But she couldn’t quite drift off. Despite the intensely cathartic sex they’d just shared, she could feel that there was something on her husband’s mind.
“What is it, honey?” she sent through their link, too sleepy to speak aloud. “What’s got you tied up in knots inside?”
Baird sighed and ran his free hand through his shaggy black hair. His golden eyes glowed softly in the darkness of their bedroom.
“It’s this new warrior who came through that damn slice in space,” he growled at last. “He calls himself a ‘Monstrum Kindred’—whatever the Seven Hells that means.”
“But what does he want?” Liv asked, waking up a little. This was the tension she’d sensed in Baird earlier—the reason he’d felt the need to bond her to him all over again with his Mating Fist, rather than just making love.
“I don’t know what he wants,” Baird growled, shaking his head. “The Head Council has agreed to hear him tomorrow. He says he has a warning for us, though, and I don’t like the sound of that.”
Liv sighed and snuggled closer to him.
“Whatever it is, the Goddess will bring us through it,” she reassured her mate. “Hasn’t she brought us through everything else?”
It was true, the Mother Ship had weathered many crises before and the Mother of All Life had never let them down. The Kindred Goddess was a very active deity who cared for her children and protected them as much as she could from harm. It was said that she took an interest, not only in her people as a whole, but in every single couple she put together and that she had a female in mind for every one of her warriors.
“I know she had you for me,” Baird sent, pulling her closer. “You’re right, lilenta—we must trust the Goddess. It’s just…that green slit in the darkness, like someone had ripped a hole in the space-time continuum…I didn’t like the look of it. Not one fucking bit.” He sighed deeply and said aloud, “If the Monstrum Kindred ship could come through, what else might get here from that other universe?”
“Hopefully nothing,” Liv told him. But she couldn’t help feeling somewhat uneasy herself. How had the tear in the fabric of their universe happened and, as Baird had asked, what else might come through it?
She supposed only time would tell. At any rate, they would certainly know more after the new warrior addressed the High Council tomorrow. And for now, she was safe in Baird’s arms and she knew her husband wouldn’t let anything hurt her.
“Love you, sweetheart,” she murmured through their link. “Try to get some sleep now. Big day tomorrow.”
“You’re right about that. All right, let’s get some shut-eye.”
But even as Liv drifted off, she could feel her husband still thinking of the next day and wondering what the Monstrum Kindred might say to the High Council…
7
Storn wandered in the rolling parklands around the Sacred Grove, located at the center of the Kindred Mother Ship. It was nearly dawn, when the artificial green sun at the center of the ship would begin to brighten to announce another day. But right now the velvety, pre-dawn dusk still prevailed and the soft wind rustling the trees felt good against his curling horns, which were much more sensitive than they looked, especially at the tips.
The Grove on his own Mother Ship was much bigger and the wild lands around it more extensive, he reflected as he walked. Many of the Monstrum changed forms at different points in their mating cycles and they needed more room to roam when they did.
The Predators, especially, were prone to changing when they bonded, Storn thought. The Tigris, the Leonis, and the Ursus all at least partially shifted when they needed to bond a female to them. And the Lupines…well, Storn didn’t like to think of that rabid group of Monstrum. It was said they had to shift completely to bond, and to make things even harder on the poor female they were bonding, they had two shafts, each of which had to be sheathed to the hilt in a female’s body before a Lupine could bond his bride to him.
But it was better not to think of those savages, he told himself. Better to keep his mind on the problems at hand. After all, the Lupine Kindred might never find the slit in space that led to this ‘verse. They were renegades who didn’t live on the Monstrum Mother Ship—they might keep away and never learn of the availability of ripe, fertile females to be bonded and bred, despite the scarcity of females in his own ‘verse.
As he tried to push the savage Lupines from his thoughts, his mind wandered back to the similarities and differences between the Kindred of his own universe and this one.
The Kindred here had fewer animal characteristics and didn’t seem to change forms—well, most of them didn’t, he amended to himself. He knew of a few who turned beastly, but it wasn’t the same as his own people. Most phyla of Monstrum Kindred had beastly characteristics like his own horns and hooves, but some became even more animalistic when it came time to mate and especially to bond with the female of their choice.