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)
Worse, when I am sleeping now, it’s too deeply. Almost meditative. A border beyond comatose. A survival mechanism of my kind; the body would rather shut down into a state of deep, immovable rest, where it can control the energy to live, than struggle to supply everything else too little of practically nothing at all.
But that natural instinct of my core being to protect my physical self is not working to my favor on this planet. I realize that fact before I even dump the contents of the survival kit to the bed. Two things are missing, and no matter how many times I push around the long Redar leaves meant to dress a wound or the healing salves in corked jars, the items just don’t show up. The small carving knife and the last piece of fruit from my home planet is gone.
How long did I sleep?
That question seems nearly, if not as, important as where my belongings have gone. Although, I really don’t have to wonder about that very hard at all. There aren’t a lot of options of who could—simply who did.
Or which guard, rather.
I doubt the general had the nerve to step into the cage where I slept and take the bag from beneath my head.
And as rest is meant to be deep and refreshing, I wake up as I should. Ravenous. Ready to eat the last, and only, thing I managed to save that would have taken me through another stretch of unknown time down here.
Has the beacon reached Hallalah, yet?
Sure, the general and his guards offer the same platters of unpleasant options that I know won’t taste right every time we cross paths, but it’s the instinct inside again that keeps me from suffering through even a single bite. His patience at my continual refusals to talk or eat lessens every time we come face to face.
Well, what choice will I have now?
I switch from confusion at the sight in front of me to anger at the very air around me faster than I can truly understand. It’s the why, really. The way it pounds at my heart, demanding an answer I don’t have and the more I have to consider it, the more worrying the truth becomes. If they had just taken the knife, I might be less concerned even though I had been careful to never use it when I knew I was being watched.
In fact, I never took it out of my bag except when alone.
But no.
He also took the food.
I didn’t need the knife to cut open the dense, but sweet, middle, so taking the one item left in my bag that I could use to sustain myself seems targeted. Maliciously, even. How long did they watch me sleeping—was that what the general did as they noticed my longer and deeper slumbers?
And why not take it all, then?
Why not just take it all?
I shout that question to nothing and no one in particular as I turn on the walls of my prison once more. It does me little to no good to beat or hit them, but the rattle as I do adds to the echoing of my anger to the empty, dark space.
“Are you not a male of honor and courage? You have to take things from me when I’m sleeping?”
No answers come.
Not that I expect them to.
I shout in my language, but I do yell one word in the human’s language that I’ve heard the general use on more than one occasion. Enough to pick it up, and the insulting meaning behind it. He uses it frequently when speaking to the males around him, but I think it suits the general himself far better.
“Coward!”
I hit the bars, but before I can turn back to the survival kit left behind, something else catches my eye. The force of hitting the bars makes the barrier between the two sections lift slightly. Just enough to tell me that someone left it unlocked. The bars are down, but not engaged with the mechanism I’ve noticed keeps them locked to the floor. Whether purposefully done or not, I don’t think long enough to question the motives when one unlocked door might mean another.
Even the taste of freedom can be thrilling.
I crouch down to grab the bottom of the bars, and straighten again as I begin to push them back into the ceiling. Although heavy, they offer no resistance, and stay in the ceiling when I remove my hands from them. Slowly, I cross the threshold between the two rooms of my prison, set on checking just how thoroughly my captor’s stupidity runs, when a familiar sight roots me to my spot. Maybe because it’s the first time I’ve had the chance to see my mate before she has me—without her noticing I’m watching, too. As tall as any of the males I’ve seen on this planet, she’s still head and shoulders below me. Draped in the same black clothing she always wears that kisses the floor and hides all but her face framed by black hair, cut short and straight across high over her brow, and the rest which she keeps balled and pinned at her nape, I have a feeling that to everyone in this world, she fades into the background with the rest of the crowd. If she lifted the hood to cover her head, she would look no different than the males who keep me in this cage standing side by side with them.