Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“Yes, but when you visit Nocturn, more than likely, I’ll be with you, and I’d prefer privacy. So keep the flat. We’ll hire someone to manage it and prepare it when we need it. And in the end, you don’t have to let it go, you have a real home away from home, and we have a private place that’s an actual home when we’re there.”
Gorgeous chest. Striking eyes. Amazing hair. Long legs. Adorableness overload with how he was petting his pup.
And wise.
I struck gold.
So much so, my voice was husky when I replied, “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Do you want Jorda to source a management company or are you good to do that?”
“I can do it.”
“Then we’re agreed.”
“We are.”
As if to seal something that wasn’t just about a decision regarding my flat, but something much bigger—and from the way Tanyn was looking at me, we both knew it—I reached out to smooth the dark hair away from his forehead.
It fell back to where it was, but even if I knew my ministrations would prove futile, I did it again.
“Catty,” he whispered.
My eyes went from my hand and his hair to his.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
“I know, baby.”
“It’s a lot of change.”
“I know that too.”
“And there’s a ton I’m going to miss.”
His eyes melted with sympathy.
Gods.
My male.
“But I’m happy,” I told him.
“Fuck,” he growled.
Still whispering, I said, “I’m giving my notice at work.”
“Sweetheart,” he muttered, gently scooting Hurley away so he could reach for me and pull me into his arms.
I settled there, and it felt natural.
“I need to make an admission,” he said.
“Okay,” I replied.
“I hate that I didn’t think of all you’d have to give up for me, but I didn’t think about it.”
Well, I already knew that, so there wasn’t much to say about it.
“However, part of me is glad I didn’t, and I’d like to explain,” he continued.
“I’m listening.”
“Before, if you’d buckled because of family duty, I might never have known, or appreciated what I’d earned, because I didn’t earn it. Now—”
I knew what came after “now.”
And I was feeling so much, I couldn’t take more.
So I pushed in to put my lips to his and ordered, “Stop talking.”
“Thank you, baby, so fucking much for—”
“You’re talking.”
I felt his lips curl under mine.
So I kissed him.
Chat done, sex was the main course, so we got to it.
We devoured it.
And as was Tanyn’s wont, he didn’t make me go without dessert.
Tanyn
“Stay, boy,” Tanyn whispered.
Hurley whined but he stayed where he was at the side of the bed while, with a glance, Tanyn left his female in it and walked to the closet to get a sweater.
He put it on, then he padded on bare feet from the room.
He went to his study.
There, he opened the safe hidden behind a panel of the built-in bookshelf.
He procured the skeleton key.
And he left his study.
He walked down the stairs to the administrative and servant’s floor.
He then descended the stairs to the storage floor.
He saw it on that floor.
And he smiled.
He opened the door to the stairs that would take him to the dungeons.
And he noticed it there immediately.
It was gone.
Completely.
His smile grew.
He unlocked and opened the door to the dungeons, and he walked through it to the end.
As he stood there, the lights turned crimson and the stones shifted, formed, the arch stood before him, the darkness beyond it yawning before him.
He walked right through.
More stairs.
A great number of them.
He jogged down, his journey illuminated by the symbols of the ancient demon tongue.
When he arrived, the flames of The Pit were crackling, rising high on the walls, far higher than his first visit weeks ago.
Then again, the evidence they were, he’d already seen.
The snowpack on the walls of the dungeon level and several inches at the bottom of the storage level had already melted away.
He strode confidently across the bridge over the blaze to the plateau at the center of it.
The flames climbed higher.
He dropped to a knee and bowed his head.
He felt the scorch as the fires grew all around him.
He took his feet and announced, “Your mistress is here.”
With that, Tanyn lifted both arms.
And the flames consumed him.
He heard their message, and after they died away, he walked, unscathed, across the bridge in order to return to his female.
His beautiful Catla.
His fated mate.
Chapter 24
Rite
Friday evening, I sat next to Tanyn on the soni-jet on our way down to the Fall.
Mangold sat next to me, Zyra next to him.
Across from us, Nayden was lounged back in a corner seat, arms crossed on his chest, legs extended in front of him, ankles also crossed, his chin tucked into his neck. He was hot-guy dozing.
On the opposite end from him were Uly and Estra.
She was a half-fae, half-demon with sheet-straight, long, glossy black hair that had a very high, wispy-edged bang cut into it. Her bone structure was classically demonic, but her eyes were the prettiest lilac I’d ever seen, which was totally fae.