Bonded by Accident

“Galaxy pancakes?” Slade frowned. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that Earth food before.”

“Well…” Brandi laughed self-consciously. “That’s because they’re something I kind of came up with by accident. I wanted to make blueberry pancakes but I couldn’t afford the fresh berries so I used the frozen ones—they’re cheaper and they last longer. But I didn’t rinse them first so the pancakes turned out to be this bluish-purple color. They looked awful but Emmie loved them so I kept making them that way. Anyway…” She looked at him uncertainly. “Do you want some?”

At that point, Slade would have politely agreed to eat dirt and rocks if she’d said they were on the menu.

“They sound delicious,” he said, smiling at her. “Do they taste good with wasabi?”

Brandi laughed. “I don’t know about that—we usually eat them with maple syrup but to each their own.”

“I’m sure they’re wonderful,” Slade said. “I can’t wait to try them.”

“So you’ll stay for breakfast, Daddy-man?” Emmie demanded. “Say you will, say you will, say you will!” she chanted, seizing his hand and jumping up and down.

“I will,” Slade said, smiling down at her. “But we have to get out of here first.”

“Yay!” Emmie jumped at him and he caught her in one arm and wrapped the other around Brandi.

“Come on,” he said, squeezing them tight. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Oh, you must be Brandi—Slade’s mate.” The girl with long blonde hair and silvery-gray eyes stuck out a hand to Brandi who took it uncertainly. “I’m Liv,” the girl said, smiling at her. My husband Baird knows Slade,” she added, nodding at a big Beast Kindred who was talking to Slade.

Brandi and Emmie and Bud were up at the Mother Ship for a “day date” as Emmie called it, just getting to know each other more fully. Her mother wasn’t with them because Ida-Mae had finally agreed to go into rehab again and this time Brandi had high hopes that it would stick.

For their day date, Slade had taken them all to a wonderful kid’s park aboard the Mother Ship called “Rainbow Mountain.” It had what looked like a miniature volcano erupting with rainbow “lava,” which was actually streams of colored water, flowing down its sides. The volcano was surrounded by a vast expanse of beach where kids could splash in the water and build sand castles and bury each other in the fine, white sand.

And apparently, in addition to the wonderful amenities aboard the Mother Ship, the people were nice too, Brandi thought as the nice-looking blonde girl named Liv smiled at her.

“Oh—nice to meet you.” she smiled back as they shook hands.

“And this is my sister, Sophie and our best friend, Kat,” Liv continued, introducing two other women. One of them looked just like her in the face but had long brown hair and green eyes and the other was a full-figured redhead with friendly blue eyes. “We’re all Kindred brides and we usually try to greet the new girls as they come aboard the Mother Ship. But we seem to have missed you,” she said.

“Oh well, I’m not exactly living on the Mother Ship,” Brandi explained. “But I am considering it.”

In the month since Slade had saved Emmie from the gator, she and Slade had begun a careful kind of dating. Brandi had a better understanding of the fierce rage that lived inside the big Kindred now. Without it, he would never have been able to kill the monstrous alligator that had attacked Emmie. It was frightening but she finally understood that it would never be directed at her or Emmie—it only came out when Slade felt that someone he loved and cared for was threatened. Or, as was the case with the memory she’d seen, when he had to defend himself against a threat.

For right now, she was still living in the double-wide with Bud and her mom but the idea of moving up here to be with the big Kindred was really growing on her.

“Oh, you should come up!” Kat told her, smiling. “It’s wonderful up here. Where else can you go to the beach and not have to worry about insects or sunburns?”

“My daughter Emmie does seem to love it,” Brandi admitted. “But…how are the schools up here?”

“They’re fabulous,” Sophie assured her, beaming. “Of course, I might just be saying that because I teach art at one of the Mother Ship elementary schools.”

“She’s being modest—the schools really are wonderful,” Kat assured her. “Kindred are very family-oriented—they spare no expense when it comes to kids and education.”

“There’s also free healthcare,” Liv said. “Excellent quality too, if I do say so myself.” She smiled.

“That would be wonderful,” Brandi said. “Insurance has gotten so expensive lately. But speaking of healthcare and schools, I was about to go back to school myself for nursing. How hard do you think it would be to get from the Mother Ship down to Earth for school and back again every day?”