Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I know some of what he is saying is for Wrath’s benefit, but much of it is the same as the things he has previously said to me. Shan is not pretending to own me. He believes I am his to his very core.
“Understand?”
“Yes,” I whimper.
“Good.” He leaves his fingers inside me, keeps me over his knee, and the journey continues.
Shan
Her hot little holes feel great around my fingers. I’m glad to have stopped her tirade, and frankly, she deserves a little of this humiliation. She has to learn to guard her thoughts and words. Sooner or later she was going to say something that would anger Wrath, but more likely, she’d say something that would give things away. Lettie already knows too much. She saw me talking with Avel, and she knows Avel and Thorn are on the other side of this conflict. That means she’s a liability when she starts getting chatty in any way.
Overall, it’s not that bad a position for her. The seat allows her to rest her upper body rather than dangling, and her legs are similarly supported. My view is not bad, either. There’s something about the way her cheeks curve and press against the fabric of the suit which is only just barely keeping her contained.
“I apologize for my human mate,” I say to Wrath. “She is not yet trained.”
“Where we are going, training will not matter. She will bear your young, and she will live as wild as she pleases. I am not taking you somewhere you will have to worry about the rules of the society that shunned you, Shan. We are going back to our roots. We are reclaiming our power.”
He sounds genuinely excited. In moments like these, I do find my loyalty to the alpha wavering. Wrath knows what matters to me. He knows what matters to all the outcasts he rules over. I am disturbingly aware of the fact that if I had met Wrath first, my loyalty would not be divided in the slightest.
“I cannot wait to see what you have in store.”
Wrath smiles at me. “And I cannot wait for you to see it.”
We travel a while further, but no more conversation happens. I eventually ease my fingers out of Lettie and restore her clothing as the road stops being a road and becomes more of an increasingly bumpy dirt track. Finally, the track ends and the van comes to a halt.
“Time to get out,” Wrath announces. His two guards disembark at the same time, exiting from the front of the vehicle.
It is at this moment that I realize Wrath has taken me deep into the primal forest with two heavily armed guards, both of whom are looking at me with a restrained violence, clawed hands on their weapons, tails swishing with excitement.
I am unable to protect both myself and Lettie. Neither one of us is armed with anything other than our own physical abilities. I have allowed us to be taken into one of the worst possible situations without so much as thinking about what I would do if it went wrong.
Wrath smiles at me, his mouth broad with humor. His eyes gleam the way they do when he is about to enjoy himself immensely. He is anticipating something, something I am sure I will not enjoy. Fortunately, I have the excuse of Lettie and her very poor behavior to draw her close and keep her close. My hand slides over her lower back and pulls her toward me.
“Don’t move more than two steps away from me,” I order. “If you do, I will whip you until you weep — I promise you that.”
“Do not worry,” Wrath laughs. “It is perfectly safe here. This may be the safest place on the planet. This is where our new lives begin.”
I am befuddled. We are in dense forest, and there is absolutely no sign of anything even remotely inhabitable.
“Come,” Wrath says. “We have to walk the last stretch, but it is worth it.”
“I hate hiking,” Lettie mumbles under her breath, sounding petulant and annoyed as we start moving. It is not easy for her to keep up with us. She needs to take two steps for every one of ours, and she is not in a state of fitness. I do not think that there’s much in the way of exercise happening on the ship of humans. They largely seem to be involved in making bad decisions with worse outcomes. There might be some cardiovascular benefit to that, but not nearly enough to ready my mate for a long walk through a trail cleared for saurians.
As we walk, her cursing and complaints start to become even more audible. Wrath is marching ahead of us. His guard is behind. I know their names, Rake and Flail, though I do not know them in terms of character. Their reputations precede them as vicious enforcers of Wrath’s will. Executioners, you could say. I feel distinctly uneasy knowing that at any moment the two of them could drop the both of us with a single shot. We could be buried out here and never found, or just left for the wild creatures who will gnaw the meat from our bones, which would then be scattered for miles potentially.