Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
QUIN
The ship pierced the atmosphere with a shudder that ran through my bones, and for a moment, everything outside the viewport was fire.
Blue-white plasma licked the hull in sheets that bled into violet at the edges, and the deck beneath my boots vibrated with the resonance of a vessel surrendering to gravity’s pull.
Then the fire died. The plasma peeled away, and Valose filled the glass.
My breath caught.
The city of Huren sat to the east like something out of a fantasy. The dome rose from the jungle floor, massive and translucent, the architecture inside visible through it as though someone had captured an entire civilization under glass.
The jungle pressed in from every side, a sea of silver-blue canopy that stretched as far as I could see in every direction except east, where the land dropped away entirely into a sheer cliff face below which a vast body of water spread itself out to the horizon.
“Due north of the dome,” Tyrk said from the console. “Landing in thirty seconds.”
The ship settled onto solid ground. The engines cycled down in a long, descending hum that moved through the deck plating and into the soles of my boots and then went quiet.
Outside the viewport, two blue suns hung low in the afternoon sky.
“Welcome to your new home.” Tyrk’s voice cut through the stillness of the command deck.
The women were already unbuckling. Brooke and Lila clustered near Vala at the hatch, their hands restless at their sides, shifting weight from foot to foot.
Erin helped Kira to her feet, the younger woman’s dark eyes wide with wonder.
I hung back with Vennox as they gathered loosely around Vala with held breath and restless hands, as anxious to be off the ship as they were about what waited beyond.
Elizabeth stood near the rear bulkhead, her hands clasped in front of her, waiting. Ruze and Mehr emerged from the doorway and flanked her in silence.
Vala cycled the hatch open with a hiss, and warm air washed through the opening.
Vennox stayed beside me, his hand still wrapped around mine. I wasn’t ready to let go. His grip was an anchor I hadn’t asked for and wouldn’t have admitted to needing, but somewhere between the anomaly world and here, I had stopped pretending I wanted to do everything alone.
Apprehension sharpened in my chest, the natural strangeness of a world I hadn’t chosen pressing against the weight of stepping into something beautiful, even as my body was still wired for threat. But the feeling carried an echo I wasn’t sure was entirely mine.
Vala led the way down the ramp, and the women followed: Brooke first, then Lila, then Erin with Kira close at her shoulder, each of them pausing at the bottom before taking their first step on Valosian soil.
Then Mara appeared in the doorway, her eyes finding Vennox before they found me.
“Brunnex is giving Truxxet the business,” she said. “Says he can walk.”
“Stubborn Jurigon pride,” he muttered, already striding toward her. He glanced back at me, and I swear I felt a twinge of relief. “Go ahead with Mara.”
Elizabeth descended between her mates, Ruze and Mehr, moving in perfect sync on either side, their massive bodies angled toward hers with the attentiveness of males who had found what they were searching for and would not be separated from her again.
I stepped out last behind Mara, and the ground beneath my boots was solid in a way the anomaly world’s shifting terrain had never been, filling my lungs with Valosian air and holding it, letting the unfamiliar freshness settle into the deepest parts of my chest.
Clean and warm and nothing like the metallic tang of recycled ship oxygen or the wet, fungal rot of the anomaly world. The dome before us held the light of the twin suns and splintered it into pale blue threads that crawled across its surface like slow lightning.
Between us and the dome stood six Valosian males arranged in a loose crescent, dressed in the varied styles of the three clans Vennox told me about.
Kilts or kiltus, as he called them, for Clan Huren; fur trousers and boots for Clan Jurigon; a single male in the traditional breech cloth of Clan Trisess.
All of them armed and watchful. All except one.
The male who stepped forward from the crescent stood apart from the warriors flanking him.
He had leaner muscle than the others, his silver hair loose around his shoulders.
Where the others carried blades and spears, he wore a dark blue bag across his chest and carried a small rectangular device that hummed faintly.
"I am Nullar." His voice was calm and unhurried, pitched to carry without startling.
"I am one of the medics of Clan Huren. Before anyone passes through the dome, I need to run a brief scan on each of you.
" He held up the device so we could see it.
"This is a biocontaminant scanner. It checks your basic vitals: heartbeat, body temperature, and rate of respiration. It also screens for any microorganisms that should not be making the trip inside the dome.”
His silver eyes moved across the group with the patience of someone who had done this many times and understood that nervous people needed a moment to catch up. "The scan won't hurt you."
Nullar moved toward me first, the device whirring in a slow, methodical pass from shoulder to hip, his eyes tracking the readings with focused calm.
Then Lila leaned toward Brooke, her voice barely above a whisper.
“He's one of the doctors?" she breathed. "I’m suddenly very interested in scheduling my next gyno appointment."
The words landed in the small silence between the scanner's passes and I felt heat flood my face before I'd even fully processed what she'd said.
Nullar's pointed ears swiveled and cupped forward with the involuntary precision of someone who had just heard exactly what he was not meant to hear. He continued the scan without breaking stride, but the color that swept up his neck and across his cheekbones was a deep, vivid blue.
"Sorry," I said immediately. "We spent weeks on a planet actively trying to kill us, and apparently some of us left our manners back on Earth."
His gaze flicked briefly to Lila with a sparkle of interest, then back to his scanner. "No apology necessary," he murmured, already moving to Mara, his cheeks still a telling shade of blue.
His gaze dropped to the device clipped to my belt before he moved on. "What is that?"
"Bio-spectral analyzer." I unclipped it and held it up so he could see, glancing at the readout.
The screen displayed dozens of life-sign readings unique to this world.
"Biological life sign detection. We crashed on a planet where everything wanted us dead.
This detected biological signatures before they reached us.
" I clipped it back onto my belt. "It's how most of us survived. Two of us were not so lucky."
"That is most unfortunate," he said quietly before moving on to the next woman.
The others hadn't been paying attention to the exchange, their whispers carrying on around me without pause.
"I cannot believe there are this many hot guys in one place," Brooke whispered, her blue eyes sweeping slowly over the assembled warriors.
“And they're all stacked,” Kira sighed.
“Ladies, try to act like you've been somewhere before,” Erin murmured.
Nullar worked through the rest of the group, the scanner whirring in the same unhurried passes, his cheeks slowly returning to their natural silver.
When he reached Lila, he ran the scanner slower this time, his silver eyes flicking up from the reading to her face with an expression that had nothing to do with microorganisms. He said nothing, simply held her gaze, the corner of his mouth curving in a warm, quiet smile before he moved on.
When he reached Elizabeth, flanked by her Nomadicans, Nullar paused. His eyes moved to Ruze first, the Nomadican who had been living on Valose long enough to become a familiar face, then to the male on Elizabeth's other side.
"Ruze." Nullar gave a brief nod of recognition, then looked at Mehr. "And this must be the ones you have been searching the stars for."
"This is Mehr," Ruze said. "And our shoulsis, Elishbeth." A beat, his hand settling at her back. "We are whole again."
"I am glad for all of you," Nullar said, running the scanner over all three. "All clear."
Nullar moved to Vala last, running the scanner over him in the same methodical pass. "Welcome back, Yulineon." Amusement crossed his face. "I have it on good authority that a certain female is anxiously awaiting you inside.”
"No doubt, nuwska," Vala looked toward the dome. "My human sister, Layla."
Nullar inclined his head to Vala in a brief, respectful acknowledgment. Then he turned to address the group.
"You are all clear to enter the city of Huren. Welcome."
The warrior at the dome wall raised a comm device to his mouth and spoke into it.
A moment later, the dome responded. A ripple of energy spread outward from a fixed point in the wall, the surface shimmering and displacing until an oval opening formed, large enough to step through, its edges catching the light and scattering it in fractured blue.
They moved through one by one. Brooke first, then Lila, then Erin with Kira close at her shoulder.
Elizabeth passed through between her mates, Ruze and Mehr, flanking her on either side.
Behind them, Mara had drawn Nullar aside and was speaking to him in a low voice, one hand gesturing toward the ship. No doubt, worried about Brunnex.
I stepped to the threshold and stopped, looking back over my shoulder at the Yulineon Star Chaser, where the hatch sat open.
Eyes fixed on that open hatch, willing Vennox to appear in it.
The want of him beside me for this was something I hadn't expected to feel so strongly, the comfort of his steadiness when everything around me was unfamiliar.
Somewhere along the way, between the anomaly world and here, having him close had become a given.
How much so, I hadn't realized until now.
I thought about the command deck. About how I had been sitting there, falling apart, and he had suddenly appeared. The tiny piece of me I’d shared with him, echoing my emotional breakdown.
I pressed my palm flat against my sternum, where the shawra pulsed beneath my shirt, and focused on sending him a silent message through the tether that existed between us.
Then I caught myself and pulled back hard.
What was I doing? Valose wasn’t my home, merely a pit stop on my way back to Earth. Besides, I knew better than this. I had already learned this lesson long ago, never to rely on anyone but myself.
I shored up the armor I had let slip and reminded myself why I had built it in the first place, then stepped through the portal.
The city unfolded around me all at once.
The structure that dominated everything was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
It was pale and massive, its lower walls rising in clean, unbroken lines before the architecture fractured into something more complex, terraced and jagged in a way that looked deliberately asymmetrical, as if grown rather than designed.
It rose above everything else in the city by several stories, its upper levels catching the light of the twin suns and throwing it back in scattered warmth.
Around it, white dwellings and outbuildings dotted the grounds, some clustered close and others scattered further out, all of them connected by pathways that curved between them.
In the center of the plaza, a fountain rose in circular tiers, streams arcing high into the air and catching the last light of the twin suns in shifting, cracked patterns before falling back into the pool below.
Then we were surrounded by women, human women, pouring from the pathways and the base of the great building in a wave that had clearly been held back by exactly nothing.
A dark-haired woman with bright eyes was at the front, a toddler balanced on her hip with silver-tinged skin and dark, watchful eyes that seemed too alert for someone so small.
The male beside her was unmistakably the one in charge, silver-scaled and broad-shouldered, with the kind of muscle that did not come from a gym.
A crown of matte silver circled his long, white hair.
He carried himself the way males carry themselves when everyone in the room already knows who they are.
A shawra marked the center of his chest. A soft glow pulsed at his sternum, and when I glanced at the woman next to him, I saw the matching light beneath the neckline of the sleeveless dress she wore.
“I am Jakkar, Sia of Valose,” he said. "And this is my spirit mate, Lily, and our youngling, Aurra. You are welcome here."
My eyes dropped to the belt buckle at his kilt of a winged, scaled creature rendered in hammered metal, its tail curving around the clasp. A wetlock. Exactly as Vennox had described.
Two women moved through the crowd behind them, both visibly pregnant, one dark-haired and the other with fiery red curls, each with a silver-scaled male close enough to catch her if she stumbled. Both women had the same soft glow at their sternums.
Introductions began in a rush, questions tumbling out before answers had anywhere to land.
Where are you from? How long were you out there?
Are you hurt? Are you hungry? Voices layered over each other as they pressed close, bright-eyed and unguarded in a way that caught me off guard.
I blurted my name somewhere in the middle of it.
Names washed over me in a single undifferentiated wave: Jane, Elise, Rowan, Gia, Bree, Alyssa, Willow, Sarah, and on. Each face was bright and welcoming and entirely impossible to attach to the right name at any speed I was capable of. Some with shawras, but most not.
“Back up, bitches, and chill. Don’t scare them off.” A dark-haired woman with a saucy grin pushed her way to the front. “I’m Marie. Sorry about all the paparazzi.”
Marie. Vennox had spoken of her. She was the woman the Spirits had brought into Draggar's life after he'd lost his first spirit mate. An impossible gift no Valosian had believed could happen until it did.
She flicked a hand toward the crowd of women. “We’re just all happy you were saved from fates worse than death out there.” She turned and gestured for us to follow. “Come with me, and I’ll show you to your rooms in the palace. When Zaku announced you were coming, we readied up the fifth floor.”
“We get to live in there?” Brooke's eyes grew comically wide as she looked past Marie toward the towering palace.
“Looks like something straight out of Atlantis,” Erin breathed, her eyes skating up the dizzy height.
“That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw it, too.” Marie smiled at us as we followed her down the path to the giant, crystal structure.