Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 46803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
“My name is Stella.”
“I will feed you often, Stella.”
“That’s the only nice thing you’ve said or done since I met you,” she says.
“I’m not here to be nice. I’m here to keep you alive.”
A little grin crosses her impudent features. “Damn. Keep talking like that and I might fall in love.”
She starts eating again, and I am left to wonder if that last comment was sarcasm or not. This rude little human has me unsettled. Of course, I did not intend to be dealing with a conscious, wild-caught human not of my choosing today. I had other things to worry about. I still have other things to worry about.
We are flying home, though I do not know if that is advisable. A civil war seems inevitable. Our father is dead, and…
The bowl clatters across the floor.
“I’m done,” she says.
“Pick that up,” I snap.
“You pick it up.”
“The only thing I will be picking up is you, to put you back over my knee if you don’t do as I say this second.”
She hesitates for a moment, then tosses her curls, gives me a gesture involving her middle finger — which I have come to learn is a gesture indicating the height of human disrespect, and runs. She doesn’t know where she is running, of course. She doesn’t even know she’s on a spaceship. But she does not care.
Humans are well known to have the flight, fight, freeze response. This one has an additional mode: chaos.
She is not quiet as she runs. This is not a true effort at escape. She is laughing at the top of her lungs, using precious oxygen that could be deployed in the futile effort to outrun me to express her disrespectful mirth.
I have never wanted to discipline anybody as badly as I want to discipline her. My palms itch with the need to make contact with her impertinent flesh. I want to make her sore. I want to make her sorry. I want to make her cry contrite tears.
At some point in this chase, and I cannot be entirely sure when, my irritation becomes anticipation. I can do with this human as I please. I can indulge my dominant urges on her with complete freedom. She is not suitable for sale in her current condition, and she would absolutely never meet my selection requirements for training under normal circumstances. She’s fair game for whatever I choose to do with her. I’m not even going to log her into the inventory.
I might even let her run a little. Tire herself out. She has been sick for a long time. Static for a long time. Whatever muscle tone and fitness she might have had before has abandoned her.
So I let her go.
I let her deplete her limited resources, and I ensure that when I do scoop her up, she is panting and barely able to smile, let alone laugh.
There are specific ways to carry a human in order to make them feel safe and secure. I wrap an arm around her midsection and she cartwheels around in her struggles, ending up with her head toward the ground.
This seems to delight her far more than I intended it to. But that does not matter. My grip is secure, and she is recaptured for the moment.
This human needs so much taming. I do not have the time, and yet I find myself taking it anyway. Perhaps it is because I cannot resist a challenge. Or maybe it is simply that there is nobody else to take care of her. I consider, briefly, the fact that there are soldiers on board, but I have a feeling she would cause chaos in their ranks. Also, the idea of one of those human males laying hands on her makes my stomach turn, but there is no reason for me to feel that way, so I ignore that portion of my reaction I carry her off to my room, where further discipline awaits.
3 A COLLAR
My room contains a great many prototypes for pet products. Most of them I have never had any chance to use on a long term basis, not being interested in pets themselves. Humans are a means to an end, a profit stream we have been using to build our family’s fortune after Wrathelder’s strike on my father. I’ve never kept one, and still intend to never keep one. But I can toy with this one for a time.
Several of my more interesting inventions have never had the opportunity to be tested. Arkan considers them too harsh for the soft tempered humans we tend to take as pets, and I agree. I suppose I have been developing tools for a more badly behaved human all along. I have a faint sense of wonder as to why, but then the human takes the chance to try to bite me and I stop questioning my motives and actions. Instead, I focus on dealing with the problem.