Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“He killed your entire crew,” I remind him. “He gave the order to shoot our ship down. Am I that annoying that you’d let a mass murderer have freedom just to punish me?”
Thor gives me a long look. “You’re right,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You should kill him. He killed everyone else,” I say. “Letting him live is letting their deaths be in vain. We have no guarantee that we will be rescued. We could all die tomorrow. But you’re letting him have an extra day of life, and a chance to talk his way out. He could escape his bonds in the night and kill us both…”
“That’s enough,” Thor says firmly. “I don’t want to hear a dozen arguments for killing a bound man. It’s cowardly, and I won’t do it, no matter how much he might deserve it. We have honor. That is what distinguishes us from them.”
He lets me go, thank fuck, and we share the mushrooms. They’re still not good. But they are food. Thor sits down for a bit afterward and closes his eyes. He says he’s not going to sleep, but I know he’s exhausted as I am, and he’s bigger, so he needs more rest.
When he starts to breathe slow and deep, I know he’s asleep. I plan to do something terrible then, but the need for a nap overtakes me. I wake up late in the evening, with dusk gathering quickly. Thor is still asleep.
I sneak over to Drako, kneel down, and whisper in his ear. “Get fucked, loser,” I say. “You’re going to die like this, tied up like a helpless little animal.”
“You keep taunting me,” he growls back. “But we both know you want your pussy wrapped around my cock. You’re not trying to get me killed. You’re trying to provoke me into escaping these ropes and punishing your pussy. Don’t worry, girl. You’ll get the rough use that you crave.”
“I wouldn’t fuck you if you had the last penis in the universe,” I tell him.
Right at that moment, Thor grips me by the back of the neck, his hand curling in the fabric of my shirt.
“Stay away from him, or you’ll have a sore ass again,” he says, his firm lecturing in quite sharp contrast to Drako’s intense sexual threats.
“She doesn’t want to be babied,” Drako says. “She wants a baby put in her. She won’t respect you until you dominate her pussy.”
“If sex was enough to make her behave herself, she’d be submissive already,” Thor says.
“Not the right kind of sex. You want to survive this world? You need to untie me. If something comes in the night and eats me, you’ve given me no opportunity to defend myself. Pretty evil, wouldn’t you say?”
I realize, to my complete horror, that Drako is actually going to talk Thor into letting him go. He’s appealing to his honor, and to his notion that we are safer in numbers. That does not apply when one of you is an absolute psycho.
“You have yourself, and a woman you can’t control, and you’re keeping your greatest potential asset trussed. I already showed you what could be eaten. You’ve filled your belly because of me.”
“Because I forced you to tell me on pain of your own death.”
Drako laughs. “We are all as good as dead. This world devours everything with a spark of life. Why do you think it remains unsettled? There are colonies further past it lightyears in every direction. But every expedition that lands here, disappears.”
“We thought that’s because Vikar forces were shooting down anything that came near it.”
“That’s only part of the reason, brother,” Drako says.
Oh, so fucking smooth with the brother talk. Making Thor think they are on the same team. It’s a masterclass in manipulation. Drako is even more dangerous than I gave him credit for to begin with. He’s brutal, but he’s not the kind of monster who only uses force. He understands when a softer touch is required.
“If you let him go, it will be the dumbest thing you ever did,” I say. “And command will want to know why. Assuming any of us live long enough to face them.”
“And that’s it, isn’t it,” Drako chortles. “None of us are guaranteed to see another day. So you can hold to whatever you might imagine command might say, but my guess is, they’d tell you to survive.”
“If you make one wrong move, we will kill you,” Thor says.
“Yes, I’m sure. Now untie me, before the night hunters start gathering and each of us has our throats ripped out.”
“Don’t…” I say, trailing off before the sentence even gets a chance to get started. Thor’s going to do it anyway. Drako has appealed to the part of him that is logical and fearful at the same time, and that’s a hard sell to beat.