Jevan's Dream by Alyssa Hope & J. P. Webb

Author:Alyssa Hope & J. P. Webb [Hope, Alyssa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2017-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6.

Their people had extended family groups on their home planet, and no young ones could ever be left homeless, so the blue people didn’t have words for ‘orphan’ or ‘adoption’, but Tad and Caleb’s people did. The expanded vocabulary helped them all decide what to do with the babies, although there was already no doubt that everyone was going to love them and help take care of them.

Jevan had thought that everyone on the ship just wanted to look at the strange little aliens, but then he realized that in fact they genuinely wanted to help, and to have babies to nurse because they didn’t have their own yet. It also turned out that there could be a bond, a different kind of bond than the triad bond, but a bond nonetheless.

It was the two head cooks who first discovered it. Suna and Dasu were large and good-natured beings, bonded to each other and waiting for their third who they knew was out there in the stars somewhere.

“Not one of the lost children, maybe, but still out there, so here we are on the Crusader looking.”

They came to the nursery because they wanted to know if the babies should have any kind of special food, and they also wanted to make sure that those who were nursing them had the best of all the fresh food available. They were barely through the door of the nursery when Dasu went straight to the pale thin baby who never cried or smiled, and had it in his arms and cradled against his chest. The big cook was sitting in one of the chairs nursing it before his partner could speak, and Suna sat on the arm of the chair and waited for his turn, stroking both their heads, purring down at them.

Both cooks smiled at Karo. “Our third will be happy to know that we have started a family already. To formally bond with a baby not of our blood, how do we do that?” They quite obviously weren’t going to put the baby down again.

Captain Oki was called in, and after consultation with Karo and the humans on the ship they devised a quiet adoption ceremony, and both cooks pricked their fingers and Karo pricked the finger of the little one, and they shared blood on a smaller scale than the triad bonding ceremony. The little one smiled up at its new parents in wonder, and made gurgling noises and waved its arms around. Then it went back to the serious business of nursing.

Kaji, the Second Officer, adopted the baby that he had carried out of that place, even though he was still looking for both of his other triad partners, and others on his team stood with him as parents for the little one. A bonded pair from his team, waiting for their third, also adopted the one who they had known was theirs from the minute they’d seen it.

Suki started watching the comings and goings in the nursery, and laughing.

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