Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 745(@200wpm)___ 596(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 745(@200wpm)___ 596(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
She makes a squeak sound as her eyes dart around wildly, calculating, looking for a way to escape. I don’t like that she feels this way; it creates sensations in my gut that are foreign and feel terrible.
There’s a leather satchel with two looped handles and a longer strap as well as her smaller woman’s leather bag with a long loop strap on the floor in the back of the car. I pry the zipper halfway and peer inside the larger one. Clothing and electrical gadgets and cords as well as woman stuff: bottles, jars, tools for her hair, I think. She may want these. I lift things from the seat and floor that fell out of her smaller bag and stuff it in, then zip it up. I throw the straps over my neck and scoop her up as I duck out of the car, immediately breaking into a run.
“No. No! Please!” she protests, trying to squirm out of my arms.
“Behave, Ivy Adeline Brennan.”
She doesn’t listen, she squirms harder, so I warn, “If you make yourself fall and you get hurt, I’ll be angry. I’m already angry enough.”
She needs warmth. Her body is far too cool. I won’t take the chance of making her ill. I will my body temperature to rise for her, but she’s only over my shoulder so it won’t do enough.
“Tyson? Right? Tyson, please. Listen... If we can just get to where I can make a call, I can have my car towed out of there and I won’t… won’t tell anyone about you. You can just go. You can just le-let me go and I won’t say a word. Please don’t be angry. You haven’t done anything that wrong yet, only broke my window and stuff and I – I don’t care about that. I have insurance. I just… please put me down and we can forget this ever happened.”
I pick up my pace. I can cover a lot of ground quickly even if I don’t run as fast as a man as I do as wolf, but as I can’t carry her and her things as a wolf, this has got to be the way home. I was weary, and then angry at myself because she’s cold and frightened, but now I’ve got renewed strength at the notion that I’m bringing Ivy with me. I’ve found the person to be mine, fill my bed, to give me sons and daughters. Uncle Cornelius said that not all hybrid shift, but some can, can become nearly as strong as their pure shifter fathers or mothers. It’s not unheard of for humans and shifters to mate at all. When they’re destined, he said their offspring are strong. I know by her scent and how it makes me feel that she’s my destined one.
She’s destined to be mine, my finding her happened with a hand from fate and perhaps even a witch, I suspect with the way the sky looks and the way the roads behaved tonight, but no matter… all that matters is that I’ve got her and we’re heading home. I feel like someplace can be home.
This. This is what I’m missing. This is what it means to be a man. Having a woman that is all yours. And that she’s not wolf means she won’t feel that usual urge Uncle told me of, to join a pack like a typical female wolf shifter would. This is right. She’ll accept my solo lifestyle. This is how it’s supposed to be for me.
I tell myself I must focus as man, find comfort in this form as this is who I’m going to be most of the time. I need to get home in case my body shifts against my will again and gives her an opportunity to run from me. It’s because of her fear. Once I claim her, she’ll know she’s where she’s meant to be, and I’ll gain more clarity and more control over my form.
She’s bouncing in my arms, grunting out with distress as I run, zigzagging down through the woods that will take me back to where I first scented her. From there, it won’t take long for me to be home. I smell home and I always know how to get there. Now that I’ve scented her, I know I’ll always know how to find her, too.
I catch the filthy scent of men, one who was with her at the service station where I first noticed her scent. As it comes into focus. I slow, spying a fire burning from near a house. I take a whiff of the night air. The boyfriend?
“Were they who distressed you earlier?” I jerk my chin in that direction as we pass the house with the three cars in front. She whimpers and reaches toward the house as if she wants to go there.