Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
For a moment, it looks like I have no head.
Hot steam flows out from the horse’s nostrils, and I reach out, gently stroking her velvet muzzle. I feel her calm, and my gaze goes to Kat beside her.
She’s standing there, her shawl clutched. Wary. Her soft, full mouth held together tightly.
“Kat,” I say. But that’s all I can say.
She stares at me for a moment, and then her expression softens, her hand going to Snowdrop’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t stand to be in there a minute longer. I know I was rude.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” I tell her. I want to go to her. Touch her. Kiss her.
Fuck her.
Defile her.
Spread your seed inside her.
I blink the voice away. “I know how strange all of this is for you.”
“And for you,” she says, and she’s coming to me now, stopping a foot away in the sawdust. She stares up at me, anguish in her pretty blues, her pulse visibly ticking in her throat. “They all act like it’s normal. Like they want so badly for things to go back to normal. As if the last four years never happened.”
But it is like it never happened.
I reach out, and I take her hand in mine. Her skin is cold but soft, so soft. I wrap my fingers around it, feeling how fragile her bones are. How easy it would be to crush her.
She must be protected from all of this, I think.
She must be protected from me.
“I think you’re right to not want to be at the school with me,” I tell her.
Her chin dips. “No. That’s not it. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you…”
“Is it him?” I sound petulant. I don’t care.
Her eyes widen.
“Him?” she repeats.
Oh, but she knows who I mean. She is pretending.
“The professor,” I say coolly.
“Professor Crane? No. It’s nothing to do with him. I don’t understand why my mother changed her mind so abruptly.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want you there alone, but now that I’ll be there, she feels I can protect you.”
She studies me for a moment. “Do you really believe that?”
“I would like to believe that.” But I don’t. Because I don’t know that I’ll be able to protect her from myself. And her mother has never cared to give her any protection. She would offer her own daughter to the wolves if it would please them. I feel she’s doing that now.
And I’m the wolf.
Kat shakes her head, gnawing on her lower lip. Her attention goes to Snowdrop, her pale hand on the horse’s white coat. “My mother doesn’t want what’s best for me. I know that now. I always knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it. Now I know.”
I can’t help but give her a fleeting smile, my heart warming with pride. “You’re all grown up, Kat. You finally see the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“That your mother has never been on your side,” I tell her.
Indignation sparks in her eyes. “And you knew? You knew this and you never told me?”
“I didn’t know how. We were just kids, daffy. We were young. I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I knew that your mother never had your interests at heart, let alone your best ones. It was always about her sisters, about their coven. It was the same with my own parents. I knew they didn’t care. They still don’t. You see that, don’t you? You’ve always seen that. You could have told me, but you didn’t.”
She looks down at her shoes, and I give her hand a squeeze. “Neither of us have parents that care. You were lucky you had your father. He was the only one who did. We have to look out for each other.”
“Look out for each other?” she says with a snarl and rips her hand away. Her anger shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. “You should have been here to look out for me! To protect me when I had no one. Instead, you took my virginity, and you left me! You left me, Brom!”
Her words sting like nettle. As if this is my fault?
“I didn’t take anything. You gave it to me. And I told you I don’t remember why I left,” I grind out, feeling anger rising from that dark place, where the thing resides. “How many fucking times must I explain that!”
“You took my innocence,” she decrees, jabbing her finger into my chest. “You took it, and you left me. You used me and discarded me. I spent four years thinking your disappearance was all my fault!”
I reach up and grab her finger, gripping it hard. “I was lost for four years! I don’t know what happened. You think this is all about you?” I squeeze her finger harder, feeling darkness flood my veins. “And fuck your innocence. It seems like you’ve thrown that away like a dirty rag. I know you’re screwing your professor.”