Warriors Of Cadir (A Sci Fi Alien Romance Collection)

by Maia Starr

  It was commonly known among the Atherien that the majority of beasts in the wilds only came out at night. While Ivy slept most of the night on me, I stayed up for hours, making sure nothing would come to harm us.

  There was one instance in the night when I heard a twenn making its three-legged run toward us. It was nothing that would kill us, but it had a mild poison that could send a human into shock.

  Just as I got up to move, I watched as the siccus slithered on the ground behind the twenn. My eyes widened as the black gloop wrapped itself quickly around the creature and infected it, burrowing into its side and then slithering back out the open wound. I watched as the twenn turned black and a dark mucus spilled from its mouth.

  It was haunting yet comforting to know that the blackness was always near me. Always waiting.

  “I don’t know what I did when you weren’t around,” Ivy said to me.

  The sentence made me shiver, and I smiled. “I don’t think I want to know,” I teased.

  “I’m serious,” she laughed. “All I keep thinking about is going back to Titan and how much I’m going to miss you tomorrow.”

  “Where am I going tomorrow?” I laughed.

  “Well, hunting, I assume,” she said bashfully. “Or whenever you start up your little missions. I need to be around you.”

  “Then we’re on exactly the same page,” I said.

  A comfortable silence stretched over us, and Ivy nestled into me once more. “We should go,” she said, grinning up at me and then giving a full body stretch.

  I nodded, but it wasn't easy to come back to the mainlands after living out with Ivy out in the wilds. It felt safe there; it felt right to start a home with her and live off the land.

  I felt addicted to her. I couldn’t get enough of thinking of her or being around her. All of her little annoyances had faded away into a thick, syrupy love that seemed nearly impenetrable.

  The needling of mistrust that was still lodged in the back of my mind couldn’t be used as a voice of reason any longer. Anything negative I felt about her was suddenly replaced by the relief of knowing that we were together. She was mine.

  When we came to the city, we were met with utter chaos. There were glowstones shattered and sparking through Titan's city square, the cries of the Gilds cracking like lightning throughout the city.

  I rushed forward, Ivy's hand still locked in mine as I saw Z'echs in the distance, bloody and wounded. He was fully transformed: a vibrant yellow dragon with a thin, spindly tail and sharp, jagged wings. It looked like a portion of his right wing had been ripped off as blood dripped from its frayed edges.

  “What's happened?” I yelled, meeting him at the base of the tower.

  He stood hunched over a dead Gild: a mighty navy-blue shifter that was dead and massacred with gore and ire spilling out everywhere from its body.

  “Where the h'sk have you been?” Z'echs cursed at me, pulling my arm close to him as he shifted back into human form. The blood seemed more intense this time. “Do you have any idea what's going on?”

  “Clearly I don't,” I snapped.

  “Where were you?” he asked, more threatening than I was used to from my friend.

  “In the wilds,” I said quickly. “Z'echs, what's going on?”

  “The Gilds,” he said, heaving a breath. “They've attacked.”

  “...When?”

  “The last night I saw you,” he said. “A Gild snuck into the city and made his way into Veynore's keep.”

  “Is he alive?” I demanded furiously.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Are you?” I asked, eyeing his wounds and looked up at him.

  He smirked at me, shaking his head. “Ask me tomorrow.”

  “What happened?” I said, looking down at the Gild. “The shifter attacked him and...?”

  “Veynore killed him, tossed him from the tower. The Gild's have been trickling in ever since, waging war on the city.”

  I looked beside me at Ivy. I might have asked if she knew this was coming, but the look on her face told me otherwise. She looked terrified, clinging to me like a child.

  “How many have they lost?” I asked.

  He swallowed. “Five.”

  As he spoke, a gild flew overhead and cast fire out his mouth with a dragon's cry that crackled throughout the sky. The fire shed into embers before it reached the ground, but the message was clear: this was war.

  “And us?” I followed up.

  “None,” he said, holding a hand over a gash in his side and then met my eyes again. “Yet,” he added.

  We both looked up at the swarm of enemy Parduss that flew across the sky, blocking out the light with their massive wings. What they had in strength and brawn we made up for in agility. If we were fighting in the water, the Gild's wouldn't have a chance at success... but this wasn't the water, and there were fewer of us than there were of them.

  “Where’s Veynore?” I asked, and Z’echs tilted his head toward the tower.

  “North side of the tower entrance,” he said.

  I went to leave, but Ivy cried behind me, pulling on my arm.

  “Kaayde, I'm scared,” she said, breathing hard, almost uncontrollably.

  “I'll protect you,” I said, setting my jaw. “It's going to be okay.”

  “I don't want to get separated,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “I don't want to be alone. Please, stay with me.”

  “I promise,” I said. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

  “Promise,” she insisted as though she hadn't heard me at all, looking up at me with the purest, realest expression I had ever seen from her.

  “I promise,” I repeated and kissed her hard on the forehead.

  My eyes scanned the sky, and I watched as a gray and black dragon circled us. We made eye-contact and knew instantly what the other was thinking. We would go there and defend out Dendren to the end.

  “How many?” I yelled to Z'echs, and he shook his head, offering his palms to me as he guessed, “Ten? Maybe less.”

  Ten to forty, I thought. It sounded like the odds were in our favor, but I knew the strength of the Gilds. There was a reason why they were a warrior breed—why they had been so successful at killing us off these past years.

  Z’echs rushed ahead of me, transforming as he flew.

  “Run,” I said to Ivy, and her eyes went wide.

  “You said—” she began, and I interrupted.

  “I'll be right here!” I yelled. “I'll come back for you, I promise. Just run!”

  I transformed fully: feeling my body shift and bend to the whims of my race. My wings spread larger and I could feel a new power surge inside me.

  Making my way to the north end of the tower, I spotted Veynore, encircled by both the gray and black shifters.

  A gray Gild flew toward me, and I looked over to Veynore, nodding at him. We were brothers in battle; we had been for years. It was my sworn duty to protect him, even if it meant my death.

  The gray dragon lunged forward, trying to grab me with his claws. He was fully transformed, and I followed suit. He let out a terrifying blast of electric fire from his mouth. I pulled my wings close and moved to the side, gritting my teeth as I spun around and watched the flame burst into the side of the Titan spire: our home.

  They would truly take the last of what was left of us. The monsters.

  I felt the fury build up in my bones and I locked eyes with Veynore.

  “Flank him on the left!” Veynore cried, transforming into a bright, orange dragon with dark accents. His tail was thick, and his wingspan was massive. He was the strongest out of all of us. If we won this... it would only be because of him.

  I could already see him grappling with the black dragon, spinning him mid-air and whipping him toward the ground.

  The black dragon when hurtling down and crashed into stone pavement, driving up a stony crash site around his body: rocks now jutting up around him.

  The gray dragon flew toward Veynore, wriggling a
gainst me as I sunk my teeth into his side.

  He shook from side to side, trying to buck me off of him. I bit down hard, feeling my teeth pull sharply, trying to drag him to the ground or make him bleed out.

  Damn the Gilds for being so much stronger than us.

  I thought about summoning the succus to me. I wondered if it would be somewhere nearby, waiting for my call.

  Then I looked down at the ground, feeling the wind underneath cool and furious beneath my body. I saw Ivy there, staring back up at me in the midst of the chaos, gun in hand.

  I imagined the succus wrapping around her and saw a vision of the blackness burrowing into her and coming out of her mouth and shuddered.

  I wouldn't do it.

  The gray dragon I had sunk my teeth into was still fiercely charging toward Veynore, who was now battling the twitching black dragon on the ground.

  The gray dragon bucked me off, and I could see the pink lasers coming up from the ground below. I looked down and saw Ivy firing at him, catching his leg and setting it into a sizzling blaze of burned flesh. The gray dragon let out a deep cry, and I blew fire at him, which he deftly dodged.

  Now his sights were set on Ivy. He charged down toward her, getting ready to blow fire at her.

  I felt my adrenaline rush through my veins as I noticed the black dragon fighting our Dendren had him pinned down, ready to strike the final blow on our leader.

  My heart fell, looking back at Ivy and then again at Veynore.

  I gestured to Z'echs to tend to the Dendren, but I couldn't fight my heart. I promised Ivy I wouldn't leave her.

  My body picked up speed toward the gray dragon, bashing into his side before he had the chance to let the burst of flames hit Ivy.

  They spun and fizzled out into the air as I dug my claws into his side, ripping away his flesh and unleashing burst after burst of fire into his wound until he went billowing to the ground with a great crash.

  I fell down with him, letting myself fall against the pavement. I exhaled on my back and turned my head weakly to see Ivy, still standing in the battleground.

  “Are you okay?” I yelled, and she nodded, bursting into sobs as she ran up beside me. I sat up and shifted into my human form. I felt her shaking and pulled her close to my body, wrapping my arms around her and trying to gain my breath. I wrapped my wings around us like a shield, and she cried into my chest.

  I craned my neck, holding her, and watched from afar as Z'echs finished off the last of the black dragon, slicing his throat with a single swipe of his claw and pushing him over onto the ground. I lost sight of him briefly.

  Finally, he looked back up and met my eyes. I raised my brows, urging him to tell me what happened. He exhaled a plume of smoke, tired and beaten, and then shook his head.

  We failed.

  The Dendren was dead.

  Chapter Ten

  Ivy

  It had taken two more hours after the Dendren's death for Kaayde and the others to exterminate the last of the Gilds from Titan.

  The tower hadn’t been as damaged as we thought it would be from the enemy blast: the fire only putting three or four rooms out of service.

  Kaayde and I hardly had the chance to speak after the battle.

  I was shaking furiously, and he held me for a long while and brought me into his room, both of us still in shock.

  “What happened?” he’d asked me quietly, stroking my arms as we lay in his bed together. “What happened the night we left?”

  “I was brought back by one of the Gilds,” I admitted. “I saw him going up into the

  “You brought him here,” he said numbly. It wasn’t a question.

  “Kaayde, I swear, I didn’t know that was going to happen. You have to believe me. I knew they wanted information, but I didn’t…”

  “Did you give them information?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not really. I said we were being treated well and that I thought your aim was to honor the alliance.”

  Of course, I left some details out. But the rest of it was true. I knew Illox was up to something, but I didn’t think he’d be so bold as to go in and try to murder the Dendren.

  I knew he felt guilty, but there was nothing I could say to make him feel better. All I could give him was my thanks, which seemed small and insignificant in comparison to the sacrifice he had made for me.

  “Please don't regret me,” I said to him, and he swallowed.

  “Never,” he said. “I would make the same choice every time. I love you, Ivy.”

  I hugged him tighter and tried to reason, “I know... but I don't want you to blame me for—”

  “—Shh,” he interrupted. “You need to rest.”

  Kaayde disappeared for the rest of the night. Whatever it was that the Parduss did during the night, the humans weren't privy to it. It seemed there was an unspoken divide between us after the attack.

  Now was the morning after the fight and we were all brought into a council room in one of the upper chambers of the great blue tower. The war room was a far cry from the council on the plenks: no semi-circle of seats or raised platforms. It was just a round room with windows on almost every section of wall: a shiny black floor that gleamed with the setting stars.

  There were no chairs or dais. Just an open space now filled with the remaining Atherien Parduss and a handful of human females, all looking terrified, some on the brink of tears as they clung to their mates.

  I looked over at Kaayde and couldn’t help but wish I was one of those girls: a partner with a strong arm around them to protect them and ease their fears.

  Z’echs had strung a deep navy cloak around Kaayde and fixed him with white and gold armor: ceremonial, I could only assume, since it would prove useless once he transformed into a dragon.

  “That’s it for us,” one of the shifters whispered to another as Kaayde was brought into the center of the crowd.

  “No, it isn’t over!” another urged.

  There were whispers and busied conversations among the twenty some odd remaining shifters.

  “Kaayde,” Z’echs said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You’re the next in line. You must take the Dendren’s place.”

  “You can save us,” another shifter called from the small crowd.

  “Kaayde,” Z’echs began again, “you have power. Only you can bring the Atherien back from the brink of death. Raise us to what we once were, like Merenora once did.”

  “No,” Kaayde said sharply, his deep, gravelly voice cutting through the room.

  “Kaayde!” Z’echs scorned, his eyes roaming around the room embarrassed. “This isn’t a yes or no. This is in your blood.”

  “Veynore’s life was in my hands, and I let it slip away from me,” he said, toneless.

  The sentiment seemed to cast doubt across the whole room as it fell silent.

  “We all failed him, Kaayde,” Z’echs reasoned.

  Kaayde looked at me with such fury that I became afraid: his eyes went dark but I couldn't look away. He was saying something with his stare, I knew it, but couldn't decipher what it was.

  “Dismiss the humans,” he said, and the girls all perked up. We left the room, and I watched as the scared girls descended the stairs.

  I followed closely behind them.

  The staircase was curved and shimmering silver: some gemstone that seemed to sparkle and shine that lower we went.

  Two girls stopped a floor above us, waiting at their respective mate’s doors. I couldn’t imagine how alone or scared they felt.

  “Is there going to be another attack?” a brunette named Melissa asked. She turned to look at me, stopping mid-step and leaning against the stone wall behind her.

  Next to her perch was an open window where the Parduss would fly in through. Outside, I could see the evening sky taking over and stretching across Titan. The gold, summery hues of the night swept in through the stone opening and cast ominous shadows on the stairs.

  Melissa's question seemed to prompt the o
ther six girls to turn to me as their source of information. Suddenly I knew what it felt like to be Kaayde right now: to have his people all looking to him for answers that he didn't have.

  I breathed, stuck somewhere between the truth and my usual lies. “Yes,” I said and immediately regretted it.

  “What?” Melissa whispered, incredulous and looking furious and worried all at the same time.

  “Don't they care that we're here?” another girl cried, turning to a friend for comfort.

  “Shh, all of you,” I warned. “Don't speak a word of this to the Parduss. If you love your partner...” I swallowed deeply, feeling a chill of fear tremble through me. “If you love your partner, trust that he will protect you. If you don't, run. Run south into the wilds and stay close to the perimeter of the forest. Hide whenever you hear something; there are plenty of underground inlets that you can hide in. Take these,” I instructed and pulled laser pistols out of my satchel, handing two out to the willing runners. “Godspeed.”

  “Godspeed?” another woman spat: her dark skin glowing in the setting starlight. “That's it?”

  “If you've got a better idea, I'd love to hear it,” I snapped. “We knew the risks of coming here. Now we roll with the punches, or we die. Which do you prefer?”

  The woman set her jaw and ripped the gun from my hand, fixing it to the strap on her waist.

  I looked out over the rest of the girls, all looking weak and afraid as they held each other or flattened themselves up against the stone wall. “Anyone else?” I said, and they shook their heads.

  I was surprised at how many women were willing to stay with their Parduss partners. It seemed everyone had fallen deeply for the Atherien. It spoke of the creatures' character, I thought. They were so willing to be loved by a human: to spoil us and make us feel welcome. They were hardly the monsters I was told they were.

  “The mainlands are mostly nocturnal,” I said with a breath, looking as far up the staircase as I could see, listening for any Parduss who might be coming.

  “I would normally suggest running in early morning, but, the Parduss are all distracted by their meeting so... now will be your best bet. If you can go somewhere and hide until morning, do that. If not, be careful.”