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  Kondr was completely silent as they walked through the halls of his home and got into the skimmer. He slammed the controls into gear, and they shot back to the treatment building at a ridiculous speed.

  “Um, this won’t work if you kill me before Rathos gets the sample.” It was the best thing to say when screaming in terror was her other option.

  He didn’t reply, but he slowed their speed to something more reasonable.

  As they parked, he muttered, “You know the way.”

  Dismissed, she left him and walked up to the second floor and smiled at Rathos when she dug him out from behind the attendants. “I have it. Set me up with a plasma drip, and you can start taking the blood that contains the cure.”

  “You are serious? Are you sure?”

  “I am sure that my body is producing antibodies that will work on an Admorik.” She didn’t want to say how, and she really hoped he did not ask.

  He didn’t ask, with attendants standing by nervously, the drip she asked for was set up and the donor pack was set on her other side.

  Rathos was waiting for the initial sample, and when he received the tube, he moved off with it to begin his testing.

  Ava felt the needles attach to her skin and breathed in deep meditation. She had to keep her body from fighting off the needles and that required a lot of concentration.

  Replacing her own blood was one of the easiest healings that she could do for herself. It caused little to no trauma, and she was sure that her baby was safe in its multi-celled form.

  Avaneer relaxed into the donation of blood and waited for Rathos’s shout of relief. It was not long in coming.

  She felt a hand on her arm and a voice asked, “How much can you donate?”

  “Two litres a day for safety. But I can be back here tomorrow morning to do it again.” She cracked open one eye, and Kondr was kneeling at her side with concern on his face. It was he who had spoken.

  “Isn’t that a lot?”

  “For anyone who isn’t a contact healer, probably. For me, it will just make me tired and queasy.”

  Rathos was hovering behind Kondr with a data pad in his hand.

  “Dr. Rathos noted something peculiar in your blood work.”

  Ava tightened and then breathed to keep the blood flowing through the tubes. “Nothing peculiar. Precisely what was needed.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “You know you are pregnant?”

  She chuckled weakly. “How else was I going to trick my body into protecting another genetic line?”

  “And you offered me your death as a solution?”

  The medical attendants cleared the area, working on the first samples of blood while the next filled the pack with every heartbeat.

  “The mixing of bloodlines may be in the current Admaryn, but there are no mixed races here on Nafki. Why would my little half-breed be welcome?”

  His words were soft as he leaned in close. “You could have asked.”

  Chapter Nine

  Kondr held her hand for the entire hour that she slowly gave blood containing the cure for the pathogen.

  Ava sealed the marks of the large needles with direct pressure and a surge of tired talent. “I thought you were angry.” “Oh, I am angry. There are things that need to be worked out before we settle everything, and those things are related to your glossing over the truth of the current situation.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.

  Avaneer tried to get to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. “I think I need a minute.”

  Kondr didn’t wait. He lifted her from the chair and carried her to the upper floor before she could do more than say, “Back on Earth, you get a cookie for doing that.”

  “You give litres of blood in one sitting on your home world?” His raised eyebrows indicated that he was sceptical.

  “No. Half a litre at a time. You get a cookie and juice to help reset your blood sugars and reduce the feeling of shock.” She fought the urge to swing her legs as he carried her, but she didn’t have to fight hard. She was tired.

  “We can do better than that. In light of your exhaustive efforts, food is being delivered to your room.”

  Sighing, she leaned her head against his chest. She felt as well as heard his next question. “How did you know that you were carrying?”

  “I don’t suppose you will believe that it was mother’s intuition?”

  “No. Not that quickly.”

  She didn’t say another word until they were in her room. “Do you want to know?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  Ava winced, “Lock the door. I am not flashing for anyone who pops their head in.”

  His curiosity was evident as he did what she asked.

  Standing in the middle of the room, she loosened the top of the gown and let it slide to her feet in a whoosh. “Can you see it now?”

  Kondr was shocked at the change to her body. She could see that much in his face, but at the same time, there was a peculiar wonder. He walked to her and knelt in front of her, touching the silvery skin. “What is this?”

  “It is an indicator that I am cross-breeding with another species. Different blood, different DNA.”

  “I didn’t know that it was so easy.”

  She snorted. “It isn’t. My body tweaked your donation until it was compatible. I told you, my genes want to survive, and if they had to use you to do it, they would.”

  “So, this child is the bridge between your race and mine.”

  Ava smiled as he pressed his hand flat to her abdomen. “Yes, he is.”

  “He? You know already?”

  Laughter at the wonder in his face was her response. “Of course. He is growing in me. I know every inch of myself, and there is something inside me that is only partially mine.”

  He continued to stroke her skin in wonder until she swayed. He sighed and stopped playing. “You need rest, you need food and you need to communicate with your people. I will see what I can do on the last one.”

  He took her hand, helped her out of her boots and tucked her into bed with a pitcher of water and a glass at her side. “The food will be here when you wake.”

  She smiled, slugged down a glass of water, rolled onto her side and curled into a ball. It was time to work on protecting her little one by making sure that she was strong enough to bring him into the world.

  Kondr had mentioned letting her talk with her people and that meant she was going to live. If she was going to live, she was not going to let Nafki regret it.

  Clothing had been provided for her in the form of another gown, this time, a pale blue with a light shawl. Her feet were encased in slippers meant for an adolescent.

  The food tray that a medical attendant had brought to her was empty. Her taste buds were engaged in a shift that enabled Ava to work her way through the strange tastes with good appetite.

  She drank a litre of water and one cup of the hot beverage that she had consumed when she and Kondr had gone for breakfast.

  He was sitting across from her, leaning on the table with his fist supporting his chin. “I can’t believe you ate all of that.”

  She snorted, “It was necessary. I can’t keep producing the cure unless I stay healthy. That means eating and drinking regularly.”

  “Speaking of that, there is a line of volunteers in the lab who have tried the cure. It seems to work very well indeed. Rathos was one of the first to get an injection, I was second.” He grinned and showed her a tiny mark on his arm.

  “How many doses did he get out of the samples?”

  “Four hundred. He is culturing more and ready to go into full production the moment that the volunteer tests come out negative.”

  She sighed and smiled. “Thank goodness. I was pretty sure that it would work but not positive.”

  He raised his brows. “You had doubts?”

  “It was all theoretical. I haven’t done that before.”

  “I am aware of that. That brings me to the point that I was trying
to make last night. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Avaneer ran her hands through her hair.

  He laughed, “You do that when you are trying to cleanse the truth in sterile language.”

  She froze. “I normally don’t have my hair loose.”

  “You are avoiding the subject. How could you go this long as a virgin?”

  She shrugged. “When I was on Earth, my family was religious and no boys were allowed near me, and when I joined the Volunteers, ending up with a diagnosis of contact healer, I was swathed in robes and not allowed to touch folks, so it seemed appropriate to follow orders.”

  “Your family was in favour of you leaving your home?”

  She started to run her hands through her hair, and she stopped when he smiled with a twinkle in his eyes. “Yes. They thought I was an abomination, and since they couldn’t kill me themselves, they wanted me off the planet.”

  Her answer shocked him, she could tell. “Your family…”

  “Thought that I was evil, tainted by evil, and doomed to hell for my wicked soul.” It felt good to say it out loud.

  “What was the wickedness?”

  “I cured my grandmother, and she wrote my parents out of her will.” She smiled, her feisty grandmother’s memory always made her smile.

  “Your family did not wish her to survive?”

  “My father did not. It was his mother. She had a series of tumours that were suffocating her organs. I took them on, and she got better. She lived for six months before crashing her motorcycle and leaving her money to a local women’s shelter at my request.” Ava grinned. Her father had been sure that the money was coming to her, and at the age of seventeen, he would have had control of her funds. She and her Grandma Leftiss had looked into every charity in the area and found the women’s shelter had the best track record as well as the best recordkeeping.

  Ava wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “After that, my father decided that it was the work of the devil to bring my grandmother back to health just so she could take his money away. He hauled me to the Volunteer Centre in our area, shoved me inside and held the door shut until the attendant took me to the back.”

  “How did he know they would take you?”

  “With the way my talent worked, there was no choice for them. The Alliance got me a nice place to stay until the launch day, and I left with the rest of the chosen on that day.”

  He asked, “How did you get a heavy-gravity assignment?”

  “There was no heavy-grav contact healer in the Citadel roster, so I volunteered for the alteration.”

  “Was it painful?”

  She thought about it, remembering the fire running through her as she was placed in a tank with ever increasing pressure she had to say, “Yes, I would say so. It was a one-way trip, and I was aware of that at the time.”

  Before he could ask another question, she raised her hand and asked him, “What is to be done with me after this is over?”

  He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Chapter Ten

  After her bloodletting the next day, an excited Rathos gave her an enthusiastic hug. “It worked!”

  Her laughter and surprise doubled when a stranger came up to give her the same treatment. Admorik after Admorik hugged her, thanking her for her efforts on their behalf. Rathos’s culture of her cells was creating thousands of treatment doses with every passing hour. The city of five thousand would be cured by the end of the following day, and at that point, those cured would begin dispersing the cure across Nafki.

  She had been hugged, groped, pinched and had her hair ruffled by two-dozen people by the time her head started spinning. She staggered away, holding up her hands to fend off those who had not yet had a chance to touch her.

  Her body was vibrating in shock, it had tried to heal every minor imperfection in every person it had touched, and touching two-dozen people in a minute was a strain. She fainted.

  She was alone with Kondr in her room when she woke.

  His face was grim. “What happened?”

  Ava sat up and reached for the water.

  He handed her a full glass and brushed her hair from her forehead. “Now, what happened?”

  “My body shut down. It was getting too many conflicting signals. I really would rather wear something with long sleeves.”

  “Would that have stopped your faint?”

  She remembered the whirlwind of kisses and folks clutching her hands. “No. Not even my normal robes would have taken the full effect away.”

  “Then, I will remain at your side and keep grateful crowds away. How is the baby?”

  Avaneer did a quick check. She sighed in relief. “He’s fine. He’s growing cell division by cell division.”

  Kondr’s relief echoed her own. He closed his eyes and sighed. “I wish for you to remain in my home during your pregnancy. After the child is born, we can re-evaluate.”

  “Will your grandmother mind my living there? It’s a huge imposition.” She bit her lip.

  “It is nothing. She can teach you to cook and keep an eye on you while I am away from home.” He beamed as if he had solved world hunger.

  “Do you travel often?”

  He shrugged and fluffed the pillows behind her back. “No. We send a visitor to the colony once a decade to check on them, but aside from that, no one really leaves Nafki. Why do you ask?”

  “Because the men who stole me and sold me to you are going to come looking the moment that it is known that the plague is over. If you don’t bring me to them, they are going to come here, but I have a plan for that if you are interested.”

  He caressed her cheek. “I am interested.”

  “A fifty-year, one-way plague lock on this world, Sector Guard patrols and communication with Admar. Can your world go fifty years without someone wanting to leave?”

  He blinked. “Of course. It is an easy thing to pass through the councils. What is a one-way lock?”

  “Oh. It allows for drops of support staff and supplies but nothing else. If anything tries to leave, they are shot out of the sky by armed satellites. The Sector Guard request will allow the Guardsmen to patrol the area in case anyone tries to force past the satellites, and if in fifty years you want to host a guard base, they are always on the lookout for heavy worlds.”

  Kondr was perplexed. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “My species is very chatty. We have a newsletter that keeps us apprised of the comings and goings of our Volunteers out here so far from home. Some of us are in the Sector Guard, some in the Citadel, and many more in strange assignments all over the known and populated universe.” She smiled brightly.

  “Men and women?”

  “Yes, though more women than men, a two-to-one ratio, actually. The folks at home were shocked.”

  She was stopped from any further discussion by Kondr’s lips against hers. Without thinking about it, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life. Her body was desperate for his touch even though it had only been just over a day since he had been inside her.

  He pulled away from her for a moment, “Are you well enough for this?”

  She answered by pulling his lips back to hers.

  He smiled against her mouth, grabbed her hands and placed them on his chest. As they kissed, she stroked the front of his vest before unbuckling the clasps and working to get at the shirt beneath. She shivered when she managed to get her hands under his clothing and sighed as the heat from his chest met her palms.

  Her skin echoed her own caresses, but she was eager to work her way down into the waistband of his trousers. When she passed her fingers over his lower abdomen, he hissed against her lips, pulling back and discarding his clothing as fast as he could.

  She laughed and flipped the covers back, welcoming him into her arms.

  He rolled with her until she was astride him, and he caressed her between her thighs, rubbing her clit and slit in a seductive rhythm. When she
moved against his hand, Kondr’s heavy-lidded expression told her all she needed to know. Whatever happened next, he wanted her now.

  She rocked against him, bracing herself on his chest and gasping as he slipped two fingers into her. She groaned and threw her head back as her channel clenched around him, trying to grip his fingers tight.

  He pulled his fingers free and lifted her over him. She rocked her hips, trying to pull the tip of his cock into her. He lifted his hips and pushed into her, the head of his cock sinking into her and teasing the sensitive flesh around her entrance. Kondr withdrew and plunged just those two inches until her whimpering was unceasing. He held her hips to keep her from impaling herself.

  She cupped her breasts to ease their ache, kneading gently, and then, with more ferocity as her arousal cascaded into a pulse-pounding roaring in her ears that heated her from the tips of her ears to the bottom of her feet.

  Ava opened her eyes in surprise when her orgasm struck. Her body jerked and no sound came from her throat as a silent scream locked in her lips.

  Kondr pulled her down and groaned as his cock twitched inside her.

  Ava trembled and slowly lay down on Kondr’s chest. “Thanks for waiting for me.”

  He stroked her hair, unknotting the tangles and smoothing it into an even cloak.

  “I get more pleasure than you can know just watching you cum.”

  She snorted, a very unladylike noise considering her position.

  He pressed his hands to her back and held her over him all night, until the light coming through the window hinted at the new day.

  “I need to use the bathroom. Excuse me.” She squirmed off the rigid length of his cock and rolled to one side.

  Normally, her body would have recovered, but since she slept on him, her thighs didn’t want to close, and she wobbled to the bathroom. Ava engaged in the normal morning activities, including stepping into the shower. She hated being sticky, and her body only absorbed so much.