Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
God, yet another example of how much she didn’t retain.
She was certain, though, that her mahmen, the Chosen Layla, had been there, and her father Xcor as well—and she was grateful now that it had been everyone.
Her granmahmen was never going to have dinner out there again.
They hadn’t known it then. They’d just been there all together, enjoying the beautiful warm night, treasuring it as winter came rolling in. But you never knew when you were going to do something for the last time.
Turning away, she brushed at her eyes as she went over to the French door on the left. The other two opened up into the first floor primary suite that had been added the year before. Thank God her grandparents had planned ahead.
What a shame that what they’d prepared for had arrived so many decades before it should have.
There was a keypad next to the bolting mechanism, and she entered her registry number. The entire house was wired for sound, as her uncle Vishous put it, the cameras and motion detectors, the alarm system, the underground escape route, all engineered by him and monitored by his staff back at F.T. Headquarters, twenty-four hours a day.
She’d always been grateful the Black Dagger Brotherhood resources protected her grandparents as well.
As things unlocked, she waved up at the nearest camera, pushed the handle down, and entered her grandfather’s office. Distantly, there was a chiming sound, and she was careful to make sure as she shut the door that the seal was tight and the mechanism could reconnect. Just like her uncle had taught her when she was very young.
Safety started with opening and closing, he’d always said—
Wincing, she lifted one foot up like a flamingo and loosened the straps on her stiletto. Slipping it off was a relief, especially in all the warmth. Except trouble came as she went to put her foot down, and while her arch protested going flat, she braced a palm on the wall for balance as she went to work on the other side.
And that was when she realized…
It was too quiet.
“Hello?” she said as she let the second one drop. “Anybody home?”
She bit out a curse as she rushed into the hall and skidded around the doorjamb. The way into her grandparents’ bedroom was open and she didn’t have time to brace herself emotionally as she usually did. She just careened right in—
The lamp beside the bed was on, the dim pool of light spilling onto the withered female who lay so still. Lyric, the elder, was positioned back against a stack of pillows, her lined face and thinning white hair still such a shock. With her closed eyes and her slightly open mouth and no movement at all, it was clear that what they had all been waiting for had—
The Kindle lying closed on that sunken chest went up… and down. There was a pause. Then it went up… and down again.
Letting out the breath she’d sucked in, Lyric sagged with relief, and then checked the two-way monitor that showed the sitting area off the kitchen. Her father Blay and her grandfather were out there on the sofas, both sound asleep sitting up—and who could blame them. This death vigil was exhausting, and yet she was not ready for the end. None of them were—even though it was all anybody had been thinking about for the last month.
Especially the last week.
With sad resignation, she leaned against the doorjamb and pushed her fingertips into her temples. Unlike humans, who aged on a gradual scale, when a vampire’s end of life came, it was a fast descent into infirmity. The fact that just back in October, her granmahmen had been cooking and cleaning, raking leaves, and climbing up on a ladder to hang an autumnal wreath on the front door was unfathomable. And that she’d done all that while looking just like she had for the previous couple of decades? Only a little salt-and-pepper around her face, her posture still perfect, her eyes lively and her laugh quick as ever?
How were they here… now.
Her granmahmen came into sharp focus once again, and it was then she noticed that Ehlena, the nurse, had already taken care of changing the nightgown. Tonight it was a pale blue. Yesterday it had been a blush pink. Both complemented the pastel color scheme of the patchwork quilt and the room’s flowered wallpaper.
Rocke had always said that he slept inside of a Victorian dresser, minus the lavender sachets and the intimate apparel. But he also knew his shellan liked the feminine decor, so he was more than happy to let her have what made her happiest to wake up to.
That little line had been repeated countless times. And the elder Lyric had always filled in at the end that Rocke was actually her first favorite thing to see when she roused, the flowers on the walls and the quilt she’d made were a distant second—