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 dig deep to push past the vertigo and force myself forward. I know I’m staggering, I’m nauseous. My vision distorts as echoes of multiple heartbeats fill my ears and sink into my own chest. I keep moving through the warehouse, staggering toward the scents.
The knowledge that I should’ve done the salt circle and taken the ampule resonates in every cell of my body.
I fucked up.
But it’s too late, I’m not turning back, not when Stacy is in there. With her.
I feel her. I feel them.
Four scents assault me hardest as I stumble into a room with people in it.
She’s here. She’s breathing. More sparks are pulled from my skin, from my chest now and fuck, it hurts, feels like they’re being yanked out of me, they’re like splinters with roots attached to them.
I ignore the sting and zone in on the two forms on the couch, one of them, my woman, the other… the woman who birthed me. The sparks that are leaving me are flying toward her, sinking into her skin, but she’s welcoming them, they don’t seem like they’re burning her.
Soleil weeps, clasping her throat with both hands, having what looks like some sort of mental breakdown as the sparks keep landing on her skin.
“I loved them both so m-much,” she croaks. “So, so much. I never wanted to do what I did. I never wanted to lose them. Never, never, never. But I… I… I just couldn’t help it. Obviously, I still can’t. I…” She sobs loudly, looking manic.
“Couldn’t help what?” Stacy asks, then turns her head and spots me as I wobble, trying to clear my double vision.
Three other women zoom into my focus. They’re staring at me, standing against a wall. I struggle to take in my mate with my eyes and my nose to assess her wellbeing.
Strength suffuses my veins, heat pulsing in my face and I straighten as my birth mother gasps. “It’s you! I suspected it wouldn’t take too long. You’d be gallant, like your father.”
“Get…the fuck… away from my mate,” I demand, summoning strength, feeling way the fuck off. I need to feel a hundred per cent, so I rip the t-shirt off my back, grab the fly of my jeans and undo it, shifting as I drop them.
The women in the room all gasp at the sight of my wolf.
I feel unsteady as wolf, too, though don’t feel it as much as I did in human form.
I shift back, then shift to wolf again before shifting back again while sparks have continued to fly from both my fur and my skin.
The energy in the room is beyond amped and the other women other than the young one who waved us in are scattering out of the room, leaving the curly-haired witch, me, Stacy, and Soleil. The curly-haired one waits, arms crossed as she watches us.
I pull my jeans back up and do them up, vision back to normal as I get my feet into my shoes deciding I’ll pull magic from every member of my coven, as much magic as it takes to ensure my mate is safe from this woman.
I take one step forward, feeling the pulsing heat not only behind my eyes, under the skin of my entire face.
“Greyson,” Soleil says, still sobbing. She rushes toward me and collides with me, grabbing my face with both hands.
Jaw clenched, I stare into eyes like Mimi’s. Like some of my cousins, and mine too, I guess.
I’m about to demand answers while simultaneously shoving her the fuck away when I’m assaulted by images, memories, emotions because of the fact she’s touching me.
Flash cards and movie snippets move fast, too fast, fusing with my mind and it feels different from the last time I pulled Ronnie’s gifts. Maybe because it’s so personal. Maybe because I’m pulling so hard.
My father’s face. He’s younger. No lines around his eyes. No gray around his temples. He’s smiling. Reaching. Emotions well up in me that I know come from this woman’s memories. Memories of warmth, love, connection. Longing. I see my face when I was an infant. Giggling. Happy. Warmth within my father’s embrace because he’s holding her with one arm, me in the other. A unit. The feel of the strong bond shatters as color drains from my infant face, as that small face morphs from giggling to gasping for breath with lips turning blue, eyes morphing between brown and silver while the baby cries a blood curdling cry that weakens until it’s faint whimpering. Everything around the images shatter and splinter into curling and melting shards of blood-slicked glass and pain. So much pain. Aching, throbbing agony. Grief. The most immense grief-stricken and agonized screaming fills my mind while everything in the visage shrivels to floating flakes of ash.
Her voice cuts through the distorted images, which continue to strobe in my field of vision.