Total pages in book: 202
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
“Okay, can you see when she’s paid up until? And… if she doesn’t turn up in time for that, what happens to her stuff? I wouldn’t want her to lose her things and I really doubt she’ll be able to get here to get her stuff within the next few days but I can for sure get them to her.”
She assesses me shrewdly.
“Like I said, delicate situation. Honest, girlfriend. You know me.”
She gives me another once-over and must decide to trust me because she says, “Wait here.” Then she leaves me with her cart while she rushes to the front office.
When she comes back, she tells me that “Lily” should have checked out yesterday. That because she’s been a good customer, management is giving her today to renew, but Nadia’s mom said that if she doesn’t come in by tomorrow, her things would need to be moved into storage to be held up to thirty days. Nadia’s mom said she was at the diner this morning and the owner said Lily quit due to a family emergency. The owner’s disappointed, said she was a great worker.
After convincing Nadia to let me come in and help her pack up those things and bring them with me, promising to take full responsibility if “Lily” has issues with this, she lets me into the room. And that’s when the mystery of my new sister-in-law deepens.
Everything is ready to go already, like she was planning to come back and get her things quickly. I open the suitcase and there’s just two changes of clothes and a few toiletries, plus a pair of sneakers. Folded on the bed I find two clean diner uniforms. I find a bag behind the ironing board in the small wardrobe that has wrapped gifts with tags on them.
I can scent the faint aromas of three male shifter scents in this room. One alpha, two betas, I suspect. One of those scents matches the faint beta scent I can now smell in the library – the dead shifter they brought to the basement.
Most shifters wouldn’t smell it since he’s in the freezer, but I do. And it’s been making it difficult to be there.
Riley killed that dude for abducting Erica. And now the air is filled with Riley’s claiming scent. And though the whole thing is upsetting and concerning, the scent of Riley’s mating brings relief. While people in the know initially thought she might be the wicked witch of the west for what she did to Rye, I quickly saw it’s not the case. And that’s part of why I haven’t jumped to conclusions about my brother’s mate either.
We’re seeing that this council’s pairings are unique. Last council had six of our seven alphas mate with female shifters, the only anomaly being my dad’s first mating to Greyson’s bio mom, a witch. But this time we’ve so far got two humans, a witch, and finally a she-shifter.
With three left to go I have to wonder how it’ll go. I know how I hope it goes for at least one of them. Well, two. Because I know that though Cicely won’t admit it, she hopes Linc wakes up one day soon and knows it’s her.
Buzz among unmated women in the pack is that at least we’ve finally got one female shifter in the mix, even though she did what she did. Even though she’s not local. We were beginning to wonder if there would be any of our kind at all and this was concerning to some because of what it might do to our bloodlines going forward.
This irked me, of course, because I’m not full-blooded shifter so I can’t give birth to a full-blooded shifter and if I do wind up with the shifter I want I don’t know if my being the dame who sires them will affect that child’s ability to shift or be on a future council, but talk like this is nothing new… I’ve heard biased opinions (and been the butt of jokes) on mixed race pack members my whole life. Nobody teases Grey for being half witch because he’s a council super-alpha so clearly even though he’s only half wolf shifter genetically speaking, he’s more alpha than most of our male population.
The other reason I came to town today was sparked by an idea I got while visiting with Erica Young in her cool van the other day. To pick up my online order at the Drowsy Hollow shipping store. I didn’t want it to come to our village where there could be questions, especially questions from Cicely who might catch the fragrance. I wouldn’t be prepared to lie to her and certainly wouldn’t want to admit the truth – that I placed a rush order for a pheromone perfume on the internet to see if I could catch Jase’s attention with it.