Taken Over

   My chest was so constricted with love and sorrow that I could hardly breathe. “The night of my dad’s funeral…”

   “Your pain was so intense I could feel it all the way across town. No we aren’t empath’s,” he explained at my questioning, stu

   I didn’t realize I was crying until he wiped the tears from my cheeks. Didn’t realize how badly I ached for him until he bent and kissed me gently. “Even now,” he breathed against me. His breath was warm, sweet, and reassuring against my flesh. “I should have stayed away from you, I should have stayed gone. I felt your grief for me, your pain and loss even through the distance separating us. I struggled to keep my own agony concealed from them, struggled to convey to them that I was still one of them. That I wasn’t different, and I did well with it. I couldn’t leave right away though, couldn’t flee. To run from them would have put you in even more danger, they would have hunted me, searched for me relentlessly. I had to stay away, but I couldn’t bare your anguish, I had to give you hope…”

   “My dream,” I whispered in awe.

   “Yes, I wanted you to move on…”

   “I couldn’t. I never could. I tried and I accepted the fact that you were wrong but I couldn’t move on from you Cade. It’s not, it’s not like that with me, I simply couldn’t…”

   “Shh love, I know. I understand.” He kissed my cheeks gently as my voice broke off on a wrenching sob that lodged in my chest. “But your life could continue on with some hope in it; that was all I wanted to give you. And to hold you once more, even if it was just in a dream. But when they hurt you…” His words trailed off, his jaw clenched as his eyes simmered with black fire. “If you were killed, I would have known it. I felt your pain through my bond to you, to feel your death…

   He inhaled a shuddery breath, for a brief moment the black shifted throughout his entire eye again. I was breathless as I watched him slowly reel the fury and despair back in. “I couldn’t live with that, I would have snapped. I had vowed to keep you safe my entire life, and in that moment I knew I had failed. I couldn’t stay away from you anymore; I couldn’t let them hurt you again. I convinced my kind that I would be more useful on the ground, as I knew more about humans and was more adept at blending in with them, and they agreed to let me come back. They don’t know where I am, but they believe that I am on their side. If they find me, if they catch us together, what they will do to you…”

   “I don’t care,” I gushed out terrified that he would leave just so such a thing didn’t happen.

   “I do and you will. But to leave you unprotected again, I can’t.” His fingers threaded through my hair, pushing it gently away from my face. His voice was fervent, he clung desperately to me. “I can help keep you safe Bethany. Those things won’t get hold of you again as long as I’m around. Whatever you decide, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. If you want me to leave…” His hands tightened on me briefly, a small shudder of agony ran through his body. “I will. Anything you want. Anything.”

   I opened my mouth to respond, to tell him that I never wanted him to leave me. That though I was wounded, betrayed; aching with loss and confusion, I loved him just as much as he loved me. That I needed him just as badly as he needed me. We could deal with this. We woulddeal with this together.

   But he placed his finger over my mouth before I could respond. “But there is one more thing that you need to know before you make your choice. One thing that could make you hate me forever.”

   “That’s not possible,” I murmured around his finger. “I don’t hate you now.”

   “You don’t know the worst thing I’ve done. There is something else I’ve kept from you.”

   I swallowed heavily, fear trickled through me. I was certain that no matter what he said, it couldn’t possibly get any worse than everything that had been revealed tonight. Whatever else he had kept from me, I could take it, and we would be fine. But the fear in his eyes, the beaten look in his gaze caused doubts to filter through me. What could he possibly have done to make him look like a kicked puppy so badly?

   “Ok, tell me,” I said softly.

   I held my breath, my hands fisted, as I braced myself for whatever it was he was about to say. “No matter what happens, no matter whatyou decide about me, you ca

   My breath exploded out of me, my hands relaxed as my body was rocked with shock. I had not been expecting that, not at all. I had expected that he had lied and there were other women, or even other aliens, or something, anythingother than that. “Why not?”

   His gaze searched mine; his hands were gentle yet strong against my face. “You are not completely human Bethany, not anymore.”

   I had not been expecting thateither.

C HAPTER 16

   I froze, trapped like a deer in the headlights as I searched his face, looking for some sign he was kidding. Some sign that he was going to yell “Gotcha!” at any moment. Some sign that this was some sick, twisted joke that only an alien, with their quirky sense of humor would understand. Some sign that he was lying to me.

   But there was none.

   He simply stared at me, his eyes willing me to understand. Willing me to believe what he was saying. I frowned at him, confused, lost, baffled by his words. Then, slowly, a dawning sense of horror began to encase me. All of the changes I had sensed growing within me. The speed, the growing grace as my inherent clumsiness seemed to fade. The cravings .Meat, especially raw meat he had said. A gurgle, half sob and half hysterical laughter, surged up my throat.

   It wasn’t what those creatures had done to me I realized. It wasn’t some strange alien germ that had infiltrated my wounds and begun to infect me. Their attacks on me aren’t what had brought forth the strange changes I felt coalescing through my body. It was him. “What did you doto me!?” I demanded.

   He remained immobile, his eyes didn’t even flicker. “The ships started leaking gas into the air supply two weeks prior to The Freezing,” he explained instead of telling me what he had done. “The gas was odorless, tasteless, and undetectable to the human race. It’s not something your kind had ever heard of before, and to breathe it caused no ill harm unless it was coupled with a high frequency sound that most people ca

   “But cryogenics doesn’t work,” I mumbled.

   “Yet, it doesn’t work yet. And only because humans haven’t mastered it yet.”

   I was in a state of shock, I felt as if I were trying to wade through a swamp but becoming constantly mired in place by mud. “Your kind has though.”

   “Yes. They also designed it so that it would not affect people with type O blood.”

  My eyes snapped back to his, I struggled to shake the strange stupor clinging to me. “Why?” I breathed.