Chapter One
“Are you alright?” Loralia asked as she watched Bannack pull another box from the top of the shelving unit and place it on the stack that he was creating on the floor beside him.
“I’m fine,” her mate responded brusquely without looking her direction.
Loralia struggled with her urge to tune into Bannack’s emotions, to let herself feel what he was feeling. It was a capability that she had been born with, one that she had never realized set her as far apart from the rest of her kind as it did. This was a gift not from the Irisa who had raised her and who she thought was the only species whose blood ran through her veins, but from the mysterious father, the Eteri who she had never known and who she had only just seen for the first time. This was something that had always been a part of her, a way that she went through life and how she understood those she encountered. It had been the way that she knew that she was able to trust the Denynso when they entered her underground home and how she had known that the same could not be said for the gruesome, skeletal creatures that had invaded before and forced her into hiding. It wasn’t until she had bonded with Bannack and gotten used to life outside of the loneliness of the reflected realm that she learned not to use it with every interaction.
There were some moments when this gift had brought great value, such as when she was able to comfort Eden about the health of the child she had been carrying within her and tell her that she would soon bear a son who would be strong and powerful like his father. There were also moments, too many moments, when she felt that she was intruding in the lives of those around her and suffered intense emotions and thoughts she didn’t want to have within her. She discovered that she and Bannack couldn’t communicate with each other through their minds in the way that the Denynso could usually do with their mates, even those born from other species. It was then that she began to question this way of exploring the world and learning from others, and soon after taught herself not to reach out in that way, to give others the privacy that their emotions deserved and connect with them on their level first.
At this moment, though, she craved the clarity that came from when she was able to detect exactly how her mate was feeling. He seemed closed and angry, lost in his own thoughts as he followed the instructions that Pyra had given him as they all worked to prepare for when they would leave the laboratory building and head for Penthos. He took another box from the shelf and placed it on the stack. Apparently satisfied that he had taken enough, he reached down and scooped the entire stack into his arms. He carried them out of the room and she knew that he was bringing them back to the section of the emergency chamber that Pyra had designated as the central location where they would gather all the supplies for the trip to Penthos and the conditions that they might face there.
Loralia stood in the room where Bannack had left her, waiting for him to return. She didn’t want to walk away without knowing what was going through his mind. With everything that they had been facing since arriving on Earth, she knew that he was under a tremendous amount of strain. He was struggling with something and it was drawing him away from her. Loralia knew that she couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t simply walk away and allow the tension and pain that was pressing in around them fracture the bond that had held them so closely on Uoria. Finally, he came back into the room and stopped short when he saw her still standing there. They stared at each other for a few moments before he went back to the shelves and started pulling more of the boxes down.
“What are those?” Loralia asked, wanting to start a conversation between them just so she could hear his voice.
Bannack glanced over his shoulder at her. The expression on his face was angry at first, but then softened before he turned back to the boxes.
“Food,” he said. “Whoever built these chambers really must have thought something terrible was going to happen and that a lot of people were going to seek refuge down here. There’s enough food and supplies down here to last for months.”
Loralia took a step toward him, trying to offer him a smile.
“But isn’t that a good thing?” she asked. “We didn’t expect any of this to happen, so we didn’t prepare for it. We didn’t have any food or supplies or anything to bring back to Penthos with us. What’s down here will sustain us while we’re here and then after we leave. That’s a wonderful thing.”
Bannack’s arms fell to his side and he gave a deep sigh.
“Yes,” he said, sounding more exasperated now than angry. “Of course, it’s a good thing that the supplies are here for us to use, but doesn’t it make you sad that they are?”
“What do you mean?”
“What type of world is this? What type of suffering and disasters did the people who lived at this time have to see and expect for them to go to this extent to prepare for something terrible to happen? This isn’t just a few supplies and some rations to carry them through bad weather or to protect them for a day or so. These supplies were put here to keep people going for long stretches of time. They wanted to make sure that every person who might have been in the hospital at the time was able to come down here and survive whatever horror was going on outside. What could they have been so afraid of?”
“I don’t know, Bannack,” Loralia said. She could feel the emotion tightening in her throat now and was glad that she had kept her mind blocked to what he was feeling. She didn’t think that she had the strength right then to endure what he was obviously going through. “Maybe it just gave them comfort to know that there was enough down here to support them if something did happen. This was a hospital. People would come here in their most difficult times. Maybe it was just reassuring to know that once they were here, they were safe.”
“Or maybe it haunted them,” Bannack said. “Maybe they thought about it constantly, the fact that there was something happening on the horizon that was so terrifying they needed to build up the walls around themselves and prepare to scramble for survival. They knew that it could happen so quickly. In an instant, the life that they thought that they were living could be over.”
“But they never had to use them,” Loralia said, taking another cautious step toward her tremendous mate. “All these supplies are still sitting here, which means that nothing ever happened that made them have to come down here and use them.”
“Not yet,” Bannack said.
Loralia reached forward and took hold of Bannack’s arm so that she could turn him around to face her.
“What’s this all about?” she asked. “Why are you thinking about this so much?”
“We came here for a wedding,” he said.
Loralia nodded.
“I know,” she said. “We saw it.”
“We also saw the Valdicians swarm the ceremony and kidnap Eden and Pyra’s baby.”
“But they got through the wedding. Samira and Ty are married now.”
“I know,” Bannack said. “That’s what’s bothering me.”
He turned back and started pulling the boxes down from the shelves again.
“I don’t understand,” Loralia said. “Why does it bother you that Samira and Ty got married? That’s why we came here. That’s what they wanted.”
“I know,” he said.
“Then…”
“Because we aren’t,” Bannack snapped, startling her into silence. Loralia took a slight step back, giving Bannack the space that she felt he needed. “We aren’t like them. We didn’t go through a ceremony together. We haven’t been tied, Loralia.”
“I know,” she said. “But we are bonded. Our relationship is just as strong as their marriage.”
“Not to your kind,” Bannack said.
“I’m the only one of my kind,” Loralia answered.
“You know what I mean,” he said more gently now, turning away from the boxes to look at her. “When we first bonded, you told me about the tying ceremony that the Irisa used to bind mates. I asked you if you would go through that ceremony with me.”
“And I agreed,” Loralia said. “When the rest of my species died out, I didn’t think that I was ever going to have the opportunity to have such a ceremony. I didn’t know that I would ever love anyone or have the chance to promise my life to another. When you asked if I would do the tying ceremony, it meant more to me than I could ever tell you. It felt like you really did love me and cared about what I would want for our relationship.”
“Of course, I love you,” Bannack said. “That’s the point. We haven’t had our ceremony yet, and we have no way of knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow. Just like these people didn’t. They spent their time preparing for a disaster that could strike them at any time. They didn’t know if it would be years in the future or the next day, but they thought about it. They prepared for the future by thinking about how they would survive something terrible that happened to them. That’s not how I want to prepare for the future.”
“How do you want to prepare?” she asked.
Bannack finally turned toward her fully and took a step to close the space between them. He took Loralia’s hands in his, engulfing hers completely in his palms, and stared into her eyes. The deep orange of his gaze still brought a tremble to her belly and she couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips. It was the perfect expression of their connection, the visual representation of the unbreakable bond that they shared. She remembered the way that his eyes looked when they first met and the flickers of orange that she saw in their first early glances. She didn’t know what it meant then, didn’t know that each of those flickers of orange was his heart telling Bannack that he had finally found the woman that he had been waiting for his entire life.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he said tenderly. “I don’t know if we’re still going to be sitting here in this basement or if we will try to get to the shuttles. I don’t know if we’ll make it back to Penthos or if we never see the stars again. I don’t know. What I do know is that if there is a future, I only want to share it with you. I don’t want the future to come without us being completely ready for it, and that means being fully and completely bound to one another. I want us to have our tying ceremony.”
Loralia felt her heart rise in her chest and butterflies fluttering in her belly.
“You do?” she asked.
Bannack nodded.
“I always have.”
“I know that we are already bonded and that the connection between us is unshakable, but it really is important to me. It wouldn’t be just for us. It would be a way for me to honor everyone who I have lost and the futures that they never got to have.” She drew in a shaking breath, glancing down at her feet and then back up at him. “It would honor my mother…and Azrael.”