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A soft giggle escaped Louella’s lips, although there was nothing remotely funny about their circumstance. She felt hysteria bubble in her throat and swallowed it down. “No one ever said humans were a logical species.”
They lapsed into silence for a long moment. Louella might have dozed off, but would not have admitted it when she awoke.
“Jax?”
“Yes, pretty spark?”
“Are we going to die out here?”
“No,” he replied with an assurance he most certainly did not feel.
“How do you know?”
He jutted his chin toward the pod’s small display. “The pod is programmed to take us to the nearest habitable planet.”
“And what if there isn’t anything before the air in here is gone?”
“The programming also scans for large spaceships. If there’s a cruiser or waystation, the pod will hail it.” He mentioned nothing about the pod’s failsafe should the pod’s navigation system not detect a viable habitat before they died.
Louella sighed and was silent a moment before she admitted in a small voice, “I’m scared, Jax.”
The big hands at her shoulder and hip tightened in a light squeeze meant to reassure her. “I know. I will not allow you to come to harm, pretty spark.”
“Why do you call me that? Pretty spark?”
Jax’s warm palm skimmed down her arm, the heat of his hand seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt she wore. “You know we Ahn’hudin are descended from what your people would call dragons?”
Louella pursed her lips and managed a small nod. The fierce Ahn’hudin did look as if humans or elves had interbred with dragons, although anyone with a lick of scientific knowledge would have knownthatwas impossible. Elves and dragons didn’t exist.
The general superior continued speaking, his baritone voice soothing her frazzled nerves. “Eons ago, a lost race whom we simply call the Elderkind experimented on the native life of Ahn’hudin. Their science was far advanced, as was their cruelty.”
“What happened to them?” Louella asked.
“We do not know. We have no written records of that time, but ancient monuments and carvings and our own oral histories testify to their presence and their work. We believe they were attempting to create a warrior race to fight their battles, to conquer new worlds for them without the need to endanger their own kind.”
“Cowards,” Louella whispered under her breath.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “For whatever reason, they left Ahn’hudin and my species, which they created, behind. We adapted and learned and innovated, determined never to be the pawns of another species again.”
“I get that,” she said with feeling. “My folks always railed against ‘the man’ and blamed systemic racism and the fact that a couple of centuries before I was born my ancestors were slaves.” She shrugged. “A lot of the issues afflicting my family members and the folks in my old neighborhood are, to be honest, self-inflicted. I can’t blame my white classmates for something evil that happened decades or even centuries before they were born. I grew up in urban poverty, but I can’t blame the white folks in the suburbs for that when my own parents didn’t make the effort to work hard and get off welfare.” She huffed. “Heck, I don’t even know who my dad is. I have six siblings, and only two of us have the same father.”
Jax stroked her arm again.
Louella continued to babble. “I had some neighbors who were white and Latino and just as poor as we were. They had the same problems my family did, because they made the same poor choices in life. Me and Marisol—my friend who was one of the brides—we were determined to break that cycle. It sure as hell wasn’t easy, but we did it.” She sighed, realizing she’d allowed anxiety to allow the nervous flow of words. “But you were telling your story. Sorry to interrupt.”
“And that is why I call you pretty spark,” Jax murmured, his lips brushing against her short hair. “You are the spark that ignites great fires. And, to dragonkind, fire is sacred.”
Louella’s heart melted. She looked up to see the underside of his jaw. “You’re calling me something sacred?”
He chuckled, a clicking sound deep in his throat. “Something very special at the very least.” He stroked his hand over her head and decided she ought to know the pod’s failsafe programming. “The pod has a cryo setting that will put us in stasis if the oxygen levels get low. It will keep us in a state of suspended animation until the pod lands on a habitable planet.”
“Is it safe? I don’t like the idea of being frozen then thawed,” Louella said with a shudder.
“I’m not fond of it myself, but we either take the risk or we die.”
“I wish I’d stayed on Earth.”
“I am grateful you did not,” he replied, running his hand over her scalp again. “Now sleep. Rest.”
