Chapter Fourteen
Ty turned toward the doors to the meeting hall and saw two warriors dragging a thrashing woman between them. Zuri came up behind them and he saw blood trickling down her chest from a large gash across the front of her shoulder. Ero walked beside her, his jaw twitching and his eyes wild with fury. The woman gripped between the warriors was small and plain. She wasn't pretty or interesting-looking like the human women who had come to call his planet home, and suddenly it struck him… she was unnoticeable.
Samira looked stricken beside him like she knew who the woman was.
"Who is that?" Ty asked.
"She was the flight attendant on our voyage from Earth. She mans all of the trips on the university shuttle."
"So she would have been the attendant when Eden, Eliana, and Leia came here, too?"
Samira nodded.
"This is who had been helping Ullie and the Klimnu," Zuri said with acid in her voice.
Pyra glared down at the woman, who stared definitely back at him.
"I don't understand," he said, "Who is this woman?"
"She has been posing as a flight attendant on all of the shuttles from Earth. She was getting information from us and bringing it back to Ullie and the Klimnu. That's how they knew that Leia was coming and were able to intercept the flight and kidnap her. The transporter in the middle of the tunnel wasn't to get her from the cliffs to the underground chamber. It was to get her from the ship to the tunnel. That's why she disappeared into her quarters as soon as the ship landed, and why she told us that she never got off in between voyages. She has a transporter in her quarters that brought her directly into the tunnel so that she was never seen moving in or out. That meant she could meet Ullie at the mouth of the tunnel and collect materials to bring to the Klimnu and go through the transporter again to the get to the chamber, or she could go directly to the chamber."
"Why would you help them?" Leia shouted at her, "How could you help such vile creatures?"
The flight attendant scoffed.
"You consider the Klimnu the vile creatures? My grandmother came here when she was young. She was one of the first human visitors to ever step foot on this planet. I bet if you asked the king and queen, though, they wouldn't even admit that she was ever here."
"Your grandmother?" Zuri spat, stepping around to look at the attendant, "You told me that she said humans should never leave Earth and that you should always keep to your own kind; that she didn't even know what you were doing for a living."
"She doesn't know what I do, and she does believe that humans should keep to their own kind. That belief comes from her brief time here. When I was younger she told me stories about how vicious and violent the Denynso men were. She told me that they were all cruel and insatiable. They would just as soon slit your throat as they would bed you. She fell in love with one of the warriors who was here at the time, but as soon as he was finished with her, he had the king and queen rescind her permissions to be here and sent her back. She has never recovered and we all watched her suffer and were limited for our entire lives because of it."
"You can't blame our entire species on the fact that your grandmother fell in love with a warrior who wasn't her mate. There are very clear warnings before any humans come to Uoria," Pyra told her, "There have been since the very first visitor. One of the reasons we limit how long humans can stay here, especially human women, is because of situations like that. We are a warrior race. It is who we are. Your grandmother knew that before she ever stepped foot here, and if she let a warrior bed her knowing that he wasn't her mate, she can only hold herself responsible."
"Bring her back to the shuttle and lock her in the pod. Make it very clear that she is never to come near this planet again and that if she does, we cannot be held responsible for our actions."
The warriors turned and dragged the woman out of the meeting hall. As soon as they were gone, Samira ran from Ty's side over to Zuri.
"Are you alright?" she asked, touching the gash on her chest.
"You left Pyra's knife in the tunnel," she said, "Guess who found it?"
"Oh, god. I am so sorry, Zuri."
"It's alright. The warriors were a little resistant to taking her into custody until they saw her swinging at me with it. A little blood is worth getting her off of the planet and away from us."
"We need to get you to Ciyrs."
"What are we going to do about the Klimnu?"
Everyone turned to look at Pyra. His shoulders were square and his Mohawk seemed to have gotten taller and sharper. Ty knew his body was preparing for war.