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)
Agnes didn’t stop, but that was okay. I still wanted to hug her. I bet it’d be like holding a cloud.
Matti shifted the child in his arms, who under normal circumstances would have been past the age of being carried around. “Ready to head back and take them home?”
The sooner we got there and got an answer to my situation, the better, right? “Let’s do it,” I agreed.
Chapter
Three
The centaur child kept peeking at me as we walked. He was so gangly, it was adorable, and with his splash of freckles, huge brown eyes, and eyelashes so long they looked like extensions? I wanted to give him a hug too.
“Are you okay?” I asked him after the fifth time I caught him.
On the ground, trotting next to him, Agnes the crazy puppy followed. She had tried to bite Matti when he’d offered to take her. She was on her own now.
“Can I hold your hand?” the little boy asked shyly.
That made me miss Duncan, and it had been less than an hour since I’d left him with Sienna.
I held my hand out, and his slipped into mine. It was warm and sweaty, and it made me like him even more. “What’s your name?”
“Shiloh,” the centaur/goat child answered. “What’s your name?”
I had already given it to him, but he’d had other things to worry about. “Evangelina but everyone calls me Nina.” Not even my own parents had called me by my full name.
He squeezed my fingers before gesturing toward the adorable menace at his side. “That’s Agnes, and that’s Pascal.”
I nodded and smiled, glancing up to make sure Matti was doing fine as he carried who I now knew was Pascal in his arms as he led us through the forest. We had decided it would be faster and easier to drive us all back. I just hoped one of their pack didn’t come looking for them before we got there, thinking we were trying to kidnap them. That would be a great introduction.
Shiloh squeezed my fingers again, and I focused down on him. His eyes went so wide, so dreamy, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It definitely wasn’t what he said next.
“Are you a forest princess?”
Up ahead, Matti tried to muffle a sound. I pretended I didn’t hear him. “I’m not, but thank you for asking.”
“You look like one,” he told me in a small, timid voice.
I jiggled his hand in mine. “Thank you.” If things worked out here, he was definitely on my Christmas list.
Shiloh kept looking at me with that innocent, curious face. “What are you?” he whispered.
It was a taboo thing to ask someone what they were. Either you offered it, or you didn’t. It was a sign of trust to tell another person your heritage if it wasn’t obvious by scent or feel. I’d been told that all werewolves smelled slightly similar, and I could confirm that they all felt a certain way, like all ogres, trolls, and other beings like that. The same way an accent would give you an idea of where someone was from. Magic was the same in its way.
But, as I knew firsthand, a lot of people were very, very protective of that information for their own reasons, and I again wondered how many of those beings sometimes just didn’t know what they were—look at me and Duncan. Regardless, asking a person’s heritage was the equivalent of someone asking what color your nipples were or how big your penis was. So, it was rare to ever have someone just ask, if they had manners.
But Shiloh, who was holding my hand like we were old friends, eyes glittering when they met mine, looked so guileless….
I’d give him my bank account numbers if he looked at me that way when he asked.
“Back there… with that… you know… you smelled like… you smelled like—” His shoulders went up and down as he struggled to express himself. “—a birthday cake.”
That was a new one.
I think I might have blushed.
“I don’t know for sure,” I whispered back, honestly. “I never met my real mom or dad.” I had some ideas, sure. One was a very, very good guess, but most of the people in my life had all agreed that it was better for me to never actually voice my guess because of superstition with saying certain names out loud. The man and the woman who I considered in every way to be my parents didn’t share DNA with me, but that didn’t mean much to anyone. Like Matti had said: werewolves didn’t care.
Big brown eyes blinked before the child frowned. “Never?”
I shook my head, grateful that this wasn’t a sensitive topic for me. It was like talking about a celebrity, in a way. Or characters I’d read about in books.
“What do you look like?” He meant in my other body, like how he could go from half goat to human.