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While she let him see her naked beauty, she was stubborn about keeping her head wrap on.

One night, he touched her temple and gave her a silent, questioning look.

Her face shut down. ‘I can’t speak about it. I won’t.’

He saw tears pool in her eyes and moved to reassure her, wrapping his arms around her. ‘My love, you don’t ever have to.’

‘It may have to be that way. Always.’

He knew she was of no race he was familiar with, but her past and origins seemed out of the question.

He wondered if covering up her forehead was a religious expectation, but he dismissed the idea, for she’d never shown any signs of devotion to a particular faith.

He vowed always to love her no matter how dark her secret was. He indulged her request for privacy, grateful to even have a sliver of her essence in her life.

So he kept silent about insisting on knowing who she was or where she’d come from. Later, this would be his biggest regret.

Their budding romance flourished into full-blown love. One that nourished them both.

With Élisa’s cooking and the delicious treats she smuggled from the small marketplace stall she worked at, Riv’s hollow cheeks soon filled out.

A fact that Élisa seemed to appreciate.

‘You are so beautiful,’ she whispered to him one night after a particularly passionate lovemaking session. ‘You are magnificent. I love your silver eyes. And your face seems chiseled from granite, almost as if sculpted by a master. But most of all, I love your voice. It’s what called out to me and made me find you in the tunnels. It’s so lush and yet so low, like a haunting wind whispering over the lunar plains.’

His voice was undoubtedly one of a kind.

It was a resounding, hoarse rasp with a resonant rustle that he’d never managed to control. He could alter it slightly, but it was the only aspect of his physicality that he could not transform.

Not that he tried. Since finding freedom on Eden II, he’d been loath to dabble in his meta-transformation abilities.

He couldn’t even find it in himself to tell her about his horrific experiences with the crats. He focused instead on living for the future they would build together.

Nonetheless, he blushed under his pale, silver skin at her words. ‘You are the beauty, Élisa. Not I.’

For he was beholden to her entire being, from her silver hair that flowed like water across her shoulders, which seemed like an ethereal glow had lighted it, to her lilac eyes, that seemed to pierce his soul and expose everything within.

Her body was a marbled sculpture of lean lines and soft curves. Her lips were a silky abyss that devoured his soul whole.

Hismalaíkatasted of sweet wine and sensuality, which became his new addiction.

They made love almost every day, Riv delighting himself in finding new ways to make her scream in ecstasy.

Riv finally ventured out of the underground ghetto and the nest of love he and Élisa had built and reunited with his Sable brothers.

They were eking out an existence in Old Town Eden II, at the edge of the Pikani settlements. There, a sea of synth-board shacks lined against each other held thousands of Pikas crammed into tiny rooms.

His fellow Riders lived in a thinly walled hovel, existing on one meal daily.

Here, survival had been rough, lean, and scrappy; every hour, a struggle to survive.

All he and his Sable brothers dreamed of was a good life - not one of material splendor, grand homes and shiny flyers but a trouble-free existence, free of war, crats and the endless grind of poverty.

They lurked on corner streets, joking, playing, reveling in their freedom from the crats - the beings who’d kidnapped and held them hostage for over five years while torturing them without mercy.

United in their pain, the five men were determined to work together in a close brotherhood to overcome their past.

Kainan worked the underground and made deals to offer protection to local traders and entrepreneurs, shielding them from gang shake-downs.