Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Perhaps it was different for humans. Their lives and relationships weren’t dictated by the quest for the other half of their soul. They found and discarded relationships easily. Fell in and out of love like it was nothing. Maybe that would work in Charlie’s benefit. He was human.
“Charlie will be okay,” I told her finally. I hoped it wasn’t a lie.
Chapter 7
Lucy
Inodded, desperately wanting to believe Ambrose. I couldn’t accept a world where my big brother was never able to crawl out of the pit he’d fallen into—not without crawling into it with him.
“So…Reese and Beau completed it right away, huh?” I said, trying to distract myself.
“Yes,” he rasped, gripping my thighs.
“I mean, that would definitely simplify things.” I tugged on his shirt, and he lifted his arms to let me pull it off. It was only fair, considering he’d already seen most of my body.
My breath caught when I took a look at what I’d uncovered. It couldn’t be, but it was.
The tattoo was faded as if it had been there a very long time, but the design of the thick geometric lines was still easily recognizable.
“You have a wolf tattoo,” I whispered in amazement, tracing the lines with my finger.
“Ulf,” he replied in explanation, pushing my hair gently behind my shoulders. “Wolf.”
“Holy crap,” I breathed. My shock must’ve been written all over my face because he let me go easily as I climbed off his lap.
Turning around, I whipped my tank top over my head and pulled my hair over my shoulder. Ambrose let out a sound before his hands came out to dig into my sides.
I knew what he was seeing. It wasn’t exactly the same—the lines were more delicate, and the design was more intricate—but a geometric wolf stared back at him from the center of my back.
“When did you get it?” he choked out, running his hand over the delicate design.
“When I was twenty,” I replied, looking at him over my shoulder.
“Why a wolf?” he ground out, his eyebrows pulled together as he stared at it.
“I don’t know,” I replied quietly. “I was screwing around with a ruler one day and ended up with the wolf, and I just…knew I wanted it as a tattoo. Charlie and I found a shop. He chickened out, but I was determined.”
I remembered the day clearly. I hadn’t been able to sleep, and I’d been screwing around with my sketchbook. Mostly, I just doodled to clear my head, but that morning the lines had almost immediately taken on a recognizable shape. I’d spent over an hour carefully finishing it.
“Gods,” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss the center of the tattoo.
It wasn’t small. The edges spanned almost all the way across my back. When the tattoo artist had originally printed it, he’d scaled it down to only a few inches. He’d been really surprised when I’d explained that I didn’t want it smaller. I’d wanted it larger than the original. It was my first and only tattoo, and it took up half of my back.
“Did Zeke see this?” he asked roughly as he gripped my hips and urged me back around.
“I’m sure he did,” I replied, running my fingers through his hair. “He saw me in a swimsuit plenty of times.”
“And he never mentioned mine?” he asked.
“Not your tattoo, no.” He pressed his forehead against my sternum. “But he talked about all of you all the time. He told us that we needed to find you if he didn’t come back. He insisted, actually. He made both of us promise that we’d make our way to Oregon.”
I paused, remembering those days after we’d realized that Zeke wasn’t coming back.
“It was so hard to keep Charlie moving. By the time we got to the Rennos, he was barely even trying to help me. He just wanted to—” The words caught in my throat. “Just lie down and die or something. So I figured it was the perfect time to go back to the apartment and get some things, since I didn’t know when we’d be back.”
“That’s when we found you,” he said, looking up at me.
“We were already on our way here,” I explained. “We would’ve met, eventually.”
“Inevitable,” he said softly, kissing the skin above my belly button.
“I guess so.”
“He had to have known,” Ambrose muttered, letting out a sigh against my skin.
“Who?”
God, when he looked at me like that, I felt it all the way to my toes. It wasn’t attraction, though the heat was evident in his stare. It was something deeper than that. Reverence. Awe.
I’d done nothing to deserve it.
“Zeke,” Ambrose replied. “He had to have known when he saw your tattoo.”
“It’s strange, right?” I asked, looking down at his chest. The similarities to mine were startling.
“Our souls are two sides of the same coin,” he said gently. “Not so strange.”