19. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

" C are to introduce me?" Amelia said after her stomach settled without emptying its contents all over the floor.

A loud meow distracted her. Helee's head popped out of the bag Zylar was carrying. She forgot Helee was in the pouch, as Zylar called it. The pouch was invisible, but sometimes when he moved, she could glimpse it.

"Helee," the strange male said. Helee jumped into his arms, and they started talking like it was an actual conversation.

Amelia realized she'd been so caught up in herself and the ‘did she or didn't she' want a mate. Everything that was happening around her was nothing except so much background noise. It was time to step into what was happening around her. Yippee, just in time for the Tan-ge to try to kill her. Her timing might be off, just saying.

"Do you want to introduce your friend?" She gave her mate a hopeful look as he looked at the unnamed male and back at her.

"Nope."

"Wait, did you just pop your ‘P'?" She shook her head. What was life, anyway? The longer she was with Zylar, the more she saw the differences and the things they had in common. When did she start believing that someone who didn't look like her was so different from her that she should be inherently afraid of them? What spin doctor worked on that over the years that she was almost born with it in her DNA?

She leaned over, not sure that she wasn't queasy at all the new revelations. There was magic in the air, and it wasn't the Diza portal. This magic clung to the air, to the very life that made Earth. It must be steeped deep into the ground, which was brown, by the way. Or at least the dirt she knew was brown. It was Earth. God only knew what there was that no one felt the need to talk about. Was there yellow dirt? Maybe somewhere. Would scientists tell them about it? No, why rock the boat?

That was too many revelations about her planet. "Hello, male, that my mate won't name."

"He doesn't name me for reasons, the same way he won't be telling me your name. Hello, mate of my friend. I know my friend's name and refuse to say it. There is magic on this plane that anyone in the know needs to be careful of. Humans bypass it because they aren't in the know."

"I don't think I ever felt stupid before today. To realize that such fundamental things are happening in the world around me, and I was clueless about them." She was still clueless because no one was coming straight out and saying what was happening.

"Long before you and most of the humans, someone planted the magic I speak of into the depths of the earth. How would you know?"

Hadn't she heard a question like that recently? How would she know? Wait, a minute.

"What do you mean, most humans?"

"You didn't think all humans die between seventy and one hundred, did you?" He wandered off with Helee in his arms.

"Will Helee be okay?" Don't tell anyone, but that five-pound ball of fur is growing on me.

"He'll be fine. Let's find my cousins and yours." Wow, talk about families intermingling. This might be the height of it.

Zylar took her small hand into his much larger one. She couldn't help the smile that said that's right, bitches he's mine.

***

If outside was something to look at inside, there was a catfight happening between three women, all of whom claimed to be next.

"Get out, bitch. Only three women are allowed in the house to wait, and you're not part of our group."

The grumpy woman was a redhead with pretty brown eyes that seemed to glow on the edges. Which made Amelia wonder if she was a baby fyra in hiding. It was the only thing that was going to stop her from pulling the plug on that woman. She should stop talking because Amelia was feeling the need to unalive her. The woman shut up as if she had a sudden picture of her death or unaliveness.

"Is this how you treat a chance to visit another planet and meet males that will love you like the goddess you are?" Amelia asked.

"Who's going to want me?" a woman who wasn't the possible fyra asked. She looked meek and mild, with mousy brown hair. She was also the biggest female there, but that didn't hide the subtle gorgeousness that was her. Why was it subtle? Because she played it down, hoping if she did, no one would see her. She thought she needed to drift through life as a shadow because the people in her life had used words like ‘you'd be so pretty if you lost weight.'

Amelia hated that. It was a backhand passive-aggressive comment, and it should be against the law to murder someone's confidence like that.

Zylar took a step forward, releasing Amelia's hand. He looked over at the woman from head to toe and then made his way back up to her face. "I know an engineer who would make you his world and worship you. In and out of bed."

The woman shivered and the smile that took over her face was so bright Amelia closed her eyes for a few seconds. So much for being mousy and boring. This woman was beautiful.

"Thank you," she stuttered. The shyness was real, and it made Amelia like her even more.

"You three will be the last getting interviewed today. When we start again, we'll let everyone know where and when. Zylar, pass the news along outside while I talk to my cousins." Amelia turned to the door and took a big breath. This was where the rubber met the road. Were things right between her and her cousins and would they continue to be right or wasn't their relationship worth saving?

Time will tell. She knocked on the door and entered when they told her to come in.

"Amelia!" they greeted her with enthusiasm.

"Bella, Jenna." She wasn't as enthusiastic, still not sure where her place in their lives was.

"Don't make me get up," Bella threatened. She moved back to show her belly, which seemed to have doubled or maybe tripled in size over the last few weeks. It turns out that humans and Diza don't gestate at the same length of time. It looks like that I'll gestate longer than the Diza, but shorter than the humans."

"Are you enjoying the word gestate?" Amelia asked.

Bella started laughing like a demented gnome with laughter that was as clear as a high melodic bell.

"You know me too well. That's why we need to be the three amigos. Cousins unite!" Bella declared.

Amelia's eyes were wide as she deliberately turned her head to look at Jenna.

"Pregnancy hormones," Jenna mouthed. She didn't want her sister to hear her.

"I want some of whatever she's taking," one of the unfamiliar women in the room said. There were two that Amelia had never met before.

Amelia couldn't deal with Bella right then. She was going to have to think about this. Her empathic abilities were crawling out of her and all over Bella. The need to cry and laugh at the same time was riding Bella hard. Amelia was sure, but she thought that actually might just be the pregnancy hormones coming out to play. There was so much going on inside of her cousin that she wouldn't be surprised. Having a child was hard enough, adding to that the fact that the child was controversial at best and would break boundaries. She bet it was close to what happened when the first female slave got pregnant in the U.S. and no matter the spin; it was hard to see people with darker skin as animals when they could procreate with everyone else in the world.

It was like trying to see the Diza as monsters when they could make a human female pregnant. Yeah, in this case, they weren't human, but how many degrees of separation were there between the races, six, maybe seven? Obviously, between humans, no matter the color of their skin, there were zero degrees of separation.

Amelia shook her head and focused on the two women in the room. As she looked them over, she realized her abilities as an empath were going to help when interviewing the females. Did she need to be in the same room to pick up their emotions or would it work long-range as long as she had a way to be in contact with them? She was going to have to ask Zylar. He was the only one she knew who understood what it meant to be an empath. He was also learning with her and that was okay.

"Hi, I'm Amelia. Jenna and Bella's cousin. I'm mated to Zylar, I'm sure you never heard of him, but he's a healer. He helped to deliver the baby of one woman living with Bella and Rakha."

Baby? Who wants an alien spawn?

Jenna raised a brow but just smiled at them. "Don't mind me. I'm here to offer my cousin's moral support."

Bella coughed to hide a laugh. Jenna cleared her throat.

"Where were we?" Jenna asked with a forced smile. It was kind of like when the person you hated came to dinner and you had to force yourself to seem nice.

"You were asking why we wanted to leave our beautiful planet and live on another world that might be as nice or even as advanced as Earth." The woman that Amelia was fast learning not to like said.

Amelia assessed the woman's emotional shields, surprised to find that they were so advanced. That made her question who she was.

Bella looked at a card in front of her before looking back up. "Stacey Carter, correct?"

"That's me." The woman's shoulders went back as she preened. She also tried to push her abundant breasts in their face as if they were lacking breasts of their own.

"I find your answer kind of strange if you want to leave the planet," Jenna said.

She didn't want to leave, Amelia screamed in her head. Ms. Stacey Carter was up to something. Amelia edged around Stacey's mind, never getting close enough to infiltrate. She figured if the Tan-ge could do it to her, then she would have the same abilities.

Every time she got close, there was a darkness that would lift its head and hiss at her. Stacy was human, that much Amelia was sure of. The darkness, on the other hand, didn't feel human. She stopped short of saying her mind had been messed with by the Tan-ge. That was something she wasn't willing to go out on a limb and assume. Something, though, wasn't right.

"Mina, we haven't heard from you," Jenna addressed the other woman in the room.

"It's a whole new world. I believe it will be safe because of what you said in the commercial and the fact that Bella is pregnant, and her mate seems to worship the ground she walks on." Mina's cheeks flushed a bright red and her blue eyes looked at Bella in awe. "I always wanted to be married and have a child."

Amelia could feel Mina's emotions and knew the woman was telling the truth. She was hoping to meet and mate with the male she always dreamed about.

"What about the fact that the males are purple and monsters by human standards?" Stacey sneered.

"I never dreamed about marrying the human. I always wanted to marry the beast."

Amelia nodded her head along with her. She was the type they were looking for to go to Diza. It would be good to have women who knew what they wanted going on the first trip. One who the government hadn't forced or blackmailed into going. A smile hovered over her lips until she looked at Stacey, who was staring at her.

Amelia hissed at Stacey. She was messing with the wrong one.