Warriors Of Cadir (A Sci Fi Alien Romance Collection)

by Maia Starr

And just like that, her whole demeanor changed.

  “Fine,” she said and shook my hand. “One week, friend.”

  I shrugged. “That’s all I need.”

  Chapter Eight

  Hazel

  One week.

  That’s all I needed from Orylis in order to get my bearings. If I could guarantee myself a week of safety by pretending to be cooperative, that would be just enough time for Theren or Nariva to find me.

  Orylis decided on three locations to show me. At the very least, I thought, it would be good information to bring back to Theren if they planned an attack on the mainlands.

  The first place he took me was Titan—the Atherien city.

  Foolishly, I assumed all Atherien’s lived in the forests in caves or tents or something.

  I was very, very wrong.

  Veynore had been kind to me since I’d arrived in the wilds. In the role of ‘good cop/bad cop’, he was, by far, the good one. But once we took to the Titan district, Veynore seemed disinterested in continuing his role.

  The lack of his presence made me nervous. It meant it was just Orylis showing me around the city. I wanted to see the mainlands—more than anything. I had wanted to come out here since we landed on Cadir. But being around Orylis made me feel… odd.

  He had this pull to him, an energy my body seemed drawn to. Rude as he was, the more I looked at him, the more attractive I found him. There was an underlying sensuality that had my eyes wandering.

  It made me nervous.

  “Ready to be wowed?” Orylis asked wryly and raised a brow to me as we entered the grand city.

  My eyes beamed as I took in the views of Titan. The ‘blue’ city.

  Like the floating islands in the plenks, the mainland cities were built in the sides of mountains.

  The structures were massive, like some ancient sandstone city. The arched doorways and intricate carvings that lined the front of the buildings gave them a grand, royal feel. Unlike similar cities I'd learned about through my geological studies, like the ancient city of Petra, these wonders were not just a cave inside.

  The insides of the buildings were lush, smooth, and furnished. It seemed like I was wrong about the mainlands being uncivilized in their designs.

  The mainland city was lush and green, with beautiful purple veneers for their home fronts. The buildings were easily one-hundred-and-fifty-feet-tall, and often the stones had been shrouded over by moss, trees, and vines. This gave it a secret garden feel: some city hidden away, with just the glow of the purply blue stone beneath the greenery alerting onlookers to its presence.

  “What is this?” I asked, setting a hand on the flat surface and feeling the heat radiate onto my palm.

  “Cavulure,” he said simply. “Absorbs the heat and contains it so we don't freeze out at night.”

  I nodded, fascinated. “Why is it purple?”

  “Why is it...?” he winced. “It’s blue.”

  I laughed. “Fine. Why is it blue?”

  “It’s purple,” he said with a confused laugh and looked me over.

  “It’s blue,” I said, and he began to laugh harder.

  “It’s purple,” he argued back childishly and set a hand against the stone curiously and then looked back to me with a broad smile. “Is that a problem?”

  “Just with your eyes,” I scoffed.

  Somehow being with him felt more like being with a fellow adventurer and less like being with a viscous captor.

  The city was vast, with secret crevices and amazing buildings. Orylis had told me about how his mother had begun their rebellion and that the celebration of that date was coming up.

  He told me about growing up as an outcast.

  “The Gilds were always this untouchable, unhelpful, class, you know?” he said to me one night, standing by his fireplace.

  I sat on the floor in front of it and looked up at him. I wondered how Theren would feel when he found out I was gone. He would be so worried. Yet, the deeper we delved into Atherien culture, the less I thought about him and the more engrossed I became in Orylis.

  “My mother taught me everything I needed to know about being Dendren,” he explained, and I nodded along, fixated on his story. “How to behave, how to inspire our men, what’s important and what isn’t.”

  I laughed and raised a glass of liquor to him as I cheered, “And you ignored every single piece of advice you got!”

  He set a hand against the shimmering stone veneer of the fireplace and turned to face me before bursting into a large laugh.

  “Basically, yeah!” he agreed.

  “I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” I said. “Throwing caution to the wind, starting your own rebellion, fighting for something you believe in like that.”

  “Hey, give yourself some credit,” he said. “You came to a new planet. No idea what the Parduss were going to be like.”

  I blinked in surprise. “You’ve never been to another planet?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not to Earth?” I asked, narrowing my brows and watching him crouch down and take a seat on the warm stone floor across from me.

  He leaned against the bottom of a plush chair, the firelight radiating against his face and casting warm shadows across both of us. “No,” he answered again. “Why?”

  “I thought…” I trailed off.

  He laughed and pierced his amber eyes at me. “You thought I was part of the L7 wars?” he asked, speaking of the famous war between Earth and the Parduss—the first time they had ever stolen women: kidnapped them successfully to take back to Cadir and breed with.

  I shrugged. “Sorry, but yeah.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “The Atherien had no part in that.”

  “Did you want to?”

  He shook his head again. “Not at all. We thought it was disgusting.”

  My face flushed and I stared down into my glass before taking another sip.

  “Not you,” he corrected with some humor. “Not the humans themselves. But taking them against their will.”

  “Ironic, coming from you,” I snorted.

  “Oh, come on,” he laughed before taking another sip. “You love it here. This isn’t a kidnapping; it’s a vacation for you, as far as I’m concerned.”

  I laughed at that and felt my heart flip as he spoke: part of me worried that he might have been right. Here I was, with my ‘captor,’ having a drink by the firelight and talking about our lives and thoughts.

  Was it… wrong?

  “They did it to us, too,” he said, calmer now. “Took our women. All that was left was my mother.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that. She must have been an amazing woman.”

  “She was…”

  That night was special to me. It was the start of something new between Orylis and me.

  But it wasn’t until we reached the lakes that my relationship with him truly changed.

  Part of me thought I would be rescued by then, though Orylis continued to remind me how nefarious the wildlands were and how allegedly impossible it would be for the ‘Gilds’ to venture in without getting hurt.

  It had been weeks that I’d been gone now.

  Touring Titan took several days, and I’d felt myself growing terrifyingly close to Orylis. Suddenly Titan felt more like family land than a strange place: its locals already friendly and willing to have me in their midst.

  I had wanted to stay in Titan even longer, but the tour had to go on.

  The tour across the mainland continued until I found myself in a familiar spot. The rivers.

  Here I was thinking this was going to be some kind of romantic stroll in the unknown land when the whole time it was just on the outskirts of the mainlands. The same place all of our scientists had been brought to do their research.

  I’d seen the ‘rivers’ about a hundred times already.

  I felt slightly sick now, wondering why he had taken me back so close to the plenks.

  “I’ve been here,
” I said firmly, trying not to sound too annoyed.

  He shrugged and offered me a playful, guarded smile. “And? I told you I would show you the main sights of the wilds. The rivers are one of them.”

  “I didn’t know you guys came out this far,” I said.

  He laughed. “We don’t live underground! We do need food and water just like everyone else.”

  “I know,” I laughed, “I just meant… this is where the humans come to research.”

  “I’m aware,” Orylis nodded, running a hand through his short hair. I couldn’t read him today. “We’ve seen them here. Well, I haven’t,” he corrected, “but I’ve heard reports.”

  “So, what exactly did your mother’s army do?” I asked, finally curious about exactly what he and his people had been doing out in the wilderness for all those years.

  He gave me a funny stare: intense eyes looking sideways at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Were you at war? What was life like out there? I mean, I know how the plenks live, but I’m not really sure about… like, I haven’t heard anything about the Atherien except that they’re…” I paled.

  “Bad?” He laughed.

  I shrugged and smiled bashfully at him. “Sorry.”

  He raised his brows as we walked along the edge of the water and I followed in front of him, tracing my hands along the water.

  The river rippled and twisted from beneath the water: tiny spirals of an underwater tornado—or so I liked to think. We walked by the stone wall that surrounded the water, and I ran my fingertips into the milky liquid as we passed. The wall came up to my navel, making it easy to dip our hands in.

  “Well,” he said before taking a noticeably nervous gulp of breath. He pointed out toward the massive footbridge that connected the mainlands to Renden—the island where I lived.

  “As promised,” he said tensely. “I brought you home.”

  I narrowed my brows and looked over at him. “Really?”

  If I sounded surprised, it’s because I was. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I thought would happen at the end of the week with the Atherien.

  How do you let yourself out of an adventure? How do you come into an otherworldly life and then never learn how it ends?

  I could feel my heart pounding viciously against my chest as I stared along the paths of impossible green and down toward the footbridge.

  “You never know,” he laughed bitterly. “Maybe they’ll go easy on us when you tell them we just let you go.”

  I forced a polite laugh and stared down at the ground.

  “You’re just… letting me go?” I asked, surprising myself. The lost, confused laugh that escaped his lips suddenly disappeared: his face contorting into a sullen, dire expression.

  “You’re not my prisoner,” he said evenly and speared me with a deep, soulful stare. He swallowed, and I could see him gesturing toward the bridge.

  “You didn’t finish the tour,” I interrupted before he could say anything. “You should have done this location last,” I scolded playfully, ‘tsk’ing’ a finger toward him. “I want the full tour or the deal’s off,” I mocked with flirtatious, raised brows.

  A bright smile curved the corners of his lips, and he gave an understanding nod.

  “You’re right,” he said slowly. “I guess I’m a shoddy tour guide.”

  “Well, that goes without saying,” I said in a mock huff. “Now, show me the river properly this time.”

  He raised his brows, thoroughly amused, and did an exaggerated bow toward me. I climbed the side of the wall and slipped a foot into the warm, milky water the same way I had every time I came out to the mainlands.

  The sun was setting, casting a gold shadow over the green land and making the water feel fluorescent.

  I was never the type of person who just jumped into a pool. I liked to wade my way in and let my body adjust, whether the water was warm or cold.

  Clearly, Orylis didn’t know this as he tackled me from behind, pushing me into the glowing, crystal clear water with a playful growl.

  We splashed into the water face-first and both sunk into its depths.

  I opened my eyes under the liquid, rolling my hands to help keep me under the water.

  Orylis shot me a devilish grin, raising a coy brow before gesturing down to his tail. It was swishing from side to side and keeping him balanced. I’d always thought his tail seemed so dragon-like, but now that we were underwater, it felt more like something aquatic.

  His scales seemed to glow and shimmer under the water, the scaled gills opening wildly the deeper we sank.

  My eyes went wide, the water stinging them. I realized that Orylis probably didn’t need to come up for air, but I did.

  I rolled my eyes playfully as he swished around in the lake and I began to ascend to the top. I had to catch my breath soon, or I would burst.

  Orylis frowned and grabbed my foot, pulling me back down to him. He grabbed my waist and brought my body against his. Then he tilted my chin up and pressed his lips against mine.

  He was… kissing me?

  My heart stopped, and I had the sudden urge to cry: adrenaline rushing through me. He backed away and began to laugh at the shock on my face.

  “Open your mouth,” he instructed, his voice muffled under the deep water.

  Shocked, I opened mouth, and he followed suit, connecting our lips once more and pushing fresh air into my lungs.

  I could feel my face getting hot under the water, and there was an excited, sinking feeling that repeated over and over in my chest as his lips left mine.

  I felt stupid.

  He wasn’t kissing me.

  Well, he was. But for life-saving purposes, I told myself.

  He took my hand and used his tail to propel us even deeper into the lake, breathing into me every time I squeezed his hand for air. I had no idea the water went down this far.

  It was absolutely beautiful.

  The further down we went, the more the rocks below began to glow a velvety pink. The building pressure from the depths was too much for me then, and I had to let go of him and swim back up.

  I took a heaping breath when I came up from the deep water and fixed my hair, trying to straighten my bangs to look as presentable as possible before he came back up.

  Then my stomach sank.

  What did I care what I looked like to Orylis?

  I set my jaw at the thought and shook it off as he came up with a giant splash.

  “Your face!” he laughed, deep and husky as he emerged from the water.

  “Shut up!” I laughed, embarrassed, and pushed a wave of water toward him with the palm of my hand. “How was I supposed to know you could do that?”

  “Atherien,” he said, whipping his wet hair back.

  “You say that like it’s supposed to clear everything up,” I teased.

  “Ah,” he said knowingly. “It means water dragon.”

  “Oh!” I blinked, spinning in the water so I could reach the stone wall and use it as leverage. “I didn’t know that.”

  Orylis swam up behind me and pushed me into the thick, stone wall and whispered, “You thought I was kissing you.”

  I swallowed. “No,” I stifled an embarrassed laugh.

  “Here,” he pulled his hand up from the water and handed me a tiny rock: a glowing pink orb no bigger than a grape.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “One of the glowstones,” he said, and I let out an amused breath. “Well, I don’t know! Aren’t you the rock expert?” he teased.

  “Geologist,” I corrected and raised the pink orb to what remained of the sunlight. I set the rock on the side of the stone wall to save for later.

  “Maybe you can solve the mystery,” he said, setting his arms on either side of the rock behind me so that we were face to face.

  A mass of chirps and stringed-insects began to play their songs as the sun went down, signifying that night had finally arrived.

  I looked at Orylis and could fe
el my breasts heaving with excitement to be this close to him.

  “What did you do when you came to the mainlands?” he asked, bringing his body closer to mine.

  “I…” I said stupidly, feeling the hard length of him against my belly. “Don’t know.”

  He smirked, and in a low voice he teased me, “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t say,” I said finally, setting my jaw. “Explored, I guess.”

  He studied me but said nothing. There was just the sound of the night around us and the water splashing against our bodies.

  Orylis was alluring in a way I couldn’t describe. He wasn’t overtly handsome like Theren: muscular, but not impossibly built like the… what should I call them now? Gilds?

  I’d never thought of them that way before. But sure. Not in the way the Gilds were.

  No. He wasn’t handsome, but he was undeniably sensual.

  With a nervous breath, I lifted my fingers to the side of his face and moved my thumb over his lips. He had sharp, amber eyes that seemed full of secrets. A beautifully square jaw that moved in a captivating way when he spoke.

  But the thing that I found most attractive about him was his color. Part of the reason I loved the wilds so much was the fluorescent colors that could be found there. Nature at its most vibrant.

  That’s exactly how Orylis looked. Vibrant.

  He had dark hair that was contrasted by these intensely aquamarine scales and wings. It made me wonder what he looked like in full form.

  I could feel my body sink into his and I wrapped my legs around him. I was excited and wet, and then I realized… I was waiting for him to kiss me.

  I wanted it.

  My heart sped up even faster, and I did the wrong thing. I waited for him to make a move—but he never did.

  Chapter Nine

  Orylis

  It had been three weeks since Hazel had graced Titan with her presence. We spent every day together, talking and exploring the still unknown valleys of the mainlands together.

  “Who knew when I brought you into a storm that you’d like it?” I whispered to Hazel as we watched the Atherien ritual festival. We’d held the festival every year for as long as I could remember to celebrate the day my mother had been crowned Dendren. The beginning of our revolution.