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)
But there was a reason why civilization after civilization had equally worshipped and feared certain entities, as my mom used to tell me. There was the good, the bad, and the tales of beings who struck sheer terror into so many hearts, their stories continued being told throughout the centuries. I knew a lot about the latter.
“And he might not ever be able to, I don’t know,” I kept going, laying it all out there in a ramble. “The problem is that I don’t have a safe place for him to be himself if he stays like this. He can’t live his whole life not ever being able to go outside. And what if he needs more people around him than just me?”
Some people and beings were fine being solitary, but so many weren’t. There was a reason why werewolves, ogres, and centaurs raised their children in communities: for safety and for family ties. You had to learn to be a functioning magical being in a modern world from someone or someones. Kids were a handful under the best conditions, and add a magical chromosome with the potential of scaring the crap out of the majority of humanity?
Honestly, it was incredible the cat hadn’t been let out of the bag after so long.
Magical beings had managed to remain a secret.
I had thought about moving back where I’d grown up, a small town in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico that had been rich with magical beings when I’d been young. It had mostly been the wolfy kind, but there had been some ogre families too, plus a couple of others who I had never known, for sure, the truth about; they’d been so secretive.
Or maybe they hadn’t known what they were either. I’d never thought about that possibility before.
But things had changed over the last decade, and the town wasn’t what it had once been. The population had dwindled as businesses closed, and the elderly, who had held the community together, passed on, leaving the younger population to move away. Matti’s parents were gone. My parents weren’t there either. Sienna’s had moved after we’d graduated, and they lived in Wyoming now. There was no one left that was worth putting up with the heat for. Going there would only bring more attention to us at this point.
“Letting him out to pee and play has already given me a few grays,” I told them.
I was scared now every time we left my trailer. The entire way up to their apartment had me sweating bullets. What if I slipped on a recently mopped floor and he fell out of the blanket? What if I moved my hand too much and someone happened to see his tail? What if his collar broke and popped off? I’d lost a lot of sleep worrying about all those scenarios.
“You already had gray hairs before,” the smart-ass I knew and loved replied, his brown eyes flicking down to the mystery in my arms as I touched the “collar” that I’d gotten for Duncan last week. It was basically a bracelet with a clasp so I could put it on and remove it easily, if I needed to. “Is that obsidian like on your bracelet? Is that why we can’t smell him anymore?” He rubbed his nose. “I didn’t notice I couldn’t sense anything other than his shampoo and his breath until now.”
At least my savings had been well spent. If Matti couldn’t sense him, no one else should be able to either.
“Yeah,” I answered. After the two incidents, it just made the most sense to hide as much as I could about Dunky. Looking back on it, it’s what I should have done from the beginning, butttt… I couldn’t turn back time and make wiser decisions: like paying for overnight shipping. Fire obsidian wasn’t cheap or easy to find, unless you ordered it. “Better to be safe than sorry.” Even though that was kind of a lie. We hadn’t been safe, and we had been sorry because of it.
But since I couldn’t rewind time, and my regrets wouldn’t do a single thing, all I could do was do better. Duncan needed me, and I wouldn’t let him down. Not again.
All three of us glanced at the legs that stretched out from beneath the blanket. There was a small paw with shiny black fur, dark paw pads, and short black nails.
And then a flame, a little bigger than the kind you could find on a lighter, on the tip of a fluffy black tail slipped out from the blanket too.
Sienna sucked in a breath like she was surprised all over again.
Matti made a grunting sound in his throat that honestly sounded foreboding, and I wondered if he’d already come up with the same solution as I had.
His eyes slid in my direction.