Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Read online

  A tear rolled down her cheek and then another and another. Before she could stop herself, Maddy was sobbing.

  She buried her face in the soft, giving pillow and tried to muffle the sobs. She knew Calden was trying to sleep and she didn’t want to wake him.

  But he must have heard her anyway because a large, warm hand was suddenly cupping her shoulder.

  “Madeline,” he rumbled, his deep voice worried. “What can I do?”

  “Hold me.” The cry came from her heart. She barely knew the big Kindred but right now she needed him. “Please, Calden,” she whispered through her sobs. “Just hold me. I need…need to feel not so alone.”

  “Of course. Scoot over.”

  She did and then he was slipping under the sheets, his body big, and warm, and solid beside hers. He pulled Madeline close and she buried her face in his broad chest and wept as she had earlier. This time her tears had a feeling of finality. Before she’d been unable to completely believe the entire crew was gone. Now she knew it—knew it in her bones. She had seen the wreck of the Kennedy and knew that no one could have survived it. She would have to deal with it—would have to find a way to move on.

  But for now she let herself mourn their loss and grieve for the fact that she would never, ever see any of them again.

  After she finally cried herself out, Calden dried her eyes gently with the edge of the sheet and turned her so that her much smaller body fit into the curve of his larger one. He pulled her close and wrapped his long, muscular arms around her, making her feel comforted and secure.

  “Sleep, nieka,” he murmured and Maddy thought she felt him drop a soft kiss to the top of her head. “Sleep and let yourself heal.”

  Maddy wanted to tell him that some wounds were too deep to ever heal but when she opened her mouth, a yawn came out instead of words.

  He’s right, she thought, I’m exhausted. I need to sleep.

  “Will…will you stay with me?” she whispered. “I don’t want to wake up in bed alone again.”

  “All night,” Calden promised, squeezing her gently. “Now sleep, Madeline. It’s what you need. Tomorrow we’ll start fixing your hands.”

  She could feel his broad chest at her back and his big body curled against hers. She knew he was a stranger but she felt comforted and protected by his presence. The big Kindred would stay with her—he wouldn’t leave her alone. She would be safe as long as she was in his arms—somehow she knew it.

  She closed her eyes again and this time, no images came—only the blackness of sleep.

  * * * * *

  Calden lay awake for a long while, feeling the way her small, soft body fit against his. Gods, he had done wrong by her—wrong to bring her back to a life where she was the only one of her kind. Wrong to bring her back to pain and loss and abject misery.

  He was glad that she had asserted so strongly that she still wanted to live, despite her pain. If she had answered his question about wishing she was dead in the affirmative, he would have waited until she was soundly asleep and then gone and asked FATHER to activate her self-termination unit at once. Or so he told himself.

  But again, the idea of letting her die—of seeing the light go out of her lovely eyes—was almost unbearable to Calden. He wanted to protect her from death—to comfort her and meet her needs. Which was, of course, the only reason he had allowed himself to get into the sleeping platform with her. Their current sleeping arrangement wasn’t, strictly speaking, proper.

  But who cared how they slept since they were sexually incompatible anyway? Well, not exactly sexually incompatible but size incompatible. Anyway, it didn’t matter, Calden told himself. Even if they had been close enough in size to mate, he wouldn’t even consider it. Madeline’s tears and sorrow made him want to hold and comfort her, not breed her. And he would never risk his position at the Mentat station for a female—would he?

  Gods, he had opened a whole box of problems when he’d cloned Madeline and awakened her to second life. If he had just stuck with non-sentient species, he wouldn’t have to be considering any of these troubling questions now. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions—except for the pain he had caused Madeline. That he did regret, deeply. He swore to himself he would do everything in his power to comfort and protect her and to assuage her grief. There was nothing else he could do right now. Nothing but hold her close and keep her safe.

  Musing over the strange situation he found himself in, Calden pulled the little female closer and finally drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  “I thought you said you could fix my hands.”

  “I can but it will take some time.” Calden motioned patiently. “Can you put them back in the nutrient bath please? They’ll never be functional unless you allow the nerves to grow properly.”

  Maddy sighed and did as he asked, sliding her hands back into the shallow containers of warm green slime on either side of her plate. She’d had an idea—a very unrealistic idea, she realized now—that Calden could just give her a pill or a shot or something to make her hands start working instantly. But apparently the only cure for them was to give them more time in the nutrient bath stuff she’d woken up in, in the first place.

  Since Maddy absolutely refused to go back into the slime, Calden had rigged up two much smaller tanks where she could rest her hands and let the nutrient bath do its work. According to him, it should only take a couple of days for her to have functional hands again. Apparently the nerves had to be regenerated—she must have hurt them during the crash, Maddy speculated—though she still couldn’t remember how.

  Not that she wanted to. Every time she remembered the dried puddle of blood under the huge tire of the terraforming machine, her gut ached and her heart started to pound. So she was trying hard not to think about it.

  Instead, she concentrated on the food on her plate—which was a strange mixture of fluffy purple mounds and dark green cubes which Calden had made for “First Meal” as he called breakfast.

  “Open,” he said, spearing a mouthful on a fork with five long tines arranged in a circle and holding it towards her mouth. “You need to eat for the nutrient bath to work. It has to have fuel to convert into new nerve tissue for you.”

  Maddy frowned.

  “How do you know I can eat that? What if your food is poison to me?”

  Calden sighed patiently.

  “I know because I can eat it and it’s not poison to me. Because our genetics match up enough that I can be certain you can eat my food.”

  Maddy still wasn’t sure—the fluffy purple mounds and green cubes didn’t look especially appealing—although they did smell pretty good, in a weird kind of way.

  “You’re really sure?”

  He frowned. “Madeline, our DNA is so similar that I could father a child with you and your body would not reject it.”

  Maddy felt her heart give a funny little skip in her chest.

  “Really? Um, that’s an…interesting way to put it. I thought we weren’t, uh, compatible that way.”

  “Only because of the differences in our size,” Calden assured her. “And I wasn’t trying to intimate that I wanted to father a child with you. I was simply making the point that if your womb would be receptive to my seed, then your stomach should be equally receptive to my food. All right?”

  “I guess so.” She nodded and reluctantly opened her mouth.

  Calden popped the bite in and then waited to let her chew.

  Maddy did, her eyes widening as she finished and swallowed.

  “Hey, that’s really good! The purple stuff tastes kind of like scrambled eggs mixed with pancakes and the green chunks are like really firm bacon.”

  “I don’t know what those foods are, but I’m glad you’re enjoying your First Meal.” Calden smiled at her and Maddy found herself smiling back because it was such a rare expression on his usually-serious face. Also because it was such a sincere expression. She remembered how Pierce had smiled—that half-grimace he