CHAPTER 3
ERRO
Cold…
Consciousness returned slowly to Erro, and his whole body was shivering with cold. The tips of his fingers were icy and numb, but it seemed like he was warming up little by little. He tried wiggling his fingers and toes, and to his surprise, they moved. Only a little at first, but as his body grew warmer and his awareness grew along with it, he found that he could move more.
His eyes flickered open after a moment, and he found himself in an unfamiliar room filled with warm light. Sitting up, he wrapped his arms around his body as he felt a chill. He frowned at the strange surroundings, feeling thorougly confused.
Maybe that crash had addled his brains?
Crash?
Memories flooded his mind, disjointed and intense. He immediately reached up to feel his head. He no longer wore his helmet, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Had he lost it somewhere? Or had somebody taken it off?
Doing a quick assessment, he found no apparent injuries. He wiggled his toes again just for good measure. No pain anywhere. So maybe the crash had been a dream?
No. Erro immediately scrapped that thought. He was still wearing his pilot’s suit, and it was ripped and burned in some places. Besides, if he hadn’t crashed, he would still be inside his ship, drifting through space or resting at a station. And it didn’t seem like he was in either of those places. So where was he, then?
He seemed to be laid out on a long, cushioned platform in the middle of a room. To one side, he spotted a table with two chairs, and to another, a shelf propped up against the wall. At the center of the room he saw a large, brick hole in the wall that smelled of smoke. A primitive kitchen?
“Great,” he mumbled. “I’ll bet civilization is nowhere close.”
A dull pain slowly made its presence known at the back of his head, and Erro realized he didn’t even know which planet he was on. He lifted his hand to rub at the pain, trying to ease it as he looked around some more. To his misfortune, he realized that the place didn’t resemble anything he’d seen before. He spotted two blocky entrances, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw a green tree next to one of them.
A tree inside of a house? Erro frowned at it. Especially since this tree looked like it was dying – if it wasn’t already dead. And yet, a few shiny bulbs had been placed on its branches.
Erro’s brow furrowed even more as he continued to stare at it. Was the tree the representation of a soul that had passed away and it had been decorated in homage to and remembrance of that person? He had heard of a ritual like that before, though he could not remember which planet it was from. Then again, cultural studies had never been his favorite subject in the Academy.
Pulling his eyes away from the tree, he continued to look around the room, searching for a clue to which planet he was on. He noticed a wooden shelf with blocky items in it that he figured were paper books – something nearly as primitive as the smoke-filled kitchen hole. But perhaps they could provide him with a clue as to where he was.
While Erro knew that he was no expert at languages – another slight in his education –he did speak the Union standard language fluently on top of his own native language, and could recognize a word here and there of at least half a dozen other alien languages. Placing this one should come relatively easily.
And yet, as he examined the books on the shelf, his spirits immediately deflated. The symbols that covered them were nothing like he had ever seen before. He couldn’t be sure if he simply didn’t recognize them due to his head injury, or if his lack of knowledge was to blame, but either way, further study of the books wouldn’t be helpful.
Erro let out a frustrated breath. He continued to study the items on the shelf and noticed a small, cuddly creature with round ears that looked alive but wasn’t. He frowned at the thing, unable to understand its significance. Did the people on this world fancy things that seemed to be alive but were actually dead? He shook his head in disbelief. The notion seemed absurd.
On his native planet, his people valued living things. Life was scarce and because of that, it was celebrated. Trees, flowers, shrubs, they were all cultivated and nurtured, almost like a mother would nurture her children. That was something Erro missed when he’d first become a soldier. He was proud of his job, proud of his achievements, but he couldn’t deny that he did sometimes miss his family and the life he’d had on his planet.
As it was, right now, he was alone. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing that would have brought him to a strange world all alone, without a team of other men. It must have been something of importance, he was sure of that, but the ache in his head thundered too loudly for him to think of what it was.
Set on a small table nearby, Erro noticed a jar filled with round, red and white pills. He stared at them, wondering about the odd choice of colors. Were they medicine? He hoped so. He could definitely use something for the low thud in the back of his head.
Picking up one of the pills, he put it into his mouth – only to spit it out immediately after. The little round thing left an odd chill in its wake that exploded inside his mouth, and he gagged, wiping his tongue clean of the substance. That stuff was definitely no medicine. The taste was horrible, and it did nothing for his headache.
Looking around was getting Erro nowhere, so he started to pick his brain for where he’d been before the crash. The ache in the back of his head intensified, and he wondered if he might have a concussion. That would explain why he felt so disoriented and didn’t even know where he was. Crap!
Erro hunched forward on the cushioned platform, feeling hopeless until suddenly he saw something beside the weird medicine on the table. A shiny, bright orb. His eyes widened as he took it in. The device looked like a part of an eqazi transmission orb, but not quite. Could he use this to communicate with the nearest base?
Hopeful, he reached for it, only to frown as nothing happened upon his touch. Picking the orb up from it’s place, his brows drew closer together as he realized that it had something stuck to its bottom. He studied it carefully, noticing odd characters inside it. Not only that, but when he shook the device, tiny white and sparkling things inside of it swirled and fell to the bottom again. The thing seemed completely pointless. What sort of a contraption was it, anyway?
Frustrated, Erro set the orb down a little rougher than necessary, but as he did so, something on the other side of the room caught his eye. Over by the brick hole that smelled of smoke.
A picture of five aliens, all with fair skin and dark brown hair. They were all smiling as they stood before the backdrop of a large wooden structure that he assumed was a civilian home. Two of the aliens were male, one old and one young, while the others were female. One wore odd, circular frames on her face, another looked like she may be with young, and the youngest female looked like her exact duplicate – probably her daughter.
So many females… Erro’s brows shot up at this realization. His own planet was nearly dying out, with fewer and fewer females being born each cycle, and here, one family had three of them? Where the hell was he?
Just as he felt like some kind of a memory about his current location might emerge in his head, Erro heard a crack on the other side of the room. He quickly turned toward the sound, and his eyes rounded in surprise when that youngest female from the picture, now fully grown, walked into the room. Her hair was longer, and she seemed thinner, but the facial features were still the same. Erro was certain it was her.
After studying the picture, he’d almost come to feel as if he knew her, like he had seen her somewhere before. Now, a feeling of recognition burst inside him as her flowery scent wafted into his nose, sending a strange sense of warmth throughout his body. The only other time he’d experienced that scent was in his dreams.
His nostrils flared as he took in her fragrance, and his cock hardened. He wanted her. More than he had ever wanted a female in his whole life. His eyes widened with surprise as he realized the reason why. He had no doubt about it.
“Ele’a!” he gasped. His mate.
She stared curiously at him with her green eyes. They grew wider, and then narrowed, and her thin eyebrows curved into a crease along her forehead. She looked confused, and perhaps slightly unsure, and the corners of her rosy lips curved down into a frown. Her slender shoulders heaved as she sucked in a breath, and she crossed her arms over her chest just underneath a pair of well-developed, firm, and perfectly rounded breasts.
Beautiful!
She spoke, and her voice was high-pitched and clear, like a sweet melody. At first, Erro was simply mesmerized by the sound of her speech, but he soon realized that she was trying to tell him something important, and so he did his best to listen.
There was one problem though. He had no idea what she was saying.
Frowning, Erro instinctively reached for the translator in his ear to adjust it, only to find that the blasted thing wasn’t working at all. He pulled it out, and saw that the core was broken. It must have shattered during the crash. Understandable, but unfortunate, since the woman was speaking in her native language, and he didn’t even know which language it was.
There was no way to understand what she was trying to tell him. And he desperately wanted to know.
He wanted to know her name, the name of this planet, and how he had come to be lying here inside her home – it was her home, he had decided – it had to be. So what had happened? Had she rescued him and brought him here? How?
These were all questions he wanted answered, and yet none of them truly mattered. Regardless which race she was, regardless of what planet he was on and how he had ended up here, he knew that what he was feeling was real. His racing heart, and the bulge between his thighs, were all the evidence he needed to tell him so. She was his ele’a. His one true mate.
Erro almost laughed at the realization. He was so happy, and yet the whole thing was more than a bit absurd. He had never expected to find his mate on another planet. Not that he had really thought much about finding his mate in the first place. Females of his species were rare, and there were more single males in his tribe than there were females on the whole planet. Only very few males were lucky enough to find their ele’a and have a family of their own.
Which is why he too had, already at a young age, chosen a life of solitude in the military. At least that meant he had something to do, a purpose. He was a soldier, and that’s what he lived for. Never had he thought he would one day find his ele’a, his one and only other half. And yet, here she was, a female who affected him as only his ele’a could.
There was no mistaking it. She was the one.
“Please, won’t you tell me your name?” Erro pleaded. “I want to…”
She looked at him with a wary expression, and Erro sighed. Of course, she couldn’t understand him either. She was a civilian on a foreign world. There was no way she spoke the Union language. There was no way for them to understand each other. Without a translator, there was nothing to be done.
Erro paused. A translator!
The one he had been wearing may have stopped functioning, but he had another one in his ship – a spare. Hell, he might even have more than one; one for himself, and another for her. After all, he did like to stay stocked up on supplies in case of emergencies.
The ship was likely a wreck by now if he had truly crashed, but there was still a chance that some of the items in the pilot’s vault remained intact.
Now, he just needed to get back to his ship.