13
Veta’s words were telling. Was she still a loyal subject to her Empire, or was she something else?
And where did that put her?
In unsafe territory, Wrathin felt.
And why that bothered Wrathin, he didn’t know. But it did. A great deal.
Already her own people were after her. Had she already jeopardized her place in the Terran Empire? Where would she go?
He watched her come back from relieving herself, the way her braids swung in the air. She twisted them onto themselves and into their own knot atop her head, making her look almost as tall as he was.
Here.
She would stay here if her people rejected her.
Wrathin blinked.
The thought was strange, so unexpected, he was not sure where it came from.
But the more he considered the possibility, the more he was confident it was the right path for Veta. If she was in danger, there was no safer place for her than here, on Sol, with him. He would make sure she was protected.
He snapped two low branches, moving them out of Veta’s way so she would not have to climb over them.
“Thanks,” she said when she came back and smiled at him. They returned to their trek. “So how old are you, Wrathin?”
“Is age an important construct to Terrans?”
She shrugged. “Just conversation. Not super important.”
“I am thirty-five standard years.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “I’m twenty-eight standard.”
Wrathin pulled up some branches to allow them passage. “You were born before the war.”
“Yep. So were you.” She glanced around at the vegetation. “Old enough to remember before, young enough to not be able to do anything about it.”
“We thought we were done fighting,” Wrathin said.
“What do you mean?” Veta asked.
“We left our homeworld searching for a place that had what we needed to survive.”’
“That’s common knowledge,” she said.
“What is uncommon is that we had to escape our builders.”
“Your builders?”
“Those that manufactured us.”
“I get it, the cyborg stuff. You didn’t do it yourself?”
“Not entirely.”
“What happened?”
