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)
Six weeks ago, Duncan’s tail had solely been fluffy, and his eyes had been a bright brown. We had known he wasn’t what he looked to be—Matti and Sienna could smell it, and I could sense it—but now it was blatantly obvious, and they hadn’t even seen his eyeballs yet. In the span of a single night, he had gone from a believable black puppy with a mixture of breeds and a hint of magic in him to something else. Something undeniable.
Unfortunately, from the shocked glint in Matti’s dark brown eyes and the way Sienna’s mouth was hanging open even wider than it had after my crappy explanation, it confirmed that any hopes I’d had of Duncan being normal-ish were long gone.
Because normal-ish was the most I could ask for.
I had crossed every finger and toe on my body in hopes they were going to tell me he was a werewolf. Any kind of mythological wolf creature would have been perfect. Even a Cerberus would have been great; there were a lot of tales about them out there. But a werewolf would have been my first choice, if I’d had one. Wolves were some of the most highly revered creatures throughout history.
Sometimes even my brain struggled to understand what kind of universe we lived in that Duncan being one would have made life so much easier.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine explaining that to someone who didn’t know the truth about the beings that roamed the planet in plain sight. People could barely tolerate others exactly like them. You tell them that magic crashed into Earth thousands of years ago and that all the mythology and folklore that had been written about was based on reality, and that would send almost anyone into a fit.
There were countless movies and stories—fiction and nonfiction, if you counted history books with mythology in them—about humans that could shapeshift. There were stories about wolf shapeshifters that dated back to Babylonian times. I was pretty sure cultures on every continent had tales of them. I could remember sitting through a class on Aztec history and having to keep a straight face while the professor went on about the symbolism regarding the Aztec believing that some of their warriors were nahuales, shapeshifters.
I’d gone through a phase as a teenager where I’d read every werewolf romance I could find, and I knew the truth. What normal people weren’t aware of was that there wasn’t just one type. Off the top of my head, I could name several types of werewolves. There were the Amarok, a line of massive wolves whose ancestors inspired the Inuit stories. An iron wolf, from those found in Baltic tales. Someone had told me once that there was a rumor even Fenrir, from Norse mythology, had a sacred line still in existence. Most of the ones I’d known and grown up with had been descended from the Mexican wolves who traced their ancestry back to Mesoamerican myths.
It was easy now to look back and think all those ancient civilizations had nothing better to do than use their active imaginations to explain things like droughts and terrible storms as the work of beings with good and terrible gifts, but some people knew the truth.
They hadn’t been making things up.
The fact was, in a world of mythological legends that weren’t exactly fiction, being a person who could turn back and forth between a man and a wolf—it was their choice after all, and their size depended on their heritage—was a well-accepted concept by those aware of the magic that had permeated the world and its beings a very long time ago. The magical.
And if anyone knew what wasn’t as easily accepted, it was me.
“Nina,” Matti exhaled my name. He sounded like he was having trouble remembering how to breathe. His eyes were wider than I had ever seen, and we’d gotten into trouble together plenty of times as kids, so I’d seen them big. “How the fuck does he have a flame on his tail, and how the hell didn’t that blanket catch on fire?”
I snorted at his deranged tone. Wasn’t that the freaking question? “I was kind of hoping you two might know,” I answered him with a tiny shrug so I didn’t wake my donut up. “And the flame is magical. It only burns things when he’s scared or mad. Neat, huh?”
I knew Matti was transfixed when he didn’t respond; he always had something to say. Part of me was convinced he might not have even heard me. It was one thing to come across a man walking along the street, radiating magic that he carried in his cells and looking to the world like just a normal, tall guy when you knew in your gut—or through your nose—that he wasn’t.
But this was different. And I had known it to some degree from the moment that Duncan had come into my life. Now? I definitely had a better understanding of how unique he was.