Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Well, it doesn’t matter.
Now, none of it really matters at all.
I would rather try anything at all and die doing so, than let the monster who created me hurt Bothaki one more time. Settling that fact in my mind helps to calm my nerves and steel my resolve as I get up from the floor and look for a chair to help get me high enough that I can push the light in the far corner of the room to the side.
It’s my last hope.
And it might be the last thing I ever do.
*
There’s a black hole where the vision in my left eye used to be, and the feeling of the blood pouring down my face and onto my shoulder and chest confirms what the general has taken from me. He did it fast, using the hands of his men and the extra straps to hold my fighting form down.
The pain made it all surreal.
For a moment.
But that moment is long gone.
“Before I move on again,” General Lockett says, rounding the table at my feet while keeping a close watch on me, “I will give you the opportunity to answer my questions. Unless, of course, you’re ready for me to begin taking some teeth. The canines—do you need those to eat?”
I say nothing.
He comes up along the side of the table, stopping at my middle.
He glances down. “Are you very fond of your cock?”
Every breath that leaves my chest shudders. Breathing that way helps the pain, a bit, but it also gives me something to keep steady when everything else is currently out of my control. I understand now that is the general’s intention. What he wants more than anything.
He finds joy and gets enjoyment in hurting, humiliating, and controlling those around him. He doesn’t have a preference. Alien, his own daughter, or some male that doesn’t move fast enough. We are all something for him to use or hurt for his own gain.
He may take from me and cause my body unimaginable pain, but even if it is my dying breath, I will take it silently.
Honorably.
I will not give this human male the satisfaction of hearing my pain again. Even as he tries to step into my view once more, determined to catch my attention and hold it as he continues his cruelty, I refuse him that. If he wants me to look at him while he tortures me, then he’ll have to force me to do it. Chances are, he will.
I stare at anything but the general. I envision my mate haloed in Hallalah’s beams, the streams of bright lights welcoming and presenting her to me.
If only …
“Hold his head back and get his mouth wide open for me,” the general orders.
Every male at the head of the table does as he’s told despite the snarling snap of my teeth and every fight I put up. It does me no good, but I refuse to give up even as the guards painfully try to pry my jaws open and a new tool is handed over to the general.
He pauses for a second to tilt his head to the side.
“Do you hear that?” General Lockett asks.
For a brief second, my one good eye swings his way.
What is there to hear?
I hear nothing.
Just him and the shuffle of boots. A clearing throat and a quiet gag in the corner of the room as a pail of water is dumped onto the floor.
My own heart, dying.
“She’s finally stopped screaming for you,” he tells me.
As if that, too, should hurt.
Except it doesn’t.
And he’s entirely wrong.
“Foolish male,” I say through blood-stained lips and agonizing pain. “You didn’t hear her at all. She stopped screaming at you.”
Never once did her heart stop screaming for mine.
Why would she waste more air on him?
“I. S-said. Stop.”
Every word thunders. It shakes the room. For a split moment, I almost think I imagine the voice of my mate in the same room as myself again, but that can’t be when I also watched them drag her away from me kicking and screaming. Except I am not the only one who hears the words because everybody in the room, including the general, turns towards the doorway where no one stood to watch.
Too busy hurting me.
Cleaning …
“I said stop,” Selina cries, every word shaking as she raises trembling arms to aim the gun in her suddenly steady hands.
“Selina!” her father shouts.
At the same moment, I whisper, “Zawla …”
Her body turns still like a statue just before she pulls the trigger. The noise is loud enough to drown out the confused shouts of the males around the room and the clatter of items that fall from shocked hands. The sudden, and swift, thunk of the general’s body hitting the floor and the metal twang of the tool he’d been holding skirting across the tiles is drowned out by my mate’s tearful sob as she lowers the weapon just enough for her eyes to find what’s left of mine.