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)
He blinked.
I felt like I was in a daze as I watched him leave the kitchen without another word. Some part of me recognized that I had to tell Henri what had just happened. What I’d admitted.
But before all that, there was another conversation I needed to have first.
For all of a disappointment as Dom might be, he was still Agnes’s dad, and she was still too young to process why people were the way they were, and maybe I shouldn’t have handled this in front of her.
Spinning around, I took in the features I’d gotten to know. It was the same level of serious as it always was. She didn’t seem mad, but….
“Mini Wolf, I’m sorry for talking to him like that in front of you,” I told her, ready to apologize some more, ready to figure out how to explain just what I’d implied.
But in front of my face, her eyebrows knit together, and she shrugged in a way that seemed familiar. Then she shocked me for the third time in a matter of minutes. The girl who’d tried to bite a green river crone shrugged. “It’s not my fault he’s mean.” She even blinked while she said it.
My eyebrows shot up my forehead, and I blinked right back at her. “No,” I agreed, “it’s not.”
Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Duncan look back and forth between us, and I had to fight the urge to smile when he was looking up at me like that.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, taking in all those small features for signs that she might be traumatized. But… there weren’t any?
“Yeah,” she scoffed, like I was dumb for asking, right as Henri and Franklin both walked in.
What were the chances he didn’t smell Dominic’s presence in the room?
“Morning, Franklin. Morning, Henri,” I piped up, taking in Henri’s uniform. He had the black on black again, black tactical-looking pants, and a short-sleeved black polo. If someone was going to twist my arm, I’d say it was my favorite of all his outfits.
Other than his sleeping pants one with no shirt.
Henri stopped dead smack in the middle of the kitchen, halfway to the island and the range. His expression was already suspicious. “What’s going on?” He drew the question out as his eyes narrowed. “Why was Dom in here?”
I was too busy trying to think of an appropriate response when Agnes answered, “He made Nina mad, and she was gonna kick his ass.”
I choked on freaking air.
But before I could laugh—or do anything else—Henri replied, “Thank you, Ladybug.” He paused. “Say ‘butt’ instead, okay?”
“Okay,” the little girl agreed in a cheery voice.
I almost didn’t want to glance in his direction. I didn’t need a good nose to know he was mad. But I peeked anyway. I had just been thinking about telling him everything that had happened.
And from the barely contained expression on those sharp features—he was definitely mad—there was no time better than the present.
I scratched my cheek and reminded myself that I’d done the right thing and now I had to live with it. “Henri, can I talk to you for a minute?”
His attention shifted toward me, his mouth flat, that cheek muscle popping, but he nodded. It was his slow nod though. His angry one. He was already expecting the worst.
“Franklin, do you mind watching Duncan for a few minutes?” I asked.
The elder looked like he had no idea what was going on as he stood by the main island, but he nodded.
Now or never. “Duncan, stay here, okay?” I told my puppy, who was still standing beside his friend.
“Yes,” my boy answered.
It made me feel like a coward, but I purposely avoided making eye contact with Henri as I walked over to him, and neither one of us said a word as we left the kitchen. Out the front door, we went as I led him to my trailer. It wasn’t much, but something was better than nothing. I opened the unlocked door and waved him in with a small, uncertain smile, not sure how he was going to look at me after this conversation.
Henri reached over my head to hold it open, and he tipped his chin toward the inside of the trailer. I went in, and he followed. I took a seat at my dining room table, and he stood in front of it instead, arms crossed over his chest in a way that reminded me of my first day here.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” The werewolf didn’t bother wasting time. He’d smoothed his features into that neutral expression that was my least favorite version of Henri.
“Not really.” I hesitated. “But I need to.”
That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting from the way his eyebrow went up a millimeter like usual. “Why don’t you want to?” he asked.