Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I want to stake out a claim on Tabby, something she’ll remember like the candy store.
“I’m taking her to have some dinner when we stop. We’ll be there overnight, and it’s a bigger town. Better food.”
Krall and Skor exchange looks. I sense they’re about to tell me no because they don’t want her loose among people. But they promised, and if we are going to take her to Eclipse City she has to get used to the world a little at a time.
“I want dinner,” Tabby says. “I’m ravenous.”
They don’t want to set her off. So they agree. The dynamics of our little pack are already starting to shift in favor of this magic she-wolf.
Tabby
There are people everywhere in this town. Dozens of them throng the streets. I find myself feeling a strange mixture of feelings I can only describe as predatory repulsion.
Thorn was right. This town is much larger. It has dozens upon dozens of buildings, and roads paved between them. There are even smaller versions of the train that trundle around, and even smaller versions that have wheels and can go wherever. I find myself wide-eyed and overstimulated, but still hungry.
Thorn leads me into a building that smells like a lot of food—amazing, and like a lot of humans—awful.
“This is a restaurant,” he explains. “They cook meals here. There will be foods you’ve never had before. Try whatever you want.”
The restaurant is full of people, all seated around us. I’ve never been around this much anything before. Even when the pack gathered in the mountains, there were less than twenty of us. This is… unbearable.
Thorn lifts a small book that contains a list of foods we can eat. I don’t recognize most of the food, and I am far too distracted by everything going on around me to care.
“What would you like?” A young woman in a white shirt and short black skirt comes and takes our order. She gives me a slightly quizzical look, and I become immediately aware that I am not dressed the way others in the restaurant are.
My dress has been through days of hard magical battle and even harder travel and skirmishes on trains, and multiple rough breeding sessions. My hair is long and wild compared to hers, which is sleek and tied back. I look like a mess, and that matters.
I don’t like the way she smiles at Thorn either. It seems she is hungry as well.
“We’ll have two steak dinners, rare, please,” he says. “And a beer for me and a sparkling wine for my wife.”
The waitress smiles, slightly tighter this time, and walks away.
“Why did you call me your wife?”
“It’s the human word for mate,” he says. “The easiest way to explain our relationship. I want to get you a ring, so others will know you are taken when they look at you.”
That seems quite sweet, I suppose. Thorn is possessive. All my mates are. I can tell they’re not having an easy time sharing me. They all want to be inside me as often and as deeply as they can be. I was a virgin just a day ago and now I have been mated roughly more times than I can count.
“Enjoy the bread,” the waitress says, delivering a basket full of hot bread and butter to the table. “Your meals won’t be too far away.”
“Thank you,” Thorn says.
“Thank you,” I echo.
She goes to do more tasks. It looks like a challenging job. She has so much to do and so much to remember. I know I couldn’t possibly do it.
“Want some?” Thorn offers me the basket.
I shake my head. I am feeling hungry, but this place is making me nervous. I’m used to eating mostly alone, and this feels like eating in the middle of a huge crowd. Any of them might come for me at any moment. My back is toward so many strangers. The energies in here are intense, and so are the scents, and then there is the chatter. It comes from everywhere. I try to concentrate on a few threads of conversation, but I can’t. They’re not talking about anything, and then someone will talk over someone else and my mind is caught in a tumult of nonsense.
“I love your dress, is that cerulean blue?”
“So I told her, there’s no way he’s ever going to catch that fish, and you know what…”
“…his promotion means we can go to the beach…”
“…Forty-three. No. Forty… one? Wait. I think it was forty-four.”
“Oh, my gods, shut up!”
I’m not aware of how loudly I made that exclamation until the restaurant goes quiet, and dozens of eyes swivel to look at me. The quiet only lasts for a moment, then slowly creeps back in as people return to their conversations.
Is this what people are like? And my mates want me to live among an entire city of humans? Absolutely not. The only thing keeping me in my seat is the smell of food, but even that is beginning to wear on me. Some of the tables have their meals. Some of them do not. We do not.