Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
“Are you going to eat me?”
“What?!” Thorn laughs.
“Why are you being nice?”
“When I see a whelpling crawling into my trash day after day to eat, I get curious,” he says. “Sona! Get the matron on the line. I want to talk to that woman.”
“I’m not going back!” I stand up, preparing to run.
“No,” he says. “You’re not. But I want to know why you are here. I want to know what happened.”
Sona brings a tablet device that has a face on it. I recognize it as the nurse who became matron after matron died. She looks worried and confused to be faced by Alpha Thorn. I make a rude gesture at her when the tablet swings briefly around to me. Thorn lifts a brow at me but does not censure me for being bad.
“Matron, why do I have a little whelp here who has been left to wander the streets for weeks without so much as a missing report?”
“Oh,” she says, as if she’s surprised to be asked the question. “He’s not a normal whelpling. He’s aggressive. He was a danger to the others, and it was decided he’d be let go.”
Thorn’s jaw clenches. “How often do you decide to let young whelplings go, matron?”
“Not very often. One or two a year at most. Only if a whelpling shows serious antisocial tendencies that cannot be controlled. You might think it is cruel, but it better than the alternative.”
“And what is the alternative?”
“Under previous administrations, hatchlings like the one you have would be terminated at birth. Letting them go gives them a chance at survival.”
“Letting them go channels them into lives of desperation, crime, and gang activity,” Thorn says “We are a predatory species living in the bones of the greatest terror ever to exist. Your job is to nurture the instincts of our kind and prepare all manner of whelps for the world.”
“But he’s not normal.”
She repeats those words, with a darker intonation.
“What’s so abnormal about him?”
“His eyes, alpha. They’re dark as night. They thought he was blind when he was born, but he’s never shown any sign of not being able to see. He barely speaks. He just looks at you with that hollow gaze, and he…”
“I’ve heard enough,” Thorn growls. “The nursery can expect a complete review.”
That is a dire threat from an alpha, even I know that.
“But we don’t have to take him back?”
“No. I will keep him here.”
She sighs with relief. She may lose her job, but she will not have to deal with me anymore.
Thorn ends the call and puts the tablet down. He turns to me and crooks a finger. “Come here.”
I do as he tells me, mostly hoping there will be more cake. He reaches out for me, takes my hands in his, and makes me look at him directly. He doesn’t seem to mind my dark eyes. He doesn’t seem to mind anything about me at all, not my filthy condition, or my roughened, sick scales. He looks at me as if I am a very, very good thing. The feeling of being regarded positively by a creature as powerful as the alpha is life changing.
“You’re not strange,” he tells me. “You’re exactly what a saurian should be. We are descended from hunters, not talkers.”
“They don’t like my eyes.”
“That’s their failing. Not yours. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are perfect.”
Hearing those words, I start to cry. I did not know that words like that could be said to me. I did not know that anybody could even think about me that way.
Thorn allowed me to grow up in his home. He raised me, in a manner of speaking. That is why Thorn will always have my loyalty. When he asked me to go undercover, work my way up Wrath’s organization, and help him bring it down from the inside, I could only say yes. I was thrilled to have a chance to repay him for all his kindness.
I never expected to discover that Wrath was not simply the evil creature he was made out to be. I never thought the situation would become so complicated. I owe my life to Alpha Thorn. But I think I might owe my future to Wrath.
6 THE BIG CITY
Lettie
I’m in the tunnel, moving through it with an increasing sense of excitement. I know Shan will hunt me down when he finds me missing. I have to find the captains as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the city is a known quantity to me. I pored over the surveillance maps we made. I looked out over it from the port windows. I paid special attention to the information the scanners showed. I know exactly where Sullivan is kept, and I even know that there’s a servant's entrance that can be used to get in.
Moving through the city without being seen is not easy. It is a somewhat busy place, but fortunately most of the saurians are far too consumed with their own business to notice me shuffling along. I have shaped the garment I stole from Shan up and over my head like a hood.