Read Online Mine to Possess by Nalini Singh - Free Book Online

must’ve cut you up that your girl only likes other girls.”
    â€œWhat?” Nate stumbled, threatening to take them all down.
    Clay bared his teeth. “She likes men ”—another surge of fury—“just not pretty boys like you.”
    Dorian began to scowl. “Smart-ass. Wait till the next time I see her.”
    Clay was about to reply when the hard alcohol caught up with him, his changeling body deciding it would be better if he slept off the drunk.

    Max arrived with a crime scene team half an hour after Talin’s call. By then, she’d taken the chance to wash away her tears, thinking clearly enough to buy bottles of cold water from the vending machine on the ground floor instead of going in and using her own sink.
    â€œDid you touch anything?” Max asked after looking over the scene, his uptilted eyes and olive skin giving his face an exotic cast.
    Clay’s skin was darker than Max’s, she found herself thinking even as she shook her head. “Nothing but the door and the bit of carpet around it.”
    â€œGood.” He nodded at the crime scene techs.
    Talin watched dispassionately as the white-garbed men and women walked in, their shoes enclosed in protective booties, their hair and clothing covered to minimize contamination. “They won’t get anything. It might look like a teenage prank, but this was a slick operation.”
    Max walked her a small distance from the open doorway of her apartment. “You’re probably right. But this is bad, Talin. One of my men is changeling—his nose tells him that that’s definitely human blood.”
    She felt her fingers curl into claws. “It’ll be from one of the children.” The monsters were playing mind games, sickening, brutal, and without conscience.
    Max didn’t bother to dispute her claim. “What bothers me is that they know how hard you’ve been pushing the investigation.”
    â€œEnforcement is a sieve,” she muttered.
    â€œYeah.” An uncharacteristically bitter look clouded his expression. “If I hadn’t been born with airtight mental shields, I’d probably have made captain by now.”
    She rubbed a hand over her face. “Psy spies can’t read you?”
    â€œNo. But that doesn’t make any difference here.” He put his hands on his hips, below his trench coat. “Council plants are simply the most obvious. We’ve got others who think nothing of selling information for profit.”
    Dropping her hand, she shook her head. “Why stay in such a corrupt system?”
    â€œBecause we do more good than harm,” he said, his dedication clear. “The Psy don’t interfere in most investigations, especially not when it involves the other races.”
    â€œMaybe not,” she agreed, “but they still treat humans as a lesser species. It makes me wonder why they let us live at all.”
    â€œEvery society needs its worker bees.” The dry sarcasm in Max’s words didn’t negate their truth. “We do all the jobs they can’t be bothered with. But we can’t blame the Psy for the lack of support in this case. This is because of plain old human prejudice. People see the victims, their lifestyles, and make judgments.”
    â€œWhat use is Enforcement if it ignores those who need it most?” She knew Max didn’t deserve her anger, but God, she was mad. “These are children , most of whom have no one else to speak for them.”
    Max’s jaw locked tight. “I prefer the changeling way sometimes,” he said, to her surprise. “You hit one of them, you get executed. End of story.”
    Her stomach twisted. “Who does the executions?”
    â€œThe high-level guys in the predatory packs.”
    High-level guys like Clay. Talin wasn’t going to lie to herself—she wanted to kill these bastards, too—but the reminder of the brutality implicit in