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)
The Mare has always been about girl power. Everybody on the Mare is a girl, even if they’re a guy. It’s just how it works. Down here, I realize I’ve been mentally assigning everybody male. But I wonder if we can’t find some kind of help from the other half of the population. Assuming females do even make up half…
“How are you enjoying captivity?”
Wrath’s question interrupts my demographic pondering.
“Lovely, thank you,” I respond, choosing automated politeness. Shan will approve, I am sure.
Wrath lets out a barking laugh. “Been fucked into submission, I see.”
I look him in the eye and I feel an odd kind of blankness. I think it’s because on some level, I know he is not my problem. He is so far beyond my pay grade I don’t have to argue with or attempt to fight him. Someone else will do that. Entire armies might be the ones to do that. All I have to do is be relatively pleasant and stay alive long enough to see that happen.
“Very perceptive,” I say, though it doesn’t come out quite the way I intended. There’s a note of sass, a kind of silent fuck off, you fucking idiot, that I just couldn’t help.
“We’re both very much looking forward to seeing what you have to show us,” Shan says, interjecting over the subtext of my attitude.
Wrath laughs. “You’re being far too polite, Shan. Worried about your human mate’s mouth?”
“I worry about all her orifices,” Shan deadpans.
A roar emits from the alpha, and even the volcanically predatory generals behind him smirk with amusement. I am the butt of this joke. I am their collective captive. I am the tender human sacrifice impaled on Shan’s cock and filled with his seed. I am the one who is being used for breeding purposes, and they all know it.
Hot shame rushes through me as it all comes rushing down on me, the realization as to their perception of my vulnerability. I am like food being played with, pushed around the metaphorical plate until I am devoured in the act of birth.
“Let’s go,” Wrath says, ignoring me.
My feelings do not matter here. That is fine. I am accustomed to my feelings being an irrelevance at best, or an amusement at worst. I content myself with following Shan into the rear of one of the vans. The volcanic twins take the wheel, while Wrath and Shan and I sit in the back.
The interior of the vehicle is spacious from my perspective. It has to be. These are tall creatures with tails, and they need the space. Wrath sits at the big seat down the back. It is plush and lined with leather and it looks comfortable. Shan sits on a bench style seat that runs the side of the van opposite the door and pulls me onto one of his knees to sit, wrapping his arm around me to hold me close and keep me contained.
We set off through the underground, which is not far from the surface, which makes sense, as the emissions from the combustion engine are no doubt poisonous. If one were to simply leave a few engines running, it would be possible to gas the entire underground warren of criminal dinosaurs to death. It’s a dark thought, but I suppose they’re aware of it. They probably have ventilation.
“Freedom is the only thing worth living for,” Wrath says.
I snort under my breath, an almost involuntary reaction.
“Yes, human. I know you have been denied yours. We have all been denied ours. What I am doing here is finding ways to make us all freer than we have ever been. You are a pirate, aren’t you? No different in criminality than any of us. You are no doubt wanted in a dozen galaxies.”
“Actually, I’m not wanted anywhere, because I’m not the sort to be caught,” I say.
Again with the ill-advised sass. I just can’t seem to help it. Wrath is a terror, but he is trying to make a connection with me, and I don’t want it.
He snorts. “You’ve been caught at least twice on this planet already.”
“That’s true. Harder to blend in when everybody is eight foot tall and covered in scales.”
Am I making excuses? Justifying my failings and my ego? Sure. Maybe. I didn’t think I had one, but maybe I just never really needed it. On the Mare, everybody knew I was a stealth expert. They didn’t question me. They celebrated me.
There’s no celebration of me here except for what my holes can or cannot deliver. I am being used in a very different way, and though it feels so fucking right when Shan and I are together in private, before Wrath it feels like a filthy, tawdry, demeaning thing.
“You know what it is to run your entire life.”
“We didn’t run. We sailed, and not away from our enemies, but toward new treasures. We didn’t hide like rats in a burrow.”