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)
Great.
No.
Farging fabulous.
Bah!
Chapter 10
Over
Predictably, dinner was not a barrel of laughs.
Tanyn’s eyes might have been back to blue, but there was no mistaking he was ticked right the hells off…and who he was ticked at (obviously) was me.
This, of course, made Dad hyper-alert to the two of us…and ticked as well.
It made Mom hyper-aware of the two of us…and openly worried.
Same with Laura, times two, because she seemed worried and ticked.
Whereas Aleksei and Nayden went into overdrive trying to make it seem like this was a nice dinner with a number of beings who cared about each other (which, it was, it was just that one of those beings was angry at another one).
Nayden, by the by, could pass as Tanyn’s brother.
He was tall, lean, fit, dark, had striking silvery-gray eyes that were a lot like the color of mine…oh, and he was gorgeous.
He was also amusing.
And last, and this was the part I liked the best, it was clear he knew Tanyn very well because he handled him and his mood brilliantly.
Fortunately, since I was de facto queen of the castle (literally!), I was seated at the foot of the table, and Tanyn at the head, far away from me.
Mom sat to his right.
Laura strongarmed Aleksei out of his seat at my right and sat there instead of him.
As Nayden regaled us with stories of him, their other friend Uly, and Tanyn at The Eyrie, being sure to make them funny not embarrassing, complimentary and not mocking, and mostly reminiscent not tawdry, Laura continually kicked my leg.
Eventually, I kicked her back.
She returned my kick.
So I did the same.
Before we bruised each other into limping for days, I gave her big eyes.
She shot them back.
I mouthed, “Later.”
She leaned toward me and whispered, “His mom was murdered. How are you two fighting?”
Aleksei had obviously filled her in.
This meant I leaned her way and answered, “Because I’m an idiot?”
She scrunched up her face.
She knew I could totally be an idiot.
That afternoon, before we all broke to go to our rooms to freshen up for dinner, I’d told her the story Mom received about my weekend on Sigil.
Laura was less excited about it, more reflective, and I thought she read between the lines of what I hadn’t told Mom.
That Tanyn was getting to me, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
But any kind being wouldn’t pick a fight, accidentally or not, with a male who just learned both his parents were murdered.
I honestly didn’t know why I mentioned the sleeping arrangements, understanding he put me there, so that was where he wanted me, and it was no skin off my nose to be there.
Except something Tanyn had said to me on Sigil.
And you were better at putting them off.
He’d been speaking of the males that I’d been with where we didn’t work.
Was it me who made sure those relationships didn’t work?
And if it was, why would I do that?
I’d always wanted to spend my life with someone. Get married. Have children. Have someone to go home to and share my day with. Make Dead Winter and Summer Solstice memories.
Have my own digi-frame filled with pics of smiling beings I adored.
But I was thirty-one (only just, my birthday had just passed), and even with copious courting, did that happen?
No.
Because none of them were right.
None of them reached into my brain, my heart, my blood and bones.
I wasn’t the only demon who thought it sucked our kind didn’t have fated mates. Not only did it make it easier to find the one, you had it. That being you belonged to. That being who belonged to you. That being who was made for you. Meant for you.
Destined for you.
Demons had to court and hope.
I’d looked it up once.
Divorce or desertion between fated mates among all in the Four Realms sat at one point two percent.
Divorce or desertion between others was forty-two percent.
Divorce or desertion between demons, the fieriest of all the species, was fifty-three percent.
I could not refute there were some feelings happening in me when Aleksei and Laura found each other.
And I was seeing this was why I gave Bash a shot.
Sure, he had it all on paper, but when the hover met the air, he was a juvenile, pouting asshole.
But I’d been desperate.
Desperate to have what my friend had.
Desperate to avoid my father doing what he did with some male that was not of my choosing.
Desperate to have someone of my own.
“And then my balls shriveled…I mean, my stomach dropped,” Nayden was saying, “when the dude just jumps out of the helo, no fucking shoot, he can’t transform into a dragon, but on his way down, the male grabs onto the branch of a tree, swings around like he’s a decorated gymnast and lands on his feet on the ground. He then pulls out his TXMag and starts blasting everything that was moving. Shit, brother,” he said to Tanyn, “everyone in that helo, including me, were stunned inert by that demonstration of you being a sheer badass.”