Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
“I will, but I don’t want to,” I whispered.
The corner of his mouth curled. “I’ll be with you both the whole time.” He eyed my wrist. “Leave the bracelet. You’ve got nothing to hide here ever again.”
I didn’t, did I? With less nerves than ever before, I tugged it off and tossed it onto my bed. That familiar discomfort I’d lived with every time I took it off didn’t circle back to me for once.
Before I could ponder that any more, Henri extended his hand, all long, tan fingers and a broad palm. “Good. Come on.”
I took it, letting him pull me up to my feet too. He was right. The faster we got this over with, the faster we could move on.
We had plans. Important ones. Some I hadn’t been as excited over because I’d been so worried about this.
Henri held my hand as he tugged me out of the room and down the stairs. I took some deep breaths and made a few promises to the universe if it let this go well. Duncan already had his head sticking out of the door to Agnes’s room when we made it to the first floor. He came running over, crashing against my legs before turning and rubbing against Henri’s too. He knew what was happening today. I’d taken a sick day, which hadn’t turned out to be a total lie, because I was sick, but with freaking nerves.
I pet him a couple of times, kissed the top of his snout, and smiled. He knew I wasn’t all right to start with. There was no point in making it worse by opening my mouth and letting him hear it. I could do this. We had multiple plans set up, depending on how everything went.
We weren’t getting split up. No one was leaving anybody.
Henri didn’t make a peep, but his thumb rubbed against the meaty part of my hand softly as the three of us headed down the hall toward the meeting room where there were voices coming from.
“Love,” Duncan said to me before we got to the doorway.
I stopped right there to crouch and hug him, my heart in my arms. “I love you more than anything, Donut. Everything is going to be fine. I’m nervous about meeting these people. Okay? But I won’t let anything happen. I swear on my life.”
A much bigger body dropped to the same level as us, and a hand landed on Duncan’s back a moment before another one did the same to the middle of mine.
We both looked at him.
And Henri said, in that velvet voice, looking back and forth between the two of us, his hands resting on our backs, “You’re both mine, and you don’t have anything to be worried about. Understand?”
I blinked, and Duncan’s beautiful fluffy tail swayed behind us. His “yes” resonating in my head.
The hand on my back slid a couple inches higher between my shoulder blades. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his jaw went tight. “From now on, we go through everything together. All right?”
I nodded, and Duncan… Duncan put his paw on Henri’s knee.
I’d been holding it together with tape, and all of a sudden, the most intense urge to cry hit right in the back of my eyes, especially when the werewolf royalty smiled softly at not just me but my boy too. “Come on, you two. Everything is going to be fine.”
He was right.
Henri had said it—we’d go through everything together from now on.
I kissed Duncan before I stood up and kissed Henri on the cheek too, giving him a smile when I pulled back. Thank you, I mouthed.
He dipped his chin at me, his expression grave, like he was ready to go to battle.
We went inside.
In the room were Franklin and Ema, the elder female with the silver-blue hair. They were standing in front of three men, two I had never seen before, and the other one was Ilya, the Alaskan leader who had invited me to their compound. The two strangers though were much older than him. They were both thin, their hair more white than silver, their faces just as stern as Henri’s usually was.
I couldn’t sense their magic, I realized, and glanced at their wrists to see that they had familiar-ish beaded bracelets on.
Both men were already facing the doorway, their eyes glued to the gangly puppy standing front and center between Henri and me.
The men looked at each other.
“Ah, yes.” Franklin waved us over, beaming like a proud dad. Or uncle.
With my chin held high and, hopefully, all the rest of my emotions carefully hidden, I walked over to the group, with Duncan so close he stepped on my ankle a couple of times. I didn’t smile, mostly because the strangers didn’t either, and I wasn’t sure if that was normal or if it was a bad thing. The older men had their brown eyes glued to Duncan, and Ilya was looking back and forth between Henri and me, a smug expression on his face.