Chapter 49: Many Babies

"How did she do it?" She wanted to hold him but he held his body taut, turned away from her, his claws still out. This violent stranger frightened her.

"She stopped eating then took medicine from her home world."

"Why did she stop eating before taking the medicine? Why not simply overdose?"

"My father made her immune to most poisons. In order for the medicine to work, she had to weaken herself."

How horrible for him to live with the knowledge that his mother had been that determined to leave him. "How did he make her immune?"

Something flickered in his eyes and, again, he didn't answer.

She thought about the way he carefully fed her every day and her heart ached for him. It ached at her own silly delusions that he did it because of any softer feelings for her. It ached for her unborn child, destined to become an emotionally repressed warrior. "I'm not your mother, Zacar," she said gently.