Taken to Nobu: A SciFi Alien Romance (Xiveri Mates Book II)

by Elizabeth Stephens

  She falls to her knees and places her ridges to the floor — an ultimate sign of humilation. “Heffa, Okarri, heffa…”

  “You must know that begging will not save you now. Tell me what you have done here. Tell me what has become of the Xhea.” Kiki, where are you?

  “I did nothing, Okkari! The Xhea…it was her. She asked me to help her escape. She asked me to take her place in the furs. She had no desire to be bred by you and wished to return to her people. I did not want to, but she is my Xhea. What other choice did I have, Okkari?”

  My whole body turns to stone. Weakness assaults me and it is a crippling, alien sensation. I cannot believe it. I cannot dare to believe it. Not after what we shared. The previous lunar tore me apart. I am not the male I was when we began and and after our last breeding, I have never felt closer to another living soul. Her Xaneru speaks to mine as if they were, at some single, infinitesimal point in the creation of the universe, one whole. Is it possible that what Kuaku says is true? Did she truly mean to leave me? Or is Kuaku up to something much more sinister, just as she was before?

  “This is not the first time you have lied to your Okkari on this solar. You will tell me where my Xiveri mate is now and you will speak the truth or I will not hesitate to banish you to the endless ice ocean where you may live out your few remaining days alone with the frost,” I tell her in an even tone, colder than the first icefall.

  “She just wanted out, my Okkari. I advised her that east was too dangerous, so I believe she may have gone west.”

  I hiss, “You are lying. Had she gone west, she would have stumbled into the village. The icefall has already begun. You know as well as anyone that the village is busy preparing and battening down. She would have been seen and I would have been alerted immediately.”

  Pink fear colors her face then before the emotion is extinguished. By her own ridges, she is betrayed. I lift Kuaku from the ground by her shoulders and shake her flaccid form. “Tell me where she is!”

  Pink flares again, the brightest I’ve ever seen, followed by a sickly shade. Regret. It will not save her. “East,” she says, “she went east.”

  I drop her and she hits the stones below with a squeal. “And what of Kuana? Where was she in this?” I ask, already activating my life drive and sending a message to four of my nearest warriors and three of my best trackers to prepare my dreya and meet me at my home’s east entrance. If she has gone out onto the eastern tundra, then we have few moments to waste.

  Kuaku rocks back and forth and shakes her head, genuflecting before me like the coward that she is. “I…” She shakes her head. “She’s in her quarters. I locked her in.”

  I roar out my frustration, unwilling to waste anymore words on this female now. Not when I have allowed this creature into my home, to care for my Xiveri mate and such an act has put her in direct danger.

  I prepare myself at speed before racing through my home, down black and then white corridors until I reach the east entrance. The doors glide open as they sense my approach and I am assaulted by the first icefall’s earliest breaths.

  While we on Nobu are suited to this weather, she is not, and it will soon come down much more severely. At its deepest point, winter drives even the most bold of our villagers back into their home. For Kiki, mere instances could mean the difference between life and death.

  I leap the steep steps of my home and sink into plush snow up to the shins. I charge through the white to where my dreya await, fastened to their ice glider, the first of my trackers already arrived and awaiting me in the transparent hull of his own glider.

  Fierce beasts, my dreya stand on six legs and measure the height of a Voraxian male. Covered in shaggy fur and with short necks, but square blocks for teeth, they make for fierce battle companions and swift carriers in times of peace. Travel by transporter is forbidden in these temperatures, which often cause even our most advanced technologies to freeze.

  By the time I am ready and strapped into the ice glider’s hull, my remaining warriors and trackers have gathered. I give only one swift signal before beginning to carve a path east. She has had little time and in these conditions would not have been able to move at speed. She would not have been able to reach the next village of Tannen. Unfortunately. There, she would have been found and I would have been alerted. She would have been given quarter, shown hospitality, and been kept warm in the time it took for me to come for her. Now she is exposed.

  “Okkari, don!” Comes Cal’El’s hail from behind me. I rear up on the holo reins I carry and come to a sharp stop. Through the clear fiber shell of the hull that carries me, I see the dreya in front of me impatiently stamp their feet. They are loyal, hardened creatures. The storm would not usually put them on edge like this…

  And then I hear it. An ancient beast’s wail followed by a female’s scream — my female — and she screams for me. “Okkari!” Chills rocket up my spine and an explosion goes off in my chest.

  “It’s a hevarr!” My tracker, Cal’El roars over the sound of the storm.

  I do not answer him, but snap my reigns, taking off further east than the course we had set. Kuaku, the sniveling welp, the treacherous hasheba. If what she has said is true at all and my Xiveri mate was looking to escape, she would have needed help. Someone to guide her. Someone to tell her where to find the transporters. Kuaku knows where they are, just north of my home, cut into the mountain. She would have had to give direction to my Kiki to come here with the express intent to kill her. She lied to her, just as she attempted to lie to me. And a sick, distant part of me feels relief that just perhaps my Xhea does not revile me so much that she wanted to run, but that she too was deceived.

  Another scream lights the bright sky and the ghost of a pain ripples up my right leg as we ride. I ready the ice spear I carry as well as the ion blaster I keep strapped across my back. It has been many rotations since our hunters have faced off against a hevarr and it is likely not all in my war party will survive.

  When we arrive at the source of the screech, I am sure of it.

  The hevarr here is fully matured, easily visible even against the wind and mist engulfing it. My Xhea, on the other hand, is not. I bellow a battle cry as grief shatters through me and my warriors roar out their response. The collective noise, undampened by the snow, startles the hevarr, which hunt blind and rely solely on sound and vibrations to source their prey.

  It turns towards us and as it shifts, my gaze flits rapidly over the white tundra, swept with ice and gales of wind carrying thickening snow. And against so much white, a small dark smear. She lies on her back, staring up at the creature with an expression of horror — one that recognizes that even if she were armed, which she isn’t, she alone would stand no chance against such a creature.

  But all that matters to me, is that she lives.

  “Kiki,” I roar, and I would never have used her slave name and disgraced her in such a way were it not so urgent. But it is effective. Across the gulley that separates us, she looks at me, and I can see her human gaze struggling to hone in on my features where my vision remains unaffected by the distance and can see her perfectly. I can see how her chest quakes. How she mutters her funny, human curse that she sometimes says in the heat of our rutting. Oh comets. And then, Thank the stars. Thank the stars. Okkari…

  The Xanaxana in my chest beats harder for her as rage and fear and honor and duty and something greater than all of these disparate parts overcomes me. I roar out another battle anthem and charge the feral creature. It releases a screech of its own and then the white world around us shatters as the Okkari within me rises to defend his own.

  10

  Okkari

  The sweeping tentacles came in violent blows, like the crushing arms of Xana herself, while the acid ink spewed like the deadliest sleet. Three of ours fell before I was able to kill the creature — a kill that would not have been possible without Re’Okkari’s sacrifice.

  In the end, he engaged two of the creature’s limbs at once while t
he remaining warriors severed its third. His attack put him close to the creature’s mouth in a position where he was unable to avoid the hevarr’s acidic saliva. Still, he remained planted where he was, even as the saliva chewed him apart.

  Using the distraction of all the creature’s limbs at once, I was able to come in at Re’Okkari’s side and stab the creature through with my black glass and Droherion spear — a new design by the Rakukanna. The end of the blade seared as it cut, cleaving a hole through to the hevarr’s small brain.

  It fought, even as it died, splintering my spear and releasing one last gale of spray that I caught with my left forearm, flaying the skin from my flesh where it landed. Flopping desperately against the hole in the ice it created, it dislodged several shelves. Va’El’s body went down, but another of my warrior’s dove after it. I swept Re’Okkari aside and helped Cra’El and Ren’El secure the hevarr and afterwards, I issued terse orders to the rest to secure the fallen soldiers and dreya while I tend my Xiveri mate.

  I remove my left sleeve and pack the raw skin with ice before jumping from floating ice-shelf to floating ice-shelf until I reach the other edge of the hole the hevarr created. There, I find my Xhea standing in wait — I might have said proudly, if not for the tremble in her chin.

  “Are you hurt?” Bitter anger and deep grief make it difficult to speak.

  She shakes her head and flinches when I reach for her. Snarling, I grab her nonetheless and run with her back to the other side of the broken ice, where my warriors and dreya prepare our return. I set her down in the hull of my glider where she is shielded by the wind.

  As I climb in after her, I cannot control my wild and untamed pitch. “What were you thinking!”

  She starts to shake — quite badly now — but she does not look at me. Nox, her gaze remains fixed to Re’Okkari’s body. It lies prone but a pace to her right, already prepared for transport. I curse this day, for it has claimed the life of one of my warriors and two dreya at least — I still do not know the status of Va’El or the injuries of my other warriors. And right now, I just need to know what for. Even if I must debase myself and ask her question after question, I will have answers from her.

  I slam my fist onto the slick floor, my hair shaking loose around my face in wet locks. “Answer me! Why did you run? Were you deceived? How did you end up here?”

  “He’s dead?”

  The grief that shines in her too wet eyes overwhelms my Xanaxana. I falter before her now, even though in front of a fully matured hevarr, I did not.

  “Hexa,” I answer her through gritted teeth. If she ran, she needs to be punished, but I find that I cannot do that either.

  She is tight and huddled and reaches out to touch a shredded strip of the covering that binds him. The flesh that contained his Xaneru but a quarter solar before is now still. Hands cross over his chest, his body is wrapped securely in the vestiges of his hide coverings. Having been lashed by the hevarr spray, it disintegrated the outside of his suit before tunneling inwards.

  “It is thanks to him that the creature was slain. Knowing he was going to die, he advanced on the creature, delivering the blow that distracted it and allowed me to get close enough to the creature to kill it. Without his sacrifice, it is likely more would have died, or been gravely injured. And it is because of you. Because you lied to me and then you ran,” I say, lashing out — not because these are truths but because I aim to hurt her. I am to hurt my Xiveri mate. I am a proud male, yet in this moment, I do not feel it.

  Shocking me suddenly, she smashes the heel of her left hand into her forehead while the other wraps around her middle. I reach for her wrists to stop her but she blocks my hands in a well-practiced motion. Furious that she would try to fight me here, I bare all of my teeth and lunge for her.

  She gasps, and then she does something very small. Something damning. She lifts her right arm, splays her fingers, and uses that elbow to shield her face and head. She prepares to be struck like someone who has been struck before, many times, and could not fight back.

  Time stands still. Outside of the clear shell of the hull, the white world rages. In here, in the warmth we share and create together, I take her suspended arm in one hand and I pull it against me. I pull her against me and onto my lap and I clutch her to my chest so tight so that she might know that she is a part of it and I would no sooner strike her than I would my own flesh.

  I allow my Xanaxana to purr its relief, filling the entire hull with its vibrations. Her muscles begin to ease and she hiccups, then covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes are shut tight and she is clutching at her chest.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she finally says, words bursting out of her in a tempest, “An alien wasn’t supposed to die trying to save my life.”

  My anger flares as she makes such an inane delineation between us, and I snarl into her hair, “Alien or human. Voraxian or alien. We are all the same. You dishonor his sacrifice by reducing him in this way.”

  She clenches harder and trembles now with vigor. Turning into my suit, her fingers clutch at the fabric, pulling desperately. I maneuver around her, caught off guard at the sight of warm water coating her face.

  “You make this water again with your eyes…”

  A sob wrenches out of her before I can say more. “Just leave me here. Please…”

  What does she mean? What can she mean? “Do you suggest that after I risk the lives of four warriors, three trackers, three dozen dreya and myself, I should throw you back out in the snow? What do you think?” I seethe, my voice threatening to shatter the fibers of the hull around us. “You are my Xiveri mate! You are our Xhea.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she says and I start.

  Of all the things to say to me. Of all the things to say. I release her and rise to my feet and as I look at her kneeling there on the plastic floor of the hull, a surge of emotion comes on so strong, there is no hope for control. I am a controlled male. I was. But not anymore.

  “You dare!” The words rip out of my throat like a strip of bark torn from a tree. Scarringly.

  She jumps, her bottom jaw trembling. She looks up at me glassy-eyed, but only for an instance. In the next, she rights herself and fumbles for the broken shard of staff I used to kill the creature. Lying there beside Re’Okkari’s body, she snatches it up and lifts it as she rises. In the impossibly small space, she squares off against me like I’m nothing but another hevarr. As if we had not traveled the galaxy’s most distant pleasures just the lunar before. As if we are not all exhausted and wounded and in pain.

  “Lower your weapon immediately.”

  “No.” She lunges at me, but I bat away her first strike with the plates lining my forearm, and then her second. I back away from her as she advances and when the hull doors open, step out into the snow. She chases me into the falling ice, but does not make it far when her right leg gives out. Plunging staff-first into the snow, she nearly skewers herself when her lower half spasms and she cries out. She grabs for her thigh, squeezing it in her gloved fingers. There are five, yet she calls us alien…as if somehow five and not six makes any difference at all.

  I dive down to meet her and wrench her small body across my knees. I reach where her hands are reaching, noticing now tears in her coverings that I hadn’t before. She tries to stop me but I push her hands aside.

  “Get away,” she says. She begs.

  “Xhea, what has gotten into you?”

  “Don’t call me Xhea. I don’t…I don’t deserve…Xhea. I don’t deserve it…” Her head falls back on her neck. Her muscles become slack. There is water on her face carving paths through the ice that has formed. Her lips are blue and her skin is ashen. My Xanaxana writhes wildly in my body and I suddenly cannot breathe. She is dying.

  Fear and panic become me, but I do not have the capacity to staunch the rush of color to my ridges as everything she does denudes and flays me to my bones. “Cra’El! Ka’Okkari!”

  My tracker and warrior come to flank m
e just as I again lower Kiki’s body into the ice glider, my remaining dreya stamping their feet before it. They lost a brother and a sister today, two who had grown up with the litter since birth. They too will feel their own form of sorrow.

  “What is it? What is killing her?” I say. My fingers fly over her body, unwilling to remove her coverings but unsure how to proceed without. Ka’Okkari answers my question as he finishes fastening her legs to the stabilizers.

  “Okkari, here. The hevarr’s spray has maimed her. It has chewed through the top layer of skin.” As he speaks, he takes snow from outside of the glider and packs it against her wound — an effective counter to the effects of the spray.

  Though it may slow the effects, it will not bring back the skin that was already stolen. Not like merillian will. I am overcome by shame. Twice that I will have to place my own Xiveri mate in a merillian tank to save her, because it is twice since the Xanaxana named her as mine that I have nearly allowed Voraxia’s creatures to take her life.

  I draw my holoscreen and issue quick commands to the healers. At the same time, I command my trackers and hunters to disperse and take the remains of the hevarr to Hurr where she and the xub’Hurr will prepare it and treat it for use during the coming icefall. Such a bounty will go a long way. The hides can be tanned and used for a number of purposes. The acid can be reduced for medical supplies and weaponry. The blubber used for soaps and oils. I should have said this and more to my Xhea. To my strange, wounded Kiki who mourns for those she calls alien. It is as if she hates us, yet still grieves for us. I do not understand…

  “Okkari,” she says suddenly and I drop to my knees, allowing autopilot to control our direction for the moment as we fly over the ice, racing towards our home.