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)
“Eat,” Shan says, handing me one.
It is an order, there is no mistaking it.
I do as I am told, because I am hungry and because I want to appease him. In the clear light of a new day, with some sleep in me, and my mind having had some time to adjust to all I have seen and been through, I understand what a fucking idiot I was.
“I’m sorry I ran off in the night,” I say. “This meat is really good.”
It actually is. It has a smoky char to it that’s nice, and there must have been more fat on that hunter than I imagined, because there’s a soft tender fleshy part of the meat and then an even softer more flavorful part that has very nearly caramelized above the flame. It is a delicious breakfast, and it lifts my mood.
“Finish your breakfast,” he says.
Apparently, the meat has not had the same effect on his mood. He seems very displeased with me. I get the very uncomfortable feeling that I am in a serious kind of trouble now. Maybe moreso than ever before. I finish my skewer, and I attempt to explain myself.
“It’s just that I really do need to get back to the city, and…”
Shan turns to me with an intensity that makes me wish I hadn’t tried.
“You don’t need to go anywhere, Lettie. You are already home. You are already with family. You belong to me, dammit. Me!” He stabs his finger toward his chest, and I hear more than his anger and his disappointment. I hear his pain. I didn’t just almost get hurt. I hurt him by making him watch that almost happen to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice small in this very big place.
He doesn’t understand what I’m sorry for, mostly because I haven’t said it, because saying all of the apology would make me feel even more guilty for what I just did. My loyalties are split, between Shan and the life we are on the verge of creating, and between the Mare and the captains, and the family I made. The family of choice.
Shan never gave me a choice. Maybe he never felt like he had one either.
There is a desperation in both of us, a need we have tried to meet again and again in all the wrong places. We have given our loyalty to places and people that hurt us because there was a taste of that need being met.
“You won’t disobey me again,” he says. “You won’t put the life that resides inside you at risk. You won’t put your own life at risk. You’ll obey me in all things, and you will tremble at the very idea of acting otherwise.
I notice that the skewers are not the only thing he prepared while I was sleeping. There’s also a branch nearby, a long, whippy thing that has had all the leaves and smaller extensions broken off from it to make something that I know is not for cooking — though it might roast my ass.
“Shan…”
“Get on your hands and knees and bare yourself,” he orders, his tone brooking no dissent.
I swallow, trying to decide which would be worse, to do as he says, or to make him force me. I know the answer, though it comes with a side of extra humiliation. I have to show him that I do understand what is at play here. I have to demonstrate that I can do what I am told from time to time, or what are my words worth?
So I do what he orders. I get on my hands and knees, but not before I unzip the suit he so sweetly got for me. The problem with this kind of garment is that if you want to bare your butt, you have to bare everything else as well.
“Take it all off,” he says. “You don’t deserve clothing after the way you behaved.”
His words make me blush with embarrassment, even as I obey.
I find myself naked, kneeling in sandy soil, my hands in front of me, my body exposed as though I am nothing more than an animal the way all the other animals in this region are.
Shan steps up behind me, swishing the switch through the air. I hear it and I know that it will be painful when it…
“OW!”
I squeal as he snaps the tip of it across my left cheek, making me arch and swing forward away from the implement.
“Stay still,” Shan growls. “Take your punishment with some dignity.”
There’s no dignity in this. There is only humiliation as he starts whipping me with a stern and intense pace. Snap! Snap! Snap! Again and again the lash lands on my ass.
“Don’t you dare ever disobey me again!” He lectures me roughly as he welts my bare bottom with his handmade lash.