Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Yeah, the pull-out method obviously hadn’t been enough. So Remy was an oopsie baby.
I’d found a place to live and moved Soraya in with me to do right by her and the pup. But as soon as she had Remy, Soraya left town. Popped out the baby, took one look at her, and was gone. While she may have returned to the pack again, I’d moved here to Cooper Valley to steer clear. I hadn’t seen her since.
I had no regrets. Remy was everything to me.
It was just that I’d known fuck-all about raising a newborn pup, and it had been a journey to say the least. Especially when I had to take her on the road with me from competition to competition to ride bulls because that was the only way I could save enough money to buy us this place and provide for her.
I was good at it, too. Prize money came in. Sponsorships. Now we were set with a good house in a good town with a good pack.
I went inside and found Remy back in her booster coloring, where she was supposed to have been while I was showering.
I stomped over and kissed the top of her messy redhead. “You scared me, baby.”
My daughter looked up at me with wide, surprised eyes. They were green, like Soraya’s. Like every time I peered into her miniature, innocent face, my chest squeezed up tight.
I loved her so much it physically hurt. The pain of fucking this up–parenting her the wrong way, or fate forbid, ever losing her–had a strangle-hold on my love.
“You were scared?” she asked in wonderment.
I set my hand on my bare chest. “You don’t think daddies can be scared?”
“I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”
I pulled back a chair beside her and plunked into it. I was still wearing nothing but Remy’s undersized towel. “I don’t get scared for me, Remy baby. But you know what scares me a lot?”
Her little forehead crinkled. She had a red ring from the popsicle around her mouth. “What?”
I leaned in and looked into her innocent little eyes. “Thinking something might happen to you.”
“But I’m okay, Daddy.” She reached out and patted my hand. As if she was the one offering comfort. “Joy is my friend.”
Joy. That was the neighbor.
I considered Remy, biting back my automatic response, which would be to tell her not to trust strangers or whatever bullshit parents were supposed to say these days. I’d picked this town, this house, because of how safe it was. How she could go and visit neighbors and play with other kids on the block.
I cocked my head. “How do you know she’s a friend?”
Remy returned to coloring, dragging an orange crayon up and down over a stick figure like she was giving it clothes. “She smells good.”
For some reason, that made goosebumps rise on my arms.
She smells good.
“You were trusting your wolf instincts.” I gave her a nod. Parenting was a little at a time kind of guidance.
Wolf pups didn’t shift until puberty, and some packs–especially those in cities or more integrated with humans–didn’t teach their pups what they were until they were old enough to honor the pack secret.
But I’d had to explain to Remy when we were on the rodeo circuit that I couldn’t be hurt by the bulls because I was a wolf. The animals had scared her, and that helped her watch me without crying every time I let myself get thrown to make it seem realistic. More than that, though, I believed it was important to teach her to listen to her wolf instincts. To differentiate between her animal side and her little girl side. I didn’t know anything about being female, so I was trying my best.
It was true that I had to be careful Remy didn’t say the wrong thing to a human, but I wanted my daughter to know what she was. I was proud of her. Proud of what she was and what she’d become. I’d taught her to distinguish the scent of a human from a wolf. She already knew she could talk freely about what she was in front of wolves, but had to keep our secret from humans.
“Yeah, I know she’s a human, but she’s the good kind.” Remy kept coloring, trading out the orange crayon for a yellow one, which she used to scratch a ball of color over the stick figure’s head.
I scrubbed a hand over my beard. “What’s the good kind?”
“The kind like Joy.”
Kids said the damnedest things. In my mind, I returned to the neighbor’s back stoop. I’d been wrapped up in the relief of finding Remy and the agitation of unused adrenaline, so I hadn’t paid enough attention to the woman. Specifically, since Remy mentioned it, the way she smelled.
But Remy was right. It had been pleasant.