Out of the Ashes (Maji 1)

“Are you both ready to go?” he asked. “Kol is requesting our presence.”

“Tell him a few more minutes. Nova has to see herself first in the viewing glass.”

“Females,” Nero said with a playful shake of his head. “I will wait outside. Please, do not take long.”

Surkah waved Nero on, earning another scowl from him before he left the room. I laughed when Surkah took my arm and tugged me across the room until we stood in front of a blank section of the wall. I blinked and looked at my sister-in-mate.

“It’s a wall,” I commented.

“Everything is not what it seems to be, Nova,” Surkah said before she leaned forward and placed her hand against the wall. When she removed her hand, the wall slid upwards, and it revealed a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror.

“Wow!” I gasped. “That is gigantic.”

Surkah smiled wide as my shock became evident when my eyes landed on myself.

“Holy fuck,” I exhaled as I stared at the woman in the mirror. “Surkah, how is that me?”

I had on the same wrap/dress thingy that Surkah had on, only mine was blue, and my body jewellery was black. My neck, arms, lower back, waist, and hips were exposed, but it looked… good. My skin was a beautiful porcelain white and clear with not a speck of dirt in sight. It almost looked as if it gleamed. I used to think I had a shapeless, average body but not in the ensemble I was wearing. It showcased just how feminine I was. There was a curve to my hips, a narrowing at my waist, and then slight fullness to my chest. My legs looked very long with the slits in the skirt going right up above my exposed hips.

“You’re a beauty,” Surkah beamed.

I smiled back at her. “You’re very sweet.”

Surkah’s brows shot up to her hairline. “Sweet? You know what I taste like?”

I burst into surprised laughter.

“No!” I choked. “I mean, your words are kind. Saying you’re sweet is just another way of saying you’re being kind.”

Surkah sighed. “Your human words do confuse me at times.”

“I can see,” I said, with a playful shake of my head. “I hope the Maji off the Ebony don’t have as hard a time with language barriers as you seem to have.”

Surkah snorted. “Our smartest Maji will shadow a lot of your females to learn your way and words, and they will document that information and make it available to the rest of our society to help us understand humans more.”

“Wow, who came up with that idea?”

“The Elders, of course.”

I raised a brow. “Who are the Elders?”

“The oldest and wisest of the people,” Surkah explained. “They’re my father’s Council and hugely respected amongst the people. Four of them were alive when we had to flee our original home world. They were only youngsters, barely twenty years of age, but they had to quickly become grown males and help the people find a new planet and establish a home there. They helped find Ealra and aided in the people starting our life here.”

“Wow,” I said, dumbstruck. “That is incredible. How old are they?”

“Very old,” Surkah replied. “Five hundred centuries.”

“Five hundred?”

“It still shocks you that our lifespan is so long?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Surkah giggled. “You’ll adjust. Eventually.”

“How many Maji were saved when your planet died?” I quizzed.

Surkah frowned. “Only 1900. It happened so suddenly; there was no warning when our planet began to break apart, so getting off the planet was a scrambled effort. Many of those rescued were females. Our males caring for females so greatly is what led to our race being endangered.”

“I don’t understand.”

Surkah sighed. “Many of the females who were rescued were mated, and their mates died back on our original home world. That means a few days after…”

“The females died,” I finished. “Their mates died, so their essence did, too.”

“Yes.” Surkah nodded, glumly. “My father and uncle, whom are from the same pregnancy and were just a few days old at the time, were saved. Their remaining brothers were not as they were on a hunt and too far away to make it to the crafts to flee. My father was not the firstborn, but he was older than my uncle, so when all his brothers died, he became the oldest living son and the new Revered Father. My grandmother was saved also, but my grandfather was not, so she died six days after they escaped. She stayed awake the entire time and extracted milk from her breast for her sons to drink after she died. She produced a lot of milk that would last weeks once stored in freezers on the craft they escaped on. Females can overproduce when they choose to.”

I was wide-eyed.

“How did your father and uncle survive?” I asked, astonished. “Surely, the milk would have run out before Ealra was found.”

Surkah nodded. “It did run out, but as I said, a breastfeeding mother can overproduce milk if she chooses to do so. Many females who were saved with their mates had infants and overproduced to help feed the Revered Father and prince.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Did it take long to find Ealra?”

Surkah nodded. “Our race took refuge on Vaneer, Vada’s home world, and along with the Vaneer, they searched for a suitable planet we could survive on. Ealra was discovered three years later, and a few months after its discovery, our entire race moved there.”

“Kol said Maji weren’t the only inhabitants on Ealra. What other species live there?”

“Many creatures live there, but only one other intelligent species like us call Ealra home, the Eedam. They’re tribespeople. Very primal and not advanced like Maji at all. We don’t bother them, and they don’t bother us.”

I nodded.

“What else did Kol tell you?” Surkah asked, an eyebrow raised.

“A lot.” I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “He told me about Terra, about the humans there, and about the deal your people made with Earth’s Officials.”

Surkah swallowed. “I urged him to inform you of Terra and its rulers, but he was scared you’d want to us to go to the new human planet.”

“He told me as much,” I said with a shrug. “He got what he wanted, though. We’re mated, and I’m by his side instead of on my way to Terra.”

“You… You feel betrayed, though?” Surkah pressed. “By Kol?”

I did. I felt like my options were once again taken away from me. I wouldn’t have chosen Terra over Kol, or the Maji in general, but he never gave me the choice. He made it for me, and that is what bothered me.

“I do,” I admitted. “I hate lies, Surkah, and he has lied to me. Something he has done more than once.”

“It pains him, Nova,” Surkah assured me. “He would never lie to you unless he was in fear of something.”

To me, that still wasn’t a good enough reason to lie about something that involved my very way of life.

I inhaled and exhaled, trying to force him from my mind.

“Let’s just go with Nero so we can get the introductions to your planet underway,” I said, locking eyes with Surkah’s through the mirror. “My argument with Kol is the least of my worries right now.”

“You need not worry about Ealra and the people, dear sister. Your arrival is a celebration… You’ll see.”

“Nova—”

“What am I doing wrong now?” I cut Surkah off as we stepped onto a huge ramp that was lowered to the ground of Ealra.

I was anxious and felt highly out of place, and every step I took, I seemed to do something wrong. First, I walked ahead of Nero when I was supposed to walk behind him then I smiled and said hello to a male who was also escorting us—he was so caught off guard he looked at Nero with panicked eyes. Apparently, no male is allowed talk to me without Kol’s permission.

“You have to wait for the Guard,” Nero answered.

I looked at Surkah. “The Guard?” I related.

She nodded. “They’ll be here in me

re minutes.”

I looked at Nero. “Can I talk to any members of the Guard?”

Nero gnawed on his lower lip. “By law, you shouldn’t, and they shouldn’t reply if you do speak to them, but the Guard members coming to escort us are you brothers-in-mate, so no matter what Kol says, they’ll talk to you. They’re his older brothers, and they give him a hard time whenever possible.”

I sucked in a strangled breath. “What if they don’t like me?”

That was such a trivial thing to be concerned about, but it was what worried me at the current moment.

“They’ll adore you,” Surkah said with a loving smile. “They’ll be shocked that Kol has mated, but then they’ll be joyful for you both.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because”—Surkah winked—“I know my brothers.”

Surkah was trying to reassure me, but my nerves were still spiked.

“Change the topic. Discuss something else to distract me until they get here.”

Nero drew a blank, so I focused on Surkah who was deep in thought.

“Housing,” she suddenly announced. “All the human women should be excited with their housing.”

“Housing?” I repeated incredulously. “You have housing on Ealra?”

Surkah muffled a giggle with her hand. “Of course. Where did you think we lived if not inside a residence?”

I paused. “I… I guess I never thought of it.”

I never thought about what life would be like on Ealra, which was stupid considering I had a one-way ticket to the planet. Thinking about my life there should have been on my mind, but it seemed Kol had taken up all my focus over the past six days.

Surkah vibrated with laughter. “We have modernised homesteads for our citizens. Each family builds their own on their land. The Revered Father gifts every new family a plot of land as a mating gift.”