Series: Werewolves of Wall Street Series by Renee Rose
Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Chapter Four
Aster
I haven’t had such strong and debilitating visions since I was young. I step into the limo on shaky legs. The scent of men’s cologne permeates my clothes, irritating my already frayed nerves.
A man in the elevator.
I can barely piece together what happened. Only snippets of memory bled through the excruciating visions.
“What was all that?” Otto asks when he settles in the opposite seat.
Another wave of pain shoots through my temples, making my stomach turn. I rub my forehead. “The stone held great power.” My voice sounds thin. “It activated my Sight.”
Otto makes a sound in his throat. He knows he’s not high enough on the pay grade to ask me what I Saw, but I don’t know if he believes me. He takes a water out of the mini-fridge and uncaps it to hand it to me.
I drink deeply, still trying to stabilize my nervous system. Chocolate would help. Meat would be better. It dampens the Sight, which is why Oma never let me have any, but Oma’s dead, and my wolf is hungry.
I press the button to speak to the driver up front. “Find a hot dog vendor,” I tell him. “I need food.”
“Yes, Seeress,” he says.
Otto studies me. “What happened in the elevator?”
I grit my teeth. I don’t want to explain myself to this man, but he’s a wolf, and he can smell the stranger’s scent on me. “I lost consciousness for a moment, and a man helped me back to my feet.”
It seems like a likely explanation, but that wasn’t what happened.
I know that much.
The clamoring of the Grandmothers had grown so strong that I felt ill. I was running for a bathroom before I threw up, but I somehow ended up in the elevator instead.
And he was in there with me. Smelling like a human coated with harsh cologne.
He felt like the man from my visions, but I can’t be sure. I might have been having a vision of the man and confused him with the stranger in the elevator.
I thought he said my name–not out loud but inside my head. Like we were speaking telepathically. But that doesn’t make sense.
I bring my hand to my sternum and rub.
Did he touch between my breasts? For some reason, I feel he did. Not in sexual way but to calm me.
He had calmed me. I couldn’t see anything, and my body was betraying me, but for some reason, I felt safe for those few moments in the elevator.
“What did he look like?” Otto presses.
I lean my head back against the limo’s headrest. “I couldn’t see.”
“You didn’t see him?” Otto’s voice drips with doubt.
“I couldn’t see him. The visions blinded me.”
There were a thousand movies playing behind my eyes simultaneously. The input was far too great for me to sort through.
“You saw nothing? Nothing at all?”
I sensed the young man from my visions, but that might have just been another vision.
“Nothing. Was I alone when you found me?”
“Yes,” Otto grumbles.
The limo pulls over, and the driver jumps out. I watch as he waves a big bill at a hot dog vendor to cut in line. A moment later, he opens my door and hands me a foot-long beef hot dog, smothered in neon green relish with yellow mustard squiggled on top.
Thank fate. I take the street food with shaking hands and devour the meat. It hits my stomach like a rock, but I don’t care. I need that sinking stone in my center to weigh me down and ground me. Bring me back to Earth, so I can sort through what happened this afternoon.
When I finish, I wipe my mouth and fingers with a napkin, drink the rest of the water, and settle back in my seat.
Show me what it all means, I beg the Grandmothers.
Instead of hearing them, my mind fills with the memory of being in the elevator. I even smell the man’s cologne–it must be clinging to my coat. Underneath the human-made perfume is his natural scent–warm amber, crisp pine. His scent, his presence, his essence feels familiar. It had to be the man from my dreams. The one associated with the Blackthroat pack.
And that means I was in grave danger. Alone and vulnerable, in the grips of a vision with an enemy close enough to snuff out my life.
I should tell Otto right now. I probably should’ve sounded the alarm the moment I stepped out of that elevator.
What stopped me? Just confusion?
No, it’s something else. Even now, I don’t open my mouth to tell Otto what I suspect. Am I protecting the man?
Or shielding myself from Aiden’s wrath if he found out I’d slipped my guards?
It doesn’t feel wrong. What happened today doesn’t feel wrong. Surely the Grandmothers would have warned me if I were in danger, and they didn’t.
It doesn’t feel wrong to keep my own counsel on this either. I haven’t interpreted the visions yet. Until I do, they are mine to keep.