His Dark Bond Read Free Page A

stick; find out what you were. Apparently, none of those accomplishments mattered because of one extra chromosome. A chromosome that marked her, clear as day, as belonging to the paranormal camp.
    The problem was, she felt human.
    “There is nothing in the university rules that prevents a paranormal from taking a teaching position.” She felt compelled to point this fact out to the dean. “You hired paranormals prior to my arrival at this university. Nothing in the university’s human-resources manual prevents it.” She’d double-checked, twice, after her unfortunate discovery.
    He looked smug. “You didn’t disclose this information when we hired you.”
    “I didn’t know it,” she snapped. “Believe me, this is as much of a shock to me as it is to you. I didn’t know until I took a DNA test that there was anything unusual about my ancestry. None of this affects my work here, what I’ve accomplished.”
    “Maybe we could work something out,” he offered, and a new smile, one she’d never seen before, creased the corners of his mouth. “If you could bring in some more funding. And if you were interested.”
    God, she needed a shower. Surely, he wasn’t suggesting what she thought he was. While she was no beast, she wasn’t a beauty, either.
    “Like I said, Professor Markoff is eager to work with you.”
    Over her dead body. Markoff had been a mistake, but she’d been lonely. He was interested and was no slouch in the looks department, so she’d accepted his dinner invitation. Unfortunately, Professor Markoff had been under the mistaken impression she would accept a lot more than that. He’d been livid when she’d refused his invite to spend the night. No way she was joining his lab now. He’d have her playing junior assistant forever while he took all the credit for whatever research came out of their happy little merger.
    “I’m not interested in working with Professor Markoff.” She blinked slowly, cautiously, but the tears still stayed put.
    “That’s too bad.” The dean shrugged. “Maybe you should go home, think it over. Consider what your options are.”
    “Have you read my latest paper? I’m the principal investigator, and that’s a peer-reviewed journal our entire field reads.” Most junior faculty would have sold their souls to the damn Fallen for that sort of exposure. She’d worked nonstop for six months putting together that paper. Getting it reviewed and published had been a major coup. She had precisely the chops she needed to make it in this field.
    “The twelve tribes of Israel.” He nodded, but his face didn’t change. His fingers stroked the smooth edge of his desk, tidied an already perfectly aligned pile of papers. “Professor Markoff briefed me.”
    Professor Markoff couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground unless someone else had already written about it, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up.
    “Thirteen,” she said, and she savored the dean’s wary blink. “There are thirteen tribes. One is missing from biblical records, and I’ve found it.”
    “Twelve.” The dean levered himself out of his chair. “Everyone knows that there are twelve. Your hypothesis is an interesting piece of fantasy, but I’d question your research methodology. No one is going to fund that kind of fantasy.”
    “It’s not a fantasy,” she countered. “I can trace the DNA ancestry of that population. The region’s right. There’s a genetic affinity—and there’s the paranormal gene. This tribe carries that gene. This is incontrovertible fact.”
    He blinked slowly. “You can prove this? And you have the funding to do so?”
    “Yes.” Damn it, she could. Prove it. Funding, however, was a little less certain. “I can. I’ll be able to.” If her hypothesis was correct. She squelched the uninvited niggle of doubt. She needed time to finish her experiment. Then, she’d have all the proof her dean required. And the answers she needed about her own unexpected