Awakened by the Giant Read online

  Or maybe don’t want to remember, whispered an ominous little voice in her head. Maybe can’t bear to remember.

  Maddy retched again but this time nothing came up, though her stomach clenched like a slick fist. She stared dully as the puddle of green slime that had come up the first time slid towards the dried blood. When the green and maroon mixed, it made a disgusting brown color that made her feel like heaving again.

  Then Calden was sweeping her up into his arms again and cradling her close to his chest.

  “Come,” he said, his voice sounding half tender, half stern. “We need to get you out of here. I never should have brought you in the first place—it’s too much for you to handle right now.”

  “You had to,” Maddy said weakly. “I never would have believed you otherwise. But I see now. They’re dead…all dead. I don’t understand how I survived myself.”

  Calden didn’t offer any opinion on that. He simply carried her out of the vast hangar-like room, away from the wreck of the Kennedy and the remains of her old life.

  Maddy shivered against his chest, trying not to think…trying not to feel. She felt cold and empty and broken inside. And alone…so alone.

  Six

  Maybe I did the wrong thing in bringing her back—in cloning her. Maybe the memories of her own death and the loss of her mate and the rest of her crew is too much emotional pain to bear.

  It was something he hadn’t even considered before starting this project, Calden admitted to himself as he stood and watched over Madeline while she slept. He should have though—should have realized that cloning a sentient being—a person—would have consequences.

  Madeline sighed and shifted in her sleep. Calden had given her a sedative to help calm her down and then taken her to his own room. Most specimens were kept in containment cages when they weren’t being studied and observed but there was no way he could do that to the soft little female. So instead, he had taken her back to his own quarters and had slipped her between the sheets of his own sleeping platform.

  The sleeping platform was the one piece of furniture in the entire station which was built completely to Calden’s scale. Though he compromised elsewhere, he knew he needed to stretch out when he slept so he had made sure he could. Now he watched Madeline shift again, her small form looking tiny on the vast mattress.

  She had been shivering so he had gotten a warming blanket he used on his more delicate specimens and put that over her as well. But despite the extra warmth and the sedative he had given her, she still frowned in her sleep, her brows knitting together as she tossed restlessly.

  “Pierce!” she whispered, clearly talking in her sleep. “Don’t say that…how can you be that way? I thought…thought you loved me. Don’t you care at all anymore? How could you…why did you…”

  Calden frowned. Pierce—hadn’t that been the name of Madeline’s now-deceased mate? Was she dreaming of him? If so, the dream seemed to be unpleasant. As he watched, tears squeezed from the corners of her tightly shut eyes and she let out a little moan of pure unhappiness.

  Unable to bear watching her in pain, Calden crouched by the side of the bed and cupped her soft cheek in his hand. Gods, she was so tiny and perfect! He’d never had much contact with females of his own kind. As he had told Madeline, most of them had died out before he was born and even his own mother had died when he was very young. But he couldn’t imagine a more beautiful female than the one before him now.

  Madeline sighed and pressed her cheek into his palm, her delicate features at last relaxing as she nuzzled against him.

  “That’s right, nieka,” Calden murmured. “Just relax…everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

  Although how it would be all right, he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how to make things easier for her, or even how or if he ought to tell her she was a clone. Madeline had wondered about how she had survived the crash when all the rest of her crew had died but Calden hadn’t thought it was the right time to tell her the truth. She was already so upset—he thought it best to save that particular bit of knowledge for later.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured to her again. “I’ll take care of you. I swear I will.”

  Right up until the self-termination unit in her neck takes care of her for you, you mean,whispered a dark little voice in his head.

  Calden pushed it fiercely away. He wouldn’t think of that now—couldn’t think of it now. He just wanted to stay here, at Madeline’s side, and stroke her soft cheek and watch her sleep. He wanted to protect her and possess her and make her his, though he scarcely knew how.

  He never wanted to let her go.

  Maddy woke in the darkness in an unfamiliar bed. Her head felt fuzzy and stuffed with cotton. She had been dreaming. Dreaming of…Pierce? Yes, dreaming of her husband. She couldn’t quite remember the dream but she did remember the emotions that had accompanied it. Betrayal…hurt…anger… What had Pierce done to fill her with such feelings? What had he done and where was he?

  For that matter, where was she?

  Maddy sat up and blinked in the darkness. She tried to push her hair out of her eyes but found that her hands seemed to be numb. They flopped uselessly at the ends of her arms and she felt a surge of panic.

  Good God, what was wrong with her? Had she had some kind of stroke in the middle of the night which only affected her hands? How could she work at her veterinary practice if she couldn’t use them? What was she going to do?

  I need help!

  Anxiously, she felt with her forearms, sliding them over the mattress, trying to find Pierce. But his side of the bed was empty. Which was not unusual now that she thought about it. Pierce had been sleeping in the guest bedroom for months before they got word that the Kennedy was going to leave ahead of schedule. And after that, he’d done his best to take a different sleeping shift than her so they rarely, if ever, went to bed together. But Maddy had been trying to change that, hadn’t she? She’d been trying to put them back together…struggling to forgive him for…

  Forgive him for what? What had he done? And where was he?

  “Pierce?” Her voice sounded quavery and small in the vast blackness that surrounded her. She tried to make it firmer—more assertive. “Pierce? Where are you?”

  “Madeline?” The deep, somehow familiar voice came from the side of the bed. Who was that? And what were they doing down on the floor?

  “Pierce?” she asked again but she was almost certain whoever was down there wasn’t her husband. Who was it though? Her fuzzy brain wouldn’t let her remember.

  “No, I am not your mate. Lights dim,” the deep voice said.

  A soft, golden glow which seemed to come from the corners of the ceiling suddenly suffused the room. Maddy blinked and looked around, seeing that she was in an unfamiliar bed—an absolutely huge one, so vast it looked like someone had taken two king-sized beds and put them together end-to-end to form one monstrous mattress.

  Then someone sat up beside the bed—a giant with glowing topaz eyes and a concerned expression on his face.

  “Madeline?” he said, frowning. “Are you feeling any better?”

  For a moment she was tempted to scream…then everything came rushing back to her. Waking up in the slime tanks…the Mentats…the lab…the space station…the ruined hulk of the Kennedy…realizing that everyone she had ever known or loved was dead…and the big Kindred carrying her away and giving her something he said would help her sleep.

  “Calden?” she whispered, making his name a question.

  “Yes, Madeline?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you well? The sedative I gave you shouldn’t have worn off yet—it’s still the middle of the sleep cycle.”

  “You’re real, aren’t you? This is real? Not just a dream?” It was hard to believe—hard to accept that all the strange things that had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours were really true.

  “I am not a dream,” he said. “I’m sorry, Madeline—this is reality. I know it must seem strange to you
but—”

  “They’re really dead. Pierce and the rest of them,” Maddy interrupted him. She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea. It didn’t seem quite real but then she remembered the wreck of the Kennedy and realized all over again that it must be true.

  “Yes,” Calden said. “I’m sorry, Madeline.”

  “I’m the only one who survived.” She shivered. “Why me?”

  “You were the only one we found,” he said simply. “Do you wish it wasn’t so? Would you rather be dead?”

  His blunt question seemed to wake something in her—a determination—a will to survive Maddy hadn’t even known she had herself.

  “No,” she said, frowning. “No, I don’t know what I wish but I know it isn’t that. I want to live, Calden. And…and I’m grateful to you for saving me. This is all just so…so scary and new.”

  “And you mourn the ones you lost,” he rumbled softly.

  Madeline nodded and a single hot tear slipped down her cheek. She tried to brush it away and remembered again that her hands weren’t working.

  “Damn it! I thought you said you could fix this!” She waved one useless hand at Calden.

  “So I can. But I thought you needed to recover emotionally more than you needed to recover physically. We can work on your hands in the morning.” He yawned. “Do you feel like you could sleep some more?”

  “I don’t know.” Maddy frowned. “What are you doing down there on the floor, anyway?” she asked, motioning to where he was sitting by the side of the bed.

  “I thought it might not be…appropriate for me to share the sleeping platform with you.”

  “Even though you said we’re not…not compatible that way?” Maddy asked, raising an eyebrow.

  He cleared his throat self-consciously and nodded. “Even so. Do you think you could rest some more?”

  “I guess so.” Clearly he was tired and it was the middle of the night for him. The big Kindred had done so much for her already—Maddy didn’t want to keep him up and make him sleep deprived.

  She lay back down in the vast bed and, awkwardly using her forearms, pulled the sheets—which were made of some silky, silver material—up to her chin.

  Calden lay back down too, by the side of the bed.

  “Lights off,” she heard his deep voice say and then they were plunged into darkness again.

  Maddy turned on her side but the minute she closed her eyes, her mind was flooded with thoughts and memories—pictures of the past. Pierce on their wedding day with a smile on his face…and then later with a cold scowl as he told her he had to work, that she needed to leave him alone. Then she saw the rest of the Kennedy’s crew…so many faces…laughing, smiling, frowning, crying…so many people who were dead now. And she was alone…all alone. She would always be alone. They were never coming back. She would never see them—any of them—again.

  A tear rolled down her cheek and then another and another. Before she could stop herself, Maddy was sobbing.

  She buried her face in the soft, giving pillow and tried to muffle the sobs. She knew Calden was trying to sleep and she didn’t want to wake him.

  But he must have heard her anyway because a large, warm hand was suddenly cupping her shoulder.

  “Madeline,” he rumbled, his deep voice worried. “What can I do?”

  “Hold me.” The cry came from her heart. She barely knew the big Kindred but right now she needed him. “Please, Calden,” she whispered through her sobs. “Just hold me. I need…need to feel not so alone.”

  “Of course. Scoot over.”

  She did and then he was slipping under the sheets, his body big, and warm, and solid beside hers. He pulled Madeline close and she buried her face in his broad chest and wept as she had earlier. This time her tears had a feeling of finality. Before she’d been unable to completely believe the entire crew was gone. Now she knew it—knew it in her bones. She had seen the wreck of the Kennedy and knew that no one could have survived it. She would have to deal with it—would have to find a way to move on.

  But for now she let herself mourn their loss and grieve for the fact that she would never, ever see any of them again.

  After she finally cried herself out, Calden dried her eyes gently with the edge of the sheet and turned her so that her much smaller body fit into the curve of his larger one. He pulled her close and wrapped his long, muscular arms around her, making her feel comforted and secure.

  “Sleep, nieka,” he murmured and Maddy thought she felt him drop a soft kiss to the top of her head. “Sleep and let yourself heal.”

  Maddy wanted to tell him that some wounds were too deep to ever heal but when she opened her mouth, a yawn came out instead of words.

  He’s right, she thought, I’m exhausted. I need to sleep.

  “Will…will you stay with me?” she whispered. “I don’t want to wake up in bed alone again.”

  “All night,” Calden promised, squeezing her gently. “Now sleep, Madeline. It’s what you need. Tomorrow we’ll start fixing your hands.”

  She could feel his broad chest at her back and his big body curled against hers. She knew he was a stranger but she felt comforted and protected by his presence. The big Kindred would stay with her—he wouldn’t leave her alone. She would be safe as long as she was in his arms—somehow she knew it.

  She closed her eyes again and this time, no images came—only the blackness of sleep.

  Calden lay awake for a long while, feeling the way her small, soft body fit against his. Gods, he had done wrong by her—wrong to bring her back to a life where she was the only one of her kind. Wrong to bring her back to pain and loss and abject misery.

  He was glad that she had asserted so strongly that she still wanted to live, despite her pain. If she had answered his question about wishing she was dead in the affirmative, he would have waited until she was soundly asleep and then gone and asked FATHER to activate her self-termination unit at once. Or so he told himself.

  But again, the idea of letting her die—of seeing the light go out of her lovely eyes—was almost unbearable to Calden. He wanted to protect her from death—to comfort her and meet her needs. Which was, of course, the only reason he had allowed himself to get into the sleeping platform with her. Their current sleeping arrangement wasn’t, strictly speaking, proper.

  But who cared how they slept since they were sexually incompatible anyway? Well, not exactly sexually incompatible but size incompatible. Anyway, it didn’t matter, Calden told himself. Even if they had been close enough in size to mate, he wouldn’t even consider it. Madeline’s tears and sorrow made him want to hold and comfort her, not breed her. And he would never risk his position at the Mentat station for a female—would he?

  Gods, he had opened a whole box of problems when he’d cloned Madeline and awakened her to second life. If he had just stuck with non-sentient species, he wouldn’t have to be considering any of these troubling questions now. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions—except for the pain he had caused Madeline. That he did regret, deeply. He swore to himself he would do everything in his power to comfort and protect her and to assuage her grief. There was nothing else he could do right now. Nothing but hold her close and keep her safe.

  Musing over the strange situation he found himself in, Calden pulled the little female closer and finally drifted off to sleep.

  Seven

  “I thought you said you could fix my hands.”

  “I can but it will take some time.” Calden motioned patiently. “Can you put them back in the nutrient bath please? They’ll never be functional unless you allow the nerves to grow properly.”

  Maddy sighed and did as he asked, sliding her hands back into the shallow containers of warm green slime on either side of her plate. She’d had an idea—a very unrealistic idea, she realized now—that Calden could just give her a pill or a shot or something to make her hands start working instantly. But apparently the only cure for them was to give them more time in the n
utrient bath stuff she’d woken up in, in the first place.

  Since Maddy absolutely refused to go back into the slime, Calden had rigged up two much smaller tanks where she could rest her hands and let the nutrient bath do its work. According to him, it should only take a couple of days for her to have functional hands again. Apparently the nerves had to be regenerated—she must have hurt them during the crash, Maddy speculated—though she still couldn’t remember how.

  Not that she wanted to. Every time she remembered the dried puddle of blood under the huge tire of the terraforming machine, her gut ached and her heart started to pound. So she was trying hard not to think about it.

  Instead, she concentrated on the food on her plate—which was a strange mixture of fluffy purple mounds and dark green cubes which Calden had made for “First Meal” as he called breakfast.

  “Open,” he said, spearing a mouthful on a fork with five long tines arranged in a circle and holding it towards her mouth. “You need to eat for the nutrient bath to work. It has to have fuel to convert into new nerve tissue for you.”

  Maddy frowned.

  “How do you know I can eat that? What if your food is poison to me?”

  Calden sighed patiently.

  “I know because I can eat it and it’s not poison to me. Because our genetics match up enough that I can be certain you can eat my food.”

  Maddy still wasn’t sure—the fluffy purple mounds and green cubes didn’t look especially appealing—although they did smell pretty good, in a weird kind of way.

  “You’re really sure?”

  He frowned. “Madeline, our DNA is so similar that I could father a child with you and your body would not reject it.”

  Maddy felt her heart give a funny little skip in her chest.

  “Really? Um, that’s an…interesting way to put it. I thought we weren’t, uh, compatible that way.”

  “Only because of the differences in our size,” Calden assured her. “And I wasn’t trying to intimate that I wanted to father a child with you. I was simply making the point that if your womb would be receptive to my seed, then your stomach should be equally receptive to my food. All right?”