“You don’t have to!” Kaylee promised her. “We’ll send the divorce papers down to Earth with two big Kindred warriors and make him sign them—then you’ll be completely free forever! And who knows…” She grinned at Mia. “Maybe you’ll find a Kindred warrior of your own. We have a new kind of Kindred visiting the ship right now! Everybody loves him and he looks just like a faun.”
“Satyr,” Talon corrected her. “He’s a Satyr Kindred.”
“But he has horns and hooves like a ram,” Kaylee protested. “I thought that meant he was a faun? You know—like Mr. Tumnus in the Chronicles of Narnia? Anyway, there’s not just him—there are lots of warriors in the Unmated Males section,” she told Mia.
Her words seemed to stir something in Mia. Horns? Had she said the new Kindred had horns? But her face ached too badly to concentrate.
She shook her head and let out a little groan.
“Don’t want to think about finding someone new right now,” she told her friend, cupping the swollen left side of her face. “Can’t think about anything except how much it hurts.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—of course you don’t want to think about men—you’re in pain!” Kaylee gave her shoulders a squeeze and glanced at her face again anxiously. “Talon, can you fly a little faster? I’m worried about Mia!”
“We’re almost there, sweetheart,” the big Kindred called back soothingly. “Look—there’s the Mother Ship now.”
They had flown around to the dark side of the Moon and, sure enough, there was the sleek, white bulk of the Kindred Mother Ship orbiting it.
Mia had only seen it in news stories and she gaped at it in wonder. She was seeing double but it was still an amazing sight. The Mother Ship was one fourth the size of the body it was orbiting and such a pure white it seemed to shine like a giant pearl in the darkness of space.
Two pearls, Mia thought and wondered if the Kindred doctor they had called could fix her vision or if she was going to be seeing double the rest of her life. They seemed to be headed for a transparent section in the center of the ship, where rows and rows of silver shuttles like the one they were flying in were docked.
“That’s the Docking Bay—we’re almost there,” Talon called as they descended.
The strain on her eyes became too great and Mia closed them tightly. When she opened them, Kaylee was saying that they had landed. She and Talon helped Mia out of the shuttle and then a nice woman doctor who introduced herself as “Liv” was examining her.
“Hmm, looks like an orbital fracture but I’ll need some scans to be sure,” she murmured, after shining a light in Mia’s wounded left eye. “Come on—let’s get her to the Med Center.”
And that was how Mia came to find herself aboard the Kindred Mother Ship, the place—though she didn’t know it—that she had been dreaming of for so long.
6
“What’s wrong, Olivia? You seem upset tonight,” Baird rumbled as they were getting ready for bed. Their son, Daniel, was already fast asleep in his bedroom at the other end of the suite from their own, and it was time to get some sleep.
“Do I? I’m sorry.” Liv sighed and ran a hand through her long, blonde hair. “It was something I saw at the Med Center this evening.” She knew that if Baird wanted to, he could probably find the incident in her mind. The mental link that formed between a Kindred and his bride after bonding sex was especially strong with them, because they’d been together for just over ten years.
“Of course I could see it if I wanted to,” Baird murmured through their link, his mental voice as low and rumbling as his physical voice was. “But I didn’t want to pry.”
“Thanks, honey.” Liv finished pulling on her long, white sleeping gown and turned to put her hands on his broad shoulders. The gown had been an anniversary present—it was made of sheena silk, a substance produced only on Kalen Six. The material was softer than the softest silk made on Earth, yet it had the breathability of cotton. It was also mostly see-thought and clung to her breasts and sex, outlining the points of her nipples and the mound of her pussy.
“What was it that you saw that upset you, lilenta?” Baird rumbled, using his pet name for her. “What hurt you?”
“It wasn’t me that got hurt—it was a woman that Kaylee, our new Music Director, brought in,” Liv confessed.
“Oh—she’s the new bride that one of my lead pilots, Talon, just called, isn’t she?” Baird asked, frowning. “What happened to her friend?”
“She’d been beaten by her husband,” Liv said grimly. “He punched her so hard he broke her cheekbone and gave her an orbital fracture!” She sighed and shook her head. “Poor thing. Yipper and I did what I could for her—we were able to fix the fractures so her vision won’t be affected. But she’s going to have a lot of bruising and swelling and pain for a long time to remember him by, I’m afraid.”