Free Icarus Unbound by Bernadette Gardner

crowd, and Odan clenched his fists as he prepared to leave the garden. "I will inform our liege of this decision."
    He would tell Lara first though, and give her as much time as possible to save herself from dismissal as Jaran's mate.
    He'd left her in her bungalow, shaking with rage and something else she didn't dare admit to herself. After Jaran's unceremonious departure, Lara had been unable to think, unable to even consider returning to work at her lab.
    How dare he practically drag her off the beach insisting he was going to ... claim her and then not follow through?
    Once she'd regained her motor skills, she'd run to the tiny bathroom and splashed ice cold water on her face. Even the temperature shock couldn't calm the heat of her shame at her body's reaction to his touch, to his unfulfilled promise. From 73

    Icarus Unbound
    by Bernadette Gardner
    the moment he'd arrived on the beach, she'd begun trembling inside, anticipating what he might do to her. She wanted to believe it was anger at his cavalier assumption that she would drop everything to accommodate his sexual whims, but the truth was, she'd wanted it. She'd wanted him.
    She'd been aching for him since last night, wishing in the deepest corner of her soul that he would simply fuck her and go. She refused to think about how her nipples had hardened and her thighs had gone damp. She'd been halfway to her bed, prepared to surrender without question when the bastard changed his mind.
    She let out a frustrated scream and slapped her palms against the bathroom countertop. This couldn't go on. She had to end this before Jaran destroyed her completely.
    Still seething, she marched through the bungalow and flung the door open. Two steps outside, she nearly collided with Odan, Namara's biological son. He was one of the few Icarians born to her generation who had been conceived through artificial insemination. Jidar had preferred to avoid the process, believing it would undermine the strong familial core of Icarian traditions. Only a few other families, couples already mated, who could not conceive, had accepted such a radical option. Jidar had agreed to allow his own mate to undergo the human method of scientific procreation only because he had no desire to choose a human mate for himself and dismiss the woman he loved from his bed. Namara had given birth during the same mating cycle in which Lara and Jaran had been born.
    "Odan, what are ... I mean, uh..."
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    Icarus Unbound
    by Bernadette Gardner
    "I'm sorry to intrude, Lara, but I'm glad I caught you before Jaran arrived."
    "Actually, he just left."
    Odan shrugged his wings. "Good, it's better if I speak to you alone first."
    Lara backed up a step. Odan's expression worried her. He looked anxious. Unlike his foster brother, Odan had never been cruel to her. Growing up, she couldn't have said they were friends, but he'd never ridiculed her name, her lineage or anything else about her, so she found it much easier to speak to him than she did Jaran.
    "What's bothering you? You haven't come to lecture me on how I should act toward Jaran, have you? And why didn't you kneel?" Lara clamped a hand over her mouth at her impertinent question. Odan, so far, had been the only Icarian to treat her normally since word of Jaran's choice had gotten around.
    Rather than look embarrassed at his faux pas, Odan smirked. "Must we stand on protocol when no one else is watching?"
    Relief made her limbs weak. "No, thank goodness. Odan, you're the only sane person I've run into today."
    "You might not think that when I tell you what's going on."
    She stared at him. "This is about the mate pairing, isn't it?"
    Odan nodded and proceeded to tell her the consensus that had been reached by the administrative committee. "It all strikes me as nonsense, but as a liaison, I have only one vote. This whole thing is based on fear that ultimately we will 75

    Icarus Unbound
    by Bernadette Gardner
    lose our culture to human influence. That was a fear