Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 67092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
But who could it be?
“Can you not guess?” the voice asked dryly. “I am the Goddess.”
The Goddess? Raak was given another jolt of surprise.
“But why are you speaking to me?” he asked, though his voice didn’t seem to make any sound. “I am soulless—Unbondable. What use has the Goddess for one without a soul?”
“Do you really think you have no soul, Warrior?” the Goddess asked. “If that is true, then how are you speaking to me now, since your body lies abandoned below?”
“I…I don’t know,” Raak admitted. “But I thought—”
“You have a sliver of a soul—just a tiny bit, like all Unbondables,” the Goddess told him. “It is not enough to bond with and in most cases, not enough to give an Unbondable male a moral compass. And, if you had not met Kara, it would almost certainly not have been enough to save you from drifting off into the void of nothingness once you died.”
“Is that what’s going to happen to me?” Raak felt a great swell of sorrow overtake him at the thought. “I don’t have a hope of ever seeing Kara again?”
“You will see her again,” the Goddess told him. “I was speaking of what might have been—if you had not met and cared for Kara.”
“What do you mean?” Raak asked. “I don’t understand.”
“In caring for her—in putting her needs above your own—you have allowed your soul to grow,” the Goddess informed him. “And in offering your life for hers, your soul has grown so large that you are now able to bond with her. You are no longer Unbondable.”
“Truly?” Raak felt a cautious kind of joy beginning to fill him. “I’ll be able to be with her forever?”
“Forever,” the Goddess promised him. “But you must tell her not to revile her fangs any longer. I gave them to her for a purpose—without them, she would not have been able to bond you to her. It is her essence in your bloodstream that has allowed the bond to form.”
“Has it already formed, then?” Raak asked hopefully.
“It has,” the Goddess told him.
“But what good is it if I’m stuck up here and my body is down there? And look at Kara—she’s getting really frightened!”
Raak watched as she took him by the shoulders and shook him, calling his name, begging him to come back to her. Any minute now she would figure out that he was dead. A great longing filled his heart—a longing to be with her. All he wanted was to go back to his body and spend the rest of his life loving the curvy little female and making her happy.
“Goddess,” he begged, “Send me back to her!”
“You must find your own way back,” the Goddess told him. “Use the bond to help you. Feel for it within yourself and let it guide you home. Farewell, Warrior.”
And then she was gone.
“Wait! Use the bond—how?” Raak called, but he didn’t feel her presence anymore. Well, he thought, he would just have to figure it out himself.
Taking a deep breath—mentally, of course—he felt around himself for something—anything—to hold onto. The experience reminded him a little of being in Qi’s Palace of the Unseen and feeling for the invisible xanthos.
Just when he was about to despair, he found what felt like a thin rope. Strangely, it seemed to be connected to his chest somehow—or the part of him that would have been his chest if he’d been in his body.
My heart, he realized. It’s connected to my heart!
It certainly seemed to be true. The rope was thin but strong and when he tugged on it, he felt himself bobbing, like a cork bobbing in liquid.
Experimentally, he gave a stronger tug and found himself floating downward, closer to his supine body. This gave him a better look at Kara too and what he saw twisted his heart.
There were tears on her cheeks and she was shouting his name and tugging at his shoulders frantically.
“Raak! Raak, come back to me! Come back, I love you! Don’t leave me—don’t leave me!”
Distressed by her sorrow, Raak gave another tug on the rope—only this time it was a mighty heave. He had to get back to her!
He found himself whizzing downward, on a collision course with his own body. He tried to brace himself for impact but when it came, the sudden meeting of his soul with the flesh shell that encased it was so rough, it shook him to the core.
Like slamming into a steel wall at a hundred clicks an hour, Raak thought, feeling dazed.
He tried to move but every part of him seemed heavy—like a machine that had stopped working and didn’t want to get started again. Inertia had set in and even lifting his eyelids was too much work—they seemed to be made of lead. His heart was like a useless lump of clay in his chest—it didn’t want to beat.