Kindred ships were well built so they shot out of the worm hole no worse for the wear, thank the Goddess. Ky turned the ship at once and watched the end-spout of the hole, waiting to see if they had company.
To his infinite relief, not a single Goshan ship had followed. It was as he had suspected, they feared either for the integrity of their ships or worried about the possibility of getting lost and being unable to return to their home world.
Most worm holes were one-way and since the end-spout could dump out literally millions of light years from the entrance, it wasn’t safe to go through one unless you had a reliable way to get back home.
Luckily, Ky did. He could call the Mother Ship and ask his fellow Kindred to fold space for them. But first they had to get oriented and find out exactly where they were.
He sent out a directional probe and instructed his ship’s computer to scan through the known star charts in its memory before he thought to look at Dani. When he did, he saw she was still clutching the restraining straps of her seat and looking around herself with a half-dazed expression in her big, dark eyes.
“Hey, little girl,” he said gently, putting out a hand to her.
“Oh!” Dani jumped away from his touch.
“Sorry.” Ky withdrew his hand. “Are you all right?”
“I…I don’t know. I thought we were going to die.” She looked at the viewscreen which showed only the blackness of space. “Where are we?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out,” Ky remarked. “Once we—” A soft beep from his ship interrupted him and he looked at the information screen. “Oh, here we go. Well, son of a bitch…”
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?” Dani was clearly still on edge.
“Nothing’s wrong, little girl. It’s just ironic—that’s all.” Ky laughed. “Looks like that worm hole dumped us out not two parsecs from the exact place I was trying to reach—the Hive’s home world.”
“It did? You mean the home world of those huge alien insects that lay their eggs in humanoid females?” Dani shivered. “Ugh—do we have to go there?”
“It’s all right.” Ky was already running a probe. “According to this, there’s no life signs. It’s pretty much what my commanding officer, Commander Sylvan expected—the whole lot of them took off and migrated. Didn’t leave anyone behind, apparently.”
“Still…” Dani rubbed her arms, which had shivered into gooseflesh. “I want to go get some Kindred warriors to help save my sister. You promised we would, Ky.”
“And it’s a promise I intend to keep, little girl,” he said gravely. “But we can’t go back right this second. We’re pretty far from the Mother Ship and the Blind between us distorts signals. Tell you what…” He turned towards her more fully. “Why don’t we just land for a few hours? I can use the planet’s magnetic field to boost my signal and while we wait for the Mother Ship to answer I can do a quick scan of the abandoned Hive lair. We can get that cut tended to, too.”
He nodded at the long scratch on her shoulder and back, made by the pain-spear. The blood on it had long since dried but it still looked swollen and it was in a place where she couldn’t effectively treat it herself.
“Just for a few hours?” Dani asked, biting her lip. “And then we’ll go back to your Mother Ship and bring reinforcements to get Lavi? You promise?”
“I promise,” Ky said firmly. “I know what you’re worried about—that Warro bastard hurting your little sister. But he can’t do that until they’re married, right?”
Dani shook her head. “No. No, he can’t.”
“All right. And they’re not getting married tonight, are they?”
“Well…no,” she admitted reluctantly. “In fact, it will probably take days to get the wedding ready. A Royal wedding is always a huge, complicated affair.”
“Then we’ve got a little breathing room,” Ky assured her. “And I’m sure my commander will look much more favorably on my request to come rescue your little sister if I come back with the information I actually left to get in the first place. All right?”
Dani nodded hesitantly. “I guess so. I just worry about her. She’s a brat sometimes but she’s still my little sister—you know?”
Ky, who had younger brothers of his own, nodded ruefully.
“I know, little girl. Believe me, I get it. Family is important.” He punched in the coordinates and brought them closer to the Hive home world, spinning silently, now deserted in space. “Just a quick layover,” he promised Dani. “And then we’ll be back to the Mother Ship before you know it.”
She bit her lip. “I hope so.”
* * * * *
Dani wasn’t at all enthused about landing on the strange, dead world with its weird gray half-light. But she could understand Ky’s wish to have something to show for his mission and if they needed a planetary magnetic field to boost the signal strength anyway, they might as well use the Hive planet to do it.
She was still trying to quiet her beating heart as Ky finished the landing sequence and turned towards her.
“All right, little girl,” he said, his deep voice soft and coaxing. “How about we go in the living quarters in the back of the ship and get that cut of yours taken care of?”
For a moment Dani wasn’t sure what he was talking about. But when he motioned to her shoulder, she understood. Suddenly the dull, throbbing ache which was the aftermath of contact with a pain-spear made itself known as it hadn’t before. She’d barely felt the injury, so frantic had she been in the hours since she’d gotten it. But now, in a quiet, safe place at last, the growing pain was making itself known.
Are you someplace safe though? an uncertain little voice whispered in her head. Off your own world for the first time, run away with a strange male—is that safe?
Ky’s not a strange male—he’s Ky, she argued with herself. But it was still hard to get used to seeing him up and around and free. Somehow it had felt so much safer when he was manacled in the cell. He was so big and strong and they were all alone together…
“Hey, little girl—what’s wrong?” His deep voice was soft and concerned. Dani looked up and saw he was looking at her intently. “What is it?” he asked. “Why are you afraid all of a sudden?”
“You…how did you know?” Dani whispered. “Know that I’m afraid?”
“You don’t have much of a poker-face.” He shook his head at her look of incomprehension. “Never mind—it’s an Earth game of chance and bluffing. I’ll teach you sometime. What I’m trying to say is, I can read your face like a book and right now what I’m reading is fear and maybe a hefty dose of regret.”
“Regret?” Dani said sharply. “Regret that I ran away from that disgusting Councilor Tornk? That filthy old bray-bray can kiss my creamy brown behind!”
Ky laughed softly and his pale green eyes went half-lidded.
“Actually, he might like that. I know I would.”
“You…what do you mean?” Dani felt her cheeks get hot at the way he was looking at her.
Suddenly she remembered that not so long ago she’d climbed on his lap and attempted to force his thick shaft right into her sacred channel. What must he think of her? Did he expect they were going to complete the act now? Did he still intend to change the color of her eyes? Did she want him to?
She found she didn’t know.
“You…” she had to stop to lick her lips which were suddenly dry. “Are you going to…going to change the color of my eyes now, Kyron?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you want me to?”
“I…” Dani heard her voice shaking nervously but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “I—I don’t know,” she confessed.
“Then no, I’m not. I want you, little girl, but not until I’m completely sure you want me,” Ky said seriously. “I don’t want to change the color of your eyes just so you never have to worry about that old bastard Tornk anymore. I want to change them—want to give you the Deep Touch—because you want me to. Because you want me as much as I want you.”
Dani felt a soft touch—his whisper fingers stroking across her heated cheek.
“All…all right,” she stammered at last.
“I do, however, want to heal that cut on your back and shoulder,” he said. The whisper fingers stroked her cheek again, then trailed down her throat tenderly. “You healed my back for me when I was wounded—let me do the same for you.”
Dani felt herself melting under his tender assault and somehow she found herself nodding ascent.
“You can try to treat it,” she told him. “But a pain-spear is made to cause nerve-damage. Honestly, it may be impossible to heal.”
“We’ll see about that.” The big Kindred seemed undeterred by her pessimism. “Come in the back and let’s see what we can do about it.”
With a gesture, he led Dani from the cock-pit area to the back which was made up, as he had said, as a living quarters.