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“Not much older than Rakha.”
“How much older is not much older?” These were the kind of things she was used to males saying. He was hiding something. She cocked an ear when he mumbled something she couldn’t catch. “Speak up, SaKura, crown prince elect.”
“I’m two hundred years older than my brother.” This time, she choked. She wasn’t getting any air and then an enormous hand pounded on her back, dislodging the food, and then rubbed comforting circles into her skin.
“How old is Rakha?”
SaKura started eating like he was starving. Jenna sat there with a grin because how often did you get one over on a monster? She waited until he wiped his plate, taking a few bites of her own. She didn’t want to be eating when he told her.
“My brother is—.”
“Wait!” she called out before swallowing and drinking some orange juice. She coughed to make sure her throat was clear. “All right, now.”
“Three hundred of your years.”
What the… was SaKura saying he was five hundred years old? He was lying. He had to be. That supported her thoughts Rakha was the good one and the rest of the monsters were liars trying to take over their planet. SaKura reached into the back pocket of the jeans he was wearing and pulled out a cell phone.
“Bella insisted I have one of these.” He called his sister and then handed the phone to Jenna. He mouthed the words, ask her.
“Bella, I have to ask you something and I need the truth. It’s important to me.” If SaKura was a liar, then she didn’t have to wait around. She could leave. The voices in her head would shut up and stop harping about who they thought he was to them.
“Two questions. How old is Rakha and how much older is SaKura?” Bella was quiet to where Jenna thought the call had dropped.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I do.”
“Rakha is three hundred earth years old, and he says his brother is two hundred earth years older than him.” The phone dropped from her cold, bloodless fingers. She could hear Bella shouting her name.
SaKura scooped up the phone, and then Jenna into his arms, giving her his body heat. She was shivering from the sudden cold.
“I have her. It looks like she went into shock. I’ll need someone to explain that to me later, but right now, I’m warming her up. Thanks, sister, and tell Rakha I won’t be seeing him for several days.” He hung up before Bella could protest. He slowly rubbed her back until her breathing calmed and she warmed up.
“I’m going to need you to explain to me what biting me meant and what you meant when you told Agent Scarlatti that I passed the test with Kala.”
Chapter Eight
Half a century. That’s the only thought circling Jenna’s brain. She was waiting for someone to say gotcha, April Fools. She didn’t hear anyone saying trick-or-treat. People didn’t live this long except for the aforementioned biblical characters. If they were real. Who was she to judge? They died a long time ago. No one was walking the earth claiming to be centuries old or more.
She was sitting on SaKura’s lap, wrapped in a blanket and cuddled in his arms. How had this day gone from bad to worse? The problem here was she didn’t want to move. When was the last time someone other than her sister held her? She was drawing a blank, and rightly so. She’d never be this vulnerable with a male.
Lions and tigers, men, and liars. Was there any difference between the two?
“Five hundred years?” She would live and die, and he would do this again. Picking some poor, unexpecting woman to make her life miserable. Is that what was going to happen to Bella? She was going to die, and Rakha would force someone else to marry him.
“I don’t understand.” Another shiver went through her. It wasn’t like she was cold. It was more like her mind refused to believe what he said. Which was silly. After all, she lived through all the visions she had. “How can you not be old and decrepit?”
Common sense told her SaKura wasn’t human. His longevity could have something to do with the sun on his planet or the rotation of his planet in his solar system. Maybe a day to them was like a year on their planet. Had something gotten lost in the translation? Whatever it was, there was no way he was five hundred earth years old. It didn’t make sense. She tried to chuckle, but it came out sounding like a meow from a half-drowned cat.
“You’re asking me to explain Diza’s biology to you, but I’m no healer. I doubt you can explain human biology to me.”
Humans were born, grew up, paid taxes, lived terrible lives, and died. The circle of life. Okay, he was right. She wasn’t up on human biology or why they aged the way they did. She’d seen some women in their sixties who looked like they were in their thirties. People would say that they took good care of themselves. He was right. She couldn’t tell you why people grew old if you paid her. Radiation from the sun? It was the best guess she had other than taking care of your body was hard no matter who you were or how much money you had.
“I’ll give you that one. I don’t know why we age and die. Still…” What was there to say after that?
His fingers stroked her black hair as he contemplated what he wanted to say. “Before we advanced enough to leave our planet, we thought everyone in the galaxy was like us.” The height of hubris. The shock came when we met our first race whose life span is half of the life span you enjoy. They not only lived but rejoiced in each day they lived. That was before I was born in my…” He floundered, looking for the earth’s word. “Grandfather’s time. My father was a youngling, but he remembers the time and meeting a male his age. He watched him mature and watched him die. The encounter touched his heart. He still talks about him a millennium later. This universe is made of wildly different species that have different life spans. All we can do is respect them.”
She knew better than that. If he was all so altruistic and wanted to respect people’s life spans, then he wouldn’t have tried to bind her to him. Her life was to be forfeited and for what?
