Chapter Six
Bannack could see the fury in the other men's eyes and he immediately regretted what he had said to them. Not wanting the situation to turn into a conflict within the entire clan, he stepped away from the table and left the meeting hall. Either Pyra, Ero, and Ty would follow him and they would hash through the situation on their own outside, or they wouldn't follow and he could escape into the darkness of the night and deal with his feelings alone like he had been for the last couple of days. He honestly wasn't sure which one of them he would prefer to happen.
As soon as he stepped outside, he realized that the other men had, in fact, followed him and they were seething with so much anger it was almost as though he could feel the waves of energy rolling off of them. He didn't pause on the stairs leading up to the meeting hall but continued down into the center of the compound, bringing him closer to his house and further from the rest of the tribe.
"What did you mean by that?" Ero asked.
The youngest and smallest of the warriors, Ero had always been teased and bullied for his size. This had made him bitter and angry over the years, creating in him an unpredictable violence that often led him to major conflicts with the other warriors and even non-warrior members of the tribe. When he met Zuri and she became his mate, much of this anger and instability disappeared, replaced by a sense of confidence and control. That new control, however, seemed to be gone now as the temper returned and his eyes flashed aggressively at Bannack.
"I didn't mean anything by it," Bannack said, trying to brush off the comment that he made even though he knew it was completely out of line.
"You obviously meant something by it," Pyra said, stepping closer to Bannack, "You said that there was no way that you were supposed to mate with a species other than the Denynso. Do you think that there is something wrong with other species?"
"It's not that, Pyra," Bannack struggled to find the right words to express what he had been feeling, but they seemed to die and disappear before they could get from his mind to his mouth.
"Well, it seems to be exactly that," Ty said, showing uncharacteristic anger on his face, "It seems like you're saying that the only acceptable mates for us are Denynso women, and that you are too good to have a mate that isn't one of them."
"Let me remind you that each one of us, as well as Gyyx and Ciyrs, found mates that are most certainly not Denynso women. We fell in love with humans, a species that none of us knew anything about any more than you know anything about Loralia's kind."
"You knew something about them," Bannack snapped back, "We have encountered humans before; even had them come and stay with us for a few months at a time. You might not have known a lot about humans before the women came, but you knew something. You had spent time talking with humans and you had heard about them from Creia. They weren't a complete unknown."
"Why does that matter?"
"With Loralia, I know nothing. Absolutely nothing. We didn't even know that there was a species that existed below ground, much less what they are like. So how am I supposed to be OK with the fact that apparently I am falling for her when I don't even know who or what she is? Mating with a Denynso woman would mean that I understood her. I would know what she is, where she came from, and how we were going to live our lives together. We would have a shared history and the same perspectives. It would be easier and more realistic to bond with her and stay bonded with her because we would be able to know each other more quickly and more easily."
"So you think that because our mates are human women and not Denynso women that our bonds are not as close as the men who have Denynso mates? Or that somehow our relationships are not as good, or as 'realistic'?"
"Be honest, Pyra," Bannack said, staring directly into Pyra's raging orange eyes, "Don't you feel better knowing that Eden is technically a Denynso? Didn't it make you happy that Ciyrs somehow changed her from a human to one of us?"
"I was happy that he saved her life and that I wasn't going to have to live without her. I didn't care what she was. All I cared about was that he got the Klimnu toxins out of her and kept her alive. If that meant turning her into a Denynso woman, that was what it would take; but I wouldn't have loved her any less if she had woken up still completely human."
"After everything that's happened in the last few months with the Klimnu and Jem, and now with the idea of going out into the other areas of the planet to find out what else is out there, I just don't think I'm ready to even think about having a mate, much less having one that I will have to learn everything about."
"Do you really think that any of us was really ready when we found our mates? Or that we didn't have to learn everything about them, too?"
"If you haven't noticed, those five women might all be humans, but they are in no way exactly alike. Each one of them is so different it barely even matters that they are the same species," Ty said, "I know that being with Samira doesn't mean that I understand Eden like Pyra does, and that Ero wouldn't be able to trade Zuri for Leia and just expect that Gyyx would be able to pick right up with her without any problem. That's part of finding your mate. You have to learn her and she has to learn you. Remember, you're just as much a different species to Loralia and she is to you."
That statement struck Bannack harder than he would have anticipated it would have. He had been so wrapped up in how conflicted he felt about her that he never stopped to think about how Loralia perceived him. She hadn't shown a single moment of hesitance when it came to him, and had given herself over to her feelings for him immediately, never once worrying that he wasn't one of her kind, or even that he was a part of a species that had taken over the land where her kind used to live, something that the Denynso would have responded to with violence and anger. She had soothed him and offered herself to him in a way that was so trusting it now made him feel sick at the way that he had treated her.
"What am I going to do?" Bannack asked, looking at the men around him.
The anger in their eyes faded and he could see compassion build in their expressions. Each of them had been through their own personal struggle when they were finding their mates, and they knew how difficult it was to overcome those feelings. Ero had even had to go so far as to travel from Uoria to Earth, becoming the first of his kind to ever travel through space, in order to find Zuri and apologize to her after offending and hurting her so deeply that she had left the planet only a day after arriving. They understood what it was like to be unsure of the intense, all-consuming feelings that came with finding their mates, and now he needed them to tell him how to get through it.
"What in the hell is wrong with you?"
A shriek from across the center of the compound pulled Bannack's attention away from the other men and he saw Eden stalking toward him with a ferocious look in her eyes. Somehow her belly made her look even more intimidating, like a mother animal ready to fight something that was threatening her nest. Bannack took a step back, but Pyra stepped up behind him, forcing him to stay in place and confront the fiery redheaded woman.
"What?" Bannack asked.
"You didn't tell Loralia that you were leaving?"
"Um."
"You just left her? You brought her to her house, she brought you inside, and then you just ran away?"
"Is that all she told you?"
It was bad enough that they knew that he had run out on Loralia. Bannack didn't want to think that she had shared with them everything that had happened leading up to him gathering his clothes and running harder and faster than he could ever remember running in his life.
"Oh, no," Eden said, shaking her head with a spiteful half-smile on her face, "but I don't think that my baby is old enough to hear that story more than once in the same evening."
"I thought that you said you didn't bond with her," Pyra accused from behind him.
"I didn't," Bannack insisted.
"Not completely," Eden said, and then mercifully stopped.
"I know what I did was awful," Bannack said, taking a step toward Eden as the other two women ran up to them, "and I want to make it up to her. I'm dealing with my own issues, but I'm working through them and I don't want to hurt her any more than I already have. I want to tell her how sorry I am before we leave."
"Well that's really sweet, Bannack, but it's not going to be quite that easy."
"Why?"
"She left," Zuri said.
Bannack felt like a rock hit his stomach.
"What do you mean she left?"
"After she told us what you did, she decided that she didn't want to be here anymore. She said there's nothing for her up here and that she wanted to go back home where she didn't have anyone to hurt her."
"Damn it."
"What are you going to do?" Ty asked as Bannack walked around the human women in the direction of the forest.
"I have to go find her."