transferred all three crying, crawling kittens to his left hand and shook with her. His hand was so huge that for a moment hers disappeared inside his long fingers completely. Luci felt like a child shaking with an adult. Then he took his hand back and cradled the kittens carefully to his broad chest.
When they got to her apartment, she unlocked the door.
“I have some formula and I’m pretty sure I still have some bottles too. We had a litter of abandoned kittens we were taking care of last month and all the girls in the clinic were taking turns bringing them home,” she told him. “You don’t get a lot of uninterrupted sleep when you have baby kittens in the house, so we try to trade off.”
The minute she opened the door, Lady ran up with a joyful bark. When she saw the big Kindred, however, she drew back and gave a deep growl, low in her throat. As she was an Australian Shepherd mixed with a Doberman, with the intelligence of the first breed and the protectiveness of the second, this was no joke.
“Uh, sorry—she’s very protective,” Luci told the big warrior. “This is a dog, by the way,” she added, thinking he might not know.
“Yes, I know dogs—they’re my favorite Earth animal. It’s all right,” Raze told her. “What kind is she? There are different breeds, right?”
“Oh, yes—yes there are. Lady is kind of a mutt—a mixture of breeds. She’s half Australian Sheppard—see the pale blue eyes? And she’s half Doberman.”
“So you’re a mutt, huh, Lady? But I bet you’re a good girl, aren’t you?” Raze rumbled softly, talking to the dog. Transferring the kittens to one palm again, he bent down and let Lady sniff the back of his hand. “I know I’m a stranger but I mean no harm to your mistress,” he told the dog in that same low, soft voice. “I promise Lucia will be safe with me.”
After a moment, Lady seemed satisfied. She stopped growling and gave a short, friendly bark. She even licked Raze’s big hand.
Luci was a little surprised.
“She doesn’t usually take to people so quickly,” she remarked to Raze. “It always takes her some time to warm up to someone new. And she never warmed up to my ex.”
“Your what?” He frowned as he stepped into the apartment with her and looked around.
“Oh, my ex-husband,” Luci said. “Lady hated him.”
He frowned. “Really? What did he do to you to make her hate him?”
Luci shot him a look of surprise.
“What would make you say that?”
He shrugged, his broad, bare shoulders rolling.
“Just what I’ve observed of dogs, ever since I came to Earth. They’re loyal companions and a damn good judge of character. When a dog attaches itself to you, it tries to keep you safe.” He laughed, a rumbling sound that came from the very bottom of his deep chest. “Guess they’re kind of like Kindred that way.”
Luci wasn’t sure what to say about that so she just excused herself to fix the kitten formula and get a few more supplies. When she got back, she saw that Raze was wandering around her small living room, looking at everything with deep interest glowing in his mismatched eyes.
“You must really love animals,” he remarked, nodding to the rabbit hutch and guinea pig cage in the corner. There were two gray bunnies that Frannie had named “Hippy and Hoppy” which had been abandoned at the clinic, as well as a black and white guinea pig named Oreo with bumblefoot, a condition caused by chronic neglect. Purring in the corner was Lucky, a one-eyed, one-eared, orange tomcat who had somehow attached himself to Luci after she’d moved into the apartment building. In another corner was a terrarium with several tiny turtles.
“I really do love them,” she admitted to Raze. “Some of these I’m just watching for the clinic and some of them I own but I love all of them.” She smiled fondly. “The little girl down the hall—well, I call her little but she’s twelve or thirteen—comes in to feed them and takes Lady out for a walk for me everyday or I couldn’t mange them all with the hours I keep.”
And of course, she couldn’t have afforded to keep any of them if Dr. Canody hadn’t let her have pet food for them all—a fact that Luci appreciated immensely. She really did have a great job and a wonderful boss—it was just too bad that it was so hard for a