Jonas~~

         It's in that small ray of light that shrinks as the intruder closes the door that Iris makes the first move. She flings her dagger through the air, striking him in the shoulder, and he lets out a cry. Stumbling back, he hits the door, and, against the force of his body, the door slams shut, cloaking the room in a sheet of darkness.

As I step out from behind the bed, gun stretched out before me, I hear Iris flick the lamp behind me on a mere second before light halos the room.

The man pants as he yanks the dagger out and tosses it to the floor, blood streaking both the tile and his clothes. Gritting his teeth, he covers the wound with his hand.

Though I don't see any weapons on him, it doesn't mean he doesn't have them hidden somewhere in his clothes. They're the same he wore earlier. How did he get past Percy?

Iris steps beside me, a gun now in her hands and raised before her. "Are you going to introduce yourself?"

The man looks at us, and Iris sucks in a sharp breath as unease spreads up my neck and down my arms.

His eyes are a dark brown.

"You're human." I lower the gun an inch. "I know you."

Iris snaps her head toward me, gaze piercing. "What?"

I take one single step toward him. We haven't met but that doesn't mean I haven't heard about him. Blood seeps around the pale white fingers of the hand he presses to his shirt. "Ean Moretti." The Beta of Borilia's son."

"How is he human?"

Ean rolls those brown eyes. "I was adopted of course."

Iris raises her brows. "From Elleany?"

He lets out a harsh laugh before looking at me. "That would have been easier, wouldn't it?" He braces a hand against the wall and inches along it in the direction of the bathroom.

"Jonas?"

"Beta Moretti got it in his head that he wanted a child from Earth and came to my father. He took him to orphanages across Elleany." I hesitate. "Yours was one of the ones he visited."

"Was I there at . . ."

"From what I've learned yes."

She looks as if she's going to be sick. At the time my father had no idea what her orphanage really was. Otherwise, he would have destroyed it much sooner.

I keep my gun trained on Ean as he pushes open the door to bathroom and flicks the light on.

"My father was convinced he would know who was "destined" to be his child when he saw them." Ean opens a drawer, I imagine, looking for something to patch his wound. "When he saw me, he said I looked like his father as a child."

"Where are you from if not Elleany?"

"A country called Japan. Have you heard of it?"

"Yes." She keeps her gun raised as she draws closer to the bathroom. "And let me guess, Jonas, your father helped his forge the needed documents and everything else?"

I shift my weight between my feet, not looking at her. "Correct."

Ean finds a roll of gauze and yanks down the side of his shirt, revealing his shoulder and the knife wound Iris inflicted.

"How do you think my cousin will react when he learns you've been trying to kill us?"

Thick gauze in hand, Ean wavers before applying it to the wound. "I haven't been trying to kill you."

"Really?" Iris's voice is dry. "Because you almost took my head off this afternoon."

"It wasn't supposed to get that close. My orders—they weren't to kill you. Truly."

"Then what were they?" I step into the doorway.

He scoffs before wincing. "I'm not going to tell you that."

"Really? Then when I speak with my cousin, I'll stick to the story you were here to kill us."

The look he gives me is murderous. "Like he would—"

"Believe me? If it's between his Preeminence and a man he's never met, who do you think Riley will believe?"

After giving me a seething glare, he turns away in a huff and searches through the rest of the cabinets and drawers. "Don't you have anything useful?"

Iris looks affronted. "You came in here to attack us, and now you want us to give you first aid?"

"I already said I wasn't trying to kill you." He grimaces, pressing the gauze harder into his shoulder. "Isn't that enough for you?"

"Not really, no."

"You're not going to bleed to death," I say, "so get over it. What did you do to Percy?" Percy is one of Riley's favorite cousins in the Order. If he hurt him, Riley is not going to forgive that. I also like to think I'm one of Riley's favorites, so maybe Ean is just screwed.

Ean finds the roll of bandages we brought in case we need to cover up our Expiration Dates. "I put something in his coffee to knock him out. He's fine. Just asleep, right outside your door." He takes one end of the bandage in his teeth and starts wrapping it around his shoulder.

Iris leaves my side, headed for the door leading out of our suite. A moment passes before she has her arms under Percy's shoulders and drags him into our room. "You're seriously the worst assassin I've ever heard of."

Ean finishes wrapping the shoulder. "It's a hard profession to excel in on a planet where everyone already knows when they're going to die."

"Sounds like you tried and failed."

Ean's eyes snap to mine. "I'd say your wife isn't a fan of me."

But Riley is.

I sigh. Very few on Amoria speak English. Usually only those in the government learn it. One way the Orders have their children practice is through sending messages to a child in the Society. Pen pals. Interplanetary pen pals.

Riley was Ean's. The Beta's son would have learned English from my cousin while Riley practiced his Amorian on him.

When I look back at Iris, she's tucked a pillow under Percy's head. He doesn't look like he'll wake for hours.

"What do we do with him?" She jerks her head toward Ean.

"You mean you aren't going to offer me your comfy bed?" He delivers the line entirely flat, and so while I should be certain he's joking, I'm not.

I frown. "If you're not here to kill us, you're here to scare us into returning to Elleany early."

"Okay I guess that was obvious." He crosses his arms and then, as if he forgot about the stab wound in his shoulder, he hisses, breaking his arms apart.

"Was Elisana helping you?" I ask.

"My cousin?"

"Do you know many Elisanas?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

He shrugs his uninjured shoulder.

Iris leaves Percy on the floor and stands to join me, her arm brushing mine. "Do you believe we should be dead?"

"Because I'm human you think I can't possibly be happy about these." He points to his Mark. "I might be of Earth, but I'm Amorian."

Iris looksONLYONWATTPADBENDERunimpressed. "So you like having your death date tattooed on you?"

"I didn't say that. Look." He places his hand over his wound again. "My father tells me to do something, I do it. He wanted me to scare you, so I did. You're still here, so clearly I failed. My feelings are invalid in this situation."

Iris picks up the knife, examining the blood. "I don't think they are. They'll determine whether I get to stab you more."

He groans. "Now I see why Riley hardly mentioned you. You're annoying as Gnota." I glower at him, not appreciating my wife being compared to the mythical Amorian vine mushroom.

"I don't think it matters whether the Preeminence is Expired," Ean says. "As far as we know it's only happened twice, so I think my uncles and father are being entirely over dramatic."

I'm sorry; I'm still stuck on the fact that he called my wife a mushroom? "You called my wife an orcana?"

Iris blinks while Ean looks confused.

"Yes? Like Gnota. The orcana bun."

Iris rubs her face, knife in her other hand. "There are worse things to be called than a fairy. Can we please get onto the man in our bathroom who threw a teacup saucer at my head?"

A . . . The tips of my ears begin to burn. This is what happens when someone is fluent in a language but not the mythology. All my life I've been thinking Gnota was an angry mushroom king who covered everything in vines. But rather he was an angry fairy king who choked the life out of his enemies with vines?

It does make a lot more sense.

"In my defense orcana also means mushroom." I say the last word in English.

Ean looks ready to clobber me and not for any reason his father gave him. "I would never disgrace a mushroom by comparing it to your wife."

In an instant, all I see is red.

Iris drops the knife to hold me back. "Breathe," she says.

I glare at Ean as he sinks onto the bathtub's ledge. "Do you really want to be Preeminence?" he asks. "It seems like entirely too much work for someone who could drop dead at any moment."

"You're not an heir. You wouldn't understand."

"True. But having to listen to your cousins give you orders all the time seems awful. If I was an heir, think of all the meetings I'd be stuck in with Alastair. I love the guy. He throws great parties. But he's as obstinate as a bull." He bites his lip. "If I go home, my Order will just send someone else. So why don't you just let me keep tormenting you?"

Iris's jaw drops as she spins around to face him. "Excuse you?"

"Fake, of course. I don't want to go home yet."

"So glad we can be a vacation for you."

I step into the bathroom. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to keep your father and uncles under the impression that you're still following their orders, and in return for not following those orders, I'll let you lie low in Elleany while they blow off steam."

And then he can finally meet his interplanetary pen pal in person.

"Do we have a deal?"

Iris's expression is wary. "How do we know he won't just stab us in the backs when we're not looking?"

"Simple. Because he knows Riley would never forgive him and he couldn't stand that. Could you, Ean?"

He can't hold my gaze and looks away, and I know I have him.

Some of you might have noticed a poll pop up if you were reading Expiration Date or Asleep. Wattpad is testing new features for readers and writers, polling being one of them, and I was included in the test group for polls on my stories. I wanted to share with you the results of Expiration Date's!