Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Apex wanted to be the help. He wanted to be the savior.
“That fucking symphath hadn’t been at the bedside back in that prison—”
From out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of movement at the forest edge. And he knew what it was before he turned.
Who it was.
The great white-and-gray wolf was standing just inside the tree line, its fur camouflaging the position perfectly in all the snow.
So the predator had wanted to give its presence away.
As it four-pawed the way out from the pines, Apex was acutely aware that it could run faster than he could, and he glanced back at the big house’s entry. He could make it if the thing rushed at him.
Well . . .
As the cold wind blew around him and tightened the muscles of his legs, he was pretty sure he could make it.
While the wolf approached him, he became transfixed by the way its weight shifted, the power in that body hypnotic. The ice-blue eyes that had made a target out of him were right in front of the head, perched atop the long muzzle. They were a reminder that predators always had their visual center facing forward. Things like horses and cows and deer had eyes on the sides, so they could see what was coming.
Wolves and vampires were what was coming.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked. Like the wolf could speak English?
But maybe it knew voices . . . and maybe Callum was still in there.
He’d never gotten the chance to ask the male if he had any control over anything when the wolf was front and center. Were they two sides of the same coin . . . or two totally different entities who arm wrestled over the same set of cells?
Had Callum sent the wolf in against those coyotes? To protect Mahrci? Or had that been primal instinct to go after an easy meal?
Did Callum know the wolf was getting even closer . . . to Apex now?
Apex sank down onto his haunches and just stayed where he was. And that seemed like some kind of signal. The wolf came all the way forward, one paw after the other, not in the deep snow now, but on the drive that had been cleared.
By the other half of him, in that truck—
And then they were face to face, nose to nose.
Reaching out, he suspended a hand over the right flank—just as Callum had done to his face earlier. And he gave the animal plenty of time to move away, growl—snap at him. Bite his hand off.
When none of that happened, he stroked the springy, silky fur, passing his palm down the shoulder.
“Can you do me a favor?” he whispered.
The wolf snorted into the cold, but not in a way that seemed like a negative response.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He continued to pet the rangy, powerful body. “If he’s in there, tell Callum . . .”
He shifted over and put his other hand on the far side of the wolf’s chest. “Callum, if you’re in there, I want you to know that I’ve spent the last thirty years thinking of you every day. It’s like you had died and I’ve been mourning you—and to deal with the pain, I made up stories about us. I made . . . a whole life for you and me. In my mind.”
Staring into the nearly white eyes of the wolf, his voice cracked, but he was able to keep going. “See, I didn’t know you long enough to have the little things. The cereal box in the store, the one I knew you liked. The jacket that still smelled like you. The side of the bed that was yours, the key ring you took every time you left . . . the sound you made when you said my name as you came. We didn’t get any of that. So I created our life, and I mourned it all as if it had existed.”
He glanced away and cleared his throat, embarrassed and yet somehow glad he was revealing all this to the wolf. “You liked Wheaties, in my made-up world. So I used to . . . buy a box, and eat it for First Meal. And when I poured the milk, I’d cry. It was the breakfast of champions, which is why I chose it for you.” He took a deep breath. So he could keep going. “In my fantasy world, we fell in love in the summer immediately after the liberation. You came home with me to Caldwell and recovered through that spring, and then as the color of the leaves deepened into that darkest green of late July . . . we fell in love. We took walks down by the river at night, under the moon. So I would go there each August, and stroll by the lazy, hot Hudson . . . and mourn.”