Taming the Giant Read online

  Taming the giant

  A Kindred tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  Taming the Giant

  Evangeline Anderson

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Evangeline Anderson Books

  Copyright © 2018 by Evangeline Anderson

  E-book License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the e-book retailer of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  *Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model*

  To be the first to find out about new releases

  click HERE to join my newsletter.

  *Author's Note: This book was inspired by some pictures I found on Pinterest called The Girl and the Giant. It made me wonder what would happen if there were a giant race of Kindred who ended up with normal sized women. I wish I could include one of the pictures here but I have been unable to get in contact with the artist, who goes by the name of eleathyra on DeviantArt. If you'd like to see some of her work, you can check the Pinterest board I made with her pictures on it HERE . She is an amazing artist and I wish I could thank her for the inspiration she gave me for this novel.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek at Bridging the Distance, a new Kindred Tales novel featuring Twin Kindred

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  Newsletter Sign up

  Prologue: The Jor'gen Kindred

  Thousands of years ago, a branch of the Kindred defied the will of the High Council and left the main Kindred race to make a trade with the Jor’gen—a race of people who were thirty percent larger than most other humanoid species.

  “This trade will make your descendants too large to ever trade with another people again,” the High Chancellor warned. “And as you know, no people can thrive forever after binding themselves to the Kindred. Our genes ensure that most of your children will be male. Eventually there will be no females left—then what will you do?”

  But the warriors refused to listen. Many of them were already dream-sharing with the Jor’gen females and they were unwilling to ignore the calls of their hearts. And so they left, never to return.

  The Jor’gen home world was many millions of light years away from First World, the Kindred’s home planet, and the Jor’gen Kindred, as they became known, eventually lost touch with the Kindred High Council and the rest of their race. They grew to enormous size—over three meters, or up to nine feet tall—but this was not a problem because the Jor’gen females they bonded with were also larger than average.

  Over the centuries, the Kindred genes, which almost always skewed male, began to assert themselves. As the High Chancellor had warned so long ago, almost all the babies born were male. There were fewer and fewer females available for bonding. The Jor’gen Kindred were in danger of dying out.

  At last they decided that it was time to go searching for new mates, just as their ancestors from the long-lost First World had done so many millennia ago. They knew their large size might make finding new females difficult but it was determined that they had to try—otherwise they faced extinction. They built a Mother Ship of their own with a green sun for its power source and a Sacred Grove in which to worship their Goddess, the Mother of All Life, who watches over all her children, no matter how distant they may be from each other.

  Then the Jor’gen Kindred took to the skies, looking for females they could bond with and love, praying that they would not be the last of their race. But there were some among them that worried they had indeed, reached the end of their genetic line.

  For what normal-sized female would want to bond…with a giant?

  Chapter One

  Alanah Kingsdaughter sighed and wiped sweat from her brow as she finished heaving the last basket of grain into the storage cave beneath the castle.

  “There—that should last us,” she said to Jenla, but her voice sounded more worried than certain.

  “Of course, my Princess.” Jenla nodded comfortingly. She was Alanah’s maid as well as her best friend—they had grown up together in the gray stone castle which had been built by Alanah’s forefathers. And now she worked faithfully beside Alanah though both their hands were roughened with the effort of getting the harvest in.

  There were some who had sneered at the idea of manual labor—gentle women who cried out in horror at the idea of getting their hands dirty or staining their fine linen skirts. But Alanah had laid down the law—who else was going to do the work now that all the men were all gone? Everyone must pitch in or they would all starve.

  To forestall grumbling and rebellion, she led the effort herself. With the faithful Jenla beside her, she plowed and planted, watered and hoed, harvested and threshed until her hands blistered and bled and finally callused with the rough, ugly work.

  The ladies of the castle had complained amongst themselves—especially Thiera, the Elder Witch, who considered herself above any kind of work but her magic—but none dared do so in Alanah’s hearing. After her father had passed into death, she had sat on his cold, gray stone throne with its worn red velvet cushion and declared that any who didn’t help with the harvest would not be fed when the harsh winter months came.

  No one was excused—the smallest child or the oldest woman could still walk behind the reapers and gather stalks of grain which had been missed. And everyone else of able and strong body had to take part as well. There could be no more ladies of leisure now that their population was reduced by half.

  Will it be enough?

  Alanah counted the scanty baskets of grain anxiously. She and everyone else in their small kingdom had worked diligently but the harvest was still much smaller than it had been in the past.

  We worked so hard—I ruined my hands—and for what result? Such a small harvest! Would it have been better if the men were still alive? Or is the ground simply giving less each year, as Papa used to say?

  Well, at least they had only half as many mouths to feed as they'd had a year ago this time. Before the plague came… But that thought made a lump rise in her throat and Alanah pushed it away.

  She stared ruefully down at her dirty palms, trying to pull her mind away from the past. Their beauty wasn’t that much of a loss—her big hands were far more deft at plowing and planting than they ever had been at the tiny, delicate needlework gentle ladies were supposed to excel at. It was as though she was born to be a farmer rather than a princess.

  Well now I’m both, she thought and a harsh laugh broke from her lips.

  “My Princess?” Jenla looked up at her uncertainly. “Something amuses you?”

  “No, not really.” Alanah sighed and smiled down at her friend. It wasn’t hard to look down at Jenla because though her friend was the normal height for a female—around 5’6"—Alanah herself most decidedly was not. Her hands weren’t the only part of her that was big—all of her was, to put it mildly, much too