Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65094 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65094 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Braeden had been the only bright spot at the time. We’d grown close to each other, commiserating after one of his father’s beatings.
Braeden would get beat for not being strong enough, for being an embarrassment because he didn’t have the ability to shift. And I would be beaten for being stupid or for getting ahead of myself.
And both of us took it for reasons of our own. Me mainly to protect Braeden from his father’s wrath. Once my Uncle had beaten my cousin so badly, I thought he’d kill him. When I intervened, he took it as a challenge and had two other Enforcers hold me down and beat me until I passed out.
I woke up with claw marks on my chest and a scar just below my jawline. It’s the reason I grew my beard in.
There came a point where both Braeden and I had reached our breaking point. Braeden had pointed out that the reason my uncle needed me by his side was because he was no longer powerful enough to hold his position. Part of me didn’t want to challenge my uncle because despite how he’d treated me, he was still family. But then Braeden told me that my uncle had planned to bring in several breeders with the goal of getting a new heir. Once he had one, he intended to kill Braeden.
My cousin was my only ally so I couldn’t allow that to happen. I reminded him that the last time my uncle believed that I would challenge him he got the other Enforcers involved.
Braeden had come up with a plan to get witnesses to ensure a fair challenge.
Looking back, I wonder if I had been manipulated all this time into doing my cousin’s bidding.
What I found more disturbing was that over the last several months, he’d slowly replaced some of the key staff members without me realizing.
Another thing I’d discovered just this morning, somehow my instruction to lock Jamie’s file had been overridden. Only the system technicians had the ability to hack into the system to override my command.
There would only be one person who would dare go behind my back to do something like that.
Now that my cousin knew about Jamie’s status, I knew he would somehow use it against me. Maybe tell me that I need another breeder. Or worse yet, call for her execution.
Whatever he had up his sleeve, I had to keep her safe.
I’m thankful I at least had the foresight to bring Ayla in. I’d known her in my days fighting in the pit. She was what people would call a hybrid. She carried superious blood but not enough to be classified as one. She had been assigned as an aide to one of the wealthy elites. It turns out the one she was assigned to enjoyed making bets in the pit. He thought it was amusing to see Ayla fight because of her hybrid status.
It turns out she was one of the fiercest fighters in the ring, defeating male and female opponents alike. We never got to fight because she was in a different weight class than me but I’d gotten to know her because she would always give me helpful information about my upcoming opponents because her Master had insider information.
I don’t know if I could call her a friend but I’d grown to respect her. When I was summoned by my uncle, I promised that I would see that she was given a safer assignment.
Shortly after I became the Sector Leader, I was finally able to fulfill that promise but by then she’d already been reassigned because her Master had lost all his wealth gambling and could no longer afford all his servants. I saw that she was given an attendants position and I figured she’d be safe.
But after the incident with those two maids and finding out some of the staff was literally trying to cause harm to anyone seen as loyal to me, I had to bring in someone whom not only I could trust but someone who would protect Jamie without being too obvious.
For the past several days I’ve been going through staff files and highlighting the ones I believe are loyal to me and flagging the ones who are loyal to my cousin.
The only thing about his plan is that there’s no way he can defeat me in a challenge, unless less he had something up his sleeve. He had to have some other kind of plan. But what.
I knew if it came down to it, I could trust Ayla to get Jamie out of the fortress but then what?
For the past three years as Sector Leader, I’d been fighting to prove I was worthy and capable of running my sector, but all along my cousin had been sabotaging me. My efforts for making improvements had all been met with some kind of obstruction.