Tails of the Apocalypse Read Online Free

Finder rations, she grew more beautiful. Her features filled out, she grew softer and more curvaceous, and a sort of love developed between us. Is there such a thing as love without trust? Whatever we had, the relationship worked for us.
    Dimah shifted her hips and slipped a soft thigh between my knees. I smiled at the ceiling. As an apprentice Finder, it was easy to get lost in the sheer volume of sexual opportunities, but Ghadir had trained me well. “They don’t want you, they don’t even want a Finder. They want their lives to change,” she’d said. “Never promise anything, and never take one with you. Never.”
    A small minority of companions wanted something else from their Finder: a baby. Although research had shown—back when there was enough infrastructure to have something like research—that the Gift was not a genetic trait, the hope remained. Bearing a child with the Gift was like winning the lottery for the parents. When they presented themselves at the Temple of the Water Finders, the child was taken and the parents were invited into a special Water Hold community to live out their days as servants in the temple. Life as a servant might not sound so good, but there’s no water rationing in the temple. Just the opposite, in fact: there’s all the water you could possibly want for the rest of your life.
    Dimah lifted her head and rested the point of her chin on my chest. Her smoky eyes looked directly into mine. “Do you love me?” she asked, her breath warm on my cheek.
    “Yes,” I answered automatically. Long practice had taught me the right answer to that question was yes—anything else was an argument waiting to happen.
    She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Really? You couldn’t even pretend to think about it?”
    This was the problem with long-term relationships. After living with me, she knew me better than I knew myself. I frowned at her.
    “It’s true.” Even as my lips moved, my brain kept working to head off the argument. It was true, sort of. I had no idea if I loved her—I had no idea what that word meant—but I knew I cared for her as much as I’d ever cared for another human being, and that should count for something.
    “Is it? Do you really love me?”
    This was the longest conversation we’d ever had on this topic. Something was up. I sat up in bed and slid my arm around her. “I really do love you. Now, what’s going on?”
    She picked at the hair on my chest. Gray hairs outnumbered blond, I noted. Then she straddled me with one fluid motion, the weight of her body warm in all the right places. My breath hitched in my throat as she nuzzled my neck.
    “I’m pregnant,” she whispered.
    I could almost hear my libido hitting the dirt. “You’re what?”
    “You heard me.” She leaned back, studying my face. “I have a plan.”
    “Dimah, the chances that it has the Gift—”
    “He. And he has the Gift. I can feel it.”
    I bucked her off me and sat cross-legged in the bed. She matched my posture, still studying me. I took her hands in mine. “Look, Dimah. Everything we know says the Gift is random—that’s why it’s called a gift.”
    “Don’t you want to hear my plan?”
    I blew out my breath. “Okay, tell me your plan.”
    She shook off my hands and placed them on my knees. As she spoke, she slid her palms down my thighs. In a voice of hushed tension—sexual and the other kind—she spoke.
    “We take over the clan—you and me and the child. Tarkon is weak. The only reason he’s not been challenged is because of you. You’ve kept the water flowing for him, so no one wants to mess with that.” Her fingertips reached my hips and she dug her fingernails into the flesh of my sides.
    “You take over as clan leader, with me as your wife. The child trains under you. When your Gift fades, he takes over and you remain as clan leader. It’s perfect.” Dimah laughed as she came up to her hands and knees. She pushed me back down onto the bed.
    In the other room,