Fractured Chances Read online

Varix raised his hand, “But—”

  Etska chuckled. “Don’t argue. She has a point. How would you feel at this point if someone removed Nan and simply told you that she was fine?”

  Varix muttered something that made both Athena and Etska raise their white brows. Nan cocked her head. “I am guessing that what he said wasn’t good.”

  Athena grimaced. “Not if you are a farm animal.”

  Nan covered her mouth and laughed.

  They chatted for a few minutes then the call was ended. Varix pulled her onto his lap and looked at her. “You look happier.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It is nice to know that there are other Earth people on other worlds, and they are doing well.”

  “Would it make you feel better to go to the colony and see the children?”

  Nan brightened. “It really would.”

  “That is what we will do tomorrow, then.” He hugged her. “If it sets your mind at ease, it is a small enough thing.”

  Chapter Eight

  Nan watched the flight of khitans return, and she smiled as they headed into their respective enclosures, chattering like kids coming back from a field trip. Her little stalker jumped onto her shoulder and told her all about the day.

  Nan was smiling until the images started to hit her. A huge male sitting and the large female hunting. The matriarch ripping strips of the beast off for the little ones, just as Nan had. No wonder she had made friends so quickly.

  She leaned against the nearest wall as she learned all about the excursion through her little buddy.

  Her little buddy wanted her to sleep with the pile of warm bodies again, but she explained that she hadn’t eaten yet through images of Varix cooking.

  The little one made a hairball image in her mind, and Nan started laughing. So, it wasn’t just her. Varix wasn’t a good cook.

  She put her little buddy into the growing pile of felines inside and headed back to the house to make dinner.

  Varix was chopping a number of items, and when she entered, he stepped aside. “What do you think you can do with this?”

  She looked it over and smiled. “How long do we have?”

  “As long as you want.”

  “Stew it is.”

  She started with the aromatics and built up the flavours before adding the meat. She finished browning it, added the vegetables, and covered the whole thing with water. Then, she turned and went about making a set of biscuits. The rising powder was a little tricky, but she hoped she had gotten the quantities right.

  “Where did you learn to cook?”

  She smiled. “On my own. It was either buy prepackaged food or teach myself, so I started slow and watched a lot of videos and learned.”

  “You can learn from videos?”

  “And printed manuals, books, anything that has a text component. That is just how my brain works.” She got a glass and punched out the biscuits. “But I can’t play an instrument. My brain refuses to make sense out of the notes in print and translate them to sound.”

  She set the biscuits on a pan and slid them into the oven. She scraped the counter to keep some of the flour in a pile.

  “What is that for?”

  “Thickener for the stew. Once everything is cooked, I will either make a roux or mix more fat into the flour and mix it in that way. It isn’t as nice, but it works fairly well.”

  She went and washed her hands then returned to the table.

  He smiled. “How long for the biscuits?”

  “Thirty minutes.” She propped her chin on her hands. “So, I get to see the kids tomorrow?”

  “You do. We can fly out tomorrow after we feed the khitans.” He smiled.

  “Do I get to fly the rider?”

  He frowned. “No. The colony can’t use any accessible means of escape.”

  “What?”

  “We put new citizens in the colony, and they learn our ways, get a trade, and by the time they are here for a year, they are then ready for a position in the city. Many new bond contracts will try and get to the spaceport the moment they land, and we want to remove temptation.”

  She grimaced. “Fine. I think if I had a place to run to, I might have considered it, and I understand that not all beings are in our situation. Some had homes to return to.”

  He put his hand out on the table, palm up. “You have a home now.”

  She put her hand in his, and they sat like that for a few minutes. She smiled and looked at his face, memorizing his features. “Why did they make the Hmrain?”

  He smiled. “To guide the empty worlds into habitation. To take control of the unused systems and to keep them from swirling into stars.”

  “Who made the education station?”

  He laughed. “That is the easy one. The Hmrain pooled their resources to send out that station and others like it. We thought that we would have a better chance at finding companions with the right sensuality rating if we attended to worlds in distress. For the diseased, we find cures in exchange for personnel, and if the world recovers, we leave. For those in your situation, the first transports provide a baseline for how the people behave, their culture, and their biology. Once we have an idea of what they require for upkeep, they are advertised to our kind and to other worlds where a colony on an uninhabited world is desirable.”

  “Oh, the yellow person with the silver eyes. They work on placement.”

  He snorted and squeezed her hand. “They work on sensuality rating. Your rating was classified as jagged. So, you had peaks and valleys.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “It means you are easily distracted if there is something on your mind.”

  She swallowed and remembered that the kids were freaking out at being separated from her. The testing had happened so fast that she had no idea what was going to occur next. They were scared, she was scared, and then, there was this freaky guy with silver eyes touching her mind, and she was getting aroused. Yeah, she had been distracted.

  “So, what was on your mind that day?”

  “It was two days after we got to the station, and they came to our group quarters and pulled me out. The kids were yelling, and they kept telling me to calm down, but I was feeling less than calm.”

  He licked at her wrist. “That would do it.”

  She shivered, and he continued to slowly caress her skin, moving his tongue in light patterns as he proceeded to her elbow.

  She whispered, “Why do the Hmrain need sex?”

  He returned to her wrist and pressed soft kisses over the line he had traced earlier. “Procreation, companionship, energy, and of course, you remind us that we are alive, breathing, and thinking. It keeps us from becoming monsters.”

  “Whoa. That is a lot of pressure.”

  He smiled. “Some of us need it more than others. I have my work with the khitans to keep me focused and somewhat in tune with what other beings need. But, some of my siblings live a solitary existence on established worlds. They have to go through a series of lovers to keep themselves from getting weak or feral. The lovers are well paid, but if they don’t have the correct sensuality index, the Hmrain with them will burn them out. With the correct lover, we give more than we take. If the match isn’t exact, there is a detriment to the person in question. It is not an ideal situation.”

  “Have you ever had a casual lover?”

  He nodded. “Of course. Only for short periods and only when absolutely necessary. I believe my last one was close to two hundred years ago. A Sregano named Kalofi. She was with me for two years, and when she left, she settled on another world and opened an arena. She lived to a good age and had several children.”

  Nan swallowed. “Two hundred years ago?”

  “Yes. After that, I immersed myself in the khitan project, and things blurred for a while. All I had to do was authorize new colonists, and when your group arrived, I was only expecting t
he same sort of admin after I greeted you, and then, there was the crash. I checked your file after making my ultimatum and was shocked that you made it on time, so I cheated.”

  She threaded her free hand through his hair. “I figured as much. You seem the type.”

  He looked up at her, and his eyes were molten gold. “Only when it is something that I want very badly.”

  She got up and walked up to him, kissing him savagely before pulling back. “I don’t want to burn the biscuits.”

  He groaned as she turned and got the pan out of the oven. The biscuits were taller than she had guessed by about two hundred percent. She laughed and pinched one to test the taste. They tasted like biscuits.

  She checked on the stew, and it had about half an hour to go. Nan turned and walked back to Varix. “I have half an hour. How would you like to spend it?”

  He put his hands on her waist and set her on the table. With one arm, he lifted her, and with the other, he peeled down her leggings. She yelped when he shoved her skirt up and buried his face between her thighs. She moaned, squeaked, and eventually shrieked. She was panting and sweaty when he bit gently at her inner thigh and then turned to the other one. He lifted his head and murmured, “And I still have twenty-five minutes to spend.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He traced a design on her skin with his tongue. “Oh, yes.”

  His tongue was surprisingly strong as it delved into her, and when he flicked her clit with it, she twitched. Varix played with her until she was limp, and then, he reset her clothing and settled her onto his lap. “You have no idea how delightful it is that you are so receptive.”

  She sighed and leaned her head against him. “You aren’t getting anything out of this.”

  “I am; you just aren’t seeing it yet. When we have completed our link, you will understand.”

  She looked up and squinted at him. “There’s more? I thought we were getting along fairly well.”

  He gripped her hip. “There is more, as you very well know.”

  She chuckled softly. “Let me finish dinner, and you can expound on that.”

  He helped her to her feet and stayed behind her to stabilize her. She washed her hands, mashed the flour into the butter, and washed her hands again. She took the lid off the stew and put a bit of the flour-butter mix into the stew, stirred, and mixed it as it thickened.

  When she had the right consistency, she put the lid on, and then, she went to set the table.

  Varix chuckled. “I have got it from here.”

  He sat her down in her chair and quickly set the table, got her a glass of water, and put the pan on a hot pad with the biscuits on a plate in a tower next to it.

  She scooped some stew onto her plate and grabbed a biscuit, breaking it into chunks and dipping it. She ate with her right hand and was reminded of all the meals she had eaten in the same way.

  “Did you make every meal while you travelled?”

  She nodded. “The kids tried, but they had trouble learning while under stress. It just became an evening ritual with us. We would gather around a fire, and I would cook—usually soup or stew. Sometimes we would have a fresh kill to take apart. I felt bad for a few of the kids. They had been vegetarians, and we just didn’t have the time for that much foraging. It got worse when the summer came and nothing grew.”

  “But you kept them alive.”

  “At times, they hated me, but yeah, they were alive. We got as much canned and preserved food as we could early on, but others had the same idea, and it became difficult to maintain enough to feed us all. We would travel for two days, hunt for one, and restock for two. When we lost our transport, we had to do it on foot, so we took to eating a lot of root vegetables. Stew and soup were the easiest things, and when our last bowl broke, we would eat off tree bark.”

  Nan looked at him. “How does the food taste to you? I know you have different scales for this sort of thing.”

  He grinned. “It’s good. I can cook, but I lose interest halfway and just eat whatever is done at the end. It is far better than the food from the dispenser.”

  She paused. “You have a dispenser?”

  “Of course. I don’t like to use it unless I need to generate specific supplies.”

  Nan sat back. “The butter and cheese.”

  “And the eggs. No bird would survive more than minutes around here. Certainly, they would never lay an egg.”

  She sighed. “I hadn’t put that together yet.”

  “You would have. Your eyes are sharp, and you don’t miss much.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Where is it?”

  “What?”

  She huffed. “The dispenser.”

  “In a cupboard in the music room. I want to make sure that I use what Abix can provide first and foremost.”

  Nan nodded, and after dinner, she wanted a bath. There was enough light outside under the moons that she could find the bathing area again. The shower in the house just wasn’t enough when parts of her ached, and muscles were tense.

  While he stored the stew and washed the dishes, she set the fabricator to make her a robe. It was an easy design, and she would grab it on the way back. It was time to kick back and think about what she wanted in her life. After surviving, what was left?

  Chapter Nine

  She finished the task of washing her hair and tied it into a loose knot before she headed to the bathing pool. When the warm water wrapped around her, she smiled and went to sit on the bench. It was lower than she thought, and she ended up with her chin resting at water level. It was fine as long as she remained perfectly still, but keeping her hair out of the water was tricky.

  She settled for leaning back with her elbows on the edge of the pool, her body floating and bobbing as she relaxed and let the day fade away.

  When she heard the slow beat of wings, she looked up, and Varix descended slowly to land next to the tub with her robe folded over his arm.

  He set the robe down on a stool, and then, he removed his own boots and pants. She watched him shower and the difficulty it was to aim the water spray between his wings.

  When he walked over to the pool, he walked directly to the bench she was seated on, lifted her, and set her on his lap. It was a much better vantage point.

  He linked his arms around her and pressed his lips to her temple. “There was no dessert today.”

  She blinked. “Oh. Sorry. I... got distracted.”

  He chuckled and hugged her. “I have been researching your cultures, and I like the idea of a sweet after the meal.”

  Nan suspected where he was going with that comment, but she just sighed. “Would you like me to rub between your wings?”

  He chuckled. “Not was I was referring to, but I am not going to pass up on the offer. Please.”

  He set her on her feet, and she glided behind him as he turned. She started with a shoulder rub and moved down to the muscles over his spine. He grunted when she rubbed her knuckles against the knots. She worked on his back for a solid ten minutes, twice hitting a nerve cluster that had the wing extending with a jerk. She giggled softly and said, “Okay, so don’t push that hard. Got it.”

  He chuckled. “I wasn’t aware of that reflex point. No one has ever pressed there.”

  She smiled and kept working. “I am guessing that not a lot of people get back here.”

  “None.”

  “What?”

  “No companion or lover has ever offered to reach the spot I couldn’t, so this is new as well.”

  She paused. “Really? Weird. Even the pervs that were after my scars tried to touch every bit of me.”

  “They sought you out because of your skin?”

  She chuckled. “It is called a fetish. People would seek out folks with damage and pay them for the privilege of contact. I was very young, and it was a way to keep food on the table. A few were even disappointed that the scars didn’t cover more of me.”

  He made
a dark sound. “They wanted you to experience pain?”

  “Some liked that I had experienced it, some wanted to cause it. Those didn’t get a second visit with me.”

  “How long did you engage in it?”

  “Two years. Just enough to gain the funds I needed to finish basic schooling.”

  He sighed. “That is too long. Do you regret it?”

  “The process but not the result. With my diploma, I was able to find better jobs and increase my earnings over time. I would not recommend it, but I made it out alive.” She rubbed her knuckles into the lower edge of his wings, and he shuddered.

  She retraced her touch all the way up his spine and finished her kneading on his shoulders before she stepped back. He let out a low sigh and turned slowly. “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “You are welcome.”

  He pulled her onto his lap again. “You seem to spend a lot of time taking care of and worrying about those around you.”

  Nan shrugged. “I have always been that way. It starts by being wary about predators then watching for signs of stress in others. Then it becomes a focus on making the people around you comfortable. If those around you are comfortable, you feel less tension and stress. Being a caretaker is self-preservation.”

  “But there are those who take advantage of you.”

  “Of course, but I did what I could. Their actions are on them.” She smiled and exhaled slowly before inhaling deeply.

  He squeezed her. “It is probably a good thing that the Hmrain are not allowed to go to worlds that are not already in distress. My kind would have swept in and found all of the compatible companions and taken you to the far corners of the sector.”

  “And if there were more of us than you expected? That situation would get weird really quickly.”

  He shrugged. “A few Hmrain have children with their companions. There are both sons and daughters. A compatible companion would always find a place in the stars.”

  She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That sounds nice.”

  “You are very accepting.”

  “Something about watching the city you lived in fall into a sinkhole and then spending a lot of time trying to find other groups who will accept you and the gaggle of kids you have with you makes you take generosity and kindness at face value. You might turn into a colossal jackass tomorrow, but that is your problem. Today, you are kind, helpful, friendly, and caring. Today is the you that I see.”