Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“They are hungry. Even when you feed them.”
It is Kain, looming out of the darkness.
“I know,” I say. He’s probably come to gloat at my failure, but that is what it is. I can’t pretend this is working anymore.
“They won’t grow strong on this food. It is made for lesser beasts.”
“I know,” I repeat.
“They need their mothers, before their mothers dry up.”
“I know,” I say one last time. My voice cracks, betraying my emotion. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, to keep trying even though I know what I am doing isn’t really enough.
Kain walks around and crouches in front of me, speaking in a low purr.
“What would you do to save them?”
“Anything,” I whisper.
He nods, as if he expected that answer. “You can help them, and all of us by going to the Den. It won’t be easy, and Azlan won’t like it, but I can take you as close as we dare, and you can walk the rest of the way. Once you’re inside, Azlan will be forced to act. This situation needs to come to a head. Azlan is stalling. He wants to do the right thing, but there are no right things when dealing with wrong people. There are only lesser evils. Leonidas needs to die.”
I’d like to disagree, just out of principal, but I can’t. I am holding a tender infant who should be with his mother. Pure innocence, suffering for the selfishness of some fuck-addled male driven by the need to dominate everything. I’ve never met Leonidas, but right now I’d happily exterminate him.
“You’re afraid to disobey Azlan, but he would forgive you. Would you forgive yourself, if you did not act now?”
I’m impressed at Kain’s sudden diplomacy. He’s not talking to me as if I am an idiot alien anymore. He’s talking to me like someone capable of making a difference, and that is intoxicating in its own way.
Tonka squirms in my arms, letting out a soft growling whine. He doesn’t know it, but he is the most persuasive person here. Azlan wanted me pregnant when he met me. He wanted to make me a mother. This little alien cub has made me feel motherly, and those maternal feelings come with an obligation: the need to protect.
I look up at Kain, standing over me in the moonlight, his arms folded over his chest. He doesn’t expect anything from me. He’s desperate. That desperation further motivates me, because he’s right. Azlan won’t act in a way that will put me in danger, but none of this is about me. It’s about a lot of other Leonids and their babies, and they matter more than one human ever could.
“What do you want me to do?”
That’s the question that brought me here, to the place where another question comes out of the dimly lit landscape as I approach the gates which now loom so high over my head I feel like an ant.
“Can I help you?” It’s a courteous question, and it catches me off-guard more than scares me.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there.”
The questioner is a Leonid, wearing a lot of armor of the same kind and color as the gate. Rock gray, thick plates from head to toe. There’s just a little fuzz here and there sticking out between them, and I’m tempted to think that is cute. He reminds me of Buttface, and I don’t know why.
He does not carry a gun, but he does carry several swords. Some are strapped to his back, and there’s two at his waist. I can’t imagine why he needs that many swords. Surely one is enough, or two if you really need a spare.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m selling cookies, but I think I’ve landed on the wrong planet.”
The guard looks at me curiously. “Cookies?”
“Well, they’re back at the ship, and to be honest, they’re probably on fire. Most of the ship is pretty, you know, on fire. Or at least, it was when I left it. Might have exploded by now.”
I am good at babbling like an idiot. Comes from years of living by myself. I usually try to put a lid on it, but in this situation it feels about right to just keep talking.
“I’m trying to help my troupe go on a camping trip, but we need to afford personal locator beacons because it’s illegal to take dozens of children into the asteroidal woods without security anymore. So we have to sell the cookies, but do the girls want to sell the cookies? They don’t. They’re busy. You have no idea how much school they have to attend these days…”
“Stop,” he says.
I stop and look at him with my blankest stare. He is looking me up and down with some confusion, but not fear and not concern. Kain was right, I am not a threat to these creatures.