Secret Santa Surprise: Book 29 in the Kindred Tales Series Read online

  “Do you want it to be a date?” she countered uncertainly. “I mean, I know I’m way too old for you…”

  “That is what my brother said too,” Clear said sadly.

  “What?” Melanie frowned. “You told him you were coming to see me and he said I was too old?”

  “Strong said that the two of us, who each have barely five years of experience in our respective professions, didn’t have a hope of attracting a lovely, mature Elite who was at the top of her career like you,” Clear explained. “I know we’re too young, but I had hoped…”

  “Wait…” Melanie shook her head. “You think…” She frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you think. But let’s table it for now,” she added, holding up a hand when he started to explain. “Things are getting…confusing. So how about if you show me how to use my wave before this frozen pizza melts?”

  She nodded to the now rather limp and soggy looking pizza which was wilting sadly on the cardboard disk it had come on.

  “Of course.” Clear nodded. “Well, first put the, uh, item on the bottom surface of the wave.”

  Melanie smiled.

  “You have no idea what this is, do you?” she asked, nodding down at the pepperoni pizza.

  The big Kindred shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not—some kind of food disk, I assume.”

  “Food disk?” Melanie tried not to laugh.

  The Light Twin nodded seriously.

  “It looks strange to me, though I suppose it’s not nearly as strange as some of our food would look to you. Grieza worms, for instance.”

  “I’ve heard about those from Sonja,” Melanie said, nodding thoughtfully as she arranged the frozen pizza on the bottom of the wave. “She said they look awful but taste amazing. But do you eat them raw?”

  “Not quite,” Clear said. “There is a kind of sauce you pour on them that kills them.”

  “Ugh…” Melanie picked up some pieces of cheese that had fallen off the pizza and sprinkled them back on. “I’d rather have my worms cook—”

  She had been going to say, “I’d rather have my worms cooked, if I’m going to eat any,” but her words cut off in a gasp of pure pain. Because the minute she’d said the word “cook,” the wave immediately cut on and a thousand tiny microfine rays of heat and light shot down onto the pizza…and onto her hand, which was still in the way.

  “Melanie!” Clear acted quickly. Grabbing her by the wrist, he yanked her hand away before Melanie could even move it herself. It came away smoking and she saw—to her horror—that the back of her hand was dappled with tiny pinhole sized burns. But even worse was the spot where the microfine heat rays had “clumped together” to form a thicker ray.

  In the delicate area between her forefinger and her thumb there was a hole as big as a nickel burned right through the flesh.

  Melanie held up her hand, which was trembling, and looked at the hole. No, scratch that—she looked through the hole.

  “I can see the kitchen through my hand,” she said numbly and then everything began to spin around her.

  Melanie!” Clear exclaimed again. He reached for her and then Melanie felt herself being lifted as he picked her up and cradled her in his muscular arms.

  “Don’t…don’t hurt your back,” she protested dizzily. She wasn’t usually one to faint but somehow the sight of her kitchen wall, as seen through the brand new smoking hole in her hand, wouldn’t leave her mind. And every time she thought of it, she felt that spinning sensation again.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Clear told her and then he was taking her out of the kitchen, out of her suite, and into the long silver corridors that ran the length of the Mother Ship.

  “What…where are we going?” Melanie asked dizzily. “Just need to…to lay down. Can’t look at …at the hole. It makes me dizzy.”

  “Don’t talk,” Clear said again. “I’m taking you to see my brother. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Can’t wait…to meet him,” she replied and then everything grayed out and she went limp in his arms.

  4

  “Where is he? I need to see my brother—now!”

  Strong felt his twin’s fear and worry even before Clear came into sight.

  “In here,” he said to the nurse, who had come running to get him. “Tell him to come in here.” He gestured to an empty triage room, holding the door wide.

  Clear came into sight, rounding the corner with a wild look in his eyes. In his arms was a lovely human female with full, lush curves and long brown hair which spilled like a waterfall over Clear’s muscular forearm.

  “In here,” Strong repeated, motioning to his brother. “What happened? Is this Melanie?”

  “Yes.” Clear brought her carefully to the exam table and laid her down as gently as though she was made of Dolsarian crystal and might break.

  “What happened?” Strong asked again. He had never seen his twin so distraught or felt such strong emotions through their twin-link before.

  “I was trying to show her how to use the wave,” Clear said, speaking rapidly. “But as she was arranging the food she wanted to prepare, she said the word, ‘cook’ while her hand was still in the way.”

  “What?” Clear frowned. “So she already had the cooking surface pulled out of the wall and aligned over the base? Didn’t you tell her that was dangerous?”

  “I was going to!” There was an agonized look on Clear’s face. “But I never thought…we were just speaking so naturally and easily. The conversation was flowing from one topic to the next and I know I should have said something but I never expected her to give the command to cook while her hand was still in the way!”

  “Well, it’s done now. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brother—I don’t think it was your fault,” Strong added, seeing the state his twin was in. “Which hand was injured? Ah—the right one,” he answered his own question, leaning down to look at the smoking hole in the female’s delicate hand. “This is bad,” he said, frowning and shaking his head.

  “What—too bad to fix?” Clear demanded. He glared up at Strong. “You’re the doctor, Brother—so fucking fix her!”

  Strong looked up in surprise. Clear never cursed. He had never seen his twin in such anguish before. Obviously the lush little Elite who was lying on the table had already captured his heart.

  “All right,” he said, using a calming tone. “I can fix it—it’s just going to hurt like all the Seven Hells rolled into one. Thank the Goddess she’s out,” he added.

  Which of course was the cue for the little Elite to open her eyes and look up at him.

  “Clear?” she murmured, frowning. “What did you do to your hair? And your eyes…they’re blue now. Where’s the green?”

  “I’m not Clear—I’m his brother, Strong,” Strong told her. “You hurt your hand and he brought you in to me to get it tended to.”

  “I’m here, Melanie.” Clear took up a position on the other side of the bed and cupped her cheek anxiously. “I won’t leave you, I swear it.”

  “Oh, Clear…” She reached for him with her uninjured left hand and he took it in both of his.

  “It’s all right,” he told her softly. “Strong is one of the best doctors aboard the entire Mother Ship. He’s going to heal you up, Melanie—I swear it.”

  “He will?” Her gaze switched to Strong and he found himself falling abruptly into her clear, amber eyes. Who knew that a human female could have eyes like that? They were so exotic in her lovely, pale face. He could see why Clear was attracted to her—she was fucking gorgeous.

  “Yes,” he said finding his voice at last. “Yes, I’m going to get you all healed up, Melanie.” He liked the taste of her name on his lips. “But I’m afraid I’ll need to give you something to knock you out,” he went on, trying not to get lost in her eyes again.

  To his surprise, she shook her head vehemently.

  “No! I don’t…don’t do well with any kind of anesthesia. Had…had it during surgery when I was younger and brok
e my leg. I was sick for…for a week afterwards.”

  “But this is going to be an extremely painful procedure,” Strong protested. “I’ll have to inject your hand with nanites so they can rebuild all the flesh and nerves and any tendons that got burned away by the wave.” He looked at her seriously. “I don’t want to scare you but if I was having it done, I’d want to be knocked out myself.”

  She shook her head stubbornly.

  “Don’t want it.”

  “Can’t you use some kind of local anesthetic?” Clear asked him. “Something to numb the area while the nanites work?”

  Strong raised his eyebrows at his brother.

  “Local anesthetic? And here I thought you never listened when I talked about my work, Brother.”

  “Just do something for her,” Clear said tightly. “Help her get through this, Strong. Please.”

  “I will. Of course I will, Brother.”

  Touched by his twin’s anxiety, Strong reached across the table to squeeze Clear’s shoulder briefly and sent a surge of reassurance through their bond. Then he looked at Melanie again.

  “Clear is right—I can inject something into your hand to numb it to a certain extent. But I’m afraid you’ll still feel the nanites working.”

  “Do it,” she said tightly. She looked at Clear. “You’ll stay with me?”

  “Every minute, sweetheart.” Clear seemed unaware that he had called her the term of endearment and Melanie, for her part, didn’t protest. She only nodded and gripped his hands tighter.

  “All right, then—let’s get started. Nurse,” Strong said, turning to the nurse who had been standing to one side, watching wide-eyed. “I’ll need 4 ccs of lidobexicain and a small syringe of the flesh-building nanites. Oh, and bring me something to disinfect the wound.”

  Although honestly, it looked like the rays from the wave had pretty much cauterized the gaping hole in the little female’s hand. Still, Strong liked to be thorough.

  “Yes, Doctor!” the nurse exclaimed and ran out of the room in a hurry.

  “It’s all right,” Strong told his patient, hoping he was telling the truth. “Everything is going to be just fine—you’ll see.”

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” Clear said, echoing his words. “We’re going to take care of you, I swear it.”

  5

  Melanie’s first thought on waking up from the gray-out was that Clear had somehow changed his hair and eye color and gotten even bigger. Her second thought was that her hand hurt like hell.

  It hadn’t before—maybe because she’d been in shock. But now it throbbed and roared at her, demanding that she do something because it hurt…it hurt!

  Then, when she understood the man she was looking at wasn’t Clear, but his brother, Strong, she understood the incredible resemblance. The twins had basically the same features, though their coloring was very different. Not that she had time to compare them much—not when her hand was in so much pain.

  Now she gripped Clear’s hands with her uninjured one and looked into his eyes, trying not to watch as his brother worked diligently on her right hand. First he poured some kind of pale blue liquid which foamed and hissed over it, and then there was a series of light pinpricks around the site of the injury as he injected her quickly and smoothly with a tiny needle.

  “Okay,” he rumbled—somehow his voice was even deeper than Clear’s. “I’ve cleaned the wound and numbed it as much as possible, but you’re still probably going to feel the nanites as they work.”

  Melanie couldn’t help looking then, and she saw that he was holding a small syringe which appeared to be filled with pinkish foam.

  “Those are the nanites?” she asked breathlessly.

  Strong nodded.

  “They’ll capture information from your DNA and rebuild your hand exactly as it was.”

  “But…I don’t see anything but foam,” Melanie protested weakly.

  “That’s the medium they’re stored in,” he explained. “The nanites themselves are microscopic. They look like tiny metal spiders if you look at them under an electron microscope.”

  “Tiny metal spiders?” Melanie didn’t like the sound of that.

  “They’ll use the foam they’re stored in as a flesh building medium and ‘spin’ a web of flesh to fill in the hole in your hand,” Strong said, nodding. “Are you ready to begin?”

  Melanie took a deep breath.

  “Yes,” she said tightly and looked at Clear. “As long as you stay with me.”

  “I won’t leave your side,” the Light Twin promised. His face looked anguished.

  “Neither of us will,” Strong said firmly. “All right, here we go. And please remember you need to hold still while the nanites do their work.”

  He pointed the syringe over the hole in her hand and depressed the plunger. Slowly and carefully, working in a circular motion, he filled the hole with the pink swirl of foam. It almost looked like he was icing a miniature cupcake, she thought faintly. Then he took a firm grip on Melanie’s forearm, pinning it to the table.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Melanie told him. “I…I think the numbing medicine you injected me with is working. I really don’t feel anything at all.”

  “That’s because the nanites are still just scanning you and reading your DNA,” he said gently. “It’s when they start ‘spinning’ their webs to replace your lost tissues that the process really becomes painful.”

  As he spoke, Melanie started to feel a tingling in the wounded area. The tingling soon turned to an itching and then the itching became a burning.

  “Oh!” she gasped, flexing her fingers spasmodically. “Oh, I feel it!”

  “You have to be still now.” Strong gave her a stern look and placed his other large hand over her fingers, forcing them flat. “Perfectly still or you could wind up with a permanent scar. You must not disrupt the nanites’ webs.”

  “I…I’ll try!” Tears were squeezing from the corners of Melanie’s eyes. She didn’t like to cry in front of the twins, but the fire in her hand was getting worse and worse. Had she thought the injury burned before? It was nothing to what she was experiencing now. Having the nanites work on her was like holding her hand in a blast furnace and feeling it burn to a crisp without being able to do anything about it.

  “Melanie? Sweetheart? Look at me,” Clear said anxiously. “Look at me—concentrate on me and not on your hand, all right?”

  “Talk to me then,” she begged Clear. “Distract me, please!”

  “I’ll try. I…I’m so sorry for what happened. I should have warned you it wasn’t safe to have the top of the wave pulled out while you were arranging the food on the base.” He looked so anxious that Melanie’s heart fisted in her chest. But what he was saying was only making her think of her hand more.

  His twin seemed to understand her dilemma.

  “Talk about something else, Brother,” Strong commanded. The Dark Twin was leaning on her heavily, holding down her forearm and keeping her fingers from curling into a fist. Melanie knew that without his help holding still, she would have been thrashing all over the table, screaming in pain.

  “I will—but what?” Clear was obviously distraught because he felt as though the accident was his fault somehow. Which was ridiculous but Melanie was in so much pain, she could barely talk, let alone reassure him.

  “Tell me…tell me what you were going to tell me back in my suite,” she gasped out. “You said…your brother had…ideas for my…my vid.”

  “Oh, yes!” Clear nodded eagerly. “Strong thinks that human females are reluctant to bond with us because they fear our size and strength.”

  “You’re certainly…very strong,” Melanie got out through gritted teeth. She glanced up at Strong, who gave her a sympathetic look.

  “You’re doing great, little one,” he murmured. “Not much longer now.” He was holding her down with ease—firmly but gently—though Melanie’s entire body was trying to spasm with the intense pain.

  “Tell
me…more,” she begged Clear.

  “Well, Strong thinks human females fear our size during the bonding process, since we are, er, merged together,” the Light Twin went on. “But he hypothesizes that they wouldn’t fear us so much if they knew about the properties of bonding fruit.”

  “Bonding…fruit?” Melanie asked, but her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. The pain was becoming so intense, it felt like her mind was checking out of the situation. The world around her began to take on a grayish cast, just as it had in her kitchen when she looked at the hole in her hand. “Don’…under…stannnnd,” she muttered but the words came out slow, as though someone was pulling them like taffy from her lips.

  “Melanie? What’s wrong with her? What’s happening?” Clear asked anxiously, looking up at his twin.

  “She’s graying out from the pain,” Strong said, still sounding remarkably calm. “Let her go, Brother. It’s better that she be out for this last part—it’s the most painful yet.”

  And then Melanie’s world went dark and she knew no more.

  “You were right, Brother—she truly is exquisite.” Strong looked down at his patient, now lying quietly in one of the Med Center’s beds. He had given her a mild sleep aid to help her continue to rest for a while, while the nanites finished healing her hand. Then he’d had one of the female nurses change her into a more comfortable gown and moved her to a private room where she had been resting quietly ever since.

  “Will she be all right?” Clear was still sitting right by Melanie’s side, looking at her anxiously. He had been there for hours and showed no signs of leaving. Not that Strong blamed him. The lovely mature Elite was definitely worth waiting for and watching over.

  “She’ll be fine,” Strong assured his twin. “See—the nanites are almost finished with their work.”

  He pointed to her right hand, which lay outside the covers. The back of it was covered with a fine webbing of pink threads, almost too thin to see. The nanites had branched out to heal, not only the hole that had been burned right through her hand, but also the smaller wounds that the finer beams of the wave had made.