by Bethany Aan
“There was a time when I was used to this,” she panted at one point, trying to catch her breath after a particularly brutal spasm. “It happened all the time, so much that I didn’t even use pain meds after awhile… I just kind of got used to it.”
“But not now?” Jace asked, grinning wryly and shaking his hand gingerly. She had nearly broken the damn thing with that last cramp. She laughed shortly.
“Not so much,” she agreed. Then she smiled up at him. “But I’m so very glad it’s back! I never in a million years thought I’d say that about my period!”
He leaned down and kissed her gently, wiping a bit of pain-induced sweat from her brow. “I cannot imagine your grief, knowing that you could not bear children,” he told her earnestly. “But I see how happy you are now. I can see what this means to you. I can only hope that we can now think about having a real family, of our own. Hunter and I want nothing less for you.”
“Jace,” she breathed, touching his cheek. He deepened the kiss, then drew back when she whimpered with pain. She laughed through her tears. “Well, that’s certainly a show-stopper!”
Jace laughed ruefully. The woman could make him smile no matter what was going on. His heart lurched at that realization. Shit. He was falling for her, just as surely as his brother had.
For two days, she struggled with the pain, and was a bit weak from anemia, since her body was not used to giving up blood for any reason in the past five years. Jace followed through with an examination that embarrassed her but didn’t seem to phase him, then declared that somehow, the nanos had figured out what needed repairing, what needed to be re-connected, and had managed to fully ‘fix’ her, with no sign of the former trauma she had sustained through surgery. Jace kept her in the infirmary with him the entirety of one of his shifts, so that he could give her additional nutrients, keep track of her iron levels, and keep the pain at bay for her. He fussed over her so much that she couldn’t get annoyed with him. Back on Earth, men tended to leave women alone during their periods. Here, her men could not do enough to help make her more comfortable.
Though they did ply her with juice to get her into a sweeter mood when she got incredibly irascible at one point. Not that she was a bitch, but she was not nearly as nice as she usually was. Her grumpiness amused the men greatly, but they were much too intelligent to let her see that.
Once her flow stopped, she felt better than ever. And apparently, with the genetic bits taken care of and back in working order, the meds were able to work on the actual damage to her leg and ribs. Within a week, she was up and limping, and in another few days, she wasn’t even doing that, but was able to move and walk normally.
“I’m becoming concerned about the general health of the ladies,” Jace said a few days later, at the officer’s meeting that Hunter had begun calling every week or so. Ri and Bev exchanged looks. Jace was watching them. “You have been here for almost exactly a month, and you are all losing weight. While I understand that, on your planet, being skinny and malnourished is apparently the ideal, I do not like it.”
“Jace,” Ri sighed, leaning forward, “We’re just adjusting to the new foods and the constant exercise. That’s all. Our metabolisms will level out soon, I’m sure.”
“Soon is not good enough,” Jace growled. He tossed her a small med scanner and nodded at it as she caught it deftly and looked down at the information. Bev and Trey had been hard at work, figuring out how to integrate all of the computers to translate both Thorsani and English on the same screen.
“How recent are these?” she asked, frowning.
“They’re from the scans I did yesterday,” Jace said, sitting forward, his hands on the table. “Every one of you has lost weight, some more than others. As a physician, it bothers me that your people have been encouraged to be so thin, when it appears that your bodies are meant to carry extra stores of fat and muscle.”
“Our doctors tend to go by weight, rather than general health, most of the time,” Bev said absently. “I’ve really lost that much weight?”
“Aye,” Trey grunted, narrowing his gaze on her. “And I don’t like it one bit, either. People will think I am starving you, if you become too scrawny.”
Bev rolled her eyes at him, but blushed and blew him a kiss.
“I’m nowhere near to starving,” she laughed, shaking her head.
“Arianna is also losing weight,” Hunter noted. “And while I still find your figure quite enticing, you are beginning to look a bit sickly.”
“Thank you. I think you’re a sexy beast, too,” Ri snorted. She sighed and sat forward, dropping the scanner to the table. “The truth is, you guys are feeding us too well. All the right stuff, none of the bad. You have us on a diet of all natural fruits, vegetables, and meats.”
“Mostly protein,” Bev said, picking the scanner up and flipping through several different screens until she brought up the chemical and nutritional breakdowns of the foods the men had been cataloging for the past decade. “Our systems are geared for more grains and fats than you guys, apparently. The kind of diet you’re feeding us is all well and good, but long-term could see some kidney damage, since we’ve evolved to process more than just meats.”
“I would not be nearly as concerned about your weight, if your blood levels were adequate, but they are not. Do you have medical files anywhere that might help me to understand and come up with some supplements, until we can adjust your diets?” Jace asked, arching a brow at Ri. It was Bev who answered, though.
“I think she has an entire SD card of books on nutrition, diets, and cooking,” the blond said. “You should be able to access them in the med center.”
“Cooking?” Trey perked up. As the Thorsani in the room groaned, he grinned at Bev, a sparkle in his eye. “What kinds of foods are you ladies used to?”
“Grains, sugars, veggies, meat and dairy fats…” Ri shrugged. “I’ll admit that we don’t need all the bleached and chemically processed foods that our society had moved to in the last fifty years, but there’s probably something on this planet we can use as substitutes for the starches and everything that our bodies are used to.”
Jace nodded, his brow furrowed in thought. Finally, he sat back with a sigh.
“Are any of the girls knowledgeable about the kinds of things you need to be eating?” he asked. Kim nodded, bringing up a new screen on the table’s central computer monitor.
“Three of them were in nutrition and dietitian programs. I think Christy was actually very close to graduating with a masters degree. She’s the one you should get working with your folks on this one, I think.”
“Good,” Hunter said. “And perhaps we should do an informal survey, ask the girls what their favorite foods were back on your world, then see if we have any equivalents here. There’s no sense starting from scratch, if we can approximate your foods with what’s available.”
“That makes sense,” Ri murmured. Then she grinned and cut a look at her mates. “I’d love to be able to make you guys an old-fashioned southern breakfast sometime.”
Bev’s eyes closed and she groaned at the thought.
“Eggs, bacon, grits,” she breathed. Ri chuckled.
“Toast, on bread that doesn’t try to chip our teeth.”
“Hey!” Trey said, wounded. “I came up with those biscuit recipes. I cannot help it if your women are so fragile that their teeth can’t break through the crust.”
“Trey,” Hunter said ruefully, arching a brow at his friend, “You are one of my dearest friends and my favorite cousin, but those biscuits challenge our teeth, and we have stronger teeth than the humans.”
“It’s not my fault if I have not been able to find a good leavening agent,” Trey grumped, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Have you tried capturing wild yeast?” Ri asked. The room went silent and she blushed at the sudden sharp attention on her. Trey’s eyebrows rose in question. “Do you not have yeast here?”
“What is yeast?” he asked, truly curious.
“It’s a bacteria that we had back on Earth,” she said, throwing Jace a grin when he bristled at the use of a germ in food. “We have a number of them, actually, that are beneficial, and some that aren’t so much. But yeast is one of those that can be found naturally in a number of places. I’ve heard of capturing your own from the local air, and growing it into a ‘starter’ for breads.”
“Now you’ve done it,” Hunter murmured, a half-grin kicking up the corner of his mouth.
“What?” Ri asked, blinking.
“Trey is a chef, a master. You have told him something of the culinary world that he did not know.”
“And are you also a chef?” Trey asked, cocking his head eagerly at Ri. She shook hers.
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “But I learned to cook and bake at a very young age, and even decorated cakes and played around with candies and pastries at one point.”
She had to describe the pastries, though the men seemed to understand candy. She could sense Hunter’s very real hunger as she talked about cinnamon rolls, muffins, cakes, and pies. She was determined now, more than ever, to make sure that she found an equivalent to some of the goodies they’d had back on earth. The Southern woman in her wanted to treat her men to some wonderful baked goods. And the dwindling Fat Girl in her wanted that, too. Grinning to herself, Ri sat back and listened as the meeting moved to other topics.
After the meeting, Hunter excused himself to go check on construction of the new living quarters and greenhouses. Jace hurried off to the med center to access the nutrition and diet books and learn more about what the women needed. Trey stopped Ri on her way out, though, his eyes alight with curiosity. Bev stayed at his side, grinning at his enthusiasm.
“Commander, a word?” Trey asked, nodding in deference to her supposed rank.
“Trey, please,” she sighed, linking her arm through his. “How many times do I need to tell you not to call me that?”
“It’s habit,” he said, shrugging and flicking a long finger over the trim at her biceps. “I see the stripes, I call the person ‘Commander’. It is simply the way it is. And I have been doing so since long before you were born, so you’ll have to be patient with me.”
“Okay, okay,” Arianna laughed. “What’s on your mind?”
As if she didn’t know. Trey led both women, arms linked through his, toward the large kitchen just off the great hall.
“I want to know everything you know about cooking on your world. Both of you.” He threw up his hands in exasperation as the women wandered around the large room. “I want to ‘pick the brains’ of every one of your ladies, as well, to find out what they know. I know that several of them come from different cultural backgrounds. Could they have different foods?”
“Definitely,” Bev told him, laughing. “But you’ll have to talk to them.”
“In the meantime,” Trey said, looking around the room with glee and rubbing his hands together. “What would you need, Com… Ri… to capture these ‘wild yeast’ you speak of?”
“Hold on, hold on,” she said, raising her hands to temper his excitement. “I don’t even know if there are any on this world, so don’t get all excited.”
“How would we know?” he asked, deflating only a little.
“I guess… if you’ve left anything sweet out, and it spoiled and smelled a bit like wine? If so, you might have some yeasts around.”
“Wine?” he asked.
“Alcoholic beverages?” she said. “Like from the fruit you make your juice from? That stuff has a bit of an alcoholic bite to it, I think. At least, it tends to get me a little tipsy for a short time.”
Bev nodded that it affected her the same way. Ri frowned. “Though how could it ferment if it’s whole and ripe on the tree? I wish I knew more about that kind of thing.”
“Ah, fermenting,” Trey said, shaking his head sadly. “I do miss a good fermented juice.”
“Well, why haven’t you tried to make some here?” Bev asked. “I mean, you have those grape-looking things, and the juice tastes a bit like muscadines and already has a bit of an alcoholic effect. Why not experiment?”
“To be honest, it didn’t occur to me,” he admitted, sitting down on a high stool near the central work table. “Warriors tend to want to stay alert, so when we’re on duty, we don’t have access to anything that might get us drunk.”
“But surely you had some wine or something on board when you landed?” Ri asked. “Even a little bit of leftover stuff might have enough yeast culture to get something started.”
“No,” he said softly. “We only had a small amount on board the Trephinia when we left Thorsan. The storage compartment it was in was lost when the ship was attacked.”
“Damn!” Ri sighed gustily. “Still… there’s got to be a way.” They sat in silence for a long moment, then she shrugged. “I’ve got a few things we might be able to try. Let me look through my books, and we can figure something out.”
“Ri, honey,” Bev chuckled, “When are you going to learn? All you need to do is access the database, type in what you want, and any of our books will come up. It’s like our very own search engine, but with books instead of websites.”
“Oh. Right!” Arianna chuckled and headed toward the small desk off the kitchen and brought up the computer.
In less than an hour, Ri, Bev, and Trey had found all the supplies they needed and set about thirty different ‘traps’ to try to catch wild yeast. They were determined to set the traps all around the compound, to see what they caught, and then they would compile the results and go from there.
The next item on the list was to try to find a good equivalent to the flour that the Earth women were used to. Trey thought about this for a long time, then shook his head.
“I think we will have to see how the current flour works with these ‘yeast’ if we can catch any. At that point, we’ll look into refining the flour, but not with chemicals.” He snorted in derision. “It seems as though your world was more interested in convenience than nutrition.”
“It was, actually,” Bev told him. Her eyes narrowed on him then. “However, I have one more item to bring up. Dairy.”
“Dairy?” he asked, frowning.
“Milk. Eggs. Butter. Mayonnaise, for heaven’s sake.”
“That is a good point,” Ri said, nodding. “If we manage to bake fresh bread and there’s no butter to go with it, the women are going to riot.”
Trey sighed and stood, hands on his hips.
“All right,” he said. “We will see about milk and butter. But I’m warning you… the rider beasts do not like it when you tug on their teats!”
“Then perhaps you’re not tugging correctly,” Bev said sweetly, grinning up at him. Trey growled, picked her up and deposited her on the table, and murmured something about perfecting his teat-tugging techniques.
Knowing when to bow out of a situation, Arianna laughed and vacated the kitchen, firmly closing the door behind her.
“You want to do what?” Hunter asked, staring at her. Ri shrugged.
“You heard me.”
“You are not going to try to milk a rider beast!” he stormed, shaking his head violently. “Those damn things are dangerous if you get near their udders.”
“That’s what Trey said,” she sighed. “But if we can figure out how to milk them, Trey told me that the milk is sweet and very nutritious.”
“It is,” Hunter agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. “But it’s not worth your getting hurt yet again.”
“Oh, really,” Ri huffed, throwing her hands into the air. “I think I can milk a durn cow!”
“They are not cows, like on your world. They are sentient beings that allow us to ride them in return for shelter, food, and companionship. But they draw the line at being milked.”
“Well, obviously someone did it at one point,” she said reasonably. “Otherwise you wouldn’t know what their milk tastes like.”
“It was a special situation,” Hunter admitte
d, frowning at her. “The first winter caught us completely unprepared. When we began running out of food, the riders allowed us to milk them, but it was very painful for them, so once the emergency was over, they didn’t let us do it again.”
Arianna deflated a bit at that, then perked back up.
“They’re sentient?” she asked. Hunter groaned.
“No. You will not ask a rider if you can milk her.”
“Look, you want us ladies to be healthy, right?”
“Aye, of course,” Hunter said, but grudgingly. She was about to make a point, and that usually meant he was about to lose an argument. Damned clever woman. He should have chosen someone more biddable.
“I heard that!” Ri laughed. Hunter growled. “You want us healthy, and part of our over-all health includes a certain amount of calcium, which, from these scans,” she held up the small hand-held tablet Jace had given her, “We aren’t getting through regular dietary means. That means we need to find a source for it. If the riders are sentient and I can figure out how to milk them without it hurting them, it’s a win-win situation, right?”
“Except for the rider calves, which will go without their supper,” Hunter grouched.
“I’ve seen those riders,” Ri told him. “Their udders are huge. There’s no way their calves are able to eat that much.”
Hunter groaned and shook his head, but realized that she wasn’t going to let up on this until she’d seen for herself just how irascible the animals could be. Scowling at her, he nodded decisively.
“Fine. Let’s go. You may talk to them. You will see that they are completely unreasonable about the whole thing, and you will drop this topic.”
“If that’s what happens, then yes. I will drop it.” He opened the door for her and she passed under his arm. Grinning up at him, she reached up on tip-toes and kissed the bottom of his chin. “Thank you, Hunter.”