Belong

by C. R. Jane

  "Exactly." I leaned in for a quick kiss on the mouth, but the moment our lips touched, I lost myself.

  The way she mewled from my kiss went straight to my head, along with the heat and growing arousal. I gripped her waist and drew her closer, then really kissed her. Tongue plunging into her mouth, her gorgeous breasts pressed against my chest. Blood rushed to my dick as she nibbled on my lower lip and moaned. And we kissed until the room spun with me. Until nothing remained but the primal need between us.

  She breathed just as fast as me, and if were anywhere else, I'd carry her to a room to strip her down before fucking her.

  Derrial cleared his throat. We broke apart, our heads touching, her long lashes blinking as if she'd just awoken from a dream.

  "Later, gorgeous." I leaned in closer to her ear. "Later, I'm going to lick you all over and fuck you real slow."

  She gasped in my arms, and my cock punched at her reaction. Every sound she made was like nectar to me.

  "We need to move fast, now," Derrial reminded me, and he was right.

  Ella slipped out of my arms, her full lips red and raw from our kiss, and already I wanted them back.

  "I'll speak to the women and be back in five minutes."

  Derrial and I nodded, then we set on getting everything ready for our jump.

  By the time Ella returned, Derrial and I were strapped in our parachutes. I turned to her. She was studying the straps, fingering the harnesses.

  "Is everything alright?" I asked.

  "Are you sure this will hold me? It just doesn't look sturdy enough."

  "You and I are jumping together, baby," Derrial stated, taking her hand in his.

  "You're going to be fine," I reassured her, cupping the side of her face. She meant the world to me. "Priority is jumping out now that we're in cloud cover.” I pressed the button on her strap sitting just below her left shoulder to activate the invisibility device to any sensors once she exited the plane. I lowered my hand to the rip cord dangling from the strap across her chest. "Once you’re outside, follow Derrial’s instructions. This cord will spring open the parachute." Underneath she wore a full body suit the color of the clouds to help protect her against the cold.

  She nodded, but fear shone in her eyes.

  "We need to go," Derrial said urgently.

  "Let's do this," she said.

  I was so proud of her at that moment, and I slammed a hand to the sensor on the door. It swished open in a heartbeat, and a gush of cold wind burst inside, freezing my cheeks. I tapped the sensor built into the head gear. A transparent mask slid over my face, and the other two did the same.

  Derrial drew Ella closer to the entrance. And without hesitation, they leapt out hand in hand without a single sound. Wasting no time, I tapped my invisibility shield button, then I hit the sensor on the wall, then lunged outside as the door shut behind me.

  Cold air slammed into me and tugged at my hair and jumpsuit. I fell through the clouds fast, until I came out and saw the other two not far below. Falling from such a great height felt much like flying. Down below, the land was a tapestry of country fields, and farther in the distance, lay the heart of the city.

  I leaned my body forward in Derrial’s directions, my arms tight by my side and I accelerated faster and faster. They grew closer, and before reaching them, I pulled up, muscles taut to not lose my balance.

  Ella’s head twisted in my direction, and her expression surprised me. She was beaming a smile and waved to me. My little vixen loved skydiving. I tucked that piece of information into my mind for later.

  Derrial was pointing to an open landscape slightly to our right then back at me, instructing our destination. I nodded. The landscape came closer to use, looking larger now.

  He and Ella tugged on their rip cords, and their parachutes blossomed overhead, hauling them away from me.

  I followed suit, and my whole body jerked upward, the hardness cutting into my armpits and sides. I tugged lightly on the toggle on the left and glided toward to the left. Adrenaline pumped through me, and I fucking loved the feeling of falling and seeing the ground rush up to me. That sensation of almost dying tugged at my heart.

  When I finally touched the ground, I stumbled forward a few steps before stopping. Without wasting time, I unbuckled the harnesses and let them drop down around me as I looked up to see Ella coming down. Her face was panicked as she came in ahead of me.

  I threw myself into a run after her and caught up fast. Her feet dangled, the toes of her shoes almost touching the ground. The moment her feet touched the ground, she was still running forward from the momentum, her body tilting forward. I swooped in and collected her, holding her still.

  “I got you.”

  She was breathing so hard, her mask fogged up. The parachute fell around us, and I quickly unlatched her. She tapped her temple and the mask vanished. I did the same, and she burst into laughter.

  “That was incredible! Oh my gosh, why haven’t I done it before?”

  I held her close, even if she was shivering uncontrollably from the adrenaline rush. “If Veon is ever back to normal, I will take you skydiving every weekend,” I promised her. “But for now, we need to move and fast.”

  Derrial had already unbuckled from his parachute and ran toward us. “Corran is here!”

  Just as the words left his mouth, a searing heat grazed over my back, and I turned as Corran’s ship appeared out from under the invisibility shield, and winked in the sunlight.

  The panel slid open to the doorway into the side of a cruiser, and Corran stood there. Eyes strained, shadows underneath, hair messy as though he’d been running his hand through it over and over. His heaved for each breath, his posture curled forward enough to tell me he’d been working tirelessly. I’d seen him this way before when he worked himself to the bone to find a solution in his experiments. I studied his face for any indication that he found a cure, except he gave none. Fear speared me like lightning. I took a tentative look at Ella who studied Corran just as closely as me.

  “Get inside,” he ordered tersely, and the three of us rushed inside.

  The door shut behind us, and I needed answers.

  Ella was at Corran’s side, concern flashing over her expression as she studied him and took his hand in hers. Her care and love for each of us was endless, and my heart beat a bit harder at the reminder of how lucky I was to call her my wife. How lucky all three of us were.

  “What did you uncover?” she asked, her voice choking as she waited for good news like all of us. A solution to our problems.

  “The city is almost overrun, but I found the location of a laboratory in the middle of the city that might be the source to all the chaos with the infected. So, that means that’s the one place that is most likely to have some information on an antidote.”

  “Then we go to the city,” Derrial agreed, his voice firm and determined to eradicate the spreading sickness. Just like we all were…all I wanted was to spend time with my new wife away from danger and prepare for our newborn. I had no doubt Derrial and Corran were the same. So, we needed to find this damn antidote, then clear our names.

  I gritted my teeth just thinking about how much was still unknown for us.

  Corran kissed Ella on the brow, then pulled back and returned to the driver’s seat. “Let’s head off. We’ll break in and see what we can find.”

  I took Ella’s hand and drew her with me to a seat and made sure she was buckled in.

  “I’ll drive,” Derrial said, to which Corran didn’t object but slumped in the front passenger seat.

  We ascended in no time, and I glanced over to see Ella rubbing her stomach. She had definitely started to show a bit already. Reaching over, I stole a quick kiss.

  “You look beautiful,” I whispered.

  She looked up at me with a sweet smile, one that told me her mind was miles away and she was trying to hide her emotions. I was certain they had everything to do with the loss of her mom. I wanted nothing more than to hold her i
n my arms, inhale her into me so nothing could ever touch her. Nothing could hurt her.

  “I’ll be alright,” she said, as if reading my mind, then reached over and smoothed out the crease at the bridge of my nose.

  I loved how strong she was after everything she’d gone through. And after so much, I’d give up everything to keep her safe.

  The rest of the trip went by quick and we descended in what looked like a small park in the city. With chaos running amuck, we could easily leave our concealed ship here without detection.

  When the cruiser gave a small jolt from our landing, I unbuckled my belt and was on my feet. Staring out the front, there was nothing but trees and a small kids’ swing set. In the distance, lofty buildings surrounded us.

  “We move fast,” Derrial said, already on his feet and heading to the door before looking at us. “And we stick together no matter what.”

  “How far is the lab?” I asked as Ella pressed up against my side and I slid my arm around her waist.

  “Just a few blocks. Not far at all. We just shoot any infected on sight and don’t make too much sound to draw any attention.”

  “Then, we’d better hurry,” Ella said.

  Derrial opened the door and hopped out. He checked the perimeter around the ship. Once we returned and waved a hand, we all followed as a close group. I quickly took the lead, my tactical training making me the best person to help us avoid detection. I knew this city like the back of my hand. At one point, my team had been in charge of putting a security system in place to protect it. Looking around, it didn’t seem that the Council had bothered using it to protect the city from the infected.

  We moved down a side street and kept to the sidewalk before taking another backstreet.

  The place was barren and empty. Storefronts smashed in, rubbish rolling across the road in the howling wind. There was a sadness to see our home in such decay. If nothing was done, the place would turn to wastelands. So many lives and homes and memories lost. This wasn’t how I wanted to see my home planet end up. My heart clenched, but I swallowed back the boulder in my throat and kept going. This wasn’t the time to get sentimental or let anything get in my way.

  Movement caught my attention from an old building up ahead. It was only three stories tall and looked like it had been used as an information storage center before it had been destroyed. I stopped and the others did the same. “Infected just ahead,” I whispered, my heart pounding.

  “Go round the building then.” Derrial pointed to a side road just ahead.

  If we moved quickly enough without sound, then we wouldn’t grab any attention.

  Corran held onto Ella and they rushed forward.

  In their rush, Ella accidently kicked a loose rock from a broken wall and it skittered right across the road like a rocket and smacked into the old building near the infected.

  In that exact moment, the building exploded and ignited into a fiery ball of yellow flames and stones, billowing outward. The booming sound reverberating over the city with such ferocity, it shook me to the bones.

  We all flinched backward.

  “Oh fuck!”

  Ella screamed and we all darted for our lives down the side street.

  9

  Ella

  "What the fuck was that?" growled Derrial as we stared at the smoldering wreckage of the building behind us that we’d passed. The air was thick with smoke, and the only reason I wasn't on the ground was thanks to Thane grabbing me at the last second and taking the brunt of the aftershocks of the explosion when it went off.

  I was trembling with shock. If I hadn't been clumsy and kicked that rock...we would be nothing but cinders right now because we would have been too close to the blast.

  Thane let me go and then hunched over, his body slightly shaking. He looked like he was about to be sick. He suddenly straightened up, and I knew by the look on his face that I wasn't going to like whatever else came out of his mouth. "You need to stay here, Ella. There's no way we're bringing you with us," he said firmly.

  I didn't want any of us to go, but I knew we needed to get in that laboratory. But there was no way that I was going to let them leave me behind. I had already made a vow that we weren't going to be separated again. Crazy or not, our separation from Corran had about done me in. I had promised these men an eternity. I wasn't going to let them leave me prematurely.

  "That's not happening," I told him quietly, but resolutely.

  His face fell. He looked to Derrial and Corran for help. They all looked like they wanted to agree with Thane, but knew that it would be a losing endeavor. "You don't understand. They've triggered the traps," Thane said fervently. "If they've changed things from when I designed them, we'll all be dead."

  "Traps?" I asked, my voice rising with a bit of hysteria.

  "The Battalion Project?" asked Derrial sharply. "That was you? I thought that was just a myth. Fuck."

  Thane nodded, ashamed. "I was head of that project." He turned to me. "Pet, if you remember, I was once upon a time head of security for the council and all of Veon. One of my projects was to protect one of the important government buildings located in the center of this city. They told me it was an archive for our world's history. But evidently they were lying. My team and I set traps throughout the city that could be triggered in the case of a Khonsu attack-" His voice broke off. "I never imagined they would be used against me."

  We were all quiet for one shocked moment before Derrial took control. "Do you still remember where all the traps are?" he asked.

  Thane seemed to respond to the authority in Derrial's voice, and he squared his shoulders, a determined look appearing on his beautiful face. "I do, but if they've changed anything-"

  "We'll just have to take that risk," said Derrial, cutting him off. "There's little risk that they did that though. The Council has never been one to get their own hands dirty with hard work. I'm sure they didn't think they'd be using it against the person who designed it. We've been good foot soldiers for a long time now."

  "I can't put Ella's life in danger like that," said Thane, sounding desperate.

  "We're not leaving her," said Corran all of a sudden, sounding exhausted. He looked like he was about to fall over. "I'm not willing to leave her behind and I'm also not willing for the three of us to be separated. I'm going to need help once we get to the lab. It's been..." His voice broke. "It's been a rough few days," he finished quietly.

  "Let's get started," I announced, trying to keep my voice level, despite the fact that the baby had chosen that moment to give me a choice kick.

  At some point in this pregnancy, I needed to rest. Which reminded me…

  "We have less than three months to figure all this shit out. Let's go," I ordered, finally letting them know I'd found out the kind of a big thing they'd neglected to tell me about Vepar pregnancies.

  The three of them all looked guilty. "Sweetheart-" Corran began, but I made a slicing motion with my arm.

  "We can talk about that little detail you left out later."

  They nodded, and then Thane took a deep breath. "The first layer consisted of bombs. We had it triggered that every twelve steps or so, there would be a crack that if stepped on would trigger the explosion. So long as we don't step on any of the cracks..."

  This put a whole new meaning on the nursery rhyme "don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back."

  Derrial grabbed my hand. "Stay close to me," he ordered and we all began walking. We all followed Thane who was counting the steps we took. The walk was tedious, as it quickly became apparent that twelve steps was not a lot in between traps. I'd decided very early on that I wasn't going to step on any cracks...just in case. This only made us slower going. It took us three hours to get through two layers of the city, something that we usually could have walked in less than fifteen minutes.

  But as we stepped over the last crack, we were all still alive, so I guess it was three hours well spent. It was eerie to see a city so deserted, but with thi
s laboratory being the epicenter of the infection, it made sense that the city's inhabitants had run. Many of them not making it very far, based on the large amount camped outside the walls still.

  I had never seen Thane look so on edge. I wanted to soothe him, but now wasn't the time.

  "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck," he said, and then he took few deep breaths as if to calm himself down.

  "What's next?" asked Derrial, who only seemed to be getting calmer as Thane fell apart.

  "As soon as we step onto the next street, a gas will start to pour out of the buildings. It's a hallucinogenic gas. It creates illusions similar to what the Khonsu can do. The effects will fade as soon as you get past the layer, but it's designed to be a hell of a trip on the way."

  "What kind of hallucinations will it be?" I asked in a trembling voice as I thought about the torture I'd gone through with that first Khonsu.

  "Bad ones, pet," Thane said apologetically. "Every fear you've ever had, magnified."

  We were all somber with that knowledge.

  "Will it hurt the baby?" I asked. We had just survived potentially being blown up, but somehow subjecting the baby to potentially poisonous gas seemed like a pretty big deal. I was definitely not following what the pregnancy books said. I wish there was a pregnancy handbook on how to survive your pregnancy in an alien world.

  "It's compru gas," Corran explained. "Besides the hallucinations, there aren't any adverse effects. The Council's used it on prisoners for years to get information out of them." He shook his head and I knew what he wasn't saying was his role in creating it. I'm sure all of my Vepar were really regretting their early lives right now. "We have to go," said Corran tiredly, and I knew he was thinking about all the people he'd left beyond the city's walls that still needed help.

  We all seemed to take a collective breath as we stepped into the next row of buildings.

  Thane was correct. As soon as we stepped out from beyond the building we'd been hiding behind, little holes opened up at the bottom of the domed structures and a fluorescent looking green gas started pouring out.