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  If both of them were willing to leave their families to meet at this late hour, it did not bode well. His apprehension grew when he entered the conference room and found former Commander T’chok present as well. The legendary warrior had resigned his commission when he found his human mate, but his advice was frequently sought on military matters. T’chok was also L’zabet’s adoptive father—no doubt the reason he was frowning at T’kol now.

  “Ah, good, Commander T’kol. I apologize for disturbing you at this hour,” T’lan said, and T’kol suppressed a grin. The senior commander’s natural arrogance had been softened by the diplomatic duties he had been forced to take on as his rank increased.

  “No doubt you were sleeping the sleep of an untroubled male,” T’chok added.

  T’kol returned his gaze directly. “No. There was much on my mind.”

  The two of them glared at each other until T’lan sighed. “I am not going to ask what this is about, although based on my L’chka’s conversation I suspect I already know. We are here on a military matter.”

  “Yes, sir,” T’kol said.

  “T’gana?”

  The big commander stepped forward, one leg dragging slightly as a result of the damage he had suffered in battle with the Saviji.

  “A party of Icluthians is aboard the command ship.”

  “Icluthians, here?” T’kol had a difficult time concealing his shock. The reptilian race had been their enemies for generations, although an uneasy mutual agreement had kept them from open warfare. The arrival of the Saviji had turned them into reluctant allies.

  “Yes,” T’lan answered. “They have brought a team of their experts to consult with us. We are both concerned about the latest exploits of the Saviji.”

  “Sir?”

  “Isolated flyers have been showing up in various sectors far from where the central horde is swarming. It has been suggested that they are scouts searching for suitable locations to form a new swarm.” T’gana spoke calmly but they all knew the possible impact. Together, the Yehrin and the Icluthians had just managed to keep the Saviji under control. If they were forced to fight on a second front…

  “I see. But with all due respect, I am not sure why that necessitates this meeting?”

  “Because the Icluthians will be joining us here, instead of on the ship,” T’lan said grimly.

  “Here? In this weather?” The Icluthians were notoriously sensitive to cold and preferred much warmer conditions.

  “It is not ideal, but they assure me that their technology can handle the temperature.” For the first time, T’gana’s face relaxed slightly. “It seems that their queen wishes to see Earth.”

  “They are traveling with a queen?” This time he couldn’t conceal his shock. Queens were kept closely guarded and rarely interacted with other races.

  “Yes. It seems that several members of their… diplomatic team are in her brace and she did not wish them to travel without her.”

  The slight pause did not go unnoticed. The Icluthian delegation was undoubtedly composed of military spies rather than diplomats, but he expected no less. The mention of her brace also did not go unnoticed. T’kol still found it almost inconceivable that any warrior, even an Icluthian warrior, would share his female. And yet, as they began the tactical preparations necessary for the upcoming visit, he did think a little wistfully that it would have been nice to have someone to watch over L’zabet while he was forced to attend to his duties.

  By the afternoon of the second day of her journey west, Lizabet was beginning to regret not having asked her brother to accompany her. She was growing extremely tired of her own company, especially since her thoughts had a distressing tendency to circle from T’kol to her own uncertain future. Despite several detours, she had managed to graduate with a double major in biology and anthropology. But what was she going to do with her degrees? The thought of teaching made her shudder. Most of the major research organizations on Earth were now Yehrin run and even though she would be dealing with scholars rather than warriors, she knew that it would only remind her of T’kol—which brought her back to the beginning of her circle.

  A sudden gust of wind shook the truck and she cast an uneasy look at the sky. The clouds loomed heavily over the horizon and she knew the look of an upcoming storm all too well. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of nowhere and she cursed her decision to take the less populated route across South Dakota. At the time, she had thought it would be interesting to see another part of the country. Now, with empty plains stretching out in one direction and massive rock outcroppings looming in the other, she seriously regretted her choice.

  A sharp ping made her jump, immediately followed by another. Fuck, now it was hailing. She watched in dismay as a thin layer of icy white pellets started to coat the road. The clouds were even lower now, and her windshield wipers were having a hard time keeping up with the steadily increasing accumulation of ice. She needed to find shelter, soon. As she leaned forward to grab her phone and search for the nearest town, a flyer roared overhead. Instinctively, she jerked the wheel and the truck slid slowly and inevitably across the road and down into the deep ditch lining one side. The wreck jarred her, but the slide had been too slow to cause any damage—to her. She suspected the truck was another matter, but at the moment she was more concerned about the flyer. She’d had a brief glimpse of it spiraling overhead in a way that was all too clearly out of control.

  What if that had been T’kol, searching for her?

  Fortunately, her door wasn’t obstructed, and she climbed out of the truck, slipping on the icy grass and shivering at the blast of cold air. When she managed to claw her way out of the ditch, the wind caught her with enough force to nearly knock her off her feet, but she kept her eyes focused in the direction the ship had been headed. There. She blinked back the tears created by the wind in time to see a ball of flames explode far out across the plains.

  Her heart stopped beating. It couldn’t have been T’kol, she told herself. She hadn’t recognized the flyer—in fact, something about it had been rather odd. But the tears now coursing down her cheeks were no longer caused by the wind. She swiped them away with angry fingers and started to turn back towards the truck. As she did, a flash of red caught her eye. Only the color made it visible against the gloom, but she watched in horror as it was flung violently first one way then another. Was it some kind of parachute—and was that a person dangling beneath the red canopy? Another gust of wind and she saw it crash against one of the rock formations, then disappear out of sight.

  T’kol or not, she was positive that someone was attached to the parachute. She had to go after them. A brief glance back at the truck was enough to assure her that it was not going anywhere. It was sprawled across the bottom of the ditch and from the angle of the front wheel, she suspected the axle was broken. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Swearing under her breath, she scrambled back down. The cab had already cooled off but at least it was out of the wind. She switched out her cute, wet sneakers for her winter boots, and pulled on thermals and her down jacket as quickly as possible. Thank God she had been expecting cold weather.

  The sight of her phone sitting in her cup holder made her wince. Of course, she could call for help. She picked it up with shaking fingers, but there was no signal. Cursing violently, she looked for the communicator only to find it wedged down behind her seat, just out of reach. She had run out of options and the sleet was beginning to turn to snow. Every survival instinct she had argued for staying with the truck, but the thought of someone injured and alone—please God, not T’kol—was more convincing. She had to try and help whoever was at the end of that parachute.

  Still swearing, she grabbed her pack, climbed back out of the truck, struggled up the embankment, and set off for where the parachute had disappeared.

  Chapter Three

  Hisst sent his flyer spiraling in a circle of sheer ecstasy. To be away from the dreary Yehrin ship, away from his nest mate watching his every move, away from the constant ne
ed to be on his best behavior just in case Queen Adorissa’s eyes should fall upon him and consider him as a potential addition to her brace. Not, of course, that there was much chance of that happening. As the youngest and least distinguished member of the diplomatic team, only his dam’s connections made him in any way desirable. But at least that connection had been enough to get him assigned to the mission and now that he was here, he was cursed if he was going to miss a chance to see an entirely new planet.

  Not that he could actually see much. White and grey clouds carpeted the ground below him. Determined to see at least something of the planet in the short time he had remaining before his absence was noted, he sent the flyer plunging down amongst the clouds. A decision he immediately started to regret when gusty winds caught the light craft and started tossing it around.

  He had always considered himself a good pilot, but he’d never encountered these types of conditions. Along with the wind, small pellets of what looked like ice beat against the outer shell of his craft in a constant barrage that assaulted the sensitive membranes of his ears. Just when he thought he had the flyer under control, another gust of wind caught the craft and sent it spiraling, not in ecstasy this time but in what threatened to be a deadly trajectory. With a prayer to the Great Mother, he prepared to eject.

  Lizabet spent most of the walk along the road swearing. She cursed everything from the bastard who had given birth to her to the scrawny guitar player who had tempted her into breaking the Yehrin curfew and getting arrested. Of course, that arrest had resulted in her finding a new home and a new family, but she refused to let that soften her anger. The swearing helped to heat her blood and distract her from the searing cold and the increasing layer of snow she was trudging through. She would have cursed T’kol for forcing her on this journey in the first place, but she was still too worried that he might be at the end of the dangling red cloth.

  She stopped periodically to check for a signal on her phone, but no bars appeared. Thank fuck that one of the Yehrin improvements had been phone batteries with almost limitless life. At least the compass was still working, and she checked it each time she stopped to verify that she was still going in the right direction.

  The hardest moment came when she had to step off the road and head towards the rocks. No one would know where she had gone. The snow would soon cover her footsteps and there was nothing with which to leave a marker. Her hands shook from more than cold.

  Stop it, Lizzie, she ordered herself. Just go find that fucking idiot and drag him back here.

  One deep breath later she was off the road. Fortunately, the rocky ground wasn’t too uneven, and the snow didn’t completely hide the contours of the land, so she made good progress. It wasn’t until the rocks started to rise up around her that she slowed. The rock formations helped to block the wind, but they also made it hard to follow a direct path. Deliberately refusing to think about the possibility of getting lost in the narrow canyons, she kept moving. She had to check the compass more frequently now.

  What little light made it through the heavy clouds started to fade and she could feel the temperature dropping, even with the rock pillars blocking most of the gusts. Just as she was beginning to think she had totally misjudged the location of the crash; she caught a glimpse of red fabric flapping in the wind. She forced her way through a gap in the rocks that was an uncomfortably tight fit and stumbled to a halt.

  An alien sprawled on the ground, half-covered with snow, but he was not Yehrin. Most of his body was covered in a skin-tight silver suit, but she could see the smooth head, the greenish-gold scales, the reptilian features. If she remembered her xenobiology correctly, he had to be Icluthian. What on earth was he doing here?

  A shudder shook his body and snapped her out of her hesitation. Icluthians were cold-blooded and these temperatures could be fatal for one of them much more quickly than for a human. She dropped to her knees next to him, noting that the tight suit he was wearing was ripped in several places, exposing his skin to the frigid temperatures. He had to be close to T’kol in size and none of her clothing would cover that extremely well-muscled chest, but she was about to start at least piling clothes on top of him when her gaze snapped to the parachute. It wouldn’t have much weight to it, but it should be weatherproof.

  Yanking on the strings, she managed to pull it down off the rock. She brushed the rest of the snow off the Icluthian, checking for obvious injuries in the process. To her relief, she didn’t find anything more than scratches wherever his uniform had torn. Despite her anxiety, she couldn’t help but notice that he had an amazing body—firm and muscular, but leaner than the more massive Yehrin physique. Stop that, you perv, she ordered herself, and focused on trying to help him rather than admiring him.

  She folded the tattered remnants of the parachute several times to make it as thick as possible, then tucked it around his body. His eyes flickered open for just a second—gold, slit-pupiled, but totally unlike Yehrin eyes. They widened at the sight of her and then an amazingly sweet smile parted thin lips. He murmured something, then his eyes closed again.

  Fuck. He needed warmth at a minimum, and probably more help as well. She frantically searched for a solution. If she had fuel, she could make a fire but there was very little vegetation amongst the rocks. And although the surrounding pillars provided some protection, the small clearing was completely exposed to the sky above. Could she use the cloth to make a shelter? But if she did, he would have nothing to keep him warm. A more sheltered spot would help, but to find one she would have to leave him on his own. She put a hand on his head. His skin was cold—she suspected too cold—and his breathing seemed slower and shallower.

  Determined to provide some additional warmth, she started digging through her pack again to look for anything she could cover him with, but as she did, she caught sight of the blast tube. One of the options on the weapon was to create flame. Could she use that to heat up some of the rocks? Her heart pounding, she changed the setting, then cautiously aimed it at the nearest stone pillar. A spear of fire shot out and she almost dropped the tube, but she kept it trained against the rock. To her relief, when she turned off the beam, a warm, steady heat pulsed from the stone. She brushed the remnants of snow away from the base of the pillar before they could melt.

  After trying to tug him closer only resulted in her landing on her butt, she took a deep breath and tried rolling him instead. To her relief that worked, and she managed to get him almost up against the rock. The parachute blanket had come free in the process. As she started to cover him again, she took a second look at the spire. It reached a jagged crest a few feet over her head, then widened down to a base about seven feet across, perfect for forming one side of a shelter. Taking aim at the top, she flung the parachute in that direction. For a change, the wind actually helped, catching the lightweight material and sending it soaring over the spire.

  A few minutes later, with the help of the remaining cords and some small rocks, she had a crude tent. Almost complete darkness filled the clearing and her teeth started to chatter as soon as she stopped moving. Grabbing her pack, she crawled into the makeshift shelter with the strange alien. He had rolled over on his own, almost plastering himself against the heated rocks, but when she checked, his eyes were still closed, and his body still felt cool enough to worry her. She dug out a scarf and wrapped it around his head, then laid her flannel shirts over his body. As she picked up his hands to wrap them in two of her tanks, she noticed that unlike the Yehrin, he had four fingers and a thumb just like a human—although human hands were not topped by sharp little points. For a moment, she allowed her hand to linger over his. His skin felt strange, the scales smoother than she had expected but with a distinctive texture and a cool dry feel.

  When he was as covered as she could make him, given her limited supply of clothing, she leaned against his back and ate half a protein bar and sipped some water as she considered her options. It was pretty clear that she wasn’t going anywhere tonight. The walk
had taken her over two hours in daylight. Aside from the fact that she didn’t want to leave her patient, she had no confidence that she could find her way back to the truck in the dark and the thought of trying to find her way using the small light from her phone made her shudder.

  The little shelter actually felt surprisingly warm and her eyelids started to droop. She had spent the previous night in a rather seedy motel to which every male in her life would have strongly objected—which was partially why she had chosen it. But while she had been all bravado checking in, she found herself jumping at every sound once she was alone in her room and she hadn’t slept well. The long drive and the long walk only added to her fatigue. With a sigh, she tucked her much emptier pack under her head and snuggled up behind the Icluthian.

  It wasn’t until she did so that she became aware of his size. She had gotten used to thinking of him as her helpless patient, but he was a full-grown male from an alien race. Although she knew that the Icluthians had a pact with the Yehrin and that they were fighting some enemy together, that didn’t mean the pact extended to humans. But then she remembered that brief sweet smile and relaxed. Still, she made sure her blast tube was set to stun and tucked it in her hand before she finally let herself fall asleep.

  Chapter Four

  Hisst came awake slowly, conscious of a delicious warmth against his front and another dimmer source of heat against his back. His arms were wrapped around something soft and warm and delightfully fragrant, reminding him of a fragment of a dream. He had opened his eyes to see the Great Mother smiling down at him, flames surrounding her head as it was silhouetted against the white skies of Valhassa. What a blessing to encounter the Goddess, however briefly. Was he still dreaming?