Sarai, стр. 38

“Jamie, are you ready?” Alekynwas standing behind him, tall, impossibly beautiful and infinitelydesirable.

“Yeah, dude. Where’s Rune?”

“Bram and Eled are playing withhim.”

“They’d better not be gettinghim too excited. The last thing we want is baby sick all over thefloor of the East Room —that’d be a great way to start the covenantcelebrations!”

“I am certain, my sarai, thatyour White House has seen worse things on its floors.”

The covenant between the humansand PanGal had come into being mere hours after Jamie and Alekynhad met with the President. Officially calledthe Naferi-Human Relations Act, itestablished the Earth Protectorate and laid out rules for Naferibonding with human sarai.

Mostlypeople on Earth called it the Taking,which made Jamie uneasy. However, by the time the remaining Earthgovernments had agreed to it, most surviving humans hailed it as agodsend.

Theconditions of the Taking were pretty benign.

Jamiebrooded a little on that — almost anything couldbe perverted by greed or ambition, but he thought he, the Adan andthe President had locked the sarai taking down to a reasonably safeand mutually acceptable option. Only true sarai could ever betaken, and then only if the humans were unmarried and between theages of nineteen and thirty. There were some exemptions — onlychildren nor those who were the sole support of their parents orsiblings, for example —and human families who wanted to couldrelocate to Naferis to be near their offspring. He suspected thelatter wouldn’t happen all too often, despite the fact that voidtravel made transiting to Earth the equivalent of a trip betweenNew York and Los Angeles.

Once thecovenant had been framed, even before it was ratified, PanGalforces had immediately swung into action, joining the exhaustedhuman forces — a mixture of surviving defense force personnel andcivilians — against the Zill. Little by little, each new daybrought more victories than losses, and a spirit of optimisminfused humanity as it became evident that the end of days had notyet arrived. The Zill feeder stations were dismantled and slowly,cautiously, millions of beleaguered and frightened people emergedfrom hiding places or were rescued from feeder bots, traumatized,terrified but alive.

It hadn’t been easy.For some reason the queens, instead ofretreating, had ordered their drones and slave fighters to continueattacking. PanGal scientists speculated that the queens knew thatthe humans, with their unique genetic compatibility with the Naferiand the other Foretimer species variants, represented a greaterthreat to the Zill than had earlier been realised.

Jamie wasn’t sure it was such agood thing taking Rune to Earth with them, given that not all theZill threat had been neutralised, but he seriously wanted to showhis fellow humans how beautiful Naferi-human babies were - and Runewas pretty darn gorgeous in his opinion.

He actually considered hislittle son, now nine months old — he’d been born just as thecovenant was approved — to be their best secret weapon.

With his button nose and darkcurls, at first glance Rune mostly looked like Jamie — untilyou saw his bright blue eyes and pretty tufted ears and yourealised he looked like Alekyn.

Once he smiled, of course, Runewas his own self, and no-one Jamie knew had so far been immune tohim.

Yeah, Rune would win hearts andminds, could persuade the humans — his people, he reminded himself— that they’d made the right decision trusting PanGal and theNaferi. He only hoped Matt and Theo wouldn’t make too many jokes athis expense when they finally were reunited.

If they were reunited.Commander Tain, knowing how anxious he was about his brothers andGlynn, had issued executive orders for their recovery. Matt hadbeen located pretty quickly by the Naferi-human joint commandforces — they hadn’t spoken yet, but Jamie knew he’d been fightingagainst the Zill in one of the cities in the north of their homestate — but there was no sign of Theo anywhere. Apparently he andMatt had been separated early on after the invasion in a battlenear the farm, which had become a sort of Zill ground zero.

Jamie’s heart contracted. Hecouldn’t bear to think that Theo, with his sweet smile and gentledisposition, had ended his life silent screaming in agony in one ofthe Zill feeder stations, like so many millions of other humans andother Earth creatures. As for Glynn…

“My dearest one — ”

Showtime, he thought,putting his sad thoughts away and turning to join his Sarat, hisbeloved Sarat. “You grab Rune from his uncles.”

They met Arakin in thecommunications centre. He looked a bit nervous, but Jamie thoughthe hid it well. His hakama was a gleaming obsidian black,highlighted with diamond pins at the waist. His swords weresheathed crossways across his back and he looked the image of acontrolled and disciplined Nafari battle thane. He winked roguishlyat Jamie who grinned back. Arakin really was a sexy beast, with hiscascading golden-red hair, his wicked dimples and the flirtatioussparkle of his pale green eyes.

His own sexy beast moved closerto him, placing a possessive arm around his shoulders and glaringat Arakin.

Tain, standing nearby,chuckled. After a moment Alekyn flushed and then laughed. Rune,picking up the humour, giggled adorably.

“Okay,” Jamie said tartly, “nowwe’ve got the cock flexing out of the way, we should probably getgoing.”

Rune reached out chubby handsto the Adan’s brother, who lifted him out of Jamie’s arms andtickled him ferociously.

“Who knows, Jamie — maybe myown sarai awaits me, and I’ll soon have a little one like this,too.” He tossed the baby into the air. “I can’t wait!”

The End