Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Kiera stared numbly at the open sky where the shuttle had disappeared.
“That isn’t true,” she said fiercely. “That isn’t true about Brux.”
“Honey—”
“No!” Kiera snapped, filling her mental voice with desperate conviction. “I’ve been helping him control his primal side. He’s not some monster running loose! Even when he was fully a wolf he never hurt me. Never!”
Iyanna’s grief and worry pressed against her mind like a weight.
“The fear is that he could lose his mind completely and slaughter everyone around him,” she said softly. “Dra’vik says that’s why Lykans weren’t allowed on the Mother Ship in the first place. They were considered too dangerous–too unstable. Brux is being taken before Commander Rarev and the Monstrum Council for stowing away…and for endangering a female.”
Kiera gave a broken laugh that was half sob.
“Endangering me? He’s done nothing but save me and help me and love me!”
“I'm so sorry,” Iyanna said, and now she really did sound as if she might cry. “I didn’t understand how much this would hurt you. I thought—I thought if he really was dangerous, I had to protect you.”
Kiera closed her eyes. For one awful second, she was just too upset to think at all. Then she said fiercely,
“I need to be there. I need to tell them they’re wrong. If he’s going on trial, I need to be there to speak for him.”
“Yes,” Iyanna said at once. “Yes, of course you do. I’ll come get you in a shuttle so you can speak for him at the trial.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Kiera sent back. “Hurry!”
“I will, honey–I’m sorry!”
The mental connection faded after that, leaving Kiera alone with the chiming trees and the open sky and the hollow, aching space where Brux should have been.
For a few moments she simply stood there…then she wandered back into the home-dome in a daze.
Should she change clothes? Put on something more formal? Something that would make her look respectable and serious before Commander Rarev and the Monstrum Council?
She opened her dresser drawer and stared at its contents without seeing them. Then she closed it again. No–she couldn’t think about clothes…couldn’t think about anything but getting to Brux and telling them they were wrong about him.
She left the home-dome and went back outside instead. The shuttle would be here soon–she hoped. She would wait on the landing pad and be ready the minute Iyanna swooped in.
Kiera stood in the bright afternoon light, arms wrapped around herself, scanning the sky for any sign of incoming transport. Her face still felt tight from crying and her chest hurt in that deep, bruised way grief sometimes settled in.
Come on, Iyanna, she thought fiercely. Hurry.
Then the wind shifted and with it came a familiar smell…B.O. and sour cream and onion chips.
Kiera stiffened. Not now! A visit from Higgs was the absolute last thing she needed in this moment of crisis!
She turned to tell him so in no uncertain terms…but just then a huge hand clamped a cloth over her face from behind.
The smell of B.O. and chips was replaced by something cloyingly sweet and chemical. It made her dizzy instantly.
Kiera thrashed in blind panic, clawing at the hand, trying to scream but nothing came out–her nose and mouth were completely covered.
“Hello there, girly—I told you you’d be sorry for disrespecting me,” a horribly familiar voice said.
Kiera tried to fight–tried to breathe shallowly, tried to twist free—but her limbs were already going weak… her thoughts blurring and slowing as the drug hit her all at once.
No, no, no—Brux–I have to get to Brux!
But even that urgent thought was fading. The last thing she saw was Had’lor Prime swimming huge and green—gold above her in the sky.
Then everything went dark.
26
BRUX
Brux stood at the small viewport of the shuttle and watched the animal sanctuary fall away beneath him.
At first, he could still make out individual details—the reddish hills and silver—threaded meadows…the faint shimmer of the enclosure barriers…the rounded shape of Kiera’s home-dome tucked into the landscape as though it belonged there. But the shuttle climbed quickly and soon the sanctuary itself was only a small patch of color on the vast face of the moon.
Plo’nix. The strange, beautiful little world where he had lived in happiness and peace for the first time since his mate died on his home world. The place where Kiera had saved him and brought him back from the void.
It was gone now…all gone.
Brux rested one hand against the cold surface of the viewport and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt terrible. Not physically—though the restraint cuffs on his wrists were uncomfortable and the hard metal deck under his bare feet was far from pleasant. No, the pain was deeper than that…older and heavier.
His sins were finally coming to light, and he had no one to blame but himself.
He never should have stowed away on the Mother Ship in the first place. He knew that now more clearly than ever. When his world had burned and the Darklings had come shrieking across the snowfields and into the forests and villages of his people, he should have stayed behind.