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)
Although not anymore. She hadn’t woken up screaming during the day for months.
“Your Daniel told me he was worried about leaving you all alone,” she heard herself say to the wolven. “So there really is no medical hope for him, is there.”
Lydia took a deep breath. “No, there isn’t.”
Xhex narrowed her eyes as the female’s grid shifted: She was lying. “None?”
When a quick shake of the head came back at her, Xhex left that alone. “Well, he’s concerned that he’s going to die, and there’s going to be no one who will help you through your grief.”
As she spoke, it was strange. The voice was hers… but the words felt like someone else’s, like an energy was flowing through her to the female.
“You need to come to the mountain,” Xhex said. “This is the place where you will find your support.”
Or more like, it will find you.
Lydia put her hand on the base of her throat. Then she began to blink quicker.
Xhex reached out and touched the female’s shoulder. “You’re supposed to be here. I think that’s why you and I were put together through your man. You need to go and find the light. You need to hear the message that there is something here for you, and it will be your solace when you feel like there is no peace to be found anywhere. The mountain has something to tell you—just like it had something to tell me. The light… is the key.”
Lydia sniffled and wiped her eyes. Then wrapped her arms around herself. “How… did it speak to you?”
“Look, I realize that you don’t know me, so there’s no frame of reference. But when I tell you I’m not into the whole divine-message thing, you’ve got to believe me.” Xhex rubbed her short hair, running her palm back and forth over her skull. “I came here one night, not knowing what to expect. I walked up the trail and this… I don’t know what the hell it was… appeared in front of me. I didn’t understand it then, but the only way this moment here, between you and me, makes any fucking sense, is that I’m supposed to tell you to come up and find it, too.”
Jesus, she sounded nuts. Flat-out insane.
“You have to believe me,” she said with some urgency.
“Oh, I already know what the mountain has to offer.” The female glanced out toward where they had come from, where the summit was. “I know where my home is. That’s not the problem. It’s imagining being up here, being anywhere, without Daniel… that’s what is killing me.”
Xhex thought back to the night before, all those hours when she’d been sure that she was going to lose John, that maybe he’d already left her in all the ways that counted.
She was not a hugger, not by a long shot—and certainly not with people she didn’t know. But there was no way she wasn’t going to reach out.
With a heavy soul, she embraced the stranger in front of her.
“I’m so sorry,” Xhex said as she closed her eyes.
“Thank you,” the female—Lydia—said.
They were standing together, in commiseration, when something moved in the shadows once again. But Xhex just ignored it as the scent of a deer came over on the breeze.
Funny how helping someone else made you feel like things were going to be okay in your own life. Not that there was anything wrong in her own, at the moment. She really was fine—her mate had survived his injuries, and at the end of the night, what mattered outside of that?
Nothing. Nothing else fucking counted.
And maybe she had given this female and her tragedy a little direction.
It still didn’t feel like enough to justify all the carrying on, but as a mortal, who the hell was she to judge.
TWENTY-ONE
BACK AT THE Phalen estate, Gus walked into his boss’s bedroom—and was not surprised. Well, he was surprised he was in her private, sleepy-time space, sure. But the decor? He might as well have been in her cavernous front lobby or that dining room or any of the other halls or staircases in the place: Everything was black and white as a chessboard, and the furniture arranged with a decorator’s eye, no mistakes in scale or arrangement.
Nothing personal to any of it, either.
His eyes went to the bed. It was a king, with draping on the wall framing a huge headboard so that it looked like the ceiling was melting and pooling onto the floor.
Did she bring that blond guard here, he thought idly. Did she—
“So here’s where the magic happens,” C.P. said dryly.
As she went over to the bedside table and triggered something, he wondered if she realized she still had his fleece on. Probably. She’d zipped it up.
And since when did he go back to being a fifteen-year-old and liking the look of a piece of his clothing on a girl?