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)
“Who were you talking to, Suli?”
“Nobody. I mean, myself.”
She’s an excellent pirate, but she’s not a very good liar. I cringe in my hiding spot, convinced that I’m about to be discovered. Sullivan isn’t going to be able to keep up any kind of pretense. I can see her in my mind’s eye, and I know that she’s probably looking guilty as hell.
There’s a pause, in which I can practically hear her squirming.
“Who were you talking to?”
The question is repeated, in darker and more serious tones. There is a gravitas to the question that makes me tremble. Whoever is talking to her, he does not sound like he has any kind of patience for lies. I wonder how he and Sullivan manage to get on.
“I do all sorts of things,” she says. “Remember my brain is all… loopy. Sometimes I talk to myself when I feel lonely. It’s been so long since I had anybody like me to talk to.”
“I can ask Avel to bring Raine over if you need the company of your own species.”
“I’d rather talk to myself and only myself than be in a room with Raine again. She hates me.”
I groan, very softly. The captains have obviously not put their feud aside yet, and that is going to make extracting them so much harder than it already is. I would have thought that Raine sacrificing herself to try to save Sullivan would help them make up. Apparently not. Apparently, there’s nothing that’s going to repair their relationship.
That makes me sad. I don’t know why they hate each other so much, though I suppose Raine has always disliked Sullivan more than the other way around, and Sullivan does sound sad when she says Raine hates her. Maybe there’s some hope. Maybe I’m delusional. Maybe I’m stuck in a closet while my captain lies to her alien mate, and it doesn’t really matter what I think. My only job right now is to stay still and quiet.
“I was coming to tell you that one of your crew was captured down here,” Thorn says. “By criminal forces, I’m afraid. That is the bad news. The worse news is that she managed to escape and is now loose in a city full of predators.”
“Oh?”
I palm my face. Sullivan does not sound like she is hearing this news for the first time. Her voice cracks slightly on the end of the word with the effort of trying to make it seem genuine. Again, this is really not her forte. She was always brave and audacious, at the cost of any and all attempts at anything like diplomacy.
“Wow,” she says, continuing with the charade. “I can’t believe it.”
I stuff my fist into my mouth, knuckles first in the attempt to stop myself from groaning out loud in a way that will surely give my hiding position away. I cannot be recaptured this quickly. If I am to be found now, I will be in just as bad a position as I was with Shan. Perhaps worse. I don’t know what this alpha wants with us either. I know he is keeping Sullivan captive like a bird, and I know that until she saw me, she didn’t resemble the captain I knew and loved before. What will these saurians do to us if we don’t start fighting for our freedom? What will we become? I think I already know. I think we’ll be kept barefoot and pregnant in various rooms and cells, producing hybrids for their use.
“What do you know about this, Suli?”
“Nothing. What would I know about it? I’m just hanging around here with my damaged brain, wearing pretty dresses and looking out the window while being completely irrelevant.”
She injects enough spice into her tone that his question about what she knows is derailed a little. That was a master stroke. Maybe she’s not as bad at this deception thing as I thought.
“I know you are used to more activity…”
“I’m used to being the captain of pirate ship,” she says. “I’m bored here. There’s nothing to do.”
Sullivan sounds petulant, and she’s acting petulant as well, tossing her hair like a bratty little girl. She has a valid point, though. Everybody on the Mare followed her into the wildest adventures, well, right up until Raine made the argument that we probably shouldn’t be shot in the head while shoplifting, and that our safety might matter.
Though she’s a wildcard who got us into more trouble and danger than any of us can count, I’ve always found Sullivan inspirational. There’s something about a woman who knows who she is and what she wants and doesn’t care about consequences. I used to care about consequences very much. I used to be terrified of doing anything wrong. I used to feel guilt so crippling I wished I didn’t exist at all. But she taught me guilt isn’t even a thing. It’s just a waste of emotions riding on the back of social expectations and most of the time it’s useless.