by Stella Sky
The human clearly didn’t know whether or not she could trust me, and she blinked her thickly lashed eyes slowly at me as we stared at each other—me doing everything in my power not to give in to my impulse to touch her again, and she probably doing her best not to give in to her impulse to smack me. Still, she mustered up enough courage to stare me in the eye and face the proposition head on.
“What would you want from me?” she asked, her chin high in the air, even as her voice wavered in fear and defiance.
“Just one simple thing,” I said quietly. “Please, just tell me your name.”
The human looked at me as if I were mental, but then her face softened, and she looked down at her hands.
“My name is Ariel,” she answered. “Doctor Ariel Landon.”
I could feel my body grow light with elation and I smiled broadly at the human, bowing deeply at her.
“Thank you,” I said. “My name is Commander Pyre Juno.”
And with that, I left her cell, determined that from that moment onward, I would do everything within my power to protect the human at all costs.
***
“Human, it is meal time.”
Ariel refused to look at Arke, and I frowned. It had been three days into her captivity, and yet this was the first time they had offered the human any sustenance. If they chose to starve her rather than to allow her a meal, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. It took only seven days on Earth, roughly the same amount of time on Helna, to kill a human, and she already looked like she was in rough shape.
“You must eat,” I said firmly, ignoring the sour look on Arke’s face. He was always over the top when it came to punishments; he had a lot to prove to himself since his masculinity had been all but robbed from him. My disease for some reason was very slow-moving, and because of that, I had maintained a very powerful position both within the Verian government and among the opposition.
“How do I know I can trust any of the food you jerks bring me?” Ariel asked, her eyes flashing out at me. I would get her out of there as soon as I could. I had to. She wasn’t doing very well in there at all. I could sense it. It was impossible not to pity the poor human.
“I suppose you can’t trust anything of the sort,” I said, looking out the window coyly at the short, long-haired Pelin men standing outside with trays of food over their heads. “But maybe you can trust these men.”
I snapped my fingers, and soon, a small parade of Pelin was marching to the cell, depositing trays underneath the bars of the door. The small shed was filled with the appetizing scent of Pelin cooking; as far as the Verians were concerned, they were the best in the galaxy. Unfortunately, the resources of Helna were severely limited and, day by day, our ability to vary the dishes we ate and served dwindled drastically.
I could tell by Ariel’s face that she was also affected by the scent of the food as it filled the space around us, and glanced down at the trays with longing and apprehension etched clearly on her face.
“What do you expect me to do?” she asked with a sigh. “Trust that you’re just going to feed me after all you’ve already done?”
I looked her in the eye. “It’s the least we could do. And we do the same for the other prisoners as well. You just happen to be a special case.”
She glared at me as if she wanted to say something else, but instead seemed to think better of it and hesitantly lifted the lid of one of the silver trays on the floor of her cell.
A funny little gurgle came from the human’s stomach, and she swallowed hard.
“I promise you,” I said firmly. “No harm will come to you from eating that food. You must be well-nourished. The knowledge you harness is valuable. We would be foolish to let you waste away.”
Arke nodded in agreement, and upon seeing his movement, Ariel clamped the lid of the tray back down and backed away from the food.
“I would rather die than help you!” Ariel shouted.
“Leave us,” I commanded, turning to face the small group of Verians and Pelins in the building. Arke opened his mouth, blubbering in disbelief, but I couldn’t have him risk dealing with the human any longer. “You’re clearly doing no good with her here. I would like to take full command of the prisoner.”
“You don’t have the right!” Arke shouted. “We’re doing just fine here without you!”
“I don’t have the right?” I demanded, arching my brow. I opened my vest and pointed to the official crest on the badge I was wearing inside. “I out-rank you, Arke. And if you’d like to dispute my authority, we can see what the Doyan has to say about this. But for today, it is your job to respect my orders, and I want you and your men out of here so that I can deal with the prisoner myself. I’m tired of you krochas messing everything up! Tell me, what have you learned? Absolutely nothing. The cause is still lost and will stay lost if the task stays in your hands. Now leave!”
“The Doyan will surely hear about this,” Arke said darkly, motioning for his troops to follow him out the door. “By this time tomorrow, you had better believe that you aren’t going to be allowed to set foot through these doors.”
“We will see about that,” I said, refusing to take my eyes off of Arke. He knew that I was stronger than he was. There was no reason to fight any longer. Even pride could only go so far in a battle such as this. Still, he was right. The Doyan had put Arke and his men in charge for a reason. He wasn’t going to like me changing the rules on him.
“Fine,” Arke growled, slamming the door open and marching outside. “But this isn’t the end. You’re going to regret this, Yul Pyre! And mark my words…”
Arke’s voice grew muffled as I slammed the door in his face and the human let out a quiet laugh.
“Really,” I said, turning to her. “You must eat.”
Ariel cut her laugh off, and I gazed into the perfect roundness of her mysterious eyes. Never before had I felt such a thing for a female before. Now I could understand the thrill that many Verian warriors described in regard to their females. I had to admit: it was both distracting and intoxicating. But I had to keep the task at hand in the forefront of my mind if we were going to succeed.
“What do I eat with?”
I was surprised, and we spent the next few minutes undergoing an impromptu lesson in Verian dining etiquette. Ariel got the hang of it much faster than I anticipated, and soon she was slowly eating the food that the Pelin had left out in front of her, closing her eyes in appreciation every so often. I wondered if it was simply because the food was very good, or if she wanted to avoid looking at me. Either way, I could tell that she enjoyed it.
“What did you think?” I asked when she finished, clearing the dishes away and stacking them near the door for the Pelin to retrieve.
“I have never tasted anything like it,” Ariel said, still refusing to look me in the eye. But at least she was talking to me. I took it as a good sign.
“Well, the Pelin feel indebted to the Verian race. They like to do things like cooking for us.”
“Good for you,” Ariel said bitterly, her beautiful face creased with resentment. “You have slaves all over the galaxy, don’t you?”
“Slaves?” I asked, frowning. “We don’t have any such thing.”
“Oh, you just call them prisoners, then,” she grumbled.
I shifted on my feet. I certainly took offense to her words, but unleashing my terrifying temper on a small female seemed in poor taste.
“You are doing no good in making an enemy of me,” I warned her, doing everything possible to keep the fury out of my voice. But she was walking a fine line.
“Really? Because last I checked, you were the enemy,” Ariel said, her deep blue eyes piercing into mine. I sighed deeply, doing my best to even my breathing before I said or did anything I would regret. I did not want her to compare me to Arke. I wanted to claim her, not kill her.
“It would be nice if you knew as much about things as everyone seems to think you do,” I said darkly instead. “But you need to guard your
secrets from these men. They are not going to do you or me any favors if they get any information out of you. What do they know?”
The human blanched suddenly and averted her eyes away from me. So she had told them something. But was it enough?
“Ariel, this is important. I can find out on my own what you’ve said if you choose not to tell me.”
“It’s just obscure data,” she whispered. “I don’t know what they injected me with or what I told them afterward. All I know is that I was in pain the entire time.”
I frowned deeply. It might already be too late. If we were going to give the opposition an edge in this race against time, then we would have to act fast.
“Do you think it was enough that the Verians could win the war against the humans?” I demanded, slamming my fist down on the small wooden table across from her cell. Arke’s small saucer full of oka rattled fiercely, and the human flinched away from me, fear and resentment flashing in her eyes.
“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “Why do you guys keep pestering me and asking me questions that I just don’t know how to answer? Can’t you just leave me alone?”
I stood my full height, at least a head and a half taller than the human, and studied her coldly. “The time is not yet right for us to let you go. And when we do, all that will happen is that you will be taken to a camp and bred like all the other females of Earth. Is that what you want?”
“You’re such an ass!” she exclaimed, kicking weakly at the bars of her cell.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Fighting with the human because I was agitated about my situation wasn’t going to help anything. It would be better to just give her some space and go collect my thoughts. I was the strongest man left on Helna currently; as far as the men who hadn’t regained their strength through breeding were concerned, anyway. All of the Verian men who were born or had become super soldiers were stationed in the war zone.
I, however, was needed on the ground of my home planet and forced to continue enduring the strains of working as a double agent of the Verian government and of the opposition. It was a difficult position, and if the Doyan ever found out about my place among the rebels, I would be imprisoned and tortured for life. Death would be a welcome release if that were the case. It would make it especially dangerous to free her.
But none of that mattered. I had vowed to myself, and now to my men, to rescue the human, and that was exactly what I was going to do.
Chapter 3
Dr. Ariel Landon
“Human. Good morning.”
“There’s nothing good about being here,” I mumbled, rolling over and trying to ignore the wave of heat that Pyre’s voice always seemed to ignite in me. It was probably just a reaction to the fear and adrenaline I felt in the face of these dangerous beings from Helna. I knew I shouldn’t give it too much consideration.
“That’s good to hear,” he said, surprising me with the pleasant candor of his voice. “Because we are leaving now.”
“Leaving?”
I paused and looked at the Verian man, for the first time taking in his dazzling white suit and the uncharacteristically casual way he was wearing his long, silver hair.
“What is this?” I demanded just as realization slowly dawned on me. I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. “You’re not aligned with the military, are you?”
The Verian froze, and I grinned privately. I knew it.
“Who I am is none of your concern. What you need to do is start behaving before this situation gets any worse for you.”
“Behave?” I asked, quirking my brow at him. He stiffened, and I couldn’t help but laugh. For being so strong and masculine, it sure didn’t take a whole lot to make him uncomfortable.
“This is a serious situation,” Pyre said, his mysterious eyes locked on mine. “If you are not silent, I will be forced to take some precautions.”
Pyre dipped into the pocket of his snug white pants and pulled out a small case. He opened it to show me that inside was a needle and a thick yellow serum. I frowned, but he seemed serious enough that I obeyed.
He pocketed the serum, and I watched as he rummaged through the room, pausing to rifle through stray documents only to discard them in a fury. Finally, he approached my cell, his eyes angry and wild.
“You are coming with us, human,” Pyre said, sending a jolt of fear through my body. He didn’t look like the same man who had abducted me at that moment. He looked savage and uncivil, as if he were doing everything he possibly could to keep together his self-control. I was terrified of what might be lurking on the other side of that hard-won composure.
I didn’t resist this time as he gripped my shoulder in his big hand, his long, slender fingers digging into my flesh firmly, but not painfully. He pushed me to the back of the shed, away from the doorway, and I frowned in confusion. What exactly was he planning to do with me?
Just then, a tiny, almost imperceptible beam of light shone through a small crack in the building, and Pyre pushed it forward. At first, I thought that the building was going to collapse entirely, but I was shocked to find that the wall opened up into a small tunnel.
“Go through here, and do not speak. Listen to the yul leading you as if your life depended on it.”
Pyre spoke his words quickly and quietly in English, then closed the opening. I was abruptly cut off from the serious lines of his handsome face, the savage energy behind his eyes. It was disconcerting, but I wasn’t sure I missed him very much this time.
“Come, human; let’s go.”
Sudden, rough hands were on me, and I was being tugged, forward and forward into the darkness, until we reached an underground bunker that was dimly lit by old-fashioned light sources from early in Helna’s development. Greandol had been using the same crude technology when he had been allowed to tinker in the lab with me.
The thought of the young hybrid boy brought a lump to my throat, and all I could think was that I would have done anything to be back on Earth with him now, giving him the cure to his disease so that he might grow into a strong, healthy young man and escape his fate as a sickly hybrid boy with nobody to love.
“This is the human?” a male voice said from across the room. He was clearly unimpressed, and I bit back the urge to sass him, but only because for some reason, whether I liked him or not, I trusted Pyre. I knew I shouldn’t, and I didn’t want to, but I did. And so I held my tongue as the group of Verian men gathered around me to speculate on my worth.
“She doesn’t look like much, does she?” another man said, reaching forward to poke at one of the golden curls draped over my shoulder.
“Well, if Pyre says she’s valuable, then she’s valuable. We need to make sure she doesn’t get hurt. Who here is the best at driving a thuse?”
About three out of six men raised their hands, promptly ensuing in a macho pissing contest until finally, I was handed off to a tall Verian man with cool, cloudy eyes. It was the first man I had seen, from across the room, who hadn’t been impressed by me at all.
“You best not move even an inch, human, or you’re going to find out the meaning of pain,” he said, looking above my head as if staring right at me were a chore he wasn’t willing to do.
“Yeah, and Blaithe isn’t even threatening you. Road rash from falling off a thuse can make even the bravest of yul cry.”
The men sniggered, quiet sounds that echoed through the small bunker. They abruptly stopped laughing when Blaithe turned away from me and began to walk. The rest followed, including me.
I pursed my lips, doing my best to obey Pyre and say nothing as the men led me down a dark corridor. I suddenly caught a whiff of fresh air – well, as fresh as the air could get on a dying planet – and knew we were close to the entrance.
Finally, we were outside, and I saw that it was twilight. There were no lights for miles, and I had to strain my eyes to find Blaine in the crowd, making his way toward a line of crafts resembling the motorcycles on Earth. As I continued to walk forward,
a small patch of dirt road came into view, and I sighed as Blaithe mounted his thuse.
“Sit behind me, human, and don’t you dare let go. You will regret it; I promise you that.”
I didn’t doubt it. The engine began to rumble to life as soon as I settled in behind Blaithe, and I held onto the little railing that was beside my seat. The thuse took off quickly, and I let out a little yelp of fear despite my vow of silence. One by one, the other Verians caught up to us on thuses of their own, surrounding Blaithe’s completely so that nobody looking in at us would be able to tell that there was anybody in the center of the group.
They were disguising me, I suddenly realized. But they hadn’t exactly been treating me well either. Was it possible that they were going to help me get back to Earth? Or were they breaking me out for some other reason that I didn’t understand yet? What did they want with me? And could I trust them to be any better than Arke had been? There was no way of knowing. All I had to hold onto was the small glimmer of hope that maybe Pyre wasn’t as evil as I imagined.
“Get off the thuse, human, and under this blanket. We’re going inside.”
I was a little bit disoriented once the thuse came to a stop and a man draped a heavy brown blanket over me. It was the same agitating material of the blanket in my cell, and I couldn’t wait to get it away from my face.
But it remained in place as I was led, basically blind, into a cool building. I shivered despite myself, and when the blanket was taken away from me, I was standing directly in front of Pyre.
He looked handsome in his casual wear, his silver hair now tied away from his angular face and his eyes much less angry than they had been in my cell.
“You are safe from Arke now, but you are going to have to stay here with me.”
“With you?”
“We are in opposition to the Doyan’s regime. Yoltaz is a cruel man, with little regard for anything outside of his own interests. That being said, you are too valuable to leave in the hands of the Doyan’s men.”
