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“I know you, brother. Let’s go get your mate.” SaKura looked for the hummer but didn’t find it.
“I left it at home. I wanted Bella to have a way of escape.” SaKura placed his hand over his heart and then his brothers. Thinking of home was their first mandate not only as royals but as Dizan. That’s what rubbed salt into the wounds left behind by the Tan-ge attack. The Dizas always placed their females first. They made their home.
Rakha placed his hand on his brother’s because he, too, was sporting deadly shoulder spikes that could kill.
“They call it evolution on this planet,” Rakha told his brother as he went to the unassuming case that held the two Spindrifts. “It’s what happens when the body changes to embrace the environment surrounding it.”
SaKura knew he was talking about how the Dizan body changed over thousands of years. Their scientist has asked more than once why the radical changes. Shoulder spikes that used to never retract now did along with their claws. Many wondered if it had anything to do with leaving their planet or meeting aliens along the way. Now SaKura believed he had the answer. The goddess had known one day they would have to mate with a species that didn’t have the natural defenses of the Diza. The changes enabled them to be compatible.
“The goddess knows best.” Sakura swung a leg over the spindrift, starting it with a bounce that he had seen several humans do when they started their bikes that acted like the original spindrifts thousands of years ago.
Rakha gave a loud laugh. “As Bella would say, you got game.”
SaKura smiled. His teeth were sharper than any knife.
“Did Jenna wear her crown?” The air thickened between them as SaKura’s fear and dread escaped his control briefly. Rakha’s hand went to his chest as he tried to breathe through the emotion that overwhelmed him.
“She placed it on her head before she left.” SaKura grabbed his emotions in a tight grip, reigning them in.
“Your mate is a frya. The living gems will help to sustain her life.” Rakha’s spindrift lifted, waiting for SaKura to lead the way to his mate.
“I’m sorry, my beloved.” Those were the words his mate spoke to him. She wasn’t thinking or she would have remembered she could passwords and thoughts to him. She sent it with the desperation of a female who knew she’d never see her beloved again. The heartache was enough to render him unable if he allowed it to. Beloved. He held the word close, wanting to hear how she felt from her lips. Preferably as they pressed against him.
SaKura’s spindrift lifted as he concentrated on the connection between him and his mate. When he was in the other world with her, he had seen with his own eyes the golden cord connecting them. It got thicker with every minute that passed. There was nowhere Jenna could go that he couldn’t follow. The Tan-ge didn’t know that. They also didn’t know that if one half of a mated pair died, the other would as well. They believed the pain of heartache and the rampage they went on caused others of their kind to end their lives in the most painless way possible.
That lie stood the test of time. Their one shot in the dark hit home. Not because the Tan-ge understood the Dizas. They simply believed females were the way to most societies collapse. Kill the females; the males will follow. To find the Dizas still thriving a century later proved the Tan-ge never understood who its foe was.
“I got her.” A sigh of joy came from him. There would be no sounds that could carry giving away that he was hunting for his mate. He took off with Rakha following. They circled the city twice, each lap getting closer to their destination. The Tan-ge thought by incisively driving in random circles that Jenna’s scent, her very essence, would be so far-flung that it would be impossible to track her. What the tan-ge knew about the Dizans could fit in a thimble, with most of it left empty.
SaKura wanted to speed up but knew that patience and subterfuge were on his side. He split from Rakha, each taking a different direction to look for the Duran. SaKura almost ran into the Duran before it shimmered back into view. The door opened, and he parked the spindrift in the open space before he got off.
“AI.” Jenna hadn’t named her Duran.
“Crown.” Pictures of a male dragging Jenna behind him showed up on the empty windows and the screens. “Your mate wanted you to have these pictures.”
“Do you know where she is?” Pictures of an abandoned house flashed on the windows. The street was lined with them. Knowing which house she was in would make rescuing his mate easier.
The scent of Kala was heavy in the Duran. “Kala?”
“He is with Jenna. I don’t believe she knows.” He understood. Rosetta was afraid to tell Jenna that Kala was with her. If she didn’t know, then she would act unprotected and not send any signals that would make the Tan-ge aware that she was being looked after as well as hunted by her mate. There was the chance his frya would make Kala stay behind, scared that he would get hurt.
“Excellent job, Rosetta. I’m glad that you were the one to be with her.”
“She’s mine.” It was a growl as deadly as SaKura’s. The Duran rejected several Dizas after the females were deceased. The last family she worked for said her pain was unquenchable. He took a risk, but he knew that together Jenna and the AI would be an unstoppable force. That she followed Jenna to help when the time was right confirmed his suspicions.
Rakha set his spindrift down next to SaKura’s. “AI, nice to see you.”
“You also, First Advisor.” She stood on protocol with those who were not hers.
“You’re always so formal. One day you will call me Rakha.”
“Maybe. You have a delightful mate.”
“If I had known that was the way to get into your good graces. I would have found her earlier.” Rosetta’s laugh was pleasant, an alto chime that made the males smile.
“SaKura?” Rakha said.
“Almost,” SaKura said. “I don’t know how to explain it. Think of a door that is creaking with the promise of opening. If you hurry the process, the door becomes stuck at whatever part of the process it was in never opening.”
