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)
It felt like he curled around me more in response, but maybe it was my imagination or wishful thinking. And after a while, after he’d ignored my comment long enough—which was all right too because what was he supposed to say? That I was welcome?—he asked, “What happened? Did the gnomes do something?”
It was probably for the best that he let my comment go, not that I would take it back anyway. He did make me feel safe, and I owed Matti even more gratitude than I already did for bringing this man, with this capacity of protectiveness, into my life. Especially now when I needed it the most. When I needed it more than I ever had before, because life didn’t revolve around me anymore.
“They didn’t do anything,” I replied. “They just confused me.”
“That all?”
He knew that wasn’t all. He had to be able to sense it. “Sad too,” I admitted.
A soft touch stroked down my bed head. “Why sad?”
I wasn’t proud of the way my inhale went in shakily through my nose. Nothing had happened. I had never been the kind of person to focus too much on ifs or coulds. But here I was clinging to Henri like someone had actually kicked me while I was down. “After you took off, I wondered if maybe they heard something, so I called out for them, and they actually came. I saw them in a knot in a tree over there.”
His pec muscles went hard, and I tried not to be impressed. “What knot?”
“I’ll show you. I don’t know how they did it.”
“What’d they say?”
“They weren’t sleeping, so they didn’t hear the ‘child,’ but as soon as I mentioned it, how it happened in a dream, they said it had to be my father or my ‘kin,’” I told him.
“Your family?” There was a delayed kind of interest in his tone. Or maybe it was wariness.
“That’s what they said, and then they told me that I’m the child the voice in the dream was calling out for, and I told them that that didn’t make any sense because whoever my biological parents are, they didn’t want me in the first place—”
He growled.
I had faint memories of my dad—my werewolf one—growling when he’d hug me after something had made me upset. He hadn’t liked me being sad either. But it had been a long, long time since I’d experienced it so up close and personal.
It was awesome. A little chainsaw-y, but better.
I smashed my cheek against him even more. “It’s stupid to be sad over people who never wanted to know me and never gave a crap about what happened to me in the first place, especially when I ended up with a family who did, but…” I shrugged and tightened my fingers around his waist. “If it is someone I’m related to, why would they be doing this? Could it be my dad? Do I have siblings? And why now? And how, Henri? In our dreams?
“They said….” I didn’t think I could keep what they’d suggested to myself. I found that I wanted to tell him. “They said the old ones don’t like being ignored. And something about a dreamer returning?” I whispered. “I don’t get it.”
The growl hadn’t gone anywhere while I’d talked, but it had lowered to a hum that reminded me of the volume Duncan reached when he snored, quiet and steady. “I’ve got my suspicions,” Henri murmured.
My body tensed, but I refused to let go of him. I’d been raised by the belief system that you avoided talking about the beings once called gods. About the magic in the world that was even more difficult to explain than a person turning into a four-legged being. About the magic in the world that had left such a sour taste in so many lives, that fear had guarded the gods’ secrets even more closely than anyone else’s.
“What do you think?” I asked him, gulping while I did it.
All those hard muscles, even the parts of his thighs touching mine, went solid. Then I heard and felt him take a deep breath. “Let’s sit for a minute. The twigs are annoying.”
I’d forgotten he was barefoot. Nodding, I pulled away before he sank into a cross-legged position right where we were. He set his hand on his thigh. Before I could wonder if that was the kind of invitation my brain was telling me it was, he tapped the cotton stretched tight over his legs. “Come here, Nina.”
This was… new.
“You don’t want to get a splinter,” that velvet voice warned.
I wasn’t sure I was slick enough to hide my reaction—my eyes going wide—but I tried to make it seem like it was no big deal to the best of my ability. His reasoning made sense, and did I really want a stick digging into my butt? Not so much. So, I did what he said and sank onto the inner thigh of the leg he’d patted, tucking my feet into a spot under his opposite thigh, my knees to my chest. If the position gave me a really, really good view of his bare chest, it was just a bonus. Like a triple Yahtzee.