Who Are the Covalent?

​The Passion Season is the first book in the Covalent Series. Now, I can imagine you saying to yourself, “The what series?” This blog post will go some way toward answering that question with a slice of backstory on my groovy aliens, the Covalent. I dig my aliens. They are beautiful, strong and immortal. They live at the still center of reality. They have existed for billions of years.

​My novel is a complex love story between Rainer Barakiel (ry-ner ba-rack-ee-el), a powerful Covalent warrior, and Zan O’Gara, a human FBI agent with the strength of will and body to match her hot alien lover. They have a lot of hot alien sex, but the story is much more than that. Rainer is connected to a murder Zan is investigating. She thinks he’s human. As if that weren’t bad enough, to love her breaks Covalent Law.   

So who are these aliens who would seek to keep our lovers apart? As you would expect from such an old culture, Covalent society is sophisticated. They write histories. Here is part of one.
 
The Annals of the Covalent: The Origin of Balance 

Long ago, we had no name, for we were all that was.

Our lives were as simple as flowing water and we trembled before the unreasoning forces of Creation and Destruction. Creation called to us, hummed in our minds with the tones of our birth. Destruction was the other, the agent of change that pushed our world along the arc of time.

We were all that was sentient. We felt the play of the great forces in our marrow, and when we fought our way to Balance, the boundless power of the realms was born within us.
Language and civilization rose from this power, a shining city, steeped in the expression of our finely tuned minds. We cultivated beauty and love and violence and death. We mapped our own Realm and wondered at the forces at our borders. We were too frightened to venture into Creation and Destruction yet we yearned to explore. We began to join in love and grow our numbers.

In the midst of a great flowering of our culture, the Calamities began. At first, our Realm trembled and moaned, set upon by phenomena we did not understand. The ramparts of our city crumbled. Many died.

In times of respite, we grieved and rebuilt. The quakes grew more frequent and the firmament joined this violence with great flashing storms. We knew we were nothing before this terrible migration of elemental forces. We came to believe that our Realm was no more than a chance expression of their ever-expanding fury. Our civilization decayed in the fatalistic acceptance that Creation and Destruction would grind us to dust, caught as we were between them.

Among this despair, there were those who kept their minds as sharp as blades. Those in whom the forces balanced so perfectly that chaos fell tame within them. They did not believe in the inevitable. They shouted, we are here, and we will not lay down to be erased. They studied the forces, measured the Calamities.

The greatest among the ancient ones learned that the forces of Creation and Destruction reached out to each other, attracted by the opposition of their natures to join and transform, one into the other. All that was, would be again. All that was, would be made new, but those who existed would be lost. The ancient ones trumpeted a challenge from the rubble of our great city. We built something, they sang. We will not let it disappear. We are here, and we love. We will save the loved.

Thus determined, these ancient ones unleashed the power of Balance within them and joined with the Realm in a blinding fusion. Their memories were released, their minds united, their bodies absorbed. The power swirled around them to create the Turning, ever renewing, holding the Realm in its embrace. They joined their energy and released their power so that we, the loved, could go on. They are the Guardians. When they had bound the calamitous forces there came a terrible roar. The Realm trembled as Creation and Destruction swelled and met the Turning. Violent quakes destroyed all that was left of our city. Fiery bolts of energy rent the land, carving seas of shimmering power, raising mountains, infusing the soil. Those who remained lay huddled together, certain the forces would swallow them, but the Turning held. With a mighty convulsion, the violence ceased. Our Realm bonded the Creative and Destructive Realms, holding them in Balance. Those realms erupted into myriad dimensions as their expansion toward one another was transformed by the great power of the Guardians.

The few who remained wept for the sacrifice of the Guardians and for our lost civilization. Soon the Stream gushed forth from the Creative Realm, pure energy so fearsome we could not hope to tame it. Many tried and were lost in its torrent. We bowed before its power.
The demons came as well, surging out of the Destructive Realm through the Turning and into our ruined city, tearing our flesh in their unreasoning lust for violence. We were no longer all that was.

Those who felt the furious energy of the Stream humming within them became warriors among us. They drove the demons from our Realm, but when the first had been vanquished, more came in endless waves. The warriors accepted the great burden of keeping the demons from our gates and we honored them as our protectors. They battled in the Turning so the citizens could live without fear.

The best among the warriors gathered such breathtaking power that we saw high purpose and brilliance in their eyes. We recognized them as descendants of the Guardians who had saved us from the elemental forces.

​They are the Warriors of the Rising, and they became leaders among us. They called our home the Covalent Realm, the bond between all realms, and we became the Covalent. We stand between Destruction and Creation. To bond them, to bind them. Our blood we pledge to this. To Balance, preserver of life.

Urban fantasy, paranormal romance, erotic fiction.