Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 47749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Breenah still wasn’t sure if she believed him or not.
“Why are you telling me all this?” she demanded. “Just because you’re afraid of the moonlight?”
“I’m afraid of too much moonlight,” he said, frowning. “And I heard you and that bossy little female talking about a ‘Lunar Equinox’ that’s coming up. Which is why I need you to set me free so I can go back to my ship and get the hell out of here, before I put you and everyone else in your Compound in danger.”
Suddenly, everything became clear to Breenah.
“So that’s your plan!” she snapped. “You want to scare me enough to betray my Compound and set you free!”
“What? No!” Rax exclaimed. “Look, sweetheart, you have to let me go! It’s not safe for me to be here, in a room that’s exposed to moonlight like this. I’ve got to get away before I hurt someone!”
But Breenah understood his plot now—all this time he’d been working to gain her trust, giving her pleasure, telling her naughty, forbidden things to draw her close to him and make her want to help him. And now he was spinning some fantastic story about having a “Beast” inside him, which was obviously ridiculous. Nobody had another entity living in them that came out only with the full moon!
“You’re lying to me,” she said coldly. “I’ve always been warned that males lie all the time, but I thought you were different. But you’re not—you’ve been lying to me this whole time. Flattering me and telling me forbidden things to make me want to…to do the things I did.”
A sudden rush of shame washed through her. How could she have lowered herself to do such wrong, forbidden things with the giant—with a male? How horrified the other women of the Compound would be if they knew!
Well, they’ll never know because I’ll never tell them, Breenah told herself. But I’ll never do them again, either. And I’m not going to listen to another word the giant says!
“Sweetheart, please!” Rax begged, looking down at her from the Stasis Wheel. “Please, you have to listen to me!”
“No—I’m putting in my noise-offs so you can’t fill my ears with your lies!” Breenah snapped. And she dug the two, tiny buds out of the zip-pocket at the right hip of her undercoverings and plugged them firmly into her ears. Then, though Rax’s lips moved, she couldn’t hear a word he was saying.
He seemed to realize this soon enough and he simply looked at her, pleading with his eyes. The expression on his face tore at her heart, but Breenah refused to give in. She lay on her cot and turned pointedly, so that her back was to him and she couldn’t see the giant anymore.
She refused to be swayed by his lies but she couldn’t help feeling both ashamed and upset. Hadn’t everyone warned her that males were all liars? For a moment—a brief moment—she had almost thought she felt a connection between herself and Rax.
But that, like everything else he had told her, was just another lie.
NINE
RAX
After Breenah turned her back to him, Rax gave up talking or trying to get her to talk back to him. Clearly she was determined not to listen to him, now that she had decided he was lying to her.
Shouldn’t have told her about my Beast, he thought. It was too much—too difficult for her to believe. Should have just told her I’d take her away from all this, back to the Mother Ship with me.
But when he’d felt the pull of the moon—its silvery light scratching against his skin like impatient fingers, wanting to peel his reason and sanity away leaving only the Beastly core—he had panicked. Thank the Goddess he had only the one moon to contend with tonight, though apparently Griesha Prime had three.
Three fucking moons, he thought, feeling his whole body shiver at the thought. There was no way he could hold back the Beast if he was faced with the light of three moons—no way in all the Seven Hells. But how could he convince Breenah of that?
And how was he ever going to get out of here, now that she was sure he was a liar like every other male, as she’d been taught to believe? Rax had no answers and as the night wore on, despair filled him as another question occurred to him.
How was he ever going to get out of here before his Beast caused a massacre and killed everyone in the whole fucking Compound?
TEN
BREENAH
Breenah was shaken awake after a restless night’s sleep. She pawed the noise-off’s out of her ears and the shaking motion was accompanied by a voice.
“Get up!” the bossy voice insisted as a hand shook her shoulder roughly again.
“What?” Breenah opened her eyes and looked around. Where was she? Why was she in the Guard Room?