Prime Selection Read Online Free PDF

this…” he waved an arm at the large room, “…whatever it is.” Wulf’s brother added under his breath, “Too many damn stuffed shirts if you ask me.”
    “No one asked you.” Iolyn cuffed the back of Huw’s head.
    Mel laughed.
    Wulf shifted her to his side and held her there. “Iolyn, have you managed to contact Tarn?”
    Sobering instantly, Iolyn’s lips thinned and his eyes held worry. “No. And no one at either Prime Military Command or the Alliance Military Command can get a response from anyone on the planet. It was as if no one was there. And there is no electromagnetic interference at the moment—I checked. Prime Command has also verified the climactic conditions through the long-range sensors. Something has happened to cut off all communications.”
    It went unsaid, but the only way communications could be cut off was by sabotage.
    Iolyn joined Wulf in snarling, raising the hairs on the back of Mel’s neck and probably scaring every civilian in the room.
    Huw stiffened and looked from Mel to Wulf to Iolyn. “What’s going on? And why am I just hearing about it?”
    “Because you’ve been an irrational idiot lately,” Iolyn said. “And Wulf asked me to check things out and keep it quiet until we figured out what was going on.”
    When Huw bunched his fists and growled, Mel rushed to stop the escalating animosity among the brothers. “Behave. All of you.”
    However, Iolyn was correct—Huw had been a proverbial ostrich since Mel and Nadia’s kidnapping. And if the truth were told, he’d had his head buried in the sand since he’d first met her attractive friend. But the Caradoc ballroom was no place for a fistfight.
    Mel turned to look Huw in the eyes. “We haven’t heard from Nadia or Aeron since the Gold team was dropped off.”
    Huw’s emotional response was immediate and strong. His anger, his fears buffeted her. She wondered if he even acknowledged the fears were for Nadia and her safety and not the team as a whole. She imagined not … Huw was in extreme denial concerning what, Mel suspected, was a serious attraction between him and Nadia.
    “Balcon’s balls! I knew we should have gone with them.” Huw paced around her and his brothers. The partygoers around them cleared even more space between them and the obviously on-the-edge-of-control man. Finally, he stopped in front of Wulf and snarled.
    “So? Why are we standing here in our fancy dress and not on our way to see what’s going on?” Huw’s hands were fisted at his sides.
    “Because,” Wulf said, “we just realized something really was wrong. Melina and I had already decided to ask Father to postpone the next two days of celebrations and leave for Tarn tonight. So, calm down, little brother, before I put your ass on the floor.”
    Wulf turned to Iolyn. “Ask the Alliance Military to send a drone from space dock to buzz Tarn. I want video intel of what is happening on the planet before we get there.
    Contact Nowicki and the other Gold captains and have them cancel all leave for the crew members who did not go to Tarn. Tell them to prepare for departure. We’ll leave for the space dock as soon as Mel and I let Father and Mother know what is happening.”
    The Caradoc brothers bristled with the early stages of batel rabia , Prime battle rage.
    The energy they threw off affected all the males in the room. Their strong emotions had every Prime male in the ballroom rumbling in an instinctive need to join the battle. The low-level noise had everyone who wasn’t a Prime male looking around in fear.
    Mel’s gut clenched, and her heart rate elevated as the Caradoc males’
    subvocalization stimulated her fight-or-flight response. Wulf’s store of battle-ready energy now zipped from him to her and back, making her itchy and ready to kill someone—preferably the overreacting males in front of her. Instead, she used the excess energy to put some threat in her voice. “Don’t go into full-blown rage in this ballroom