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)
I regretted going into that room with them tonight to begin with. All of this could have been avoided if I’d walked away when Dominic started his BS. If I’d been an even bigger person.
He was being really nice worrying about me.
“I understand. I’ll try to keep my distance from him,” I promised.
His features twisted. He wanted to know what I was. It was one thing not to fear him or Spencer at a distance. One thing to scare a swamp crone, but that moron had been in my face. I could’ve smelled his breath, and that hadn’t been enough to get me to step away.
And that made me mad the more I thought about it because how many people had he intimidated before by doing the same crap he’d done to me?
Those bright orange-brown eyes moved over my face, his forehead furrowing all over again. “You make people fertile, but you also scare the shit out of beings four times bigger than you,” he stated, walking the intrusive line perfectly.
A small part of me wished I could have denied it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. I shrugged to play it off. “Something like that?”
My answer rolled around in his head, and he plucked my words apart, trying to figure out how they fit together. How they could make sense. I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know either.
“I don’t want anyone to be scared of me,” I admitted. I didn’t want him to be scared of me, more like. Matti wasn’t. Neither was Sienna. But they knew me.
Henri, though, didn’t say he was scared. He didn’t say he wasn’t either. The only thing he did was keep watching me. His mouth formed a flat little line after a moment.
“Look.” I hoped I didn’t regret saying what was about to come out of my mouth. “Dominic can think whatever he wants. He can paint runes on his door to make himself feel better, but… I don’t want you to be scared of me, Fluff. That’s all.”
The way his eyes widened, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but for some reason, admitting that to him felt kind of relieving.
I gave him a little smile. “But you probably aren’t scared of a whole lot, huh?” The nerves were there, in my voice, in my skin, in my soul. “I guess there isn’t a whole lot that could scare you or bully you. Agnes, maybe. The way she looks at me sometimes is intimidating. She’s got her glare locked in.”
Look at me trying to change the subject.
Fortunately, he either felt generous or the idea of him being scared of me was so ridiculous he could move on from it that fast.
“I wasn’t bullied when I was young. Now…?” The corner of his mouth gave the world a faint half smile that I liked as much as I liked a full-blown one. “The pups make up for it.”
I hoped the universe would bless him ten lifetimes for letting me move on from talking about myself. “I guess it’s a good thing Duncan can’t talk back yet.”
Henri’s eyes flicked around me to the side of the door, taking a peek at the puppy passed out on the bed. “He’s a good pup.”
“He is,” I agreed. The best one.
He focused back on me, jaw tense. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of everyone, but the elders are going to want to talk to you about the gnomes’ visit tonight.”
Ah. That’s why he was here. “Right.” I stood up straight. “I was planning on talking to you about them, but then all that happened downstairs….”
“They say anything I need to know about?”
“They said so much stuff I didn’t understand, Fluff,” I trailed off, going through the list in my head. “It was two of them today, the oldest of their clan. They said that they were there to be around me?”
He raised his eyebrow that mini amount that was standard for him, and I nodded.
“I might be imagining it, but that sure sounded to me like they thought I could help them have kids or something. Then they brought up my father—my DNA dad, not my werewolf one—and how they thought he was dead but they were happy to hear that he isn’t?” I rambled out in a single breath, feeling as overwhelmed as I had in the moment when the conversation had gone down. “I said that they probably had the wrong person, and they claimed that they didn’t. That the person they’re talking about is him.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and threw out the last part. “Did you know that obsidian doesn’t hide magic from them?”
That dark eyebrow went up another millimeter, and he must have been used to dealing with people on the verge of hysteria because he didn’t seem bothered by my rambling at all. “I didn’t know that,” was what he decided to respond with first.