Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I enjoy the underlying spirit of rebellion that is emerging. I thought the Regent pack would be homogenous and snobby and treat us all like outcasts. So far there has not been any sign of that.
The door opens again, and Rex steps in. He sees the final finishing touches being put on my face. I can see him in the mirror. His expression softens as he sees me, and he seems to settle into a quiet admiration.
“You look beautiful,” he says.
“Thank you,” I blush. I feel a little shy, which is unlike me. It’s the dress. It’s making me demure.
We go down to dinner together. Rex in his handsome suit, me in this classic dress, and Fescue somehow lingering in the background while also remaining prominent in a way that you couldn’t teach someone who didn’t know how to do it instinctively.
“Does he follow you everywhere?” I murmur to Rex as I go down the stairs.
“In a sense, yes. Though, today, it’s safe to say he followed you,” Rex says. “You needed the protection more.”
“I really didn’t. We held our own in the fight.”
“What fight?” Rex lifts a brow at me and cocks his head to the side.
We are walking into the dining room now, though, so I plaster on my best approximation of a nice smile and refrain from answering him.
* * *
Dinner turns out to be far easier and less high stakes than I had imagined it would be. There are a lot of people present, at least a hundred or more, and they are mostly enjoying each other’s company. I am not being presented officially. I am being integrated naturally, and I am very grateful for it.
Rex introduces me to some people. There is Grant, Tyler, and Sylvia. The three of them occupy high-level positions inside the company. In spite of being very different in visage and gender, they somehow blend together in my mind as the evening progresses. Grant reports… I don’t even pretend to care. They’re smart, educated people, and Sylvia has raven hair and brilliant green eyes and I think Tyler must be her mate, or maybe that was Grant. Or maybe it’s both of them.
I sip a little wine and try to be polite, because I know this is the easiest way to fit in. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I want to be seen as pleasant and faintly boring. That’s the safest bet.
In a matter of hours, it is all over, and Rex and I are finally alone. I breathe a sigh of relief, exhaling a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding most of the day.
We are on the balcony outside the bedroom, and a little set of stairs leads from it down through the forest. I wonder what’s down there. For the moment, Rex wants me where I am. He has his arms on either side of me on the railing and is looking down into my face with an expression of intense interest and care.
“You haven’t been yourself tonight,” he says to me, brushing a few stray wisps of hair out of my face.
“No. That was the point,” I say. “I know what myself is like. Nobody wants that at a dinner party.”
He smiles at me, sweetly and handsomely and I feel something gentle inside me start to stir. It feels so out of the normal way of things that my initial impulse is to stuff it back down where it came from.
“I’m a monster,” I add, in case he hadn’t gotten the point.
“You’re really not,” he says. “Or, if you are, it’s a small, cute one.”
He drops a kiss on my nose and I let out a playful but feral growl that makes him chuckle and pull me closer for a proper kiss that makes my head spin.
“Come with me,” he says when he breaks the kiss and its spell. “I want to show you something.”
He leads me down those little stairs that were getting my curiosity. They lead, I discover, to a private forest clearing. It looks like there’s a place for a fire and maybe a picnic table or something of that nature, but none of that is here now. It’s just an empty space in the middle of what suddenly feels like nowhere.
His arms wrap around me from behind, he draws me down in the clearing, and together we sit on the embankment that faces the moon.
“Relax,” he says. “Let it happen.”
For a second, I don’t know what he means by ‘it.’ Then I realize what he is trying to do. He wants me to shift. Not going to happen. Not ever going to happen.
“Sounds like sex,” I laugh, changing the subject.
He chuckles behind me.
“I want you to feel the moon,” he says. “Deep inside you. Draw it in with every breath you take.”