Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
A folder lands on the table in front of me, and hot breath touches my neck from behind. “Open it.”
Tad.
I know his voice as well as one might know a recurring bad dream, and all too vividly. I flip open the file to find a photo of Jensen, Julian, and Julian’s wolves, not sure what the point is, though I’m certain it’s a threat I’ll soon understand. I flip to the next photo and the next, all of which are more of the same. Jensen with Julian and his wolves, all seemingly taken at different locations.
Tad rotates my chair around, his hands planted on the table on either side of me, his big body too close. I can feel the heat of him, and it turns my stomach. I want to shove him away, but I tamp down the desire, fully aware of how he’ll punish me if I do. “That’s Julian he’s with,” he says, as if I don’t know this already. “He’s one of us. He wants to be Julian’s second, and he’s promised to fuck you into submission to get that title.”
He clearly missed Jensen telling me about the change in Julian, before he shocked Jensen by becoming a modern-day Hitler, or the fact that Jensen’s been paraded about the facility in a manipulation tactic, which means that be it past or present, the photos mean nothing.
And I wonder if there is no audio recording in the room. Just a visual? Whatever the case, deep down in my core, I trust Jensen. “Why would you tell me this if it’s what Julian wants?”
“Because I’m Julian’s second,” he says. “And Jensen means to replace me. I’m going to kill him before he has the chance. So, I suggest you make it clear you’re loyal to me, or I’ll see you thrown in one of the sex camps.” He shoves off the table.
I have no idea why I do it, but I challenge him. “I know he worked with Julian while he had his wolves. That proves nothing. And isn’t this being recorded?”
The next thing I know, he’s whipped my chair around again, and he’s pressing his hands to the arms. “I turned off the cameras. I could kill you, and he wouldn’t know.”
He being Julian, I assume. “He’d figure it out.” I sound brave, but I’m quaking inside.
He grinds his teeth and pushes off my chair, removing his cellphone and doing something before he says, “Listen up.” He hits a button with his thumb.
A recording starts to play.
I hear Julian say, “Then you’ll join me?”
“Yes,” Jensen agrees, and my stomach knots with that one word. “I’ll join you.”
“Fuck her into submission,” Julian orders. “I’ll turn off the cameras.”
Now I want to be sick.
“How will I know they’re off?” Jensen asks. “I’m not your freak show.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“I’ll rip them out,” Jensen promises.
“Fine. Do it. You will walk out of this room with me and stand before my men by my side. Understood?”
Jensen’s reply makes me go colder than ice. “Why are we still standing here?”
Tad smirks. “Now you believe me?”
“What do you want?”
“You. And I promise it will be better than the sex camps. You’ll only have me to deal with.” He grins an evil grin, rotates on his heels, and marches to the back office.
Just the words “sex camps” are enough to cut me inside out. With an inner tremble, my gaze slides around the lab, seeking an escape, and to my utter shock, the water glass on my table shatters, my body jerking with the shock.
Milton Wright, the only other non-GTECH scientist out of the six I’ve met since leaving Jensen in the room and the only one working with me at present, rushes to my table and begins anxiously clearing the glass. According to him during a whispered exchange, he’s thirty-two and worked for the military until he was kidnapped and forced to help Julian.
“That was odd,” he murmurs, tossing shards into the trash. “The glass just shattered. I never saw you touch it.”
He’s right, and it’s not the first glass to shatter. There was another earlier, not long after I got here, but before Milton was brought in to help me. “What’s a sex camp?”
His thin lips press together, his energy uncomfortable, as he claims the chair next to me and lowers his voice. “Julian’s son, Dorian, is very powerful. Like freaky powerful.”
“I’ve gathered that, but what does that have to do with sex camps?”
“They want more like him, which means finding the rare woman who can bond with one of the males and convert to GTECH. It’s like a physical marriage. They have sex. They bond. They have scary offspring, like Dorian.”
My hand presses to the table, memories of Jensen’s brief mention of this washing over me. “How do they know they bond? They just get pregnant, or what?”