Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Nina Popoca needs help.
So, so much of it.
The only place she can find that help is on a sprawling ranch in Colorado. A place hiding more than a community filled with magical creatures trying to live their lives in safety and in peace. A village that might hold the answers to questions she’s had her entire life.
And if that ranch is owned by her best friend’s hunky cousin?
…there are worse things in the world than having to live right by Henri Blackrock
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter
One
Though most of the statements regarding The Night of the Meteor vary depending on geographical location, two claims remain undisputed: it happened on a night with a full moon, and the world was never the same again.
I wasn’t surprised they didn’t know what to say. What had just come out of my mouth sounded like something I’d hallucinated—or an excerpt from a fantasy novel.
But this was no fairy tale. No legend. Not even a bestselling novel being adapted into a movie.
It was reality.
My reality.
So, I wasn’t exactly surprised either when my two best friends leaned forward, mouths slightly open, and said almost simultaneously, “Explain that again.” The only part they differed on was that Sienna called me “Nina” at the end of her sentence, and Matti didn’t.
I almost made fun of them for being that kind of married couple now. It was one thing to finish each other’s sentences, but for them to choose almost all the same words and have nearly identical expressions? It made me want to bear hug them and tease them at the same time.
But we didn’t have time for that. I could make fun of them later.
First, I needed them to understand. Needed them to help me. Help us.
The truth was, I couldn’t blame my friends for struggling to comprehend what I’d just told them. I had a hard time accepting everything that had happened over the last month, and I’d watched it go down with my own two eyes. I had lived it. None of us were strangers to unbelievable things, but this pushed the limit.
Dipping my chin like I hadn’t looked at the body sleeping in my arms at least ten thousand times in the past couple of years—a huge chunk of those peeks having taken place over the last few weeks—I focused down on Duncan for the ten-thousandth and one time. I smiled despite the uncertainty and near panic I’d been living on the verge of lately. Because he always cheered me up. Honestly, it was impossible not to be happy when the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life snored in a way that reminded me of how my dad used to nap in his recliner after dinner.
In Duncan’s case, it was a lot of work being adorable; it was a full-time job.
And maybe it was better just to show them why I was here instead of explaining with words one more time.
This whole situation was half miracle and half Teen Wolf, Lord of the Rings, and Ancient Aliens combined, after all. It depended on how you looked at it and what you believed. But that wasn’t important either. They needed to see the big picture first.
In our case, I guess you could say the puppy-sized picture.
Peeling back the blanket I had him wrapped in—to hide Duncan, not because he was cold—I angled my arms so Matti and Sienna could get a better look at the ball of black fur that had turned my life upside down—not once, but twice now. I wasn’t mad about it. Overwhelmed and more scared than I wished, but not angry.
Unlike some people I knew, I didn’t believe that Fate was working behind the scenes, smoking a cigarette and planning people’s lives out before they were even born. For one, that was too much work with eight billion people on the planet. I didn’t have a second reason because I thought the first one was enough.
But sometimes things happened that made absolutely no sense in the moment but eventually turned out to be blessings. Maybe you cried before you saw the good in them, but that was hindsight.
I figured there were plenty of things in the world that weren’t easily explained, but it didn’t make them any less real.
Like countless beings in existence at that moment.
Like every person in this room, if you wanted to be specific, and especially like the small body tucked up against me, which was why I was here.
Without the blanket covering the majority of him, Duncan’s black coat gave the initial impression that he was a short-haired black dog, and his long ears gave the idea he had some kind of hound in him, but as I tugged the blanket away inch by inch, the poofy tail that could have belonged on a fox peeked out.
And so did the star of this whole shit show.
The moment would have called for spirit fingers if our situation wasn’t so dire.
“He has a flame on the tip of his tail now,” I told them like they couldn’t see it with their own eyes.
It was one of the two things on Duncan’s body that were a dead giveaway that he was no baby basset or bloodhound or even any kind of household pet—not that he’d ever been, but it hadn’t been so noticeable before. You had to have an excellent nose or be sensitive to magic to mistake him for anything else.