Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Is Zachary Wyndham at home?” he demanded, glaring down at the man.
“Uh, yeah but you can’t…I mean, nobody meets with the boss without an appointment,” the man stammered. “I’m his bodyguard and even I don’t see him without a fuckin’ appointment, ya know?”
“He’s going to make an exception for me,” Torus said grimly. “Do you remember his ex-Mate?”
“His what?” The man frowned, clearly confused.
“Wife,” Torus said, finding the correct word. “Do you remember his ex-wife?”
“Molly? Sure—pretty little thing. Kinda too plump for my taste, but you know, I’m not the one who pays the bills around here.” The man laughed nervously.
“And do you know what Zachary Wyndham did to his ex-wife?” Torus demanded. “Do you know how he treated her? How he continues to harass her?”
The man in the black suit looked distinctly uneasy.
“Oh, man—come on. You know you can’t come between a man and his wife! Especially if he’s your fucking boss!”
“So you knew,” Torus said flatly. “And you did nothing.”
“What could I do?” the man whined, taking a step back. “I mean, their business is their business—you know?”
“I know you’re a coward,” Torus growled. He leaned down, putting his face right in the human’s. “I’m going to give you one chance. Run!” he growled.
The man went completely pale and then he turned and ran as fast as he could away from the mansion. Torus let him go—he had other matters to deal with.
He walked right through the open door and into the sprawling house. He was just about to conduct a room-to-room search when he heard a human male’s voice call,
“Bronc, is that you? Who was that outside?”
Torus stalked to the back of the house and found an open door. Inside, the room looked like a vast, expensive library. Leather-bound books lined the walls, which were three stories high at least. There was a fireplace and a comfortable and expensive-looking leather couch with a fur throw over the back of it.
On the floor were several animal pelts that had been turned into carpets—Torus recognized a lion and a rare white rhinoceros hide as he walked into the room.
Sitting at a desk filled with human computer equipment was the man Torus had seen over and over in his dreams. His dark brown hair was expensively styled and his eyes went wide when he looked up and saw Torus standing there.
“Hey, who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“Your retribution.” Torus was beside him in a heartbeat.
Zachary Wyndham fumbled in his desk drawer and suddenly he was holding a human weapon—a gun, Torus thought it was called. He pointed it shakily at Torus’s chest.
“Get back, man! I know how to use this!”
Before Torus could answer, he fired. There was a loud bang! and a piercing pain went through his upper arm.
It didn’t stop him.
Contemptuously, he plucked the gun from Zachary Wyndham’s trembling hand and threw it across the room.
“Only someone with extremely poor aim could have missed hitting a vital organ at this distance,” he remarked, as the gun landed on an expensive looking carpet with a thunk!
“What the fuck, man? I shot you!” Wyndham exclaimed querulously, as though they were playing a game and Torus was cheating.
“Not very well,” Torus told him. He was barely holding onto his temper—the Rage was telling him to kill, maim, and rend this bastard limb-from-limb, but that wouldn’t solve Molly’s problems. So instead, he reached out with his right arm—the one that wasn’t currently bleeding—and picked Zach Wyndham up by his throat.
“What…the…fuck?” the human male gurgled, kicking helplessly as Torus raised him high in the air. “What…do…you want?” he gasped out.
“I want every file you have of Molly, your ex-wife,” Torus told him. He squeezed, his fingers digging into the human male’s windpipe. “Now.”
6
MOLLY
“So he said he was going hunting? What does that even mean?” Lana asked for the fifth time as they sat on Molly’s couch in her small, single suite.
There weren’t many single suites available aboard the Mother Ship—most of the women who lived there were married or mated to Kindred warriors. But there were a few unmarried women—almost all of them housed along a small hallway not far from the rolling parklands around the Sacred Grove at the center of the ship. Karen Geners lived just down the hall from Molly, but the two of them weren’t friends—they just nodded when they saw each other and almost never spoke.
“I don’t know what it means,” she said to Lana. She’d used the Think-me, as Commander Torus had suggested, and called her friend away from work. The thin golden wire that fit around the wearer’s temples was a thought-conduction device invented by the Kindred. Molly had never been so glad for the alien technology as she was when she was able to call her friend to come meet her without having to face the entire Kindred Information Department.