Time to Heal Read online

  Time To Heal

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  Time To Heal, 1st Edition,

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2019 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  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 share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  Time to Heal

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Leave a Review

  Pairing with the Protector

  Chapter 1

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  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  Time to Heal

  A Single Mother, Desperately trying to get back her baby

  A Warrior who swears to help her or die trying

  Can Skahr and Emmeline steal back her baby before it's too late?

  And will they have...Time to Heal?

  Emmeline is a young, single mother all alone in the world. After being attacked, she was cast out by her family and is having a hard time making her way in the world, Desperate to assure her son's future, she gave him up to her mother to raise—only to have him stolen away from her completely. Now he is sick and she must find a way to heal him—but how?

  Enter Skahr, a Kindred warrior from another world who needs some healing of his own. A prophesy has foretold that Emmeline is the one he seeks but he must promise to help her find and heal her baby first. As the two go on a quest together, Emmeline finds herself drawn to the big, scarred warrior with his surprising strength and quiet ways. But will the two of them get back her baby before it's too late?

  And will they have...Time to Heal?

  Author's Warning: Though I have tried to handle it delicately, readers should know that my heroine, Emmeline, is the victim of sexual assault. If you have also been a victim, please read with care. I hope, as I always do when I write this kind of book, to provide a narrative which will bring hope and healing to the reader, not a re-occurrence of trauma.

  Foreword

  Dear Readers:

  1. Though Time to Heal can be read as a stand alone novel, you will probably enjoy it more if you read its predecessor, Trapped in Time first.

  2. Though I have tried to handle it delicately, readers should know that my heroine, Emmeline, is the victim of sexual assault. If you have also been a victim, please read with care. I hope, as I always do when I write this kind of book, to provide a narrative which will bring hope and healing to the reader, not a re-occurrence of trauma.

  3. After her assault, Emmeline chooses to keep her baby despite the fact that he is the product of a rape. This is not any kind of political commentary—it is simply the heroine my muse supplied when I was writing this book. Though I myself have very strong political views, I try to keep them out of my books.

  Hugs and Happy Reading to you all,

  Evangeline

  One

  “So how’s it going? See anything interesting lately?”

  Caroline Vii looked up from her work, startled by the voice in her ear. It was Sophie, one of her new friends aboard the Kindred Mother Ship. The other girl gave her an apologetic smile.

  “Oh sorry—didn’t mean to startle you. I was just curious about what other universes you’d been watching lately.”

  It might have seemed a strange question to anyone else, but Caroline was a scientist who had pioneered the study of the other layers of reality in what was known as the Multiverse. The idea that there might be more than one universe—that there might, in fact, be hundreds or thousands or even millions of universes and realities layered on top of each other like the rings of an onion—had long been bandied around the scientific community.

  But only Caroline had found a way to actually observe them.

  Using a machine she had invented called PORTAL—short for Positronic Orbital Rotating Time/Space Allocating Locator—Caroline was actually able to peel back the layers of reality and observe other universes. Some people were also able to travel between them, using the window that PORTAL created. Caroline had found that out the hard way, when she was sucked into another universe and forced to live the life of her own double in what was essentially Victorian England.

  That had been a wild adventure and Caroline had barely escaped with her life several times over. She’d been drugged, shot at, attacked, and made to wear hoop-skirts and a corset laced so tightly she could barely breathe. But since she had also gotten her mate and husband, Richard, out of the deal, she considered the whole thing a success—not that she ever wanted to repeat it.

  Now there was a clearly marked black line on the floor of her lab, exactly three feet from the large brass frame of PORTAL’s window generation unit. This was considered the minimum safe distance and whenever a different universe was showing in the large, rectangular frame, Caroline made certain that she and anyone else who came into her lab observed it carefully from behind the safety line.

  She didn’t want anyone else getting sucked into another world and forced to live the life of their Multiverse doppelganger as she had. It was too damn dangerous and crazy, trying to pass yourself off as a whole other person who might look exactly like you, but had a completely different personality and life. Having lived through that herself, Caroline wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Nor did she want to drag anyone from another universe through the PORTAL’s window into her own world…well, with one exception.

  She wished desperately that she could bring Richard’s cousin, Emmeline, through. In fact, that was who she was watching in PORTAL’s window right now.

  “Not really seeing anything new at the moment,” she told Sophie. “Mostly I’ve just been trying to keep an eye on Emmeline—though I don’t know what we could do if I saw something bad happening. Richard can’t go back to his old universe and I don’t think I can either.”

  “Poor thing!” Sophie looked at the large brass frame, which showed a gray,