Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“Oh, I know!” Mattie clasped her hands under her chin, her brown eyes wide with hope and excitement. She had thick, dark lashes, a cute little nose, and a heart-shaped face with a cupid’s bow mouth that her friends said made her look adorable and wholesome at the same time. Kind of like one of those old “American Girls” dolls come to life.
Mattie didn’t like the comparison herself—she would rather be striking and angular and thin but she wasn’t—she was short and curvy and cute which were facts she’d come to accept about herself.
“Do you think Commander Sylvan is going to approve the mission?” she asked Sophie hopefully. “You’re his wife—you must know!”
“Sorry.” Sophie shook her head. “But Sylvan doesn’t talk business at home—I won’t let him! Running the Mother Ship is hard enough—he doesn’t need to bring it back to our suite with him every night. The minute he walks in the door, I do my best just to help him unwind and decompress and put everything away until the next day.”
“You’re a good wife,” Mattie said, smiling. “I hope he knows how lucky he is!”
“Well, I try.” Sophie smiled back at her. “And you know, all the Kindred feel lucky to have us. Considering they’re 95% male, they always feel grateful for females.”
“I can think of one particular Kindred who doesn’t feel a bit grateful to have a human female around,” Mattie said, rolling her eyes.
Sophie sighed sympathetically.
“You wouldn’t be talking about Grath, would you?”
Mattie made a face and nodded.
“Of course I am. I just can’t seem to get along with him, Sophie! I wish you’d put a bug in Sylvan’s ear about getting a new Protector assigned to me.”
Sophie shook her head.
“I’m sorry, hon, but Sylvan doesn’t actually choose who gets assigned to who. He leaves it up to the Goddess.”
Mattie put a hand on her hip and frowned.
“He what? What are you talking about?”
“He leaves it to the Goddess—or, well, the High Priestess,” Sophie clarified. “She puts the names of the human scientists and possible Protectors into what’s called a “blind box” and prays over it and pulls out the names. I’ve seen her do it—they always come out two at a time, a male and a female. The Kindred believe that’s the Goddess’s way of saying which two are meant to work together.”
“I didn’t know that. That’s not a very scientific way of pairing people up!” Mattie protested. She didn’t like to denigrate other people’s religion, but as a scientist, she was pretty skeptical of most of the belief systems out there.
“It’s actually not as bad as you might think,” Sophie said gently. “Since all the Protectors are Kindred and Kindred males are all fiercely protective of females, no matter who they are. So you really can’t get a bad pairing.”
“Oh yes you can!” Mattie said grimly. “Case in point—Grath and myself!”
Grath was the Hybrid Kindred warrior who had been assigned to Mattie as her Protector. As such, he went with her to every alien planet she visited to guard her with his life.
This was a safeguard that Commander Sylvan had installed to keep human female scientists safe while they were working for the Mother Ship. Human male scientists could also have Protectors if they wanted, of course, but most of the scientists in the program were women.
It was still difficult to get some research projects taken seriously in the male-dominated scientific community back on Earth. Whereas the Kindred, who valued females highly and treated them as equals, were more than willing to listen and give prospective scientific research done by women a fair trial. That had certainly been Mattie’s experience, anyway. She had always longed to study alien cultures and so she had applied and won a coveted spot as a Kindred ambassador slash Xeno-Cultural Anthropologist.
Most Protectors got along with the scientists they were assigned to extremely well—one or two had even Joined with their charges—which was the Kindred version of marriage. But that wasn’t so in Mattie’s case. She and the huge Hybrid who had been assigned as her Protector were like oil and water—they just didn’t mix.
Maybe more like nitro and glycerin, Mattie thought wryly. Leave the two of us alone together for too long and we’re likely to explode!
As if thinking of him had called the big Hybrid into existence, there was a brief knock at the door and when it slid open, Grath was standing there.
Mattie couldn’t deny he was an impressive specimen of a man. Like most Kindred warriors he stood somewhere in the neighborhood of seven feet tall and he was extremely muscular—a fact his dark blue uniform shirt couldn’t hide.
She wasn’t quite sure which two—or possibly more—branches of the Kindred tree he was a Hybrid of, but he had long black hair, a reddish tint to his dark tan skin, and eyes like pools of midnight with golden motes that looked like sparks in them.