Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) by Marie Hall Read Free Book Online

unlock your powers.”
    She grabbed her head. “You keep saying that. That I know you. I don’t effing know you, dude!”
    Again she was skating the bigger issue. Why wasn’t she asking about what’d happened to her? It was as if she didn’t care. She had to care. Who could turn into a bird and not demand to know what’d just happened to them?
    He’d expected her to rail and piss and moan about it, instead she was asking all the wrong questions and wanting to go back to the very place that’d beaten and tortured her for who knew how long?
    Had they broken her? Was her life that meaningless that nothing mattered? It made a slithering, unsettling feeling creep down his spine, and settle in his gut like rancid grease. Breathing through the powerful emotion, he fought to shove the anger aside. It would do no good, not here, not now…
    “And," he continued once he’d gotten control of himself, deciding he was done ignoring the obvious, "doesn't it bother you even a little that you shifted into a bird? Aren't you the least bit curious about that? That maybe, just maybe I'm telling the truth and we have a history we need to sort through?"
    Her look was blank. "I'm sorry that you think I should care. I'm pretty used to weird shit happening to me. What's one more? Maybe it's the pills making me hallucinate that anyway." She shrugged her scrawny shoulders. "Don't care."
    He shook his head, dumbfounded. This was not the phoenix he’d known. If he hadn’t seen her change, he’d think he had the wrong woman. But it was her. The hope of a world rested on this girl’s shoulders, he tried to quell his desperate desire for her to suddenly remember. "Denial isn't healthy, Sable," he growled, having a tough time repressing the anger that nothing was going as it should.
    She laughed, the sound slightly shrill. "Oh that's funny. Seriously."
    “Give me one good reason why I should take you back,” he snapped, breathing heavy with each second that ticked by.
    His skin tightened, itched. Biting onto his lip, he breathed in and out through his nose. He wouldn’t lose it, not now. Pushing it down, he ignored the desperation and the need for everything to be what it was. He knew coming here they’d be starting over.
    She wasn’t the same woman. He had to remember that.
    Her eyes narrowed and for a split second of time he could almost swear he saw the ghostly image of the phoenix staring back at him. “Not like I haven’t already given you a million, but how ‘bout one more,” sarcasm dripped like dark molasses from her tongue, “because I swore to kill fat bastard before I left and I aim to do it. That’s why.”
    “He’s gone, Sable,” he said slowly, his heart twisting with the pain she tried so hard to conceal from him. What had those people done to her?
    “You’re lying.”
    He shook his head. “No. I’m not.”
    Her lips clamped shut and she wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t believe you.”
    “Look at me, Sable.”
    She refused and suddenly he knew the fight had left her.
    Hunter gripped her shoulders and shook her hard. Her head whipped back and forth and all she could do was moan no over and over. It was exhaustion, he knew it. Her skin was sallow, eyes sunken. Brave words and nothing more. She needed sleep. Food too. She'd told him before how the shift would drain her energy the first few times so that it was like she was one of the walking dead. In firm control of his emotions once again, he drew her tight into his arms.
    Her knees buckled, and right before she fell he hefted her up. This talk would have to wait, if he didn't find her shelter soon, Sable would die and without her, none of this mattered.

Chapter 6: The hole in the ground
    She groaned as the dreams continued to bombard her into the waking. Sable rolled over onto her stomach, her bruised body cushioned on something soft. It smelled clean and when she inhaled she was surrounded in lavender. She grabbed her head that felt like it was trying to