“I will,” I said. “I’ll be glad to come back here and learn more about my life, my family. But I’m tired now. I feel … I need to go back to things that feel familiar.”
“I was hoping to convince you to stay here until tomorrow night,” he said.
I shook my head. “Take me back.”
“Shori, it would be best for you to stay here. Wright has hidden you successfully for this long, but if anything went wrong, if even one person spotted you with him and decided to make trouble—”
“You promised to give us a week,” I said. “That was the first promise you made me.”
He stared down at me. I stared back.
After a while, he sighed and turned away. “Child, I’ve lost everyone but you.”
Stefan said, “All of our female family is dead, Shori. You’re the last.”
I wanted more than ever to go home, to be away from them and alone with Wright. And yet they pulled at me somehow—my father and my brother. They were strangers, but they were my father and my brother. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I need to go.”
“We Ina are sexually territorial,” Iosif said. “And you’re a little too old to be sharing territory with the adult males of your family—with any adult Ina male since you’re too young to mate. That’s what’s bothering you.”
“You mean I feel uncomfortable with you and Stefan just because you’re male?”
“Yes.”
“Then how can I live here?”
“Let’s go back to Wright. I think you’ll feel better when you’re with him.” He led me away from Stefan toward a side door. I looked back once, but Stefan had already turned away.”
“Is he feeling territorial, too?” I asked.
“No. He’s willing for you to be here because he fears for you—and for himself. And you’re not mature yet, so there’s no real danger …”
“Danger?”
He led me through the door, and we headed back across the lawn.
“Danger, Iosif?”
“We are not human, child. Male and female Ina adults don’t live together. We can’t. Mates visit, but that’s all.”
“What is the danger?”
“As your body changes, and especially as your scent changes, you will be perceived more and more as an available adult female.”
“By my brothers?”
He nodded, looking away from me.
“By you?”
Another nod. “We won’t hurt you, Shori. Truly, we won’t. By the time you come of age, I’ll have found mates for you. I was already talking to the Gordon family about you and your sisters … Now … now I intend to sell your mothers’ land. That money should be enough to give you a start at a different location when you’re a little older.”
“I don’t think I want to live here.”
“I know, but it will be all right. It will only be until you look more adult. Your brothers and I have our genetic predispositions—our instincts—but we are also intelligent. We are aware of our urges. We can stand still even when the instinct to move is powerful.”
“You said I’m a child.”
“You are, now more than ever with your memory loss. You can play sexually with your symbionts, but you’re too young to mate. You can’t yet conceive a child, and you’re not yet as large or as strong as you will be. Your scent right now is interesting, but for us, it’s more irritating than enticing.”
We went back into his house. “You’ll take us back to the ruin tonight,” I told him. “You said you would. Were you speaking the truth?”
“I was, but I shouldn’t have said it. I’m afraid for you, Shori.”
“But you’ll do it.”
There was a long silence. Finally he agreed. “I will.”
We went down the long hallway again and into the great room. There, Wright sat alone in one of the large chairs. The other three humans had left him. I went up to him, wanting to touch him from behind, wanting to lay my hands on his shoulders, but not doing it. I wondered what Iosif’s symbionts had said to him, what they had made him feel about being with me. I walked around and stood in front of him, looking down, trying to sense his mood.
He looked up at me, his face telling me only that he was not happy. “What happens now?” he asked.
“We go home,” I said.
He looked at Iosif, then back at me. “Yeah? Okay.” He got up, then spoke to Iosif. “You’re letting her go? I didn’t really believe you would do that.”