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)
A few of the elders started whispering to each other. Glasses, I noticed, wasn’t one of them. He was sitting very, very still.
“Matti said you’re all very wise and accepting.” He hadn’t said that, not exactly, but I wasn’t above sucking up. “More than anything, I really hope that you might let us live here since this is a secure community. The world out there isn’t safe for him. I’ve already had people try to steal him, and I don’t want to put him at risk. I want him to be happy, healthy, and safe, and I hope this place might be able to provide all that for him.”
There was stirring, and looks were cast that didn’t make me feel all that optimistic. Or maybe I was just expecting the worst. They had been polite so far, but they were picky about their privacy and community. That much was obvious.
The cyclops narrowed his eye. “You’re in danger?”
“Not anymore, only in the moment,” I explained. “On two different occasions recently, people tried to take him, but I took care of the problem.” I paused and held Duncan’s foot. “They won’t be an issue again. We aren’t bringing any danger or attention here.”
Matti huffed beside me. He’d heard the whole story on our first day of driving, and he and Sienna had just about exploded over me keeping those incidents a secret for so long.
“How can you be sure of that?” one of the female elders asked. Her hair was so silver it bordered on pale blue.
“Because there’s no way they knew my name. The incidents happened at campgrounds at night. I checked their phones and cars before they… were taken away. There weren’t any pictures related to us, and there hadn’t been any recent calls or texts they’d sent or received.” I’d been lucky their phones’ facial recognition had worked.
“That doesn’t confirm that you can’t or won’t be followed,” the cyclops argued.
They were really going to make me tell them more than I wanted to. But I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why they needed to make sure I wouldn’t be bringing any drama. My hand trailed up to my neck, where it had still hurt up until yesterday. “Every person involved suffered a brain injury and some other wounds. If they ever wake up, the chances of them remembering… or being able to communicate again… are slim.” I tried not to wince. “Very slim.”
A small part of me still thought that I had no right to mete out any kind of justice, but another part of me knew it hadn’t been justice at all. I’d done what I had to, and I felt bad about it, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it either. Both of our lives had been at risk.
I stroked my hand down Duncan’s side, his coat so, so soft. Probably from all the sardines he ate. To be honest, out of everything I’d ever done for him, scooping those tiny fish out of their containers was the grossest. Not pulling hair out of his butt after a poop or having him sneeze into my open mouth. Nope. Sardines. I didn’t like fish, but I did it every day, and it still made me gag. But like the song said, I would do anything for love.
I was here, willing to do what I was willing to do, and Matti and Sienna had come with us, and if that wasn’t the four-letter word that had started wars and maybe even ended them, I didn’t know what was.
My hand kept going along his side, over his flank, until I could wrap my fingers around the middle of his fluffy tail. I’d teased him before, telling him he had to be half fox with that thing, and he’d given me the stink eye even though I wasn’t even sure he knew what a fox was. It would look like a black dust sweeper… if it wasn’t for the tiny blue flame on the tip of it. I pinched it and smiled as the color flickered around my fingers.
There were multiple gasps, and it was the woman who spoke that time. “But how…?”
Maybe they were letting the incidents go for now.
“It only gets ‘hot’”—I used quotation marks with my free hand—“when he’s scared or protective.” It had changed colors when he’d been trying to save me from the giant werewolf, but I was the only one who’d recognized the signs. “He burned a few of the men who tried to kidnap him. Those were the other injuries they received. But it was in self-defense.” It had happened right before I’d taken action. Just thinking about that moment pissed me off all over again because it had been my fault for hesitating.
I reached with my free hand to rub Duncan’s ears between my fingers. Multiple sets of eyeballs moved from his relaxed body to the hand I had on him and back. Several nostrils flared again as the elders smelled him—and maybe me too—all while staying quiet, hopefully just intrigued by whatever he was and whatever I was. Two mysteries wrapped in the same tortilla.