Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 90404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Though I crouch over uncomfortably, I still bang into one, which sets it clanging into all the others. Furious, I drop the bags of food on the long, shiny silver countertop.
“Oh, careful!” Hannah-consort says, turning to me in concern. “Are you okay?”
I freeze, fury choked in my throat… Her face… She looks concerned for me, not the cookware. But the space is too— There are too many memories of Creator-Father clouding my mind—
Monsters don’t belong here! You’ll never fit in, I don’t know what I was thinking making one such as you. What good is a warrior who can’t slip in and disappear among the mortals? I’ll have to try again. But this time to create one who is not a revolting monster! He paced back and forth while I hung my head in shame. And then he glared back up at me in disgust. You’re still here? Out of my sight!
“Abaddo—” Hannah-consort starts but I spin, my horns knocking and banging against more pots.
I growl in fury. Fine. If she won’t tell me where she went while she was gone, I’ll just have to find out for myself.
I head for the door, anger lit in my chest again. It is a relief. Anger I know what to do with. Not all these tender feelings.
I will go hunt down the male she received clothing from and take out my anger on him.
And then I will come home and breed my newly fed Hannah-consort.
“Abaddon!” Hannah calls again, but I just slam out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Three
HANNAH
The meal is delicious. The kitchen is state-of-the-art, but old. Maybe forty, fifty years old? Barely used, though. It all works like it has been newly installed after I relight the stove’s pilot light. I have no freaking idea how all this modern equipment got shipped all the way here—wherever here might be—or how this old castle got wired with enough electricity to run it all.
But it’s good enough for a world-class chef, much less little ol’ me.
I feel almost silly cooking myself a simple omelet on the giant grill, but it feels like the easiest way to get the tastiest ingredients in, plus some protein.
I have no idea where Abaddon stormed off to, but if he’s not going to demand I sit on the floor on my knees while he feeds me off his questionably clean claws, hey, I’m not gonna fuss about it.
No, I eat off silverware I’m pretty sure is actual silver. And even though I mean to take it slowly, I absolutely scarf down the meal. And there’s even orange juice!
Oh my gosh, after barely eating for several days, it feels like heaven. I sit back on a little stool that’s beside one of the long, stainless-steel countertops and pat my tummy.
Absolute bliss.
I clean up leisurely. Not like I have anywhere else to be. And then I put away the rest of the food in a huge walk-in refrigerator.
It’s empty except for a wall of condiments that look just as old as the appliances in the kitchen. Yikes.
I head back out to the kitchen and find trash bags. And gloves. Then I go back into the walk-in to do a clean-out.
Who on earth did this castle belong to before Abaddon and his brothers got here? Did their father build it? Abaddon cut off so abruptly this morning when I asked questions about the guy. Was he a… ya know, a demon-monster like them? Abaddon said the guy had stolen angel-spark from the Great Hall which wasn’t Heaven but was something like it? So was their father an actual demon? Fell-from-Heaven like in the stories, kind of demon?
I shake my head as I throw away an ancient bottle of what looks like ketchup. The bottle has Cyrillic writing on it, strengthening my we’re-in-Russia theory.
Maybe this Creator-Father guy had just been some mad Cold War-era scientist doing bananas human experimentation who had a god-complex and just told them stories about angels and demons? He told them about Frankenstein, too, so really, there was no telling. Maybe he imagined himself as something between a god and a modern-day Frankenstein.
I toss the ketchup bottle in the trash bag with a grimace. I do not want to know what is growing in these bottles after all these years.
The clean-up takes a couple of hours.
But even a good scrub-down doesn’t do anything to take care of the sour smell inside. Maybe I can ask Abaddon to get some baking soda next time he’s out? Like, ten boxes or something?
I finally step out of the refrigerated room and close the door behind me, only to yelp at finding Abaddon standing in the kitchen again.
“You’re back!” I say, my heart racing. At his sudden appearance, or the grumpy look on his face, I’m not sure. Or just because… it’s him, and every time I’m near him I can’t help my mind flashing to intimate things we have done together and the way he has brought my body to life in ways I never imagined—