Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
“But I can, little Princess. And I’m going to,” Skeezix returned, giving me an evil grin. The holo of him turned to Hornsby. “You know where to meet me. Take the Space Gate to the Goreth Nebula. I’ll be waiting in the third quadrant of the second quarter.”
“That’s not very specific!” Hornsby complained. “Why can’t you at least give me a planet to navigate to?”
“Can’t risk it,” Skeezix growled, flexing his wings. “Just come to the coordinates I’m sending you and I’ll meet you there.”
Then his hologram flickered and died, leaving me with nothing to stare at but Duke Hornsby, who was giving me an evil grin.
“Soon enough, my dear, you’ll experience the same fate you cast upon me,” he snarled, waggling his metal fingers at me—including the rotten, black one. “Soon enough you’ll be cut into tiny little pieces and I hope it hurts.” Then he pointed with his rotten fingers to the ship. “Go on—get her inside,” he snapped. “Let’s hurry it up—no point putting on more of a show than we already have. It’s time for some retribution.”
47
SLADE
I can’t begin to tell you how much it fucking hurt when I found out Aurora had betrayed me. Breaking her vows like that and taking steps to keep from having my heir when she had sworn to open her womb to my seed was a huge blow, both mentally and physically.
After she admitted it, I couldn’t even look at her.
But just because I sent her away, didn’t mean I stopped thinking of her, though the Goddess knows I tried. I did everything in my power to put her from my mind, to stop feeling for her. But once Fated Mates have found each other and entered a Binding—even a Partial-Binding—turning off your emotions isn’t an option.
I could tell my Second, Rive, was worried about me. He tried taking me out to various parties and shows—he even offered to take me to a sex club. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of touching another woman—of being with anyone but Aurora.
The Thirst was tearing at me, demanding to be slaked, but I refused to slake it. The torture it put me through felt right—like a burden I was meant to bear. I didn’t want to feel content or peaceful—I wanted my body to hurt as badly as my fucking mind. And so I suffered.
I wondered, when I let myself think about her, if Aurora was grieving too. I had seen how upset she was—or maybe was just pretending to be. I couldn’t be sure anymore. I only knew that she had betrayed me in almost the worst way possible.
Rejecting a male’s seed after you promised to receive it was one of the worst insults a woman could give a man in my culture. She might as well have shouted, “Fuck you!” in my face or slept with another male right in front of me—that’s how bad it was.
And all that time, she’d been pretending to like me—acting like she was falling in love with me. It made me sick and so angry and hurt I could barely fucking think straight.
Which is why I tried my best to ignore the bad feeling I started having about three weeks after I’d told Rive to take her home.
It started in the pit of my stomach—a restless, uneasy feeling that something wasn’t sitting right. At first I thought it was something I’d eaten but it was too nebulous for that. And soon enough it spread to my heart and lungs as well. When I thought of my Fated Mate who had betrayed me, my heart pounded and I found it hard to get a deep breath. Soon, a sense of impending doom began to bear down on me, making me almost frantic. I stood up from my desk and started pacing, unable to be still any longer.
“Boss, what is it?” Rive asked, watching me pace the floor of my office, which was located not too far from the penthouse. I had moved back there directly after the disastrous confrontation at the dinner table—I couldn’t fucking stand to see Lyrah’s smirking face, rubbing it in. If it hadn’t been for my bitch of a stepmother, I would still be with Aurora now. I wouldn’t ever have known that she was betraying me—I would still be happy.
“What is it?” Rive asked again, as I paced. “There’s something wrong with you—what?”
“I don’t fucking know.” I put a hand to my heart which was pounding heavily in my chest. The Darkness inside me stirred uneasily. It felt the feeling too—the impending doom that was hanging over me like a fucking anvil. “I don’t know,” I said again. “I feel like something’s going to go wrong—or maybe is already going wrong.”
“Something to do with Aurora? Sorry, I know you said not to say her name,” Rive said quickly. “But—”