"He has his best ideas when he's drunk."
"Interesting." She kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the narrow bed beside him, resting her head on the uninjured side of his chest.
"What are you doing?" he asked. "Not that I mind. I don't mind at all. But won't you get in trouble if you don't sleep in your room tonight?"
"I'm staying. Someone needs to watch over you, and my roommates might not even notice that I didn't sleep there tonight. We don't work the same hours." Her arm draped across his stomach. "I want to take care of my hero."
"I'm no hero."
"Yes, you are." Her arm tightened around him possessively, or at least that was how he wanted to interpret it.
"Stop arguing and go to sleep," she added.
24
AREANA
"Darius looks so much like Kalugal when he was little." Areana reached out to stroke her grandson's soft cheek. "Same hair, same eyes."
"He has nothing of me." Jacki adjusted her hold on the squirming toddler. "I was just the delivery truck."
"Don't say that." Kalugal leaned to kiss Jacki's cheek. "He has a lot of you on the inside."
Areana smiled at both her sons, a warmth spreading through her. Having them both with her, getting to know them as her sons, and them getting to know each other as brothers, was a gift she'd never dared hope for during all those centuries of separation.
"Kalugal and Lokan also look like their father," she said. "Kalugal has my eyes, but Lokan has nothing of me."
An awkward silence followed the mention of Navuh. It always did. The male who had taken their sons from her as infants, who had raised them in the Dormant enclosure without ever letting them know who their mother was. He'd done it to protect them,to shield them from the vicious competition of harem politics, but it had been cruel nonetheless.
He could have found another way.
He'd had the Brotherhood under his absolute control. How difficult could it have been for him to keep his real sons safe?
All those lost years.
All those moments she should have had with them.
Darius stared at Areana with his too serious eyes as if he wanted to communicate something that he didn't have the words for yet.
"He has a strong personality," Areana said. "Like his father."
"Thank you, Mother." Kalugal dipped his head. "Darius will be a force to be reckoned with when he grows up."
"I have no doubt," Lokan said. "I just wonder if he will also be a rebel like his father."
Kalugal chuckled. "I'm sure he will. It runs in the family. It just took you much longer than it took me."
"True." Lokan draped his arm around Carol's shoulders. "And I never would have jumped ship if not for Carol."
It struck Areana that her sons were still learning to be a family. A thousand years separated them in age, and they'd never been close even before Kalugal escaped during WWII. They were strangers learning to be brothers, just as they were learning to be her sons and she was learning to be their mother.
Carol leaned over the coffee table and lifted the teapot. "Anyone need a refill?"
"Please." Areana held out her cup. "The tea you brought is excellent. It tastes of coconut."
"That's because it has coconut in it." Carol poured the aromatic liquid into the cup.
She was a lovely young woman who, apparently, had a colorful past. Areana didn't know all the details yet, but what she'd learned so far was enough to make her blush. Then again, what had she expected from a female who had infiltrated the harem to find her?
