Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 46803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
I am not given to paranoia, and yet everything about our current trajectory fills me with a sense of palpable doom. The frozen steak in my hand comes from an Earth cow. I know it is not the flesh of my own flesh, or blood of my own blood, but there is something about holding this cold lump of flesh in my scaled hand that makes me pulse with deep concern.
The cooking process is quick and simple. Apply salt and heat. Easy. Done.
Take it back. Feed my pet. Make her happy. Easy. Done.
“Oh my god. That smells amazing!”
I watch as Stella tears into the flesh, her relatively soft and small teeth still making very short work of the beast’s meat. Humans have been surviving in a world of monsters from the very beginning. They evolved as weak, hairless mammals who had lost the ability to retreat to the trees. They should never have survived. They should be a footnote in the fossil record.
And yet they are not.
One is sitting tucked up in bed in my room, and a good dozen on board the ship, milling about with their latent aggression barely under control.
I know it is probably a waste of time, but yet again, I go and talk to my brother.
“Arkan.”
“Hmmm?”
“We cannot deliver an army of aggressive humans to Euphoria.”
“Of course we can. They are our humans, Kahn. You worry too much.”
“They could turn on us at any moment, attack us, potentially kill us, and take both women for themselves.”
“Obviously, we wouldn’t let that happen,” he says.
“What makes you think the two of us are more powerful than an entire crew of Wrathelder, which they already wiped out?”
“What makes me think the two of us are more impressive than a Wrathelder crew? Listen to yourself, Kahn. One of us is more impressive than a Wrathelder crew. I know our family has taken a few psychological hits lately, but don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who we are. Brothers who hold the destiny of Euphoria in our hands.”
He’s drunk on his own sense of importance, and he is making a terrible mistake. I am no longer certain that I am going to be able to cover for the magnitude of the chaos that is coming our way.
8 OLD FRIENDS
Stella
My period always sucks, but I find that in Kahn’s care, it sucks considerably less. He’s so attentive, and he looks after me in every way possible. I am being taken care of so incredibly well that it almost feels like I’m doing something wrong when I decide to sneak out once I stop bleeding and start feeling better. I can’t stay captive. I need to move. Being cooped up is making me crazy. I did almost fall asleep in the bath, but that’s just because I haven’t been able to get the hell out of Kahn’s rooms.
I tell myself that I’ll just be careful, and I won’t be long. I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to evade soldiers, after all. If I get caught, it’s because I’ve been very stupid. And I’m never stupid.
I step out of Kahn’s room, and…
“Stella?”
My name, spoken in a human voice, makes me freeze. I know that voice. I know what it means. It mans the end of everything. It means I’ve been caught. Instantly. After weeks on the run, after leaving everything I ever knew behind and venturing into the uncivilized wilds, after getting shot and being sick and getting alien abducted without even noticing it and then captured and thrashed, I’ve been caught.
By someone I know.
Maybe that fact should make me homesick.
Maybe it should fill me with guilt.
All it does is make me freeze.
That is not the voice of a stranger. It’s a voice from the past. My name, spoken in those familiar, if a little shocked and stern tones, drags me back through time to when I was half my age and my size.
I can hear footsteps approaching. Overhauling me.
Why can’t I move? After all this running, why am I suddenly staying still and just letting this happen?
There’s a kind of helplessness that only emerges around people from the past. If I met this guy now, I wouldn’t think twice about running, or fighting, or…
A big hand clamps down on my shoulder. I know logically that it has to be smaller than Kahn’s. No human’s hand is bigger than Kahn’s. Somehow, though, it feels bigger and heavier. It is like something reaching out from the depths of years to grip me and hold me still.
He turns me around, and I find myself looking into a grizzled, wiry, square-jawed face.
“Rex.”
“I told him I’d find you,” he says, his eyes burning with glee at the sight of me. “I told him I would do whatever it took to bring you back. And now here you are.”