Free The Primal Connection by Alexander Dregon Page A

that was part of the reason he and Charlie had had such a long break-in period. Terry tried not to blame Charlie, tried to look on the bright side about how much good they were doing. Terry was even able to rationalize that on some level, their sacrifice was helping two races, and that one day, when both races learned how to coexist and communicate without the need for occupation, the depth of that assistance would be noted and remembered.
    Which was fine and dandy for the future, but it made for a damn poor present. Terry still carried Chandra’s picture in his wallet. Still talked to her, but he’d left things hanging for too long.
    She had called him when he came home from Iraq. They made no commitment when he left, Terry not wanting her to be any more invested in him than she was in case he didn’t make it back. So the fact that she had been dating someone else wasn’t an issue for him.
    What was an issue was that she had dated a couple of guys more for appearance than anything else. Like Terry, she was old school. She decided to wait and did, politely going out on dates occasionally but never looking for anything more serious than company. She hadn’t even expected Terry to be the same way. What she did was her choice. But when Terry got out and went to work at the CIA, she wavered. Her wait, she felt, had been long enough; while Terry, by now well aware of what his life had developed into, did nothing to retrieve what she thought they had. As a result, they had drifted apart quickly.
    Even so, he had remained her friend. Over the five years since Terry got out of the CIA, she had married, had a son and divorced her husband. Unknown to her, when her husband had tried to win her back, failed and still refused to finalize the divorce, Terry had paid him a visit. The late-night kind that leaves scars. Chandra got the paperwork the next day.
    Terry had figured it was the least he could do. Still, he didn’t want Chandra to know he had done it. He simply wanted her to be happy. And last he had heard, she was, having seemingly fallen for a widowed banker that had his own son about the same age as hers. Terry managed to find out through friends back home in San Francisco that it looked like she might make the walk down the aisle once more and this time could be for keeps.
    Terry hoped it was. She deserved the best this world had to offer, and if this guy could give it to her, Terry wished both of them the best. It made him feel good to think of it that way.
    Almost good enough to let him sleep some nights without seeing her face.
    Charlie knew all of this. And he felt guilty about his part in the situation. So much so, he had tried and found a solution of sorts that, while it couldn’t help Terry’s dislike for him being an unseen partner in his sex acts, at least allowed him enough privacy to enjoy sex in the simplest and most primitive form.
    Charlie discovered that he could, with a little concentration and a lot of practice, isolate himself in Terry’s mind. The two of them had worked out the particulars of this the first few times Terry had given in to his urges .
    What was more amazing, though, was the discovery that if their partner of the moment was occupied, Charlie was able to communicate for the first time in years, with one of his kind. Oddly for Charlie, that was more desirable than sex.
    Terry, at first, couldn’t understand. Later as he thought about it, though, it became clear that, much like Terry’s loss of Chandra Miller, Charlie had his needs as well. They were just simpler. He loved sex, but for him, it was fun just to talk to one of his own kind. It was easy for him to pass things off as normal, although the first question was invariably, “Where did you come from?” since they couldn’t detect him until Terry and the host were having sex. Sometimes, he would explain the whole thing, others he would just mark it off as Terry having a poor bioelectric field. Since the fact was that Terry’s