Chapter Five
"Hello, my love," Bannack said.
"Hi, darling. I have the other women with me."
"I can see that," Bannack replied with a smile, "Hello, everyone."
Loralia could hear all of the women chiming in around her to say hello to Bannack and she smiled.
"How is everyone doing?" she asked.
The compact shifted suddenly and Pyra's face appeared in the glass.
"Pyra!" Eden gasped, pushing closer to the compact.
She reached out and ran her fingers down the side of the reflection of Pyra's face.
"Hi," he said softly, "I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
"How's the baby?"
"Everything's fine."
"Good."
"I wish I could connect with you."
"I know. It's just too hard right now."
"It's like I can feel you with me."
He seemed to be starting to say something else, but Gyyx's face appeared beside his as the other warrior tried to push Pyra out of the way.
It continued like this for the next several minutes, each of the men forcing their way into the reflection so that they could spend a few moments with their mates. Finally Lynx appeared in the reflection.
"I'm sorry to be the one to break all of this up, but we really need to start figuring this out."
"Lynx is right," Ciyrs' voice came from behind Lynx and a moment later he appeared in the reflection.
Elianna reached forward and touched the image of his face. Loralia could see the tears in her eyes and had a pang of feeling for the tiny woman. Elianna and Ciyrs had been together for far longer than she and Bannack, and Loralia could only imagine that the bond grew stronger with time. As with the other women, she couldn't begin to understand how painful it was for them to be away from the men who they had spent months with rather than the mere days she had been with Bannack. Being without him felt like her heart was coming out of her chest, and in that moment she found herself in awe that the other women, or their mates, were still functioning.
"Do you have any ideas?" Elianna asked, her voice lowering as if she had forgotten the others were around her and was just talking to him.
"I've tried everything that I can think of. Do you want to look at her?"
Elianna nodded. The reflection in the compact mirror moved as Ciyrs carried it over to the bed and held it up so that the image of a beautiful woman appeared in the glass. Loralia looked at her delicate but distinct features, the flow of hair in a color that she had never seen, the soft peacefulness that made her face look relaxed and calm without a hint of knowing what was coming in the moments just after she laid down to rest.
"She's like Sleeping Beauty," Zuri said.
Loralia didn't know what she meant by that, but the other four human women nodded in agreement, so she figured that it must have some sort of meaning behind it.
"Who is Sleeping Beauty?" one of the men asked and Loralia was relieved that she wasn't the only one that wasn't familiar with the phrase.
"It's a fairy tale," Zuri said with a small laugh, "A story that we tell our children on Earth. It's about a woman that gets put into a deep sleep by an evil fairy. She sleeps for so long that her fairy godmothers put everyone in the entire kingdom to sleep. She can only wake when her true love comes and kisses her."
"How long does it take?"
"One hundred years."
Loralia heard Lynx's sharp intake of breath.
"Maybe you should try kissing her," Pyra said to Lynx, only partly sounding like he was kidding.
"It worked for me," Gyyx said.
Loralia saw Leia blush.
"You might have done a little more than kiss me," she said and Gyyx grinned.
Loralia remembered the story they had told her about Gyyx waking Leia up out of her sleep after they rescued her from the Klimnu by stimulating her. She had come out of her sleep in the middle of an orgasm, but it wasn't until she had convinced him to bond with her completely that she had really started to heal and regain her strength.
"I don't think that would work," Loralia said, "She might look like Sleeping Beauty, but she wasn't singled out. The Covra locked the entire settlement, not just her."
"That's true," Ciyrs said, "This is an ability of the Covra, not magic. There has to something, something specific, that will unlock all of them."
"We're going to go back to the other men and tell them what we found out about Rain," Pyra said.
"Rain?" asked Eden.
"That's her name," Lynx said.
Loralia could hear the tenderness in his voice and she wished there was something that she could do to reassure him. Even just hearing those few words from him, she feel his emptiness and loneliness, and if there two emotions that she understood clearly, it was those.
"We will keep working on it from here," Loralia said, hoping that that would comfort Lynx in some way, "If we think of anything, we will get in touch with you."
"I have you and the baby with me, Eden," Pyra said, pulling a pendant out from under his shirt.
Loralia watched as he held the pendant in his hand and rubbed it with his thumb. Behind her she heard Eden sigh.
"Keep it with you," she said, "I love you."
The rest of the women repeated her words to their mates, and the men returned them. Finally she was looking at Bannack again.
"We'll do everything we can," she told him.
"I know you will."
"I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
Loralia closed the compact and looped it back around her neck. As she was turning toward the rest of the women, she felt a sudden wave of worry and when she looked at Eden, she watched the color drain from her already pale face.