Total pages in book: 202
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
“I’ll do better,” I vow.
“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, wife. And I’m sorry if I’ve said or done shit that has made you afraid to level with me. No more secrets between us. None. Yeah? We’re still new but there’s depth in this relationship already, isn’t there? Or did I misread that? Because if I did, there’s something seriously wrong with my instincts.”
“You didn’t misread that.”
“You still don’t trust me or what is it?”
“I trust you. I just… I think I’m coming to grips with living a life not ruled by fear.”
“What do I gotta do to get you there?”
“I think I’m getting there now, Greyson.”
“Then no more secrets. Promise me.”
I nod. “Promise.”
“Even if I get angry.”
“Okay.”
“Promises mean everything, Stacy.”
“I don’t make promises lightly, husband,” I say.
He swallows and more of the hardness melts away.
“I wanna punish you right now. You’re lucky we’re here or I would.”
I rear back but he catches the back of my neck and holds it, grazing my mate mark, which causes tingles to shunt through my body.
“Not the kind of punishment that’d hurt you, the kind of punishment that'd frustrate you because I'd keep you on edge for a while, not letting you come.”
My eyebrows fly up in surprise.
He’s not done.
“But then you’d come,” he says gruffly, “You’d come so much, so hard, you’d beg me for mercy. And it’d be a while before I give it to you.”
“Uh…not sure your idea of a punishment dissuades me, Grey.”
“Don’t push your luck with me right now, woman, or I’ll get creative.”
I can tell by his face he’s not joking.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly, and I mean it. But I also smirk; I can’t help it.
“Whatever babies we have… they’re gonna be fine,” he says, angrily.
“I hope so,” I whisper.
“I know so,” he counters. “And just so you know, I want at least four.”
Four babies? “Um…”
“Non-negotiable,” he states, then adds, “Unless there’s a health reason to stop before then.”
“Um… okay… but how do you know they’ll be fine?”
“I just do,” he clips angrily.
“Between drinking the water here, the high miscarriage and low live birth rate of this pack in the past few years, plus the potential cousin thing… I’m scared.”
He shakes his head, thrusting his hand through his hair. “First cousins isn’t anything new. Not in the human world, not in ours. It’s taboo nowadays but genetically, there’s only a small chance of any issues. If they were siblings, that might be a different story.”
I wince. He goes more alert.
“There’s one more thing I should probably tell you,” I whisper. “Wyatt couldn’t ever get anyone pregnant around here, and he threatened me. That’s another reason I wanted to be paired up with Malachi. So Wyatt wouldn’t… um…”
His eyebrows fly up and red sparks flit around his temples.
Shit.
“Spit it out,” he orders.
“He was on a bender, was really drunk for like… two whole days and he forced his way into my mouth.”
I watch tiny red bubbles appear in the whites of Grey’s eyes and burst like webs before blood begins to trickle. He growls, his anger a living and breathing thing that somehow translates to the building, because now the building is rumbling right along with him.
The way blood bursts from his eyes when he’s upset, it feels like the right circumstances could put his entire head at risk of exploding. Me bursting into tears right now might be the only thing stopping it because Grey’s hands suddenly grip me. Red sparks materialize as his lip curls and the rumbling coming from beneath our feet… it’s loud.
37
Grey
As I grab her and pull her close, a deep-seated, overwhelming need to know everything she’s harboring inside her must tie into the magic I’ve recently come into because it’s the only thing that makes sense to me as the reason for the burst of heat and sudden tsunami of images and sensations slamming into my consciousness.
And as I process it all, my knees give out and she and I go to the floor.
I don’t just see things through her eyes, I feel things. Smell them. Taste them. It’s pain and fear; it’s sorrow and hunger. It’s desperation and fuck, the hunger... it’s so stark, my gut aches.
I find myself holding my mate on the floor, turtling over her in wolf form as the walls surrounding us in this building crumble. While I protect her from the falling debris, I roar out my anger while shifting to and from my forms repeatedly, as if against my will while my mind floods with images, scents, sensations. Images that turn my stomach. Sensations that fucking hurt. Scents and flavors that I want expelled from my body.
Strobing images come fast as scents and sounds all assault me from her mind, her memories. But I smell, feel, and see them all here. In the now.