Time After Time (Cora's Bond) Read Free

know is what I was told to do.”
    “It is not your fault,” Dorian said, his voice dry and mechanical, as if he were reading a script. “You did nothing wrong. You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
    She lifted her head and nodded vigorously, her eyes instantly dry. “Yes, sir. You’re right, sir.”
    “I always am,” Dorian said, and the sarcasm in his voice appeared to be entirely lost on her. “Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. And come in refreshed. No one will blame you, and you must not blame yourself.”
    “Thank you, sir,” she said almost brightly. She stood and nodded to both of us before hurrying out of the room.

Chapter Two
    I hugged myself hard as Dorian dismissed the shifter guards. I couldn’t help the instinctive revulsion I felt whenever Dorian used his powers on someone. It was impossible not to become all too aware of the bond that was between us—and how it meant that my mind, also, would never be free.
    “You should hire yourself out as the world’s most effective therapist,” I said, making a weak joke to cover my uneasiness.
    He turned toward me, and in his eyes, I felt like I could see every year of his age. “I am so tired of fighting, Cora. So. Damned. Tired.”
    I reached out and caught one of his hands between both of mine. “I know. Even though I can’t really imagine, I know.” I could feel it in him, through the bond that joined us.
    He closed his eyes, and for just a moment, the completely perfect skin of his forehead creased. “I wonder why I fight at all sometimes. It seems like everything we do only makes matters worse.”
    I lifted a shoulder. “You’re the one trying to convince me of the importance of your cause. The future of humanity and all that. And I may not be entirely human anymore, but I actually do still care whether all humans are turned into nothing more than vampire cattle.”
    He opened his eyes and took a deep breath, and his face went perfectly, impossibly smooth. “We could not have won without this research. You realize that, right?”
    I nodded. “Since the Adelphoi don’t feed whenever they feel like it, only when they must, they wouldn’t be able to find cognates often enough to keep from dying out. The test narrows the chance of finding a cognate with a feeding from one in thousands to one in ten or so. Yeah. I got it. It’s been just about drilled into my head.”
    “But developing this research also has its risks. Imagine, for a moment, that any agnate had the ability to pluck ten people out of a crowd of thousands, feed from those ten, and find a cognate. And that he might not be content to do it once but two, three, perhaps a dozen times.”
    “Oh,” I said, and his hand in mine suddenly felt colder.
    “Yes, ‘oh,’” he agreed. “I was hoping we’d have time to at least convince agnates that multiple cognates is an infraction deserving of death rather than simply being in bad taste. We’ll deplete the genetic supply of those able to become cognates too quickly otherwise, never mind the other consequences.” He gave me a kind of lopsided, humorless smile. “Perhaps introduce to our people the idea of birth control, once they begin to adjust to the idea that there is no scarcity any longer.”
    The other consequences. I could imagine all too well what they would be. Once the vampiric agnates could find mates quickly, they multiply quickly, becoming not ten per a million as they were now but perhaps one hundred per million, one thousand per million, even. Each demanding more blood, more cognates to fulfill their need and in turn giving birth to even more....
    The fight between the Adelphoi and the Kyrioi had been a battle waged largely through the breeding of armies. And if it continued, it would mean the end of everything—not now, maybe not even in ten years, but in my very long lifetime, human society as I knew it would be destroyed.
    Unless we kept the research from being used by the Kyrioi.
    “How can we stop them?”