Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“Thorn’s whole regime is turning into meat doll fuckers.”
Meat doll. That’s one grotesque way of describing me.
“We should cut her up, cook her, and put her in a stew for them. I know someone who works in the alpha’s kitchens. It would be funny to make them eat one of their fuck pets.”
A shiver runs through me. I am genuinely in danger of a kind I have not been in a long time. Usually, Sullivan gets me into situations like this. This time, I don’t know who to blame. It might very well be that just being someone who matters, even slightly, to someone powerful, is inherently dangerous.
“I wouldn’t fuck it.”
“Should we try?”
Being discussed in cool, terrible terms makes me afraid. And being afraid makes me furious. But my options are limited. I am surrounded by bigger, stronger creatures and I still don’t have a weapon.
One of them grabs me roughly by the back of the shirt, lifting me up from the ground in one arm. These things are just ridiculously powerful. They could tear me apart. When I look into this one’s red saurian gaze and see the unpleasant leer on his face, the scaling that goes from his temples all the way to his lips curling back with a dark thought, I get the sense that is exactly what they plan to do.
“It talks,” he says, swinging me around on the fulcrum of my shirt. “It talks, which means it can tell us how much it hurts when we hurt it. I think it might be fun to keep, and to hurt.”
I say nothing. I am putting all my energy into hating this saurian.
Then someone else says something that changes the energy of the conversation.
“We should show it to Wrath. It triggered the signal. Maybe he wants us to take it to him.”
“We’re not showing it to Wrath. We got it for ourselves. It’s ours.”
I don’t know who Wrath is, but the way the one holding me snaps back at the one who suggested it tells me this Wrath is someone they fear. I’m not being held by the highest ranking creatures of his particular saurian pack. This is someone’s half-cocked idea, and it is going to go sideways, like all half-cocked ideas that a crew without order comes up with.
I risk speaking again, though every time I do I get hurt worse than before.
“You should show me to Wrath, because when Avel finds me — and he will, you’re going to have brought an absolute shit show down on him, and if you somehow survive Avel, I doubt you’ll survive whoever Wrath is.”
The next thing I know I’m hitting the floor. Hard. The saurian who was holding me has dropped me like I suddenly turned red fucking hot.
Blood fills my mouth again. I feel something click inside my jaw. I think they might have broken a tooth. That’s the least of the damage they’ll do if they panic.
I can already predict their next stupid move…
“We need to get rid of her. And we need to get rid of that collar. It marks her as his.”
Rough hands pin me down and a knife runs through the leather harness and collar more swiftly than I imagined was possible. As the bits of leather are pulled away, I feel naked even though I still retain the remnants of the dress. They’ve taken the mark of Avel’s protection, and I am as alone as I have ever been in this or any other world.
They’re panicking. Now they’ll just want to kill me and stash me somewhere. Make it so I’m never found. This is worst case scenario. I hope I can talk them out of it.
“It’s too late to get rid of me, and it will only piss Avel off more. He will know who took me. He will hunt each and every one of you down, and he will extract the kind of revenge you could only dream of.”
“Shut up!”
A boot cracks me in the ribs. There we go. That’s another injury. Now breathing hurts, and being moved is going to be excruciating, so I settle into my place on the floor and just hope like fucking hell someone in this room has more of a brain than the two cells slamming into the skull of the idiot who just took hold of me.
I’m glad I’ve been hurt before. I’ve taken worse injuries than this, and I know I can survive them.
I also know if they keep hitting me this way, that might change.
“We’re not going to tell Wrath. But we’re also not going to get rid of her. We’re going to keep her down here and we’ll see what Avel does. We’ll see how close he gets. We’ll see if he can find her or not. It’s been a long time since we tested the alpha’s capacity. We let them humiliate Torin. We need to strike back one way or another.”