Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“And back home? What has happened in the time that I was gone?” I ask.
“The new homes that were being built when you left are finished and families have moved into them. Several mates were found, and ten babies were born.”
“Any females?”
Her smile drops some. “Not this year.”
“Why do you have so few women?” Selina asks.
“We’ve always had low female birth rates among our species,” I explain. “But the past few decades, those numbers have dwindled even more.”
It’s like I can see the side of Selina that she’s been revealing to me during our time in the room is taking over. The healer in her. The seeker of knowledge. It was her coming down to the library that brought us together, after all.
“Do you have any ideas as to why?” she inquires. “Have you done studies? Do you have tests for those kinds of things on Hallalah?”
“There are answers that aren’t ready to come to light yet,” Vabila answers, but doesn’t really answer at all. “The time for them is coming, though.”
Vabila smiles and nods, it seems, to herself more than us. She does that often. I do take some comfort in it, even if I don’t quite understand why we have to wait for the answers, or what those answers might be.
“So, since there are so few women,” Selina begins, “that would mean there aren’t enough mates for the males?”
“Females on Hallalah can choose to have more than one partner,” Vabila tells her.
I can’t help the laugh that bursts out of me from how high Selina’s brows shoot up, from how wide her eyes get. Once she recovers from her shock, however, she narrows her eyes at me.
“Even I could have more than one partner?” she asks, looking right at me.
That cuts my laughter off immediately, and she smiles. Vabila is the one laughing now.
“Oh, Bo,” she pants out through her giggles. “The look on your face.”
“Are you ready for your tour?” I abruptly ask Selina, more than ready to end this conversation.
“Oh, I can—” Vabila begins, but I cut her off.
“Alone,” I state.
Vabila’s not offended in the least, instead smiling at me like she knew I would say just that. She probably did.
“I’ll clear the food away,” Vabila offers, then sighs. “And I guess find something to do, all by myself.”
Selina looks at me with pleading eyes. “She can come.”
“Don’t fall for it.” I chuckle as I stand.
Vabila laughs, her ploy not working on me in the least and she can tell. I lead Selina out of the dining hall and begin our tour. First, I take her to the control room and the main brain, wanting to show her how the sky looks around us now that we’re out of her galaxy. When we walk in, all the males inside greet us, bowing their heads to me and my mate. I see her throat bob with her swallow as she smiles at them.
I lean in and whisper, “Still not used to it?”
She shrugs. “I think it’ll take me a while to get used to men bowing their heads to me when I’ve been raised not to even look men in the eyes.”
“The females on your planet, how did they allow such oppression to be brought upon them?” I ask, a question I’ve wondering for a while.
“Because those who fought back were met with death or brutal punishments. It scared many into submission and the ones who remained defiant were thrown in …” She pauses, her expression saddening. “Well, they were put in places like the one I showed you my mother is in. To be broken, cowered, slowly killed. And for my generation, we were taught and shown what happened to women who disobeyed, who were ungrateful, who went against The New Order, so we never even thought to defy the men around us and end up like those women. It was systematic, and the laws, and men, got harsher with each year it seemed. But what choice did we have?”
I nod. “But there are other females on Earth who want freedom, right?”
“Yes, even if most of us don’t even know what freedom truly means. We don’t know any other way, but we know we don’t like the way things are.”
We leave the control room and I begin to lead her towards the common area on the ship.
“But things will get better now, right?” she asks. “On Earth? It won’t just be war and destruction?”
“It won’t be war forever,” is the best I can say. “And the females there will be free.”
“Okay.”
In the common room, I introduce her to two games we play on Hallalah. I let her win at one of them, even though I’m pretty sure she knows. Then, I show her the rest of the ship before we go back to our sleeping bunk. The moment we get behind closed doors, though, thoughts of everything else fades away. All but one.