Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 130947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Sighing he went back to the front entrance of the suite, which looked out onto the busy inner world of the Kindred ship. He’d dropped the large cardboard box filled with Olivia’s possessions and the bags of human food he’d gotten at the market here when he heard her scream. Hoping there was nothing breakable in the box, he moved it to one side and gathered the bags to take to the food-prep area.
First he cleaned up the spilled fireflower juice and then began unpacking the human food. It came in flimsy but tough containers made of the material humans called plastic and also in round metal cylinders with colorful labels on the sides that supposedly showed what the contents looked like. There was also some kind of red sauce in a hard clear jar. None of it looked very appetizing to Baird but being Kindred he was used to trying new foods.
The essence of genetic trade was immersing yourself in a new culture, learning the ways of a new people. Since he’d been captured by the Scourge and imprisoned in their Fathership only a few days after being reassigned to the Kindred ship orbiting Earth’s moon, he had a lot of catching up to do. Previously he and Sylvan had been stationed on Tranq Prime but there was really nothing to do there—the genetic trade had been completed long ago and Baird didn’t care for the cold, aloof people that inhabited the planet.
For Sylvan it was a different matter because his mother had been a native of Tranq. She had died when he was very young and their father had moved on to the next Kindred trade world, Rageron, and claimed Baird’s mother, a native of that planet, as his second bride. When she had also died, the victim of a senseless and brutal tribal war on the jungle planet, their father had left and resettled his small family on the third trade world of Twin Moons. There he took his third and final bride, a widow with two sons of her own to raise of the Twin Kindred kind.
Baird’s childhood had been filled with longing for a mother he barely remembered. According to his father she’d been a fiery beauty with a temper who had never backed down from anyone. Baird liked to think he’d inherited his determination from her.
Because their stepmother was busy raising her own sons, he and Sylvan had turned to each other for support and friendship and had grown much closer than anyone would believe two such different warriors could. Close enough that after Sylvan’s tragedy on Tranq Prime, Baird had agreed to go with his half-brother to join the new trade.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Earth had been besieged by the Scourge and the Kindred were ripe for another genetic trade. But the Scourge were putting up a much more determined fight than anyone had expected. Some among the Kindred speculated that they were after something here on the small blue and green planet. Something more specific than their usual planetary rape and destruction.
There was talk of a prophesy that the Scourge with their strange, twisted religion, believed would come to pass. Baird had heard whispers of it in the long, dreary, painful months he spent aboard their Fathership but he’d been too distracted by his own agony and the dreams he’d shared with Olivia to pay much attention. Now he wished he’d listened more carefully when his captors spoke in their ugly, hissing tongue. The Kindred High Council were convening to discuss what was going on and he was scheduled to appear before them soon.
Normally a warrior going through his bonding period would have been exempt from anything but spending time with his new bride but, as he had told Olivia earlier, they were in the middle of a war. Of course he would much rather have spent every spare minute with the woman he loved and hoped to keep with him forever but Baird couldn’t ignore his duty—no Kindred could.
With an effort he shook off the grim thoughts of war and duty and went back to preparing the late-day meal. He didn’t mind cooking—it was considered a necessary skill for a Kindred male who wanted to bond with his bride—but somehow things just weren’t looking quite right.
Baird didn’t understand. He’d followed all the instructions the clerk in the Earth brides section of the market had given him. First he’d taken the large round bread disk called a crust and spread it with the red sauce from the glass container. Next he poured the rubbery white shredded stuff from the colorful plastic bag over the sauce. To finish, he added human meats and produce from the metal cylinders. But the finished product didn’t look very much like what he’d observed Olivia eating when he’d watched her in his dreams. In fact, it looked terrible—like something he wouldn’t even feed Bebo. Not that the picky little zicther would eat anything but the special food that came pre-prepared from him all the way from Rageron.