Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17
Read Switched: Brides of the Kindred 17 Online
Authors: Evangeline Anderson
Tags: #scifi, #alien, #scifi erotica, #scifi romance, #scifi erotic romance, #evangeline anderson, #fated mate, #kindred, #brides of the kindred
Brides of the Kindred
Book 17: Switched
Evangeline Anderson
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Evangeline Anderson Books
Brides of the Kindred
Book 17: Switched
Copyright © 2016 by Evangeline Anderson
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
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Thank you for respecting the author's work.
Author’s Note #1:
To be
the first to hear about new e-book releases, join my new
newsletter
. I promise no
spam—you will only get email from me when a new book is out for
either preorder or for sale.
Author’s Note #2:
I'm
happy to let you all know that I am going into Audio in a big way.
I put both Claimed , Hunted, and
Sought
into the audio
format and I had such a great response from readers and listeners,
that I have decided to put ALL the Kindred books, plus all my Born
to Darkness books into audio as well as my standalone book,
Purity
. If you have a long commute or you'd like something new
to listen at the gym or just around the house, give it a
try.
Author's Note 3#
I'm
trying to find out which of my readers are also listeners. For a
chance to win a free audio book, sign up for my new
Audio book newsletter.
It's the same as my e-book newsletter, but only for audio. And
as always, I promise not to bother you unless I have a new audio
book out or I'm running a contest with an audio book as one of the
prizes.
Hugs and Happy Reading and Listening to you
all,
Evangeline Anderson March, 2016
Other Books by Evangeline Anderson
Brides of the Kindred
books
(in order)
Claimed
(also available in print and as an audio book)
Hunted
(also available in print and as an audio book)
Sought
(also available in audio)
Found
(coming soon in audio)
Devoured
(also available in print)
Switched (coming early 2016)
Mastering the Mistress (A Brides of the
Kindred novella)
Stand Alone Novels
Purity
(also available in audio)
The
Academy
(YA novel)
Born to Darkness
Paranormal series
Crimson
Debt
(coming soon in audio)
Scarlet
Heat
(coming soon in audio)
Ruby
Shadows
(coming soon in audio)
Cardinal Sins (coming soon)
***
The above books are just a
small sample of Evangeline's work. For a complete list of books
from all publishers, please visit her
website
***
Chapter One
On Friday morning,
Frankie woke up in her own body.
Not that waking up
in her own body was unusual—not at that point, anyway. And Frankie
had no idea of knowing how unusual it would soon become. All she
knew was that she’d hit snooze one too many times and now she was
running late.
“
Crap,” she muttered as she glanced at the clock on her phone
and bolted out of bed. She barely had time for a shower—a super
fast one—if she hurried. There was going to be no time to wash her
hair though, which meant she was going to be fighting frizz all
day, especially if the humidity was high. And since she lived in
Tampa, Florida, the humidity was
always
high.
As the hot water
poured over her body, she tried to wake up. Why had she kept
hitting the snooze button anyway? Oh right—it was the dream she’d
been having. It was almost like a story and she’d wanted to see how
it ended.
As she washed, she
tried to remember the details. Recalling the dream was surprisingly
easy. Most dreams started to fade the moment you woke up but this
one was staying with her.
It
was about a guy—a really tall guy,
she thought, splashing the hot water in her face
and reaching for her favorite pink grapefruit shower
gel.
Normally the only
man she dreamed about was her ex, Carlos, and those were mostly
nightmares. Nightmares that she was still stuck in her dead-end
marriage with no job, no prospects, and nothing but a life of
endless childbearing and housework ahead of her. Not to mention a
husband who didn’t appreciate her or think she was capable of
anything else. But the man in her dreams had looked nothing like
Carlos.
He
had short blond hair—or at least, it was really light brown. And
those
eyes
…
She shivered. His eyes
had been a pale shade of gray Frankie had never seen before. So
pale they were almost white but with a solid black ring around the
irises that made him look scarily intense. In fact,
everything
about him was intense. In
her dream, he’d been barking orders at a bunch of other guys. All
were tall and muscular, dressed in some kind of uniform and they
shouted back in unison when he asked them questions.
Weird,
Frankie thought.
Like some kind of Army recruitment film or something.
Except the uniform her
dream guy was wearing wasn’t like anything from any branch of the
Armed Forces that Frankie had ever seen. It was scarlet with
accents of gold and the trousers that went with it were black with
a scarlet stripe running up the sides. Tall black boots completed
the outfit.
He’d been barking
orders and marching up and down the line of warriors or soldiers or
whatever they were and then the tall, blond man with the scary gray
eyes had turned his head and…
“
And he looked
right at me,”
Frankie whispered to herself. She shook her head, trying to
get rid of the image. “Don’t be crazy, Frankie—it was only a
dream,” she muttered to herself, getting out of the shower. She
wrapped a towel around herself and wiped steam off the mirror. A
woman with wild black hair and big brown eyes looked back at her as
she reached for her toothbrush.
Frankie—who had been
christened Francesca Benita Hermosa Rodriguez— came from a big,
traditional Latin family. She was the fourth of seven children,
three girls and four boys. Her two sisters, Alma and Carita, were
married and had six kids between them. Her two older brothers,
Julio and Dominic were also married and of the two younger ones,
Tomas was engaged and Aurelio was dating a girl seriously—the
family expected him to propose to at any time.
It was enough to
make you sick.
Not that Frankie had
anything against marriage and family and commitment—she had tried
it herself, after all. Her whole family had expected her to marry
her high school sweetheart and so that was what she had done. And
then she’d spent a miserable five years cooking and cleaning up
after him, putting up with him the nights he came home drunk and
abusive, and trying to be happy because this was the way life was
supposed to be, right?
“
Wrong,” Frankie said aloud to herself. “That wasn’t me—wasn’t
the life I wanted.”
She often thought that if it wasn’t for her best friend, Lacy,
she never would have made it. Lacy was the only one who saw how
miserable she was—and she’d been the one to encourage Frankie to
take some college classes and had provided her with a steady supply
of birth control for which Frankie was eternally grateful. Not that
she didn’t want kids eventually, but it had only taken her a couple
of months with Carlos to know she didn’t want
his
kids and having children would have compounded
an already bad situation.
Despite being
miserable, Frankie had stuck out the marriage for five long years
because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents. Finally, though,
she couldn’t take it anymore. When she told her family that she was
filing for divorce, her extremely Catholic grandmother had fainted
dramatically and her father had disowned her.
That had been
hard—maybe the hardest thing she’d ever gone through. But Frankie
was strong—a lot stronger than she’d given herself credit for. She
made a new life for herself, going to college full time to get a
degree in Women’s Studies. Eventually she hoped to get a PhD and
teach but for now, she was just trying to get her Masters Degree
without taking on too many student loans.
Frankie finished brushing her teeth and rinsed, taking a final
look at herself in the mirror. Whoever had lived in this apartment
before her must have been tall—she had to stand on her tiptoes to
see more than just her face. Of course, they wouldn’t have to
be
very
tall to be taller than
her.
She was a stubby
five foot four with what her friend Lacy charitably called, “a
juicy caboose.” To put it bluntly—she had a big butt. Frankie often
thought she looked completely unremarkable from the waist up—she
had B-cup breasts that were nicely shaped and perky enough. But
from the waist down, her child-bearing hips and big behind got lots
of looks and some outright stares if she didn’t dress to minimize
her flaws.
“
Not that it’s a flaw,” Frankie told herself sternly, as she
dried the body part in question and pulled on some clothes. “It’s
part of me—part of my heritage.” Still, she couldn’t help feeling
self-conscious about her ass whenever she went out wearing anything
form fitting like yoga pants.
She finished
toweling off and pulled on a plain khaki skirt and a blue blouse.
The outfit would do for her morning class, as well as her shift at
work later on. A glance at the clock told her she was still running
late. She knew that across town, her sisters were already up,
seeing their older kids off to school. And her brothers were
probably at work. None of them understood her need to go back to
school and change her whole existence. Her mother was still hoping
she might get back together with Carlos—Frankie knew because her
mom had been inviting her ex to family suppers on the weekends.
“
Mira,
Mom,
it’s not going to happen,” she’d told her mother. “Carlos and I are
never getting back together so please just stop inviting
him.”