The Alien's Mystery (Uoria Mates IV Book 7)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  “It was awful,” Rain admitted. “Our bodies weren’t ours anymore. They had been taken over by another species and used for their own purposes, even though those purposes weren’t what we wanted, and we never would have gone along with it had we been able to prevent it.”

  Ivy nodded.

  “That was only for a time,” she said. “You had a life before the Covra and you have a life now. You can do whatever you please and live whatever life you want to now. They don’t have control over you anymore and you are willing to fight to make sure that no one else has control over you or anyone else on Uoria or anywhere else in the Universe ever again. Imagine what it’s like for the hybrids. Yes, they were bred, born, and raised to be weapons, but they are still alive. They are still people. They have lived their entire lives under the complete control of Ryan and the Valdicians. They aren’t able to make any choices for themselves and know that there is not a point at any time in their lives when they can hope for freedom. Is it so difficult to imagine that this is not what they want to do? You think Ryan is horrible for what he wants to do to the Denynso and the Mikana, for wanting to control them and turn them into weapons that he can use to take over the rest of the Universe for his own purposes. How can you not see the horror of what he has already done to the people who he is using to get to them?”

  Chapter Five

  Severine reached down and placed her hand on the baby’s stomach, gently rocking him to soothe him further into sleep. His face looked sweet and peaceful and she felt a sense of calm come over her. Though he was very small and had struggled when she first got him from Ciyrs and the vehicle in which he was born, he seemed to have gotten stronger in even the small time that she had been caring for him and she was no longer concerned that he might not survive. She felt Rilex wrap an arm around her waist and lean down to kiss her cheek.

  “When is the last time you had something to eat?” he asked.

  Severine thought back, trying to answer him, but realized that she didn’t remember the last meal that she had eaten. She shook her head at him and he took her by the hand to lead her out of the room and back toward the room where they had left their bags. He guided her to sit down and brought his bag over, pulling a few containers out and putting them on the floor in front of her. She watched him as he prepared the rations and divided them into collapsible bowls. He looked up at her as he handed her a bowl and she saw the shooting stars in his eyes again.

  “Will you tell me more about yourself?” she asked.

  Rilex stiffened slightly and sat down in front of her, picking up his own bowl and looking down into it as if hoping that it would tell him what he should say to her. She saw him reach down for one of the packets of food and then put it down and select another before looking up at her again.

  “I already told you about myself,” he said.

  “I know,” Severine said, “but there has to be more. You told me that you come from a different time and place, and that you traveled to Earth through a portal, but that’s really it. I still don’t feel like I don’t know much about you.”

  “Do you need to?” Rilex asked. “I’m here now. I’m with you. It doesn’t matter what happened before.”

  “Of course, it does,” Severine said. “Everything that happened to you before right now is what led you to me. If a single one of those things hadn’t happened, you might never have gotten here. You might not have found your way to Jem and you might not have been at the University when Eden found us.”

  Rilex leaned across their food and touched a kiss to the tip of her nose. Severine smiled at the touch and returned it.

  “I’d like to think that I would have found you no matter what,” he said. “Nothing could have kept me from you.”

  “If you didn’t know that I even existed, how would you be able to find me?”

  “The Universe would have brought me to you,” he said.

  “It did,” Severine said. “How?”

  Rilex gave a resigned laugh and settled back into place.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  Severine smiled. She barely knew what to ask first.

  “You said that Ryan wouldn’t have trained the hybrids to come after you because he didn’t know your species. What species is that? You already told me that your home is in a different time and on a different planet. How? Why did you go through the portal? Did they know that you were missing? Did they ever try to look for you? How long were you gone? Who found you? How did they find you? Why did they come back to Earth? Why did you come to the University if you weren’t with the original group?”

  Rilex laughed again and closed his eyes as if he were trying to let everything that she had asked him process so that he knew where to start. She saw him draw in a breath in preparation.

  “My kind is an ancient species, one that no longer exists and hasn’t in so long that most have forgotten that we ever existed, and even those who have heard of us think that we are nothing more than a myth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Severine said.

  Rilex shook his head and took another bite of the food from his bowl.

  “No reason to be sorry,” he said. “This is the way that it was meant to be.”

  “What do you mean?” Severine asked.

  “My kind was tasked with caring for the stars. Each of us was given the power to create and nurture stars, and to put them in place in the sky. The first of our stars appeared in the sky when we were born and most often, when we died, the stars that we created fell.”

  “Most often?” Severine asked.

  “Yes. Sometimes when one of the race died, some of their stars would fall, while others remained in place. These were often the most important of our kind, or those who had made a tremendous impact when they were still living. During my time, the sky had so many stars it was almost as light as daytime at night. Each of those stars meant something. Over time, it was only those stars that lingered that remained. My species was meant to protect the Universe.”

  “From what?” she asked.

  “There are countless threats against existence. If people knew about them, they would spend their lives terrified. My kind was responsible for ensuring that the Universe was always as safe as it could be. There are threats that I can’t even explain. When the time had come that we had done what we were meant to do and it was time to pass along the protection to others, that is when our kind disappeared. We left behind the work that we had done to protect existence and the light of the stars. When I left my home, a species had emerged that had put all of existence into more danger than it had ever been. My best friend was the ruler at the time. I was his most trusted advisor. The StarKillers had come and destroyed our temple, tossing pieces of it through all of the streams of existence. We had to retrieve them and restore the temple or the Universe would cease to exist. I was seeking out one of the stones when I accidentally stumbled through one of the portals.”

  “You didn’t know that it was there?” Severine asked.

  “No,” Rilex told her. “I had gone through one that we already knew about into a stream that I was positive contained more than one of the stones. I was trying to get back when I accidentally found another portal that brought me to Earth.”

  “And you had no way of communicating with anyone back home?”

  Severine couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Rilex to suddenly lose everything. He’d had a life that he loved and that he was proud of, and in moments one decision had taken that from him.

  “No,” Rilex confirmed. “When I arrived on Earth, I didn’t even know where I was. I knew that the portals brought us through the different places and versions of the streams, but I had never thought that it could transport me through time. I was suddenly in a world that I didn’t understand in a time when my home and everyone I knew and loved had been gone for millennia. There was nothing that I could do to reach out to them, and nothing that they could do to reach out to me. I can only imagine what they thought had c
ome of me.”

  “The only choice that you had was to make another life.”

  Rilex nodded.

  “I spent the first few years learning everything that I could about Earth and its history, and I tried to find out as much as possible about my kind. I was hoping that I would be able to learn what had come of them so that at least I would have some comfort of knowing the type of life that they had lived. But I found very little. That’s when I knew that it was going to be up to me to make sure that what my kind had done and the accomplishments that they had would not be fully forgotten. Some years after I arrived, though, I heard of the HM-1313 wall.”

  “I heard you mention that,” Severine said. “What is it?”

  “It was a discovery made during an archeological excavation far in the desert. There was a team who was researching an ancient civilization and some of the members of the team disappeared when they went into a strange cave outside of the research grid. During that excavation, they also found a wall that they hadn’t discovered before and that didn’t correspond with what they thought that they knew about the civilization that they were researching. They didn’t think that there was a connection between the two.”

  “But there was?” Severine asked.

  Rilex nodded again.

  “The group that disappeared actually went through a portal in the cave. The wall that they found they gave the label ‘HM-1313’ and brought it in for research. Even though they knew that there were things about it that weren’t in line with the civilization and it was found in a place that didn’t make sense, they decided to include it in their understanding of that people and basically made things up about it to make it fit in with what they had already published about that civilization. But I knew that they were wrong. I started looking into it and realized that it wasn’t a wall. It was part of a wall that had once been a piece of our temple.”

  “The temple that had been damaged by the StarKillers?” Severine asked.

  “Yes. It was just one part of the wall, but it was an important piece of it. I knew that it was my connection to my own stream, but that it also meant my stream, and all of existence, was in danger.”

  “I thought that you said that by the time that you arrived here, the Universe was already safe.”

  “I thought that it was. Then I realized that that wall showing up in the desert meant something. I had to find out more about it and do what I could to help. I started researching. I visited the wall and tried to decipher what it said, but it seemed to have been changed from what I remembered it saying. I knew that I wasn’t just going to be able to use it to get home and that I was going to need help. It took a few months, but then a woman named Galadriel called me. She was interested in the wall as well and wanted to work with me to find out more about it. It couldn’t have been more perfect, but I knew that I couldn’t tell her who I was or what the segment of wall really was. Telling her too much could have compromised what needed to be done. I had to let her discover it for herself and just hope that it would work out.”

  “And did it?” Severine laughed.

  “We’re all alive, aren’t we?” Rilex asked. “We aren’t under the control of an overlord?”

  Severine felt heat on her cheeks and glanced away.

  “Are we?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Rilex said. “I only meant that the Universe is still going and we aren’t under the control of the StarKillers. I sent Galadriel on an incredibly dangerous mission that didn’t go the way that I had planned. She ended up going through the portal before I intended her to and ended up not in another place, but another time.”

  “Did she find the others who had already gone through?” Severine asked.

  “No,” Rilex said. “Not at first. They had been gone for five years by this time. They had spread out and not all of them had survived. She did, however, find Vyker, the son of my best friend. He’s grown now and leading in his father’s place. But he was bitter and angry. He didn’t trust anyone and felt that he was the only one who would be able to save his kind and the entirety of existence. He wasn’t willing to accept Galadriel’s help, but she insisted on it. Along the way they encountered the two of the original group that had survived, Jacob and Angela.”

  “The ones in the University? Who traveled back with us?”

  “That’s them,” Rilex said. “They joined Vyker and Galadriel to continue working to restore the temple. They had lost them when they ended up on the planet where they found Jem. He had been missing from the Denynso compound for some time.”

  “Missing?” Severine asked.

  “He was fighting on Uoria, their home planet, and he went through one of the portals. He and the rest of the Denynso thought that he was sacrificing his life to destroy the final members of the enemy army. When he arrived on the new planet, he didn’t know what had happened and had no way of reconnecting with his own planet. They mourned him bitterly, but it was losing him that convinced them to leave their compound and start exploring Uoria, which led them to the humans and the Mikana, the Irisa and the Eteri. It’s what brought them here.”

  “And you?” Severine asked. “That is how the Denynso got to Earth and then to Penthos, but you haven’t told me what happened to you. After you found Galadriel, what happened? Didn’t you go home?”

  “I did. For a time. Galadriel, Vyker, and Jem eventually reunited with Jacob and Angela. When Galadriel and Jem ended up back on Earth, they came to me for help. That’s when we found our way back to my stream and to Vyker. I told you that I decided to come back here because there was more work to do. Vyker had our stream under control and didn’t need my interference. I needed to come back to the life that I had already built. I knew that they would be alright, and that I could get to them whenever I needed to. Jacob stayed with Vyker and Galadriel, Jem went back to his stream, and eventually Angela joined him there.”

  “But if Jem made it back to Earth, why didn’t he stay and go back home? Didn’t he want to go back to Uoria and to his own kind?”

  Severine saw Rilex’s eyes change. There was a sadness in them now.

  “He was afraid,” Rilex said. “He could have found a way to get back to Uoria when he was here, but he knew that Galadriel still needed his help. He had sworn his loyalty to them and he knew that he had to stay true to that. The Denynso are known for being the most powerful and fierce warriors in the Universe, but they are also known for their dedication to loyalty and duty. Even if he had known exactly how he was going to get back to Uoria, Jem wouldn’t have gone if he felt that Galadriel still needed him and that there was something more that he could do. So, he went back.”

  “But when he knew that Galadriel didn’t need him anymore? When everything was alright again, why didn’t he come back to Earth and go home?”

  “Like I said, he was afraid. He didn’t know how long he had been gone and whether the Denynso would welcome him back. It was easier for him to stay away than it was to face the possibility that he would go back and they would reject him.”

  Severine felt her heart clench and tears sting in the corners of her eyes. Though she hadn’t had much time with any of these people, Jem had been one of the ones who had come to the rescue of the hybrids being tortured by the Valdicians, and the women in the breeding facility. He had helped Ciyrs, Elianna, and Jacob take care of the wounded. He was gentler and kinder than the other warriors, but still a fiery and intense fighter. To think that he had gone through something so difficult was upsetting.

  “So how did he end up here? How did you find him again?”

  “When I came back here, I started researching the Denynso. I didn’t know much about them, but interacting with Jem had made me want to know more. As I researched them I started to see rumors about turmoil that was happening on Uoria and an unethical scientist on Earth.”

  “Ryan,” Severine said.

  “I knew that I had to find Jem. Something was going to happen and the Denynso needed him. The only way that I was going to
be able to get to him was to go to my stream and then travel to his planet. It was going to be treacherous and there was a chance that I wasn’t going to be able to find the right portals to go to the places that I needed to go. When I was on my way to the museum that had the first portal that I needed to go to, I heard that there had been a break-in and the intruders had escaped through the front door of the museum. I immediately knew that it was Jem. It wasn’t long before he, Jacob, and Angela got in touch with me and we started to the University.”

  “How did you know that the other Denynso were there?” she asked.

  “We didn’t,” Rilex admitted. “Our plan was to find a way to get to Uoria and to help them from there. When we got to the University, though, we found the others.”

  She could see the expression in his eyes become more serious and she knew that he was thinking about something, but wasn’t ready to tell her.

  “So, Galadriel and Vyker weren’t with him when he came back to Earth?” Severine asked.

  “No,” Rilex said. “He didn’t go to them before he came here. Once he returned to his planet, he didn’t have much to do with them. They were at peace and he was trying to get on with his life on his new planet.”

  “So where are they now?” Severine asked carefully.

  She knew that Vyker and Galadriel were important to Rilex and that it was difficult for him that he didn’t have the opportunity to be with them as he wanted to.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Rilex said. “They are both long-since gone and alive and well. It’s hard for me to think about them.”