Broken and Beautiful: An Alien Abduction Romance Series (Savage Warriors Book 5) by Jude Gray

Author:Jude Gray [Gray, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“You’ve never seen another Grifft naked,” he says.

“Um…no.”

He takes my hand and smooths it over his mohawk-like hair. “This pelt grows down our backs. It is a Grifft boy’s pride. It grows with him into manhood. He is judged by it.”

“I get it,” I say. “Like a human woman’s chest.”

“When I was a boy of thirteen,” he says, and now his voice is low and crunchy with the memories of pain, humiliation, sorrow, and rage, “my pelt was burned from my body.”

Quick tears spring to my eyes. “Jax,” I murmur. “Oh no.”

He squeezes me, attempting to comfort me. “I had seduced our jaghri’s daughter.”

“Jaghri?”

“Our section leader. Pelaf was a sweet virgin of fifteen. She was born a brittle, which means she was close to the gods. She would spend her life in service. She was being groomed for a life of servitude to the gods and the people, and her status elevated our jaghri, as well. He enjoyed his life. Pelaf did not.”

“You freed her,” I say.

But he shakes his head. “I killed her. We began to sneak moments together, though we both knew our punishment, were we caught, would be brutal. We did not know how brutal. I was stupid.”

“You were a child.”

“There were no excuses. I understood that what I was doing was wrong and dangerous to us both. I did not care. I saw Pelaf and I wanted her, so I set out to get her. She became pregnant.”

He shudders and for a few seconds can’t speak. I wait patiently, because I would rather never hear this horror story at all. I kiss his chest and squeeze his hand and I wish with everything inside me that I could wipe that memory from his mind.

“We would have been discovered eventually, of course,” he continues. “Though I believed I could sneak her away from the section and start a new life somewhere else. She grew frightened and confided in her mother. Her mother turned her over to her father.”

“That poor girl,” I whisper.

“Yes. It took our jaghri less than an hour to get her to give up the name of her seducer. They came for me. Dragged me out of my mother’s house, stripped me naked, and tied me to the cross so they could take my pelt. First, they made me watch as they killed Pelaf and the life growing inside her. My life after was…difficult. That was why the jaghri allowed me to live. My death would not have satisfied him. I nearly died. Several times.” He shrugs. “But he would not let me go. Two years later I escaped him, with the aid of some sympathetic servants. And now I am here.”

Two years. Two years he’d lived in that hell. I don’t ask what he lived through in those two years, and I pray he won’t tell me. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I am so sorry.”

He runs his hand over my hair, soothing me. “The strip of mangled flesh on my back is a constant reminder of what I did.

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