Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
The thought was extremely comforting.
When the ship came to a standstill and the whir of energy collection replaced engine noise, there was a knock at the door.
Swiveling in the chair, Brenya looked at the barrier between her and her unexpected hostage. She had to talk to him, owed him an explanation.
She could rig the door to only open a few inches, and debated through another series of knocks on the wisdom of such an enterprise.
It was not his fault she had done something extreme.
It was not his fault at all.
Her hands began to shake again as she fiddled with the mechanics, making the simple adjustment take twice as long as it should. When she pressed the button and the hydraulics hissed, she crossed her arms over her chest, less out of modesty and more out of needing the comfort of her own arms.
Unsure what to say to him, Brenya stood and found the quick shine of his eyes in the dark.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?”
She let her head fall into her hand, finding it harder to speak than she’d expected. “I’ve altered ignition programming… you can’t fly the ship without flipping the switches in an exact order. A mistake will blow the system. If by some miracle you got in here, you need me alive, or this is where we stay forever.”
His voice was as dead as the world around them. “I don’t imagine you understand the weight of what you’ve done.”
Shaking her head, she rubbed the grit from her cheeks. “I had to get out.”
“Naked?”
She couldn’t help her lack of dress. “This is a Thólosen vessel.”
The shine of his eyes never wavered. “Yes.”
“Why do you have it?”
“I was born in Thólos.”
“Good.” Without the engines heating the craft, she began to shiver from the growing chill. “That’s where I’m going. Once I have arrived, I will give the ship back to you. You can take it wherever you wish.”
Even with darkness shadowing his face, Brenya knew the man smiled. It was not a friendly grin. Neither was his rejoinder. “I can’t let you do that.”
She had never spoken with such open rebellion in her life. It felt good. “I’m not asking you. It was not my intention to take you with me, but you are my hostage, I am not yours.”
“And when you get there?” Jules eyed her lack of clothing and warned, “You’ll freeze to death in a matter of minutes.”
Brenya had already done the unspeakable. She was not about to let one small factor deter her. “The survivors must exist someplace warm. I’ll find it.”
The man edged as close as the door would allow. He showed her his face, his severity. He even modulated his voice as if to project concern. “Do you have any idea what they do to Omegas in Thólos? It is not a place you want to go.”
Brenya met the striking blue of her prisoner’s eyes. She held his gaze, knew things showed in her expression, and said, “It can’t be different than what they do to Omegas in Bernard Dome.”
“It is different, girl. You’re not capable of understanding the savagery—”
She cut him off, “The first time, he ripped me open on the streets in broad daylight before a gathering crowd. I thought I was going to die… I almost did.”
It seemed as if Jules had not heard that part of her story, if he’d heard anything about her at all. It was very subtle, but a change came over him. “You want that to happen to you again?”
“The people of Thólos need engineers to rebuild the Dome. If they want to survive, they will protect their best interests.”
“You overestimate those animals. You wouldn’t last a day.”
Her attention went to the navigation panel at her left, Brenya focused and as abrupt as her companion. “I can’t go back. After what I’ve done, he’ll take one of your Omegas, a real Omega, and I’ll be terminated. If I have to choose my graveyard, I choose Thólos. I’m an engineering grunt. It’s all I know, all I have ever wanted to do. I’ll fix what I can. If the people of Thólos kill me for it, then at least I’ll die doing something I love. How I die doesn’t matter. Once I’m dead, I won’t care who raped me or how much it hurt.”
“Don’t you believe in an afterlife?”
Her hand froze over the blinking map. “I’m not a Beta anymore. Their God would not have me.”
“The Omega Goddess…”
He was wasting his breath, Brenya making her opinion clear in one harsh reply. “I’m not an Omega either.”
The Beta flat out scoffed. “Then why do you smell like one who’s about to enter estrous?”
Vision swimming, Brenya blinked, wondering how it had grown hotter than the Sahara while she’d napped. Under her body the metal floor had imprinted its pattern onto her damp skin, just as the throb of a building headache had imprinted its tick on her brain.