7

"Took you long enough" she finally said once he had blurted it all out.

"What?"

"Owen… I have watched him around you… all of you. I have watched the way you all talk in half sentences like you are all having the same conversation… I found it weird until I realized you were talking in your heads too. You don't even know you do it." She laughed "I knew on that night in the pub… I knew even then that you were of the same blood as Ianto."

"Why did you not say?"

"Say what. I am a sleeper agent tasked with the quest to find the Royal bloodline here on this planet and protect it at all costs? Come on love… for all I knew it was a story my grandmother used to tell me to make me sit still while she cut my hair. My family was of the guard too… sent here to hunt… when the time came and the signal given… find… protect. I didn't' realize it was true... not until the night Hunter was born and I felt it. You didn't know… in there weeping all over the pace… out here I was weeping too. I felt it… I felt the blinding light of him entering our timestreams. I am here to protect him. Hunter. He is a pure. He is a prince. Ianto knew the moment he felt that first flutter… why he was so dammed determined to get things squared away… Jack onside as a proactive mate… and somehow out in the middle of nowhere those hunting might never find him."

"And the only ones that come around can't tell their arses form their elbows" Owen sat back "Clever bastard."

"The love is true. Ianto and Jack… it is true."

"Yeah… the bond hums when they smile at one another" Owen agreed. "OH MY FUCKING GOD how did I miss that?"

"We were too close to it… in the epicenter… the eye or the storm as it were." She smiled as she reached out and touched his cheek "but here we are. Both our families drawn to protect the next great king… together. Here in a time of wonderful happenings."

"Wonderful … horrible happenings" Owen corrected.

"And we know our jobs, we were born to them... bred for this. Ianto put the talisman on… he wears the key. He knows… deep down he feels the shift in the cosmos as much as we do. IT is time." She said as she rose "Come on lover. Let's get ready too. The Hunt is coming for us."

"And we will make sure the traps are epic" he said with glee.

"Booby traps" Toshiko said knowing it would please him and he giggled as he repeated it.

"Boobies"

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Max was leaning against the barn door watching as Jack checked the oil in the old tractor, the huge discs on the back for tilling the soil not something he remembered being on there "Wrong time of year for those."

"I like the look of them on there" Jack replied as he stood back and canted his head "Ya know… I can see a lot of damage being done with those."

Max chortled to himself as he walked away, slowing his walk as he turned to stare into the far tree line with a frown. He moved a bit faster towards his house behind the large fake spaceship.

He had things to do too.

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Hildoer stood waiting for a moment to speak, the blood long since dried on his exoskeleton. Ianto finally invited him and watched the others rising from their chair as the others turned to find the bugs in the house, some of them in a bad way.

"We was attacked" Hildoer said as he waved a claw at one of his brothers "The house is gone. We defended as best we could… sent many in other directions so there could be no trial left to here.. then when I was sure we have no tail.. I come."

"Are you OK?" Ianto asked softly.

"We endure. They did not" came the clacking reply.

"So they are getting close, desperate" Jack sat back at the table and motioned for the bug to join them but he headed for the wall space with his brothers and sisters, tired and relived to be home. Not the one they had in the city… the one they preferred. Near the man they were trying to protect.

Sleeper agents too.

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"Bastards" Rhiannon spat with anger, turning in a small circle "I wanna kill them all."

"Come on sissy… you stay here with me most of the time now… all the good things from our life are here… mama's things are here… what was that house other than some pots, pans, clothes and sour memories?" Ianto cajoled her "the insurance will build you a nice little cottage in the back field anyway right?"

She turned to face him and considered "really?"

"You are here most of the time in the RV so… why not?"

John left to update the others in the team so they might close ranks a little more.

Time to place more traps.