Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Read online

  “Forgive me. I was not respectful of your privacy because my past specimens have not required such consideration.”

  He talked like Spock from the old Star Trek show her dad had loved, Maddy thought distractedly. But he still hadn’t put her down or answered her questions.

  “The rest of my crew,” she said again. “Where are they?”

  Calden sighed. “I do not know an easy way to say this so I must be blunt. From what we can gather, your ship went through a wormhole and came out the other side into an asteroid field. We surmise that it must have collided with one or more of the asteroids because it was ripped in two. We found only the back half of it—you were the only specimen collected by the droids, other than the frozen animal embryos and plants.”

  “Stop calling me a specimen!” Maddy exclaimed. “And are you really saying that I’m the only survivor…that no one else is left? That they’re all…all…dead?”

  The word would scarcely pass her lips. She felt sick saying it. So many people! Pierce, of course—they had grown apart but she’d been trying like hell to put them back together. And there was also Ana, the head biologist, who was becoming a good friend. She had the kindest way about her and she often asked Maddy to come have a cup of tea with her, even though she didn’t have much in her personal stores. Laurence, the engineering officer, had been funny and could always make her laugh and of course Captain Judith had been wonderful—so strong and sure of herself—she always inspired confidence. And so many, many more. Gone. Just…gone.

  Maddy began to shiver, as much from shock as from the cold slime that was drying to a sticky glue on her skin. She had left Earth and most of the people she loved behind hoping to start a new life. And now that life had been ripped from her, along with everyone she knew. It was too much—just too much.

  “G-gone,” she whispered, her teeth chattering. “Th-they’re all g-gone. I’m the only one l-left.”

  Calden’s topaz eyes widened as he regarded her, still cradled in his arms. “You’re shivering—you’re going to start going into hypothermia. I must put you back in the nutrient bath to warm up.”

  He started to lift her back into the tank but Maddy clung to him, pressing herself to his broad chest.

  “No!” she gasped, blinking back tears. “Please, not back in there! I can’t.”

  “But you’re really not ready to be out,” he protested. Still, he stopped trying to put her back in the tank and carried her out of the sliding door instead. They came out into another room, this one equipped with what looked like a shower stall at the far end. At least, it was a large rectangular space that was covered in strange blue-green tiles that looked like scales and there was a drain in the middle of the floor. It, like everything else in the room, seemed to be built for someone Calden’s size which reinforced her feeling of being a child in an adult-sized house. It was very disorientating.

  When they got to the shower area, Calden put her down gently and began fiddling with some knobs and buttons located on the wall.

  “Where…what…what are you going to do to me?” Maddy wrapped her arms around herself, feeling smaller than ever now that he had put her down. He was just so huge—nine feet tall at least, she estimated. The size difference made her feel like a kid being confronted by an adult—her head only came up to his elbow and she wasn’t short. In fact, at five-ten, she’d always felt like she was too tall. Now she wished she was a little taller so she wouldn’t feel so little and defenseless.Not that a few inches more in height would have made any difference. Not when Calden was a freaking giant.

  “Relax,” he rumbled. “I’m just going to rinse the nutrient bath off of you and warm you up some.”

  He detached a wide silver nozzle at the end of a long, snaky silver hose and pressed a button on the blue and green tiles of the wall.

  At once a powerful jet of warm water spurted out, nearly knocking Maddy over.

  “Whoa!” she gasped, feeling like she’d been hit with a fire hose. She staggered backwards under the intense water pressure, her feet, still slick with slime, slipping and skidding all over the place.

  “Oh, forgive me!” Calden quickly made some adjustments and the water pressure lessened considerably. “I am not used to having such delicate…” He hesitated. “Such small, delicate people, as yourself to look after,” he finished at last.

  Well, at least he hadn’t called her a specimen again, Maddy thought dully. Not that it really mattered. She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that everyone in the Kennedy was dead except for her and now she was stuck in a weird alien science station or research facility or whatever this place with its slime tanks and oversized furnishings and fire hose showers was.

  “I’m not that small,” she muttered rebelliously. “You’re just really big.”

  “The Jor’gen Kindred are thirty percent larger than most humanoid species,” he agreed, conversationally. “It is one reason we have difficulty finding females to mate with.”

  Sudden horror came over Maddy.

  “Is that why you saved me and put me in your slime tank to, uh, defrost?” she demanded. “To mate with me?”

  She was suddenly aware all over again of the fact that she was naked—naked and dripping wet and still mostly covered with slime which couldn’t be very attractive but then again, who knew what this huge gray giant with his glowing bronze eyes found attractive? She tried to cover herself with her mostly useless hands and started to back away from him.

  Calden seemed to understand her horror because his eyes widened.

  “No! No, of course not,” he exclaimed quickly. “I will never take a mate—it is forbidden here aboard the Mentat station. I wanted only to study you—and to see if you could give me information about the other specimens from your home world we found in the wreckage of your ship—some of which are already growing.”

  “Study me?” A new fear came into her mind. “Are you planning to cut me up? Dissect me like a frog in a biology lab?”

  Calden looked horrified.

  “I do not know what a frog is but I promise, I would never harm you, Madeline” He sighed. “Forgive me—I fear I am not doing an adequate job reassuring you. I’ve never had a specimen—er person—that I could talk to before.”

  “You might as well call me a specimen,” Maddy said dully. “For all I know, I’m the only human left alive anywhere. I guess that makes me something to study.”

  “Was your planet destroyed?” Calden asked gently. He began to run the stream of water over her again as he spoke and to Maddy’s relief, some of the slime started coming off. She tried to help the process along by rubbing herself but her hands still didn’t want to work right so she wasn’t very effective.

  “It was about to be,” she said, remembering the dark, awful days when the invaders came. “By a race that called themselves ‘The Scourge.’ Our government had been preparing an expedition to go out and seek new Earth-like planets for the human race to live on. They sped up the schedule and got us launched and away before the Scourge could stop us. We got away but then…then…” She frowned. “I can’t remember what happened—what’s wrong with my memories?”

  “They’ll come back to you in time,” Calden assured her.

  “Are you sure no one else made it?” Maddy asked, feeling the lump in her throat again. “No one else from my ship? Ana or Laurence or…or Pierce?”

  “Pierce was your mate?” Calden’s deep voice was neutral.

  “Yes.” Maddy nodded, her dripping hair flinging green slime with the action. Though the stuff he called “nutrient bath” seemed to be coming off her skin, it stuck to her hair stubbornly.

  “And I suppose you loved him very much. I am…sorry for your loss,” Calden murmured.

  “No,” Maddy said bluntly, too emotionally overwrought to keep her thoughts to herself. “No, I didn’t love him. But I was trying to love him. I’d like to think we were trying to love each other.”

  Calden frowned. “Forgive me but I don