Secret Santa Surprise: Book 29 in the Kindred Tales Series - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,14

Strong gave her a stern look and placed his other large hand over her fingers, forcing them flat. “Perfectly still or you could wind up with a permanent scar. You must not disrupt the nanites’ webs.”

“I…I’ll try!” Tears were squeezing from the corners of Melanie’s eyes. She didn’t like to cry in front of the twins, but the fire in her hand was getting worse and worse. Had she thought the injury burned before? It was nothing to what she was experiencing now. Having the nanites work on her was like holding her hand in a blast furnace and feeling it burn to a crisp without being able to do anything about it.

“Melanie? Sweetheart? Look at me,” Clear said anxiously. “Look at me—concentrate on me and not on your hand, all right?”

“Talk to me then,” she begged Clear. “Distract me, please!”

“I’ll try. I…I’m so sorry for what happened. I should have warned you it wasn’t safe to have the top of the wave pulled out while you were arranging the food on the base.” He looked so anxious that Melanie’s heart fisted in her chest. But what he was saying was only making her think of her hand more.

His twin seemed to understand her dilemma.

“Talk about something else, Brother,” Strong commanded. The Dark Twin was leaning on her heavily, holding down her forearm and keeping her fingers from curling into a fist. Melanie knew that without his help holding still, she would have been thrashing all over the table, screaming in pain.

“I will—but what?” Clear was obviously distraught because he felt as though the accident was his fault somehow. Which was ridiculous but Melanie was in so much pain, she could barely talk, let alone reassure him.

“Tell me…tell me what you were going to tell me back in my suite,” she gasped out. “You said…your brother had…ideas for my…my vid.”

“Oh, yes!” Clear nodded eagerly. “Strong thinks that human females are reluctant to bond with us because they fear our size and strength.”

“You’re certainly…very strong,” Melanie got out through gritted teeth. She glanced up at Strong, who gave her a sympathetic look.

“You’re doing great, little one,” he murmured. “Not much longer now.” He was holding her down with ease—firmly but gently—though Melanie’s entire body was trying to spasm with the intense pain.

“Tell me…more,” she begged Clear.

“Well, Strong thinks human females fear our size during the bonding process, since we are, er, merged together,” the Light Twin went on. “But he hypothesizes that they wouldn’t fear us so much if they knew about the properties of bonding fruit.”

“Bonding…fruit?” Melanie asked, but her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. The pain was becoming so intense, it felt like her mind was checking out of the situation. The world around her began to take on a grayish cast, just as it had in her kitchen when she looked at the hole in her hand. “Don’…under…stannnnd,” she muttered but the words came out slow, as though someone was pulling them like taffy from her lips.

“Melanie? What’s wrong with her? What’s happening?” Clear asked anxiously, looking up at his twin.

“She’s graying out from the pain,” Strong said, still sounding remarkably calm. “Let her go, Brother. It’s better that she be out for this last part—it’s the most painful yet.”

And then Melanie’s world went dark and she knew no more.

“You were right, Brother—she truly is exquisite.” Strong looked down at his patient, now lying quietly in one of the Med Center’s beds. He had given her a mild sleep aid to help her continue to rest for a while, while the nanites finished healing her hand. Then he’d had one of the female nurses change her into a more comfortable gown and moved her to a private room where she had been resting quietly ever since.

“Will she be all right?” Clear was still sitting right by Melanie’s side, looking at her anxiously. He had been there for hours and showed no signs of leaving. Not that Strong blamed him. The lovely mature Elite was definitely worth waiting for and watching over.

“She’ll be fine,” Strong assured his twin. “See—the nanites are almost finished with their work.”

He pointed to her right hand, which lay outside the covers. The back of it was covered with a fine webbing of pink threads, almost too thin to see. The nanites had branched out to heal, not only the hole that had been burned right through her hand, but also the smaller wounds that the finer beams of the wave