Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Her touch pulses up and down my arm, right to my center. It’s teasing the beast, her delicious juicy scent and touch driving me wild. When she lets me go, I blow out a long breath, shuddering.
“The cult,” she goes on quietly. “They were against medicine. When I was little, my dad got really sick...he refused to go to the hospital. He wanted to make Master Pete happy.”
There’s that name again.
Master Pete.
It makes me want to find him, to throttle his puny neck for ever daring to make my woman and her family feel this way.
I feel her pain in the air, the scent of it, and I ache. My eyes flare.
Ruby stares. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I growl. “What was it? If you don’t mind me asking. What killed your father?”
Ruby laughs bitterly. “That’s the thing. We think it was some sort of flu. They could’ve helped him. He was a weak man anyway. No, that’s awful – I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her firmly. “I know what you mean, his health.”
“Yes, that’s all. He was a lovely person. I think. I don’t remember much about him, mostly at the end, when he looked, well, he didn’t even look human. And Mom told me later that Master Pete said it was probably the flu.”
I move my hand over her shoulder, squeezing it gently. The more primal parts of me flare beneath the surface, but I push the wolf away, focusing on her sadness.
There’s so much pain in her voice.
“I’m so sorry, Ruby.”
She shakes her head, pawing at her cheeks, though there aren’t any tears there. She’s so strong, so ready to face the world, to take what it throws at her.
And that’s where I come in. Because I’ll make sure it only throws good things at her. I’ll make sure she never has to face anything alone.
“I’d like to help you with your studies.”
It just comes out before I think about it. But once I hear my own words, I know how true they are.
“There’s nothing I’d want more,” I say.
I lie because there are always a few things I’d like to do right now, especially when my woman stares at me.
Wide-eyed, ready.
I’m burning up again.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. You deserve to follow your dream.”
We walk in silence for a time, breaking through the trees and walking across fields. Perhaps Ilsa and Liam sense Ruby and I want some alone time. They walk ahead, out of earshot, dim figures in the light of the moon and stars. It’s far brighter without the cover of the trees, the moon howling to me silently, calling to me.
A young wolf would snap, but I have to be stronger than that.
For my woman, I can’t put her in danger again.
“What about your parents?” she asks.
“A wolf murdered them,” I tell her, my voice steady, the way it always is when I tell this story. “It infected me when I was twelve. But I managed to hide. There was a crawlspace. I was smaller back then, and I...well, I hid. The wolf attacked them. I heard it all.”
“Ramsey,” she whispers.
She’s stopped walking.
I face her, devouring her features, the way she shares my pain, and how I’ll always share hers. I’m not sure when we started holding hands, but she feels so right, so warm, so mine.
“It was a long time ago. Liam killed the wolf who killed my family. It was a week after hunters killed his mentor. Josefine. Obviously, I never met her, but Liam says she was the best wolf he knew. Liam was a wolf from birth, so he’d had time to learn about it. His dad was a wolf, passed now, and his mother was a human.”
She squeezes onto my hands. “Thanks for telling me that.”
I try for a smirk, pretending this moment isn’t pulsing with wolfish energy.
Her beauty brings me closer every moment, with all her energy and heat.
“The world’s just so unfair sometimes,” she whispers, her voice shaking. “It’s like with my Mom. She’s finally getting over all that cult stuff, sort of. Maybe she’s depressed. I get that. But she’s stopped believing in all their crap, all the horrible stuff they told us, did to Mom....”
I pull her into a hug, laying my chin atop her head, closing my eyes, and breathing deeply. I breathe in her sadness, pain, and bravery beneath it all.
I breathe in her anger at how evil the world can be.
Squeezing her tightly, I almost say I love you.
Even those words don’t feel like they describe it properly.
Ruby has yet to understand how deep my need for her goes.
“Was it bad?” I ask, just to say something, to try and deny the fact I’m rambling again, shivering from the inside.
But I don’t want to let her go.
“Mom said Master Pete would torture her with horrible lies, telling her demons were going to get her, get me if she didn’t do what he said.”