His to Claim: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance - Taylor Vaughn Page 0,54
been keeping from D’Rek during our supposed “tell me everything” conversations.
Shoving those thoughts away, I smile up at my new hybrid friend. “I’m good, L’Than. How are you doing?”
I smother a laugh as I watch him struggle to compose an answer in the language he’d never spoken before meeting me. And I find myself once again feeling grateful for N’Maryah.
After I told her the story of how my sister died on the first day we lunched together, she’d insisted I meet “one of her admirers,” a young male who was a hybrid like my nephew and had a great curiosity about his human side.
“He is the friend I mentioned in possession of his own long-distance flyer. He is not a baby, but I believe you two will enjoy speaking with each other, and he can provide you with an escort. I want to show you all the places there are to picnic on the palace grounds, and he knows his way around the gardens well. He can bring you to me every day, while I set up our lunch.”
She’d been right. The red and brown swirled hybrid male who’d met me in the garden on the day after D’Rek left for his trip wasn’t a baby, in any sense of the word.
On the contrary, L’Than was only a couple of solars younger than me and he quizzed me often about his chances of winning N’Maryah’s agreement to marriage. I got the feeling he’d only agreed to escort me to different meadows on the shockingly large palace grounds in order to get in her good graces.
But he was also curious about the humans on New Terrhan. Over the last four days, he’d asked me many questions about the planet where he’d been born and the list of now forty-year-old women who could possibly be his mother.
Knowing that he’d never meet the woman he was so curious about made me sad. Yet L’Than struck me as carefree in a way that his female counterparts weren’t back on my planet.
On New Terrhan, both hybrid and full humans worked in the community fields from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond with only a short break for lunch. But L’Than seemed to have plenty of leisure time to meet with me in the palace gardens and escort me to wherever N’Maryah had chosen for that day’s picnic.
Crazily enough to my ears, he spoke full-on Xalthurian, complete with clicks, hisses, and scratching sounds. But he regarded me as a teacher, often asking how to say certain words in New Terrhan, then pronouncing them over and over until he got them just right.
I’d often wondered about the fate of the boys who were ripped from their mother’s arms on New Terrhan, but to my surprise, L’Than seemed…happy. Especially now that the war is over. He’d been on the verge of conscription, when they announced the Kaidorians’ request for peace talks.
Now that he wasn’t under any threat of ever having to fight, his life was pretty much perfect. He’d grown up, if not loved in the way of human parents, certainly valued. He’d never wanted for anything. Never even had to do work or undergo schooling he did not wish for himself, thanks to the Xalthurians’ Knowledge Expansion Educational system, a program that could be uploaded directly into Xalthurian brain waves while sleeping and therefore required no classroom time whatsoever.
Since Xalthuria was a planet with very few vices, he’d grown up having what an old planet entertainment might have called good, wholesome fun. From what I could tell, L’Than’s life now consisted exclusively of picnics, faun-riding competitions, and whatever else he considered enjoyable.
He’d liked growing up on Xalthuria, with its perfect people, perfect educational system, and perfect weather. Other than not yet having N’Maryah’s agreement to marriage, he had assured me many times that he was very happy.
In fact, after several long moments of thought, he answer’s my question about how he’s doing today with, “I am…perfectly…happy…thank you…for…asking.”
Perfectly happy, just like I had mostly been since agreeing to stay here with D’Rek. It made me wonder—no matter how much I tried not to—how perfectly happy I would be if I lived here, too. Like L’Than.
“Ki’Ra? I…say…words…wrong?”
L’Than’s halting question jogs me from my unsettled thoughts. “No, you said them exactly right. I was just…thinking.”
“I…think…too…and…I…think—essh!” He winces in a way that very much reminds me of a human despite his swirled face. “Apologies, Ki’Ra, I must switch to my own language to speak these next thoughts as they are complicated.”