A full moon cycle had passed since Tabitha had crashed into my kingdom and I’d brought her to my parents’ house.

My warriors had found thirty-three survivors inside the Paragon wreckage—which, counting Tabitha, made thirty-four captives. The humans had been brought to confinement within my village for holding until the Council decided what to do about them. Tabitha, however, had remained with my parents, to the knowledge of no one but them and myself.

The Forum on the captives had been, perhaps, the most turbulent yet in my Elderhood. The vote had been very divided on what to do with the humans, but it had been ruled they would be kept alive and tended to for questioning. In the meantime, it had been agreed we would halt our attacks on the ships inside Andromeda’s borders. Vi’den had insisted that we learn what we could from the humans before continuing action, something I had agreed with wholeheartedly. It was unknown as of yet what would become of the humans after we had received all the information we could from them, but that was a subject for another Forum.

I had chosen to forego telling the Elders of Tabitha and her whereabouts. I wasn’t sure why I kept her a secret; it went against everything I believed to be my duty as Tribe Elder. For whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to confess, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was because I was concerned about the consequences the action would have to myself.

She had become a strangely well-integrated part of the household. I hadn’t been to my home since the crash, opting instead to stay at my parents’ whenever I wasn’t away on Elder work. For several days after bringing Tabitha there, my mother had been afraid of her and had stayed no greater than five strides away from my father. To my surprise, however, mother had been the first to warm to her—not counting my little siblings, of course, who knew nothing of threat and danger.

It had happened one day when I was out hunting. I returned with a hicorn ram and found mother and Tabitha around the cooking pot together. Tabitha was leaning over the pot, staring into it hard as though trying to memorize its contents, and mother was explaining the recipe to her in English as she dropped the ingredients in. When I’d walked in, they’d both looked up at me and smiled brightly. I had been so stunned to see them together that I’d just stared at them.

“What is wrong, my son?” Mother asked, reverting to our native tongue. Tabitha glanced at her momentarily before swinging her gaze back to me.

“You are not afraid of her?” I asked surprised.

Mother flicked her eyes to Tabitha for a split second and then smiled warmly at me. “She has been no danger to us thus far. And I take great stock in your feelings for her, my boy.”

“What feelings?” I said sharply.

She didn’t answer. She just turned back to the cooking pot and resumed instructing Tabitha in English. I wanted to push the question, but I knew better. Despite being Tribe Elder, my mother was still an authority figure for me, and I wouldn’t rudely demand anything of her, so I resumed bringing the hicorn to the back to be cleaned and harvested. Her words remained in my mind, though.

My father hadn’t had an epiphany towards Tabitha, but he seemed to gradually take to her as he watched her play with my little brother and sister and help out my mother around the house. He no longer watched her with suspicion; on the contrary, he treated her as though she’d always been part of the family. He told her jokes and showed her various things about hunting tools. He also insisted that she come outside and learn about the animal anytime he brought home something she hadn’t seen from a hunt. It reminded me greatly of how he’d taught me everything I knew about living off our land and respecting the gifts of the Grand Circle.

At the end of the day, Tabitha and I continued to share the bed upstairs. Mother had lent her some new, undamaged clothes to wear for the first week of her stay, and father had gone on several extra hunts just to get new skins so that mother could show Tabitha how she could make them into clothing. When it was time to sleep, however, Tabitha still wore her own underthings to bed, rather than the traditional night-skins the A’li-uud of our tribe wore. I had awoken during several nights to find my arm or my leg pressed up against her, and it had stirred something inside of me which had made me salivate.

She was so cool to the touch. I knew humans to be warm-blooded beings, but they weren’t nearly as warm as A’li-uud, and it was almost refreshing to touch her. Sometimes, in the night, when I’d realize I was touching her, she would shift in her sleep and cuddle herself against me. It was soothing and comforting, but it was also arousing, and I would spend the remainder of the night awake and alert.

During one of those nights, I gave into my whims a bit. I looked over at her and admired the way she slept. Her back was to me, her dark, curly hair spilling out over the pillow, and she breathed slowly and deeply. I lifted my hand and gently brought my fingers to the blade of her shoulder. As I made contact, she mewed a bit in her sleep, and I gritted my teeth to keep down the desires roaring within me. Slowly, I trailed my fingers down her side, feeling each ridge of her ribs and each curve of her femininity. It felt as though my skin buzzed against hers.

That was when I realized my mother had been right. I had feelings for this human.

The next day, I studiously avoided both Tabitha and mother, occupying myself instead teaching Igno how to whittle vigibrach wood into pegs for building. I could tell, each time I passed on her, Tabitha was confused and a bit hurt by my behavior, but I didn’t want to address the matter. It frightened me that I cared for her. I didn’t know what was to come of her or what the consequences would be for either of us if we were to pursue something deeper, and I wasn’t prepared to be hurt.

“Rex!”

I looked up at the call and saw my father knee-deep in the grasses a short distance away.

“You have to go! A Forum has been called!” He shouted at me.

I got to my feet, handing Igno the piece of vigibrach and the small knife, calling back to father, “Thanks!”

He nodded and turned around, presumably to resume doing whatever he had been doing when he’d received word of the Forum. I went into the house and found Tabitha sitting with mother at the table. Furs were scattered about between them, and both of them seemed deeply focused.

“I have to go,” I announced, making them both look up. “There is a Forum.”

Mother nodded, but Tabitha got to her feet. “Wait. I’ll walk you out.”

We exited the house together, and she smiled brightly at Igno as he showed her the peg he was working on. When we got to the edge of the front path, she put a hand on my arm to stop me.

“Is there something wrong?” She asked. Her eyes probed mine with obvious concern.

“No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. “It feels like you don’t want to be around me.”

I intended to reassure her while keeping as much distance—emotionally and physically—as possible, but I couldn’t fight the feelings taking over. I reached forward and cupped her cheek in my hand. She looked back at me with a contradictory mixture of hope and fear in her expression.

“Tabitha,” I said quietly, “I always want to be around you.”

Her eyes seemed to melt, and she smiled. I could see in her eyes my own feelings mirrored back at me, and I realized I probably wasn’t the only one feeling things I would never have expected.

“I need to go,” I told her, just as quietly.

She nodded against my hand. I kept it there for another second, and then I jumped on the winds to P’otes-tat Ulti.

When I arrived, all of the other Elders were already present. I took my seat, and Vi’den took presence as usual. I tried to stay focused on where I was and why I was there, but I couldn’t keep my mind from continuously reverting back to Tabitha and the look she had in her eyes. I was wrenched from the thoughts, however, when I heard Vi’den speak.

“It is time to revisit our action plan,” he said grandly, arms extended to the side. “The humans have been our captives for a full moon cycle. We have received a substantial amount of information from those who have been interrogated, and there is likely to be much more to come, but we can no longer forego addressing the other ships in Andromeda that continue to travel nearer to Albaterra.”

I sat frozen in my chair. The information we’d gathered from the humans, in my opinion, had been negligible; according to all of them, they had known nothing of us prior to their crash on our planet, and most didn’t know the specific reason they’d been sent on their space mission in the first place. It occurred to me there may have been things learned I had not been told of, and, with a sickening swoop, I wondered if any of the other Elders had found out about Tabitha.

“We have enough humans to get what we need,” the vicious cave Elder spat. “Blast the others.”

“It is possible those on the other ships know things these humans do not,” Ma’ris chimed in. “We would be unwise to destroy them without first questioning them.”

“Enough questions!” The cave Elder barked back.

I could feel Duke’s eyes on me from my right, and I knew he was waiting for me to say something. The humans had, after all, crashed in my kingdom, and it was expected from me to have particularly strong feelings one way or the other about our course of action. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, though, for fear of blurting out something that would give Tabitha away.

“We must come to a decision about the ships,” Vi’den said sagely. “The humans here are confined and pose no immediate threat to us. It is to the Council to measure the risk the ships pose.”

“Blast’em!” The cave Elder shouted.

“You are a foolish, narrow-sighted brute,” Ma’ris hissed to him. “Your thinking is the kind that decimates races and worlds.”

“And your thinking is what will have us all in shackles, doing the humans’ bidding,” the cave Elder roared back.

“Enough!”

I didn’t mean to say it, and I certainly didn’t mean to yell it at the volume I did, but silence fell in the chamber at once as my command echoed throughout. All eyes turned to me, and I sat up a little straighter in my chair.

“Bickering amongst ourselves solves nothing,” I said. “And, if I recall, the Paragon landed in my kingdom. It was my warriors who found and brought back the surviving humans. It is my tribesmen keeping them confined and performing the interrogations. If anyone should have an opinion on the matter, it should be me, not either one of you in your ignorance.”

Both Elders looked highly affronted, but Vi’den looked at me with an expression of obvious pride and approval.

“We would all greatly value your opinion on the matter, Rex,” he said.

I didn’t speak right away. I was going over my words in my mind, making sure I would say nothing relevant to Tabitha. When I finally did speak, it was slowly and calculatingly.

“The humans have, for the most part, shown no signs of aggression. Those we have seen have been symptoms of fear for their survival. I do not believe they were aware of Albaterra or the A’li-uud prior to their crash.”

“That does not mean they weren’t sent by those who are aware,” Ma’ris cut in.

“Or that knowing about us now isn’t dangerous,” the cave Elder added.

Silence fell again as their assertions rang in my ears. I realized, with a dull pang, that they were both right. At the end of the day, I was a Tribe Elder, and I had a duty to my tribesmen and my race. If I was unwilling to uphold my promise of safety and protection to the A’li-uud, I might as well have been executed for treason.

My chest suddenly felt hollow and achy as the truth sank into me. My feelings for Tabitha were a distraction from the real problem, the real danger. My feelings could be the catalyst for the decimation of the A’li-uud race and Albaterra altogether. At the very least, the safety of my family was in question the moment the Council found out about her.

“Let us vote,” Vi’den said. I stared at the floor, feeling sick to my stomach, as he said, “Those in favor of recommending our plans to destroy all human ships in Andromeda?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw hands lift into the air one by one. Duke, beside me, extended his upward as well. I swallowed hard. I had a choice to make, and, if I made the wrong one, it could literally mean life or death.

With trembling fingers, I raised my hand.