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)
His mom had been great at it.
Duncan focused back on Agnes, his tail swinging around.
“What’s that smell?” Sienna asked out of nowhere. She wrinkled her nose. “It’s like sewage.”
“I think we met a Jenny Greenteeth,” Matti answered.
“A what?” we both said at the same time.
“Jenny Greenteeth.” He scratched his nose. “That’s what they call them in England.”
“What’s a Jenny Greentooth?” Sienna asked, reading my mind.
“Greenteeth, baby. An old crone that lives in a river and eats….” Matti’s eyes flicked over to the truck, where the kids were. His lips and mustache went flat.
I took after Matti and scratched my nose. “I’m impressed you know that much obscure folklore, Matti.”
“My roommate junior year of college was from Lancashire and had this book I read when I took a shit.”
That explained it.
“You guys stink.” Sienna wrinkled her nose. “Some more than others.”
I didn’t think it was us that smelled. I was pretty sure it was Agnes since she was the only one who’d gotten touched, but I didn’t trust the puppy not to bite me if I talked about her. She wasn’t barking anymore as she waited at the truck, her attention still on Duncan.
She was a wary one for sure.
But she was so dang cute.
I got Shiloh’s attention. “Need help getting into the truck?”
He shook his head as he let go of my hand and jumped gracefully into the back seat, landing on the floorboards perfectly. “Come on, Agnes,” he called to his friend. The puppy gave the three of us adults a mean look before backing up and jumping in too… barely making it. Duncan’s tail waved faster, but he didn’t lean down to smell or lick her like he had the boy, Pascal. He gave Shiloh space too, I noticed.
Matti held out his hand. “I’ll drive the rest of the way, okay?”
“Sure,” I agreed. I just wanted to give my boy a hug now. What if that child-eating asshole had found him instead?
He could have lit her on fire, but that was beside the point. I only wanted him to light things on fire that he wanted to light on fire—and that was a thought I didn’t think I would ever have. This whole situation was one I never would’ve imagined either.
“I’ll sit in the back with them if you want to ride shotgun,” I offered to Sienna, who nodded.
It only took a second for me to get in and shut the door. Duncan settled into my lap and licked my cheek. “Hi, Donut.”
His “yes” was soft and gentle. His form of hi. We were both still learning his gift. His voice was nowhere near as clear or strong as his mom’s had been, and I wondered what it would sound like when he was older.
“Is that fire on his tail?” Shiloh whispered.
Pascal, who was leaning over, gawked. “Why are his eyes red?”
“The same reason why yours are gold. You got them from someone in your family,” I answered him.
The boy seemed to think about that for a moment. “He smells like you, but he doesn’t smell like you,” Pascal the wolf boy argued. “You’re not his mom.”
Duncan licked my cheek in a way that felt like an argument against that claim. It sure felt like I was his mom, even if I’d never used the word out loud.
“He didn’t come from my body, but he is my pup,” I tried to explain, gently.
“He wasn’t in your stomach?”
“Nope.”
“Was he in his dad’s stomach? Because my mom said that she wished my dad could have babies, and Dad said that seahorses do. And that maybe other animals do too, but not wolves,” the boy rambled on out of nowhere before making an expectant face.
He actually expected me to answer that?
Sienna turned all the way around in her seat as Matti pulled us back onto the road. Pinching her index finger and thumb together, she dragged them across her lips. Freaking coward.
“I… I really don’t think his dad carried him in his stomach either. I’m pretty sure it was his biological mom.”
“What’s biological?”
This kid hadn’t said a word to Matti during the walk to the car, but now he had a million of them.
I wasn’t exactly qualified to have this conversation. Duncan was the only child I’d spent significant time with since I’d been a kid, and he didn’t argue with me or ask questions. He could push my buttons playfully sometimes, but that was different. He was an angel on four legs. And I just had to peek down at him, finding those big, sweet eyes, to know it was true. He was one of those puppies that looked like he was smiling.
But no one else seemed to want to answer the boy’s question, so I guessed it was up to me. “Uh…” I started fidgeting. “That means....”
There were coughs from the front seat that sounded deceptively like laughs.