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“Well, that’s true, but I was taught to use every possible advantage. It’s one of the most basic rules of war. If you didn’t have the ability to turn invisible, you wouldn’t have even touched me.”
"Hyperbole," Ash said mildly.
Noa caught Arin and Abbey’s expressions. They both looked decidedly unimpressed.
“Two alpha-males in one room is too many,” Abbey said, switching to English. “What happens if there isn’t a clear winner? Do they just keep fighting it out until someone comes out on top?”
Arin waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, ignore them. I think they actually enjoy ribbing each other. You just wait and see. They’ll be back at it tomorrow, and in each of their minds, they'll declare themselves the winner. I'll bet they're pretty evenly matched, although I hear Ash has a little bit of an edge.”
Noa wanted to tell Ashrael to take it easy, because she’d seen the large black bruise blossoming across his ribcage, but there was no way she could ever tell her Kordolian to stop fighting.
Arin was right. Intense physical combat against opponents of his caliber was something that made her matehappy.
Abbey made a face as Ami squirmed in her lap and started sliding downwards, slipping down beneath the table. “Ow!Kids,” she sighed, “have no concept whatsoever that little elbows and knees can actually cause pain.”
Noa laughed. “I hear you. I grew up with a little brother. Skinny, lanky kid. Elbows so sharp he could skewer a person.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Abbey exclaimed. “Where does he live?”
Noa smiled. Although she’d become close with quite a few of the women, she still kept her personal life fairly private. “Tomas is in California, studying. He’s a PhD student at UC.”
“He must be a smart cookie. What does he study?”
“Galactic politics and the new universal order, or something like that. He doesn't even realise how ironic that is. But you’re right. Heisa smart kid.”
Noa missed him a little.
Her disappearance had hit him hard. He was all she had, really. Both her parents were no longer alive, and Noa wasn’t so keen on getting in touch with any of their relatives or her former friends on Earth.
She’d visited him a few times since she’d been rescued from those terrible experimental SynCorp labs; since she’d done the unthinkable and traveled all the way to Kythia, and the planet itself had reacted to her presence.
Since she’d found her soul-mate in the man beside her.
Tomas had been shocked but overjoyed to see her. Unable to tell him much about her current existence—how did one explainanyof that?—Noa had kept things simple and made up a story about being in an accident. That she’d disappeared and was presumed dead because she was in a coma. That she needed time and space. It was hardly plausible, but she’d given Tomas no choice but to accept.
And of course, she hadn’t introduced Ash to him yet. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Aunty Noa!” Little arms emerged from under the table as a blur of lilac and platinum and pink-rainbows-and-clouds-jumpsuit appeared. Ami wrapped herself around Noa’s legs and curiously peered at the cloth bag and its mysterious contents. “What’s that?”
Noa’s smile widened, turning warm. The kid was sharp. Her attention had gonestraightto theka’quiinfused device.
But that was to be expected. ShewasTarak and Abbey’s child, after all.
“Why don’t I show you?” Like a magician with a secret trick, she reached into the bag and retrieved the transparent orb.
Ami’s eyes went wide as she caught sight of the spinning balls inside. Immediately, she reached for it. “Mine?”
“All yours,” Noa said, her heart swelling as the child took the orb with her tiny hands and started staring intensely at the trinkets inside.
Noa caught Abbey’s attention. “Pull this out when she’s getting gnarly with her abilities. Gosh, I can’t even imagine how hard it is to manage a child of her age who’s already starting to manifest the Talent. This will make her focus on a single concentrated point, and hopefully, over time, she’ll start to do it automatically whenever she’s feeling a surge of theka’qui.Don’t worry. I designed it to be practically unbreakable.”
Abbey beamed. “That’s brilliant, Noa.” Then she looked sternly at Ami. “What do you say to Aunty Noa, Ami?”
Noa looked down into big violet eyes that were the perfect blend of human and alien.
“T'ank you,” Ami muttered, distracted by her toy. She set it on the floor and rolled it, watching in fascination as the colorful orbs inside remained suspended.
The ball disappeared under the table.
