Retribution (Kall Alien Warriors #3) - Sue Lyndon Page 0,19

voice in the back of her head whispered that she ought to remain silent. Risking his fury at this moment wasn’t smart. “What would your wife think of you beating an innocent woman?”

He snarled and grasped her hair, giving her head a sharp jerk. “Don’t presume to know what my wife would think. She’s not here. She’s gone and she’s never coming back.” A sorrowful look entered his eyes.

“Did you love her?” What the fuck was she doing? Why had this question slipped out?

A storm gathered in the general’s black eyes. He tightened his grip on her hair and gave her another shake. “What business is it of yours, human, whether or not I loved Shessema? She was my wife. We should have spent the rest of our lives together. We should have had children and grown old together. Your husband took away her life and mine as well.”

“I’m so sorry,” Layla said. “I’m shocked and saddened by what Michael did to your wife. I wish I could go back in time and stop him. But hurting me won’t bring her back.”

He released her hair and grasped her chin, causing her jaw to ache. “You were probably in league with your husband. You probably had full knowledge of his involvement with the human rebels. I know hurting you won’t bring Shessema back, but it’s what you deserve.”

Anger sparked inside her. “You want the truth?” she asked in a desperate but biting tone. “Yes, yes I suspected Michael might be involved with the rebels, but I didn’t know for certain. When I questioned him about it, he slapped me and called me a bitch and told me to mind my own business.

“On the day he killed your wife, I left him because he’d gotten violent again. I was afraid of him, especially because he kept blaming me for the war and his son’s death. He killed Shessema because the Kall killed his son during the war. And now you intend to kill me—eventually—because he killed your wife. Where does it end? Where does the killing and the fucking misguided vengeance end?”

She expected him to shake her again or resume whipping her, but he stared at her instead, his gaze entirely unreadable. She wished she knew what he was thinking. She wished she knew the right words that would still his hand and make him understand the wrongness of his actions.

But was there any way to reason with a stubborn Kall warrior who was grieving the loss of a wife he’d loved? She was starting to think not.

His next words sent fear churning through her.

“If you had even the slightest suspicion that your husband was involved with the rebels, you should have turned him in. That makes you guilty enough. It makes you responsible enough for my wife’s death that you deserve all the pain that’s coming to you. And you deserve to one day die at my hand.” He gave her a cruel smile that made her blood run cold. “But you’re not going to die anytime soon.”

He stood and moved behind her, where he resumed trailing the leather strap along her back in a threatening manner. Then he brought it down across her back again. Hard enough to steal her breath. This time he didn’t pause to speak with her, he just kept going and going, bringing the strap down over and over.

The pain, the pain, the pain.

Chapter 7

Something was wrong.

Zamek stopped wielding the strap and took a step back. He’d struck the little human fifteen times, though not hard enough to break her delicate skin, despite his promise to make her bleed. But her back was covered in red stripes, and she cowered before him, on her hands and knees, as she sobbed.

Her cries unsettled him. Deeply.

But fluxx if he knew why.

Disgust rolled through him. Not disgust with her, but with himself.

He swallowed hard and looked at the strap, then back at the small human female. Hurting her didn’t make him feel better, as he’d hoped, nor did her suffering make him hunger for her blood.

When he finally allowed himself to consider how Shessema might view him now, shame washed through him.

Fluxx fluxx fluxx.

If he couldn’t use Layla to exact his vengeance, what exactly was he supposed to do with her? He couldn’t set her free. According to the Kall Custom of Retribution, her life belonged to him.

He stuck the leather strap into his waistband and started pacing behind Layla, trying to gather his thoughts. She remained on the