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)
“It’s okay.”
Not really, because I wanted nothing more to continue stroking my hand down Luna’s back as she slept. I wasn’t tired, and even if I had been, I knew I couldn’t have fallen asleep. Not when the other option was to feel my mate’s body pressed against mine. Even now, I can still feel her body wrapped around me as I drove into her, hear the sounds she made as I brought her to pleasure, and picture her face as she came. I want to get all this over with so I can get back to her.
“The message?” I ask.
“You have one from your father, and also one from Katur on Earth.”
“I’ll listen to Katur’s first, so I can give my father a more precise report on what’s happening back on Earth when I respond.”
He nods and presses a button on the panel. It doesn’t take long for my happier thoughts about Luna to fade as I listen to the message. My display, as my cousin calls it, has made some of the females on Earth apprehensive about coming to Hallalah now, thinking it will be some other version of Earth once they board the ship, with them having no rights. Some of the males in The Opposition are accusing me of kidnapping Luna and demanding I bring her back and threatening to leave her father’s side to begin their own group if I don’t. Frances is trying to hold everything together and continue making plans with the Hallans to hit key New Order strongholds, but he’s losing men, and facing defiance from others who feel he’d given his daughter up too easily. That he’d gone against the very principles he was fighting for.
The only bit of good news was that they’d discovered three more bunkers and what soldiers they’d taken alive were giving them valuable intel to find more. They were closer to finding where The New Order’s leader had hidden than ever. And the best part was my cousin telling me he’d found his mate. A woman being held in one of the bunkers, Jessica, but that she, too, was taking some convincing to board a ship to Hallalah when it was time for him to leave. He ended by telling me they may need some reinforcements if human males kept abandoning Frances.
“Males will go if they think it will mean possibly finding a mate, as more and more Hallans are on Earth,” Ponor says.
“What good will that do if the females keep refusing to come to Hallalah?” I tiredly ask. “Do we condemn those Hallans to have to live with their mates there on that barely living planet?”
When he has no answer for that, I tell him to play my father’s message. Maybe I should have played this one first and gotten some good news before all the bad. My brother’s mate is pregnant, surely much further along than when my father sent the message since I’m sure it took some time to reach me. She is adjusting well to Hallalah, which gives me hope for Luna living there. Bothaki, too, was adjusting to being home after so long away, and after what the humans did to him. My father asks how things are going on Earth and tells me that my mother says, in the cryptic way most of her words are spoken, when she becomes hard, you must become softer. I instantly know she means Luna. And that my battles with trying to prove I’m worthy of Luna being soft with me aren’t over. That’s okay. I’ll fight as long as I have to for my mate to know her heart is safe with me.
The message ends and Ponor leaves to give me privacy to do it to reply to my father. It wasn’t needed with the messages he received because he would have had to clean them up when he received them for me to listen to. The recordings can get pretty messed up traveling such long distances. And editing them is not something I know how to do. But alone now, I try to figure out how to even begin to explain what’s happened to my father. I decide the best route is to tell him the basics and explain more when we’re face to face. I clear my throat and press the record button.
“Hello, Father. I am happy to hear that I will soon be an uncle and that Bothaki and Selina have both adjusted so well. I … I wish the same could be said for our presence on Earth. The humans in power there continue to resist the terms we have set forth for their surrender, but The Opposition have been working with us to bring down their leaders. The partnership is strained at times but seems to be working for both parties. There are circumstances that may strain it further, though. Recent events that …”