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)
The man who was responsible for the great and terrible magic in me was out cold.
My uncle cleared his throat again. “He’s sleeping. I didn’t kill him.”
I wasn’t sure that was ever a sentence I’d imagined hearing, but… this was my life now.
And maybe I should’ve been irritated, but it was pretty freaking awesome.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
I knew it was dumb.
I also knew that there was no reason why we couldn’t wait one more day to do this.
There’s no rush, Franklin had insisted earlier when I’d stammered my way through our plan.
There was, but there wasn’t.
The hellhound brothers had decided on the same day we’d met that they wanted to extend their visit. They’d explained their desire to spend more time with Duncan, who was, in fact, their little brother. Henri confirmed it too, after they’d taken off their bracelets and let the cool wash of their magic fill everyone’s senses. Whether they had the same dad or not wasn’t something I needed to know badly enough to ask any time soon. But maybe someday.
Their mother, they explained, was a long-lived being, known as the first hellhound in many places, and a fairy hound in others. But unlike Duncan, their mother had raised them until they’d turned fifteen and had left them behind in Alaska, where they’d spent the majority of their lives since. No one knew why she had abandoned Duncan without an explanation, much less what she’d been up to since leaving her children so many years ago, but at some point, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter.
It wasn’t like I wanted her to come back.
That was a terrible thought, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. Not anymore. I loved him, I called dibs on him, and that was the whole point as to why I needed to get this conversation over with.
Well, needed the hellhound brothers to get this conversation over with. I was just an innocent bystander. A bystander whose whole world hinged on the outcome of it.
Like the moon had been able to tell that these few days were some of the most important in my life, she had been out in her full glory every night since the siblings had arrived. Brilliant and bold, making the magic in the air so much sweeter and stronger. Her light felt like a hug to me.
Or as Pascal had called it, moonshine. The nonalcoholic kind.
A big, furry body appeared between some trees up ahead, and I sat up straight, catching the amber eyes set in a dark, sharp face. A predator. This forest’s largest one.
Henri was so quiet when he wanted to be.
The imposing wolf, part Amarok, part Fenrir, stalked over while I sat there in the clearing, his long face dipping low to nose at my cheeks, at my neck, slipping between my hair and my nape, warm and damp.
And even though I hadn’t felt like laughing up until then, I did.
It tickled.
The stunning wolf, my official mate as of tomorrow, curled around my body before slowly lowering himself to the ground, his ribs and side pressed against my back so close I could lean into him. I reached for him and slid my fingers into his coat as much as I could, wiry and soft at the same time. That jaw full of sharp, sharp teeth skimmed the top of my head.
With my other hand, I touched the long leg on one side of me as two puppies appeared in the same direction from where he’d come from. One pounced on the other, taking turns chasing each other on their way over. Agnes, the much bigger but still small white wolf, and Duncan, sleeker and with those ridiculous ears I liked draping over my face every chance I had.
“They’re going to talk to him right now,” I told Wolf Henri, sliding my fingers back and forth through his coat. He was so solid behind me, I could really let myself sink in.
Like I was sure I would always be able to, even when he was in his other form.
I twisted some of the black strands between my fingertips. “I need to know, Fluff. I want to get it over with,” I admitted, turning my cheek into his fur. “I like them, and I can tell he does too.”
The side of his snout brushed against mine, the sounds of his breathing soothing.
“I’m still struggling to comprehend that they’re brothers, because of their age gap, but who am I to talk? Franklin is at least four thousand years old, from the stuff he’s mentioned,” I rambled to him about the man I’d left in the kitchen, along with my parents and best friends. They had so many questions for him.
Wolf Henri laid the bottom of his jaw back on the top of my head as the sound of the clubhouse’s door opening and closing told me who was coming.