The Spawning (40 page)

“You feel something?”

Miranda’s head jerked upward at the question, but it took a moment for her focus to shift from her inner search to her gaze. She discovered that all four men were staring at her hand even though it was Teron who’d asked. Abruptly, joy surged through her. “I think … I’m pretty sure I did.”

She discovered they didn’t look nearly as joyous as she felt. In fact, they looked downright faint, maybe a little sick.

“I think I felt it move,” she clarified.

Teron swallowed convulsively a couple of times. “No pain?”

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She glanced around at them, chuckling a little uncomfortably. “Of course not! It was just … like a little flutter. I suppose it might not have been the baby,” she added, vaguely disappointed that it might not have been. “But it didn’t feel like me.”

It seemed to spoil their appetite, which she found somewhat insulting. Trying to ignore the tension that seemed to have gripped them, she finished her own food and then got up and gathered their plates and took them to rake the scraps into the pit they referred to as the compost pile and went to wash the plates.

Gerek joined her, crouching beside her and washing half.

“I think I can handle washing five plates,” Miranda said a little testily.

Gerek slid a speculative look at her. “No one meant to insult you, dear heart,” he murmured.

Miranda looked at him a little questioningly as she restacked the plates. She sighed. “I wasn’t insulted. I just … don’t understand.”

His gaze flickered over her face. Reaching for her, he dragged her into his lap.

The move overbalanced him and they both sat down with a splash in the surf. Miranda couldn’t help but laugh. He cupped her face in his hand, grinning back at her. “I’ve never understood less in my life … or enjoyed more,” he said quietly. “It’s almost as terrifying to know you, dear heart, as it is joyful, confusing, intriguing and downright unsettling.” He shook his head, the amusement fading from his expression. “I can’t decide if I’m more glad that I wasn’t there to see what happened or more frustrated and frightened at the thought of what might have happened if the hunters hadn’t been near enough …. Particularly considering how much you frightened Khan and Teron. I’m not sure either one of them have completely gathered their wits, yet. Actually, I’m not certain either one of them will ever be the same again.”

Miranda eyed him quizzically, uncertain of whether he was teasing or not.

He lowered his forehead to touch it to hers. “No man likes to feel powerless, to have to face the fact that there might be one foe they can not defeat who can snatch the one thing dearest in the world away while he can do nothing about it.”

Miranda swallowed with an effort, realizing abruptly that she hadn’t just

endangered herself. She’d threatened the tiny bud of life that had thrilled her so much only a few minutes earlier. She sucked in a shuttering breath. “No
one
wants to face that,” she corrected him.

How could she tell him she was sorry she’d risked their child? She was. She

cared about it and yet there were other risks. It’s life was just as threatened if it’s health was. She didn’t think it was
wrong
that she’d gone searching for food that would ensure good health and strong growth. She couldn’t assure them that she wouldn’t try again, only that she’d try to be more alert and more careful. The jungle was the only place that offered things she might need, that the baby might need.

And she couldn’t very well ask the others to take risks she wasn’t willing to take herself. Her baby was more important to her than theirs were, but she didn’t doubt they felt the same way.

He kissed her. “Next time, let someone else hold the beast off while you run,” he said almost as if he’d read her thoughts.

Helping her to her feet, he scooped the plates up.

Miranda glanced at him in amusement as they waded out of the water. “I hadn’t exactly planned to take a bath while I washed dishes,” she said teasingly.

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He chuckled. “That’s one of the things I think I love most about you, dear heart.

Nothing ever quite turns out the way one expects it to.”

She smiled at his teasing, but wondered if he was referring to the ‘breeding’. She doubted there’d been anything else quite that unexpected.

She didn’t think the baby was Gerek’s, which caused her a pang of regret even

though her greatest hope was that it was Khan’s. Gerek had wanted a baby, though—so had Teron and Adar. If anything made her feel inadequate it was the realization that she couldn’t make them all happy and that it mattered to her that she couldn’t.

She could try. She was willing to try. She just didn’t have a lot of confidence that she could succeed.

* * * *

It was barely daylight when the party of Hirachi arrived, rousing everybody from their habitats. Still bleary eyed, Miranda stumbled out of her habitat first to see what the noise was about. Gerek met her almost in the doorway. Chuckling, he snatched the knife from her hand, pitched it toward the dirt so that it stuck straight up with a twang, and swept Miranda into an exuberant dancing gig of an embrace.

“It’s a very good thing I wasn’t an enemy, warrior woman,” he said teasingly.

Miranda eyed him crossly. “It’s barely daylight.”

He nuzzled her neck. “We wanted to get an early start.”

“Last night wasn’t early enough?” she asked tartly. “At least I wasn’t
trying
to sleep then.”

He leaned away to study her face. “You’re as prickly as a
keltzit
first waking,” he murmured.

Miranda didn’t know what a
keltzit
was and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. It didn’t sound like a compliment even if he was grinning at her when he said it.

“You aren’t that chipper yourself,” she reminded him. “
You’ve
obviously been awake more than five seconds.”

He kissed her and swatted her buttocks playfully. “Go shower and wake up.

We’ll have something to eat shortly and then we’ll leave.”

Yawning, Miranda retrieved her knife and trudged toward the bathhouse. She’d

gotten over feeling downright nauseas first thing in the morning, but she certainly wasn’t awake enough to have an appetite, yet. She still wasn’t alert enough after her brief shower to be very interested in eating or even able to figure out what was going on, but she tried to work on figuring it out while she ate.

It looked like fully half the Hirachi were on the beach—a very rare circumstance so early in the day.

And they were going for a walk?

Everyone else looked as sleepy and bewildered as she felt.

When they’d finished eating, though, they all got up and allowed the Hirachi to herd them out of the gate. They turned north, which surprised her, following the wall of the compound and then turning at the corner and following the north wall down to the far end.

There was a path cut through the jungle, she discovered when they reached the

other end. The smell of fresh cut vegetation seemed to indicate that it was a fairly new path, too, although she couldn’t be certain. She’d never been this way herself—not any of the women. They confined their excursions to the side of the compound the gates THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 181

faced.

The land sloped upward. It wasn’t immediately noticeable because the jungle

encroached closely on either side, but she began to notice it as they walked in the pull along her calves and the back of her thighs.

She also noticed that the Hirachi marched on either side of them, dividing their attention between the path in front of them and the woods. Adar walked on her left side and Gerek on her right.

They weren’t just walking three abreast. When she looked up the line ahead of them, she realized every single woman was guarded by two warriors.

She wasn’t certain whether she should be alarmed by that or not.

She supposed she was, she just wasn’t certain what to be alarmed about.

Was it more dangerous here for some reason? Did they expect something to

happen? Or was there an ominous reason why the women were caged in?

She didn’t believe that, but it was impossible to completely dismiss it once the thought occurred to her. Regardless of how familiar the Hirachi had become to all of them, she didn’t feel a hell of a lot closer to understanding them than she had in the beginning.

She didn’t
think
they presented any kind of threat, but the circumstances had thrown her off kilter.

Her anxiety eased after a while, not because she was any closer to figuring out what was going on, but because she became too hot, tired, and plain out miserable to really care. She’d reached a point where she felt like she was going to have to demand to stop and rest—and relieve her aching bladder—when they began to slow. She couldn’t see for the people in front of her, but they seemed to be spreading out, as if they’d reached a clearing.

She discovered it was when she finally reached the spot herself, not a natural clearing and not a
small
clearing. She was no great hand at visually calculating the size of things, but the area looked fully as large as a city block—minus buildings and plus enough huge trees to shade a good bit of it.

It was the raw ground at the back of the clearing, though, that riveted her

attention—and the men working there—and the enormous building rising from the pit they’d dug.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 182

Chapter Twenty Two

Miranda had no idea how long she simply stood stock still, gaping at the structure that seemed so incongruous for such a setting and yet also seemed to blend with its surroundings in both the color of the stone it was being erected from and the free flowing, natural looking shape of it.

It certainly wasn’t boxy like buildings she was used to seeing.

It reminded her of the ‘sandcastle’ the Hirachi had built beneath the sea.

Dragging her gaze from it finally, Miranda glanced at first Gerek and then Adar questioningly. She saw there was a question in their own eyes.

Unable to decipher it, she moved away from them after a moment, studying the

building and the men working there as she moved nearer. Gerek and Adar joined her after a moment, like shadows, catching her elbow to right her when she stumbled over the debris that littered the ground.

“It will take many months more before we can complete the village,” Gerek said finally, a grimness in his voice that was rarely there. “With the best will in the world it’s just not possible to finish before …. But the nursery is complete. It won’t be particularly comfortable with so much construction going on and no privacy, but still ….”

Miranda looked at him a little blankly. “You’re building a village …?”

Gerek and Adar glanced at one another. “For our families,” Adar said, his gaze flickering over her face almost anxiously.

Miranda was still having trouble absorbing it. She saw when she glanced toward the structure again, though, that Khan and Teron had broken off and were striding toward her. Their expressions were searching.

“Would you like to look at the nursery?” Khan asked, holding out his hand.

Miranda took it automatically, still a little too bemused to trust the idea that had been slowly germinating in her mind. She divided her attention between the building and Khan’s face as he led her toward it, pointing out various features and explaining what they were doing. She recognized the construction of the nursery as soon as they’d descended into it, by way of a wide stair instead of the entrance tunnel of the one in the sea. Beyond that, it didn’t differ a great deal. The entire thing, walls, floors, and ceiling, seemed to be all stone—something like concrete, she supposed because it wasn’t built from stones that had been joined with mortar. The ceiling was supported by arches and columns, just as the other one was.

Actually, the ceiling itself was arched, rather like a halved barrel, which curved downward to the supporting columns that lined either side of the central pool and then curved up again and met the outer walls. It was bigger, noticeably bigger, maybe twice the size of their nursery in the sea.

Miranda studied it—gawked at it, more like—until she was distracted by the

voices of the other men and women who’d filed down to look at it. She glanced at the men, discovered they were watching her expectantly. “It’s … well, it’s beautiful, really.”

Touching her elbow, Khan led her to a corner alcove. “For now, this will be our THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 183

area.” He grimaced as he studied it. “Not much space for comfort, but you seemed to like to gather with the other women in the nursery before so, mayhap, it will not be so bad until we can complete the family pods on the upper layers of the village. The environment will also not be as controlled until the remainder of the structure is done—

the spires for cross ventilation, evaporation, and lighting—but it will be more comfortable than the habitats since this is below the ground here and the soil will insulate from the intense heat … and the cold once the season changes.”

Miranda looked around the small space. Four beds had been wedged into the

small area with barely room to squeeze between them and the pillows they’d each had in their private pods had been piled on the beds.

It was definitely tight, but a thrill still went through her as it slowly sank in that they meant to share the space—all of them—she thought. Teron moved up behind her, settling an arm around her shoulders and his chin on top of her head. “This is what you wanted, dear heart?” he murmured. “The fathers to provide so that you could devote your attention to your babes?”

Miranda didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Momentarily confused, she finally recalled the conversation, but she’d been speaking in a general way, and she’d been thinking about her own culture—
A
father and mother to divide the tasks and rear their family. She was vaguely distressed that Teron had misunderstood, unnerved, and happy about it all at the same time.