Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
“But your grid—”
“Annnnnnnnnd maybe you’re reading me wrong. But like your opinion, that’s none of my business or my problem—”
“Yo, Alex? You got a sec?”
Twisting around, she’d never been so grateful for an interruption by one of her staff. “What’s up.”
Although who cared. She’d chew her own leg off to get away from this symphath intervention.
Her bouncer spoke up louder as the music changed. “Bruno’s passed out on the floor of your office with blood all over his hand, and I dunno whether we should call nine-one-one or not.”
“Coming,” she called out over the din. After the guy walked off, she looked at Rehv. “If there are dead vampires showing up in alleys, talk to the Brothers. And if they’re missing eyes? Lys is a readily available weapon, and I haven’t used mine in a couple of years. So we’re done. Thanks for stopping by and fucking my vibe.”
Rehv switched his cane back and forth again. Then he rubbed his eyes like he was tired. “I’m just worried about you. And I’m not wrong about your grid.”
She walked up to the male. “A piece of advice? Not that you want it. Go back to the training center, find your mate, and spend a little time with her, if you know what I mean. You’re teed up about this, and the concern is great, blah, blah, blah, but I’m okay. Not dwelling on my past has turned out to be a far more effective strategy than confronting it. Go figure.”
She gave him a pat on the shoulder that felt as patronizing as it no doubt came across; then she walked away. The sense that she was leaving drama behind was a relief.
The idea that the King of symphaths might be the one losing his fucking mind?
That was downright terrifying.
FOUR
THERE WERE PLUSES and minuses to everything in life. Take first-floor bedrooms, for example. Con: If someone wanted to break in, it was easier. Pro: Fire safety.
Along that easy access angle came the benefit that, if you were a wolven, who had just shifted to go out into the darkness to find your mate—only to discover that he was sitting on a log in the forest, trying to give himself even more lung cancer…
You didn’t have to go through a house the size of a football stadium, all birthday-suit naked with tears rolling down your face, to get back into your clothes after you changed back again.
As Lydia resumed her human form, her body reassembled itself in a smooth morphing that had little in common with the An American Werewolf in London or The Howling gory-style torture. The second she was back up on two legs, with nothing but bare skin to insulate her from the elements, steam wafted off of her, the body heat created by her racing retreat from the forest evaporating into the cold air. She also lost about fifty percent of her hearing and seventy-five percent of her sense of smell—but all that was incidental because she’d lost one hundred percent of her mind.
Although that had nothing to do with the shifting.
Shivering, she went over to the sliding door, and as she reached out to put her forefinger on a sensor, she caught sight of herself in the reflective glass. Her hair was longer than it had been for years, the sun-streaked blond ends grown out dark from so much time indoors, the ragged tips down below her shoulders. Her body had always been lean, but now it was scrawny from her having only picked at her food for months. Her face was hollow, her eyes pits of emotion.
She looked like a different person. Then again, she had been transformed.
With a shaking hand, she put her fingertip on the reader, and when there was a click, she opened the slider and stepped back into her bedroom. Their bedroom—
Why in the hell is Daniel smoking? What the fuck is wrong with him. Why in the hell is Daniel smoking—
That refrain had been going through her head since she’d seen him hiding in the woods with a literal coffin nail all lit up, but it wasn’t the only repeater: What the hell does it matter.
The latter was even more devastating.
Closing herself in, she went over to the bed. Standing next to the salad of messy sheets and comforters, she stared through her tears and tried to figure out whether she was heartbroken or mad. Then she segued back into whether her emotions mattered. Which they didn’t. Parsing out the nuances in the shit stew she was in when it came to her feelings was like getting upset if he was smoking: Nothing was going to change the trajectory they were both on.
Wiping her face with her palm, she picked a pillow up off the floor and thought back to the beginning of their relationship—when they’d just been dealing with people at the Wolf Study Project being killed, and bomb threats, and her getting stalked, and, you know, easy-peasy stuff like gunshot wounds, poisoned wolves, and embezzlement. Back then, there would have been good reasons for bedding to be in disarray. Happy reasons.