Hybrid's Love Read Online Free Page A

to it, then licked it. It really had no flavor,
at all. She picked up the spoon that had been placed on the tray
and did as he suggested, eating it quickly. Taste was not the
problem, but the texture was repulsive. She managed to down half of
it, before her stomach began to rebel. She opened the small bottle
of what he called electrolyte compound and drank it quickly. It
tasted vaguely sweet, like sugar water. In all, it was the least
satisfying meal she’d ever had. In spite of that, she did feel
better afterwards. She also had more questions.
    Wren had not just spent the last few hours
sulking. She had been thinking, planning and trying to figure out
how her life had turned into a Joss Whedon script overnight. The
simple answer to that was that it had not been overnight. Whatever
was different about her, had been different since she had been
born. Why else would she have dreamed of the Aldacyians before, why
would she have seen them skulking about periodically throughout her
life? It wasn’t precognition that had prompted her to fear them,
but memory.
    “ How long have you been assigned to
protect me?”
    “ For as long as you have been alive,”
he answered honestly.
    Wren thought about that, about her mother’s
insistence that her biological parents had been damaged in some way
and that was why Wren herself was ‘different’. “Why would the Core
want to protect me? What were they protecting me from? Why did the
Aldacyians want me? Every time you answer a question it only raises
more questions.”
    Kyr met her gaze with an assessing one of his
own. “I will answer any question you have, if you are ready for
those answers. I fear that you are not.”
    “I’m like you, aren’t I? An alien.”
    “The term alien is incorrect. Right now,
neither of us is on her home planet. We are both aliens. I am a
hybrid, as are you, but not just like me. I was bred to be a
warrior, engineered to understand combat, strategy and to withstand
pain and injury.”
    Wren fought the urge to hurl the tray at him.
“What was I bred for, then?”
    “You were bred for me, genetically designed
to my perfect mate,” he replied softly.
    Wren rose and paced the cabin. Again, the
urge to deny his words was welling within her. It explained so
much. It explained her response to him. She was hardwired to want
him. At the same time, it repulsed her. She had been raised as a
human being, to believe that she had free will, to choose her
lovers on her own criteria. To hear that her sole purpose, her very
conception, had been to be a vessel for a man made her ill.
    “Never again,” she said. “You will never
touch me again!”
    The gentleness that she had seen in him, that
he had been so careful to hold onto with her, vanished. He stalked
towards her, his large body imposing, powerful. He was towering
over her, looming above her as she clung to the wall behind her. “I
will have you again,” he said. “Make no mistake, Wren Marlowe. I
have claimed you and you are mine now.”
    “I am not an object to be claimed! I am a
human being!” she cried.
    He brought the tips of his fingers to her
face, touching the single tear that had fallen from her eyes. His
anger had vanished, but there was a resolve in him that was
unmistakable. “No, Wren. You are not a human being. You are mine,
created for me, made to fit me in every way. I will never harm you,
I will never force you, and I would give my life to protect you…
But do not think to leave me,”
    “Where do I sleep, here?” she asked, sweeping
her hand towards the berths. She was effectively ending the
conversation. She couldn’t face it, not the knowledge that she was
something other than human, or that her free will had been nothing
but an illusion. She also couldn’t face the traitorous leap of her
pulse at his promise, or the dangerous thrill she’d felt in knowing
that, at last, someone wanted her just as she was.
    Kyr moved away from her, tension still coiled
through his body. It was