Read Online Wild Invitation by Nalini Singh - Free Book Online Page B

looked up. “Did you want the terminal? I’ll be finished in approximately one minute.” She glanced over Tamsyn’s shoulder. “There are several others that appear free.”
    “No, I don’t want the terminal.” Tamsyn looked at her, at her human-seeming eyes, her clear skin, and her shining fall of jet-black hair. There was nothing overt that marked this woman as different, as Psy, part of a race that had eliminated its emotions. “I wanted to ask you a question.”
    The stranger considered her request for a second. “Why are you asking me?”
    “I need to ask a Psy and you’re the only one here.”
    “I can’t fault your logic.” She tapped her finger on the screen to complete her purchase, then turned to give Tamsyn her full attention. “Your question?”
    “Do you ever cry?” It seemed imperative that she know the answer.
    The Psy didn’t react to the oddness of the question—if she had, she wouldn’t be Psy. “Even those of my race have little to no control over certain physiological reactions. If, for example, a foreign object were to accidentally enter or touch my eye, that eye would certainly produce fluid in an attempt to excrete the intruding matter.”
    Tamsyn frowned at the clinical description of such a wrenching, heartbreaking act. “No. I don’t mean that. I mean, do you
cry
?”
    The stranger looked at her for several long moments. “As you chose to approach a Psy, you must know the answer to that question. However, I’ll respond as I see no possible negative repercussions from doing so.” She picked up a slim electronic pad from the desk near the terminal. “No. We do not cry out of fear or sadness, anger or rage. We do not feel; therefore, we do not shed tears.”
    “Don’t you miss it?” Tamsyn asked.
    The Psy ran her gaze over Tamsyn’s face. “Judging from the redness of the blood vessels in your eyes and your stuffynose, I believe I can say with certainty that crying is in no way a positive experience. Why would I miss it?”
    “No. I meant…don’t you miss feeling?” Love and hope, joy and need.
    “I can’t miss what I’ve never experienced,” the other woman said, as if that should have been self-evident. “My race chose to eradicate emotion for a reason. Those with emotions are weak. We’re not. It’s why the Psy rule this planet.” With that, she gave a curt nod and left.
    Tamsyn stared after her, the words circling around and around in her head.
Those with emotions are weak.
She saw the reflection of her drawn, listless face in the terminal and found herself agreeing. For a frozen heartbeat, she wished she were like that Psy woman. Cool, controlled, focused. No attachments, no hopes, no dreams.
    And no Nathan.
    Her eyes, which had started to close, snapped open. “No,” she whispered fiercely. She would not, could not, live in a world where Nathan didn’t exist. He might make her cry as much as he made her laugh, but she couldn’t imagine waking up one day and having emptiness where he was.
    She didn’t know much about how and why the Psy race had stopped feeling, but it had to have been a terrible thing that had driven them down this path. Her healer’s soul ached for them—for the love they would never touch, but she knew she couldn’t help them. Not when they barricaded themselves in their high-rises, their minds shut to the possibility of hope.
    It’s why the Psy rule this planet.
    Tamsyn shook her head. The stranger was wrong. The Psy might rule, but their world was limited to towers of steel and glass. They knew nothing of the joy of running under a full moon and listening to the music played by the wind, of feeling the sensation of a packmate’s fur against human skin, of the sheer life that existed in the forests that were
her
world.
    But the woman had been right about one thing—how could you miss something you had never experienced? Nathan had never been hers. Their beasts might cry out for each other, but if the human half of Nathan