Caught Between Two Blue Aliens - Celia Kyle Page 0,63
on the Avash, and then all would be right with his world.
He stopped in his tracks.
What was that?
He turned around, hearing a voice he hadn’t been expecting to hear this morning—not here, of all places.
“I’m looking for Jenna Perry,” Bea’s unmistakable voice floated in the air. “She’s our sister. No, no, she’s an adult.”
He glanced over to see the young girl standing at the reception desk with Noah at her side. The small boy was pushing himself up onto his toes to try and look over the edge of the tall desk.
What were they doing here?
Hiren eagerly moved toward them. Was Jenna here early? He looked around the lobby for a sighting of his beloved, but he didn’t see her anywhere. And as he grew closer to the two younglings, he didn’t need the ability to sense their thoughts to feel the anxiety radiating off Bea. In fact, Noah wasn’t holding her hand after all. Bea was holding onto his to keep him from zipping off, presumably to bombard the nearest Drokten with questions.
“I am sorry,” the Drokten receptionist responded, “but I am not able to contact anyone by that name.”
“T-t-then what about the two Drokten she’s with?” Bea asked. Her voice sounded a lot like Jenna’s when she was on the verge of panicking, an emotion Hiren had gotten to know all too well over the past few days. “Their names are Sevith and Hiren, one is...uh...very dark blue, and the other is...lighter blue?”
Of course, the Drokten receptionist’s face looked about as baffled as Hiren would have expected.
“It is not possible to speak with them,” the receptionist replied uneasily. “I am sorry, but I do not have the authority to request communication with the Commander or the Ambassador. Please, wait here while I summon the human representative.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never been here before. I’m just trying to find my sister,” Bea said, and Hiren heard a crack in her voice as the receptionist looked increasingly embarrassed. “We can’t find her anywhere, and this was the last place we knew she might be here.”
“Just a moment, if you—”
“I just need my sister,” Bea wailed loudly, her face starting to turn red and tears starting to well in her eyes. “Please, I’m worried she might be in trouble and she’s all we have. My little brother is scared, and we don’t have anywhere else to go!”
The shuddering and cracking in Bea’s voice grew steadily with each word until the receptionist’s eyes were as wide as Hiren’s as the Drokten ambassador started hurrying toward the group.
Bea started crying loudly and the receptionist looked so frazzled Hiren wouldn’t have been surprised if he could have found a way to reach his and Sevith’s personal communicators.
“Bea, Noah!” Hiren called as he approached from behind.
They both whirled around while the receptionist gave Hiren the most flabbergasted yet relieved look he’d ever seen.
“I am right here. Do not worry.”
“Hi…ren!” Noah said while waving, clearly proud of himself for coming up with the pun.
Hiren smiled down at him, but he noticed that the child wasn’t nearly as distraught as Bea had made him sound. And for that matter, as soon as Bea saw Hiren, she seemed to get her own emotions under control in record time and wipe the tears away as if they’d never existed.
“I will take it from here. Thank you,” Hiren told the receptionist, who nodded gratefully as Hiren drew the two children away from the desk. “Are you alright?” he asked the girl. “What happened?”
“Oh—sorry, it’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head and sniffing as she took a tissue from her receptacle. “I’m fine. I used that trick once so I could get in to see my best friend in the hospital, and I thought it might work here, too.”
Hiren blinked. She’d been faking the whole thing? The tears, the anxiety…a trick? Heh. “I thought Jenna was with you,” he said with a gruff voice. “But she’s not here. So, why are you two at Drokten Main alone?”
Bea looked around at the densely crowded lobby. “Do you have an office or somewhere quiet we can go? I don’t want to talk about it here. There are too many people around.”
Hiren opened his mouth to reply, but his tablet pinged, and he glanced down. “It’s Sevith,” he said. “If you two have something urgent to tell us, he will want to be there as well.”
Bea bit her lip, looking uneasy.
Hiren tapped the screen and Sevith’s voice barked through the vid. “Hiren! I’m on my