Eden's Creatures Read Free Page A

nothing.”
    “Battle excites me, Rupa .” She turned and rubbed her backside against him. “I choose you. I wish to mate with you now.”
    He pitched backwards into the wall of the nest. “Whoa, what a minute. Mate?”
    “Yes, mate,” she purred, backing into him once again.
    He gripped her swirling hips to keep them in place. “Wait! I… I don’t even know who you are.” Hell, he didn’t know what she was.
    She stopped abruptly and turned, a question on her face. “Tell me, Rupa . Have you mated before?”
    “What? Yes. Of course,” he scoffed. Twice. Under the school bleachers. With a girl two years older who already had a kid at home. Best six minutes of his life.
    Her eyes blazed with heat. “Good.”
    “Why?”
    “Unless I can convince my people that you are to be my mate, they will kill you.”

CHAPTER 3
The Faedin
    F or the first time, Cal noticed that Stassi’s two canine teeth extended downward into sharp fangs. It did nothing to distract from her beauty, yet he couldn’t mate with anyone on demand. Particularly a girl that claimed she wasn’t even human. Cal had his doubts. The costume was elaborate, he would give her that. And the flying thing was probably just a well-hidden pulley system that lifted her into the air. It had to be something explicable, right? Otherwise he would be forced to acknowledge that the strange girl in front of him was real.
    “Your people?”
    “The Faedin.”
    “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “Unless I mate with you, your people, the Faedin, will kill me?”
    “They will not wish to harm you, but will have no other choice.”
    “Why?”
    “Gai’tan covets you.”
    “Gai’tan?”
    “The serpent. He has searched for a human since the dawn of time. It is the only way he can escape.”
    “A serpent is after me?”
    She sighed heavily as though he were a dimwit. “Yes, and now that you are here within our realm, he will stop at nothing to get to you. In order to prevent that from happening, you will be sacrificed to protect all others.”
    “Unless…?”
    “You mate with me. Is that really so objectionable to you?”
    Cal speared a hand through his hair. “It’s not that simple.”
    In a blur of movement, Stassi leapt at him and took him to the ground with a spine-tingling growl. “Are you rejecting me, son of Adam?”
    “No!” he bellowed into the snarling face hovering inches from his. “I… I don’t even know you.”
    “I do not understand,” she said, digging her talons into his chest. “Any Faedin male would gladly give up their nest for mine.”
    “Of course they would,” he assured her through a hiss of pain. “You’re very beautiful.”
    “But?”
    “But I’m not Faedin and I have to get to know someone first.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s a human thing.”
    She let go of him and stood. “If you want to live, we must.”
    “Can’t you just tell your people that we… er… did it so they won’t kill me?” he suggested hopefully.
    “They will know.”
    “How?”
    “I will get my white wings after it happens,” she told him, her expression turning wistful. “It is all I ever wanted. To get my wings and become one of the warriors.”
    A sudden desire to give her what she wanted flooded through his body. He sat up with a sad smile. “I do want to help you. Really, I do.”
    “Now?”
    He shook his head. “Not yet.”
    “What will change your mind?”
    After a long thoughtful moment, he said, “Tell me more about the Faedin, Stassi. Show me your world.”
    A feral grin lit up her face and she snapped out her wings. A forceful leap took them both up and out of the nest and into the blue sky above the treetops.
    Cal winced in terror as Stassi’s erratic movements almost emptied the contents of his stomach. Taking several calming breaths, he turned his attention to the space around Stassi, searching for wires or a cable, but found no evidence of anything keeping them in the air except her wings.
    “Cal,