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Chapter 19

"Max?" Serena timidly looked into the tent. She was expecting to find him there, where he had spent most of his waking, and sleeping, hours lately. Watching over Liz. She was surprised when she found Liz to be alone. Her shallow breathing echoed in the silence of the tent and Serena turned to leave when she stopped. Max hadn't let anyone near Liz the last couple of days. He was guarding her with his simple presence. He hadn't exactly spelled out to them that they weren't allowed to visit Liz. It was something in his demeanor, in the way he was always with her, which made the others automatically leave him alone. It was like it was something too private, too personal, to disturb.

Finding Liz all by herself made a curiosity build within Serena and she found herself turning around towards the mattress again. She knew that she might be treading dangerous ground, but no one in the camp had been given the faintest clue about Liz's condition. Max had forbidden the physician they'd had at the beginning to get even five feet within Liz, since one of the physicians had made the foolish mistake of hinting that Liz should be kept alive merely for the purpose of keeping the child inside of her alive.

It was simply her duty to her people to find out how Liz was doing, Serena told herself as she approached the mattress. Liz's health was directly correlated to Max's strength and ability to start focusing his attention on his people and rebuilding Antar, something that he had completely ignored. He hadn't attended any meetings, Michael had attended them in his place instead. Max had not shown any interest at all that he wanted to help the people who were now hopefully waiting for him to help them to their feet.

Referring to the facts she had heard from Michael and Isabel about Max, and also due to the person she had judged him to be from her own observations, she had really tried to justify Max's lack of interest in his people, but still it infuriated her. How a mate could mean more to him than a whole race of people was beyond her. She had tried to understand. She had tried to put herself in the same situation, if something like that would have happened to Aldonis, but she couldn't. She wouldn't have dropped her responsibility, ignored her duty, like that, even if she cared a lot for Aldonis.

She came to a halt beside the mattress, staring down in the face of the person Max would sacrifice everything for, even his own life, and she gasped. Because it was really Liz's face she was looking at. Not only her closed and bruised eyelids and her parched dry lips, but her whole face. The band aids were gone and her skin had none of the awful blisters she had tried to take care of just after she and Max had been brought to the medical tent after Khivar's attack existed. It was like they had never been there. Her skin was flawless. With her mouth gaping in a mixture of awe and surprise, Serena took a hold of the comforter and started to pull it downwards to take a look at the rest of Liz's body.

"Serena."
She visibly jumped and jerked her head into the direction of the voice, her hand guiltily moving away from Liz. She already knew who it would be before her eyes landed on his hard facial expression.
"Max," she said, trying to appear calm, but his appearance had been too sudden and she had been too attentive to what she would find when she pulled down the comforter, that her voice was just a notch to high.
"What are you doing?" Max asked. His voice betrayed nothing. It was as cool as everything about him lately. Serena quickly pulled herself together and took a step away from Liz.
"I didn't know that she had healed so much," Serena said, deciding to confront him with it, "Why haven't you told us? She must be doing better. She looks better."
"The superficial wounds are easy to heal," Max answered. He hadn't moved since she had turned her eyes to him and now he was just calmly observing her. Serena couldn't put her finger on what that meant. Was he angry with her? Did he want her to leave? Narrowing her eyes she decided that he was resigned, even a little relieved that she had forced him to tell her this.
"What about the internal wounds?" Serena asked slowly.
Max met her gaze straight on, trying to appear collected, but one thing Serena had learnt about Max was that he had very expressive eyes, which always betrayed the truth. Especially when it came to Liz. Max was very bad at keeping his feelings for Liz secret.
"She is much better," he answered.

Serena wondered why he hadn't answered her question directly, but instead given her an answer to another question, but she bit her lip to stop herself from asking him about that. She had a feeling that Max's trust in her was already on shaky ground, and she really shouldn't do anything further to jeopardize that.
"How about the baby?"
A flicker of hope passed in Max's eyes before he answered, "They are perfect."
Serena started nodding in relief, when the meaning of his words hit her. "Wait... Why did you say? 'They'?"
"Twins," Max answered, a soft smile playing in the corners of his mouth.
"Twins?" Serena repeated dumfounded. Her brain was working overload trying to find out just what twins were. Somehow, Liz was going to give birth to several babies at the same time. She was carrying several babies at the same time.
"How is that possible? Is it two babies?" Serena asked.
Max's facial expression softened some at her stunned expression. "I found it out this morning. I was just with Emma, telling her that she would be having two baby brothers."

"But that's not even possible," Serena said, shaking her head.
"How's that?" Max asked. He started to move towards Liz, as if the mere mention of the babies resting inside the warmth of her protective uterus made him want to be near her and touch her.
Serena watched him take Liz's hand, a hand that now had no bandage, and lovingly pushing a strand of her dark hair away from her forehead. The gesture made Serena forget what she was talking about. She had never seen anything like it. And he had only brushed away her hair. It had been so tender and on one level so very intimate it made her throat clog up and she had to swallow to clear her throat to be able to speak again.
"We...we can't have two babies at the same time," Serena said absently, her eyes fixed on the tender caresses Max's hand made on the healed skin of Liz's cheek.
"You can't?" Max asked, looking up at Serena. He only seemed mildly surprised, like details like that didn't matter to him since he was certain that he and Liz were having twins.
"No..."

"Humans can," Max said, his eyes moving to Liz, and unbothered by Serena's presence he bent forward and placed a gentle kiss on Liz's forehead. Serena had to turn away. The picture it made was just as heartbreaking as it was achingly beautiful.
Just like that it hit her and she looked back at Max. Her eyes moved over his relaxed face and his warm eyes, lingering on the soft private smile playing on his lips, made it all more clear to her. There was something he wasn't telling her. There was a hidden happiness in him and she didn't think that it only had to do with the news of his babies.
"But when I examined her and found out about the pregnancy, I only felt one presence. There was only one."
Max met her eyes again and nodded thoughtfully. "I thought about that too and I think that it was too early in the pregnancy for you to be able to pick up two energies. And one of them is smaller than the other. His energy can have been so weak you didn't register it or just assumed it was something different."
"But... are you sure you can have two babies in the same pregnancy?"
Max actually smiled at this and Serena could feel a weird feeling of happiness in the center of her heart. During the short, albeit intense, time period she had known Max she had never seen him smile. Not like this.

"Feel," Max said simply.
"Pardon me?" Serena looked at him in a mixture of confusion and curiosity.
Max reached out with his hand across Liz's body and took Serena's hand in his. Too stunned to speak, Serena wordlessly let Max move her hand towards Liz's body while his other hand moved away the comforter and revealed the skin of Liz's stomach. As on her face, there was no trace of the blisters and wounds on her stomach. Her stomach had grown, stretching out around the fetus it was shielding. Max put her hand down on Liz's stomach and repeated, "Feel."

So Serena did. She let her energy pour into Liz and let her mind melt with the functions of Liz's body. She allowed Liz's bloodstream to appear in front of her and she watched the nerve impulses skitter from one nerve cell to another. Her energy was not the same as Max's. She couldn't surge energy into someone's body with the purpose of sharing that energy with the other person. She couldn't heal. She could only pour her energy into someone to be able to read its bodily functions and, after she was done, pull the energy back to her own body.

She expertly moved through the organs in Liz's body, but their condition was barely registered, in order to reach the main point of interest for this examination. Two life energies came to her with full force, so strong and so pure that she had to take a mental deep intake of breath to calm the awe. She was filled with the warmest feeling she had ever felt. It filled every corner, every cavern of her heart, mind and body. The feeling was so great it didn't take her long to figure out what it was. Love.

Next she encountered something like a great stonewall, its appearance so sudden that she abruptly lost the connection. Max was watching her when she opened her eyes and was catapulted back to reality. She took a shaky breath, trying to get the intense feelings she had experienced down to a more Antarian level. That is, almost non-existent.
"Did you feel them?" Max asked.
She nodded, being too shaken to talk. Max nodded and looked at Liz. Serena followed his tender look and having the emotions still raging inside of her she suddenly had no difficulty at all understanding why Max would sacrifice everything for Liz and his family. That feeling - love - had been the greatest feeling she had ever felt. She realized that it was something like that she felt for Aldonis, but that was only a faint whisper in comparison to what she had felt from the unborn babies Liz was carrying. Love children. They had been filled with the love Liz and Max felt for each other. They were pulsating with pure love. Serena felt the urgency to embrace these new feelings, but she knew that the years of repressing those same emotions couldn't be undone that easily.

"I..." she cleared her throat, "I was stopped by some kind of wall..."
"It was a block," Max answered.
Serena frowned. "A block?" Then it hit her. "Did Khivar put it there? Is that why she is still unconscious?"
"I put it there," Max said quietly.
"You?" Serena looked at him confused. "Why would you put a block on her mind?"
Max took a deep breath and Serena saw him tighten his grip on Liz's hand. "She was in so much pain."
"When she woke up?" Serena had heard about Liz's brief moment of consciousness.
Max nodded. "I put a block on her mind to keep her from waking up. Until I have her completely healed." He looked up at Serena, his eyes shimmering with pain. "She was in so much pain..."
"Have you been able to heal her completely?" Serena wondered. She vaguely registered the haggard looks of Max. He looked like a living dead. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and he still limped, something that should have healed on its own a long time ago. Liz looked healthier than he did and Serena silently wondered how much of his energy Max had been feeding Liz every day. Probably everything he could give her before he passed out.
"Almost," Max whispered. There was guilt in his voice, expressing his feeling of helplessness over not being able to do more than he was already doing.

Serena really hated to bring this up, but the others were wondering and time was quickly slipping away. "Max, we have to talk about Antar. What are you planning on doing?"
Max looked up at her, his whole body going tense. "I haven't planned anything."
"The people are counting on you to help them."
"I don't want to be a king. I want nothing more to do with this planet. As soon as Liz is completely healed, we will be going home. To Earth."
Serena stared at him. "You can't mean that. You cannot abandon your people like that! They have been waiting for this for too long. You will be leaving them without someone to lead them."
"I helped them the best I could, with Khivar," his voice hardened at the mention of his enemy's name, "My family almost died because of it! It's more than I ever wanted. I never wanted to come to this planet anyway. The only reason I came here was because Khivar took Emma and we had to get her back."
Serena's mouth was hanging open in frightened surprise. She had known that Max's interest for Antar and its people was mild, but not that it wasn't there at all.
"Don't you feel any obligations at all towards your people?" Serena accused.

Max looked her firmly in the eyes and said slowly, "Leadership shouldn't be about obligations. I cannot rule Antar only because it's my duty to do so. Antar needs someone who is willing to fight for the people. Someone who is willing to rebuild the planet. Serena, I don't know the Antarian people and I hate to say it, but I don't feel enough for the Antarians to lead them. Earth is my home. I belong with humans. I cannot speak for Isabel and Michael, but I doubt that they want to stay here. They have lives back on Earth," he looked at Liz and added softly, "We all do."
"You can't do this, Max! It's your destiny-"
Max jerked his head up at her choice of words, "This is not my destiny. Antar is not my destiny. It might've been Zan's destiny, but my destiny is on Earth. My destiny is Liz and my family."
Serena clenched her fists as a strong urge of some feeling built inside of her. It might have been anger. It might have been hurt. She didn't know for sure because she had never felt it before.
"This is why you shouldn't let your emotions rule you," she said through gritted teeth.
Max stared at her like she had grown a second head. "Things like duty and obligation really don't mean anything, Serena. It is forced. Do you want your people to be ruled by someone who feels forced to rule them? Who feels obligated to rule them?"

"You are the right man to do it. You have the right abilities for it. I've seen them."
"It's the heritage from Zan," Max whispered, "It's not who I am. It's a part of who I am, but I'm not only a leader. I never chose to be."
"Faith chose you."
Max shook his head, and said firmly, "No. Faith gave me the qualities, but it's up to me what I do with them. Just because someone can sing doesn't mean that person will become a singer."
Serena could feel something bubbling inside of her, wanting to erupt. To explode. She wanted to yell at him, shake him. Make him understand that he had to guide his people or they would perish.
"This isn't about some singing career-"
"No," Max interrupted. "This is my life. This is my family's life. I don't want my children to grow up here. I want them to be able to see blue sky, see fields of sunflowers, bathe in the ocean. I want them to feel safe and not be followed around by bodyguards because a follower of Khivar will seize any opportunity it can to kill them. I want them to meet their grandparents. I want to see them grow up, go to school, graduate, get married..."

"Those are just wishes, Max. We all have them, but sometimes dreams don't come true-"
"Is it too much to ask that I want my children to be safe?" She could hear that he was getting angry.
"No," she answered.
"I haven't decided on what to do about Antar yet, Serena. But I will not just leave it to its mercy. If I cannot lead your people, I will find someone who will."
Serena knew that she should probably feel a little relieved by his promise, but they had been waiting for him to rule Antar for so long. Who should rule Antar if he wouldn't?
"Who?"
Max looked her directly in the eyes when he answered, "I have someone in mind."
"Someone?"
Max took a deep breath, his gaze drifting to Liz. "Serena, are we finished? I will concentrate on that later. Just not right now."
Serena had so much more she needed to talk to him about, but was frustrated when she realized that she had to leave Max alone now.

"Is it... Is Liz's present condition a secret, or may I inform the men?" she asked, as she stood up.
Max eyes traced Liz's facial features as he contemplated her question. "It is a secret for now," he answered after some seconds had passed. "I want to talk to Michael and Isabel first."
Serena nodded and then halted when something struck her. Max hadn't told Michael and Isabel about the babies. He had only had the chance to tell Emma. The fact that he had told her before he had told Michael and Isabel made a warm feeling settle over her heart.
"Okay," she whispered.
With a last look at Max and his soul mate, she quietly left the tent.

TBC...