| |
SOLAN’S MESSAGE CAME early the next day: Training facility. 10:00. Since she only knew of the one facility, that was where she went. And when she got there, Emily was climbing up to one of the top platforms and sailing down as if she’d been born with wings.
If Emily was using her power, that meant Oz was somewhere close by. For some reason, Matched units needed to be in relatively close proximity or their sparks didn’t work well. Emily had confided that she and Oz were working on the distance and now they could be miles apart and still make things work.
Had Solan considered that?
They hadn’t discussed it, but he must have. Right? Lena wasn’t going to worry about it. It was his problem. Besides, she’d been up half the night testing out her wings and she hadn’t run into an issue with her powers once. Whatever their range was, they had plenty of room to maneuver.
Lena wasn’t ready to talk to Emily about what was going on, so she ducked down towards the changing rooms before her friend could see her. Solan hadn’t forbidden her from saying anything to Emily, and she wouldn’t have bonded with him if he had, but this was way too new to talk about yet. She changed into her workout clothes quickly and headed down one of the halls, looking for a smaller training room where she could warm up before Solan arrived. He’d said to be there at 10:00, so she was ready at 9:30. Her body was still adjusting to the twenty-two hour long Zulir days. The constant sunlight didn’t help, nor did thirty-four years of dealing with a twenty-four hour schedule.
But Lena had decided to embrace her new world as much as she could. There was no going back to Earth, not ever. And if she sometimes had to wipe away tears wondering what had happened to her family, she’d do it where no one could see. Let the Zulir throw anything they wanted at her. She could take it.
After she warmed up her muscles.
She found a small workout room and thought it was unoccupied until she heard a female grunt and looked over to see a blonde head bobbing in and out of view near what looked sort of like a squat rack. Lena recognized that blonde head and she would have turned right back around if Grace hadn’t caught her gaze in the mirror and lifted an eyebrow in challenge.
Great, now if she walked away she’d lose something. She wasn’t sure exactly what, but she would lose and Grace would win and she didn’t want that. Grace was fully human, but she’d been raised on Aorsa by a human mother and her Zulir step-father. At some point she’d joined the military and had been sent down to Kilrym to infiltrate the same facility where Lena and her friends had been held. Grace had been the model prisoner, currying favor with their guards and alienating all of the other humans. She’d also been instrumental in eventually freeing the humans. Lena’s feelings about the young woman were... complicated. And she wasn’t in the mood to talk.
So she didn’t, instead waiting to see what Grace would say. Grace remained silent.
It went on for another minute before Lena gave up. She headed to one of the workout stations, ignoring Grace, and powered up the treadmill-like device. It wasn’t identical. It was built into the ground and operated by waving her hand over a sensor, but Lena quickly got the hang of it. She started slow but quickly picked up the pace. The machine adjusted to her stride. She didn’t know exactly how fast she was running, but it felt good. And by the time she was warmed up enough to begin stretching, Grace was gone.
Good.
Lena wanted to hit herself. She shouldn’t be feeling good about avoiding interaction with Grace. Grace had done nothing but her job. She was a decent person who’d done a duty. They didn’t need to be best friends, but that didn’t mean Lena should treat her like crap.
That was another resolution for the list. Be nicer to Grace. Fine. But she wasn’t going to chase her down to do it.
Awareness pricked at the back of her neck a second before she heard the door open. Lena stood up from her stretch and turned to see Solan watching her. Had he been looking at her butt?
Not the time.
“You’re early,” he said.
“Early is on time.” It had been drilled into her in the military and she wasn’t going to forget it now.
“I have a training station set up. Ready?” He nodded back towards the hallway.
She followed him out. “Thanks for that tip about the translator.”
“What?” The halls were a maze around them and Lena hoped she didn’t have to find her way out alone.
“I did a bit of research after we... talked. And I successfully read a paragraph from that book. And now I know more about fertilizer maintenance than I ever wanted.” She hadn’t been able to sleep, so studying had seemed like a great idea. She needed more practice, but she was sure it would all come together soon enough.
“That’s great.” He grinned at her and Lena’s stomach flipped. Stupid stomach. Stupid grinning man. She wasn’t going to put up with that.
The training room looked a little like a shooting range, but not a shooting range that Lena had ever seen. There were targets set up at intervals, some made of paper, some freestanding, and paint on the floor marked the distance.
She could barely hold in her excitement. This was really happening. She had a purpose again. She wouldn’t need to rely on Crowze’s kindness or anything else for long. She could stand on her own.
Well. Mostly. There was still Solan right there beside her.
“Where are the guns?” she asked. She’d briefly carried a Zulir blaster when they went to liberate her fellow prisoners, but other than that she’d been unarmed for months. Years. She still didn’t know how to reconcile the time difference.
Solan shook his head. “No weapons.” He flashed out his wings with a jerk of his shoulders, then sent a bolt of power flying towards the nearest target. The paper caught fire with a flash and burned almost too fast to see. As soon as the fire was out, a wire descended from the ceiling and automatically replaced the paper.
“Neat trick.” Lena subtly flexed her shoulders like Solan had, but her wings stayed stubbornly retracted.
“Once you’ve practiced enough, you won’t need your wings extended to call your spark, but it’s definitely easier that way.” He looked at her expectantly, waiting to see her wings.
Lena could do this. If Emily could summon her wings like it was nothing, so could Lena. Piece of cake.
She looked within herself for that power she’d felt before. Solan had said it was tied to her emotions. The wings would protect her. So she needed to think of something scary.
Killer clowns. Creepy bugs. Jail. Jail with killer clowns.
It didn’t work.
She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw. She could almost feel that power. She just had to reach for it.
Come on. Come on.
There!
Lena had it for a second and wind rustled behind her, but when she opened up her eyes, Solan was still looking expectantly.
“A little help?” She hated asking, but she didn’t want to stand here all day.
His face grew thoughtful. “I’m going to try reaching for your spark.”
A sarcastic comment sat on the tip of her tongue, but Lena held it back. She and Solan weren’t at the witty banter portion of their relationship yet. She just nodded.
She knew the second he was inside her. It tickled. But it no longer felt wrong, not exactly. He was more guest than intruder. Until he jolted something inside of her that made her wince and jerk back.
“Hey!” Her arms were up and she was ready to fight.
But he grinned. “It worked.”
“What?” Lena jerked her head back and got the impression of electric green and red out of the corner of her eye. “I really need a mirror.”
“There’s one in the changing stalls,” he offered. “I’ll wait, if you want to take a look.”
The offer sounded genuine, but it made Lena feel vain in the worst way. “I’m good,” she said. And she was going to figure out how to call her wings out on her own so she could see what they looked like in private.
Solan shrugged. “Here are the goals for today. You are going to use your spark to hit at least three of the targets. Once you’ve done that, we will combine our sparks to see what we can hit.”
She looked back. There were five targets, two made of paper, the others freestanding metal of some kind. None of them far away. If Lena had her gun, the targets would be toast. But the point of this was to train her new powers so she’d never be unarmed. “Sounds easy enough.”
“It should be,” he agreed. “We’ve been given a directive to begin training and these are the most rudimentary exercises, designed to train a newly Matched pair where one partner has an underdeveloped spark. Once we complete these, we’ll be monitored more closely and judged by military trainers before we can be put in the field.”
That wasn’t exactly how they did it back home, but it didn’t matter. She had to hit a few targets before they took the training wheels off. Fine. She flexed her shoulders and imagined her new powers, that lightning that Solan could call so effortlessly. Her fingers tingled and when she looked down she saw white light dancing between her knuckles.
She wasn’t going to miss this chance. Lena aimed, palm up, fingers down, and tried to shoot like she was slinging webs in a Spider Man comic. There was a small puff of air, crackling with electricity, but the closest target, which was only about six feet away, was untouched.
“Maybe some advice would help,” she admitted, turning back to Solan. “You Zulir make this look easy.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was a child. It will come.” He stepped close and ran his fingers over her arm.
He was off to the side so he wasn’t interfering with her wings, but her wings seemed to have a mind of their own. The one closest to him flared out and rubbed against his shoulder, sending sparks raining down on both of them.
Solan’s fingers tightened around her forearm and he sucked in a deep breath. “We’ll need to add wing etiquette to the training as well. That is a very...” he had to clear his throat to get around the gravel that made him husky, “intimate gesture.”
Lena snapped her wings back, and they would have made a sound if they were more than just magical electricity. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” He put a little space between them and lifted her arm. “You’ve called your spark to the surface. That’s a good first step. Eventually you won’t need to, but we’ll get there. What you need to do now is concentrate it before you aim. See how you have all these separate strands? You want to consolidate those into one strike.” He traced his fingers through the power, nudging it all towards the center of her palm.
“Does it sting?” She wasn’t sure exactly how this was supposed to work, but it looked like he was playing with live electricity. That couldn’t be safe.
He looked up from her palm and she couldn’t read the look on his face. Or maybe she just didn’t want to. “We’re bonded,” he said. “Your power recognizes me, just as mine recognizes you. We can’t harm each other, no matter how hard we try.”
“Handy.” With his fingers still swirling in her power, Lena tried to do as he said, concentrating all the filaments and strands into one. Her palm grew warm, and though she hadn’t consolidated everything, she’d certainly made progress. “Let me try again.”
Solan dropped her hand and she did.
This time she hit the target. It didn’t go up in flames, but there was a definite scorch mark.
“Yes!” Lena shot her hands in the air and did a happy dance. She didn’t realize her power was still active until Solan jerked her hand down, eyes frantic.
“Don’t bring the ceiling down on us!” His wings had flared out around them, bigger than seemed possible.
Lena wanted to run her fingers through them, but that was apparently a no-no. She clenched her hands into fists and kept them pointed towards the floor. “Just like a firearm. Got it. Won’t do it again.”
Solan retracted his wings and Lena concentrated her power once more. She didn’t think she could hit anything but the closest target, so she aimed for that again. And again. And again.
She lost count of how many times she tried. Her arms ached and sweat poured down her face, but she wasn’t going to give up. Solan didn’t try to stop her, though he did offer her a small glass of water after a while. She drank gratefully and returned to her task.
And on the hundredth or thousandth try the paper target went up in flames.
She would have jumped for joy if she had the energy. Solan nodded, but offered no more congratulations.
She was ready to turn to the next target when a buzzer beeped.
“Braz,” said Solan. “That’s our time. I only reserved the room for five hours. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
“We’ve been here for five hours?” An hour on Aorsa was roughly as long as an hour on Earth, but Lena had completely lost track of time.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “I need to go over our training plan to adjust some things. Same time tomorrow.” He gave no other farewell before leaving Lena there.
She looked at the charred paper target and tried to conjure up a sense of accomplishment. Instead she could only focus on what they hadn’t done. She’d only hit one target, not three. And they hadn’t even tried to use their powers together.
She’d thought this training thing would be easy. Now she was beginning to fear they’d be stuck here for a long time.
***
SOLAN DIDN’T WANT TO be frustrated with Lena. By most standards she’d performed well and come far in a handful of days. But he was being stifled. Until she was field ready, he wouldn’t be able to go on any missions. Their powers were tied together, and unless they were together, or their bond was broken, his power would never completely be his own. And since he didn’t want Lena to die so the bond could break, that meant training her.
Perhaps it had been unrealistic to expect her to take to the training as quickly as a Zulir military recruit. Her own frustrations were making things even more difficult. From the dark circles under her eyes, he was almost certain she was staying up late to continue training, running herself to the point of exhaustion to try and get the control she needed.
Exhaustion led to mistakes. He was just waiting for one to happen. She wouldn’t listen to caution until there was a cost.
After the first three days of training she’d managed to hit three targets, and now they were working on hitting the targets together.
She had a sharp look of concentration on her face while he explained the mechanics of the exercise, and Solan tried to ignore his body’s response to her presence.
He was having his own concentration issues. And it wasn’t thoughts of training keeping him up at night.
He wasn’t going to let anything happen between them. He refused to be ruled by his primal urges and become like his father. But while he slept, his mind wasn’t under such strict control. And Lena joined him in his dreams. Under him, on top of him, kissing and caressing and leaving him hard and panting for more every morning.
The intensity of the dreams had him questioning his resolve to keep things professional. Did she have the same attraction? Could they balance a working relationship with something more?
They’d never find out. Solan refused to cross that line. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
Things were working out fine. With a little more practice they’d be ready for the field, and then his mind would settle. It had to. Or he’d need to find someone to relieve the desire he was feeling.
His spark cracked in him, sending a shot of pain down his spine. He jolted. “Was that you?”
“Was what me?” Lena was on the ground stretching. For the first handful of mornings they’d trained together, he’d walked in on her doing the same things. Then he’d decided to arrive early enough for them to use her warm up time to get prepared for the rest of the day.
“Did you reach for my spark?” It had never caused him pain before, but the momentary discomfort was already dissipating.
She shook her head and got to her feet. “No. Do you want me to? I think I’m ready today.”
He hoped she was. Once they conquered this obstacle, they’d be ready to really begin their training. He could almost envision the two of them outside fighting the Apsyns, who were gearing up for war while they were stuck inside doing target practice.
He took a calming breath to get his spark to settle. “I want you to reach for my power, just like you did when we bonded, and use it instead of your own to aim for the target. Once you’ve done it, I’ll do the same to you.”
“What’s the point?” She rolled her shoulders a few times until her wings came out. They’d need to work on that before it became a habit. She needed to be able to call her wings without moving at all.
“Our power combined is stronger than either one of us alone. There may come an instance where one of us is using the spark while the other is busy with something else.” There were a hundred scenarios where it could happen, but he didn’t want to spend all day talking about it. They’d get to it when they moved to the next phase of their training.
“Makes sense.” Her fingers flared out before curling into fists. “Let me try.” That was all the warning he got before he felt Lena reach deep inside him and wrench his power toward her. She took enough that he could feel his energy draining, and still she was taking more, molding it into a perfect line of energy that she shot off towards the nearest target, incinerating the paper like it was nothing.
If Solan could pull in a deep enough breath, he would have congratulated her, but his vision was going blurry around the corners and he stumbled forward.
Lena took aim at the next target and shot out. Solan tried to close off the connection, but their bonding made it impossible. He didn’t know what would happen if he lost consciousness, and he didn’t want to find out. He tugged on the line of power between them and Lena tugged back. She was trying to draw even more. Way too much.
“Stop!” he gasped. He fell to one knee and reached out, dragging his hand across her leg.
Lena looked down and sank to her knees. The drain on his power stopped as if it had never happened in the first place and she looked horrified. “What did I do? I’m so sorry!”
Already things were better. His vision was clearing and his limbs stopped shaking. He stood and stretched his neck from side to side, giving himself another minute to recover.
Lena was right on the edge of his awareness, not touching him, but not backing away, ready to reach out if he fell again.
“That was good,” he finally said.
“Good? I almost knocked you out.” Her arms crossed and she was ready to argue. He didn’t yet know her well, but he could recognize that stance.
“You hit the target.” He couldn’t help but grin. “Try it again but draw less power this time. Just enough to feel it, not enough to send me to the floor.” He didn’t let any doubt into his voice. Lena had done exactly what she needed; she was so close to a breakthrough, and he wasn’t going to let a stupid thing like the limitations of his body stop them from moving forward.
“If you’re sure about that.” She only gave him three seconds to try and contradict her. He didn’t.
The pull came slower this time and he thought she had it. But the pull didn’t stop, and the longer it went, the more she took. Solan yanked his power back before she could shoot and took some of hers with it, his fingers lighting up with her spark’s power.
Lena whirled to face him and waved her arms. “What the hell, man? I was doing it.”
“You can’t take that much.” He couldn’t yell. He knew if he did, it would set her tumbling down whatever cliff she was standing on. His woman—no, his partner—wasn’t used to failure.
“Then you do it if it’s so easy. I can’t even tell how much I’m taking.” Her wings rustled, still so tightly bound up in her emotions that they gave everything away.
He wanted her to get this right. He needed them to get this right. But maybe if he showed her what she needed to do, she’d understand how she was going too far. And it would help Solan understand the process better. It wasn’t like he’d ever done this either.
Should he ask for help?
The thought taunted him, but he pushed it aside. They were fine. They would be fine. And in no time they’d be out in the field, defending the Synnrs from any Apsyn incursion. But they had to train hard and fast if they were going to be ready when the war came.
Solan focused, going deep into his spark and following it through the new pathways in his mind, into where it mixed with Lena and beyond. Her spark waited, glowing faintly, but bigger now than it had been when they’d first bonded. Her spark would take some time to mature. It was still only a few days old. But he looked forward to seeing what she would be able to do when the time came.
He reached for a wisp of her power, careful not to take too much. It should have been easy, but her power followed after him as he pulled the spark into the open and let it loose, incinerating the closest target. More power flowed into his hand like water out of an open faucet, and he couldn’t stop it. He heard Lena grunt and then felt a tug as she wrenched her spark away from him just as he’d done to her.
“Not so easy, is it?” she panted. Her hands were on her knees and she was bent over, chest heaving. Her brown skin had grown pale and she looked ready to fall over.
“One more time,” he said. He went as slowly as he could, as carefully as possible. And when he pulled her power this time, he made sure to take only a little and not let any extra flow. He hit the closest target. Barely.
“I’ve got an idea,” Lena said. Her color was coming back and her breathing had evened. “My turn.” That was all the warning he got before something tugged at his power. He stumbled, but before the loss could take him to his knees, the soothing balm of Lena’s spark bolstered him, giving him the energy he needed to stay upright.
She hit the three targets like it was nothing and then let go of his power. “Easy.”
He wasn’t about to be shown up. Solan reached for her spark and sent his own along with it, supplementing her power with his own. Then he hit all five targets in the room, starting with the one furthest away. He shot her a satisfied smile when he was done. “Easy.”
Lena narrowed her eyes and her spark crackled in the air around them. “It’s on.”
They went back and forth, calling on each other’s power and obliterating the targets. Once they had the hang of that, they tried to get fancy. Solan sent his spark out in waves, slowly incinerating a paper target with the kind of control that took years to master. Lena took a more aggressive approach, calling on a burst of his power to take out all the targets at once.
After an hour of practice, they were both exhausted, but for the first time they ended the day with smiles. Success. They’d actually been successful.
“I’ll report on our progress,” he said as he took a drink from his water and watched Lena stretch. He shouldn’t have been staring at the curve of her muscle or watching as her shirt rode up to expose one of her sides, but his eyes wouldn’t look away.
“And what about the failures before that?” She switched sides and her shirt moved with her.
His mouth watered. He wanted to taste her skin. He had to clench his fists tight to keep his cock under control, but he doubted it would work for long if he kept looking at her like this. So why couldn’t he look away? “No one needs to know about the failures.” He managed to turn and pick up a towel to wipe off his sweat. It was an abrasive fabric, almost like it was punishing him for daring to perspire.
Lena sprang to her feet. “I still owe you that beer. Why don’t we head out and get it? Celebrate a hard day’s work?”
A yes was on the tip of his tongue. He could imagine Lena beside him in a dark booth at his favorite bar, the privacy curtains pulled as they sat close and shared secrets. And more. But he didn’t trust himself outside of their training. They had to keep things professional. “Not today.”
Her shoulders sank and a look flashed across her face too quickly for him to read. “Colleagues can get beer together,” she offered.
“I can’t.” He wanted to be convinced. He wanted her to tell him that his rules were ridiculous. He wanted to kiss her and see where things led. But he had to control his passions. He left and tried not to look at Lena as he passed her.
He was beginning to think they should have never bonded.
