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)
Nothing seems different.
One look at Selina tells me something clearly is.
“Zawla?” I ask her then as my hand reaches for hers, letting the imploring of my tone speak the words I can’t quite place.
The door to the cell clicks shut as my hand hangs empty and untouched between us. It’s the flinch that races between her pinched brows and over her frowning lips that makes me take another look at her.
My mate.
“Selina,” I say, no question behind it this time. Now, I’m demanding, and like my need to have her look at me before, I know good and well she hears this.
I want her to look at me, but all I get is the briefest flick of her gaze up to mine. That isn’t good enough.
“Zaw—”
She doesn’t let me get the word out a second time before she shakes her head and this time, her eyes do find mine. Now, she’s the one pleading, her stare wide and chilling for the quickest of seconds before she drops her chin again. It’s the way her hand flutters up to wave listlessly near her eyes before moving towards her ear that keeps me silent.
We’ve done that before.
Eyes which see.
Ears that hear.
What is my mate trying to tell me?
“I’m sorry, this is what I’m here to do,” she says, rustling the folded paper that she shows me as if it’s the explanation for her sudden change in behavior. Maybe it is. “I have a list of questions to go through with you.”
“Spada,” I refuse instantly, and not in her language.
Selina’s brow furrows in confusion. “You won’t let me ask you any questions?”
I shake my head.
She unfolds the paper and lifts it closer to her face, opening her mouth to read whatever is on the page as if I didn’t just speak to her and she didn’t hear me say a thing. Neither of which is true.
“The New Order—”
I snatch the paper away from her, crumpling it like nothing in my hand despite her shriek of surprise that melts into displeasure. She dares to glower at me a bit, but she doesn’t even try to reach for the ball of uselessness before I toss it to the other side of the cell. Away from us where it belongs on the floor like trash. The same way the humans on this planet have treated their homeland.
“Bothaki!”
In that moment, her indignant disbelief that she levels on me almost takes me to another time and place. A different world and planet altogether. In those seconds, I wish we were somewhere but here and I had taken and thrown anything else so that new fear in her eyes could be something different, too.
But this is where we are.
And something just isn’t right.
“No,” I say in her language, pointing at her, making her stiffen from the reprimand. There’s a part of me, and it starts deep in the pit of my gut, that likes how responsive she is to me. It’s ingrained into my very being to protect and serve the female in front of me, but sometimes that means making sure she understands how important it is for her to listen and obey me, too.
It’s a path that moves both ways.
I know there are interesting, and pleasurable, ways to teach my mate these facts that we’ll both enjoy, but now is not the time or place for those things.
Never mind, my baser urges.
Besides, I still haven’t forgotten what I think she might be trying to tell me. And, what I worry might be happening as we speak.
“We can’t talk?” she asks, only sounding a little hurt.
Like a wounded baby animal. More than anything, I want to cradle her in my arms and apologize for the pain, but I don’t think it will help right now.
Talking is not what she wants to do, though. She says it is, but her body language and the way she’s acted up until this moment says something else entirely. The feeling that she’s interacting with me on cue and not with pleasure and joy as she’s done in the past unsettles me. I don’t like how it sits on my shoulders.
Far too heavily.
“Selina,” I say, her name on my lips drawing her attention back up to me where it belongs, “questions, no talking. Questions. No. Talking.”
“Questions are not talking,” she mutters, downcast in an instant again. “I get it.”
I point at her eyes, then her ears, asking, “Questions no Selina?”
She looks away, to the upper shadows in the corners of the room, and that’s when I know. My missing knife and the fruit from days back. Her standoffishness and inability to speak as freely as we both want her to.
I know—instantly—they’re watching us, maybe at this very moment, maybe they always have, and she’s the method the general is currently using to communicate with me. Likely, if this interaction is any indication, against her will. The very fact enrages me enough that I begin to plan the general’s demise the next opportunity I have to do it. I can already imagine the way his blood would feel coating my claws and fingers as I rip out his throat, but I force my train of thoughts to remain on the matters at hand.