Mama and the Alien Warrior (Treasured By The Alien #1) - Honey Phillips Page 0,36
just drifted from man to man. I don’t think they were nice men, and that’s probably why Lucinda ran away. She didn’t come to us and we couldn’t find her either. Eventually, social services called me because they found Lucie.”
Hrebec frowned. “Your sister took your child?”
“Oh, no. Lucinda gave birth to Lucie but she was involved with a very bad man, a drug dealer. I think she managed to stay off drugs while she was pregnant because Lucie is perfect, but as soon as she gave birth, she was back on them. She died from an overdose and I adopted Lucie.”
“So she is not your daughter?”
“She is absolutely my daughter,” she said indignantly.
“I did not mean to offend you. I just meant that you were not the one who birthed the child. Perhaps that is why you were able to bond with Tiana so easily—because you know that you don’t have to give birth to be a mother.”
“God, you understand that so easily. John couldn’t seem to grasp it. He didn’t understand why I didn’t put her up for adoption, or at the very least hire a nanny to care for her.”
“John?”
“My former partner. He only stuck around for a few months before he decided that having a baby around was too much trouble.”
Hrebec growled. “I do not understand your Earth males. A child is a precious gift.”
“They should be,” she agreed. “But too many people are more interested in the pleasure of the act than the possible consequences.”
“As I told you, a Cire isn’t fertile unless he knots inside the female. And he will not knot unless he feels the possibility of a mating bond with her.” His face was grave. “I feel that way for you, Abigail.”
“I-I don’t know what to say.” She found the idea unexpectedly appealing, but it was impossible. Wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was. She had a responsibility to her girls and she couldn’t abandon them now. “I wish our circumstances were different.”
He bowed his head but didn’t speak.
In an attempt to change the subject, she brought up something she had noticed over the past few days. “Why is the majority of your crew so young?”
“It is… difficult to live on Ciresia. So many places were burned to the ground in a futile effort to contain the plague.” His voice dropped. “Or because there was no other way to take care of those who died.”
He gazed over her head, his eyes haunted, and Abby put a gentle hand on his arm as she waited for him to continue.
“Most of the remaining population has gathered in three smaller cities, each of them centered around a reproduction lab,” he said at last. “I worked there for many years.”
“You were a doctor?”
“No. I have some medical training, but I ran the lab. I monitored the projects, collated the data, made the reports. Year after year of failure.” He shook his head again. “But you weren’t asking about me.”
“I want to know about you too.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” he said bitterly. “No matter what I did, no matter what experts I recruited, what supplies I wrangled, what new experiments we tried, nothing helped. I spent most of my life there, following in my father’s footsteps. When he died, I just couldn’t do it anymore. The Confederated Planets are desperate for assistance. I commissioned a ship and was accepted into their volunteer fleet.”
“Which leads us back to your crew,” she prompted him.
He nodded gravely. “As I said, Ciresia is not a happy place. Even in the research cities, there are areas which have been burnt, abandoned. There is an overall air of… despair. For those few, like Ribel, who survived, they are young, energetic. They do not want to live out their lives in a mausoleum. When they found out I was leaving, they sought to accompany me and I could not turn them down.”
“I’m surprised that a planet so desperate to repopulate would let them go.”
He snorted. “There was a great deal of debate about it. In the end, I just took them and left.”
“Does that mean you’re in trouble with your government?”
He shrugged one massive shoulder. “They were not happy but they accepted it.” He studied his hands. “Ironic, isn’t it? Even the generation we created no longer wants to live on Ciresia. It’s like a corpse that’s still moving, not even aware that it’s dead.”
“You, um, don’t look like an administrator,” she said, trying not to stare at his impressive array of muscles.