Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“You.”
I let out a laugh of surprise. “And now that I have you, is something supposed to happen?”
“Yes, we’re supposed to both be transported up to the ship, but that won’t happen because I threw my transponder away.”
“And why did you do that?”
“Because I didn’t want to be part of the stupid plan, even though it seems to be working exactly as it was planned. So maybe it wasn’t actually as stupid as I thought. Oops.” She gives a little cavalier shrug.
She seems simple, but I don’t trust anybody who seems this guileless. Sometimes, the smartest and most able agents are the ones who seem to know nothing at all.
“Am I to understand that there’s trouble up on the human ship?”
“There’s trouble everywhere. You’re trying to be the Grave City alpha, and the Grave City alpha is trying to root you out. And…”
“Are you really going to let this human speak so insolently?” Zin interrupts her.
I find her little diatribe very enlightening, but I can see how it is coming across as disrespectful to the others. Most of the time these humans are all sass and no information. This one seems to be sass-free. She might even be obedient, though she admits she countered the wishes of her captain. So perhaps she is not so simple after all.
“I think a private audience is in order,” I say. “Follow me, human. What is your name?”
“Allie,” she says.
“Come with me, Allie.”
Allie
I can’t believe I am following Wrath’s orders and going after him. I snug the coat back over my body as tight as I can and hustle after him, avoiding the gazes, and in some cases, glares of the other saurians. Not everybody seems to like me.
But Wrath does.
Or he’s at least patient enough to not show temper the way the others do.
“I’m sorry,” I say as he leads me into what must be his personal underground lair.
“What are you sorry for?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like I should be sorry.”
He chuckles lightly. “You’re quite an interesting specimen, Allie. I have handled several of your crew, and none of them have been as polite or as obliging as you.”
“I don’t have any fight in me. I’m not a pirate. I’m a cleaner.”
“I’ve known plenty of devious and important cleaners in my time,” he says. “In my line of work, you soon learn never to underestimate service staff.”
In private, he is a softer massive beast. I watch him move around the room with a surprising amount of agility given his size. He is huge, and his facial features are both blunt and vicious. Saurians have eyes like lizards and scaled skin, but they also have mouths and noses and the humanoid type facial structure that allows them to emote. Most of them look a little like walking, talking lizards, but this guy, this guy is built different. He is made wilder. He has a big flare from the back of his head which covers his neck and part of his shoulders, and he has a horn that emerges from his forehead and sits just above a prominent brow ridge.
He looks like a brute, and he acts like a brute, according to his reputation.
He settles into a chair, a big wood carved thing that must be reinforced to take his weight. If I had to guess how much he weighs, I’d say four hundred, maybe even five hundred pounds. He’s huge. His musculature ripples with even the smallest of movements. He is shirtless, and he is…
“I fell in the lake,” I say, suddenly, as his intense looking at me starts to make me feel incredibly nervous. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know what he is going to do with me.
“Did you,” he says.
“Yes. But some young males pulled me out. They didn’t know what I was, and they were going to…. Well, I don’t know. They had sticks. But then Madame Adaine caught them. They were her apprentices…”
I see his face shift expression as I say the name Madame Adaine.
“So you have been with Adaine, not just caught by her sons.”
“Not for long. She wanted me to stay with her, because I’d be safe there, but I guess someone changed their mind.”
“So Adaine doesn’t know you were taken, and now you are here, and now she is going to be looking for you,” he muses. “Fucking Vendis. Can’t kill him because he’s her idiot little brother.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if she’ll notice, or care. A lot of people don’t notice or care when I’m missing.”
“You have managed to cause quite a political whirl-storm with your arrival,” he says. He raises his voice. “ZIN!”
The door opens.
“Is it time? Can I have the human?”
The second of those questions is terrifying. Can he have me? I do not want him to have me.