Protector: The Elect, Book 1 Read Online Free

feel his desire, his hunger. She’d had uncanny intuition as a child. She knew what people felt, what they thought. Their darkest desires. She could communicate telepathically with her brother, could influence people, plant suggestions in their thoughts without their knowledge. She’d almost used that talent when Brax snuck into her office. It had saved her more than once as a child, but she couldn’t say why she held back now.
    Her gift, her curse, had made life hell when she was a child tossed into the foster care system. She didn’t want to know if the new father she’d been stuck with had lascivious thoughts about young girls. Or boys. She didn’t want to know she’d only been brought into a house because of the money the state paid. She was different. She knew it, and inevitably, they knew it. She’d been fighting that difference for years. Repressing it.  
    She wasn’t stupid. She’d studied schizophrenia and paranoia. For years she’d thought she really was crazy, despite seeing the difference in clinical descriptions and what she knew was her reality.  
    Eventually she’d learned to control the telepathy. It was all about emotion. If she repressed her feelings, she could keep it under control. She didn’t have to feel other people’s thoughts. Didn’t have to feel what they did. But now, the ability to do so was loose. After all the effort, all the work to suppress it. It pissed her the hell off.  
    She snatched her shirt up from the floor and pulled it on, glaring back at him when he snarled at her. What the hell?  
    “I’m going home. I know what you are. I have no evidence. And even if I did, I wouldn’t expose you.” She gave him a tight, angry smile. “See? No worries.”  
    His eyes narrowed on her, and she felt his anger and refusal before he spoke. Damn it, she didn’t want this. She didn’t want to know what people were thinking. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to be human . And she wasn’t. Not by a long shot.  
    “You aren’t going anywhere, Esme. You know it isn’t safe.”  
    She sighed, the fury deflating out of her like a stuck balloon. She’d known he’d say that. Just as she knew he wouldn’t let up until he had her in his bed.  
    “Would that be so bad?” he asked softly.  
    “I didn’t give you permission to snoop in my head,” she snapped.  
    He gave her a wolfish grin. “You’re projecting your thoughts so I don’t have to snoop. Tell me, sweetheart, you’re a geneticist—have you ever tested your own DNA?”  
    She froze. He knew. He knew she was different. He knew she wasn’t human anymore than she suspected he was. It infuriated her.  
    So where the fuck had they been? While she’d gone through the childhood from hell, alone and lonely, abandoned by her own parents? Her own people? Watching her baby brother suffer alongside her and then being separated until they were adults?
      She lifted her chin and faced him. Damned if she’d show him how much that hurt. The solitary life she’d been forced into.  
    “What do you call yourselves then? How many of you are there?”  
    Was her mother among them? They’d been taken from her so long ago. Later, Esme had discovered she’d been hospitalized for a mental disorder. She’d claimed to hear voices. But Esme knew, while the voices may have unhinged her fragile mother, they were real. On her release, she’d disappeared.  
    “We’re the Elect. There are about two thousand now that we know of, most here in the Tampa area. We’ve made it our home base.”  
    Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. She’d known, of course. Eventually Homo sapiens would evolve, a barrier would be jumped. She’d known she couldn’t be the only one. She’d also known she couldn’t ever let anyone know what she was. She had no intention spending her life as a rat in some privately-funded, top-secret lab.  
    Why hadn’t she heard? It was a small community she was a part of. And shit,