Page 232 of Fated Mates of Breeder Prison

He was not a big dumb animal like many of the other prisoners.

When his eyes drew together, focusing, blocking out everything else, he became a man possessed.

I couldn’t help but blush.

Then I realized his eyes weren’t really focused on me.

They concentrated just beyond me, over my shoulder.

I peered at where he was looking and found a wall of dull sand.

He approached it, his footsteps slow and stealthy, his eyes and ears focused on the same point.

When I made to get up, he raised his finger to his lips but didn’t hush me.

He placed his fingertips to the surface of the sand and smiled, sensing something there.

What was he looking at? I wondered. What could he sense that I couldn’t?

He pulled his body back.

I thought he was going to thrust his fist into the sand and snatch something from it.

Instead, he pulled his head back and snapped it forward.

His horns pierced the surface and buried themselves in halfway.

A high-pitched squeal erupted from a creature in the sand.

As Egara pulled his head back, a creature wriggled like a flailing fish on the end of a fisherman’s line.

One tip of Egara’s horns had skewered it.

Egara reached up and took the small creature from his horn and snapped the creature in half.

It hung limply in his hands.

“Sand Fish okay?” he said.

I just stared at the creature, my eyes bulging and wide.

I didn’t know.

Was Sand Fish okay?

The creature might have been odd in appearance but it tasted much like chicken back home.

I guess the rule that a lot of foreign food tasted like chicken also extended out here to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Egara built a small fire in a hole in the ground and cooked the creature inside it.

The moment the meal was done, he shoved a handful of sand over the flames, dousing it.

A shame, I thought, as I was beginning to enjoy the heat.

Egara must have noticed my expression because he dug the embers of fire up again.

They still glowed with heat as he placed them beside me.

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