Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
His voice was changing, and the words were wrong. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at Trill. He was leering down at her naked body. Deidre shrieked and jerked herself upward to get away from him. Around her, the room faded into darkness, and she realized it was just a dream. A beautiful dream with a nightmare ending.
She continued to sit upright in the bed, trying to shake off the dream as she considered what the meaning behind it might be. No doubt, it was just about longings and fears, somehow combined and warped in her state of unconsciousness. She got out of bed and wandered downstairs to get a drink of water, leaning against the kitchen counter as she continued to contemplate just how fucked up her head had become with all that was going on in her life.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Niall
The days were long and exhausting, each day a new battle with the Maguire clan, slowly taking each and every one of them out. Niall was sore all over, spending each night sleeping in the mountains surrounding Dublin in order to heal and maintain his safety. He and Ronan slept in shifts, each keeping their eye on the other around the clock.
The sun filtered through the trees above them, letting them know it was time to get up and get back to business. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up, but at least it had kept him from agonizing over the loss of Deidre, at least during his waking hours. At night, she was very much a part of him, filling his dreams with vivid memories of her, of every inch of her perfect body.
Last night, it had felt so real that he’d thought she was actually with him until the moment he’d woken up. Ronan sat beside him, leaning against a tree. Nearby, there were other shifters who had joined them last night, but they’d still relied on one another rather than letting any of the others take turns at guard. All it took was one turncoat to create a problem, and they were too far into this to let that happen.
Niall shifted and got dressed, Ronan and others following his lead. They gathered together for a quick chat and then made their way out of the woods and into the large Tesco Supermarket that sat nearby. Each of them made their way to the cars arriving to park in different areas of the lot, slipping behind the wheels and into the passenger seats as the men inside took their places in the woods, where they’d spend the day healing for the night ahead.
“What’s the craic?” Niall asked the young wolf sitting behind the wheel of a ratty old Skoda.
“We’ve almost cleared the compound from what we can gather. There are still some holdouts in the old castle walls that sit on the property. No more than twenty by our estimate.”
“How many have we lost?”
“More than twenty, but we now outnumber them.”
“What about the women and children?”
“Evacuated by their families once they found out Trill was gone. We have them under watch, but we haven’t tried to move on them in any way.”
“That’s good. Let’s keep it that way. Any sign of dragons?”
“No. None.”
“I don’t understand it. They said they were on board and they haven’t done a damned thing.”
“You can’t trust dragons. I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied.
“At least we can trust wolves. Cheers for that, mate.”
“Aye. It’s in our best interests too.”
“All right. Have a good rest. We’ll be back after twilight to trade out again.”
“Aye. See you after my nap,” he laughed.
It wasn’t until after he’d gotten out of the car and headed toward the edge of the woods that Niall noticed the severe limp and the dark stain on one side of his jeans. He’d not had a good night, it seemed, but he hadn’t given up either. It was a good sign for the youngest Alpha in the lot to be hanging in there so hard.
“Let’s do this, Ronan,” Niall said, slipping behind the wheel and pulling away from the lot, a line of cars behind him as they made their way toward the fight.
The day was a bloodbath as they converged on the walls of the old castle. It had long ago been decimated by war, and only a shell was left of the upper structure, but the dungeons below had withstood the test of time, and the remains of the Maguire Clan were hunkered down in it, using human warfare tactics of guns and traps rather than fighting like men or bears, as the case may be.
“How are we going to get them out of there?” Ronan asked.
“Firebombs?” Niall replied, knowing there was a time to stand on principles and a time to know your enemy.