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before his arms went around her.
    Jaz took a seat on the other loveseat, and Mick sat beside her, leaving only an inch of space between them.
    “There are a couple of things we all need to talk about,” Mick said, clearing his throat.
    “What?” Ash gave him a knowing look. He knew there was something else going on, but waited until Mick was ready to share.
    “We have bigger worries than just the Clone Council or the Patron’s men coming after Jaz. The Darkness is also coming after her.”
    “The what?” Both Jaz and Brook said at the same time, squinting up their noses with that puzzled look on their face.
    “The Darkness is the bogeyman of the galaxy. Except it’s not a story used to keep children in their beds at night. They’re real. Your Earth talks about the devil. He’s rumored to be one of the top henchmen in the Army of Darkness. They recruit their victims by killing the person they love most. Once The Darkness owns you, there will never be freedom.”
    “The real question here is why would The Darkness be after Mick and Jaz?” Ash asked.
    Mick nodded; that was the answer he needed to try to answer.
    “I don’t know what you know about me, Jaz, so I’m going to go into a little bit of detail. The Created—that would be Ash and me, were born on a different planet in a galaxy your scientists still haven’t found. Much like you, Jaz, we weren’t born; we were created.
    “The males of the planet—we call them Scientists because their interest was in any and every sort of science—used to be warriors. I have seen pictures of their ancestors. They were tall, much like us, with extremely fit bodies and abilities that helped them fight wars. They conquered their planet bringing peace to it, and over the centuries they conquered every planet around them.
    “Then there came a time when no one would challenge them. I’ve no idea how long this time was. But during this time they began to change, became more interested in science and what they could achieve through it and less interested in war. Eventually, their bodies changed. Their brains increased in size and their bodies decreased.
    “Now the planets they conquered wanted to conquer them for the advances they were making on a daily basis. At this point, they knew they needed protection. They devised shields to protect their planet, and that worked well until someone was able to find a way through them. Eventually, they came up with weapons, but none of them were designed to fight a war by this time. They tried robots with the best AI ever designed. They even made full grown killers. Nothing worked long term.
    “In the end, it was one of their females who said, ‘if you want a warrior, he must be birthed and taught to care for this planet above all others.' But they could do nothing the acceptable way. They went on a quest to collect different male specimens as well as still viable DNA from males who didn’t live long enough to be brought back to their lab. They even collected animal DNA and then started combining so they would have warriors who held many different abilities.
    “We all come from one Female. Every Created has the same mother and it helps to bind us together. After that, everything changes. We, the A’rouk brothers are the first Created. Technically Dante was the first Created, and I was the second. Each group of brothers was created in groups of six. We are all roughly born twenty-five years apart. As you can imagine this was hard, Dante was older than I am, then when Julian came along now Dante is fifty years older in Earth terminology. This was not just our group, but all created.”
    “Wait,” Brook interrupted. “How did that happen?”
    “The scientist slowed our aging process in the beginning so by the time Raphael was born Dante was maybe eight even though he had been alive well over a hundred years. After all six of us were born, we were allowed to age more like normal Earth children. The Scientists didn’t want us to