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)
And worse.
“I’m mad,” Agnes threw in from where she was walking close to my other side. Her hand kept brushing my thigh, and I was trying so hard to pretend I didn’t notice just how purposeful it seemed. But I’d seen her face when I’d taken my clothes off to wring them out. Maybe she hadn’t made an actual peep, but there had been no hiding the emotion coming from her either. She’d been just as scared as the rest of us. “You’re dumb!”
“Who’s dumb?” Pascal asked, sounding offended and not like he’d been blubbering for his mom and dad minutes ago.
“You’re dumb. You and Shiloh,” the little girl accused.
“I’m not dumb. You’re dumb!” Pascal claimed, leaning over my head again so I had to reach up and grab his hips so he wouldn’t topple over and send us both headfirst into the ground. A concussion was the last thing I needed. And if we didn’t find the UTV soon, I was plucking him off my shoulders regardless of what he wanted. He was too dang heavy.
“I’m dumb?” Shiloh sounded more than a little hurt.
The universe was balancing out my perfect Duncan with these agents of chaos. It had to be. It’s what I deserved.
Almost like he knew I was thinking about him, a nudge had me glancing at Duncan trotting beside me. “Love you,” I told him as my calf cramped so hard, I wanted to stop and massage it, but if I bent over, I might not get back up.
“Love,” he told me in return, watching me carefully with those incredible, observant eyes.
Shiloh and Agnes froze at the same time Pascal tensed up on my shoulders.
No. I couldn’t deal with this right now, I thought, as I paused right where we were, expecting the worst. If this was some magical being that liked eating people, I was going to scream. I wasn’t going to break something; I was going to—
“You’re gonna be in sooooo much trouble,” Agnes cooed as something big crashed in the distance, getting louder and louder, closer and closer.
I couldn’t deal with another catastrophe right now. Please let this be help. Please don’t let this be a Mothman or whatever other cannibalistic asshole might be in this forest.
“Is it someone we know?” I asked, ready to lower the kids and hide them if I had to. It didn’t sound small. Or friendly.
But I sensed the wrecking ball of magic before anyone answered.
A flash of a coat appeared in the distance, and the sight and color of it relaxed me as much as my frozen body could handle. Massive, fluffy Henri was flying across the ground, his long strides eating up the distance. He looked like something out of a children’s fantasy book, all imposing and menacing and just… unreal.
But he was very real.
Because at that exact moment, on my shoulders, the boy shook. “I’m sorry, Henri!” Pascal shouted in a broken voice.
The black wolf slid to a stop a few feet away, head held high, his posture regal. His coat was so glossy I would’ve sworn he got regular baths. He was beautiful.
The air shimmered, and in the place where a colossal, black wolf had stood, there was now a man with the same color hair. A very pissed-looking man whose amber eyes slid from one child to another before finally landing on me. The muscle in his cheek popped.
I’d barely seen him since my talk with Franklin, and the times I had, had been through the window across from my room that faced the parking lot. He’d been working extra-long hours again, and when he wasn’t, from what Randall told me, he was dealing with ranch stuff. The same old story.
Matti had been right when he’d called him a principal.
Regardless, I liked to think Henri was giving me space to deal with the news Franklin had shared, but there might have been a chance he was still mad at me after our conversation with the Alaskan leader. Not that that conversation had even made all that much sense in the first place, but he hadn’t made the effort to bring it up again so chances were that maybe he’d seen my point. Maybe he was fine now with letting me keep Alaska as a backup option.
I didn’t let that possibility hurt my feelings. It was what I’d asked for. It was what I needed.
And he was here.
Glaring, but he was here.
Taking us all in while we looked like a million bucks.
There was a drowned rat on my shoulders, a protective puppy at my side, Shiloh looked like he’d been haunted by ghosts for a century, and Agnes was about ready to fight someone.
And I was more than likely a mix of all of them.
I kind of wished someone had a camera so I could remember this moment forever. Me and my band of magical menaces. I loved them.