“Yeah, well—you did a lot of things that were ‘unlike’ you while we were on Soluu Four,” Bravik growled.
Danni turned on him.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded. “If you’re implying that I was unprofessional in any way—”
“Unprofessional?” He barked a laugh that sounded almost angry. “Oh, I guess you could say that we were both pretty unprofessional, little girl.”
Danni didn’t know what he was talking about, but she was tired of the big Kindred’s demeaning nicknames and bad manners.
“This is ridiculous,” she said stiffly. “It’s clear you’re upset with me, though I have no idea why. I’d like to get out of the ship please—can you hurry up and land?”
“Right away, sweetheart,” he growled sarcastically, heading the shuttle towards the Docking Bay of the Mother Ship. “Wouldn’t want us to have to spend any more time together than we have to.”
Danni couldn’t have agreed more. They spent the last few minutes of their flight in frosty silence and she was relieved when the shuttle finally touched down and she was able to open the door and get away from the angry, brooding warrior hulking on the other side of the shuttle.
She had no idea why Bravik was being such an asshole. She only hoped that now that their mission was complete, she would never have to see the big Kindred again.
Forty-Six
“So she doesn’t remember anything—not even that you’re bonded?”
Baird stared at him in disbelief.
Bravik shook his head and looked morosely down into the glass of Stygzyon whisky he was nursing. He was glad he’d accepted his old friend’s offer of a drink. Baird was the half-brother of Bravik’s commanding officer, Sylvan, but he was a Beast Kindred, not a Blood Kindred, as Sylvan was. Since Bravik often felt more in tune with his Beast Kindred half, he was comfortable talking to Baird.
Not that there was much to say, he thought darkly. It had been two weeks since they had come back from Soluu Four and Danielle still didn’t remember anything that had happened there.
“She doesn’t remember a fucking thing,” he growled, voicing his thoughts aloud. “I’ve made several excuses to ‘run into her’ as the humans say, and every time she can’t get away from me fast enough. All she remembers is that I was an asshole to her before we started the mission and she doesn’t like me one damn bit.”
“Have you tried reaching out to her through your link?” Baird asked. Every Kindred established a mental link with their new bride when they bonded a female to them.
“Of course I have,” Bravik growled irritably. “She’s got some kind of mental wall in place—I don’t even think she knows she’s got it up. But it’s there, all right. When I try to get through to her, it’s like banging on a locked door—there’s just no way to get in.”
“Damn, Brother—that’s fucking horrible,” Bravik said sympathetically, shaking his head. “I wonder why you retained your memories of Soluu Four and Danielle lost hers?”
“I don’t know.” Bravik shook his head. “I think maybe because the Mother Stone affects different species differently. I had a better memory of the Mother Ship while we were on Soluu Four than Danielle did—she even forgot she was a doctor, there at the end—and that’s an incredibly important part of her self-image to her. I remembered everything, but even for me things were getting fuzzy right before we finally left.”
“It’s a good thing you left when you did,” Baird pointed out, frowning. “If you’d gotten any younger, you wouldn’t have been tall enough to see through the viewscreen and steer the ship on the way home.”
“I’m not as young as I was,” Bravik said. “I don’t think, anyway.”
In the two weeks since he’d been back aboard the Mother Ship, he had regained some of the years he had lost on Soluu Four. By the end of the first week, he’d started looking less like an adolescent and had begun to take on the appearance of a young warrior. By the middle of the second week, he got to the place where he looked like a male of around thirty cycles.
And there, he had stopped. For the past several days, he hadn’t noticed any physical changes and Bravik had begun to think there weren’t going to be any more. His body seemed to have normalized at this age and though he certainly didn’t miss the aches and pains he’d begun to have in his early fifties, it was still unnerving to look in the viewer and see a male twenty years younger than he ought to be.
“Yeah, you look better than you did,” Baird said, voicing Bravik’s thoughts aloud. “It’s still fucking strange though, seeing you look younger than me.”
“You think it’s strange for you, try looking in the mirror and seeing yourself de-aged by twenty cycles,” Bravik growled.