Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Zane decided we’d stay an extra few days at the Rosa Waterfalls for me to recuperate. Zane’s dad took Ollie home and everyone else went back home, too.
“My ring is beautiful,” I told him. “So is yours.”
My ring was a rose gold band and the stone was supposed to turn red, representing my feelings, and the gem was shaped like a moonflower. It was still black, like my ear, and likely would be while that allergen was still in my system.
Zane had a wide rose gold band with red stones in it. I loved how it looked on his finger.
We didn’t finish the ceremony by the waterfalls, but I wasn’t about to try that again, though I did want to see the waterfalls up close one more time before we went home.
***
It was our day, we walked together to the waterfalls. I got looks on the way. Many still looked at Earth women funny. I knew there was some prejudice and that would probably take a while for some people to get over.
I was told that Treya’s hatred of us for killing her mother and sister, almost every other female she knew had created deep hatred. She went on a rant at the police headquarters when they brought her in. She wanted us to pay. I was probably in the line of fire as the closest Earth female around and I figured she saw me as weak and easy pickings because I wasn’t outspoken like Elaina and because I kept trying to show her trust and friendship she probably saw that as weak. She ranted about being kept hidden for four years and living like a prisoner, nearly getting stolen twice, then meeting the man of her dreams, only to have an Earth woman steal him from her. She was definitely harboring bad feelings about Jetta, too.
Spar was lobbying to get her psychiatric help. Zane wanted her to do hard time. There was a region on Phallyx called the Outer Limits and it housed the criminals. It had a harsh climate and they did manual labor there. I didn’t like the idea of anyone having to endure that, especially a young woman who’d had a rough four years with all the tragic loss. Zane and I got into an argument about it.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to watch, powerless, as sickness took my daughter and her mother? Other women? To be able to do nothing?” He was so angry that I was suggesting that psychiatric evaluation might help, rather than incarceration and hard labor. I told him if I was called to her hearing in the courts that I would say that I was agreeable to it as part of my victim statement.
“Your wife.”
“Do you think I can watch while something takes you from me, too? Do you think I will let the person trying to take you from me, from Ollie get away with that?”
“Wife. Your wife.”
“Why do you keep repeating that word? My wife what?”
I took a big breath. “Your daughter and your wife. You said, ‘her mother’. Whenever you talk about her, you say “Ollie’s mother.” She was your wife, wasn’t she?”
We stopped by the waterfalls and Zane stared out, shaking his head with anger, then looked at me with a sour expression.
“I was married to her, because she tricked me into fucking her, got us intentionally caught and convinced me to ask for her hand to save face with her parents. She said she’d decline and claim she was too young and unready to marry. Instead, she accepted. In front of her entire family. It put me in a bad position, and I didn’t fight my way out of it, teaching me a valuable lesson about getting pushed. I never regretted our children together and don’t want to speak ill of Arla as she’s gone and left me with memories of a perfect daughter and left the gift of my precious son who was all she cared about saving as she lay dying. But you? You are my wife. Since having you, I know the difference. I cared for her, but I married her based on a lie, on manipulation. You? I don’t want to breathe without you. And I tell you this, I will not allow anyone or anything to take my wife from me. Not even if the one trying to take her is my wife herself because she is willing to forgive her enemies.”
His rant stopped me in my tracks.
“You might be my second wife officially but you’re my first choice, Tanya. Do not ever forget that.”
“I love you,” I told him.
“I love you more,” he snapped.
I smiled. He glared at me a minute, then finally he smiled back.
“Let’s go home, moon flower.”
“Moon flower?” I jolted and stopped in my tracks, staring at the beautiful pink waterfall. “Another new nickname?”