Chapter 41
Corzin escorts Sky with their daughter onto the Isonian transport that’s landed on base. Two backpacks and two duffles is all they take with them. We’ve only stopped to pick up Rhysan, and the base is already a mess of rushed cargo transfers, soldiers, and their families.
There aren’t many of us left. The next battle will use a different M-pack rotation, so we have time to heal, but we do not have much time to flee our homeworld. I can already feel the eyes of Lunas on us from the surrounding hills.
Azrim stays at Tessi’s side as she gathers Rhysan into her arms and turns for her ship.
Thrusters thunder as MTF vessels and private transports start taking off, heading for the stars.
Viriden has sent one of his troop transports to help us guard each base, and Onidus has brought his shiny black gold fighter.
Thunder under my boots makes me scan the treeline from where I guard the base beside Onidus. Blue eyes light up the darkness. “Stampede!”
“Get off the ground, now!” Onidus shouts, frantically waving an arm in the air.
The ships leave, but Tessi is still running back to our ship with Rhysan in her arms. Azrim picks them both up and runs faster.
But it isn’t going to be enough, and Onidus sees it.
He pulls a disc from his belt, throws it on the ground, and opens a shielded dome that encompasses us and our two ramps.
Lunas smash into the shield, crawl over the ships, and try to get inside, but they can’t.
Azrim slows and pinpoints someone in the crowd.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
Azrim hands Tessi and Rhysan to me. “I’m going to call out the traitor who sent him into the woods near the portals.”
Tessi wants down, so I set her feet on the ground. She guides Rhysan into my arms. “I’ll be right back.”
I clutch Rhysan close as Tessi stays with Azrim. They walk to the edge of the shield, where Azrim calls out for Emarza.
A familiar face pushes through the snarling pack. She sees Rhysan and slumps with relief. “I have been looking for him for days!”
“I think someone let him out or deliberately carried him to where the Myndrous were entering,” Azrim says.
“Myndrous?” Emarza’s face pales. Then anger darkens her cheeks as she looks back into the mass of Shifters.
Tessi lifts her right hand and presses it to her chest. An iridescent pulse ripples out from her and turns all of us into orbs of different colors.
I stagger back in shock. Onidus burns bright white, Azrim is next in luminosity, with Rhysan and I just a hair more blue than them. Tessi is the most gorgeous iridescent pulsing creature I’ve ever seen.
“I have this skill of unmasking things.” Tessi waves her other hand toward the dark blue shifters. “Find the one that doesn’t belong.”
Emarza turns and looks around, then starts to cry. “Father?”
He lumbers forward and snarls as he stands, nearly lightless. “That vile filth is why our kind is dying off.”
I hug Rhysan tighter as Azrim turns to him.
“You let my mate die. She was one of your own! You did that. Not me. Then Rhysan was conveniently abandoned by a portal site?” Azrim fumes.
“You’re not Lunas,” Scarnis snorts. “You do not deserve to call this place your home.”
Azrim smirks. “We have protected you for centuries. Now it is your home. Good luck learning to fight this war on your own. We’re out.”
Onidus casually patrols those beyond his shield, looks through it, then reaches through and pulls Emarza and her mate onto our side.
Emarza stumbles as she holds Jorix, their only surviving pup.
Her mate clutches them inside his arms like he isn’t sure what Onidus plans to do with them.
But their essences shine brighter than the other shifters.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“They are not Lunas.” Onidus glowers at Scarnis with disgust. “Hypocrite. Hope you learn your lesson.” He tilts his head back. “Thelisoria, they’re all yours!”
To my surprise, and that of the others, thunderheads form in the skies and lightening cracks between them like Thelisoria is stitching a blanket of doom over the Lunas.
Onidus promptly escorts Emarza and her family onto his ship. Azrim kneels and puts his hands to the ground. The surface of our world shudders. A fissure forms in the quaking ground between us and the Lunas. It curls around the base, separating it from the world.
Azrim gets up while the dirt still trembles.
“Thank you,” I call to Onidus as he walks to the end of his deck.
“Don’t mention it. Really. Don’t. Viriden will not be happy I meddled in intergalactic relations.” He grins. “But I always do anyway. When it’s right.”
“Understood.”
“I will escort you to your place to get your other ship and the rest of your things. We must make it quick.”
Tessi releases her hand from her chest, eyes the Lunas one last time, then curls herself inside Azrim’s open arm. We load into her ship, and Azrim has us off the ground in seconds. The moment we’re in the sky again, Tessi sighs.
“As much as I wanted to get to know your world, I’d much rather be anywhere else, with my favorite boys: Rhysan, Radar, you, and Azrim.”
He glances back at us from the pilot’s seat. I can smell him on her. He finally took a taste. I just don’t know if he’s ready for her to be ours.