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Page 284

| ested in. Hand him over to me and you can get back to your butchering." |

| Sasha coughed, her throat stinging from the vomit. Glad that it was over, she wiped her mouth clean with the sleeve of her shirt. Slowly she raised her eyes and again she felt the icy claws of dread gripping her insides when she looked around at the massacred animalstoo many to even count. |

| Sasha gazed sadly at one animal close by her, its short forelimbs looking almost like human arms, its long, thin powerful hind legs never again to be used for jumping. Its head was small, its ears large and rounded, with a small mouth and prominent lips. Its fur looked soft and wooly, and there were stripes on its head, back, and upper limbs. |

| Averting her gaze, Sasha choked back a sob when her attention was drawn to another kangaroo. A baby kangaroo was in its pouch, bleeding, its mouth still attached to one of its mother's four teats. But the baby was lifeless. |

| Hardly able to stand anymore of this, Sasha rushed away to lean against a lone eucalyptus tree. She looked at Ashton and the men, seeing that they had everything under controlexcept that something did seem suddenly awry. She could see it in Ashton's expressionthe surprise that quickly changed to disappointment. |

| "You can't mean that Ajax is dead," Ashton said after one of the kangarooers explained that they were now riding without Ajax, that he was dead. |

| "He's been dead two nights now," the kangarooer further explained. "He was killed in his sleep by some stranger. Now why don't you ride on? These are our kangaroos. We killed 'em fair and square." |

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