Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
She frowns. “I don’t think I should go to New Orleans if there’s an alpha there who sent more people after you. I don’t think much of the politics of your kind, having been incarcerated and nearly killed. They keep people like animals, like they had the right to kill us in cold blood.”
“No harm will come to you if you are with me,” I assure her. “I will not allow it.”
“You couldn’t stop me being kidnapped. I bet your brother had something to do with that too,” she says, eyes narrowed with suspicion. It’s a fair question. Not even a question. A wager.
“He did. He wanted you out of the picture.”
“Okay, well, sure, let’s go on a road trip to meet the person who sent him after me. Why not? Now I have a body count, why not expand on it? And what about Molly and Mark?”
“Who are Molly and Mark?”
“They’re the other people who were captured and waiting to die,” she says.
“What about them?”
“If I let them go without some kind of protection, the pack will find them and hurt them. They don’t deserve to die just because they saw something. If your kind doesn’t want to be spotted, don’t dance around in the fucking woods turning into wolves in the firelight. This happens all the fucking time as far as I can tell. Going for a hike shouldn’t be a death sentence.”
“Bring them, then, but they’ll be in just as much danger. You are special, Callie. They are not. They are absolutely expendable, and you are going to put them in danger, along with the rest of us.”
“Molly, Mark! Do you guys want to come with me to a wolf-infested New Orleans? Or do you want to stay here in wolf-infested New York?”
I don’t know what I expected to see when Molly and Mark appear, but it’s not the two people who emerge. They look like they belong in a much less palatial environment. Mark especially is dressed like he’s accustomed to brewing his own alcohol and hunting his own meat. Molly gives me an arch look, as if she’s sizing me up.
I know very well that Callie doesn’t have many friends. She has hundreds of social connections, and probably thousands of people who would do her bidding if she were to ask, but she never really gets close to people in an easy, friendly way. I don’t think these people are friends either. I think they are under her protection.
The two humans look at one another with an understandable hesitance. “Do you have any non-wolf infested places to go to?” Molly asks the question.
Callie looks at me. “Are there any non-wolf infested places to go?”
“No,” I say. “The world is full of wolves, and snakes, and more things besides. There’s no real escape from the paranormal horrors once your eyes are opened and you’re on their radar.”
“We have to do something for them,” she insists. “I’m not leaving anybody to die.”
“Best we can do is get them hidden and then hope we can cut a deal with New York’s pack master. Deals happen all the time.”
“You can still stay at my place,” she tells them. “I told you that, and I meant it.”
“Wait, is that a good idea?” I don’t know that I like the idea of two complete strangers, one of them male, spending time in Callie’s home, no matter how big it is.
“Do you have somewhere for them to stay safe?” She looks at me accusingly, as if I’m to blame for this quandary. She is taking on far too much responsibility for complete strangers.
“No,” I sigh.
I don’t care about these people. I care completely and exclusively about her. I want to get her out of New York, where the shifter packs have taken a black eye in the loss of their pack mate to a human female. They will be out for blood. There is absolutely no doubt about that. She will not be safe, not here, not in this fancy house. They will come in the night, and they will kill her. They will burn this place to the ground if they have to. She has started a fight with a feral force of nature that will show no mercy.
“I have to talk to you somewhere private,” she says. Molly and Mark keep staring at us, so she takes me by the hand and leads me away. I allow it, only because I think grabbing her and carrying her off into my car is going to make her panic. She’s just been abducted. I don’t want to abduct her twice in one day.
Calista
I take Gray to the study, because we really need to talk. Not in the casual sort of superficial, ‘oh, terrible things just happened’ sort of way, but in the ‘my life and probably personality has changed forever’ sort of way.