The Alien's Mystery: Alien Warrior Mates IV, #7

By Grace Kensington

As Jonah continues to delve into what the mysterious patient files and the pristine examination room in the abandoned medical ward might mean, his mind keeps wandering back to the woman he encountered in the hallway outside of the lab. It was only a brief encounter, but one that left a lasting impression. When he sees her again, it might have lasting influence on the work that he is trying to accomplish and the life that he may have now that he is back on Earth.

On Uoria Ellora has found herself at the mercy of the Order and must call upon the memories of her husband to give her the strength and courage to survive in the tunnels. Above her in the Mikana kingdom Ivy is struggling with the way that Creia and the army are talking about the hybrids, and the way that her pregnancy has changed her view of everything.

On Penthos, the group has still not arrived and Maxim is worried that something has happened to them. Finally accepting Avery into their fold, he asks the pilot to tell him everything that he knows about Nyx 23. What Avery tells Maxim creates more questions than answers, and Maxim begins to wonder if they can really trust the ones who have been with them all along

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grace Kensington
• Release date: May 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393565574

Book preview

1

Jonah tried to concentrate on the food that was in front of him, but his mind kept wandering. It had been more than a day since he had eaten, but now that he was sitting with the rations on the floor between his feet, he couldn’t keep his thoughts calm enough to actually bring himself to eat. His thoughts kept wandering to the woman who he had encountered in the laboratory when he went upstairs. He had only been near her for a few moments, but she was etched in his mind and he couldn’t stop thinking about those few seconds and the way her eyes looked when they met. This wasn’t the time for him to be thinking about a woman. There was already too much happening for him to let himself get distracted.

He looked around at the corner of the room that he had set up for himself. When the others had left, he knew that he had to settle in and create as much of a home for himself in the basement as he possibly could. There was no other option for him. He no longer had a home outside of the University or anywhere that he could go even if he did leave the basement. For as long as he was going to be on Earth, he would find his comfort and protection in the walls of the hidden and forgotten emergency chambers. Though many of the group had found the dark corridors and rooms eerie, even frightening, there was something soothing about knowing that this building, these walls, were standing when he was still on Earth. It was hard for him to think about the reality of how incredibly different Earth was since the last day that he was there before stepping onto the ship that would eventually bring him to Uoria. Though he had seen nothing of it but the University itself, just seeing the bright new corridors, rooms, and labs of the building and facing technology and developments that he could never have conceived of before leaving had been startling.

Jonah knew that beyond the grounds of the University the world would barely resemble anything that he remembered from his time there. He had to stop himself from thinking about everything that would be gone and all that he lost when he left and headed on what he thought would only be a brief journey into space. Thinking about that would cause too much pain, too much emptiness for him to continue on with what he knew that he needed to do. Instead, he had to close his mind off to the existence of anything beyond those gates. Instead, he kept his focus totally on the University and this building. It was almost as if he had a sense of camaraderie with the old medical building. They were lingering reminders of a time long since passed. He had breathed within those walls. He had spoken, laughed, and lived in those rooms. He had looked into the eyes of the young receptionists and seen the life that was stretched before them in their gaze. All the years that he had seen waiting there in those eyes had passed, the lives long-since ended. Everything that had happened there, though, kept him connected to the life that he’d had when he was still here.

It was still so hard to think about all the years that had slipped past him while he was on Uoria. He could remember so few of them. Only the fifteen that they had lived between the ship crashing and the Covra locking them, were present in his mind. All of the time that had gone by when their bodies were being used as incubators for the next generation of Covra was blank to him. He could clearly remember the day that the Covra returned. It was like any other day until they swarmed. He knew that he was one of the few people in the settlement who actually saw them when they came back. Most people were caught completely by surprise and frozen in place in the middle of a normal activity or even while they were asleep, as Rain had been. Jonah had tried to fight. He didn’t want to face the horror of the Covra again. He remembered the gruesome way that they had killed and the potentially worse way that they had controlled the minds of those they attacked so that they could force them to destroy each other. He would have done anything that he could to stop them, but their invasion had been carefully timed and planned so that there was nothing that he could do. Before he could kill even one of their number, he had been cornered and frozen in place.

What came next was a century of emptiness. One hundred stolen years that took far more from them than just the days and nights that they could have lived. As they hovered somewhere between living and not, on a distant planet, the lives that they should have lived continued on back on Earth. Those years were still going. The days kept slipping by. The paths that they should have followed kept marching forward, but with a gap where they should have been. To all of those who loved them, they were like ghosts. The memory of them was still there and they kept holding them closely within them, not knowing that exactly as they imagined them was how they still were. The Covra had taken so much from all of them, but also from the people who waited on Earth for them. Jonah struggled with deciding which had suffered more. Those who had stayed on Earth suffered an excruciating loss thinking that the entire team had gone missing somewhere in deep space, never to return. They had gone the rest of their lives not knowing where they had gone or what had happened to them, and never imagining that most of them had not only survived, but had created a new settlement on a distant planet that they didn’t even know existed. Not knowing had to be brutal, a torment that they had never been able to escape. Though they had likely never completely recovered from the pain, however, they would have had the chance to process it, to think through it and soothe their suffering by memorializing their loved ones. They had had the opportunity to watch as the story of their family members and friends became a part of the history of Earth and the basis for new regulations and advancements in technology and safety.

For those on the Nyx 23 crew, however, this comfort hadn’t come. They had spent fifteen years thinking about the people who were back home and knowing that they had the most horrible thoughts about them. They knew that they had no way of contacting them or letting them know that they had survived. They most certainly had no way of getting back to them. For those years, all they could do was long for them. Then in an instant everything changed. They went from knowing that they had been away from everything and everyone that they knew and loved on Earth for just fifteen years to waking up in the horror of the Denynso and those with them trying to kill off the Covra before they destroyed them all, then discovering that another one hundred years had passed without them knowing. They had never had the opportunity to mourn their loved ones properly or to feel like they had said goodbye. Instead, they were just thrust into the reality that they were all gone and that there would never be the chance, even with a miracle, that they would see them again. Now they had the rest of their lives to think about what they had lost and try to piece together a new existence.

When he was within the building, Jonah could almost pretend that it hadn’t all happened. Even with the devastation of the abandoned structure around him, he could tell himself that everything was still as it had been. This slipped slightly when he stepped out of the medical ward and into the newer laboratory that had been built up around it, but only somewhat. Even with the advanced equipment and renovated rooms, the building itself was still old, allowing Jonah to keep his mind focused. The moment, if it ever came, that he left the grounds of the University, though, he knew that he was going to be confronted with the overwhelming reality of life a century displaced from what it could, and should, have been.

Jonah gave up on trying to eat and decided to go back to the emergency chamber that had been converted into an infirmary to check on those who had stayed behind when the others left. He felt responsible for them even though he knew that there was little that he could do for them other than follow the instructions that Ciyrs and Elianna had left. When he walked into the chamber he saw one of the hybrids who had been rescued from the torture chamber in the breeding facility walking slowly from one side to the other.

You’re up, Jonah said encouragingly.

The man turned to look at him and Jonah tried to decipher his characteristics, still trying to figure out what species had gone into creating him. The hybrid gave a hint of what could have been a smile and nodded.

It hurts, he said. But I’m willing to deal with the pain to be moving again.

Jonah nodded. He didn’t want to think about what this nameless man might have gone through at the hands of the Valdicians that made him so thankful just to be able to walk. He didn’t know how long the hybrid had been strapped to the cold metal table, attached to the screen that the hybrid woman had told them was a form of torturous reprogramming. There were no plans in place for what was going to happen to these people when they had recovered or when the time came for Jonah to leave the basement for