Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“She is young, and we are old.” I am tired. My bones ache and my mind is still trying to process all we saw in the mountains. There was true evil walking those lands, actually incarnate. Usually evil is much harder to discern. It lurks inside people and leaps out when you least expect it.
Tabby has lived her entire life in an environment more dangerous than any I have experienced. I assumed we would be taking on a female mate who would look up to us as her protectors. But she is the only reason we made it through the night intact. She was our protector, and now we are carrying her around like a hostage. Thorn’s little treat is the only good thing we’ve done for her. It’s time we started providing. Started showing her how she can benefit from being with us. If we cannot be more appealing than a murderous mountain then we are truly a sorry pack indeed.
Tabby
We finish our treats, and I feel a certain sense of sort of… vibrating. It’s as if my body is absolutely deluged with energy that I could use to do any number of terrible things. It’s intoxicating.
“The sun is starting to set,” Skor says as he approaches us. “It’s time to get to bed. We need rest.”
“You need rest. I have so much energy!” I declare. I feel like I could run right back up into the mountains this very moment. In fact, that is precisely what I plan to do sooner rather than later.
“You won’t in about forty minutes,” he says. “A sugar high doesn’t last that long, and then you have the crash.”
“A sugar high?”
“It’s when you feel good after having sugar,” Thorn says. “It’s not a real high.”
“What’s a real high?”
“Ketamine,” Thorn says.
“Cocaine,” Skor says.
They speak at the same time, then snort-laugh as if they said something very funny.
“Okay, well, I don’t want to go to bed. I stay up late. And I slept earlier today.”
“You napped for a few hours. That is not enough rest. Come with me now,” Skor says.
I look him in the face, and find myself filled with pure rebellion. “Or what?”
“Or this,” he says, not skipping a beat as he pulls me up from the table and lays his palm across my ass three times in swift, harsh swats.
“Ow!”
“You have a lot to learn about behaving,” he says, releasing me. “We’re going to the hotel, going to get some real food, and we’re going to bed.”
“Real food?” Thorn cuts in. “What have they got?”
“There’s a stew on. Can’t you smell it?”
I rub my butt, then kick Skor in the shin. Hard.
“You don’t get to hit me. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t… hey!” I shriek as he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.
“You need to learn to behave yourself,” he says, smacking my ass again hard. “And you don’t kick me just because I spanked you. This is what happens when you disobey. You get punished. You know that. You grew up in a pack. You know how to obey.”
I obeyed my father because he is the ultimate authority in the land. These three are nobody in particular. Sacrifices I saved. Males who owe me their life. The sting in my ass only encourages me to escape. We are not yet too far away for me to run back to the mountains overnight. I plan to make my move once they all fall asleep, so I suppose I should at least pretend to submit.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
I let him carry me into the hotel. Unlike the candy shop, this place does not smell good. The scent of food is the least offensive thing about it. This place smells like… I don’t even know. I guess there was a faint waft of it in the candy shop, but here it’s thick and it gets in my throat.
“What’s that stink?”
“Quiet,” Skor says as he starts to carry me up rickety stairs.
“Why?”
He carries me to the very top, across a landing, and into a room, where the smell is even more intense. Now it is coming from the bed, a big thick oversized thing that looks about five times larger than literally any other piece of furniture I have ever seen in my life.
“I’m going to be ill if you do not open a window,” I say as he sets me on my feet. “This place smells like death.”
“It’s not death,” he says. “It’s the scent of people. Humans. You’re not used to them.”
“Oh, my gods, did they rub themselves over every inch of this place?”
“Effectively, yes,” he says.
“Please open the window.”
He cracks it, which doesn’t help at all. If anything, it stirs up the smells and makes them more pungent somehow by giving them small air currents to drift on. I think about hurling myself through the window, but force myself to be patient. My time will come, and it is not yet.