Total pages in book: 8
Estimated words: 7510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 38(@200wpm)___ 30(@250wpm)___ 25(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 7510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 38(@200wpm)___ 30(@250wpm)___ 25(@300wpm)
And that’s what I am.
The woman he’s responsible for, that he can’t let die again.
Not the woman he loves.
I’m reminded of the alignment of our families back in the day. The way our union benefitted him and his lands, but that was the way of the times. And I was perhaps too naïve to understand that fact. There’s a strange sensation inside me, a clawing feeling I can’t explain, that isn’t about what just happened with Eli. It’s that wolf. It’s the magic. I’m parched and lightheaded. I walk to the fridge, luck out and find a bottle of water, and down almost all of it.
I decide maybe I do need to lay down.
The house is two levels. I climb the stairs and locate the master bedroom, a giant four-poster bed greeting me. My body aches and I curl up on top of the mattress, my lashes fluttering shut. My mind is all over the place, trying to weed through what is past and what is present, what is me now and what was me in the past.
I’m standing at the window of my family house when a carriage pulls to the doorway. I don’t know how I know it’s him, the man I’d met at the pharmacy, but I feel it, I do. “Someone is here,” I say, glancing behind me at my father where he sits in the chair by the fireplace.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” I lie, and I do so out of fear, because how can I explain to my father it’s a man I flirted with who’s now at our home?
He stomps to the window and his brows dip. “Who is that?” He moves to the doorway and flings the big wooden door open.
I watch anxiously as he steps outside and meets the handsome man I’d gone to the aid of in the middle of the walkway. They talk for a moment and then my father turns back to the house. “He came to call on you. Why didn’t you tell me you met him?”
“Call on me? I—I didn’t know he wanted to call. He needed aid at the pharmacy, and I helped him. It was nothing.”
“It must have been something. Go talk to him. He’s a good man to be calling on you.”
“But I’m not a girl a man like that calls on.”
“You are now. Get going.”
I’m shocked at his willingness to hand me over to a stranger. My mother exits the bedroom and looks between us. “What’s going on?”
My father points at the door. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
My heart races in my chest, and I hurry to the door. The minute I step outside, I’m confused, as my gentleman caller is nowhere in sight. Movement to my right draws my attention, and I turn to realize he’s sitting on the bench by the door. He pushes to his feet, and I rotate to face him. He closes the space between us, stopping so near I can smell the manly goodness of him, if that’s even what you call it. I don’t know. I have no experience in such things.
“Hi,” he says, his voice low and rough.
“Hi,” I say. “How is your arm?”
He smiles a handsome smile. “Better, thanks to you.”
“I don’t understand what is happening right now.”
“I don’t either. I’ve never met a woman I couldn’t stop thinking about until you.”
My memory fades into darkness and then I’m inside another memory…
It’s my wedding night, and I’m so nervous. I’m in the bedroom, still laced into my corset and wedding dress, and my hands are trembling. Eli stands in front of me. “Stop being nervous. It’s me.”
“I don’t—I’ve never—”
“That’s a good thing. I like the idea of being your first. As it should be. Turn around.” I turn around, and his hand curves my body and settles on my belly, his lips caressing my neck.
I shiver and my nipples pucker. “Eli,” I whisper.
“You’re my wife now,” he murmurs in my ear. “All mine.” His hands slide up and cup my breasts. I moan with the feel of such an intimate touch, and when his thumbs stroke the lace of my bodice down, and his fingers tease my nipples, I gasp with such a delicious invasion.
He begins pulling on the threads at my back, but suddenly the window in front of us breaks, and a giant beast—a wolf with red eyes is charging toward us.
I gasp and sit up. That didn’t happen. The part about the wolf didn’t happen. I press my hand to my forehead and my skin is damp. “What is happening to me?”
CHAPTER SIX
Ivy
I suddenly feel dirty despite the clean clothes Marcus gifted me with his magic.
Pushing off the bed, I walk into the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror, looking for something that says I’m changed, that I’m no longer human. But all I see is the same ol’ me who looks like the mother who gave birth to me in this lifetime. It’s so very confusing to think about being the daughter of more than one mother. My parents in this lifetime and the last, got sick and died. Maybe I was the poison that killed them. I wonder if there was another lifetime where they died as well. I wonder if they too are the same people, destined to die just because I’m their daughter. It’s unreal to think of living and dying and still remaining the same person with the same curse on my family.