Warriors Of Cadir (A Sci Fi Alien Romance Collection)

by Maia Starr

  The girls nodded to me, and I looked across the rest of them. “And you... don't speak a word of this to your partners. Unless you want to see your friends die.”

  I didn't wait to see if they had any more questions for me. I cared for the girls: we had bonded well enough on the ride up to Cadir, but I couldn't get involved now. This was their decision, not mine.

  I made my way down to Kaayde's room. It was strange, I thought, how little time we'd actually spent here. We went from separating to living in the wilds to coming back to an absolute battle.

  An hour passed before he came down. The automatic doors disappeared into the walls and then clicked shut behind him as he entered. I was sure, were they not automatic, he would have slammed them fiercely.

  He looked at me wildly, broken and furious, and I knew we would have sex.

  I stood from the couch and walked up to him, biting my lip as he grabbed my hair and twirled it around his palm, tugging it gently so that my neck craned back.

  He hesitated, and we locked eyes. I knew he was unsure of me… but I knew he needed me just as much.

  Kaayde’s tongue found its way to my neck and licked from my collarbone up to my ear, biting the lobe as he pulled away.

  I let out an excited breath, and he gripped my shoulders gruffly. My top teeth scraped against my bottom lip as he stared me down and I smirked, prompting him to squeeze my arms and giving me a single shake, putting me in my place—I didn’t mind at all.

  Without a word, Kaayde turned me around, flattening my body against the cold.

  “This is what you’re after?” he said sharply, tugging my pants down to the floor and kicking them away from us. He bent me forward, and I set the palms of my hands against the wall, trying desperately to hold onto something as he pushed himself inside of me.

  Kaayde reached in front of me and grabbed my breasts through my racerback, flattening his palm against them and then feeling for my hardening nipples.

  He thrust roughly inside of me so that my face was in profile, pressed up against the wall.

  I wanted to know what he was thinking: how he felt about me now. I wanted to talk to him… but I was so overcome with lust that the growing heat between us made my mind a fog of forgotten questions.

  If he was being rough with me on purpose, I knew I deserved it, and I certainly wasn’t complaining, but my heart still raced as he pounded into me, letting out guttural moans and grunts. I needed to know he still loved me.

  It was a sensation I’d never felt before. A need for something.

  That was all new with Kaayde. I’d only ever felt this way for him. I needed him to like me. I needed him to need me. And now I needed to know the way he felt about me wasn’t erased in light of the battle that had just happened.

  “Tell me you love me,” Kaayde said, bucking against me. I knew he was close to coming: his body taking over in a robotic rhythm.

  My breathing had gotten so loud since we started. All I could offer him was a moaning whimper as I felt my climax building.

  “Say it,” he said furiously, digging into my hips.

  I let out a heavy breath and whispered curses as I felt him twitch and pulse inside of me. I finished just before he stopped moving, too aroused by his climax to contain myself.

  When it was over, Kaayde pulled out of me, and we stood in silence. I turned and grabbed my pants, pulling them up my legs and fixing them shut. He did the same with his own.

  He breathed heavily, spent, and I turned to face him so that my back and palms were pressed up against the stone wall behind me.

  The heavy silence loomed over us, neither willing to look away from each other’s eyes.

  “Kaayde,” I began softly, feeling my heart pound so loud I could swear he heard it.

  “Did you do this?” he snapped at me.

  “The… the assassination?” I asked, drawing my brows together. “No!”

  “But you fed them information,” he said quickly.

  I set a hand on my chest, feeling my heart race. “Kaayde,” I said, knowing how guilty I already sounded.

  “Answer the question,” he said, looking desperate: eyes full of emotion as they begged me to say no.

  “Yes, that was my job, but—”

  He interrupted me, screaming, “But nothing!”

  My breathing sped up, and my hand started to shake against my chest. “Listen to me!” I urged him as he made his way to where I stood: towering over me.

  “All I showed you… and this is how you repay me?” he swallowed hard.

  “What are you going to do, Kaayde?” I snapped, stiffening in vain to try and meet his height. “Send me away again?”

  He grabbed my neck, softly, feeling my skin beneath his hand and smoothing his palm flat until it reached my cheek.

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Can’t,” I asked, “or won’t?”

  “You are mine now,” he said, exhaling with emotion. “I told you I would never leave you.” He pressed his eyes shut, and I watched them flicker beneath his eyelids. “I let Veynore die for you. You’d better hope you’re worth it.”

  His eyes snapped open again, and I could feel my throat swelling up with emotion. I pushed him away from me and snapped, “I haven’t given the Gilds information since we’ve been together, Kaayde. I promise you that.”

  “Then why did I follow you to the plenks?” he asked evenly, cocking a brow at me and crossing his arms.

  “It’s official!” I shouted. “You love stalking me!”

  “No jokes,” he hissed. “Not this time, Ivy. What were you doing there?”

  “It’s my job,” I said, enunciating each word. “What… I’m supposed to just stop going there? That doesn’t seem like it would be a little bit suspicious to you? You have to remember that it's not just me I'm representing here, Kaayde. It's the SAEW. The other girls brought to the mainlands. Everyone is relying on me.”

  He set his jaw. “You have some serious issues with loyalty.”

  “I have always been loyal to you,” I argued.

  “With Xereris?” he squinted.

  “I told you nothing happened,” I said firmly.

  “No. You used him, that's all.”

  “Would you rather I fell in love with him?” I narrowed my brows and threw my hands into the air.

  “I will love you forever, Ivy. I chose you. Over and over I choose you, no matter how many times you betray me. All I am asking is for you to love me back.”

  I felt my heart lilt and I cursed my stupid, rotten, spoiled personality. “Kaayde...” I tried to explain, shaking my head. “Human relationships are complicated.”

  “Atherien relationships,” he said carefully, “are complicated.”

  “I care for you, so much,” I said, pressing my hands against my heart.

  “You were the one who wanted this. Wanted me. You insisted on it: dared me, tempted me, mocked me. Now you have it. What are you going to do with it?”

  “I'm going to treasure it; what do you think?” I yelled, tears now spilling from my eyes. I could feel them trail down my cheeks, the streaks of water going cold against the air.

  “I think you need to take care of it, Ivy. Whatever you're doing... whatever you're scheming or planning... you need to take care of us now.”

  “I do!” I cried.

  “No,” he said quickly. “You knew Veynore was going to be attacked. You put me...” Kaayde paused and looked as upset as I was. For a moment I thought he was going to cry, but his emotion was quickly overtaken by anger as he shouted, “You put me in this position! You made me choose. Now I'm making you choose.”

  My lip trembled, and I set a hand against my forehead. “It's...”

  “Not that simple? For me it is. For me, there has never been a question. I knew I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”

  “And you sent me away!” I yelled through my tears.

  His deep eyes went wide, incredulous as he gritted his teeth and insisted, “You know
why.”

  I breathed, “This is my whole life you're asking me to betray.”

  “I did. For you.”

  I swallowed, calming myself down and rolling my eyes at the comment. “It's not a competition.”

  He didn’t respond, still standing in the hall of his home with me, standing in the middle of the room as I still stood up against the wall.

  “Half of the Gilds don't even know this is happening,” I said. “They think there's an alliance and they are happy that way. They want the Atherien to come to the plenks.”

  “I told you I would trust you no matter what. If you tell me that the Gilds want peace... then I believe you. You tell me that you didn't know Illox was going to kill Veynore?” He set his jaw. “Then, Ivy? I believe you. And if you say that you're not using me like you use every other person I have ever witnessed you interact with... then I will believe you. But I need to hear you say it.”

  I blinked. “I care about you.”

  “That's not an answer,” he said lowly.

  “I want to be good at my job. I want to be the best at my job. When someone calls on me, I want them to know that whatever they need will get done.”

  The words flew out of my mouth, too afraid to tell him the way I felt about him. I regretted it immediately as his expression fell. He looked stricken as he breathed out in surprise and whispered, “You don’t love me.”

  “Kaayde,” I protested, but he raised his hand to me.

  “You don't love me,” he said, coming to the completely wrong realization. He swallowed his emotion, and I watched as several tears fell from his eyes before his expression went formal, then hateful.

  “Then now you know all you need to know,” he said. His tone continued to go up as he spoke, raising into a furious, gravely shout as he announced, “Go back to the plenks. Tell Fenris that I am the weapon; see him come after me. We'll see who survives that battle, Ivy. Send him after me. Tell them that we have no children left, no eniwan females, no chance of living. Tell them that our Dendren is dead. Tell them I refuse to take leadership.”

  I burst into tears then, burying my face in my hands.

  I did love him. I had never felt this way about anyone before in my life. I had probably never loved before in my life. My sobs continued to sound out as I heaved for breath, unable to verbalize my feelings for him.

  “Do you know what your problem is, Ivy?” he seethed. “My love? You don't know who you are. You wear so many masks that you've never been able to pursue your own life. You don't know who you are if you're not running toward something new. I understand that better than anyone you will ever know. I ran from you.”

  “Kaayde,” I managed to say through my tears. “Stop.”

  “I just hope that one day you run back to me.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked, full of tears as Kaayde made his way toward the door.

  “To the wilds,” he said. “Alone.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ivy

  The Renden council chamber was becoming like a second home to me. I felt like I was there every other week, reporting back to Fenris and his advisor. But this time there were no Gild warriors coming back to fly me into the plenks. Not unless they wanted to get killed.

  Titan was on high alert. The fact that there were only twenty dragons left only seemed to make them that much hungrier for blood.

  I arrived back on Renden in five days’ time, on foot. It killed me to leave Kaayde, but I knew I had to finish out this mission.

  Once again, the council chamber left me in surprise as I walked in expecting to see Fenris there, the handsome and stubborn leader of the Gilds was there, surrounded by sixty or seventy of his warriors. All the ones supporting the war, I presumed.

  “Ivy Elm,” Fenris said, brushing a hand through his white locks of hair and looking down toward the bottom of the dais, sizing me up. “Good to know you weren’t hurt during the fight.”

  “Thanks for the warning on that one,” I snipped sarcastically.

  “Well,” Fenris said through clenched teeth, “you were supposed to report back to us over a week ago to get the message, but you were nowhere to be found.”

  “I was told to distract Kaayde,” I snapped back. “Nobody said how long I was supposed to keep him busy for.”

  “Fair enough,” he nodded toward me.

  I looked around at the room’s inhabitants and felt a shiver as the packed chamber all looked down at me, watching my every move.

  “Good job distracting Kaayde," the Dendren said, nodding his thanks toward me. The gesture made me sick, but I had no choice but to nod in return, smiling at a job well done. "Were you in the midst of it? The battle, I mean?"

  I nodded. “We arrived in the city when the Dendren was killed,” I said, deciding to skim over the details... particularly the one about me being the one who caused the Dendren's death. I figured that would give Fenris too much joy for me to stomach.

  "He's dead?" Fenris smiled, and I set my jaw, ignoring the sick that lurched in my stomach at his expression. He looked around the room, and the suddenly stood, throwing his hands into the air and announcing, “He’s dead!”

  The proclamation echoed through the circular room. There was mass applause, dragon's cries, and cheering that erupted in the room. The commotion caused the ground beneath me to shake and send a mild wave of fear through my body.

  The celebration was out of control. The longer it went on, the more irritated Pash looked. Finally fed up, she whipped her thick tail against the ground, and it caused a harsh crack to sound throughout the room.

  “And what of our men?” she demanded. “None have returned.”

  “They’re… they’re dead, ma’am,” I said, and I tried not to smile. “Defeated by the… secret weapon.”

  Fenris looked knocked down a peg then. "What's the secret weapon?" he asked, narrowing curious brows at me as though remembering that there wasn't a reason to celebrate quite yet. "What's your intel?"

  "It's a beam cannon," I lied. "It's set up in the tower in Titan. It was designed by one of the humans you sent there years ago."

  "I knew that was a mistake," Pash swore, shaking her head as she gave Fenris a damming stare.

  "It's powerful enough to take down a Parduss with one shot," I explained. "But it's only in the city."

  "Well that doesn't help us," one of the other shifters, a man who I didn't recognize, spat out. "The shifters live in the city!"

  "That's why I came here as quickly as I could," I said, giving myself a pat on the back as I continued to lie. “There are only twenty shifters left in the mainlands, and they’ve all traveled to the badlands.”

  Fenris went rigid: the color falling from his face. He must have known the dangers that lurked there. His sister, I’d heard, had died after being infected by the siccus.

  “Why?” Pash demanded.

  “They’re going to mourn there for just two more days,” I said, and the room grew abuzz with excitement. “If you want to strike them, do it now.”

  "And what of Illox?” came Pash’s questions, unphased by the good news. “He left with you... and then what happened?" Pash asked, her eyes full of tears that refused to fall.

  "He died," I said. "That night, the Dendren killed him."

  That was the last thing I could say in the council room. Pash was screaming and crying, slamming her hands up against the stone walls: it was the father of her children, I'd heard. I stared stone-faced at her, trying not to feel any sympathy for her. I could easily put myself in her shoes, wondering if Kaayde was alright after a vicious battle.

  Some of the shifters went to comfort her, but most were too busy planning their attack. They would leave tonight, and I would be going with them to witness the destruction of the mainlands.

  Allegedly.

  I left the room slowly, listening as the rest of the council went a flutter with gossip and plans. To the badlands they would go: to kill Kaayde. They were beyond pleased with me, but I felt a tremor
in my body that wouldn't go away.

  Was this really what it meant to be a spy? Someone important to the world? If it was... I was no longer fond of the idea.

  I walked down the immense hallways of Renden's halls and felt completely insignificant. It felt comforting, somehow, after spending so many days at the center of drama and chaos.

  I could still see the way Kaayde looked at me: turning between his king and me. Choosing me over anyone else.

  The thought was flattering in theory but made me sick in reality.

  I caught sight of a familiar soldier roaming the halls. He had dark gray scales and a sturdy frame, and those yellow eyes that had first caught my attention when I came to Cadir.

  "I remember you," I said, snapping my fingers toward him

  The man looked at me and then offered me a gentle smile. "I remember you, too," he said. "You're the one who went into the meeting last. Told me you were the 'special' one, right?"

  "And you told me something pretty interesting, too," I said with a wry smile.

  "Is that right?" he teased, still tracing those eyes over my body. "Refresh my memory?"

  "You said," I began, leaning in toward him and lowering my voice, "that you wanted peace with the Atherien."

  He quickly looked up toward that council room and then back to me with a dire expression. He gave a single nod, an expression that said: you have my attention.

  "Yes..."

  "And yet the council room is full of fifty or so shifters, all heading down to the mainlands right now to finish the attack on the Atherien."

  "Finish the attack?" he repeated with some confusion.

  "You didn't hear about the attack on Titan? Their Dendren is dead," I said.

  I could see the news bring tears and then rage to the warrior: the half-breed I had met what felt like forever ago.

  “Veynore?” he asked, and I nodded, impressed with his knowledge of the other side. Maybe he wasn’t bullshitting about his secret group, after all.

  "What's your name?" I asked hurriedly.

  "Calrix," he said, and I nodded.

  "Calrix," I urged, pulling him toward the corner of the hall, desperate to get the words out before the council emerged from their chamber. "Would you support a new Dendren?" I whispered.