Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
“They do, huh.”
“Sure. Whatever the obvious course of action is, people don’t want it. They want to be something either more or less than what they are instead of just following the path destiny has laid out for them. You were made to be Justice’s mate. You have already helped him and us. You have shown courage and honor, and…”
“And been trapped in an egg-laying facility for my troubles.”
“Would you rather he’d left you alone to have those eggs at home, perhaps in the bath? Or perhaps in your workplace? Would you like to have become the focus of a new series, Help, I Didn’t Know I Was Laying?”
“You watch too much tv,” I snort. “He could have told me. He tricked me. I thought I was coming here for a funeral, not to become his brood queen.”
“Really? You didn’t put two and two together when he wanted you to meet his family?”
“No! No, I didn’t! And even if you do try to normalize this, meeting a guy’s family does not usually mean being trapped in his basement and producing them out of your own vagina.”
“Justice may not have handled this perfectly, but he was raised here in isolation, as were we all. Our interactions with humanity were limited. He is not trying to hurt you. Nor am I.”
“Good. Then get out of the way.”
Fury shrugs and steps aside.
Finally. I put my foot on the gas and… nothing. I don’t press it down. I don’t know why. I just sit there, idling, wondering why I feel so strange and conflicted. Now that I’m no longer actively being kept captive, the idea of rushing back to New York isn’t as appealing as I insisted it was.
I do know what my life is like there. It is quite sad, in many ways. I have no attachment to anybody besides Tessie. I am a tool for the chief to use, and I took a lot of pride in that for a long time, but am I going to feel the same way knowing I’ve left the greatest mystery of all behind? And my eggs. Are my eggs okay? I suddenly feel a welling of concern for those little white globules.
“Fuck,” I curse, slamming the steering wheel with my hand.
The cab door opens. Fury offers me his hand.
Silently, I turn off the engine, and let him help me out.
I wait for his smug words, his judgement, maybe even some kind of pain.
Fury looks down at me from his great height, his dark eyes absolutely eerie with their two round whites dead in the center. I brace myself for what is about to emerge from his mouth.
“How about some breakfast?”
11
“You can’t keep me captive. You can’t make me do anything.”
“Yes,” Justice says. “I am beginning to understand that.”
I have spent the day at the vault, waiting for him to wake up so I can give him a piece of my mind. A lot of what he did here was absolutely uncool, and we need to get that fucking straight.
We are talking in the blue room I was first put into. The television has been removed and the floor cleaned. Fury told me I deserved a good spanking for breaking it. I told him he needed to find someone else to punish. He said that might not be such a bad idea.
“Do you really want to take yourself back to a world you were always trying to escape? Those books, you had thousands of them, all little portals to other worlds. A home like yours is nothing more than the manifestation of the need to get away,” Justice says.
“You don’t understand what a book is,” I tell him. “It’s an escape, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to live my life. It means I want a bigger life, a broader life, one seen through the eyes of others. It does not mean I want to be kept in a dungeon getting pumped full of semen. Being used as a brooder for mutant eggs was definitely not on the agenda. You’re not offering me freedom. You’re offering me captivity.”
“I am not a true monster,” he says with a sigh. “I will not keep you here against your will. I chained you for your first laying because I did not want you to panic and thrash and destroy the eggs before they had a chance to toughen their shells. But if you wish to leave here, I will not stop you.”
He’s missing the point. He always misses the point. I can see that I am going to spend the rest of my life explaining these things to him.
“You have to let me choose you,” I tell him. “You can’t make decisions for me. You have to tell me the truth and let me make my own decisions. It’s the only way you’ll ever know if I really love you or not.”