Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Knowing more about the organization and the world outside, I could see how her motives made a sick sort of sense. Our placidity did, too. What could our village do against her trained and bloodthirsty patrol? Valuable as I was to her operation, even I’d been punished severely when I wandered too close to the perimeter. We stood no chance against them.
But in the beginning, I’d had nothing. I’d been nothing. I’d been too young for my animal to have budded, and I had zero skills to bring with me. I knew why she’d kept me, but why had she brought me in? If Hadriel and Weston and others could be believed—if my own journals could be believed—she wasn’t overly fond of charity.
At this point, I just wanted to know why.
I kind of wanted to cry, too.
And burn things.
And present myself to the dragons so they could end this miserable, aching, physically and emotionally pain-filled existence. That was probably the scariest thing of all: the desire to give up and stop surviving.
For now, I stared placidly at Dante, my hands stilled, my mind whirling. This was why it was important to keep busy—no thinking required.
“Everyone loves the death by dragon joke, it seems,” I said, making no move to do as he said. I was kind of done doing as people told me.
“Of course they do—it’s funny. Come on, put your things away. This book promises to be good.” He waved it at me. “The alpha passed it on to Nova, who passed it on to Burt, who tried to keep it all to himself but whom I stole it from because it wasn’t his to begin with, and he needs to learn to share. Let’s get into it.” He paused, staring at me. His eyebrows lifted slowly. “Listen, I am your friend, remember? You made a big fucking deal about that fact, so now it’s a big fucking deal to me. Friends force other friends to try books they’re unsure of. It’s sacrosanct. Now, there is only one copy, and I read slowly, which means you’ll be able to understand everything. I can’t have you read it because I’ve noticed how fast you whiz through those journals. You’ll talk too fast, and I won’t have a clue about what you’re saying. Here we go. Let’s get cracking. We have, like, a day. We’ll need to do this round the clock if we are to finish in time.”
I sighed but couldn’t hide the smile. “Fine.”
“There we go.”
“You call him Burt too, now?” I started to gather up my stuff.
“Yeah. I did it by mistake and he got all huffy about it, which was strangely hilarious, so I did it again and acted like it was a mistake just to see what he’d do. He threw something at my head. So now I do it because I want to see if he’ll ever hit me.”
I smiled even wider. “That’s probably why Hadriel does it, too.”
“I’m sure. Do you want me to run that back to your room?”
I turned, slid down to sit on the deck, and placed the journal beside me as I leaned against the side. “No, it’s fine. Go for it.”
“Cool. Okay . . .” He sat next to me and leaned back as he opened the first pages. “There’s a map.” He turned the book to show me a black-and-white image. “Fantastic. Moving along.” He licked his pointer finger and pushed a page out of the way. “I’d like to thank, yada-yada. You wrote a book, we get it . . .”
I blurted out a laugh.
“Now, here we go.“ He groaned. “Once upon a time, really? They might as well have started with ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ So clichéd. Are we sure this book is any good?” He arched an eyebrow at me.
The laughter kept coming. “You’re the one who brought it to me! I’ve never heard of it. It’s in poor taste, though, I will say that.”
“What?” He looked at the cover, then the back. “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because there’s pirates and a shipwreck and we’re on a ship.”
“Bah.” He waved that away. “What are the odds?”
“After yesterday? Higher than I originally thought. Do you even like this genre?”
“No idea. I don’t usually read fiction. I’m more into nonfiction. Now, if we were reading nonfiction about pirates and a shipwreck, well then that would be cause for alarm. Some dude’s imagination? Nah. It’s very rarely inspired by real events.”
I really hoped he was wrong.
“You like this genre, though.” He turned his gaze back to the book. “And so we will read this genre. Here we go, stop interrupting.”
I laughed again as my heart warmed and tears of gratitude filled my eyes. I could allow myself a few more tears on this ship. Maybe I’d just cry my fill later tonight and let Weston hold me again. I could tell he was unhappy with the distance between us. It didn’t matter, though. It couldn’t. He’d broken me down under duress. I would not allow him to shape me anew, not like Granny had. I would not put my head down, stay blind, and keep busy. Not this time. I barely knew him. If he wanted to use me, he’d need to put in more effort than simply forcing us to share a bed. Until then, he’d just have to find someone else to meet his needs, a task I was sure would be fairly easy for him once he returned to his element.