Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Her face lit up, gratitude seeping into her eyes. “You saved my lantern?”
“Love,” Hadriel said, “he brought your fucking spices. Of course he brought your lantern. He probably pawed through your drawers, sniffing —“
My look cut him off. The dragon king and queen allowed this wolf a lot of leeway and I honored their looseness, but I had my limits.
“Why did you bring my spices, by the way?” she asked me, for once curious and not accusatory.
Thankfully, before I could answer, Sixten asked, “Do you think she kept you in the dark in case you got captured?”
“She never mentioned if she did, but she definitely did not like me sticking my nose in. If I asked too many questions or pushed too hard, I was punished for impertinence.”
“And you were cool with that?” Sixten asked, crinkling her nose.
Aurelia shrugged. “I didn’t have any other choice. Granny could be funny about certain things. You just kinda learned when to butt out. Given most of her affairs didn’t concern us and she let me know if something was ever amiss with my product, I just kinda . . . bumped along.”
Tanix jogged back toward us and held out the lantern. “I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. There’s no switch.”
“It’s magic.” Aurelia winked at him before explaining how it worked.
He did as she directed, trying a second time when it didn’t work. He shook his head and handed the lantern over.
She followed the same instructions with a smile and in a moment, a bright indigo burned within the glass.
“See?” Her smile widened and the light twinkled in her eyes.
I stared, entranced. I’d never seen someone so incredibly lovely in all my life. Her happiness beamed from within her, like a beacon.
“What kind of lantern is that?” Dante asked.
“A fairy lantern. It was a gift from Granny.” She turned and held the lantern up so she could better see the labels. “I’ve always been intrigued by fairies. I’d always dreamed of one day traveling to their lands and finding a handsome fairy mate with all his riches.”
Dante looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Everyone else looked straight ahead, suddenly stiff.
I let it go. Her comment hadn’t sparked even a kindling of rage. She didn’t really mean it, I could tell. More importantly, my wolf could tell, knowing her heart wasn’t in it. And then she glanced at me, nothing more than a quick look, and I knew why. Any other mate would be an imperfect fit, and now, after having met me, they would never do. She was in the same situation as I was, thrown together by some force of nature, unable to rationalize a way around it.
What a shitty fucking situation—her shitty life matched my terrible fucking past. We deserved each other.
“Here.” She pointed at one of the crates. “That’s the one. And then this one . . .” She lowered the lantern, pointing at the crate on the bottom left. “Product X. I hate naming things. She clearly thought I was no good at it if she changed all the names for market.”
Dante and Sixten got to work, moving things around so that they could pull out the crates she needed.
“No, don’t—” She jumped into the cart, reorganizing before looking into the crates to check their contents. “Some of these need to be stored in a specific way or they smush together and mess up the doses. The doses need to be precise.”
“No one is going to be taking them,” I growled. “They might as well go into the fire.”
“Someone will take them. As soon as you see that they aren’t lethal, people will want to try them.”
I pursed my lips and didn’t bother arguing, instead turning my attention to the crate Tanix was unwrapping. The same sort of tabs I’d seen earlier were piled in, all a slightly different shape but the same size. Tanix stepped back, still looking down on it all, as Aurelia finished up and then checked her Project X.
My stomach clenched and I turned away, unable to stop thinking about her carrying my child. Unable to stop the yearning. My wolf did the equivalent of whining in misery.
“Right.” Aurelia dusted off her hands and bent to the crate of relaxants. “How do you want to do this, Hadriel? Should I take half of one, and then half of another, wait a minute to prove I won’t die, and then you can take the same ones?”
Hadriel snaked between the others and then bent next to her. “You promise I’ll be okay?”
“I still promise that, yes. You’ll be fine.”
“Take it in wolf form,” I advised, turning back and avoiding looking at that other crate. “That’s how they did it.”
“Right-O.” Hadriel handed off the nearly empty bottle of wine, set down his glass, and quickly stripped.