“This was all a lie and a trap!”
It was hard to think clearly with all the screams, cries, and speculations... Avery took a deep breath, made sure she held on to the table leg as best as she could, and looked around her. The Hordaa had tipped over and was now slowly trying to recover from the blow. That meant they would all probably be thrown to the other side of the room in a second, so Avery had to find a way to – maybe, hopefully – not hit anything this time.
“Honey, you need to hold on to something that’s not me,” she told the redhead.
“No! Don’t let go. Please, don’t let go.”
“All right, all right.”
She tried to turn around and look for Grace, Ginny, and Kaylee, who were supposed to be at the other end of the table. Fortunately, the table itself hadn’t moved. Its legs seemed to be anchored deep inside the floor, which she guessed made sense for furniture on a spaceship. Not the same with the chairs, though. They had all flown around the room, hitting everyone and everything in their way. Later, Avery would find out they were made of a light type of wood only found on planet Kralia, but right now she was worried many of the women had been hurt badly.
The second explosion sounded more muffled, like it happened somewhere far away. When the Hordaa didn’t tip over again, Avery figured it wasn’t the one to get hit.
“Why are they shooting at us?” she asked out loud.
“Who is shooting at us?” asked the redhead, her big, watery eyes fixed on Avery as if she had all the answers.
Avery attempted to shrug and regretted it instantly. Pain shot through her ribs up to the back of her neck. She had to stand up. Some of the girls close to her had managed, clinging at each other and at the edge of the table, helping each other to their feet.
“Come on, we can do it,” she told her redheaded burden. “Together, okay?”
The young woman nodded, but just as they were trying to pull themselves up, a second explosion hit the Hordaa, and the ship tipped over to the same side as before. Harder, this time.
“Shit!”
More screams and cries. More curses. Avery thought of Grace and her baby. Kaylee and her baby. When Kryan’s rough voice came out of the invisible speakers in the walls, Avery felt it as if it was coming from deep inside her.
“We’re under attack. The Craziak is firing at us, and Captain Araime is refusing to open a channel of communication. Lyare, Verto, Swetho – we need your assistance. Our shields are at sixty percent and holding, but if you feel like stepping up, this is the time. Your wives and mothers are on the Hordaa.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Well, isn’t this grand?” Avery stood up on shaky feet and went to look for her friends. She’d managed to pass the young, scared redhead to someone who had a little more control of herself. “That bitch waited for her two problems to be in one place: the Kralians and the women who were messing with her plan. Brilliant.”
She wobbled and pushed through the small crowd, calling for Grace, Kaylee, and Ginny. When she found them, Grace was on the floor, holding her belly protectively, and Kaylee and Ginny were at her sides, making sure no one stepped or fell on her if the ship got hit again.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Kaylee said without looking up. She was trembling. “You?”
Avery touched her tender side. It was probably green and purple by now.
“Yes. Doing great.” She spotted the door. “Maybe we should get out of here?”
“It’s locked, and I don’t think they’re letting us out anytime soon.”
“Huh.”
“D-do you think that’s good?” Ginny looked up at Avery, her eyes filled with hope. “It’s intentional, right? We’re safer here?”
“Err… I…” She wanted to say that she didn’t know, but then realized she could find out if she really tried to focus for a second. “Let me find out.”
Kaylee threw her a suspicious glance. “How?”
Avery waved her off and allowed herself to slide down to the floor, next to Ginny. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The Command Bridge and the conference room were on the same level, but not very close to each other. Still, she figured that as long as they were on the spaceship, she could reach Kryan and Aedar telepathically. That was… if they weren’t too busy saving everyone from a certain crazy Minarian woman.
When calling them mentally didn’t work, Avery took a couple of deep breaths, relaxed her tense muscles, and intentionally ignored the pain in her side. “Emotionally,” she whispered to herself. “Emotionally, not mentally.” Breathe in. Breathe out. What did she associate Kryan with? Fire. The fire in her lower belly when he grabbed her around the waist and rubbed his hard body against her until needy moans poured down her lips. And Aedar? The watery mix of feelings swirling in her stomach and chest, then up her throat as she rubbed her nose on his neck and inhaled his deeply masculine, insanely wild scent. Kryan was fire. Aedar was water. When she was trapped between them, she was… earth. She was more than from Earth, she was the element itself, integrating Kryan’s all-consuming passion and Aedar’s soft, all-encompassing love, grounding them inside her very being, allowing their energies to nest within her heart.
Avery smiled when she finally felt them. Apart, separated by walls and corridors, but somehow occupying the same space at the same time. She was with them, on the Bridge, and they were with her, on the floor, surrounded by scared women. They could feel her fear and confusion, and she could sense their agitation, the rush and pressure of making quick decisions, and their… uncertainty. She shifted in place, rubbed at her painful ribs, and blindly reached for Ginny’s hand. She could see Kryan’s furrowed brows and Aedar’s worried eyes. They were still trying to open a channel with the Craziak, and the other three ships hadn’t announced their intentions yet. They were out of time. The Bridge was a mess, and there were two people lying on the floor, unconscious. How did that even happen? The Hordaa had been taken by surprise.
“Why aren’t we moving out of her way?” asked Avery telepathically.
Aedar looked at one of the screens, and Avery understood. If the Hordaa moved to avoid the hits, the Craziak would have shot at Earth.
“No, she’d never do that. Earth is what she wants.”
“We can’t risk it, can we?”
When Kryan’s eyes went wide at the sight of the Craziak firing another round, Avery snapped her eyes open.
“Brace yourselves!”
She jumped in front of Grace and dragged Kaylee and Ginny with her to make a wall in case anything flew their way when the Hordaa tipped over again. Sure enough, she felt a couple of soft, trembling bodies hitting her in the back and stopping at her heels. At least, the ship hadn’t changed its drunken dance and thrown them in the opposite direction. Apparently, Araime liked to hit one side only. Avery wondered whether it was some sort of strategy, so the shields would give in more easily that way. Why hadn’t she been more interested in how spaceships actually worked?!
“When will this end?” whimpered Ginny.
“The question isn’t ‘when’, but ‘how’,” said Kaylee.
“They have to help. They have to!” Grace had ended up on her back, and she was clinging to Avery and trying to pull herself up. “The Valgans will come.”
“The Norgavians too.” Kaylee sounded convinced. “Drav will not stand for this.”
Avery helped Grace sit up in a more normal position, then turned around to see if the girls who’d hit her were fine.
“You need to let me out of here,” she sent telepathically to both Kryan and Aedar.
“No. You’re safe there.”
“I want to help!”
“Then, you’ll stay with them. Calm everyone down, take care of them… This will be over soon.”
“Over… how?”
The sound of two muffled explosions rose above the deafening screech of the eme
rgency alarm. Or… whatever the hell that alarm was. Yes, they were under attack! Everyone on the Hordaa knew! Why wasn’t anyone doing something to stop that infernal noise?
“They’re here,” Avery whispered. Then, louder: “The other three ships are firing at the Craziak!”
“How do you know?”
The Hordaa regained its balance, and the girls held on tight until their center of gravity told them the floor was horizontal again.
“Okay.” Avery took a deep breath. “Kaylee, Grace, Ginny… here’s the truth. And this is the single, only truth. The truthest of truths, I promise.”
“Not a word…”
“Seriously?”
Ginny shrugged. “English major.”
Avery rolled her eyes. “I’m an FBI agent. My mission was to investigate Kryan and Aedar, but I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, then straight in their bed. Bed, not beds. Bed. One bed. Three people. We’re together now. That’s how I know what’s happening. The connection between us is a dozen times stronger than what you felt with your masters… err… husbands when they took the serums.”
Kaylee blinked a couple of times, staring at Avery as if she were from another dimension.
“Oh, and my name is not Poppy. It’s Avery. Special Agent Avery Tonkin.”
Kaylee didn’t even try to say anything. For now, she was willing to accept that she had no words.
Grace only whispered a weak “I don’t even”, and Ginny chose to remain silent, too.
Avery paid them no mind. She couldn’t have if she tried, because her head was filled with images, thoughts, and emotions. She didn’t have to close her eyes to see what her Kralian lovers were seeing anymore. It was as if she could perceive two places at the same time. She could be here, in the conference room, if she chose to, and she could mentally transport herself to the Command Bridge and see through Aedar’s eyes while she heard through Kryan’s ears.
“Poppy? Avery?” Grace shook her rather roughly.
“The Verto has put itself between the Hordaa and the Craziak. The Swetho and the Lyare just fired on the Minarian ship. That’s what we’ve just heard.”