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’d made it five seconds trying to be incognito. Dang it. I lifted my hand. No point in being discreet now.
Something in his body language changed a moment before Henri got to where they were.
My childhood sort-of friend didn’t even look tense as he took in the bigfoot like it was a child throwing a tantrum. “Oh? You’re not in a good mood?”
Was he mocking it? Was freaking Henri mocking a bigfoot that was a foot or more taller than him?
“Because,” he continued talking, “we’ve had this conversation before, and you damn well know you aren’t allowed to be in this part of the forest.”
He was mocking it. No doubt about it.
The bigfoot, who had to be around eight feet tall, was a pretty accurate replica of all the supposed sighting photos I’d ever seen of them. His dark eyes were kind of visible beneath the long hair framing its face. If he had a nose, it wasn’t noticeable, and I could only see his mouth because every single sharp tooth in it was displayed when he pulled his lips back into a loud snarl.
It was almost scary.
The bigfoot stretched out arms so long they weren’t proportional to his body, making the image even more impactful. “I am the forest—”
Henri laughed. This lumberjack-looking man laughed, loud. Right then and there in the middle of the being’s spiel, in this forest that made my skin prickle and made me feel like I was a little high, he laughed. It wasn’t ha-ha-funny, but more like the way I did when I was frustrated and wanted to kill someone.
Not that I would, but I wanted to—or at least give them a little strangle.
He even shook his head, like he couldn’t believe the situation. “Your people are from the Pacific Northwest. We gave you permission to live on our land, Spencer”—No. The bigfoot’s name was Spencer? S-p-e-n-c-e-r?—“You are not the guardian of this forest, I am,” Henri told him in a strong, demanding voice that pulled at something inside of me. Something that made the goose bumps on my arms that much stronger. It had so much authority to it. “We are, and last time we talked about this, we made it clear that we weren’t going to tolerate these tantrums you throw every few months.”
“Tantrums? Do you know who you’re speaking to, Little Wolf?” Spencer the bigfoot gnashed teeth that would’ve had a great white shark doing a double take.
The man I’d known decades ago did it again, he laughed. Even louder that time. Big and bold and—and then I did too a little, more like a giggle. Because Little Wolf? Had he seen Henri in his wolf form? Not even his eyeballs were small in that body.
The bigfoot was massive, but my money would be on Henri, hands down. Calm, collected people in the face of high emotion were dangerous. They made less mistakes. They thought things through.
Every single head in the group swiveled.
I took a half step back behind the tree I’d been trying to use as camouflage.
“I’m out of the way,” I called out to Henri, because I was. There were at least fifty feet between us.
The slightest breeze picked that exact moment to carry its way through the trees, making the group downwind from me.
Crap.
I grabbed my bare wrist.
An abnormally long arm stretched forward, a long finger extending out from it. “What is that?” the bigfoot asked in a way I honestly didn’t appreciate much. I’d heard those words before. That tone too.
Nothing good ever came from it.
“None of your damn business,” Henri snapped, his amusement gone, his attention laser-focused on the giant hairball pointing right at me.
A slightly stronger breeze blew through, going in the same direction as the last, and I took a second to get another hit of the rich, rich scent that seemed embedded in every part of this place. It was so much stronger here. I had to stick my hands in my pockets, it made me so twitchy.
But Spencer wasn’t paying attention to Henri because I was the lucky winner. Then the bigfoot said it, the tips of his sharp teeth appearing as he did, “That smells like an abomination.”
That? First of all, was I or was I not over here minding my own business? Sure, maybe I shouldn’t have laughed when Henri had, but it was funny. I wasn’t laughing at him but what he’d said.
But now?
A low growl crept through the spaces between the trees, and it was not coming from the bigfoot. “Watch what you say next,” Henri threatened slowly.
I glanced at him for a split second, touched that he would stand up for me.
The hairy being took a step forward, drawing my gaze back to him. “Show yourself, demon!” it bellowed.
Of all the words in the world he could have picked, that term got under my skin like nothing else—and I mean nothing else. It triggered something in me that I wanted to think I was better than, after so many years. There were a whole lot of words that would never bother me again. Sometimes, people sucked. Abomination was mean without a doubt, but demon….