Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Come on, though, like he needed the additional verification that his sire was in fact back, had actually met him here just nights ago?
Aware his head was fucked, he rerouted around the fountain that was shut down not just for the season, but because no one lived on the property anymore. As he made the half circle, he glanced across at the carriage house’s shuttered visage, the windows all battened down, its front door snow streaked and wedged with drifts.
It was as if centuries had passed since the last resident had shut things up and driven away with their shit, the whole property like the artifact of a previous civilization, its leftovers waiting for a decoding that would never be totally right.
When he got to the base of the mansion’s steps, there was so much accumulation that the levels leading up to the cathedral-worthy facade were just an ascension, their contours buffed out of existence under the blanket of an infinity of flakes.
Just like the stars in the sky. Too many to count.
After a shuffle of bad footing, he approached the imperial door. The copper key he used to open the old-fashioned lock was something he’d stolen almost a decade before. He’d snuck into his mahmen’s room, and gone to the back of her closet. There, in a duffle bag, had been sacred things, things he knew he shouldn’t have been fucking around with.
Because they were his sire’s.
He’d violated the privacy and the secrets, though—and hadn’t felt any guilt. He’d been about to go through his transition, and given his bloodline, there’d been a very good chance he wasn’t going to live.
So yeah, he’d needed to see what his dead dad had left behind, and like the heavy key could have gone to any other door? It had taken him a couple of days to get out here, and he’d had to steal one of the doggen’s cars to make the trip. He’d also needed a map because he hadn’t been completely sure where the mansion was.
But Great Bear Mountain? Well, that was easy to find, and he’d gone around all the rural roads at its base, trying every lane into the dense trees until he’d met with the mhis barrier. Getting through the wonky masking, fighting the disorientation and the nausea, persevering even as his heart had pounded with something close to fear… had been his first opponent in so many ways.
And he’d been in the habit of not quitting since then.
As he reached the mansion’s portal—
A tremendous gust of wind punched him between the shoulder blades, his torso acting as the spinnaker for his lower body, the whole of him shoved face-first into the carved panel. He managed to catch himself before he ended up with a pair of black eyes and a nose that needed a splint, but the almost-assault didn’t improve his mood.
Whatever did, though.
Well, he could think of one thing.
One… person.
Forcing the key into its slot, he cranked the shank and felt resistance as the cold tumblers shifted. When he went to work on the handle, there was a squeak of metal—and that got louder as he opened things up, the hinges that were big as a male’s forearm protesting.
Fritz certainly came here and kept after the place. These frigid nights, though. No amount of WD-40’ing was enough to keep things smooth. For that, you needed to have people coming and going, in and out over the hours. Steady streams of males and females.
Like hinges, people were subject to rust, he reflected.
Sometimes he thought his anger was because he wasn’t letting anybody in or out of his own life—
“Stop it.”
Stepping inside, he closed himself in the vestibule and stamped his shitkickers on the marble floor. No mat to catch a male’s heavy treads. There must have been one before, back when the Brotherhood and First Family had all lived here together with the other fighters and the staff.
He’d been a toddler then. So he didn’t remember much. Hardly anything, really.
Why he continued to come back to this empty husk of a house was a pathetic reflex he kept hidden even as his visits were no doubt caught by all of the security cameras.
Although maybe the monitoring had been abandoned after all these decades.
Whatever, this was so much better than going home, especially on a night like tonight. And if someone wanted a piece of him? They could make the trip and kiss his ass.
Opening the vestibule’s door, he looked across the acre-sized foyer to the staircase that poured down from the second level. The carpet was red as blood and wide as a river, like the elevator scene from The Shining had been relocated from a hotel to Windsor-fucking-Castle and set up on the second-floor landing. And talk about luxe. Even in the dull light, the gold balustrades glowed, and so did all the crystal hanging from the sconces and the light fixtures on the walls. And then there was the marble and malachite columns. And the yawning caverns on either side of him, homes to all kinds of hibernating furniture and antiques.