She stepped into the room and smiled at him.
"If I have my way, I'll never stay there again."
Ty crawled to the end of the bed and rested his hands on her hips so he could pull her close and kiss her.
"I'll tell the king and queen that they can consider that house vacant."
She grinned and kissed him again, lingering on his lips for a few moments before pushing him away as his hands started to travel to her breasts.
"Not now, Big Boy. We have things to do."
The statement was meant playfully, but it fell hard in Ty's gut. They had only slept for a few hours because they knew that the rest of the clan would be making their preparations and that every moment mattered. Suddenly he realized he hadn't even gotten a chance to ask her about what had happened in Ciyrs' office the night before.
"Did you figure out the healing potion?" he asked, climbing out of bed and heading for his bureau.
Her face lit up.
"I think we are really close. I suggested that we integrate some of the slime into the potion kind of like on Earth when doctors use small amounts of germs and viruses to create vaccinations. It gives the body the opportunity to learn to fight off that particular infection. I thought that maybe if we put the slime into the potion, it could counteract injuries and trigger the warriors' bodies to fight harder, speeding up their healing and protecting them from further injuries and reactions."
"Wow. You really are incredibly brilliant."
She flashed him a huge smile.
"That's what they tell me. Get dressed while I run to my house and change. I'll meet you at Ciyrs' shop."
An hour later Ty was walking up to the shop when he heard shouting. He started running, fear flooding him. When he burst into the shop, however, he saw that everyone was grinning and hugging each other.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"We think we figured out the healing potion," Ciyrs told him, "Thanks to your amazing mate, we are really ready for this showdown."
Ty crossed to Samira and kissed her.
"You are amazing," he agreed.
"What do we do now?" Pyra asked from where he stood against one wall, his hand rested protectively over Eden's belly.
The room fell quiet for a moment.
"We need to figure out who was helping Ullie," Samira said, "And I think that means going back to the tunnel."
"No," Ty said, "It was too dangerous the first time. You can't go again."
"We have to, Ty. There's no other way. I have been thinking about this a lot, and I am convinced that there is something about that tunnel that we don't know. It still doesn't make any sense that we only walked for what seemed like such a short time and then got so far away."
"Do you think there is some kind of portal or transporter in the tunnel?" Zuri asked.
"There might be. You said that the Klimnu have incredibly advanced technology on their original planet. What if they brought some of it here and put it in the tunnel so that they and whoever has been helping them can use it to get them to different areas of the planet more quickly?"
"If that underground forest that you found is some kind of Klimnu bunker, but they aren't the ones using the tunnel, how are they getting into it?"
Ty saw Samira's face get tense again like she was thinking through something complicated.
"I have a theory. It is outlandish, but it's all I have right now."
"Tell us."
Samira turned to Ty.
"Last night I had the warriors tell me everything about the Klimnu. What they are, where they come from, what they do, everything. Something that stood out to me was that they have the ability to look like something else when they want to confuse or manipulate people."
"That's right," Eliana said, "They did that to me."
"Me, too," said Leia.
"Me, too," said Eden.
Samira nodded at them.
"Zuri, I need you to show me exactly where you encountered that Klimnu. I can explain the rest once we get there."
The group left the shop and hurried toward the woods at the edge of the compound. When they got there, Samira looked around.
"Is this how you got to the prison that you burned down?" she asked.
The warriors confirmed that it was and Ty saw a smile starting to form on her lips.
"Look, Zuri. Look around you."
Zuri looked around for a few seconds and when her eyes dropped to the floor, Ty saw them grow wide.
"It's an inverse," she muttered.
Samira nodded.
"A reflection." She turned to Leia, "Leia, do you see it?"
Leia followed the same path with her eyes that Zuri did and suddenly a hand flew to her mouth.
"I don't understand," Ty said.
"Neither do I," Pyra added.
Samira gestured at the trees.
"These are the trees from the underground forest." She pointed to branches overhead and the patchy leaves, "Those are what we saw as roots with bits of undergrowth around them. What we thought was water was the sky. And this," she leaned down and touched the thick moss and undergrowth that covered that section of the forest floor, "This is what we saw as the leaves that created the ceiling."
"It's a reflection," Pyra repeated what the women had said and Samira nodded, "What you thought you were seeing was wrong, but you were seeing something that was really there."
"Yes."
"That means," Zuri said, crouching down to touch some of the moss. She ran her hand across it for a moment, and then suddenly pulled it back, "Ero, could you pull this up for me?"
"Pull up the moss?" Ero asked.
"It shouldn't be difficult. Grab this edge and pull."
Ero did as he was asked and as soon as he pulled on the edge of the moss, it peeled away from the ground, revealing a narrow gouge in the ground shining around the edges with thick, clear slime.
Chapter Thirteen
I gave a mirthless laugh as the deep hole in the ground came into view. It was all coming together in my mind and I was watching it unfold in front of me. The warriors tensed around me as they all started to understand what was going on.
"There will be holes like this all the way through the forest right up to where the prison was. That's how so many of them survived the fire. All they had to do was find one of these holes and drop down into the chamber."
"What about the tunnel, though?" Ty asked, "You were so wrapped up in feeling like it took you further than you thought. Did you feel like you walked this far?"
"Definitely not. The Klimnu definitely put a transporter in that tunnel that brought us from there all the way to here in between steps. But I don't think that it was meant to be used for getting the Klimnu from there to here or the other way around. If it was, you would have noticed them coming from that side of the compound."
"Why did they put it there?"
"I think it was for whoever was helping them along with Ullie. It had to be someone small enough to get through the tunnel easily and someone who would have access to another transporter that wouldn't be noticeable. Someone that no one would notice and no one would miss."
Suddenly Zuri's eyes widened.
"I know exactly who it was," she said, her voice sounding gravelly with fury, "Does anyone know what time it is?"
"Mid-afternoon," Ero told her.
"We don't have much time. Ero, I need you to get to the launch platform now. Don't let the shuttle leave."
Ero took off with such intensity that he was invisible within seconds.
"Do we all need to go?" Pyra asked.
"Two of you come with me to the launch platform. Some of you start finding as many of these holes as you can. The rest of you, find every warrior in the compound and get them to the meeting hall. Leia and Samira will meet you there and fill you in."
I watched as everyone dissipated to follow Zuri's instructions. Ty held my hand for a few lingering seconds and then gave it a squeeze.
"I'm going to help the
m find the holes," he said.
"No, we need you in the meeting hall."
"Why?"
"You said you wanted to fight. This is your chance."
We met eyes and without saying anything else, we started running toward the meeting hall. Soon I was stumbling over my own feet trying to keep up with him, and he swept me up to put me on his back so that he could carry me the rest of the way. I didn't know if I was ever going to get used to being carried around like a rag doll, but part of me loved feeling so small and having him take control like that.
By the time we got to the meeting hall, the main room was loud with the voices of all of the warriors of the clan except for those who were back in the woods finding all of the holes that led down into the forest chamber. Pyra hadn't bothered to go the stage on the other side of the room. Instead, he was standing in the middle of one of the long tables, staring down at the warriors.
"Listen to her!" he shouted, "All of you be quiet and listen to her!"
Finally the warriors quieted down and started to settle onto the benches. I saw Leia sitting at one of the tables, her illustration of the underground forest in front of her. She was adding labels to it, pointing out what we had realized each of the elements was.
"Ty?" Pyra said when he noticed him standing there beside me.
"I want to fight," Ty said.
"You aren't a warrior, Ty. You don't have to do this."
"I want to. I think that I could make a difference."
"Show him," I said to Ty.
"Show me what?" Pyra asked.
"I'm not sure," Ty said to me.
"This is your chance, Ty. You were born to do this. You have a gift unlike anyone else on this planet and you owe it to your father to embrace it."
"What is she talking about, Ty?" Pyra asked.
I saw Ty turn back to the warrior and then look over his shoulder. His eyes narrowed as I had seen them do earlier. An instant later a massive sword fell from the hooks holding it on the stone wall and shot forward, narrowly missing hitting Pyra. Ty snatched it out of the air and lowered it slowly to his side. The warrior's erupted in shouts and Pyra struggled to get control of them again.
Before he could respond, the doors to the meeting room swung open and I heard the scuffle of people entering. I turned around and felt my heart constrict painfully.
Chapter Fourteen
Ty turned toward the doors to the meeting hall and saw two warriors dragging a thrashing woman between them. Zuri came up behind them and he saw blood trickling down her chest from a large gash across the front of her shoulder. Ero walked beside her, his jaw twitching and his eyes wild with fury. The woman gripped between the warriors was small and plain. She wasn't pretty or interesting-looking like the human women who had come to call his planet home, and suddenly it struck him… she was unnoticeable.
Samira looked stricken beside him like she knew who the woman was.
"Who is that?" Ty asked.
"She was the flight attendant on our voyage from Earth. She mans all of the trips on the university shuttle."
"So she would have been the attendant when Eden, Eliana, and Leia came here, too?"
Samira nodded.
"This is who had been helping Ullie and the Klimnu," Zuri said with acid in her voice.
Pyra glared down at the woman, who stared definitely back at him.
"I don't understand," he said, "Who is this woman?"
"She has been posing as a flight attendant on all of the shuttles from Earth. She was getting information from us and bringing it back to Ullie and the Klimnu. That's how they knew that Leia was coming and were able to intercept the flight and kidnap her. The transporter in the middle of the tunnel wasn't to get her from the cliffs to the underground chamber. It was to get her from the ship to the tunnel. That's why she disappeared into her quarters as soon as the ship landed, and why she told us that she never got off in between voyages. She has a transporter in her quarters that brought her directly into the tunnel so that she was never seen moving in or out. That meant she could meet Ullie at the mouth of the tunnel and collect materials to bring to the Klimnu and go through the transporter again to the get to the chamber, or she could go directly to the chamber."
"Why would you help them?" Leia shouted at her, "How could you help such vile creatures?"
The flight attendant scoffed.
"You consider the Klimnu the vile creatures? My grandmother came here when she was young. She was one of the first human visitors to ever step foot on this planet. I bet if you asked the king and queen, though, they wouldn't even admit that she was ever here."
"Your grandmother?" Zuri spat, stepping around to look at the attendant, "You told me that she said humans should never leave Earth and that you should always keep to your own kind; that she didn't even know what you were doing for a living."
"She doesn't know what I do, and she does believe that humans should keep to their own kind. That belief comes from her brief time here. When I was younger she told me stories about how vicious and violent the Denynso men were. She told me that they were all cruel and insatiable. They would just as soon slit your throat as they would bed you. She fell in love with one of the warriors who was here at the time, but as soon as he was finished with her, he had the king and queen rescind her permissions to be here and sent her back. She has never recovered and we all watched her suffer and were limited for our entire lives because of it."
"You can't blame our entire species on the fact that your grandmother fell in love with a warrior who wasn't her mate. There are very clear warnings before any humans come to Uoria," Pyra told her, "There have been since the very first visitor. One of the reasons we limit how long humans can stay here, especially human women, is because of situations like that. We are a warrior race. It is who we are. Your grandmother knew that before she ever stepped foot here, and if she let a warrior bed her knowing that he wasn't her mate, she can only hold herself responsible."
"Bring her back to the shuttle and lock her in the pod. Make it very clear that she is never to come near this planet again and that if she does, we cannot be held responsible for our actions."
The warriors turned and dragged the woman out of the meeting hall. As soon as they were gone, Samira ran from Ty's side over to Zuri.
"Are you alright?" she asked, touching the gash on her chest.
"You left Pyra's knife in the tunnel," she said, "Guess who found it?"
"Oh, god. I am so sorry, Zuri."
"It's alright. The warriors were a little resistant to taking her into custody until they saw her swinging at me with it. A little blood is worth getting her off of the planet and away from us."
"We need to get you to Ciyrs."
"What are we going to do about the Klimnu?"
Everyone turned to look at Pyra. His shoulders were square and his Mohawk seemed to have gotten taller and sharper. Ty knew his body was preparing for war.
Chapter Fifteen
"I'm not staying here, Ty," I said, following Ty to the door to the meeting hall.
"Yes, you are. You and the other women are going to stay here where you'll be safe while we go take care of the Klimnu."
"If it wasn't for us you would have no idea how they were getting into the compound."
"And we appreciate that, Samira, but the Klimnu are vicious, horrible creatures. I am not letting my mate be in harm's way. I'll be back soon enough and we'll go home, together, and start our life."
I loved the way that sounded, but I hated that after everything we did to help them, the warriors were just going to leave us women behind so that we could sit around and be worried about them, feeling useless.
"Ty," I started to protest again, but he shook his head.
"No, Samira. You aren't coming with me. You have to stay here and look after Zuri and Eden. We know what we're doing."
He kissed me a final time and joined the warriors standing at the door. They all looked so powerful standing there. Their bodies had changed wi
th the coming war, giving off even more of the intense, animalistic impression that already made them so intimidating. Pyra opened the door and they marched out, slamming the door behind them. The meeting hall fell silent. All of the other women were sitting along one of the benches, but I couldn't sit. I paced around in front of them for a few minutes, tormented by the thought of Ty and the other men marching off into such incredible danger and us just sitting here.
I knew that they had planned out their attack carefully. It was designed perfectly, but I was still terrified for them. It was not enough for me to sit and wait and hope that what they had come up with would actually work. Finally I stalked across the room to one of the wall sconces that held torches and pulled one down.
"What are you doing?" Zuri asked, standing up.
She had a bandage covering the wound on her chest, the sweet smell of the healing potion Ciyrs had finally perfected seeping through it toward me.
"I can't just sit here. That's my mate out there, and my new home. We started this for them, and I'm not going to let them finish it alone."
I started toward the door and heard footsteps coming after me.
"I'm coming with you."
I turned around and saw Eliana close behind me. I knew of the incredible power that she shared with her mate and that it could be an intense force against the Klimnu. I nodded and looked back at the other women.
"Zuri and Eden, neither of you can come in your conditions. Leia, I'm trusting you to take care of them and make sure that the potion is ready for when the warriors come back. Eden can help you apply it. Stay connected with your mates as much as possible, but don't let them know you're worried. You don't want to distract them. If anything happens, Eliana will connect with Eden."
Eliana grabbed another torch and we rushed out of the meeting hall in the direction of the cliffs. She knew the land better than I did and I let her lead. The darkness had built around the planet and the feeling of impending battle hung heavy over the compound. I ducked my head and continued to run. The fear dissipated as we reached the cliff. I knew that I had faced my own share of battles before and I had come out alive even though then I had little to live for. Now I had everything to live for and I was either going to save it, or die trying.
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