"The Covra will be back. I have absolutely no doubt about that. But it isn't just the men who are at risk. They could leave and continue on their journey and likely never encounter them again. The Light Ones, however, are at very serious risk. If they don't figure out how to unlock them very soon, they might run out of time. My grandfather was always cryptic with his stories, but he did mention that when the young ones come, enemies fall. If I'm right about the new generation being born soon, the Light Ones' time might be up."
"But what does that have to do with you looking for us?" Elianna asked.
"The men don't know how to unlock them. Ciyrs tried the healing that he did to remove the toxin that caused the infected warriors to try to fight the others, and it didn't work. They read back through all of the information that they found when they went into the prison and found out about the settlement and the Light Ones, and there's nothing in there about the specific way that they unlock them. They need help."
The women exchanged glances and then Elianna nodded.
"Let's go to Ciyrs' shop. I've never heard of the Covra so I don't think that there is anything in any of his books about them, but it wouldn't hurt to look through them again. Being close to the supplies and healing ingredients might also help to trigger some ideas," Elianna said.
The women hurried to the shop and as soon as they stepped inside, Loralia took the compact from around her neck and placed it on the counter.
"Everyone come around here. You'll be able to see your men and they'll be able to see you."
The women gathered tightly around her so that they could all look into the mirror and Loralia opened the compact. She reflected the chain in the top mirror and the silver around the glass started to glow. It gave off the same pearly luminescence as her skin, growing in intensity as the compact reached out to link with the one that Bannack had. She knew that just as hers did when he reflected the braid of her hair that she had attached to it before giving it to him, her father's compact would now be pulsating with light on Bannack's chest.
An instant later the glow faded and Bannack's face appeared in her mirror again. It hadn't been long since they had last spoken and he told her that she should go talk to the women without the compact activated and then reconnect with them when the women were ready, but she still felt the upward surge in her heart that she always did when she saw his eyes looking back at her. They were still so close to the beginning of their relationship that she could remember what his eyes looked like before they shifted completely to orange after their first bonding experience. She could remember the flickering when they would shift from their original shade to the bright orange and back again, a feature that she found so strange. Now, however, she knew that she much preferred the orange because it was an outward, inarguable sign of their unbreakable connection to each other.
Chapter Five
"Hello, my love," Bannack said.
"Hi, darling. I have the other women with me."
"I can see that," Bannack replied with a smile, "Hello, everyone."
Loralia could hear all of the women chiming in around her to say hello to Bannack and she smiled.
"How is everyone doing?" she asked.
The compact shifted suddenly and Pyra's face appeared in the glass.
"Pyra!" Eden gasped, pushing closer to the compact.
She reached out and ran her fingers down the side of the reflection of Pyra's face.
"Hi," he said softly, "I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
"How's the baby?"
"Everything's fine."
"Good."
"I wish I could connect with you."
"I know. It's just too hard right now."
"It's like I can feel you with me."
He seemed to be starting to say something else, but Gyyx's face appeared beside his as the other warrior tried to push Pyra out of the way.
It continued like this for the next several minutes, each of the men forcing their way into the reflection so that they could spend a few moments with their mates. Finally Lynx appeared in the reflection.
"I'm sorry to be the one to break all of this up, but we really need to start figuring this out."
"Lynx is right," Ciyrs' voice came from behind Lynx and a moment later he appeared in the reflection.
Elianna reached forward and touched the image of his face. Loralia could see the tears in her eyes and had a pang of feeling for the tiny woman. Elianna and Ciyrs had been together for far longer than she and Bannack, and Loralia could only imagine that the bond grew stronger with time. As with the other women, she couldn't begin to understand how painful it was for them to be away from the men who they had spent months with rather than the mere days she had been with Bannack. Being without him felt like her heart was coming out of her chest, and in that moment she found herself in awe that the other women, or their mates, were still functioning.
"Do you have any ideas?" Elianna asked, her voice lowering as if she had forgotten the others were around her and was just talking to him.
"I've tried everything that I can think of. Do you want to look at her?"
Elianna nodded. The reflection in the compact mirror moved as Ciyrs carried it over to the bed and held it up so that the image of a beautiful woman appeared in the glass. Loralia looked at her delicate but distinct features, the flow of hair in a color that she had never seen, the soft peacefulness that made her face look relaxed and calm without a hint of knowing what was coming in the moments just after she laid down to rest.
"She's like Sleeping Beauty," Zuri said.
Loralia didn't know what she meant by that, but the other four human women nodded in agreement, so she figured that it must have some sort of meaning behind it.
"Who is Sleeping Beauty?" one of the men asked and Loralia was relieved that she wasn't the only one that wasn't familiar with the phrase.
"It's a fairy tale," Zuri said with a small laugh, "A story that we tell our children on Earth. It's about a woman that gets put into a deep sleep by an evil fairy. She sleeps for so long that her fairy godmothers put everyone in the entire kingdom to sleep. She can only wake when her true love comes and kisses her."
"How long does it take?"
"One hundred years."
Loralia heard Lynx's sharp intake of breath.
"Maybe you should try kissing her," Pyra said to Lynx, only partly sounding like he was kidding.
"It worked for me," Gyyx said.
Loralia saw Leia blush.
"You might have done a little more than kiss me," she said and Gyyx grinned.
Loralia remembered the story they had told her about Gyyx waking Leia up out of her sleep after they rescued her from the Klimnu by stimulating her. She had come out of her sleep in the middle of an orgasm, but it wasn't until she had convinced him to bond with her completely that she had really started to heal and regain her strength.
"I don't think that would work," Loralia said, "She might look like Sleeping Beauty, but she wasn't singled out. The Covra locked the entire settlement, not just her."
"That's true," Ciyrs said, "This is an ability of the Covra, not magic. There has to something, something specific, that will unlock all of them."
"We're going to go back to the other men and tell them what we found out about Rain," Pyra said.
"Rain?" asked Eden.
"That's her name," Lynx said.
Loralia could hear the tenderness in his voice and she wished there was something that she could do to reassure him. Even just hearing those few words from him, she feel his emptiness and loneliness, and if there two emotions that she understood clearly, it was those.
"We will keep working on it from here," Loralia said, hoping that that would comfort Lynx in some way, "If we think of anything, we will get in touch with you."
"I have you and the baby with me, Eden," Pyra said, pulling a pendant out from under his shirt.
Loralia watched as he held the pendant in his hand and rubbed it with his thumb
. Behind her she heard Eden sigh.
"Keep it with you," she said, "I love you."
The rest of the women repeated her words to their mates, and the men returned them. Finally she was looking at Bannack again.
"We'll do everything we can," she told him.
"I know you will."
"I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
Loralia closed the compact and looped it back around her neck. As she was turning toward the rest of the women, she felt a sudden wave of worry and when she looked at Eden, she watched the color drain from her already pale face.
Chapter Six
"Eden?"
Loralia's voice sounded like it was coming through water toward her. She could hear her, but the words were muffled and indistinct. Far more distinct was the strange pain coursing through her belly and tightening in her lower back. She felt dizzy and her vision blurred slightly.
"Eden?" Zuri said
Eden felt the other woman's hand come to her back and she pressed back into it, hoping to find some strength and balance in the support.
"I don't feel right," she managed to say, though the words sounded just as warped coming into her ears as the ones that the others had spoken.
"What do you mean you don't feel right? What's wrong?" Leia asked and Eden felt her come up to her other side.
"I'm dizzy and I have a pain in my belly."
"Oh, no," Zuri said.
"We need to get her to the midwives," Elianna said urgently.
Eden looked at Loralia and saw her serene face gazing back at her. She knew that the five of them had not done very well making her feel like she was part of the clan. Even though they truly wanted to, the five of them were still hesitant and unsure of anyone outside of their tightknit little group. The reality was that the five of them were intrinsically connected. Eden had been the first to come and was there to be an anchor within the compound for the other women to come. She had watched Elianna come and go through her brutal attack from the Klimnu, which bonded them. Elianna had discovered Leia in the prison, which connected the three of them. When Zuri came, she already knew Leia from the university, and then Zuri herself brought Samira back to Uoria after her brief visit back to Earth.
Loralia was an outlier, something that none of them understood. It was not that she was another species. They had all learned that that didn't matter. It was more that she was inexplicable and came without connection to any of them. Eden hoped very much that they would soon all mesh together.
At that moment, Loralia was a source of focus for Eden. Her lavender eyes were startling enough to keep her concentrating on them as Zuri, Leia, and Elianna supported her, and Samira held the door to make it easier for them to guide Eden out of the shop. She lost sight of Loralia as the others turned her to move her out of the shop and Eden glanced back over her shoulder. Loralia was hesitating inside the building, not following the other women.
"Loralia," Eden called, "Please come with us."
It was difficult to explain, but right then, as new waves of dizziness and pain washed over her, she knew that she wanted to have all of the women there with her.
A few minutes later the women helped her into the home of the elder midwife of the tribe. The tremendous Denynso woman, more feminine but nearly as large as her male counterparts, rushed into the room still drying her hands from washing them in the sink in the back room. Her eyes were wide and worried.
"Eden?" she asked, coming up to the women, "What's wrong?"
"She says she's feeling strange," Zuri told her.
"I'm dizzy," Eden said, "I feel like I can't see straight."
"Are you having pain?" the midwife, Adela, asked.
Eden nodded, not wanting to actually admit what she was going through because she felt like if she gave voice to it, it would be too real and she would have to really confront what might be happening.
"Bring her into the back," Adela said, gesturing toward the curtains that covered the large doorway leading from the main room in the front of the house to the small examination room in the back.
The women helped her toward the back of the house and Eden glanced back to make sure that Loralia was following. She laid down on the bed and closed her eyes, willing the strange feeling to pass and the pain to ease. As she lay there she felt the comfort of Pyra's presence near her and she began to relax.
"Tell me what happened," Adela said, rubbing her hands together to warm them before lifting Eden's dress out of the way and resting her palms on her belly.
"I don’t know," Eden said, "Everything was fine, and then I felt a little tinge of pain in my lower belly, and then it moved around to my back. It started getting worse, and then I started feeling really dizzy and lightheaded."
As the midwife examined her, Eden rested her head back and closed her eyes again. She concentrated on the feeling of Pyra's presence, the thought of him being close to her. It was as if he were there, cradling her head and touching her belly as Adela checked her carefully for all of the signs of labor.
"It doesn't look like you are in labor right now, Adela said and relief washed over Eden, but the stern look on the midwife's face brought her back into the sense of nervousness, "But I need you to remember that we aren't entirely sure how this pregnancy is going to go. Pyra is the first of this generation to reproduce, but the problem is that you were once human."
"Ciyrs says that I am Denynso now, though. He says that my DNA has completely changed and that I am now as much Denynso as you are."
Eden was feeling slightly defensive, but she knew that it was mostly fear that was making her sound angry and sharp with the midwife who had been nothing but kind and encouraging to her since she discovered that she was pregnant.
"I know that, Eden, but we've talked about this before. You are the first person to ever be changed like that. No one else, ever, has been changed from another species to a Denynso. We didn't even know that was possible, so we have no idea what it actually means. It is entirely possible that while you are technically one of us, your body still maintains some of the traits of humans. That means that we don't know if this pregnancy will go as long as a normal human pregnancy or if it will be closer to a Denynso pregnancy. That makes it really difficult for us to tell where you may be in the process."
"What is the difference between the pregnancies of the two species?" Loralia asked from her place several feet away from the bed where Eden lay.
"Two months or more. If she is carrying like a human, she still has some time to go. If she is carrying like a Denynso, though, this little one will be ready to come into the world very soon. There is simply no way of knowing."
Eden slid her eyes over to Loralia, catching her gaze and holding it meaningfully, hoping that she could tell her what she was thinking just through that one glance. It seemed to take a moment, and then Loralia gave a single subtle nod. Eden looked back up at Adela.
"I am starting to feel much better," she told her, "I think I just overreacted. I've never done this before, you know."
"I know," Adela said with a warm, understanding smile, "I completely understand. I am the only one that still remembers the last generation being born, and I can tell you that there was not one first time mother who did not get nervous close to the end. The dizziness and pains are not uncommon. I can't tell you for sure, but they make me think that you may be carrying more like a Denynso. Those are common symptoms for a mother that is drawing close to labor."
"If it's alright with you, I'm just going to go home now. Some rest will probably do me good."
"Of course, but prepare yourself. This child could make an appearance when you least expect it, and it is important that you are ready."
Eden nodded and looked toward the other women.
"The girls will help me get the house ready and make sure that I'm alright until Pyra comes home."
"Good."
Eden let Adela help her sit before swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing carefully. The
pain had subsided and she was feeling stronger, but she longed for the feeling of Pyra being close to her. The sense of his presence had dissipated and she reached out with her mind for the link with him. As it had been for the last few days, though, she could not make the connection. She remembered him holding the pendant in his hand when they spoke through the mirror and realized that somehow it was connecting them. When he touched the hearts that represented her and their baby, she could feel his energy pulsing toward her. The thought calmed and comforted her, giving her the strength to move forward.
"Come on," Zuri said, "We'll help you get home."
With Zuri on one side and Samira on the other, the women made their way carefully out of the midwife's home and toward Eden's. Adela watched them from the door, calling out reminders to Eden about the things she needed to be doing to take care of herself until the baby arrived.
Eden waited until they got to her house to turn to Loralia again.
"Can you help me?" she asked nervously.
Loralia hesitated and then walked over to Eden, leading her with a gentle hand on her back over to the sofa.
"I can try," she said, "Lay down." Loralia knelt down beside the sofa and took her compact from around her neck, "I don't know if I'll be able to tell you anything that I didn't tell you the last time."
"Just try."
Loralia opened the compact in her palm and brought it up to rest against the side of Eden's belly, placing her other hand on top of the swell. Eden could feel her hand pressing down as if trying to reach the baby and ease it closer to the mirror. She was quiet for several long seconds and Eden started to feel worried, then Loralia's mouth twitched into the hint of a smile.
"This baby is very perceptive," she said.
"Is it still a boy?" Eden asked.
Loralia laughed and looked into Eden's eyes.
"If he was before, he still is now. I don't think that changes," she said and Eden laughed, the moment relieving some of the tension she was feeling.
"What do you mean he's perceptive?"
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