Azra & Elise’s Story (Uoria Mates IV Book 10) Read online

  “What do you mean?” Lila asked.

  Elise looked toward the door that was still standing open, staring out into the dancing firelight around the courtyard. She thought of all of the times that she had stood inside the ship staring out of the windows, wondering what else was out there beyond the repeated, back and forth trips that she took as she traveled for work. Never could she have imagined that it would have been like this.

  “My life was set. It was a routine. I knew what I was going to do, when I was going to do it. I had plans months and even years in advance. Then I was assigned to a trip picking up passengers from Uoria and bringing them to Earth. It seemed so exotic and exciting. I was used to the usual leisure destinations and the long cruises, and I had never been to somewhere as far or as unique as Uoria. Especially with what happened to the last attendant who interacted with the warriors.”

  Elise could see the look of confusion on Lila’s face and had to remind herself that this woman was not human. She wasn’t from Earth and didn’t have the same experiences or thoughts that she did. It was a strange realization and one that she knew would take time to process. Though there were things about Lila and the other Mikana that clearly differentiated them from humans, Elise found herself less and less cognizant of them the longer that she spent with them. Being near other species was something that she was accustomed to after the years she spent traveling on the ships, but there had always been distinct separations between them. She considered each of them different and often found herself interacting with them in the way that she thought that she was supposed to based on what she had been taught about each in her training and what she thought that she knew about them. In her brief time with this group, though, she had realized just how ridiculous that was and how skewed she had allowed her perceptions, and the behaviors that they dictated, to become.

  “There was another flight attendant, not too long ago, who went to Uoria. She was on the shuttle that brought a couple of the women from the University program to the Denynso.”

  “What happened to her?” Lila asked.

  Elise shrugged.

  “No one really knows,” she said. “She volunteered to be a part of all of those trips and seemed to really enjoy them, though every time that she came back, she seemed different for a few days.”

  “What do you mean different?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Elise said. “She was just different. Distant. Not quite angry, but something close to that. It would linger for a few days after she returned, and then she would go back to normal. Then one time, we just didn’t see her again.”

  She could see the look of shock on Lila’s face.

  “She didn’t come back from Uoria?”

  “Oh, she came back,” Elise said. “But not to work. No one is completely sure what actually happened, but she was sent back locked in a pod and disappeared. The official word of the company was that she had been relieved of her responsibility after an issue during that last trip, but we knew that there was much more to it than that. The University was extremely touchy about the program with the Denynso. If she did something to offend them, there could be very serious trouble for her. It was well-known that there were government agencies involved in the exchange program and that there have been conflicts with Earth before. The last thing that either group would want is for a human woman to show up and cause an issue with the warriors.”

  “So, what do you think happened to her?” Lila asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I know it’s more than just her leaving her position and going off to do something else. If that was the case, we would have heard about it. Someone would have seen her or at least talked to her. You don’t just disappear when your job ends. If I had to guess, I would say that the Denynso got in touch with the University to tell them what she had done and when she arrived back on Earth they handed her over to the government agency overseeing the cooperation between the two planets.”

  “What would that mean?” Lila asked.

  “That would depend on what really happened,” Elise said. “If it was something serious enough, she could have been sent to a prison facility on Earth or even one of the intergalactic prison colonies.”

  “Prison colonies?” Lila asked. “Isn’t that what was here? I thought that that is what caused the problems with the human crew.”

  “The colony on Penthos was illegal,” Elise explained. “At the time, the cooperation agreements were very new and some of them were still being designed. The idea of punishment for criminal behavior and the expected treatment of species on planets that were overtaken by others was hotly debated. It was one of the most pressing issues of the agreements and part of what had taken so long to get all of them formally settled. Most people believe that is part of why Nyx 23 was kept a clandestine mission. They didn’t have the intention of revealing any of their work until they had found the evidence their intelligence told them that they would, and were able to put the steps into place to begin resolution. Unfortunately, that’s not how it happened. Instead, everyone found out about it because they went missing.”

  Elise felt a chill go through her. Her entire life she had heard about Nyx 23 and the tragedy of their loss. Coming up with reasons that they had disappeared and stories of what had happened to them was a popular pastime for many people, and there had been countless books and raving demonstrations based on the conspiracies that grew out of these discussions. She remembered sitting at the top of the stairs when she was a child, peering down through the spindles at the party her parents were hosting. She was supposed to have been asleep hours before, but Elise couldn’t sleep when she knew that there were adults filling the home and talking about the wondrous and interesting things that she never got to hear about. Though much of the conversation had been dull at first, soon the direction of the conversation shifted to Nyx 23. It was a favorite topic of her father, though she never understood why. He had his own strong opinions about it, including a harsh condemnation of mission control for not reporting them missing sooner or being more upfront about the mission itself.

  Elise had heard all of these thoughts before, but that night there was something new. A man who she had never seen stepped into the conversation and presented the idea that the team didn’t die on Penthos or go off track and disappear into deep space where their ship would be destroyed by the environmental forces. That had stopped the conversation, creating a tense, uncomfortable silence that settled over the room.

  “What if they lived?”

  It was a question that had seemed so mundane, and yet so impactful. Every other conspiracy theory that she had heard up until that point, even in just the small snippets that she had been able to glean from listening in on conversations, were dramatic and complicated, sounding outlandish even to a child. There were people who believed that the crew had, in fact, returned to Earth and been integrated into other scientific programs to watch how the story of their mission spread as a means of researching meme theory and use it as an instrument of population control. There were others who felt that the crew themselves had been a different species who had come to Earth generations before and hadn’t been able to leave because of travel restrictions, so they came up with the idea of the mission to allow them to leave and return to their home planet without detection. Still more tried to convince anyone who would listen that the mission had never happened at all, and that the entire story was a complex and intricate cover for another tactical move, using the images of people who had died in other missions or who had been sent to prison colonies to serve life for crimes that the government didn’t want to admit.

  That one question, though, was different. It was simple and straightforward. That made it at once more plausible and more unbelievable. Elise remembered that the adults at the party had quickly shut down that train of thought, dismissing it as quickly and easily as they had accepted more ridiculous concepts, and soon after that the guests had left and Elise had snuck back to bed before she was caught. She had though
t about that question for many months, waiting for the next party that may give her the opportunity to hear more from that unknown man. But it never came. She never saw that man again or heard mention of his theory. Soon, the thought seemed to leave her mind and she didn’t contemplate it again. Not until now.

  “Did you know?” Elise asked.

  Lila looked at her strangely.

  “Know what?” she asked.

  “About the Nyx 23 crew,” Elise said. “Did you know who they really were?”

  Lila shook her head.

  “You have to remember that the humans had been locked in place by the Covra for more than one hundred years when the Denynso found them and released them. The Mikana hadn’t had any interaction with them since before they were locked and had long been distanced from the Denynso. By the time that the warriors came to our kingdom to ask for help, no one was still alive who had engaged with them. Some of the elders remember their parents and grandparents talking about them, and even going out to look for the settlement after their interaction stopped, but they never found them.”

  “But wouldn’t they have told your kind? Wouldn’t they have talked about where they came from and what had happened to them? Maybe the Mikana would have been able to help them and get them back to Earth.”

  Lila shook her head again.

  “No,” she said. “The Mikana and the humans didn’t connect until well after their arrival on Uoria. By then, I suppose the group had settled into place and felt that they had their home.”

  “Or they didn’t trust you,” Elise said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “They didn’t know that Uoria even existed,” Elise said. “They didn’t know anything about your kind, even less than they knew about the Valdicians. How would they know that they could trust you, or that you weren’t a part of the group that caused them to crash?”

  “We helped them,” Lila said. “The Mikana living in the kingdom at the time taught them about Uoria and how to find food, build their settlement better, everything. How could they think that they were cooperating with a species trying to hurt them?”

  Elise shrugged.

  “I’ve never been through what they have, so I can’t guess what they were thinking or going through.”

  They women fell silent and Elise walked back out of the building to check on the food. The bread was ready to bake and she tucked it into the dugout oven near the blazing fire. Her ears strained for the sound of the men approaching, or even the drums, anything that would tell her that something was happening beyond the wall of the compound.

  “Did knowing about the other flight attendant make you worry when you met the Denynso?”

  Elise glanced over her shoulder and saw Lila standing beside the pot, distributing the finished stew into a large tureen so that she could start another batch. There was a level of forced levity in her voice as if she were trying to make the question that she asked less serious.

  “I guess a little,” Elise said. “But at the same time, I knew that it was her that did something wrong that caused whatever happened to her, not them. All I knew about the Denynso was that they are fierce, violent warriors. There were rumors that these men are insatiable, and that some of them are so powerful and even ruthless toward women that they avoid them all together until they have a partner. That was intimidating.”

  “I suppose you didn’t know about their mating tradition?” Lila asked.

  It was said playfully, a gentle tease from another woman who was in the same position that she had been, falling in love with a man outside of her species who was known not just for their fierce fighting, but also for their intense devotion to their mates.

  “I didn’t,” Elise said with a laugh. “But there was something about Azra. As soon as I saw him, something inside me changed. It was like I somehow knew that there was something special about us.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Elise started toward the pump to gather more water for the next batch of stew and Lila felt into step beside her with another large pitcher in her hand.

  “It all happened so quickly. I couldn’t believe how strong my feelings for him were or how much I was longing for him. Finding him in that ship and bonding with him was so impulsive, so unlike anything that I had ever done. I knew that it wasn’t a smart choice. We only had the short time from when we left Uoria until we arrived on Earth. I had to continue on with my work and had only a brief time to spend with him. I was worried that that meant that I was going to lose him so soon after I found him, but he reassured me that that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Of course not,” Lila said. “He is totally devoted to you. As a Denynso, he’s been waiting for you his entire life and will love you with unimaginable depth and passion every day of your life, whether you are standing right beside him or are a galaxy away.”

  Elise filled the containers that they carried and they started back toward the fire. There was an ache forming in the base of her throat as she poured water into the now-empty pot and heard the hiss as it reacted to the heat from the fire beneath. She felt her shoulders drop as a long sigh escaped from her lungs.

  “It seems so unfair,” she said. “I have spent every day that we’ve been apart thinking about when we would finally be able to be together. I have wanted so much to be able to take care of him the way that his mate should. To cook for him. Make sure his home is clean and ready for him when he gets home. I thought that it would be months until I was able to even begin doing those things for him. Now here I am, taking care of him the way that I’d been dreaming, but these are the circumstances that brought me here.”

  Chapter Three

  The sound of the drums had begun again. It was pounding in Azra’s ears, mimicking his pulse until he felt like they had replaced his heart itself and was now trembling through his body. He knew that meant that they were coming. More of the hybrid army was coming their way, fresh and unburdened by the tiredness of already having fought. He looked back over his shoulder at Ero and saw that Ciyrs was kneeling beside him, trying to perform a healing as quickly as he could. The procedure made both men more vulnerable and the healer needed to get through it as fast as possible so that he could return to fighting and Ero would be safer.

  Around him Azra could feel the energy of the battle shifting. The group led by Pyra and Maxim had been strong and dominant when they first began to fight, but now that was waning. The men were growing tired and injuries had pushed some of them back. Though they were still fighting with everything in them, some struggling through the blood in their eyes and obvious wounds, the new wave of hybrid soldiers was beginning to arrive, and Azra could see a look of worry beginning to form in the eyes of the those who hadn’t before faced such a fierce battle.

  War had never been like this. There had never been a battle that Azra hadn’t felt completely confident in facing. Even when they had stormed the laboratory and the first time that they had encountered the hybrids in the corridor, he hadn’t allowed himself even a moment of entertaining the thought that they could be defeated. They might not know exactly what they were facing. He might be concerned about his own ability to face down the creatures and come out victorious. But there was never a moment that he felt that defeat may be imminent. Now he was starting to wonder if this was that moment. If this could be the time that the Denynso were unable to overcome a challenge that was set before them and would have no other choice but to let Ryan’s cruel and disturbing plans come to fruition.

  Azra tilted his head to the sky and let out the loudest battle yell that his lungs could create. The feeling of the cry pulsing through him and pouring out of his throat revived him and washed his mind clean of the negative thoughts. He felt new energy rush to the tips of his fingers and through his legs, taking the stiffness and soreness that had formed in his muscles away.

  Having to trust that Ciyrs would be able to handle Ero on his own, Azra surged back into the battle, fighting with even greater feroci
ty as the first fresh soldiers came down on him. He wanted them to see him, to look into his eyes and see that he wasn’t going to back down. There was no fear. There was no hesitation. If he died, he would die with Elise in his mind, the power of the Denynso in his heart, and a battle cry on his lips.

  The night around him had become so deep and the light from the torches and lanterns around the battlefield so scarce that Azra was able to see the sparks that leapt from blades crashing against each other. They jumped through the sky like tiny shooting stars and suddenly Azra’s mind rushed to Rilex. He still hadn’t seen him and he was worried that he had encountered danger when he left the ship and journeyed across the planet in pursuit of the hybrid woman. Even if Rilex was able to escape whatever it was that he had faced, the darkness might make it nearly impossible for him to find his way back, making him even more vulnerable to the dangers that awaited all of them.

  Suddenly Azra heard a gasping scream ripple through everyone on the battlefield as if they were all reacting in turn to something. He turned away from the man who know lay at his feet and saw a bright light moving toward him through the purplish blackness beyond the clash. The light was moving, shifting as it approached like it was being carried by something, but it was higher in the sky than even a Denynso warrior could have held it. The fighting around him slowed as everyone turned their attention toward the approaching light and the silhouette that was becoming more evident against the sky.

  The shape became more defined quickly and soon Azra realized that it was a huge animal unlike anything that he had ever seen. Walking on four massive legs with thick fur that nearly brushed the sand from where it hung from its belly and chest, the creature had a head so large that the eyes it contained appeared larger than Azra’s hand. His eyes traveled up to its back where he saw the hybrid woman he had heard Eden call Severine sitting astride it. She seemed to be gripping its fur in one hand to keep herself securely in place while holding a large torch above her head with the other, but the creature wasn’t resisting the pressure. Instead, it appeared to be walking along willingly, its pace steady as it approached. Azra took a step forward and noticed that there was another figure walking in the deeper shadow cast by the creature. After a moment, he realized that it was Rilex.