Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes. I am.”
Gray
Karl and I swap looks while our father talks Callie into his little deal without so much as a single objection from her. He definitely has a way with women. A way of manipulating them. They never see it coming. He just focuses his attention on them and they fall under his sway. It’s almost like vampire powers, in a way, it’s like he fogs their minds. But there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s just being a hot older guy.
“I can have someone escort you to the reading room now,” he says. “It’s within the walls of the property. You’ll be safe from prying eyes.”
“Yes, oh yes, please. Thank you so very much,” she says. “I am so glad I came. This is everything I have ever imagined. I don’t know how to thank you.”
I want to talk to my father, so I do not object when he sends her off with a bookish lady with big thick glasses and a chunky cardigan. I’ve been in the libraries here. There are books that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Callie is going to be in absolute heaven.
So why don’t I share her joy?
My father sits back in his chair once she leaves, and fixes both Karl and me with a much less friendly stare.
“The two of you are too big for me to be cleaning up after,” he growls. “One of you is thinking with his cock, and one of you can’t kill a soft girl. Ridiculous.”
The nice, cheerful, sociable facade he showed Callie is gone in an instant, and in its place is the same cold disapproval Karl and I are so used to. I almost believed him when he was in performance mode. It makes me wonder why he can’t just be nice, if he knows how to pretend to be nice so easily.
Karl gets up, drops his napkin on his plate, and leaves. He does not take negative feedback well. I’d be tempted to follow his lead, but I need to question my father. This deal is too neat and too kind. I don’t trust it.
“Is this real, then, Father? Is she safe here?”
“She’s safe enough,” he says. “You needn’t panic. I won’t be killing your little mate. Would it really have been so hard to find someone of your own kind? There are dozens of females who would let you breed them. You could have had several litters by now. But you insist on saving your seed for creatures like that insipid little thing.”
“You didn’t like her,” I say flatly.
“What is there to like? Generational privilege in kitten heels?” He snorts. “I’m surprised Karl couldn’t kill her.”
He didn’t really try. He handed her off to another set of wolves who bungled the whole affair, but I don’t tell my father that. Hurling Karl under the bus won’t help anything.
“So what is really on the table, Father?”
Orion looks at me, and his blue eyes are iceberg cold. There is not a hint of feeling in that gaze.
“There is only one thing to be done if you will not have her see death.”
“What? I will do anything to keep her alive. Anything.”
“She must be transformed.”
I am confused and horrified in equal measure. “Transformed? That’s not possible. You mean… there are legends, but shifters are bred, not made. We know we can’t actually make new shifters by biting.”
If we could, Callie would already be one. She has a bite on her deeper and bigger than most any scar I’ve seen on a person.
“Most shifters are simply bred from mother or father to child, yes, passing on the ancient curse. But the nice thing about curses is that they don’t really mind how they are passed on. Only that they are.”
“So you want to turn Calista into a wolf,” I say, not asking how in the meantime.
“Yes. Induct her into the pack. Make her one of us. Doing anything else is unacceptable. If she has chased the curse so long, refused all opportunities to escape it, then she may as well be delivered to her fate,” he says. “She seems to be potentially submissive enough. She was practically begging to show her belly over dinner.”
I hate hearing him speak to me this way. It’s so disrespectful.
“How is a human made wolf?” I ask the question to change the subject.
“She is bitten.”
“She’s already been bitten and survived.”
“Bitten is more metaphorical,” he says smugly. He knows something I don’t, and I hate it.
“What are you talking about, Father? Do you want me to guess your meaning?”
He doesn’t like being called out on his dramatic streak. It makes it all that much less fun for him. This man is up to something, and I want to know what.
“We have been working… and when I say we, I mean people with more scientific acumen than myself or any of the brutes who enforce the laws,” he says, taking a conversational sideswipe at me. “On a method to isolate the curse.”