"It is," Ivy said quietly.
Maxim released her hand to wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her close to him. He kissed the top of her head and she heard him take in a deep breath.
"I can't wait for you to meet my mother," he said.
She was suddenly self-conscious. They had only had the opportunity to bathe once since leaving the settlement, and even that was just a brief dip in the creek with a cake of hard soap that she had tucked into her bag. It made her uncomfortable that she was going to meet the people of Maxim's home looking far less than her best.
"Is there somewhere that I can take a bath or a shower before I meet her? I'm sure that becoming fugitives that very well might have a price on our heads is not the best impression that I can make in the first place, but I would rather not look like one."
She tried to smooth some of the strands of hair that wriggled their way out of her braid and Maxim laughed.
"You are the most beautiful fugitive that I have ever seen," he said.
"Have you known many fugitives in your time?"
She asked the question only half in jest. With everything that she had learned about his kind in the last few days, she was very aware of the possibility that he had in fact come into contact with fugitives of more than one species. His noncommittal shrug was not as comforting as she would like it to be, but before she could take too much time to contemplate it, they approached the stone wall. He guided her along it for several feet until they came to a gate embedded in the stone. An aging man stood beside it. Even with his silver hair and weathered face, this man had the same type of beauty as the other men.
"Maxim!" the man said when he caught sight of them. "What are you doing? Where are the others?"
"Athan, I need you to get us to my house without anyone seeing us, and if anyone comes here asking, you didn't see us."
"What's happening, Maxim? What's wrong?"
Maxim gripped the black bars of the gate and stared into the older man's face. Ivy could see the desperation in his eyes. Even though he believed they would be safe in the kingdom, at least for a time, she knew there was a part of him that worried they had been gone long enough that the Denynso may come here looking for them.
"Please, Athan. I can't explain right now."
Athan paused for another moment, glancing between Maxim and Ivy, then nodded, reaching down to release the lock on the gate and pushing it open to allow them inside. He glanced around as if checking to see if there was anyone that might be watching them, and then placed his hands on their backs, guiding them to one side of the gate.
"I can't be gone from my post for long. I can take you as far as the tunnels. Will you be able to make it from there?"
"Yes. Thank you, Athan."
Athan nodded at Maxim and started along the edge of the wall, his stride so long that Ivy almost needed to jog to keep up with them. Suddenly the older man stopped and Ivy crashed into Maxim's back. He reached back, grabbing onto the back of her thigh and giving her an affectionate squeeze. She watched over his shoulder as Athan pressed his fingertips to a stone in the wall. The stone shifted, revealing what looked like a small keypad made with different colors of gems. Athan touched them in sequence and stepped back. A section of the grass sank and then tilted, creating a ramp down into the ground.
"There shouldn’t be anyone else in the tunnels at this time of day. Once the access hatch is locked in place, there is a five minute lock-out when the doors cannot be opened from the outside again, so you have that amount of time to get to the exit before anyone else would be able to get inside."
"Thank you so much."
Maxim started down the ramp, but Athan reached out and touched his back to stop him.
"Maxim, I don’t have to tell you how dangerous it would be if someone found out that I allowed you into the tunnels."
"I know, Athan. You can trust me."
"I know that I can." Athan touched Maxim's cheek and Ivy noticed how much older his hand looked when it was against the smooth, young skin of Maxim's face. "You look so much like your father." As if startled, Athan let his hand drop away from Maxim's cheek and stepped back. "Go on. Hurry."
Ivy let Maxim take her hand and lead her down the steep ramp into the tunnel below. She glanced up a final time to watch Athan's face disappear as the section of grass moved back into place and the access hatch again become undetectable in the rest of the grass. She had expected that the tunnels would have been dug directly into the ground and be dirt, but was relieved to find that it had been reinforced with smooth sheets of stone and seemed to glow with recessed lights at the tops of the walls, but only in the first several feet.
"Come on," Maxm urged, tugging on her hand and starting down the tunnel.
As they moved along the passageway the lights overhead illuminated and the sections of the tunnel behind them extinguished. She noticed that each section glowed with a different color of light, apparently indicating where along the path of the tunnels they were.
"What did Athan mean that it would be dangerous if anyone found out that he had let you into the tunnels?" Ivy asked.
"These tunnels were designed for use by the elders and a secret segment of the military that the rest of us are not even supposed to know about. Allowing someone who is not authorized into them is considered a high form of treason."
"How did you know about them?"
"My father was a member of the Order. He told me about them when I was a child."
"Your father was in it, but you aren't?"
"My father. My grandfather. His father before him. I wasn't selected."
"By who?"
"I don't know."
"Rey?"
"Rey doesn't control the Order."
"But if all of those generations have been in it, why weren't you selected?"
Maxim stopped and turned toward her sharply. Ivy saw a moment of frustrated anger flicker over his face, and she knew that she had pressed too far.
"The circumstances of my father's death changed the Order. Athan is the only person who was in it with him who still is, and I do not know who else is a part of it. He won't tell me, and I wouldn't ask him."
Ivy nodded and Maxim turned away from her again, stepping into a section of the tunnel that glowed red as he passed through. He had only taken a few steps when Ivy heard the sound of muffled voices ahead of them. A look of panic crossed Maxim's face and Ivy realized that there were people coming toward them from the other end of the tunnel. Maxim looked around and then she saw his eyes lock on something above him. He jumped up and grabbed a metal bar that was barely perceptible in the vibrancy of the red light and yanked it down. A narrow ladder followed him down and he started up it without another word. Ivy followed, keeping as close to Maxim as the bags on his back and the rolled blanket beneath his arm would allow.
At the top of the ladder Maxim pushed against the ceiling. The lights went out around them and the sudden darkness made it so that Ivy could see the hint of purple light from a section of the tunnel several yards away. She could hear Maxim muttering to himself, commanding the ceiling to move. The purple light gave way to yellow and the voices of whoever was in the tunnel grew louder. An instant later the light shifted to green. They were moving quickly now and Ivy felt her heart pounding against her ribs with such intensity that the bones seemed to tremble in her chest. The light shifted to blue and she could hear their voices distinctly now.
"There is someone here. I'm telling you. I heard footsteps."
"There's no one that would come down here. Athan and Vitri are on guard. The rest are with Rey."
The light shifted to white and Maxim's muttering became more frantic. Above her she heard a scraping sound like stone grinding against stone.
"That's why it is so troublesome."
The light shifted to orange and the sound above her reached a peak, then she heard Maxim let out a breath and felt him moving up the ladder again. She followed as qui
ckly as she could, letting him grab her by the arm and pull her up. The ladder came up with her feet and just as the door they had climbed through closed, she saw a flash of red light.
"We have to get out of here," Maxim hissed.
Ivy scrambled after him through the dark room where they had come up out of the tunnel. By the piles of cartons and cloth-covered forms scattered throughout the space Ivy assumed that they were in some sort of storage room, but she didn't ask Maxim. He weaved his way through the room until he reached a small window on the far wall and she saw him release the three latches holding it closed before tossing everything he was carrying through and then following. Ivy followed his lead, handing her bag through and then pulling herself up and through the window.
The window led out onto what looked like a screened-in porch. As soon as Ivy dropped down onto the wood-planked floor, Maxim grabbed up the bags and blanket and started for a door at the far end. A crash behind her made Ivy jump.
"They followed us," Maxim said.
Ivy picked up her bag and they ran down the length of the porch. Instead of going through the door, however, Maxim turned and ducked through a small archway in the wall that reminded Ivy of the dog door she had had in her kitchen door when she was a child. It led to a small, dark stone chamber that didn't seem to have any other exits and Ivy felt panic rise in her throat. She watched Maxim brush dust away from one of the walls and a metal ring came into view. He yanked on it and the wall gave way, opening so that they could slip through. The door closed behind them and brilliant pink light disoriented Ivy for a moment.
"Are we back in the tunnel?"
"Yes. Come on."
"If they are coming after us for being in the tunnel, why did we go back into it?"
"No one knows about that door. My grandfather created it long before anyone but Athan was a part of the Order and he didn't tell anyone except my father about it. I wasn't even sure if it would still work."
"What would have happened if it hadn't?"
Maxim shook his head and she didn't press any further. They were only in the tunnel for a few moments before Maxim pulled down another ladder and they hurried up into a cool, faintly lit room. The hatch to the tunnel had just closed when Ivy heard a door above them open, she braced herself, but Maxim didn't seem concerned. He walked toward the bottom of a set of stairs across the room and smiled up into the light that came down into the room.
"Maxim?" a woman's voice said incredulously.
"Hello, Mother."
A stunningly beautiful woman who vaguely resembled Maxim rushed down the stairs and gathered him into an embrace.
"What are you doing here?" she asked as she pushed back to look at him.
"Mother, this is Ivy," he said, carefully stepping out of his mother's arms and turning to gesture at Ivy.
Ivy brushed at her clothing, hoping to get as much of the dirt off as she could and smoothed her hair back again before stepping toward her.
"Hello, Ivy," Maxim's mother said, "I'm Ellora." She looked at Ivy carefully and then glanced back at Maxim. "Maxim, she's lovely."
Maxim smiled and ran the backs of his fingers tenderly along Ivy's cheek. Despite the grime of her travels, she had never felt more beautiful than she did at that moment.
"It's nice to meet you, Ellora," Ivy said.
"You, too. But, Maxim, what are you doing here without the others, and why did you come through that door? I told you when you were just a boy that you were not to go into those tunnels."
"Father showed them to me."
"Your father…" her voice trailed off and Ivy could see Ellora trying to control a sudden wave of emotion.
"Mother, it is absolutely essential that you do not tell anyone that we are here. There were members of the Order down in the tunnels. We only got past them by using the door that Grandfather built."
"The Order!" Ellora gasped. "You know the difficulties that this family has dealt with because of them. I had hoped that you would remember that and stay away from them."
"The only reason that we made it even this far without someone seeing us is because of Athan."
Ellora seemed to contemplate this for a moment, weighing what she should say to her son, and then she shook her head and gestured at the steps.
"Come on. Come upstairs. You two need to get cleaned up and then I want to hear what's going on."
Ivy followed Maxim and Ellora upstairs into a home that felt so warm and inviting it was almost as if she had stepped off of Uoria and into her grandmother's house on Earth. She relaxed as soon as she walked into the kitchen and the smell of something very close to coffee touched her nose. She drew in a deep breath and saw Ellora smile.
"Would you like a cup?" the beautiful woman asked.
Ivy was startled.
"You have coffee?" she asked.
"Yes," Ellora said with a laugh. "We've been growing it here for generations."
Ivy glanced at Maxim who was giving her a look that said she shouldn't ask any more questions about it. She assumed that meant that it had something to do with the unspoken history of their kind. The plant had to have come from Earth, and as Ellora filled a delicate cup that seemed to be crafted out of thin blue shell and handed it to her, Ivy could imagine that she was drinking coffee from plants originally grown from beans carried to Uoria by Project Nyx 23. The thought was oddly comforting, as if the drink was a thread connecting herself back to Earth at a time well before she existed. She took a sip of the coffee. It was stronger and silkier in her mouth than the coffee at home, but she credited that, and the slightly different fragrance, to the lush growing environment on the planet.
"When you're finished with that, why don't you take a shower?" Maxim offered. "I know you would feel better and it'll give me a chance to explain everything to Mother."
"Is that alright?" Ivy asked, lowering the cup carefully to the table where they had sat.
"Of course it is," Ellora said. "Whenever you're ready, you just go on up. The bathroom is at the end of the hallway."
Ivy finished her coffee in one long sip, thanked Ellora, and headed up to the bathroom. She stood under the water for several minutes until she finally felt clean again, and then stepped out. She pulled fresh clothing out of her bag and stepped into it, luxuriating in the feeling of the clean fabric against her now-clean skin. Not knowing how long it would be until she had a chance to bathe or wash her clothing, she had avoided changing out of what she had been wearing when they left the settlement, and the feeling of the clean clothing was nearly as refreshing as the shower.
Gathering her clothing under her arm, she took the strap of her bag in her palm. She couldn't stand to have it over her shoulder for another moment, not until she absolutely had to. She started down the steps back toward the kitchen and was startled by Maxim's heated whisper.
"You mean they knew?"
"Of course they knew!" Ellora responded. "The Order knows everything. Why do you think that your father died the way that he did?"
Ivy wasn't sure if she should continue into the room or just pretend that she was still in the shower. The way they were speaking seemed to mean that they didn't want to be overheard, but she was as involved in this as Maxim was, which meant she needed to know as much as she could in order to protect herself.
"If the Order knew about what happened to the group that split off, why didn't they do anything about it?"
"They tried, Maxim. They made alliances in the badlands and it drove them off of Uoria. When they came back and their bodies began to change, there was little anyone could do. By then they didn't even know about the Order anymore. They destroyed the Order's original allies because it was only war and hatred that the generations taught each other."
"Who were their allies?"
Ivy couldn't stay out of the room any longer. What Ellora was saying completely changed what Pyra had believed about the Klimnu and their evolution.
"I don't know," Ellora told her.
"I am not privy to the details of the Order. I never have been. I only know what little I was able to pick up from Maxim's father."
"Rey said that he didn't know anything about the Klimnu," Ivy said, turning to Maxim.
"He doesn't," Ellora confirmed. "Rey is not a part of the Order. He leads the kingdom, but in many ways the Order is above him."
"Why did the Klimnu not come after the rest of the kingdom when they came back?"
"They didn't remember us. The generations that came before them had only told them of the conflict, not of their origins. They didn't know where to find us, and once their transformation began, they were too distracted by the new war they waged to care about continuing to look."
"The Denynso," Ivy said. "That is who the new war was with. Because Creia wouldn’t rescue them from their change."
"So the Order just pretended that they didn't exist?” Maxim demanded. "They knew that these creatures were out there and they did nothing to protect anyone from them?"
"Some of them did, Maxim. There was tremendous conflict. It was violent…" her voice weakened and she stopped. She looked back and forth between the two of them. "If they found you here, Maxim. If they knew what you had done, that you came through those tunnels…"
"We won't put you in any danger, Mother," Maxim promised. "We'll just stay here for the rest of the night and tomorrow to get some sleep, but then we will leave and continue on our way."
"Where are you going?" Ellora asked.
"We don't know. We just have to go. The Denynso will be looking for us and we can't let them find us."
"You can't run forever, Maxim."
"We can't let them catch us."
"No. They shouldn't catch you. You should go back to them."
"Mother—"
"You can't spend your entire life running. You have to go back and stand up for what you know is right. Do what your father didn't have the chance to. This isn't time for another war. It's time that this planet finally comes together."
Alien Romance Box Set: Uoria Mates II Complete Series (Books 1 - 10): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance Page 46
