Read Temporal Shift (Entangled Select Otherworld) for Free Online Page B

hoped his people had escaped, but he’d heard nothing since the attack on the Church’s headquarters.
    She smiled, scraped out the bowl, licked the spoon, and put it down almost reluctantly. “Then we have much in common.”
    He stared across at her, not trying to hide his skepticism. She was tiny and so earnest, brimming with life and, if he was honest, so good. It shone from her. Whatever they were up to, whatever lies she and this Thorne guy were embroiled in, he was sure she wasn’t aware of them. Just an unwitting dupe with a faith in people he couldn’t remember ever having, even before his parents were slaughtered in front of his eyes. Beside her, he felt old, and jaded, and very tired of everything. He wanted it to be over.
    No, as far as he could see, they had absolutely nothing in common. “We have?” he asked, the disbelief clear in his voice.
    She nodded, her wide mouth curved into a smile. She had a nice mouth, the upper lip arched like a bow, the lower full. He had an image of that mouth wrapped around his dick—he wondered whether she had ever seen that in a vision.
    “I’m a rebel leader as well,” she said.
    His own lips twitched. “You are.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “And how did that happen?” After joining the rebel forces when he was fourteen, he’d dragged himself up by sheer bloody nature, by demonstrating his dedication, and by fighting anyone who stood in his way. He’d taken control when he was twenty-one and no one had questioned that since. He couldn’t imagine this girl fighting anyone.
    “It’s sort of hereditary, but there’s more than that. I’m a time-mancer.”
    She’d mentioned the word before. “And that means…?”
    She rested her hands on her lap. “It’s thought long ago that the Old Ones—”
    “Old Ones?”
    “It’s what we call the ones who were here when we arrived. Anyway, it’s believed that the Old Ones were time-mancers and could manipulate time. They could travel to other times as we travel to other places. But something went wrong. They almost destroyed the world—”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know. In fact, we know very little—only what we’ve been able to work out for ourselves. And what Thorne has been able to learn as he grows in strength and communicates with the Old Ones.”
    “He talks to them?”
    “No, not really. He sometimes hears their thoughts. But the first protocol states that time must not be interfered with. It’s their most important rule. And this whole universe is riddled with wormholes. So we guessed that, long ago, they traveled along them. But something went wrong, some paradox of time, and it was banned.”
    The thing was, she sounded as though she believed what she was saying, crazy as it was. “So how does that affect you? You’re not ‘Other’.” At least he thought she wasn’t though she had that violet hue to her eyes and her skin…
    “By the time the Espera arrived here, the numbers of the Old Ones were severely depleted. They took most of the males from the colony ship and changed them. Only the weak were left. They promised us help and them immortality. Thorne had no choice.”
    “Of course he didn’t.”
    “Shut up. Thorne is the best person ever.”
    So why didn’t she shag Thorne? Bloody paragon. “Could you get to the point of this long and rambling story?”
    She glared at him and then pursed her lips. “It’s not a story, it’s the truth. For many years, the newly changed still lived among us. They mated with the women—they had to or we would have died out—and besides, most of them had families. Thorne had a wife and they went on to have many children. I think he’s my great, great…something or other.”
    “And the children were immortal?”
    “No, but they were long-lived. We live around a thousand years. And they passed on other things—the eyes…” She blinked at him from those huge purple eyes like his mother’s pansies. “We’re not telepathic—”
    “Thank