“You looked nicer the way you were before,” Marissa told her. “When you first came, you had your hair down to your waist. You were softer around your face, too. Now.....”
Aimee studied her. “And now?”
Marissa turned away and shook her head.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Aimee went on. “I was fat and soft then. Now I’m hard and lean and dangerous. I discovered a different part of myself when I joined the warriors. I learned to run and fight and hunt with them. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the way I was before.”
“What if you find a mate and have children?” Marissa asked. “What will you do then?”
“Why can’t I have a mate and children the way I am now?” Aimee returned. “I’m still me, whether or not I have hair on my head. I’m just a different version of myself. I can still love. My heart hasn’t changed. Besides....”
“Besides,” Marissa interrupted, “you might find a mate on the warriors.”
Aimee didn’t take up the joke. “Is that why you think I joined the warriors—to find a man?”
Marissa dropped her eyes. “No one is saying that.”
“But you’re thinking it, aren’t you?” Aimee asked.
“No one thinks it, either.” Marissa replied. “Everybody knows you joined the warriors to help our faction, and we all appreciate it.”
Aimee followed her gaze into the dense foliage. “Right. Everybody thinks I shaved my head and joined the warriors to avoid finding a mate, but that’s not the reason, either. I wasn’t happy with myself. I was useless. I couldn’t run. I was so weak and out of shape I couldn’t even haul firewood. I couldn’t stand myself.”
“You’ve been happy with the warriors,” Marissa replied. “Everyone can see that. You’re different, but you have a strange fire burning in you now that wasn’t there before. Everybody can see you’ve found your place.”
Aimee beamed at her. “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you.”
Marissa stretched. “Now let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about Chris.”
“I’m sure she’s happy now, too, since she moved back up to her beloved mountain,” Aimee replied. “I’m surprised she stayed in the village as long as she did. You could see she wasn’t happy there.”
Marissa laughed. “Ever since the twins started running, she couldn’t keep her eyes off that mountain. She never belonged in the village at all.”
“Is Turk happy up there, too?” Aimee asked. “I can never tell if he’s happy to be back in the village with his family or if he’s itching to get out on the trail again.”
“He’s just like Chris,” Marissa replied. “He loves his family and the village community, but his heart is on the mountain. I understand why those two spent almost a year out there before they came down to have the twins.”
The sun broke over the mountain rim, and a fan of sunbeams shot through the trees. The leaves glowed golden, and steam rose from the damp earth. Marissa lifted her face to the light.
Aimee peered at her. “Are you sure you don’t want to run?”
Marissa turned red. “I can’t.”
Aimee’s eyes popped open. “Why not?”
“I’m pregnant,” Marissa told her.
“That’s wonderful!” Aimee paused. “That doesn’t mean you can’t run. Chris ran when she was pregnant, and I know some others who have done it, too.”
Marissa shook her head. “It isn’t that. I just don’t have the energy for it. I’m tired all the time, and I feel like I’m going to pass out every time I exert myself.”
Aimee sighed. “All right. I understand now. We’ll take it slow.”
Marissa hooked her arm through Aimee’s elbow. “Thanks.”
Chapter 2
A little hut perched among the high cliffs with the wind howling through the branches of its roof. Two twisted trees clung to the rocks with gnarled roots, and their tortured trunks formed the tiny structure’s twin backbones. Bundles of thatch tied onto their branches kept out the wind and rain.
Aimee and Marissa found Chris Sebastiani standing in the doorway. She shouted toward the shadows where the forest undergrowth swayed in the wind. “And don’t go too near the cliffs. And be home by dark. Your father will be back tonight.”
Aimee glanced toward the forest. “Was that the twins?”
Chris nodded. “They disappear at dawn and don’t come back until after dark most days. I hardly see them anymore.”
“They must be growing up fast,” Aimee remarked.
“I was hoping to see them,” Marissa told her. “I haven’t seen them since you moved up here.”
“None of us have.” Chris waved toward the door. “Come inside and sit down. What took you so long to get here? It isn’t that far to run.”
Aimee and Marissa exchanged glances. “We didn’t run. We walked.”
Chris’s head whipped around. “What for?”
Marissa hesitated, but Aimee replied, “Marissa didn’t feel like rushing. The woods are so beautiful at this time of year.”
Chris went back to her work. Aimee and Marissa sat down in two chairs opposite the little fireplace in the back wall of the house. “How have you been, Chris? I can see the mountain air agrees with you.”
“Everything about it agrees with me,” Chris replied. “It agrees with me, and it agrees with the twins. I don’t know how I stayed in the village as long as I did.”
“That’s what I just said,” Aimee told her. “You never should have come down in the first place.”
“Yes, we should have,” Chris countered. “Turk’s mother is getting old. If she hadn’t seen the twins when they were small, she probably never would have seen them. Now that they are running through the woods all day, they don’t want to sit around the village. Besides, it gave me a chance to get to know Turk’s family. I won’t get that chance again.”
“How is Turk?” Aimee looked around. “Where is he?”
“He joined a patrol to the Ursidrean border,” Chris replied. “He still has duties with the warriors even though he lives up here.”
Aimee frowned. “I wonder why I didn’t hear about that.”
“He’s on his own assignment,” Chris told her. “He doesn’t travel with a detachment of warriors the way he used to. He travels alone most of the time and answers directly to Caleb.”
“What does he do out there all by himself?” Aimee asked.
“He carries communications from Caleb to Donen and back again,” Chris replied. “He meets Faruk, who is Donen’s right hand man, on the border. Faruk hands off Donen’s messages to Turk, and Turk carries them to Caleb. Then he carries the answers back and delivers them to Faruk, who carries them to the Ursidrean capitol to give to Donen.”
“That’s an awfully complicated way of communicating,” Aimee remarked. “There must be a faster way.”
“Do you mean like whipping out your cell phone and sending the person a text?” Chris asked. “This is Angondra, not Seattle. The Ursidreans have advanced communications technology, but the Lycaon don’t, and none of the other factions do, either. If they want to communicate, they have to do it the old fashioned way, and Lycaon runners are the fastest on the planet.”
“Don’t forget,” Marissa added, “these factions have been at war for centuries. They’ve never communicated at all before. Maybe when the peace negotiations get a little farther advanced, the Ursidreans will share their technology with the rest of us to make communications faster.”
Chris prepared them a meal, and they caught up on news from the village. “Carmen is pregnant now,” Marissa told her.
“Really?” Chris exclaimed. “I hadn’t heard.”
Marissa laughed. “How could you hear? You’ve been in self-imposed isolation up here for who knows how long.”
“I haven’t been in isolation,” Chris argued. “I’m just not living in the village where every tidbit of news gets passed from hand to hand
in seconds. How did you find out?”
“Caleb told me,” Marissa replied. “He found out from Faruk, who found out from Donen, who is in negotiations with Renier.”
Aimee laughed. “Now that’s what I call the bush telephone.”
Marissa smiled. “Don’t laugh. He also told me your cousin Anna is with the Ursidreans now. She’s mated to a friend of Faruk’s named Menlo. She’s with Emily in the Ursidrean capitol.”
Aimee gasped. “How did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“We were too busy talking about Chris,” Marissa replied. “And I only found out this morning. The Avitras captured Menlo off the Ursidrean border. They were going to hold him for ransom and then kill him. Anna helped him escape, and they traveled together back to Ursidrean territory.”
Aimee shook her head in wonder. “Amazing. I always knew Anna and Frieda didn’t belong with the Avitras. There’s something shifty about those people.”
“They’re all right,” Marissa told her. “We just have the same prejudices against them that all Angondran factions have against each other. I’m sure Aquilla had a good reason for doing what he did.”
“That’s not the only news from your cousins,” Chris interrupted. “Your cousin Frieda has been found.”
Aimee started out of her chair. She couldn’t contain herself any longer. “What? When? How? Where?”
Chris held up her hand. “Slow down. She’s with the Aqinas. That’s all I can tell you.”
Aimee stared at her. “If she’s with the Aqinas, how can she be found?”
“The Aqinas came out of the water when Donen and Renier met on the frontier,” Chris told her. “There was another human woman there. I met her at the Romarie crash site, but one of the Romarie survived the crash long enough and attacked her. I thought she was dead, and we left her there when the Lycaon rescued us. Maybe you remember her from the ship. She was a Latina woman from Texas. Her name is Sasha Marquez.”
Aimee nodded. “I didn’t think she survived the crash.”
“You don’t know how surprised I was to see her with the Aqinas,” Chris went on, “but they said they had another human woman with them who just came to them a few days before. They described her, and Emily recognized her. Frieda is living with the Aqinas. She’s found happiness there, and she’s not coming back.”
Aimee scratched her head. “This is amazing. I thought Frieda was gone for good.”
“That’s what we all thought,” Chris replied. “But she’s alive and well. Don’t ask me when we’ll ever see her again, but at least she’s happy where she is.”
A twig snapped outside. Chris frowned toward the forest.
“Is it the twins again?” Marissa asked.
“It’s Turk.” Chris waved toward the trees. “What’s he’s doing back so soon?”
A shadow fell across the doorway, and Turk crossed the threshold. He nodded to the two visitors. “Good to see you, again, Turk.”
“What are you doing here, Aimee?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be on patrol?”
“I took a leave of absence to visit Chris,” she replied.
He gave Chris a kiss. “I can’t stay, darling. I have to run back to the Ursidrean border before dark.”
Chris’s eyes popped open. “Why? Can’t you stay even one night?”
He shook his head. “This is an emergency. Donen, Faruk, and Menlo are on their way to rendezvous with Renier. They're all going to Avitras territory.”
Aimee stiffened. “The Avitras? What can they do there?”
“They’re going to try to talk Aquilla into joining their peace agreement,” Turk replied. “The Lycaon have to be there. I wish there was some way to send a message to Caleb. He should be there instead of me, but there isn’t time. I have to leave right away.”
Marissa stood up. “I’ll go back and tell him.”
“There isn’t time to walk back,” Aimee told her. “By the time you got there, the other Alphas would be long gone.”
“I won’t walk,” Marissa replied. “I’ll run it. Then Caleb can run out to the border and meet up with you, Turk.”
“But you said....” Aimee began.
Marissa cut her off with a chop of her hand. “This is too important. I’ll make it.”
Chris looked back and forth between her friends. “Do you mind telling me what the dickens is going on?”
Marissa faced her. “I’m pregnant. That’s why we walked here instead of running, but I’ll be fine. I can still run as fast as I ever did, and Turk’s right. Caleb shouldn’t miss this meeting. If you can convince Aquilla to join your peace agreement, this could be the biggest thing to happen to Angondra in years. We’ve all waited so long for peace and been through so much. We can’t miss this chance.”
Turk hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Marissa headed for the door. “I’m sure. I’ll be there in no time, and Caleb will meet you on the border.”
Turk turned to Chris and Aimee. “Aria is coming with Donen, Emily and Anna are coming with the Ursidreans, and Carmen is coming with Renier. They think all these human women will help convince the Avitras to bid for peace.”
Chris stepped forward. “That settles it. I’m coming with you. You come, too, Aimee. The men won’t turn their backs on the chance at peace with all of us there to convince them.”
Aimee nodded. “All right. I’ll come with you, but what about the twins? They’re out there in the woods somewhere. What will happen when they come back and find both you and Turk gone?”
Chris tore a strip of bright red cloth off a bundle by the door. She tied it to the crooked tree branch over the doorpost. “This is our signal to the twins to go back to the village. Marissa can tell Turk’s mother and sister the twins are on their way down to the village. The twins will go to their grandmother’s house until we get back.”
Chapter 3
Turk stopped running on a hill north of the Lycaon village. Enormous expanses of forest stretched to the horizon beyond. “Can you see anything from here?” Aimee asked.
“There’s a dust cloud rising over the plain,” he replied. “That must be the Felsite column approaching the border.”
“If they’re raising dust,” Chris told him, “it’s the Ursidreans in their armored vehicles. The Felsite travel on palanquins carried by huge snails. They don’t raise dust.”
Turk nodded. “That explains why they’re moving so fast.”
“Can you see anything coming from the west?” Chris asked. “That’s Felsite territory.”
“There’s nothing moving,” he replied, “but there is a smudge cloud closer to the border. The Felsite must already be camped there and waiting for the Ursidreans.”
“Did they plan to travel to Avitras territory together?” Aimee asked. “Why are they camping and meeting there when they could meet so much closer to their destination?”
“No one wants to risk a confrontation with Aquilla,” Turk told them. “They’ll hammer out a concrete strategy before they move closer to the Avitras.”
Chris nodded. “That makes sense. Aquilla hates the Ursidreans, and he isn’t too keen on the Felsite, either.”
“The Avitras are the only faction that hasn’t come around to the idea of peace,” Turk replied. “Convincing Aquilla to put aside decades of hostilities could be harder than we think.”
“Well, we aren’t getting any closer standing here,” Aimee pointed out. “Let’s get down there and find out what they have in mind.”
Aimee set off down the hill, and the others followed single file. The wind tugged at Aimee’s hair and the fringe of her buckskin jacket, and it brought the rich scent of the forest to her nostrils. She had never run like this before, with the wind in her hair. She shaved her head bald when she joined the Lycaon warriors, and she never ran in her life before she came to Angondra.
What was her life becoming? Only a few months ago, she thought she’d found her bliss patrolling the
border with the warriors. Now, with peace on the horizon, all that could end in a heartbeat. She vowed in her heart never to give up the happiness she won when she joined the warriors. Now she let her hair grow and turned her eyes toward the village and the hearth. Who was she, after all, if she wasn’t a warrior? What would she be after this peace negotiation? How would she recognize herself?
Unlike the other survivors of the Romarie space ship crash, she didn’t hang onto her old self or grieve the loss of her old life. She dropped her past like a hot potato, much to the distress of her cousins. Anna and Frieda left the Lycaon partly as a reaction to losing the Aimee they knew on Earth. They couldn’t relate to the new Aimee—hard, spare, distant, warlike. They winced when they saw her. And Emily barely recognized her when they met again.
Aimee ran and ran. She could run and never stop running. She could never thank the Lycaon enough for the gift of flight she learned. All these women found their places in Angondran society when they found men to love and settled down, but Aimee found her place running under the trees with the wind stroking her bare scalp. She would never give that up.
In a few hours, the trio entered the narrow canyon cutting between Ursidrean territory and Felsite territory. Aimee never knew the canyon was there, but Chris and Turk knew it well. Felsite and Ursidrean rendezvoused in the no-man’s land between their territories to discuss peace no one ever dreamed possible.
Aimee didn’t see the narrow trail leading up out of the canyon to the plain until Chris turned around a big rock and climbed to the flat land above. Sure enough, a huge band of Felsite camped on the canyon rim. One big Felsite with a bushy orange mane rose from his place by the fire and approached them. He extended his arms, and his voice boomed. “So you made it after all. I hoped you would. We couldn’t conduct this negotiation without you.”
Turk clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, Renier. You know my mate, Chris, and this is Aimee Sandoval. She’s Anna and Emily’s cousin.”
Renier nodded and shook Aimee’s hand. “I’ve heard about you.”
Optorio Civil War Complete Series Box Set (Books 1 - 6): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance (Optorio Chronicles Book 2) Page 73
