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)
Thorn does not like conflict in his city. He understands that there will always be a criminal element, and that it is better to control it and be as close to it as possible. Better to have Wrath keeping the underworld under his thumb than to have dozens of splintered criminals all acting out in an entirely unmonitored way. But there’s a real problem with that approach, and that’s the fact that when your underworld boss starts getting ideas about taking over entirely, when his network starts to rival your forces as alpha, and when his moves are bolder, braver, and wilder than any you can make… things start to get dangerous. Not just for you, but for everybody.
“I think I’d better get this one contained,” I say. “Keeping a hold of her is one thing, but I don’t want her hearing too much. These humans make pretty adept spies.”
“Your room isn’t secure, is it? We’ll have to find somewhere safer to keep her, won’t we?”
He has a point. And I know that my room will be searched, if it hasn’t been already, and the tunnel she used will be discovered. That alone isn’t damning. There are tunnels everywhere. And by now, Avel should be more than well enough aware to stay clear of that rendezvous point. I take a breath, not too deep. I don’t want to look stressed.
“I think that little visit to the wilderness is overdue,” he says. “I think you should bring your human with you.”
There’s no getting out of this. I have to go to the wilds, and I have to take Lettie with me.
“Agreed,” I say. “But I need a word with her first. A private one.”
With that, I carry my human mate back off to what is left of my private sanctum, now a charred, ransacked, and entirely compromised room. That doesn’t matter now, though. All that matters now is giving her the discipline she sorely deserves.
“Please don’t hurt me. Please let me go. Please…”
She is begging me for mercy, and there is some part of me that wants to grant her wishes. There is a greater part that will never let her go under any circumstances. She is mine. She has been wrapped around my cock, she has embraced me with her hot, tight human grip, and she has taken my seed inside her. There is some chance that she is already brimming with new life — with the life I planted in her. I won’t let her go.
“Quiet,” I growl, slapping her ass.
I could lecture her more, but I find the fewer words the better. I will make her beg for mercy again, but first I want to know exactly what she has been up to.
“Why did you go and see Enforcer Avel?”
“I didn’t go to see Avel. I went to see Raine. Maybe it looked like I was going to see him, but that’s only because he has one of our captains,” she says, her eyes still wide with that same fear. “I need to get the captains back so we can leave this planet. It’s not good here. I don’t want to have a dinobaby. I’m not ready to be a mother. I don’t have any schools picked out. I don’t know what my favorite names are. I don’t even know how to do a diaper. This baby would have a mother that doesn’t even know the most basic things about babies. I don’t think I can eat cheese. Or can the baby not eat cheese? When do they get cheese? I don’t know…”
She is babbling, but it hits me in that moment that she is not merely something to take and impregnate without any consequences. She is intending on mothering her child. She is not intending on abandoning an egg somewhere and never thinking of it again the way my mother must have — the way most saurians do.
She emits a small squeak as I draw her up into my arms in a rare for me embrace. I hold her tight, feeling the soft fragility of her form against my own rougher, harder body.
“You are a good girl,” I murmur in her ear.
Lettie
He calls me a good girl and I fucking melt.
Those are the words I didn’t know I was waiting for, an affirmation of my worth to him. I wouldn’t have thought he would consider me such, given I escaped immediately after he told me not to, but I’ll take praise where I can get it.
It has been a very rare occurrence in my life to be told that I am good. Complimentary, approving energy is so seldom experienced that when I get so much as a taste of it, I lap it up. I would lick it off broken glass, if that was how it was delivered.