Revealed (31 page)

“Sylvan!” Nadiah looked absolutely mortified. Her cheeks turned a dark pink and she put a hand to her chest.
“Please!”

He smiled slightly. “I’m only telling the truth, Nadiah. Don’t worry, as I noted earlier, your eyes remain unchanged. So I know your virtue is intact.”

Sophia laughed.
“Mostly
intact, anyway. Come on, let’s go find the girls. We have a lot to catch up on.”

Nadiah looked anxiously at Rast. Not asking for permission, Sylvan thought, but offering reassurance and letting him know she still loved him even though she wanted some time with the other females.

Rast seemed to understand her perfectly. “Go on, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Have some fun. I think Sylvan and I have some catching up to do, too.”

Sylvan nodded. “Yes, I think we do.”

“All right then.” Nadiah kissed Rast lingeringly on the cheek. “I love you,” she murmured. “Come find me in a little while and we’ll get some dinner. Something that doesn’t come from a dehydrated food cube.”

“Or involve mud worms,” Rast said and they shared a private smile.

Despite his worry, Sylvan couldn’t help smiling himself at their exchange. The two of them were already in sync with each other—a perfect couple now that Nadiah’s blood bond was broken and Rast had realized and acknowledged his true feelings for her. Yes, they were perfect together and perfectly happy as well. So why did Sylvan’s heart tell him that something wasn’t quite right? He watched Sophia and Nadiah walk away together, their light, feminine voices echoing softly in the vast space of the docking bay and wondered why he couldn’t answer that question…

“Okay, now you want to tell me how the hell I’m not human when I was born and raised on Earth?” Rast demanded in a low voice, breaking his train of thought.

Sylvan turned to him. “Were you? Do you have a birth certificate or other proof showing the place of your birth? Of course, such things can be forged…”

A strange look had come over Rast’s face. “Well now that you mention it, I don’t. I mean, I have a birth certificate but I’m pretty sure it’s a fake.”

“A fake?” Sylvan frowned. “How so?”

Rast blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s something my mom told me right before we left for Tranq Prime—when I was saying goodbye to her. She said…she told me I was adopted.”

“Did she mention your original birth parents?” Sylvan asked. “I can’t imagine how but I suppose a Kindred male and his female might have somehow made their way to Earth.” He frowned. “Although, that was
years
before we discovered your planet…”

“She said she didn’t know.” Rast looked unhappy and the tone of his voice seemed to say his adopted mother hadn’t cared either. “She said no one knew—that I was found wandering naked in a field somewhere and no one ever learned who my birth mother was.”

“And she told you all this right before you left?”

Rast laughed humorlessly. “Hell of a goodbye, isn’t it? I tell her I’m leaving the planet and she tells me…ah hell, never mind.” He shook his head. “I’m over it now. No big deal.”

Sylvan remembered how quiet the other male had been on their trip back from Earth to the Mother Ship and thought it
was
a big deal—a
very
big deal indeed.
Sophia was right,
he thought.
I should have asked him what was wrong.
 
Aloud he said, “I don’t know how it’s possible that you’re of Kindred origin but what you’re telling me certainly seems to make it more
probable
.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.” Rast shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I mind being one of you guys—I’ve always felt strangely at home on the Mother Ship. But it would be nice if you could tell me which one. Or which kind, I guess.”

Sylvan sighed. “I wish I could. Your DNA
almost
matches that of a First Kindred but it’s more primitive somehow—more basic and powerful. Also you have an extra gene on your Y chromosome which I have never seen before.”

Rast’s eyebrows shot up. “An extra gene? Doesn’t that kind of thing usually cause a deformity?”

“I don’t know what it’s for,” Sylvan admitted. “It appears to be dormant right now but if it should ever become active…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what would happen. What you would become.”

Rast crossed his arms over his chest. “You think I’m some kind of science experiment? Some kind of freak? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—the minute that extra gene gets going I’ll turn into some kind of a monster?”

“No, no—nothing like that!” Sylvan protested. “I don’t think you’d be a danger to yourself or others or I would have taken much stronger steps to keep you away from Nadiah.”

“Well…all right.” Rast nodded grudgingly. “But you think you can find out what’s going on if we run more tests?”

Sylvan nodded, relieved that the other male was willing to be reasonable. “I just need a little more blood.”

Rast sighed. “All right then—no time like the present. Let’s go.”

Sylvan clapped him on the back as they headed for the med station. “You’re doing the right thing. You need to know what’s going on before you and Nadiah get joined.”

“I suppose I do—I owe it to her.” Rast ran a hand through his hair. “I just don’t want to lose her, you know?”

“You won’t,” Sylvan promised. “I know Nadiah—she has a loyal heart. She’ll never give you up, no matter what.”

“But what if it turns out we can’t have kids or something?” Rast asked. “Would she still want to stay with me then?”

Sylvan felt a surge of sadness in his heart. “Even then,” he said quietly. “Even then.”

“Okay, Nadiah, spill,” Olivia commanded. “Tell us all about the blood challenge and how Rast won your freedom and your heart.”

They were all sitting around the low structure called a “coffee table” in Sophia and Sylvan’s suite. Olivia, having another one of her cravings, had gotten a small machine which pressed two round, flat pieces of bread called tortillas together with various ingredients in the middle to create what the Earth girls called a quesadilla. The entire oblong table was covered with various foods chopped into tiny pieces, some of which Nadiah recognized and some which were completely foreign to her.

“Yes, come on,” Kat urged. “And don’t leave out any dirty parts. We
love
the dirty parts.” She grinned and nudged Lauren who laughed.

“Kat, you’re bad!”

Nadiah blushed and put down the triangular wedge of quesadilla. “I’ll tell you everything, of course, but I think Sophia has something to say as well.” She looked at her friend.

“No, hon, you go ahead.” Sophia shook her head. “Take your time. It’ll give me time to get my thoughts together. And besides…” She pressed Nadiah’s hand and smiled. “I want to hear everything too.”

Nadiah saw Lauren, Kat, and Olivia exchange glances but then they shrugged and nodded.

“Go on,” Liv said. “And don’t mind me—I’m just going to make another quesadilla while you talk, okay?
 
I think this time I’ll try a sweet one. Kat, pass the salsa, please”

“A sweet one?” Kat objected. “Then what do you want salsa for?”

“Never you mind,” Olivia said crossly. “Just pass it. And the peanut butter and chocolate chips while you’re at it.”

Kat made a face but passed the requested ingredients to her friend. “Okay, now that Queen Olivia is happy, go on with your story, doll.” She nodded encouragingly at Nadiah.

Nadiah wasn’t sure where to begin but she found herself telling them how she’d realized that she was in love with Rast. The way he stood up for her against her parents and Y’dex, and the way she thought he could never love her back because of what Sylvan had made him promise.

Sophia let out a sigh at this point. “I love him with all my heart and I know Sylvan was just trying to look out for you but…”

“But men sure are stupid sometimes, aren’t they?” Olivia finished for her, licking a mixture of salsa and peanut butter off her fingers.

Sophia gave her a mock slap on the arm. “Hey, that’s my guy you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Liv grinned unrepentantly. “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure Baird would have done the same thing. Or any of the guys, really. It’s not a Sylvan thing, it’s a
male
thing.” She nodded. “Go on, Nadiah. What happened next?”

“Well…” Nadiah told about the three challenges but when she got to the part about Y’dex’s
tharp
inching up and falling down to expose him to the entire audience, the girls broke up into a fit of giggles.

“Oh no!” Sophia gasped, holding her sides. “I
know
I shouldn’t laugh because I’ve had that happen to me before and I totally understand how mortifying it can be.”

“What happened to you is actually what gave me the idea in the first place,” Nadiah admitted. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course she doesn’t mind,” Kat said. “But go on with the story—what happened next?”

Nadiah was really beginning to enjoy telling her story but when she got to the challenge of wills with the mud worms, she couldn’t help noticing that both Olivia and Lauren looked sick.

“Skip the in-depth descriptions if you don’t mind, please,” Lauren said faintly.

“Yeah, it’s enough for us to know Rast had to eat a live worm as big as his forearm,” Liv said. “We really don’t need details.”

“I’m sorry,” Nadiah said contritely. She hurried on, telling them how Y’dex had lifted and dropped her and Rast had caught her and saved her life. The girls exclaimed in horror and Liv offered the opinion that Y’dex should be “strung up by his balls.” But it wasn’t until she told about the last challenge, the challenge of blood, that Nadiah really began to blush.

“You shared blood with him?” Sophia asked softly and Nadiah nodded. Being bonded to a Blood Kindred, she knew her friend really understood the significance of the act. But the other girls seemed to sense it too. And when she spoke of the way she’d been pulled between the two males, all four of them made sympathetic faces.

“That must have hurt like hell,” Kat remarked. “Being torn in two like that.”

“It was the most painful experience of my life,” Nadiah said softly. “I didn’t think I could stand it. Didn’t think I could free myself from Y’dex—it hurt too much. But when Rast shouted to me that he loved me, I finally found the strength.”

“It nearly killed her, though,” Sophia put in. “Tell them about seeing your dead grandmother, Nadiah.”

“What?” Lauren’s amber eyes were wide. “You saw
who?”

Nadiah told them as much as she remembered about the experience but she couldn’t help feeling like there was something she was leaving out. Something important. She wished she could sit and think about it for a minute but the other girls were hanging on her words. She had to finish her story.
Oh well,
she thought uneasily.
Maybe it will come to me later…

“And then I woke up in Rast’s arms,” she went on. “Because he’d taken the other half of the blood bond into his own heart. But the magistrate didn’t want to let us go even though Rast had won me fair and square…” She told about Magistrate Licklow’s attempt to declare the challenge void and how her friends had stopped him by threatening to tell the Elders about his attempt to fix the challenges.

“Good for them!” Sophia declared. “I never liked that nasty Magistrate Licklow ever since he accused me of fondling him under the table.”

“He what?” Lauren demanded and then, of course, they had to digress and talk about what had happened on Sophia’s trip to Tranq Prime. When they had all finished laughing about that, Nadiah was finally able to finish her own story.

“So he carried me back to our ship and told me he loved me. And we’ve spent the last three days on the ride home, er, enjoying each other’s company.”

“Oh, no…” Kat shook her head. “You don’t get off that easy. We can all see you have the same color eyes which Sophia informs us means you’ve still got your V card. But there’s no way you spent three days and nights in one of those dinky little ships with the man you loved without doing
something
dirty.”

Olivia nodded. “Details. We want
details.”

Nadiah could feel herself blushing to the roots of her hair and she twisted her fingers together nervously. “I’d be happy to tell you, uh, details, but I thought Sophia had something to say.” She looked at her friend, pleading with her eyes. “Sophia?”

“All right.” Sophia took a deep breath and Nadiah noticed that the other three girls immediately got quiet.

“You gonna tell us what’s been bothering you the past few days, hon?” Kat asked.

Sophia nodded. “I am but it’s not easy to say.” She looked down at her hands. “I…I’m barren. I can’t get pregnant.”

“What?” the three of them shouted together.

“And you’ve known this
how
long?” Olivia demanded.

Sophia bit her lip. “Just a little while. I…I had Sylvan run some tests after Lauren found out she was pregnant and—”

“Wait a minute,” Nadiah interrupted. “Lauren? You’re…?”

“Going to have a little girl,” Lauren said quietly. She looked happy but worried, Nadiah thought. “Xairn and I are very…excited.” She glanced at Sophia. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for my news to bring you pain.”