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)
“Now. Let. Her. Go.” I grit out every word in their language.
“Ah! He speaks!” The general’s bitter laugh lets me know that he hears me just fine. “She’s not going anywhere. She’s going to watch.”
“You bastard!” she shouts.
I hear an impact, then Selina cry out in pain. I can see well enough from the corner of my eye to watch Selina fall to the floor, blood leaking through her fingers from where she holds her hand to the side of her head. I roar, trying to break the shackles. The table moves violently from side to side and I hear the alarmed voices of the guards, warning each other that I’ll break loose.
“Calm down or I put a bullet in her chest.” The general warns.
I stop instantly, even though my chest heaves. The general’s loud laughter makes me salivate for the moment I can rip him apart, limb by limb.
“Look at you. Like an obedient pet now,” he says as he comes over to me. “I guess I should have just gone this route from the start, huh? Tempted you with a pretty human girl to make you docile. You know, she’s the one who told me about your suit.”
“He’s lying!” Selina shouts.
I don’t doubt her for a second.
“Get her. Strap her to a chair.”
“Do not touch her,” I growl, “or you will get what you deserve.”
“You’re not in control here, alien,” the general spits.
Selina is placed in a chair that I can just barely see her in if I look down my body. She’s shaking so hard and blood pours from her head wound as the guard I know they call Charles brings a strap across her chest, and another across her legs.
“I didn’t betray you, I swear!” she cries.
“I know, Zawla.”
“Zawla, Zawla. What does this mean?” the general asks. “This will be the first thing you tell me.”
I look at him now, to make sure he sees the truth behind the words I’m about to say. “It means Selina is mine. Only mine.”
Oh, he understands. His lip curls, his nostrils flare, and his eyes narrow to slits. A moment later, though, that smile is back.
“You know, I was lying, Selina didn’t give you away. Your desire for her did. It showed us there was more under your ridiculous loincloth than showed at any other time when my daughter wasn’t around. But you know something …” He leans down, bringing his face close to mine. “She may very well want you, and you might want her. You both may have even convinced yourselves this will happen, but in the end, Selina is no one’s but mine. To do with as I please, to give to whom I please. I might even let one of the soldiers have her right here in this room so you can hear her screams. And you’d be helpless to stop it. Your precious Zawla, defiled before you. What then, alien?”
“Any pain she feels, you will feel twice as much.”
“Ah!” he exclaims with a clap of his hands. “Listen to you! To think, I thought you an imbecile at one point. Now, you will answer every one of my questions, and if you don’t, we’ll start pulling you apart, piece by piece, while your … Zawla watches.”
He backs away, waving for someone to bring something, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t betray my people by giving him the answers he wants. I don’t care if Selina watches me suffer, so long as she doesn’t have to suffer herself.
“Now then, we’ll begin with something simple,” her father states as he puts something at the base of my claw that clinches it on both sides. “What is the name of your planet?”
He waits one second, two, and then three. On the fourth, he rips my claw off. Selina screams out, thrashing in the chair, but I grit my teeth to hold in the shout of pain. I force myself to smile at her. The general moves whatever instrument he has to another claw. I can feel the blood leaking from my missing one now, dripping warm and wet against the side of my leg. Selina’s eyes are fixed on it as she sobs.
“Eyes, Zawla.”
Her tear-filled eyes come to me, an apology she can’t speak and utter despair in them.
“What resources do you have on your planet?”
I ignore him, focusing on Selina instead.
“Think of the stars, Selina.”
He rips another claw off and I purse my lips to trip the scream trying to escape. Selina closes her eyes and drops her head, shoulders moving with her cries. I take the moment she’s not looking at me to release a shuddering breath.
“Think of the clouds, Zawla.”
She looks at me again.
“Go there with me.”
I think she finally understands, that I want her to lay beneath Hallalah’s sky with me, envision us there instead of watching her father’s brutality. When the general puts his instrument to another claw, she only looks at it for a second, before her eyes come back to mine. She nods.