Page 31 of Guardian's Destiny

"I'm listening." How he could stuff this food into his mouth so vigorously was beyond me, but kudos to his bravery.

"Alright, as soon as you're done eating, I'll give you some words, and you're going to…" I slid one of the cube screens I had pulled up over to him.

"Hey, is that my comm?"

"Sure is. Now focus." I showed him a simple pain scale from one to ten with alien smiley faces that somehow resembled him. Alright, they were silver… oops. "When I say certain words, I want you to note the level of pain. Here, one equals none, ten head exploding, got it? Good. You just have to select it like this, okay?"

"They don't look like me," he scoffed.

"Sorry, it was the best I could come up with on such short notice. Deal with it."

"I'd rather have your face on it." He complained.

"And I'd rather be flying through space with Henry Cavill, but we don't get what we want, do we?" That was a lie, because, sorry Henry, Vraax was even hotter thanThe Witcher—as hard as that might be to believe. "Are you ready?"

He nodded, his hand hovered playfully over the scale, moving right and left and left and right, daring me with his eyes. My first impulse was to take the dare and throw him off balance, but thankfully, my professionalism set in, and I reminded myself that this wasn't a game.

"Let's start something easy. Your name is Vraax."

He rolled his eyes and selected the zero.

"Nock?"

Zero again.

"Zaarek."

Zero.

I moved through the list of names I made from aboard the other ship, with the results all being zero, until, "Tharaax."

He hesitated. Three. Interesting.

"Ohrur."

"Just pain level, not anger, right?" He confirmed.

"Just pain." I nodded, imagining his heartbeat rising.

"Space Guardian."

Zero.

"Darlam."

His face twitched. Three.

"Mating marks."

Zero.

"Soulweb Glyphs."

Four.

We went on like this for a few minutes while I gradually moved down the list of words I had prepared. The longer we continued, the less often he chose the zero.

"Alright," I finished. "Let's take a break."

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