Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“I’ll be good. I’ll listen, I will!”
“Zarah, it’s me, Luna.”
“No, no, no …”
“We’re on the ship, remember? We’re not in that bad place anymore, I promise. Nobody here wants to hurt you …” She trails off and there’s a pause before Luna asks, “Can I hold you? Here, give me your hands.”
The sobbing quiets but doesn’t stop altogether.
A moment passes before I hear my mate speak again, and her voice is softer than I’m sure I’ve ever heard it before.
“It’s okay,” she says soothingly. “Nobody’s angry. I’m not going anywhere, Zarah.”
Feeling like the young guard and I are intruding on a private moment that we don’t necessarily need to overhear; I press my hand against the panel outside the door in the hallway to close the door. After I do, the Hallan moves back to his post just left of the door.
I continue waiting directly on the other side of it, but the desire to go to my mate and soothe the pain I’m sure she is also feeling is enough to make me weak in the knees. Somehow, I remain standing straight, and otherwise unconcerned, visually.
The pride might be what does Luna in, but it's self-control that constantly tests me.
My current circumstances are a good lesson in patience because I remain on the other side of the paneled door with the Hallan guard for so long that two separate members of the High Deck crew come up to check on us during the ship’s waking hours.
It’s only once I am positive that my mate must be tired, and I don’t hear a peep behind the closed panel door for a significant period of time, that I press my hand to the wall. The door slides open to grant me access to the dark room, but it takes nothing for my eyes to adjust to the difference.
Soon enough, I find Luna and Zarah with my mate using cushions to make being propped against the bed more comfortable as she struggles to keep her eyes open. A fight she fails again and again as I cross the room to where she sits.
Zarah sleeps, not very fitfully, with her back turned to my mate who still rubs her hand slowly back and forth over the older woman’s shoulders.
“I’m not ready to go yet,” Luna tells me sleepily when I crouch low to her.
I brush my fingertips along her cheek, watching her tired eyes flutter closed at the touch. “Hmm, I disagree.”
“Halun—”
“Come, I will help you sleep.”
“But—”
“You’re not any good for her if you’re tired,” I say.
“You know, it sucks the most when you make good points,” she grumbles. A little too groggily.
I really should get her to bed.
I just grin, but I don’t give Luna the opportunity to argue with me further when clearly, she’s done her duty in calming Zarah down enough to sleep, and now it’s her turn. She’s tired, too. Making easy work of cradling my mate in my arms, I give Zarah one last look on the bed.
“She’s fine,” I tell Luna.
“She might wake up and be scared or—”
“The guard posted at her door will come find us. Just as he did before.”
“I could have just slept in there.”
That makes me laugh under my breath.
“No, you will sleep nowhere but in my bed next to me.”
Luna sighs, but it sounds both irritated and pleased. I’m not sure what to do with that, but she’s yet to put up a real fight.
Maybe it’s her sleepiness that keeps her from arguing with me further, but I won’t deny that it makes the situation easier for me. Luna barely says a thing as I carry her out of the room, past the posted Hallan that I stop to give orders, and then down the hall back to our room. Once we’re behind a closed door, I’m surprised to find she doesn’t even put up a fuss when I offer to strip her of any clothing before she climbs into bed.
It kills me to do it, but I keep my gaze on hers the whole time and I swear the way she watches me under her lashes when I tugged her pants down her legs until she can step out of them, or as I pulled her shirt over her head, she knows what she’s doing.
She knows what she’s doing to me.
“I don’t like it, you know,” she tells me as I turn her around to urge her onto the bed first. Making her beautifully round backside in a prime position for my face as she crawls toward the wall.
“Don’t like what, my mate?”
“Could you not?”
“I cannot,” I reply simply. “Honestly, aren’t we beyond that?”
Luna mumbles something I don’t hear before saying louder, “I don't like that no matter how many times I tell you that this isn't happening, it just does, anyway. You did a bad thing, Halun. It was my choice to stay.”