Free Night Play.doc by Unknown Page B

Dad's tomorrow and have him look him
    over."
    "You going to keep him, then?" Tabitha asked.
    Bride lifted his head so that she could look him directly in the eyes. "What
    do
    you think, Mr. Wolf? You want to stay with me for a little while?"
    She had no idea. If he had his way, he would be a permanent addition.
    Chapter 3
    + ^ ;
    Vane stood outside the bathroom in human form while Bride took a shower.
    Tabitha
    had left a short time ago after threatening one last time to hunt down Bride's
    ex and hurt him.
    If Vane ever laid hands on the bastard, there wouldn't be enough left of him
    for
    Tabitha to bother with. Not that he should feel that way. After all, if Bride
    hadn't been on the outs with the man, she wouldn't have been his tonight.
    And he might never have known that she was his mate.
    But that was human rationale and human rationale had no place in his
    animal
    world.
    "I'm not human," he breathed, feeling the profound pain of that statement. At
    least he wasn't fully human.
    No one, not even him, was really sure what he was.
    He was a cursed hybrid who belonged to no real group. Half Arcadian, half
    Katagaria, Vane had been born in the native form of a wolf pup only to find
    his
    native form changed to human once he hit puberty.
    He flinched as he recalled the day he'd changed over. The terror of it. The
    fear. The confusion. All of his life, he'd existed solely as a wolf, and then
    for a few months, against his will, he'd been locked inside a human body and
    unable to transform back into a wolf at all. His new body had been alien to
    him.
    He hadn't known how to eat as a man, how to survive or to cope. Even
    walking had
    been difficult at first. He'd been assailed by human emotions and feelings.
    Human sensations.
    Worst of all, he'd been weak. Helpless.
    Nothing had ever been more degrading to him than to realize he couldn't
    fight
    back. That he was completely reliant on his brother for survival.
    Every night he'd prayed that come the morning he would be an animal again,
    and
    every morning he awoke to the horror that he was a man.
    If not for Fang and Anya, his pack would have killed him. Luckily, his
    brother
    and sister had shielded him from the others and had helped him hide the fact
    that he was no longer a pure wolf.
    For centuries he had hidden from everyone, even himself, the fact that after
    his
    puberty he held a human heart.
    How could such a change even be possible?
    Yet here he was: a living contradiction. A living impossibility.
    And he was mated to a regular human.
    Vane clenched his marked hand. He couldn't hide the truth of his physical
    being
    from the Fates. They had known what he was and they had sought to bind
    him to a
    human woman.
    Why?
    Life as a hybrid was hard enough. The last thing he wanted was to father
    children who would be even more outcast than he was.
    Would they be human or Were-Hunter?
    And all those arguments telling him why he couldn't mate with Bride didn't
    amount to anything when the human heart inside him craved the woman on
    the other
    side of that closed door.
    Even now he could imagine what she must look like in there, naked. The
    water
    sliding against her pale skin as her hands slid over her body, soaping her
    thighs, her
    The wolf in him demanded he kick it down and claim her.
    The man in him just wanted to hold her close and protect her.
    He'd never been so torn. So confused.
    So damned horny!
    Vane trailed his hand over the cool silk pajamas that Bride had pulled out of
    one of her boxes and left on the chair beside the door. They held her unique
    scent of strawberry potpourri and woman. He lifted the top and inhaled the
    richness of her as his groin burned and strained.
    It was all he could do to not go to her in the shower and take her again. But
    it
    wouldn't accomplish anything other than to terrify her.
    She was human and knew nothing of his world. She knew nothing of him.
    A wave of hopelessness consumed him. He didn't know how to court a
    human female.
    Not