Though he still feared Zara would turn him over to
Danson, he was grateful that she didn't follow him
immediately into his bungalow. The hyper-aroused symbion
seemed to be pumping an endless stream of sex hormones
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into his body, and urging him to mate with the nearest
female.
Not that Caleb hadn't thought about that very thing
numerous times himself since the day he'd met his sexy
socio-therapist, but what the symbion wanted wasn't a
candlelit dinner and a romantic stroll on a secluded beach.
The animal on his back wanted to claim a female, to take
ownership of a lifelong mate and impregnate her.
He wasn't sure how long he could fight the overwhelming
urge, especially if they'd continued to stand facing each other
in the cool night air. With her chest heaving from fear after
their short flight and her nipples straining against her tight
shirt, she looked, at least to his symbion's feral perception,
both ready and willing to be taken.
"Wrong. That's wrong thinking," he told his new and
constant companion as he rummaged through his small
storage area for a pair of pants. "We ... I cannot just jump on
her and have sex. It's not right."
"The female is aroused. Mating is necessary for survival."
"I know that. I know that's the whole freaking point of his
experiment, but Zara is not Icarian, and she's my therapist,
and a colleague, and she'll kick me in the nuts if I go after her
waving my dick like a crazed madman. So back off."
Caleb sat on his bed and jammed his legs into a pair of
shorts. Covering up at least part of his body gave him a little
peace of mind, though it did nothing to calm the anxious
symbion.
"The female is aroused. Mating is necessary."
"I said, shut up already!"
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"Caleb? Who are you talking to?"
Zara stood in the doorway of the tiny alcove that served as
his bedroom. In the soft, yellow glow of the bungalow's
automatic lighting, she looked amazing. Her hair was
windblown and partially damp. It hung in ringlets around her
face. Barefoot, in shorts, she was all legs. Her pink lips parted
in a question, and her eyes held boundless concern, made
more urgent by his insane outburst.
Of course, what was normal about talking to a voice in
your head?
"Nothing. I mean, no one. I'm fine. I feel better." Being
partially dressed definitely helped. For the first time since the
joining, he felt human.
"Good. Do you want to tell me about it? What happened to
you this morning? Where have you been all day?"
"I'm thirsty." That had come from the symbion, always
concerned with bodily needs. "Yeah. I guess I am thirsty."
She gave him a suspicious look, as if caught off guard by
his half internal conversation. "I'll get you some water."
Clearly reluctant to leave him alone, Zara backed out of
the sleeping alcove and headed toward his food storage unit.
She never took her eyes off him, moving mechanically to find
and fill an empty water pod from the purifier. "Here, it's cold."
She handed him the plastic bulb, and he drank gratefully,
gulping the liquid as though he'd spent the day in the desert.
"You must be hungry too," she said.
"Not really. I should probably eat something, but not right
now. I need to think."
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"You need to talk, Caleb. We need to understand what
happened today. Obviously the joining was agonizing for you,
and it shouldn't have been. That means something isn't right.
You need to see Dr. Danson and have your biochemistry
analyzed. We have no idea what's happening inside you, but
it could be very dangerous."
Caleb finished the water and sighed. He turned the empty
bottle over in his hands and tried to concentrate on the few
clear drops still rolling around inside the container rather than
the allure of Zara's slender ankles, her shapely calves, her
perfect thighs...
"Caleb?"
"I can't go to the lab, Zara."
"Why not?" She dropped to her knees in front of him, a
submissive posture that had his symbion practically slavering.
"Female! Take her!"
Caleb bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself from
the tantrum taking place in his brain. "Danson will want to
remove the symbion."
"No he won't." She offered him a faint, reassuring smile.
"You're alive. You're walking around. Sure something isn't
quite right, but once he understands where the problem is, he
can fix it."
"The problem is in me. I'm the reason the joining didn't go
right."
Zara put her hands on Caleb's bare knees. The contact
sent a stab of awareness through his body. His cock pulsed,
his balls tightened, and his symbion stirred, causing his wings
to ruffle. He shivered and pushed her hands away.
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"You're in danger here with me."
"What do you mean? Caleb, we don't have secrets between
us. For the past year, you've told me every thought and
feeling you've had about this experiment. I've been with you
every step. Whatever you think is wrong, you can tell me."
Caleb hoisted himself up off the bed and quickly
maneuvered around Zara, who remained on the floor,
following him with her curious gaze only.
It had been a year of lies. More than a year, in fact. He'd
been fooling everyone, including himself, ever since his
diagnosis.
"There is one thing I never told you or Danson. One thing
that would have made it impossible for me to qualify for the
joining. I hid it from everyone because I was convinced this
was the only way for me."
"For you what? What haven't you told anyone, Caleb?"
He couldn't look at her. He'd never be able to look at
himself again either after this confession, but if he didn't let it
out now, he'd burst.
Fists clenched at his sides, head bowed, he took a deep
breath and said the words he hadn't been able to say before,
even to himself. "I didn't qualify for Danson's experiment
because I'm dying."
[Back to Table of Contents]
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Chapter Six
It seemed to Zara that she'd been drowning all day. The
first cold wave had taken her under on the north beach that
morning when Caleb had disappeared into the brilliant Icarian
sky.
She'd been gulping for air ever since while she waited for
word from the search parties. Now, after only a brief respite,
she felt as if the tide of events had dragged her under again.
In the wake of Caleb's confession, she put a shaking hand to
the middle
of her chest and willed herself to breathe. "What
do you mean, dying?"
He faced her, but he didn't meet her gaze.
"I have Rennard's Syndrome."
"No." This statement made no sense. How could Danson
not have discovered the rare disorder during all his tests?
Caleb had been a virtual pincushion for the last four months.
The geneticist had mapped his entire DNA sequence at least
twice.
"I'm serious. I was diagnosed three years ago after I left
the Jovan system. I contracted it as a side effect of my
exposure to the Haldon Belts on Bradon's World when I
worked at the transfer station there as an intern."
A million questions swirled through Zara's mind, but all she
managed to do was gape.
"The disease is slow to manifest and difficult to detect.
That's why Danson never found it. Only people who have
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worked in the Haldon Belts get it ... and I never included that
in my work history when I applied for this post."
"But ... why? Why hide it? You look perfectly—" She
stopped short of saying "normal". The man had wings, after
all. He'd never be normal again.
"Denial. I knew I had five years before the symptoms
started. A month to live after that, but I figured I'd be done
with my work here by then and I could go find a hospice
somewhere."
Tears stung Zara's eyes, and she swallowed hard at the
thought of her vibrant, handsome Caleb slinking off to a
medical facility to die alone. She shook her head. "I don't
know much about Rennard's. How can you be symptom free
for five years and then die in a month?"
"The disease creates a resistance to certain enzymes in the
blood. At first the body compensates, but over time the
enzyme deficiency causes a catastrophic breakdown in cell
cohesion. Death is painful, but relatively fast".
"Is it ... transmittable?"
"No, it's not contagious."
"No. I mean through DNA."
Caleb stared at her now, seeming horrorstruck by her
insinuation that he might have planned to pass on the
disorder to his Icarian offspring. "No! No, it's not. It doesn't
affect the DNA, which is why I was able to hide it from
Danson. He knows everything about me, down to every cell in
my bone marrow, but he doesn't know this because the
enzyme deficiency doesn't appear significant until the end."
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Zara allowed her shoulders to slump. How many more
times would she have to lose him? "Oh, Caleb. I'm sorry."
His wings shivered. "I should be sorry, not you. I'm a liar.
I'm a cheat. I was desperate to pretend it would just go
away. And then when I came to work with the Icarians and I
learned about the symbions, I started to think maybe I had a
chance to beat it."
"The symbions' regenerative abilities."
"Yes. It was hard to document in a race that's generally so
healthy, but the few cases we've seen where young Icarians
were injured or ill prior to joining and their symbions helped
them heal gave me the idea that maybe joining with a
symbion could cure the Rennard's." Caleb looked away again.
"I know I had no right. The symbion knows. He understands
something is missing from me, and that's why I felt so much
pain during the joining. I believed he would be able to
counteract the enzyme resistance."
"If you'd told Danson, he could have tested the theory. He
might have been able to tell you beforehand if it would have
worked or not."
Caleb paced and shook his head. "No. He would have
simply removed my name from the volunteer roster. I know
that's no excuse. I'm ashamed of what I did. I'm ashamed
that I've lied to you all this time."
Zara sat back and folded her legs in front of her. Resting
her hands in her lap, she sighed. Caleb's betrayal stung. The
trust they'd built over the past year had sustained her,
especially after she began helping him with the psychological
aspects of his decision to accept a symbion. She'd known
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there would never be a next step in their relationship, but
she'd managed all this time to keep her personal feelings out
of the equation because their professional relationship was so
perfect. Finding out that all the emotions and dreams he'd
discussed with her might have been pure fabrication left her
reeling.
She fought the instinct to scold him, to berate him for
trampling her feelings and essentially mocking her purpose in
his life. There would be time later for recriminations. Right
now, she needed to do her job. "Caleb, we need to put all
that aside for a moment. What's important right now is your
health and your physical link with the symbion. Let me call
the lab so Ray can start working on this problem."
Caleb scrubbed a hand over his face. Though worry lines
creased his brow, he looked remarkably good for someone
who'd woken up not long ago with a lungful of water and a
face full of sand. He didn't look terminally ill, not by a long
shot. Though, if what he'd told her was true, he would
probably continue to appear perfectly healthy almost until the
day he died.
Danson will want to remove it."
"Jidar won't let him. The Icarian terms of the joining are
very clear. The symbion would not be removed except in the
event that maintaining the link was proven a danger to your
life. It will die without you now."
"It will die anyway."
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Suddenly angry, Zara bolted up from the floor. "Are you
going to let that happen? Or are you going to at least fight for
it?"
Shock widened his eyes, and Zara stepped close to him.
"I'm not sure how well I know you anymore, but the only
thing I'm still certain of is that you're dedicated to the
repopulation project. So if there's anything that can be
learned from this ... you'll do what has to be done to help the
Icarians, right?"
His mouth worked for a moment. "Right."
"Good. I'll call the lab and get someone over here with a
cart to pick us up."
Caleb continued to pace the tight confines of his sleeping
alcove while Zara retrieved the portable radio transmitter
from his work area. Each moment he waited made him more
and more agitated. While his confession had relived a great
weight from his conscience, he still wasn't sure he was ready
to face Danson and the others.
He'd already caused so much trouble. They would never
believe his original intentions had been good. He'd sincerely
wanted to help the Icarians boost their flagging population.
After studying their complex culture for years, he fully
understood their reluctance to simply accept donated DNA
from humans.
The only way they could accept help to rebuild their
population was to bring in new adults who could not only
contribute mating material, but remain within the society to
help raise and nurture their offspring. Danson's solution
involved a true hybridization of two species. Caleb wasn't sure
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now that he could live with the shame of having screwed that
up.
Jidar and his people would never trust him. Raymond
Danson would want to dissect him, and worst of all, Zara
looked at him as though he were lower than the crabs that
infested the island's south beach.
She seemed calm and professional right now, but he knew,
underneath, she was hurt. He could never begin to explain
which of the things he'd shared with her were real and which
were embellished to feed his lie.
The symbion wanted to stretch his wings and propelled
Caleb involuntarily toward the living area. Zara's urgent
whisper stopped him though, and despite the guilt it caused
him, he remained out of sight behind the wall, which divided
his sleeping quarters from his work area.
"We need to do this carefully, Ray. It's clear he doesn't
have the kind of control over the symbion he should have,
and I'm worried about his emotional stability."
Caleb almost laughed out loud at her remark. What
emotional stability? He was carrying around a pair of sentient
wings on his back, and all they wanted to do was grab the
nearest female and fuck her senseless. He'd be lucky if he
saw "stable" again this century.
"I don't have access to a sedative. I'm sure he's got
nothing stronger on hand than an analgesic. How fast can you
get here?"
Caleb tensed at the word sedative. An emotion surged
through him he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before, and it made
his body shake.
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The symbion remembered being sedated by Danson. The
pain of an injection followed by lethargy and disorientation
had left it angry and frightened. Rudimentary communication
through Jidar's symbion had reassured it no permanent harm
would come to it, but that hadn't made submitting to the