I raked my hands through my hair and up and down my face, as despair clenched at my heart. The last of the ceremony attendees would leave today; they were packing as I was sitting in my tent, wallowing in misery.
"Xyrek! Xyrek!" Allisaahn's excited voice reached me from outside the tent before she threw the flap aside and entered. She held up her arm, where faint black lines were sneaking their way up her flesh.
Hope filled me for one moment, but when I looked at my silvery skin, there was no trace of it.
"It's not for me," I said in a broken voice.
"I refuse to believe that. I know you’re my Soulweb Mate. I do." She rushed forward, and before I could stop her, she threw the blanket I was covered with off me. Underneath, I was naked, but neither she nor I cared because we both stared in awe at the black lines sneaking up my thigh and hip. Laughter escaped her lips, and I joined in as I crushed her into my arms.
"Damn the gods for playing with us like this," I chuckled.
That was a rotation ago, and my love for her had only grown. That's why I wasn't all too happy to see my brother, Zaarek, stepping into my path on my way to her workshop. He had been gone for several moons, and I was happy to see him, but that paled in comparison to seeing Allisaahn.
"Brother, a word?" Zaarek spoke the last words I wanted to hear right then.
"Can it wait until the morning? I'm on my way to pick up Allisaahn. I'm pretty sure she hasn't eaten all day." I tried to step by him.
But he wasn't having it. He pulled me into his embrace and slapped my back, saying, "I missed you."
With a sigh, I returned his embrace, pounding just as hard, maybe more. "I missed you too."
"Come, I'll walk with you," he put his arm around my shoulder, knowing the way to Allisaahn's workshop as well as I.
"How is Noevah?" Noevah was his mate.
"She is good. I had a hard time getting her to leave Ax," he laughed. Ax was a bigger town, a few days' journey from Rek. Zaarek was our town's primarch and had traveled to Ax to confirm rumors of another species having arrived on our planet.
Despite my need to see Allisaahn, I stopped, "Is it true then?"
"Yes," Zaarek stopped as well. “I've met them. They call themselves Ohrurs, and there is something off about some of them. Evilness surrounds them."
War. The word, so strange and foreboding, entered my mind unbidden.
It was a word full of horror invented to keep us pure, yet it was still an abstract concept for us. In all the thousands of rotations of the history of Darlam, there had never been a war on this planet.
But now that one word echoed through my head. The promise of something looming, something dangerous to come, chilled me to the bone—a premonition.
"What do they want?" I asked.
"They claim they only want to trade, but some of their emissaries have already inquired if we are for hire." Zaarek looked down at his feet.
"Hire for what?" Even as I posed the question, the fine hairs at the back of my neck stood up.
"As their bodyguards, their mercenaries." He said, not looking up.
"Why?" I creased my brows. "Why would they want us…"
He shook his head, "According to them, we are the strongest species they have ever encountered. They're traders, and they need protection."
That's not who we were. I had never given my physical stature much thought. We were all built much alike. Some had stronger arms; some had stronger legs; it didn't matter to us. Every one of us lived, worked, and did what was necessary to make our community thrive. We all knew how to hunt and kill prey, but that was all the killing we ever did. We weren't fighters, and we never harmed each other.
"They are so much more technologically advanced than us," Zaarek filled me in. "They have machines that fly through the sky. They came from another planet, another galaxy."
"Are they gods, like the Arkhevari who blessed us long ago?" But even as I asked, I knew they weren't.
"More like demons," Zaarek warned. "We'll be meeting again soon. I just wanted to let you know and tell you to be careful."
"Careful?" What was he talking about?
