Janar: A Sci-FI Alien Romance (Jorathian Warriors Book 1) Read online

  "Whatever it is I need to find a way to stop Khor and your teasing isn't really helping at all." I groaned while rubbing my eyes, the orange glow of this damn control panel always wore me out.

  "You say that now but i've been going over the documents....ever consider that she might be your mate?" she asked me with particular emphasis on the word your. I moved my hands away from my face rather slowly and shook my head.

  That was impossible.

  "My mate?" I asked.

  "There's a chance that she is your mate you know? You say that Jorathians usually mate when they are much younger but there have been cases proving the contrary." Fi chirped, her pixelated smiley face flashing over the dashboard of the ship.

  I had thought that I would have been relegated to a life of loneliness, wandering the cosmos for adventure and nothing more. Hell I would have thought I would have died young and if everything went according to plan, I would. I would be on that planet and perish along with Lauren, Khor, and all of Khor's men. I had never thought about women after I had passed the age of 24 Jorathian years, I just thought that loneliness was going to be some sort of constant. I didn't think she was my mate....Was she? Was it even possible for someone to find their mate later than the usual period and on top of all of that a human?

  There was something there, something when I looked in her eyes and glanced her over. Something that I wanted more than anything else I could have ever dreamed of. When she swayed on her heel while eating those cold rations, while she leaned up behind me and observed while I repaired some mundane control panel, while she laughed and giggled at my reactions to her stories of home.

  Something that told me that this was something that i've never experienced before and that I was out of my depth.

  #

  Lauren

  He sure did turn around didn't he? All in about 2 months too!

  It started off slow enough, I would go and eat with him and pepper him with questions that he would only give one word responses to. I would show up with my plate and with a smile, trying my best to create conversation. Sometimes I even feigned ignorance or foolishness to get him to laugh, like that time with the noodles, that was the first time I ever broke him down.

  It was just him, Fi, and I on this ship so contact was inevitable at some point. Each day I spent with him was better than the last despite the monotony that was consuming our daily routines. I had no idea why he didn't just sedate us until we landed but I suppose it was due to medical reasons more than anything else. Each night I sat across from him and got to stare at that handsome face, my favorite days would be when he was shirtless in front of me, when he displayed those rippling muscles and that powerful body that had saved me from Khor's wrath. Now and again I catch myself blushing when he looked over at me and smiled, I find myself giggling at every little thing he did.

  Was I falling for this man? Was it possible that I was falling in love with my savior?

  As soon as I saw him that first day when he visited the containment cell I became enraptured by his appearance. That shining blue skin, those golden eyes that flickered, that amazing body that was littered with scars from battles past, all of it drew me in. It wasn't until days after that, that I discovered what I truly loved the most.

  "HAHAHAH!" he laughed as I regaled him with a story from home about how clumsily I asked a boy out during college. He found human courtship quite fascinating and often amusing.

  And other times his laugh would be a wistful, nostalgic chuckle.

  "Back home we used to have contests to who would reach the top of the tree the fastest. Now Bora was obsessed with his hair and I meant obsessed, he loved it more than anything. So he grew it out and one day while we were doing the contest I was neck and neck with him and he tried to taunt me by waving his hair. He ended up getting it stuck on one of the branches while I passed him and he had to cut it if he wanted any chance of making it on time. So then he shows up with this massive bald spot on the back of his head hahahah! It was quite the site." he muttered while repairing his guns. I often pestered him each and every day to tell me a new story while he was busy attending to his equipment, usually it worked, usually.

  Today was rather special, we had to make a supply stop for some water and some fresh carbon molecules to help synthesize more food. The planet we landed on was dotted with crags and water with several islands upon which the golden sun of the star system rained eternal. The plants here were quite different than back home, the leaves were absolutely massive, the size of cars on Earth. We manage to land on a plateau near the ocean, the waves of cold salt water rush over my face as he hands me a bucket and tells me that we need to go collecting the leaves for both our oxygen supply and our carbon stores for energy.

  "Incredible, it's beautiful." I muttered, my eyes surveying the horizon, the sun slightly dipping on the dark waters of this beautiful planet.

  "This is way past the frontier for exploration. Don't really know why there hasn't been any city founded on this land but I suppose every interstellar civilization can't be bothered with a planet that doesn't have many resources.....but what this place lacks in material wealth it makes up for in beauty." he muttered while he bundled up the stalks of leaves growing out of the ground and slipped them into his bucket, he could carry so much more than I could, I had to admit I caught myself glancing over at his musculature while he hoisted the leaves back to the ship, sometimes he would glance over at me while I was picking the plant matter and smile with the sun directly behind his head. The joy I received from just one glance from him made all the troubles tailing us seem so small.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lauren

  We spend the rest of the day wandering around the small island that we had landed on. If I had to guess it was about as big as your average small metropolis back home, about 3 miles wide, 3 miles long. There weren't any great mountains, just a bunch of short trees that jutted out of the ground with leaves the size of cars directly hanging over our heads as we walked through the forest. The ground was covered in moss and was mostly rocky so I had to watch my step a great deal of the time, he just took off his boots and let his claws dig into the rocks as he walked amongst them.

  "I used to do something like this back home in Minnesota. In the summer we would go into the woods and pick wild fruits before bringing them back, only now it's for our oxygen stores." I muttered, leaping over rocks and attempting to balance myself on the roots that these "trees" had.

  "I thought you said it was a cold place? Ah but it grows warm during parts of the year doesn't it? I see what you mean, on Jorath we never got the chance to do anything like this, we usually just hunted the wildlife for recreation. This is a great deal......calmer." he remarked, clutching the branches of the trees with his long fingers, digging his claws into the wood before pulling himself closer and closer to our ship which was parked next to a stream, the only flat land that I could see around here.

  "Calmer? I would have taken you for the hunting type." I remarked and he shakes his head.

  "No, not really. It was mostly done for recreation, anyways, not actual sustenance. We have technology." he remarked, his baritone voice ringing along with the sounds of those powerful, distant waves.

  When we arrived back at camp he turned off the pump, the hose that jutted out of the ship and dipped into the nearby river softened and withered before he detached it completely. We toss all the scraps of the leaves we had into the oxygenator which breaks down the starch into single cells that we could use for photosynthesis and oxygen production, others would be sent to the kitchen to be converted into the compounds necessary to create the foods that we ate.

  "So you ready to go?" he asked me, the sun was setting on the planet, we had landed during the day and over the course of about 9 hours it was going dark. It was a small planet, a small jewel of beauty in this sea of void. A small place where the sun lingered over the waters and the trees shone, an eternal beauty hidden away until the end of
time. I wanted to stay here a bit longer.

  "Can we camp out? Come on it's been so long since i've slept in fresh air." I pleaded with him, he glances at the horizon and the sky, muttering something to himself before nodding. He allows himself to grant me a small smile.

  "Sure." he states.

  He dragged out the sleeping kit and laid on top of the mat, next to a small fire that he had started on the rocks near the river. Bundles of dried and dead leaves lay underneath the smoldering embers, I sit across from him, his blue face tainted with shades of orange from the fire. I munched on my ration, Jorathian rice, my favorite. He quietly ate some sort of baked good and stared into the fire with great intensity.

  "Janar." I said to him and he didn't look away.

  "Janar!" I repeated and he nearly jumped, glancing over at me and locking his eyes with mine. I could tell that something was eating away at him, something strange.

  "Sorry, sorry just....reliving old memories." he muttered with a tinge of regret in his voice.

  "Anything you would like to talk about?" I asked him and he shakes his head.

  "No not in particular." he states.

  I glance over the embers that pool on the rocks, the cool breeze of the ocean waters washing over my back while I indulged in my meal. Every inch of his muscular frame was outlined in the light, every slither of skin shining against the flame, I wanted to tell him how much I wanted him, what I was beginning to feel, I wanted to touch those incredibly luscious lips that pursed together when he looked at me.

  And then I thought back to the men chasing us, the first thought that I had granted them in nearly a week.

  In that smoldering fire I began to relieve that harrowing day when I was told that I was one of the reasons that Khor had attacked the base. His mate, I was that monster's mate. I could scarcely imagine life under him, I could see the fire building and building, I imagine it consuming Arasin and every one that I knew, one man's greed swallowing the world. I knew that it couldn't possibly be my fault but some part of me made me think I should just have stayed at home, perhaps in my own way I was hungry for glory.

  "Do you think true evil exists?" I asked Janar, he looked up from his meal and raised an eyebrow.

  "What do you mean? Is this about Arasin?" he asked me and I nodded.

  "This man you describe, seems like he doesn't care about anything at all, he cares for nothing but himself. Someone who committed countless atrocities...that has to be evil right? People always say that people are just people but...for men such as him I think the term evil is being generous." I muttered.

  "We all have done things we regret. It's just the way the world works out here. As for if I hate him or not the answer is yes, I do. I hate him for the things he's done but perspective is not a shared resource." He said.

  "So you don't think he's evil?" I asked.

  "I don't really know if I could call him evil. There's things i've done that are horrid as well, things that I will regret forever." he stated with a great deal of melancholy, the wind sweeps his hair to the side and I could see that flicker of regret wash over his facade.

  "But that's the thing.....regret. You regret the things you did and are trying to be better than what you were right? Besides you weren't a criminal, you weren't evil, you did what you had to in the name of good and are trying to repent. You're a good person." I declared, he backed away a couple of inches while I said this.

  "I...." he began but only nodded.

  "I want to tell you something....I don't really know if it's the right time to tell you about it but......nevermind. It can wait." I muttered, I had wanted to tell him how I felt about him, how much I wanted him, how this passion and affection was bubbling inside of me.

  I was afraid in some sense of the word. There was the chance that he would reject me and it would only make the mission that much more complicated, this was supposed to be a professional relationship after all. Hell I think what we were already doing was against police conduct, at least where I was from. If I told him how I felt, how this passion was growing and he rejected me....then it would make life on that ship much more unbearable than it ever was before, that much I knew.

  So I kept my lips sealed and we didn't chat for the rest of the night. We kept silent until it came time to lay down with the fire smoldering to my side while I laid in the little trench that I had dug. My bag sliding against the dirt before my mind ran back to the conversation I had with him over the fire.

  "True evil....and good." I muttered, the same dream that had been occurring in my head, it all came back to that old idea. The eternal battle of light versus dark.

  He rolled over onto his side and shut his eyes, I see him pop those pills into his mouth even though he tried to sneak them in. I keep my eyes on him and see him toss and turn, a low growling emerging from his mouth before ceasing. I was exhausted but awoke in the middle of the night while he snarled, I keep my eyes on him before he fades back into the realm of sleep. Those demons that he had, they must have troubled him a great deal if he had to take that sort of medication for it. It was similar for me back home, to be honest I wasn't disclosing the full details of what had happened to me back on Earth, why I had left.

  Near the end of my degree my old friends and I had gone to a party. I wasn't really the type to go to these sorts of things but I showed up anyways, there were boys, alcohol, the works. Once it came to an end and we had to drive back I took the wheel even though I knew better.....their bodies were buried soon after, I was the only survivor of the wreck after I had accidentally ran a red light. And that one word, that one word that coiled around his neck and mine, regret, it sounded off in my mind once more.

  I couldn't bear to stay in that town and look at all of those crying mothers, those judging stares from friends that would never cease. I could barely talk to my parents the very next day, everywhere I looked in that city I was responded to with looks of disgust, of judgement. That's why I left, over the years I told myself that it was because of the opportunity but really I was running away, I never got to repent......True evil houses its nature not in malevolence...but remorselessness.

  And when I uttered those words I knew that he was hiding similar demons in himself, I would tell him when the time came and as would he. On some level I was glad that he understood, I was glad that he was a kindred spirit.

  I slowly shut my eyes and gaze up at the midnight sky before fading into the realm of sleep. The sound of the river rolling by and the fire dying down filled the air, my hands clench the soft fabric of the sleeping bag and I focused my gaze on his face, looking him over as he slept peacefully, I liked to think that on some level my presence had dissuaded any more of those nightmares from occurring.

  Once I awoke I was greeted by the most wonderful sight of my life, the sight of a man that I would forever come to adore.

  My eyes slid open and I looked him over, gazing at his blue skin that was painted grey in the morning sun. His hands on his knees, he knelt beside me and smiled as I opened my eyes and looked up at him. I could feel his finger brushing away a lock of blond hair, pulling it away from my eyes as I looked up at his face that was framed by the glowing yellow sun. His body covered in the shroud of shadow and mist, that tall and powerful physique stretching into the sky above. The warmth of day consumes me and I bite my lip, his body inches from mine, his face directly above and his green eyes glimmering. In him I saw a new day, a better life than anything that I had been pursuing before, some semblance of hope that lingered off the cliff of my downfall.

  And I could tell that to him, I was the same thing.

  #

  Janar

  The weeks that followed were marked by new vigor and joy. That trip to that small island planet had rejuvenated us a great deal, I wasn't so bored like I was the days before we had landed and she seemed to be skipping around with a new lightness in her step, a bit more joy, a bit more love for life.

  The next couple of months pass by wi
thout much fanfare. We would occasionally land on a planet now and again to collect supplies, those were the days that she was looking forward to the most. It was strange to get up in the morning and see someone greet me with a smile that wasn't the AI but it was a welcome change. We grew closer and closer, our natures intertwined in just a simple gaze, it was getting harder and harder to hide my affections for her but that charade would come to an end on the 4th month.

  "You both seem much happier." said Fi, it was mid-day, 4 months removed from her rescue.

  "We are." I said matter of factly, I didn't hear a response for a moment, instead I heard my communicator beep. I placed it in my ear and turned it on, this likely meant that she had something private to say.

  "Considering the nature of the mission then?" she asked.

  "I am not......I don't know anymore." I muttered, truthfully every time I thought of abandoning her in those mines I felt some sort of deep rooted pain wash over my skin.

  "I can formulate our flight patterns. Give you time to think this over. He hasn't latched onto our signal yet." she states and I shake my head.

  "No, no......we go ahead with the mission." I muttered, steeling my resolve by thinking back to the massacre that had occurred, how he had butchered my people.

  "You don't have to die and pay for your sins and she doesn't have to die either. You can start anew, you have a reason now." Fi said and I bite my lip, growling.

  "Shut up." I snarled before I turn my attention to something else.

  The dashboard.

  Something was showing up on the wire, a ship was wandering around these parts, I had no clue what someone was doing out in these deep reaches. The interstellar civilizations didn't send ships this far out, not usually anyways. I blinked for a bit and glanced closer to see what the signature on it was, unmarked, probably meant that it belonged to some sort of warlord that wasn't affiliated with the civilizations and I recognized this signature as being one of Khor's.