Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Nothing,” I say when Tailor nudges me with his socked foot from the couch. He is getting far too comfortable. They all are. I might be too. It’s nice to be in one place, to rest, to sleep, to not be consumed with the all-important desire for brutal vengeance.
“I can feel the weight of your thoughts,” he says, his tone deep. “Share them.”
“I think I’d like to go home.”
“You are home.”
“No, I mean, where I came from. I’d like to see the old place, maybe visit my parents’ graves. Pay my respects.”
Nobody decent and in their right mind would deny me that.
“We’ll talk about it with Conroy when he gets back from the docks, but I think that is a good idea,” Tailor says. “I’d like to see where you came from.”
“No,” Conroy says the next day. He comes home from working on the port, walks in the door, and dashes my dreams as if they’re nothing.
“No? Why not?”
“No. It’s another ploy to get somewhere and do something,” he says firmly. “I want you here, with us, until you have our pups. And when you do that, you will realize that there are many more important things than revisiting the past.”
“Why are you being such a controlling asshole? Oh, wait. Why ask that. It’s because you are a controlling asshole.”
Conroy
Tailor pulls me aside after Kita has had her predictable tantrum at being told she can’t have what she wants. He keeps playing into her need to try to get in control, even though we’ve discussed plenty of times how bad that is for her.
“Why are you being such a controlling asshole?” He asks the question with a frown.
“Because I already looked into her home town. Nobody survived. It doesn’t exist. It was razed to the ground by the vampires when she was taken. There’s nothing for her to go and see. Nothing for her to return to. It’s a bunch of ruined houses rotting in long grass. I don’t want to take her back there and remind her of everything she had to endure all over again. I want her happy here. I want her to come to terms with this as her home, this as her family, this as her life. If I let her go all the way back to that wreck she’s going to be unsettled all over again. Why are you smiling?”
Tailor is giving me a look I cannot read. “You really love her, don’t you. But you go out of your way to make her feel like you’re a monster.”
“She doesn’t have to like me. She just has to do as I say. It’s simple. And don’t you tell her what I told you. It’s a secret. She doesn’t need to think about the past.”
“I don’t think you get to decide what she thinks about, Conroy. I think it’s time you started thinking about what she wants and why she wants it, instead of just trying to control everything all the time. If you want to keep her close, you have to start responding to her emotions.”
“Stop being ridiculous.”
“Does she know anything about you? Where you come from? What made you this way?”
“Does she need to know in order to do as she’s told?”
“Yes. Probably. Eventually. Yes.”
Kita
I hate this place. I hate my mates. I hate Conroy the most. He says no to everything. If he could say no to me seeing daylight, I bet he’d say that too. He’s obsessed with control. He doesn’t care about me, or what I want, or what I need. All he cares about is forcing me to do what he wants, and using my body to give him pleasure and make his babies.
I sit outside, fuming to myself, trying to think what I can do to get back at him. Can’t really run away again, but I can go ahead and make his life a nightmare in other ways.
“I was drafted into the military when I was seven years old,” Conroy says, dropping a wrapped sandwich into my lap. I don’t really want to talk to him, but that opening makes me curious.
“You were? As what?”
“As a mine detector. We were light, and less likely to set landmines off.”
“My god.” I stare at him. “That’s terrible.”
“It was less than ideal,” he says. “Eat your sandwich.”
I start unwrapping the paper. I didn’t really want a sandwich, but I know he’s only going to take it as some kind of rebellious act if I don’t eat it just like he tells me to.
“I want babies,” he says. “I want to have the family I lost when I was taken. I think you want that too. But it’s not back where you were taken from. It’s here, it’s now. It’s with us. The past doesn’t have what we need. It’s just a catalog of badly remembered events and things we need to work to let go of. I know you think you want to go home, but what you really want is to make a home you probably never really had here with us.”