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)
“She has been bred,” Shan says. His response makes me flush with heat all over again.
Wrath lets out a laugh. “Very good! Very good! In the months to come we will see what fruit your breeding bears. In the meantime, we will keep seeing about capturing the rest of them. The ship is in orbit for the moment, but we know it can be brought down.”
“How?”
“We have one of theirs now. We will display her in distress. They are unable to help themselves when they see one of their own in trouble. They inevitably attempt a rescue, and they are inevitably caught when they do. Three for three is a good catch rate.”
When he puts it like that, we do sound like a pack of idiots.
The problem is that we are actually quite stupid. Not individually. Individually, each of the crew is fucking brilliant. But without leadership we are the dumbest of the dumb. The saurians work together in ways that make us entirely vulnerable. Every catch I’ve seen or heard about so far has involved teamwork. We were in orbit when Sullivan was taken. We saw how they hunted her down on wheels and on wings. She was like a rabbit fleeing a pack of wolves. No matter how wily or wild she got, another one was there to waylay her. And we saw what happened with Raine. She wasn’t able to fall off a cliff without being captured. My own attempt at escape was not really an attempt at escape, but I ended up narrowly avoided being blown up and then I was most certainly bred.
I feel a tremor of something like excitement mixed with fear at the notion of being somehow impregnated by an alien I barely know. Shan is a dominant stranger who has spilled his seed inside me. This makes me think of Sullivan and Raine. Are we all pregnant? Will Raine give birth to a baby with wings? What the hell is going to happen to us all? And who the hell thinks this is a good idea?
“You’re stupid.”
The words escape me before I can stop them. We don’t usually bother trying to stop our words on the Mare, so I am out of practice. Fragile male egos are not a consideration aboard the ship. Not that we go around calling each other stupid either, but what I just heard out of Wrath’s mouth is top tier dumb.
Wrath hasn’t really been looking at me until this point. He has been talking to Shan, because of course only males matter to a creature like Wrath.
“Am I?” The question comes with relative calm.
I heard his plan for me and for the others. Maybe I can dissuade him from it by pointing out how stupid it is.
“Motherhood is not something to trifle with. You’re not going to make a whole slew of obedient hybrids. You’re going to make people with scales who love their mothers and loathe their oppressors. Which would be you, by the way. And it would take twenty years for any of this to even begin to come into fruition, but the effects would linger for generations.”
“Our young do not love their mothers. Our young do not know who their mothers are.”
“Well, our young do. We grow inside our mothers. We love them and are loved by them in a way that shapes our very souls. It takes unspeakable cruelties to sever the bond between us. You will not make what you think you are going to make. The only thing you’re going to make, Mr Wrath, is a huge fucking mistake.”
“Quiet!” Shan hisses the word and clasps my ass in his hand hard enough to make me yelp. It is an embarrassing end to what I thought was a rather good tirade. I’m not usually good at things like that, but that was as argumentative as any of the girls on the Mare could be.
“Bring her up out of the water,” Wrath says.
I feel Shan’s hesitation, but I know he is going to do as Wrath requests, because he is pretending to be obedient to him. There’s not a bit of true obedience or deference in Shan’s body, but he is putting on a show. That means I am going to be on show as well.
“Show me where you were connected,” Wrath continues.
“You have earned this,” he growls in my ear. “Speaking out of turn and earning his ire. If you learn nothing else from this, learn how to be quiet.”
“Shan,” I hiss. “Please don’t. Please…”
He is already pulling me out of the bath, right in front of Wrath and all the others.
Shan upends me, turning me around in his grip and bending me over while holding me around the waist. I do not have to look at Wrath, and that is a small mercy, and the only mercy I shall receive whatsoever. I feel the wet clinging shirt pulled up over my hips, and I am put on display. I know Wrath can see my ass and everything between my thighs…