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)
It was quite sweet of her to offer those two strays protection from the New York wolves. Deep down, Calista understands the obligations that come with much of her wealth, and she shares it where and how she can. When I worked for the paper, we often reported on the works being done by the many charities under her name. She’s a good person. I want to make sure she has a very long and happy life with me.
Callie
I’m bored. The hotel room is so tiny. I’ve been roaming since I got kidnapped and put through god knows what. It felt good to travel, to have the whole world at my wheels. But Gray is just obsessed with me being here, and staying here. I think he’s traumatized by all of this, more than I am even. I know all the bad things happened to me, but sometimes it’s just as hard to be the person who tries to fix the bad thing as it is to be the person going through the bad thing.
I do get him to get me a phone, though, and he gets himself one too. We play a few rounds of sudoku, scroll some reels, and then I do what I actually wanted to do and spend a little money.
I’m not staying in this damn hotel room.
Gray is reading the news, scrolling through his phone with a faint scowl on his face. He’s so sexy when he’s serious. He’s sexy when he’s not serious too. He’s hot. And brutal. And kind of maybe evil, but not in a way that I have to worry about.
“Do you really want to do this here?”
“What?”
“The change-y shifty thing. I found a place on an app for people of means. There’s a very nice house in the middle of nowhere on fifty acres, surrounded by forest. Nobody will know what we’re doing out there.”
“We’re staying put,” he says firmly.
“What if I eat the bellboy?”
He pauses for a moment.
“We’re going to this house you found,” he says, sounding just as definitive about that as he sounded about staying just moments ago.
I clap my hands and squeal excitedly. “And we can go shopping before we go, because we will need clothes and food and things. It will be fun!”
“We are keeping a low profile, so I will go shopping and you will wait in the car…”
“You’re going to deny me the pleasures of the grocery store? Why?” I pout.
“Because I don’t trust you not to do something stupid. We have to keep a low profile. I do not want to be found by either my family, or anybody else. You are precious to me, and you are in danger, and I have already failed you once.”
“You didn’t fail me!” I exclaim. “You didn’t know he was going to do that—did you?”
“No. My father has never kidnapped a lover of mine and forced her through a risky experimental medical procedure designed to turn her into a werewolf through some means other than birth or bite.”
“So it can be transmitted by biting?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. Hard to say. They say it can be, but you were ripped half to shreds and you clearly never shifted. So it wasn’t true in your case. Truth is, nobody really understands the nature of our being. Werewolves aren’t well studied.”
“Like women,” I sigh.
“Hm?”
“They didn’t even start doing clinical trials on women by law until 1993,” I say. “So in a way, your father’s fucked-up secret lab is actually very progressive.”
“You make a joke out of everything,” he says.
“Yeah. I do. Because the alternative is going insane, and I already tried that when I was a teenager. I’ve decided not to do that again, if that’s cool with you or whatever.”
We are getting our stuff together as we talk, and I am so happy when we leave the suite, I want to run and click my heels together and do all sorts of gamboling and things. I don’t, though, because Gray has a hand on the back of my neck. It’s firm and his grip is tight and when he speaks it’s in this tight voice that strongly implies I will be in a whole world of trouble if I so much as put a toe out of line.
We get in the car, I sit in the passenger seat, and I try to do my best impression of someone who is definitely going to behave themselves. I used to do this by default, without even thinking about it, but now I am having to do it on manual. What did I used to do with my hands? Where do they go? On my lap? I guess.
“You can relax,” he says, starting the car.
“I can’t,” I say. “You have to know that I’m not going to cause you any trouble because you let me out of the horrible hotel room.”