Mia woke up drenched in sweat, her heart pounding like a drum. She put a hand to her chest, blinking rapidly, trying to remember what had upset her so much. But already the dream was melting away like cotton candy the minute you put it in your mouth.
“There was a man,” she whispered to herself. “And he had…he had something strange about him. Was he even a man? Why can’t I remember?”
A loud, snorting snore from the other side of the bed made her realize she had better be careful. If she woke her husband, Hank, there would be hell to pay—literally. Hank didn’t care to be woken up early. He always said he worked hard to support her and the least she could do was let him sleep until the alarm went off.
Being careful not to jostle the bed, Mia got up and wrapped a worn, blue cotton robe around herself. Barefoot, she made her way to the extremely neat kitchen—Hank wouldn’t stand for any clutter or mess anywhere in the house—and put on a pot of coffee. Mia preferred tea herself, but Hank would be in a much better mood when he woke up if there was a fresh-brewed steaming cup of “bean juice” as he called it, waiting for him.
As she made some tea for herself, she concentrated, trying to remember the strange dream.
“Moonlight,” she whispered. “And leaves and grass…I was in a forest—wasn’t I?”
She wished she could recall. She had the feeling she’d experienced the strange dream before—perhaps many times—but every time she woke, it melted away to nothing.
As she sipped her tea, the last of it faded, leaving her with only one thing: the shape of the man in the moonlight and a single word.
Soon…
1
“What in the Seven Hells is that?” Baird stared at the viewscreen of his shuttlecraft, wondering if he was seeing things. As a Beast Kindred, he had excellent vision, but the sight in front of him was so incredible—and so unnerving—that he almost hoped he needed a trip to the Med Center to check his vision. It would certainly be better for him to be seeing things, than for what had popped up on his viewscreen to be a reality.
It was just supposed to be a routine sweep of the Earth’s solar system, he thought to himself ruefully. It was something he and the other Kindred pilots under his command did on a regular basis.
Ever since the Kindred—a race of alien warriors that were 95% male—had come to Earth in search of females to call as brides, they had been defending the small, blue-green planet from outside invaders. In fact, the very first thing they had done was defeat the Scourge, a malignant alien race bent on the destruction and domination of the Earth and its inhabitants.
Baird had met and Claimed his own bride, Olivia, during those first, dark days and he had sworn to protect her home world ever after. Now, as he stared at the viewscreen, he hoped he would be up to the task.
There, in the middle of space, just around the backside of the small red planet that humans called “Mars,” was a glowing, green slice in space.
It was enormous—a vertical cut that looked as though someone had taken a straight razor and slashed downward, ripping open the space-time continuum, Baird thought. As though someone—or something—had torn the very fabric of reality.
And then it got worse.
The slit widened, becoming a gash—a wound, Baird thought, bleeding glowing green plasma—and a ship came through.
But not just any ship, he saw, his surprise deepening. It was a Kindred ship—a long-range shuttlecraft that looked almost identical to the one he himself was flying. The only difference was that the outer hull of the shuttle was gold instead of silver. It even had lettering on it that he could read because it was written in the Kindred universal language—Property of the Monstrum Mother Ship—it clearly said on the side of the hull. But though the words were legible, they looked somehow subtly wrong.
They’re written in the old alphabet—the archaic text of First World, Baird realized. Nobody uses that lettering anymore!
First World was the Kindred’s Mother planet, the place their race had branched off from when they first attained interstellar flight and began exploring new worlds and calling brides from different planets. Baird’s own home world, Rageron, had been one of the first places the Kindred had started a genetic trade but the Kindred had spread to many, many worlds since then. Could this strange ship come from a distant branch of the Kindred family tree?
It wouldn’t be impossible, he speculated. The Kindred’s dominant but malleable DNA ensured that they could mate with almost any other humanoid species. While the offspring of such a trade would inherit some of the characteristics of their mother’s people—like a Beast Kindred’s Mating Fist or a Blood Kindred’s double set of fangs—they were sure to also exhibit the traits all Kindred warriors had in common: height, (most Kindred were seven feet tall at least,) and heavy musculature.