The Goblin Warrior (Beneath Sands Book 2) by Emma Hamm (100 books to read txt) 📕

“We might have to shave these.” Her fingers bumped over the braids at his temples that created the look of a mohawk. They were so knotted that the individual strands of hair were nearly impossible to see.

He shrugged. “Should have shaved them a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you?”

His eyes drifted closed as her fingers massaged his scalp. “Hoped someday that someone would do this.”

Jane rolled her eyes but continued to work through the tangles of his hair. If there was ever a time she should tell him about the child it was now. But the thought of it made butterflies scatter in her stomach and beat against her ribs.

“Ruric…”

His eye slowly opened, though the sightless one remained closed. “Let me first.”

He raised onto an elbow and her hands slide out of his hair. Perhaps she had been wrong. There was a troubled expression upon his face that made her nervous.

“I want you to come back home with me. The humans will remain here, that is fine. But there will be many talks on whether or not we will allow them into our lives.”

“Ruric, you know I can’t abandon them.”

“I don’t ask you to abandon them, but to remain with me.” He met her gaze then. One pitch black eye staring into hers and the other milky white and fogged.

“I will not leave them to their own devices. They haven’t even lived in the desert before! They’ll die up here before your people make their choice.”

He struggled to sit up. Jane watched as the muscles in his arm shook for a moment before he was finally able to turn and face her. The goblins had been pushing themselves too hard lately and Ruric was showing signs of it.

She was about to tell him to relax when he started speaking again.

“Jane, I will not let them take you away from me. No matter what the traditions are, if we manage a child or not, you belong with me.”

“I don’t think my people care about that.” She said confused.

“Not your people.” He leaned forward to grab her hands. “Mine.”

“What are you talking about Ruric?”

“Why do you think I let you wear the chain? Do you think I wanted to see you as a slave?” He leaned forward to brush his clawed hand against her cheek. “If you were a slave then you were mine. They couldn’t take you away from me if we did not create a new life between us.”

“What?” She did not pull away from him though her head was already swirling. She hadn’t thought about why he had left the chain on her, at least not in a way that put him in a different light. Jane had simply assumed he, like all the other goblins, thought that the punishment was correct. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“Yes!” She shook her head and her brows furrowed. “You can’t expect me to read your mind or to not be angry when you treat me like that. If you had just told me… Ruric so much would be different now.”

“We would still be here.” His thumb smoothed away the wrinkles on her forehead. “But perhaps you and I would be different.”

“Why would they give me to someone else if we didn’t manage to have a child?”

“The fault would lie with me. The hope was if you were given to another, they would manage to create life.”

“That’s barbaric.”

“That desperation.” He shook his head. “We believed we had no other choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“I understand that now.” Ruric’s hands were gentle on her. He couldn’t seem to stop touching the soft warmth of her hands, her arms, her cheeks. “You have taught me much about the similarities of our species.”

“But not the others.”

“They do not know you as I do.” She could see Ruric’s jaw clench for a moment as he paused. “We will try to make them understand.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “This has all been because you need someone to create a baby. That’s wrong Ruric.”

“We are dying.” She could hear the fear in his voice as well as the sadness. “It is hard to stand by and watch your race die.”

He had a point. Jane didn’t know what she would do if she knew she was one of the last of her kind. The goblins were such strange creatures to her, but they were at least fighting to keep their species on this planet.

In a way, she felt as though she should be helping them. There was something valiant about the need to continue on in this world, whether it was in the same form or not. The goblins had forgone the attempts to creature full blooded goblins and instead they had settled for hoping their blood could be in the veins of living creatures for just a little while longer.

Their pride had taken a hit in agreeing to that. Jane knew that to offer to give up everything they were, to dilute the bloodlines until there were nearly no goblins left, was a difficult one. Her child wouldn’t be goblin. It wouldn’t be human.

But no matter what, it was likely her child would end up with a human. There were more of them and the numbers couldn’t lie. When that happened, the goblin would disappear even further.

They would die out no matter what they did.

The life inside of her was a chance at existing, even in a small amount, for a longer time than they could now. Neither choices they had were ideal.

“So this has all been about the child?”

“In a way.” Ruric replied. “But I will not let them take you from me.”

“No, I don’t think they will.” She murmured.

The words seemed to draw the tension from Ruric. He sighed heavily and moved to settle his head back in her lap.

Jane’s eyes were glazed for a few moments as she lost herself deep in thought. The butterflies were released once more when her mouth opened again.

“They can’t take me from you. You managed just fine.”

“I