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)
“I’m sorry, Bothaki,” she manages to say.
I shake my head. “No need to be sorry, Selina.”
She’s not even a second too late.
Those silent seconds between us seems to grow bigger with every heave of her shoulders and dart of her eyes to the males shocked into stillness around the room. Did any of them move?
I only look for her.
To her.
“Someone grab—”
The words are silenced by another firing round from a perfectly aimed gun my mate barely hesitates to lift.
“Holy shit!”
“Unstrap him right now!” she shrieks, every word piercing to my ears. Her anxiety and terror coat every word, but it doesn’t show in her sure grip and unmovable stance. She juts the long-barreled weapon in her hands at the male closest to her. “Right now!”
She screams louder the second time.
Someone finally moves, too.
It’s another wailing from high above, so loud that not even the soundproofing of the laboratory could stop it from traveling down to me, that freezes me to the table even as males suddenly rush to loosen the straps holding me down. A nervous burst of energy starts in the pit of my stomach and flows outward as I watch the humans around me stare up and around in confusion, some even flinching at the whirling, high-pitch repetition of the war horns of the Hallans.
There is no place on my planet one can hide from the sound of those horns. It seems, the humans won’t be able to, either.
“Zawla?” I hear Selina whisper from across the room.
That nervous energy finally reaches its peak, melting into something else entirely. Crawling out of my chest and throat, spilling from my blood-drenched lips in a laugh that trembles at first, until it’s the only sound filling the room.
“They’re coming,” I tell her.
Her gasp holds no fear.
“They’re here,” I promise.
ELEVEN
I have never heard sounds like the ones that blare through the basement right now. It’s so high pitched that it makes me want to cover my ears, but I refuse to even muffle the sound that means Bothaki’s suffering is at its end. That we have a way off of this forsaken planet. Horns, and what I can only explain as war cries, rattle the glass walls of the cells, making the guards clench whatever is near them as they back away from a now freed Bothaki. He gets off of the steel table slowly, when I would be rushing to get away from the very thing that restrained me so I was helpless and left to the hands of the people in this room. When he stands, he rolls his shoulders, grabs a wad of gauze from the table that holds my father’s instruments, and wipes his face. More blood just pours from his eye though, staining his cheek as it trails down. He looks at something on the table and I follow his gaze. His eye, black, covered in blood, and mangled.
If I had escaped the room just a minute earlier, maybe it would still be in his head. Another guilt to add to the ones I already have.
“Y-you’ll never get away with what you’ve done.” I turn my head to find Charles standing towards the back of the cell.
I’ve never heard his voice tremble the way it is now, whether in fear of me or Bothaki, I don’t know. Or maybe just at the shock of losing his General.
“They will behead you for murdering your father in front of the whole world. You can be sure of it.”
He chucks his head up with false arrogance. It’s not there for long, though, because the moment Bothaki turns and begins advancing on him, his bravery fails him. For each step Bothaki takes forward, Charles takes one back, but soon there’s a glass wall behind him and he’s trapped. Bothaki rounds on him until Charles has to crane his neck to look up at him.
“You touched my mate,” Bothaki growls out. “Hurt her.”
Charles shakes his head, more fear in his eyes than I’ve ever seen him look at my father with.
“I was … I was only following orders.”
“Orders?” Bothaki tilts his head, considering the word. “Then, I order you to die.”
Charles screams as Bothaki wraps his hands around his neck. His scream chokes off with my mate’s tightening grip. Eyes bulging, drool spilling past his lips, hands clawing at Bothaki’s forearms, I watch the life drain out of Charles. Then, he goes slack and Bothaki tosses his body aside as if Charles had never existed at all.
When Bothaki turns around, the remaining soldiers bump into each other trying to get out of the door first. He doesn’t chase them, instead coming over to me where his hands find my face.
“Are you okay?”
“You’re asking me if I’m okay, Bothaki?” I exclaim. “Are you okay?”
My hands come up to his face now, blood on the fingers of my left hand. The feel of it breaks my heart.