Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Coming in at that angle seems like the better option for me at the moment. I don’t want to seem too curious, but I know my father hasn’t left the property once today and as I haven’t seen him, either, and that leaves me with one conclusion.
He, and probably his gang of soldiers, spent the entirety of their day downstairs. With the beautiful gray alien. Except the very idea of my father spending any time with the creature bothers me in a way I can’t quite explain. It sits heavily on my chest, making it harder and harder to breathe. It might have something to do with the fact that I am aware of how my father treats humans and animals alike on his own planet. I cannot imagine how he plans to handle something like he has hidden downstairs.
Even so, my father continues eating like I didn’t say a thing. I study him longer from under my lashes with my head bent down slightly toward my own plate. It’s clear by the way he saws into the plain chicken breast—it’s always chicken a good portion of the year—that he doesn’t watch me nearly as closely.
I should be grateful for that.
Instead, I’m just more suspicious.
I know better than to ask more questions, than to press a little harder, but still …
“Will you be quite late again tomorrow?”
Pausing in his next bite, there is a little, crooked, almost unsettling smile to the corner of his mouth as he asks, “And why would that be any of your concern, Selina?”
Damnit.
I should have just kept my curiosity, and questions, to myself. Maybe he doesn’t notice the way I rush to plop in another bite of rubbery chicken just to have a few extra seconds to come up with a feasible excuse for why I would ask him such a thing. Thankfully, by the time he raises his gaze to mine from across the table, I’m starting to swallow some of the chicken.
I can’t complain about the food—not without appearing ungrateful to The New Order, and I know better than that. He won’t want to hear it’s because I care for my father and like spending time with him because I am far beyond that kind of age, and the two of us can only pretend for so long when we’re in the same room together.
I open my mouth, ready to let whatever flies out first come as soon as I swallow what remains of the chicken, but the sudden movement from the dining room’s entry stops the lie in its tracks. Charles, one of the men my father enjoys keeping closer than his others, is a stoic shadow of black as he crosses the floor with eyes locked on the general.
My father, on the other hand, only watches me. The sharp arch of his eyebrow should concern me more than it does, but I’m too grateful for Charles’ unexpected entrance to care all that much.
“What?” my father asks harshly.
Charles, unfettered at the rudeness, bends down slightly to say, “General Lockett, there’s been a bit of an … emergency.”
The news changes my father’s mood in an instant. And not in a bad way. “Oh?”
“Yes. We’ll have to leave immediately.”
“Well, then,” my father says as he pushes back his chair and ambles to his feet, shooting a nod in my direction. “I best get that handled, whatever it is. Selina, ensure your nightly duties for The New Order are done with joy and gratefulness. Yes?”
I nod, but otherwise, keep my head down, desperate to hide the sudden rush at the idea he’ll be gone, and I’ll be alone. Well, not exactly …
“Of course, father,” I say as I’ve done a thousand times before.
I’ve never meant it less.
FOUR
I don’t know how long the days are here, or if they even have a proper nightfall on this planet when the sky darkens. What I do know is that the time down here has felt endless. From the moment they turned the lights back on, I have been waiting for them to turn them off again, in the hopes that in the darkness, my mate would come again.
My mate.
I was in such disbelief over that one fact that I laid awake the entire time the lights were out. There she was, right on the other side of the glass, looking at me with shock, but with interest. With confusion, but like some part of her knew me. Of course it did. We are destined for each other. Always, from the moment we both drew our first breaths. I have been searching all my life for the female the Mina foretold fate would bring me together with when I was just an infant. If I’m being honest, I had given up a little hope of ever finding her after searching each planet I went to. Looking for a female with one eye blue, and the other, green. And here she was all this time, on Earth. On a planet we’ve never even heard of on Hallalah, let alone explored.