Chapter Five
Elianna buried her head against Ciyrs's shoulder and held him tightly around his neck as he continued to rock her hips against his. She cradled him inside her body, enveloping him as though protecting him in the most powerful way she knew how. His skin was slick and warm with sweat and she felt it mix with her own as they both came down from their climaxes, maintaining the link between their bodies and allowing their breath to stream and blend between them as they preserved these last precious moments in each other's arms.
She kissed the side of his neck and let out a long sigh that seemed to pull with it all of the emotion that she had experienced since coming to Uoria. It had been like nothing she had imagined. When she left Earth to come to this strange and barely-known planet it was with the intention of helping humans learn more about Uoria and the Denynso. As a journalist she planned on writing a series of reports that would help to illuminate this species as the people of Earth got accustomed to the idea that the government and the academic sector were planning on not only making direct contact with the species, but cooperating with them. Knowing the reputation of the Denynso as the most powerful and skilled warriors in the galaxy, the goal was to bring some of them to Earth to fight and to train armies, while also allowing humans to go to Uoria to share parts of the Earth culture and visit the planet as tourists.
Elianna had had her own thoughts about these plans, but she had primarily kept them to herself. She wanted to remain as objective as possible, just as her career demanded, and that meant not contemplating a future in which the inhabitants of this far-away planet showed up on Earth and roamed freely, teaching humans to be even more violent and aggressive than they already were, and in which humans flew off to Uoria on cute little family vacations thinking that they would relax and make some fun memories, when they really had no idea what was awaiting them.
When she arrived, however, Elianna's resistance to other people and pain from abandonment in her past had nearly kept her from accepting Ciyrs as her mate. He had been patient with her, though, guiding her through the difficult and confusing first moments of their connection that would eventually seal them together. Before they could fully mate, however, a member of the Klimnu had masqueraded as Pyra and stolen her, bringing her to a dark, disgusting prison just on the edge of the compound, a place where she would learn that the Denynso never went. There she was tormented and tortured, the only comfort she got came in thinking about Ciyrs and reaching out to him through her mind.
It wasn't until the Denynso came for her that she discovered he had transferred some of his incredible healing power to her, but with the ability to heal came the ability to destroy. As much as she wouldn't want to admit it, she had delighted in the ability to wrap her hand around the bony, slimy neck of the vicious creatures who had made her life a living hell for the entire time that she had been there, and had nearly killed the frail, tiny woman that she had found battered and bloody, crawling through the halls of the prison, and watch them burn.
This had changed her forever. Suddenly life was not about writing articles and bringing back information to the people of Earth so that they could learn more about a planet that would remain a novelty. It became learning about the people that were now her family, giving herself over completely to the man that she loved and who she knew was her lifelong mate, and offering the gifts that she had just discovered to helping heal and protect the Denynso.
Now as she wrapped herself around Ciyrs, reveling in the feeling of the only man who had ever been inside her, she couldn't imagine a single moment of her life without him or without Uoria. She felt more at home and at peace here than she ever had on Earth, and it was as if his presence and the abundant, never-ending love that he gave to her had soothed all of the pain and emptiness she had suffered throughout her life. The thought that he was leaving with the warriors to explore the planet was gut-wrenching and she didn't want to think about it. She wanted to continue to hold him and let him protect her in his massive arms, ignoring the eventuality, and pushing back that moment when he would have to say goodbye.
Suddenly the first rays of sunlight started trickling through the slight gap between the curtains over their bedroom window and she knew that she couldn't put it off any longer. Her mate, the healer of the clan, was a vital component of this mission and he would still need to gather all of his supplies so that he could meet with the warriors at the main hall to be ready to leave after breakfast.
She climbed off of him slowly, savoring the feeling of his body stroking against hers as it left her, and crossed to the bureau on the far wall to pull out a dress that she dropped over her head. Out of a small drawer in the bottom of the piece of furniture she pulled a book tied with a green ribbon. When she turned back around Ciyrs was tying the strings at the front of his pants. She waited while he put on the rest of his clothing, and then stepped forward to hand the book to him.
"I brought this notebook with me from Earth. It was supposed to be where I was going to make my notes for my articles, but after I met you, I realized that I was never going to go back there so I didn't need to write them. Instead, you gave me the confidence to do something that I had never told anyone that I wanted to do, but that I had been dreaming of for my entire life."
Cirys untied the ribbon and lifted the hard front cover of the notebook. She watched him read the first few lines of her neat, precise handwriting and then look up at her.
"What is this?"
"I wrote a book. It's not quite finished yet, but I want you to bring it with you and read it. You'll be the very first person to read anything that I've written other than articles, and you can help me decide how to end it."
Ciyrs gathered Elianna into his arms and hugged her close to him. She breathed in the smell of his body and listened to the rhythm of his heart, wanting to internalize that sound so that she could replay it in her mind whenever she thought of him while he was gone.
"I will be thinking about you every day. I'll get home as soon as I can."
"I know you will."
As Ciyrs released her, she glanced down at the bed. It was going to be next to impossible to sleep without him beside her. The bed looked so big, empty, and cold already and she dreaded nightfall when she would have to climb in and try to will herself to sleep alone.
"Come to the shop and help me pack up the healing ointments and other supplies?" he asked.
Elianna nodded and let him take her hand, intertwining their fingers as he led her out of their house and through the compound toward the building that held his shop and clinic. This was where they healed the sick and injured, and where they had worked with Ty's brilliant mate Samira to create powerful healing ointments that had gotten them through the last battles with the Klimnu. She knew that the bottles and tubes that he packed in his large bag would be integral to the trip, but she didn't want to think of the suffering that they would end.
As they packed his supplies and checked the list of items that he had made the day before, Elianna could hear the compound outside coming to life as the Denynso started heading for the meeting hall to eat breakfast and say final goodbyes to the men.