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)
The man I liked to think of as my friend looked at me. Really looked at me. It was a long, serious inspection that made me want to squirm because I couldn’t tell what was going through his head despite the fact he had just said what I had done was a good thing. His forehead scrunched and his voice was low. “I used to wonder what you were going to be when you grew up.”
He had?
He drew his palm down his mouth. “How old were you when your magic finally kicked in?” he asked.
Here I was, feeling shy all over again. “Sixteen.”
That seemed to surprise him as much as it had me when it had finally happened. I’d started to think it never would, that maybe that “different thing” everyone else had always brought up with my scent was a fluke. I had assumed I was half human, and because of that, I’d kept my expectations low. That maybe that was why I’d been given up to a magical couple.
Mythical beings didn’t have kids with humans because there would have been no hiding what they inherited and would eventually become.
As for children of other magical beings who could pass for human, there wasn’t a whole lot on them. Most of the stories I could find of demigod kids in mythology didn’t have happy endings. For all I knew, maybe nothing about them changed either. Maybe for some of them, depending on who their parents were, they never even realized there was something different about them.
Then it had happened.
My parents had burst into my room in the middle of the night, the moon bright and full in the sky, because they’d smelled something different in the house. Something that shouldn’t have been there. That had never been there before.
I wasn’t sure who’d been more shocked to find that the only thing that had changed was me.
One moment, I’d been awake, the same as I’d always been. Then I’d fallen asleep, and when I was woken up, there had been this feeling in my body that hadn’t existed before. This thing that felt like a very calm butterfly in my stomach.
It hadn’t left me since. It had gotten easier to ignore, or maybe to live with… as much as I could. When we’d learned just what my magic meant, I’d had to accept real quick that while I could pretend it wasn’t there, I had to keep control of it at all times.
Fortunately for me, I didn’t have a temper; the most I did was talk a whole lot of crap when I was mad. I never really wished ill on anybody, and I was definitely a lover more than I would ever be a fighter.
At least until a loved one was endangered, then, even if I didn’t have in me what I had, I would’ve found a way to torture someone.
“I’m not asking what your magic means, but I am asking how much control you have over it,” he explained, probably seeing the borderline panic on my features. “You said something about the fertility aspect being involuntary. That’s not all though, is it?”
I hesitated, but then I shook my head.
The fact he wasn’t asking about my ancestry said he might have some vague suspicions. Or maybe he thought I was a chihuahua; I might not be the biggest or the baddest, but that wasn’t going to stop me from going after your ankles and whatever else I could reach.
Henri didn’t look concerned though.
But I was. Because I hadn’t wanted to talk about this, and he might have a good feeling that there was something in me that was different from most other magical people. I could tell everyone here not to worry as much as I wanted, but he’d made it clear from the beginning that he protected the ranch’s residents.
He wanted to know if my bite was as big as my bark or if I was just bluffing. So what was I supposed to say?
I couldn’t lie.
So I fidgeted, and I shrugged. “It’s more complicated than just having control over it, like how all you need to do is think you want to be a wolf and it happens. Right? Then how, when you want to be this version of Henri, you come back to it and your clothes are on. My body doesn’t change. The fertility, I have no control over.” That reminded me of the gnomes’ comments. We could circle back to that. “The other parts of what I am? I do feel that in me, and I choose whether to let it… make my hands tickle or not.” Did that make sense?
I wasn’t sure it did. Not entirely, and he confirmed it when he murmured, “Your hands tickle?”
I nodded.
He wanted to ask. He wanted to know so bad, but I wasn’t willing to tell him yet. We were on the right track to being friends, and I was sure he liked me. We’d spent too much time together to think otherwise.