Alien Overnight (8 page)

Alien Overnight

should. She was rocking now, scraping her face roughly against the carpet while she cried out in agony.

Then he saw the blood streaming down the legs of her scrubs, pooling around her knees, and felt his entrails turn cold.

39

Robin L. Rotham

Waking had never been such a chore.

Monica knew it was time. The lights were bright on the other side of her closed eyelids and she felt relaxed and rested as she hadn’t in weeks. Still, it was so nice to just lie here and drift. She’d had amazing dreams, tons of them, and no pain at all that she could remember. Someone must have slipped her some damn fine meds.

“Monica, can you hear me?”

Soft fingers brushed her hair back from her forehead and she sighed with contentment.

“Hi, Shelley,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

“Hey, Gothchild, how you feelin’?”

“Marvelous.” Her chest felt kind of heavy and she didn’t have enough energy to lick a postage stamp, but otherwise, she’d never felt better.

“That’s good. Can you open your eyes for me now?”

“I don’t know. They’re pretty heavy.”

“Just try, okay?”

Her sigh this time was long-suffering. “If you insist.”

Her first thought was that someone had been doing some funky renovations in the hospital wing. Everything was blue, a startling iridescent blue.

“
Hello
!” she exclaimed weakly. “Was there a sale on spray paint at Home Depot?”

“Not exactly.” Shelley’s smiling face came into view. “You’re aboard the
Heptoral
.”

At Monica’s blank look, she clarified, “The Garathani ship.”

“Wow, really?” Monica tried to sit up, but the wave of nausea that washed over her when she moved convinced her that was a really bad idea.

“Just lie still, okay? The commander will explain everything when he gets here.”

Shocks of excitement skittered down her spine. She was on a spaceship! She turned her head and looked around, unsurprised by the sleek, Spartan appearance of what must be one of the ship’s four infirmaries. Hers appeared to be the only bed out of six currently occupied.

“What’s wrong with me?” she finally thought to ask, anxiety welling in her chest.

“You’re fine now, sweetie,” Shelley assured her.

“So what happened, then? Why am I here?”

“I’d rather let Commander Kellen explain that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“But why?” she demanded.

40

Alien Overnight

“Quit haranguing your faithful sidekick, Monica. She’s under orders to leave the explanations to me.” Kellen’s voice swept over her like a balmy summer breeze and her eyes closed reflexively.

Forcing her lids up again, she countered the dreamy feeling by mustering a glare as he stepped up beside the bed.

“Commander,” she acknowledged. “Care to clue me in about what’s going on?”

“I’ll do that, just as soon as Nurse Bonham has assured herself that you’re well.”

“If she can stare daggers like that, she’s definitely on the mend,” Shelley declared with a broad grin. Then she leaned down and planted a kiss on Monica’s forehead. “I’m so glad you’re okay. Don’t ever scare me like that again, you hear me?”

“Do my best,” Monica agreed thickly. How had she ever lived without friends?

“I’ll come back as soon as I can.” When Shelley reached the door, she turned and said severely, “Be nice to the commander, Gothchild. He saved your life. If he wasn’t so big and scary, I’d have kissed
him
instead of you.”

“It’s not too late,” Kellen interjected quickly, but Shelley just smiled and left the room. He turned to Monica. “I’m not that scary, am I?”

His plaintive tone earned him a grin.

“To a five-foot-two pansy, yeah, you’re that scary.”

“But not to you.”

“Nah. You’re just a big marshmallow.” Planet Narthan notwithstanding.

“You didn’t seem to think so at our last meeting.”

The frown pulling down his brow curled something in Monica’s stomach. Vague memories of that confrontation teased the edges of her mind, but she couldn’t recall the details with any accuracy. She did remember being terrified, but she couldn’t imagine he’d been the cause of it. More likely, she’d been scared out of her wits by whatever the hell had seized her body.

“I think I was really out of my head with pain that day. I hope I didn’t say anything to hurt your feelings.” It crossed her mind that he might not have feelings, at least not as she knew them, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “How long has it been, anyway?”

Kellen’s eyes were dark as they watched her.

“Ten days.”

“Holy crap, really? What was wrong with me? Did it require surgery? Why did you bring me here? And how did we—”

“Let’s take one question at a time, little Terran.” He smiled. “Yes, you required some relatively minor surgery. We arrived here by molecular flare, which is an advanced technology we haven’t yet revealed to the Terran representatives. The nature of your emergency made speed of the essence, which is why we risked using it.”

“Why am I totally not surprised? You’d be fools to lay all your cards on the table if you didn’t have to,” she murmured.

41

Robin L. Rotham

“Exactly, and we’re far from foolish. Hopefully,” he added grimly.

“I notice you skipped right past the ‘what was wrong with me’ question.”

“I’d hoped you were still too groggy to catch that.”

“Sorry.” His hesitation made
her
hesitate. What if something awful was wrong with her?

“It’s nothing life-threatening,” he hurried to say, divining her fear. “At least not now that the crisis has passed.”

“So why the sidestepping?”

“Because I’m not looking forward to your reaction.”

“
Now
you’re scaring me,” she growled. “Just spit it out, Commander.”

“Perhaps it would be better to show you.” He sat down, very carefully, on the edge of her bed. “Empran, station one, elevate head twenty degrees.”

Monica was startled to feel the mattress rising silently under her head.

“Nifty. Is that what you wanted to show me?”

“Hardly.” His expression didn’t match the dry tone. “What I’d like you to do, Monica, is to place your hands on your breasts.”

“Excuse me?” She blinked at him. “When did we go from hinky to kinky?”

“Indulge me, please.”

“Oookay,” she drawled, sliding her hands, stiff from disuse, gingerly up her ribs.

The extravagant mounds of flesh that met her questing fingertips were…

Definitely not hers.

“What the
fuck
?”

*

“You brought me up here to give me breast implants?” she asked, disbelief sending her dark brows into her hairline.

Kellen slanted a look at her, doubting that she seriously believed that scenario.

“No, they’re all you.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly as she digested that, her hands unmoving on her newly bulbous breasts. “All right, we’ve done show, now
tell
,” she demanded in a dangerous tone.

“We transported you up here because your body was undergoing a violently accelerated maturation and your immediate needs were beyond the scope of Terran medicine.”

He was surprised when she let her head fall back on the bed and rolled her eyes.

“Good God, this stupid body of mine never has done anything the normal way.

Only I could go from thirty-eight flat to thirty-eight C—”

“D.”

42

Alien Overnight

“Thirty-eight
D
in just over a week. Holy shit, I’m a D-cup? How weird is that going to be when I go back to the compound? Nobody will believe they’re real.”

Kellen was just debating whether or not to tell her she wasn’t going back to the compound when her eyes widened again. “Maturation, huh? I suppose I’ve got… Turn your back,” she ordered. Kellen obeyed without question, turning to face the door.

“Damn it!
That
development I could have done without. Now I’m going to have to wax.”

Ah. She disliked the thick, silky patch of curls between her legs. He’d have forbidden her to remove it, but decided to save himself the grief. Where they were going, wax wasn’t even an option.

“I can’t believe all this happened in less than two weeks,” she murmured. “You can turn around now.”

She’d pulled the blanket up to her chin.

“It didn’t happen without considerable trauma to your body,” he said gravely. “Dr.

Ketrok likened the process to a series of catastrophic earthquakes on your planet. He induced a light coma to help you through the worst of it and you’ve slept naturally for nearly seventy hours since then.” The urge to draw her into the protection of his embrace was almost overwhelming, but he restrained himself. “The violence of your transition made you a shocking sight, especially those first few days, which is why I refused to allow Nurse Bonham to see you until today.”

Kellen looked away from her momentarily, still shaken at the vision of her kneeling in more than a pint of her own blood. “The maturation of your reproductive organs was particularly vicious. Do you remember hemorrhaging in my office?”

She nodded slowly. “Vaguely. It seems more like a dream.”

“I’m not surprised,” he agreed. “You were in shock. The hemorrhage was

precipitated by the explosive buildup of your endometrial lining, which couldn’t be expelled because your hymen was abnormally thick and solid. The pressure finally became great enough to rupture your membrane and a number of the larger vessels perfusing your vaginal tissues.”

Her cheeks were stained with color as she turned her face toward the bulkhead, which was somewhat surprising, considering her profession.

“That was the
minor
surgery?” she asked incredulously.

“I was trying not to frighten you.”

“You weren’t there for it, were you?”

She looked at him then, her gray eyes wide and vulnerable and begging him to lie.

But he wasn’t about to begin their relationship with untruths between them. He’d already misled her once about the nature of her reaction to their pheromones, though his explanation was true in the strictest sense of the word—it was just incomplete.

“I was,” he said softly. The river of blood pulsing from between her thighs had disturbed him more than any battle injury he’d ever witnessed, and as Ketrok raced to 43

Robin L. Rotham

seal the ruptured vessels before she bled out, Kellen had whispered his first prayer to the Powers since the death of his House. It was only the first of many such prayers to pass his lips over the ensuing days.

Monica looked away again. “So, it seems you’ve seen every inch of me, then,” she said bitterly. “Why is that, Commander? What gave you the right to be privy to all my secrets?”

Kellen considered her profile, so radically altered since the onset of her Sparnite transition, and felt unexpected sorrow for her. She’d appeared so very young when they first met, so tender and innocent despite her attempts to harden her look with the outlandish makeup and piercings, that it made the change all the more jarring.

Though the Garathani doctors had done their best to anticipate her nutritional needs and supply the calories necessary to sustain her through the hyper-metabolic episodes, Monica had lost a substantial portion of her fat reserves and it showed most clearly in her face. But even if she hadn’t lost the baby fat that was a hallmark of Sparnism, she would still look vastly different. Her facial structure had grown longer and stronger, as had the bones of her body. He wondered if she would even recognize her own reflection.

Over time, Monica would adjust to her new appearance, and though it might take longer, she would eventually learn to accept the reality of her true origins, as well. Her sudden sexual maturity and its ramifications, however, would no doubt lead to countless trials for all of them. He was tempted to delay informing her of that aspect of her life until she’d had at least a few days to work through the other changes, but Kellen didn’t think he’d be doing any of them a favor by putting it off.

As much as he wished it were otherwise, he and Shauss would have to mate with her long before she was ready in order to protect their claim. As the only Garathani female within four parsecs of this ship, Monica was a prize that many would sacrifice their honor, their fortunes, perhaps even their very lives to possess, and only a child of his House in her belly would guarantee her protection.

And Peserin’s damnation if the thought of putting one there wasn’t raising his staff.

“The Garathani Council gave me that right,” he answered, running a gentle fingertip down the newly hollow cheek she’d presented to him, “when they awarded you to me.”

A muscle in her jaw stood out in stark relief as she clenched her teeth and Kellen could hear her breathing become quick and shallow, but she didn’t look at him.

“Awarded me to you,” she repeated with deceptive calm. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, Commander, but no one, especially your goddamned Council, has the authority to
award
me to anyone.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, little Terran,” he confided in a silky voice. “Or should I say, little
Garathani
?”

44

Alien Overnight

She’d never thought herself slow on the uptake, but Monica finally had to look at him, uncomprehending.

“Little
what
?”

His look was chiding. “I’m certain you heard me, but I’ll repeat myself,
little
Garathani
. And that
is
what you are, Monica.”

She licked her lips nervously. “In what sense?”

“In every sense.”

“Damn it, could you be any more vague?” she raged suddenly, fear twisting angry knots in her stomach. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Please be calm, little one,” he tried to soothe her. “I have much to tell you, and it may not be easy for you to accept in the beginning. But for your own sake, you must make the effort.”

“Just tell me!” she shouted.