Page 54 of Enzo

"I'll see you in the morning." He walked out the front door, closing it silently behind him.

She picked up the food. "Who's ready to eat?"

Enzo pushed the couch back while she grabbed some plates. He laid out a blanket, and they ate picnic-style on the living room floor. He ordered pepper steak and orange chicken. They traded food and laughed. When they finished, he cleaned up before pulling her close.

"I think it's time for those answers, but I'm not sure I know them all. I need to tell you a little more about my background. My planet is one of the five larger planets in our solar system. At one point, all five planets were at war. Over the centuries, many of the issues have been settled. Now only two of the planets are at war. As long as the two planets in question keep their conflict confined to their planets, the other planets ignore them. They act as if it wasn't happening.

"War can only happen for so long before too many brothers and sons, sisters and daughters die. Then there's a cry for peace because the cost of peace isn't as high as the cost of life. Except these planets resisted; they didn't want to give up their war, so they created us in their image to carry on the war for them. We were considered replaceable. Each of us has elements in our enzymatic profile that triggers the sensors on our planet that let the people around know we are not born Kur'iks.

"We live in dormitory-type housing on the outer rim of the planet, and we fight for months, sometimes years, in a rotation before we’re allowed a day off. When we fell into your Earth's gravitational pull, we were on a two-year rotation. We ate, slept, and fought. Sometimes we didn't get a chance to eat or sleep."

He reached out and played with her hair, amazed that she was still lying in his arms. How much longer would that last?

"The war between the two planets had been going on for centuries, so they designed us with longer life spans, which meant they didn't have to replace us as often. Only if we died in battle. They also gave us a ramped-up sex drive and enhanced our bodies, but we're born knowing that we're not allowed to procreate and that we are unable to bond with a female. If we were to do something as crazy as try to impregnate a female, the child would be killed when he or she was born.

"We never worried about that happening because we were only allowed to have sexual relations with females that were infertile. There was a rumor, more like a myth, that floated through the battalions when we weren't fighting, that we could bond. It was risky and inevitable if you found the right female. There was a rumor that we would have no control, our teeth would grow, and we would sink them deep into the female. It would bond us together.

"I never believed the rumor, none of us did. We thought it was just something to give us hope on cold nights when the reality of being alone until we died was more than we could handle."

Deja sat up and moved a little bit away from him. "You bonded us together? Is that marriage for your people?"

"I think it's as close as we can get to your term of marriage. When I bit you, I gave you some of my enzymes. You're still human but..."

"But what? Will my eyes glow or my teeth grow sharp? Will I change into the animal you became? What will happen to me?"

Why aren't I freaking out on him? I should be crying, denying that anything happened. I should be running for the door.

Please doallthose things. I willdelightin reminding you about them later.

You've lived through your version of hell. Is being bitten by Enzo that bad?

Being bitten by him wasn't freaking her out, which is why she was freaking out. She wanted to have what she felt was the human response. The normal response. Instead, she was very interested in what she was learning, and in the back of her mind, she knew that he was alien all along and accepted the possibility that something could happen.

"Why didn't you warn me that this could happen?" That was the question she wanted answered.

"I didn't want to lose you, so I convinced myself that it was all rumors, and I didn't need to be concerned."

She nodded. That reasoning sounded familiar, like when she didn't tell him the truth about Matt for fear of him not wanting her. She could argue that this was bigger, and it was, but she understood.

"Tell me about Ven." She was still sitting away from him. She was sitting with her legs tucked under her, and her arms crossed in front of her chest. What she needed now was the truth.

"I was on rotation for five years when I came off. A beautiful infertile smiled at me. I thought she was playing a game, making fun of me for all her friends to see. Declyn convinced me to talk to her. Her name is Venize. I felt lucky when she invited me back to her place. We spent the night together. The next day, we were called back for duty, off to another rotation. I never saw her again. Eight years later, we were back in that city. We didn't know how long it would be before they called us back to rotation.

"I remember drinking that night. Declyn and I shared a room. Early that next morning, my com went off, waking both of us. It was a number I didn't know. When I opened it, Venize was there. She told me that she had somehow conceived a child from the time we were together. She had kept him under the radar for thelast eight years, but now she was finally settling down, and her husband refused to raise the child of a Kur'ik warrior.

"He was going to put Ven out on the streets. The minute a scanner picked up my blood in his veins, they would exterminate him like vermin. She pleaded with me to get to him first. While she was pleading, Declyn and I were racing through the streets. He was so little to be almost eight. There was a scanner moving down the street. We ran to him, burying him between our bodies. I think we almost crushed him. When the scanner moved to where we were, it could only read Declyn and myself, and because Ven is from my enzymes, it read him as part of me.

"We took him in but couldn't tell anyone that he was my child. We told them that we rescued a new prototype that was heading to termination. If anyone knew about him, there was a chance that the wrong people would hear, and they would kill him."

"I think you need to tell him."

"You're right. I'm still protecting Ven, but he has a right to know."

"I think he knows, but confirmation would be nice," Deja said.

He nodded and waited. He would talk to Ven tomorrow, but today he needed to know if he had lost Deja. Why hadn't he been honest with her from the first day? Because humans didn't do well knowing they were sharing their planet with a more advanced species.

Well,what are you going to do?

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