"Somehow I don't think you’re helping your case." Kira leaned toward Jace.
He shot her a dirty look. "In the eyes of humans, I'm considered a mature adult."
"Try middle-aged," Kira said with a wicked smile, touching on the phrase he'd carefully avoided using.
Jace snarled. "I'm not middle-aged. I have years to go before I'm considered that. I haven't even had kids yet."
Kira blinked, surprised. Jace had grown up an only child of only children and had lost both parents in the early part of the war. He'd always talked about the family he'd have one day when the war was over.
"Better get on that," Kira told him, keeping her voice light. "You don't want to be chasing them around when you're an old man."
Amila leaned forward, her gaze curious as she stared at Jace. "You're really forty years old?"
"Thirty-nine."
"It's one year, Jace. Just get over it," Kira told him.
"It's an important year," he said stubbornly, trying for dignity and failing.
"That's right, boss man," Nova called. "You hold onto your thirties as long as you can. Once you hit forty, it's all downhill from there."
Kira bit her lip to keep from laughing as Jace's shoulders bowed, the man's words hitting him where it hurt.
As much shit as they were giving Jace, he was right. He wasn't quite middle-aged. With health advances from the last century of space travel, humans now lived to be close to a hundred and fifty years—longer if they could afford the anti-age boosters. Jace was at least four decades from retirement and considered to be in the prime of his life.
"How old are you?" Pare, one of Graydon'soshotawarriors, asked Blue.
"Twenty-six."
Pare choked as several of Graydon's people stared at Blue with wide eyes.
"What?" she asked.
"You're a child," Amila said in a hushed voice. She turned to Jace. "How can you let a child serve in such a dangerous position?"
He started to defend himself before giving up and shaking his head.
Kira took pity on him. "Blue's not a child. She's considered a full adult."
She might be considered an adult now, but when she'd attached herself to Kira's team fourteen years ago, she had been a child in truth.
Blue had learned the hard way—war spared no one. Not even children. The only way Kira had known how to protect her was to show her how to fight and keep her close.
It'd worked out for Blue. The tactic wasn't as successful for others.
"None of us have anything on the Grandma over there," Raider said with a curl of his lip.
Kira didn't react to the statement or the barely veiled dislike there.
"You're what, sixty-five?" he asked.
"She's ninety-two," Graydon said, not pausing as he strode down the hallway, leaving the rest of them staring after him in surprise.
Kira hurried after him. "How do you know? I thought you didn’t know who my parents were."
"I didn’t. Not until Liara confirmed you were a first cousin. She only has one—a girl, stolen days after her birth. If you're her cousin, as Liara believes you are, it would make you ninety-two," he explained.
"Damn Phoenix, you're so old," Blue said.
