Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 67092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Is it any wonder I was drawn to him? she thought desperately. He accepted me, fangs and all. Who else besides my family is willing to do that? No one! I’ll never have a normal life and all because of these damned fangs!
“Kara, sweetheart—” her father began but Kara couldn’t stand anymore.
“I have to go.” She raced for his study door and yanked it open. But she stopped in the doorway. Turning, she half-met Sylvan’s eyes. “I’m sorry I shamed you, Father. It…it won’t happen again.”
He opened his mouth—probably to protest or to call her back—but Kara couldn’t bear to stay. She rushed out the door, her eyes filled with hot, angry tears.
Her fangs—it was always her fangs. They made her recognizable enough that everyone knew she was the Chancellor’s daughter. Kaleb didn’t have to put up with such instant recognition and retribution and why? Because it was normal for a Blood Kindred male to have fangs. And as for what her father had tried to tell her about the fangs giving her urges…
Kara shuddered with embarrassment at the thought. But then a little voice inside her spoke up.
It’s true, isn’t it? Haven’t you been having the urge to bite someone—to bite a male—for a long time? Doesn’t the ache in your upper teeth make you shiver with need? Isn’t that why you “accidentally” bit Jason? You were hoping he might ask you to bite him again, in a different place, weren’t you? But instead he dumped you. It’s the story of your life, the damn fangs mess up everything.
Well, maybe it was time to do something about them. Kara dashed the tears out of her eyes and thought again of her mother’s words the other night when Sophia had thought she and Sylvan were alone. “I’ve heard of a treatment…on Tranq Prime…”
I’ll go there, Kara suddenly decided. Of course it would mean “borrowing” a long range shuttle from the Docking Bay but she could manage that—hadn’t she been taking piloting lessons since she was twelve cycles old? She could outmaneuver most anyone but Uncle Baird himself. Still, a long range shuttle wouldn’t get her all the way to Tranq Prime, which was hundreds of light years away…
Then she had a thought. Hadn’t Raak said there was a cadre of trader ships going to the Blood Kindred home world tonight? She was certain he had. So if she could borrow a shuttle and fly out with the rest of them, she could slip through when the Mother Ship folded space and no one would be the wiser.
I can call Great Aunt Zeelah and Great Uncle Grennly and I’m certain they’ll let me stay with them once I explain who I am. I bet they’ll help me find the right doctor to perform the procedure or the treatment or whatever it is too.
What the procedure was, Kara had no clear idea. She had a vague mental image of a serious but kindly physician handing her a tube of toothpaste-like medicine and telling her gravely, “Now you rub that on your fangs twice a day for two weeks and they should shrink back down to the size of normal teeth.”
“And the…urges? The way I want to bite someone so badly?” Kara imagined herself asking.
“Why, the medicine will take care of those,” the imaginary physician said, smiling. In Kara’s daydream she was a kindly, gray haired old lady. “You won’t have to worry about a thing—you’ll be perfectly normal in just a little while.”
“Oh thank you—thank you!” Kara imagined herself hugging her and thanking her over and over, tears of gratitude in her eyes. “You’ve changed my life forever,” she would say.
And the kindly gray-haired physician would smile and tell her to go have a beautiful, normal life and everything would be all right.
The vision was so strong in her head that Kara wasn’t even looking where she was going. She nearly ran head-long into Kaleb, who was standing in the hallway directly between their two rooms.
“Oof!” she gasped as she careened into her twin brother’s broad chest.
“Hey, watch where you’re going.” Kaleb grabbed her by her upper arms to steady her. “Where are you going anyway? Did the talk with Dad go that badly?”
“No.” Kara shook her head. “No, he was mostly understanding.”
“Then why the rush?” He frowned. “I watched you—you ran out of his office like your hair was on fire and your ass was catching.”
It was an expression they’d heard from their Aunt Kat on occasion and it usually cracked Kara up. This time, however, she could only muster a small smile.
“I just…wanted to get away. He…” She cleared her throat. “Dad wanted to talk to me about my fangs. About how they give you…” Her voice dropped. “Urges.”
“Oh…” Kaleb let go of her, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “He had that talk with me too—but years ago.”