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She looks determined now. That flash of hurt from her past steels her and makes her strong.
“What happened to the man you were going to marry?”
“I don’t fucking know,” she says in a tone that strongly implies he could be sucked into a black hole and she wouldn’t care.
I sit down in front of her and take hold of her hands. They are delicate and much smaller than mine. I hold them in my hands and wait for her to look at me.
“I may kill men,” I tell her. “I may do it in ways you find brutal and distasteful. I may take them as trophies and take pride in their deaths. I may be what some have accused me of being. A monster…”
“A psycho,” she whispers under her breath.
“Yes. That too. I may be all those things. But I have chosen you, Lyssa. And unlike others with softer tastes and less of an appetite for violence, I can promise you I will never take another. I have chosen you for me. Forever.”
Lyssa
His words are so fucking romantic, and I could so easily swoon for him. Manik is in some ways the sort of man every woman wishes she could have. But there’s a bit of skull sticking out of the back of his pack. I can see the teeth sort of… ugh. Instead of swooning, I shudder.
He follows my gaze. “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. Let me get cleaned up and stash my things. You stay here.”
I have never left this front room, this haven of technology and propriety. I know the rear of the cave must go quite deep, and I know it has pumpkins in it. And corpses. Pumpkins and dead bodies. It is like Halloween, but it’s real, and it’s a horror I am now wrapped up in.
I distract myself with the conversation we just had. Stan. That’s the name of my ex, and I haven’t really thought about him since I got here. Manik’s presence has a way of mentally erasing all thoughts of other men, the same way his violence removes them physically. I could truly fall in love with this monster. I think I might already be starting to. But… what the hell am I loving? What am I doing? I didn’t start this journey of independent womanhood and becoming a kick-ass bounty hunter just to end up the prisoner of a brutal alien.
My eyes drift toward the open door. I wonder. I wonder, if I can get clear enough out of here and far enough away from Manik, if the ship might be able to initiate a transport. It might half-kill me, but it is possible that being beamed out of this atmosphere is not as dangerous as being beamed in.
Manik
Their skulls were good skulls. I took a little too long examining them, apparently, because when I return to the cozy front room, Lyssa is gone.
She has taken the suit I made her, and she is gone. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I am not. She had no response to my declaration of loyalty, and I do not know if she believed me or not.
“You are in trouble now,” I growl underneath my breath as I prepare to go out and reclaim what’s mine.
Her trail is laughably easy to follow. It is a big, wide trough through the snow. Her suit means she moves slowly and without any artifice.
I soon see her up ahead. My anger makes me want to go grab her and drag her back, but I can see the funny side of this. Most escape attempts are panicked and intense affairs made in haste. Hers is painfully slow and adorably awkward. Where is she going? What is she trying to do? Escape into the freezing wilds?
She keeps stopping and looking up, raising her hands to the sky. What is she doing? Is this some kind of human ritual I am unfamiliar with? Then it occurs to me. She’s going to try to get her ship to initiate a transport. She’s going to get herself killed.
I burst into a run, covering the hundreds of yards between us in a matter of seconds, and grab her up off her feet.
“Do you want to die!?” I shout the question into her face.
“Don’t kill me!” she shrieks in fear.
“No, you little idiot. Trying to transport from this planet is deadly. You should know that already. I thought you were more intelligent than this. I thought you had a basic understanding of explosion bad. You are an absolute liability, do you know that?”
I toss her over my shoulder and I carry her back to my hideout. She gives up the fight quickly after a few token struggles. I think she knows that what she was doing was stupid. And I think she also knows she is in very big trouble. My mind is racing with thoughts. I want to punish her, but every idea I have is far too harsh for her to survive. I thought she was intelligent, but her actions today have proved otherwise. Intelligent animals learn from past mistakes. Clearly, she has learned nothing at all.
Upon return to the hideout, I bolt the door and secure it in several other ways to ensure that her little human fingers will be unable to operate it again.
“I have to keep this locked now, because you don’t have the ability to look after yourself on even a basic level. You need to be crated and contained.”
“LET ME FUCKING GO!”
Somewhere along the way back to the hideout, this girl decided that she should yell at me. I can only assume she has abdicated all sense and reason, because she saw death and she did not want to see death. But that is how life is.
She’s an absolutely spoiled brat who thinks because somebody sold her a bounty hunter license, she can do anything she wants. I am supposed to be the crazy one, but she is the one who keeps ignoring reality.
