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TWO
Harlee stared, open mouthed, at this man who claimed he was the head of the vampire clan and her uncle.
A cold chill crept up her spine and she shivered, pulling the blanket tighter around her. It wasn’t true. She had to remind herself that in war, captors would do anything to convince their prisoners to cooperate. “You can’t really expect me to buy this. Surely I’d have realized by now if I wasn’t human.” The government had conducted an extensive background check on her prior to granting her high security clearance. No mention had ever been made of her being adopted.
Then again, court records were typically sealed. No! The whole idea was ridiculous and she felt stupid even pondering it. She wasn’t adopted, that’s why nothing was ever uncovered. If there had been anything, anything at all about her, the government would have uncovered it when they investigated her background.
Robert shrugged and examined one long fingernail. “Not necessarily. If you are not brought up knowing the species you were born into, there’s no way you would have known. You would not exhibit any of the characteristics of either species, unless you were taught or forced to change. You have to be trained to use force of will to enact the change or an act of passion might trigger it.”
“Act of passion?”
“Sex,” Adrian interjected.
Her gaze shot toward the two men who’d taken her. Both of them stared back at her, their lips quirked in half smiles.
“Sex?” she repeated.
“Yes. Sex,” Robert said. “Sex with a lycan or vampire. Since the government doesn’t even acknowledge our existence, that would have been difficult. Although if you had murderous intentions, that could also bring about the changes within you. But we really don’t know how any of this affects a hybrid such as yourself. It’s never been done before, but we are fairly certain that tandem sex with one member of both species will bring about the changes.”
She ignored his comment about sex with two men, the visual too uncomfortably familiar. Instead, she focused on the other words he’d used. Hybrid. Different. Like her other dreams, the ones she’d had since she was a child. She’d always thought she had a vivid imagination that had manifested itself in her strange dreams. She’d often dreamed of vampires and werewolves when she was little. Their world was so real to her it seemed as if she had grown up a part of it, which had seemed so strange to her since she’d never even known they existed until she went to work for the government. She’d always chalked it up to wanting to be unique, to wishing she had those special abilities that the mythical vampires and werewolves had. Their power, their sexuality, their ability to manipulate their environment in many different ways. As an adult, her childhood dreams of living with them had changed, becoming more erotic, kinkier than anything she’d ever done in real life.
Just like the one she’d been having tonight when they’d broken in and kidnapped her. Two men fucking her, licking her, biting her. She studied both of them now. They were so much like the men in her dream, though she hadn’t been able to see their faces. But body size, hand size, they were pretty damned…
No! It wasn’t them! She hadn’t been dreaming of them, it had been two nameless, faceless humans. And a normal fantasy for a woman who hadn’t had sex in too long to remember.
Living among vampires and lycans had been nothing more than childhood fantasy. She wasn’t different and she sure as hell wasn’t some hybrid. They had her confused with someone else. This was a mistake. Vampires and lycans weren’t magical, sexual creatures. They were murderers and cannibals, preying upon humans and using them for their own twisted experiments. And now that she’d been led right to their headquarters, it was her duty to find a way to bring them down. “I don’t believe any of this.”
“You will,” Robert said, his gray eyes capturing and holding her. She wanted to pull away but she couldn’t. Something about him seemed so…God, she hated to even think it, but he seemed familiar. He pulled something from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her.
It was a picture of a woman with long red hair, green eyes and full lips. A smattering of freckles decorated the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Harlee’s blood chilled. It was like looking at a picture of herself. She looked up at Robert. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s a picture of my sister when she was about your age.”
The likeness was amazing. But not believable. They could have easily doctored any photo and passed it off as his “relative”.
Placing the picture on the table in front of her, she stood, once again tucking the ends of her blanket around her. They hadn’t mentioned her position in the government. Was it possible they really didn’t know who she was? And if that was true, then did they really believe she was one of them? Deciding to use the advantage for as long as she could, she said, “My parents never said anything about adopting me.” And how convenient that her parents were both dead and she couldn’t ask them. She had no other relatives. She was supposed to trust these animals, act on blind faith after they yanked her from the safety of her home in the dead of night? No way.
“They were instructed not to. That was the condition we placed upon the adoption.”
“Why did your sister and my…supposed ‘father’ give me up?”
Robert frowned and she saw pain cross his features before he quickly masked it. Another act for her benefit, no doubt.
“Relational fraternization between vampires and lycans was forbidden. Wars had been fought between us for less than one species taking up with another. It was against our laws. But Amelia and Stefan fell in love anyway, and no one ever knew. He spirited her away, kept her in hiding when they discovered she was pregnant. They were planning to come out after you were born and fight to change the laws. They figured two prominent members of the lycan and vampire clans would be protected, that their child would be spared from elimination because of her royal blood. They thought your existence would change everything.”
“But?”
Robert inhaled sharply, his exhale sounding like a mournful sigh. “My sister died giving birth to you.”
How could that be? The recuperative powers of their species were phenomenal. Now she knew they were full of shit. If they were even vampires and lycans. They hadn’t yet proved that to her.
“Aren’t you people like superhuman or something?” she asked, trying to play dumb. She wasn’t supposed to know they even existed.
Robert cast her an indulgent smile. “Even our powers are no match for extreme blood loss. I don’t know exactly what happened, only that she bled and she bled too fast for Stefan to bring help. Offering his blood wouldn’t have saved her because he wasn’t the same species. He could only hold her and watch her die, then he made a promise to her that no harm would ever come to you.”
Why did that knowledge hurt? She had no idea who this Amelia was or for that matter who this Robert person really was. Yet his pain was real. She felt it, saw it in his grief-stricken eyes. It stabbed her with a searing ache, shocking the hell out of her. Human or vampire or lycan, he had suffered a great loss, one that obviously still plagued him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded and inhaled sharply, then relaxed his shoulders. “After Amelia died, Stefan sought me out and told me what had happened. Both the vampire and lycan clans thought she had simply run off with a werewolf, defying our laws and traditions. We had no idea she had fallen in love with leader of the lycans, or that she had given birth.”
