Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“He’s going to have to let me go. I’m not a child anymore, Auntie Beth. I want my own life, my own family, and I can’t… I want to move out.”
“Oh. Boy.”
Okay, she could just imagine how that conversation was going to go.
“Can you talk to him?” The girl pressed her palms together in prayer. “Please? He’ll listen to you. They all listen to you.”
Thinking back to the moment she had walked into her hellren’s study and told the Black Dagger Brotherhood exactly how it was going to go, she remembered the males down on their knees in deference to her, their daggers buried in the antique rug.
Nalla wasn’t wrong that she could stand up to them, and that they gave her special clout, but there were limits—and she was very sure that such boundaries started and ended with interfering with their children. Especially the girls and anything sexual.
Sure, things had evolved in so many necessary ways, but fathers were still fathers, especially if they were warriors.
That groomsman had a point about ending up in pieces.
“I think you need to speak to your father yourself, honey.”
“He doesn’t listen to me.”
Or worse, does and just doesn’t agree, Beth thought.
“What about your mahmen?” she asked.
Tension tightened the female’s features. “She’s always been more worried about him. But it’s fine, I can stand up for myself. I don’t need her.”
“Your mother loves you.”
“My mother loves my father. I’m just what came along when I did.”
Beth shook her head sadly, thinking of her own struggles with L.W. “Families are complicated.”
“Well, I’d like to start my own someday and find out. But at this point, that’s not going to happen because my sire will slice the throat of anybody who wants to take me out for a coffee.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said. “I really am.”
“Me, too.”
Nalla stayed for a little longer, then left to clock in for her shift at Luchas House. As Beth listened to the back door shut, she looked across at the pan in the drying rack, and the silence closed in. Loneliness, her ever familiar, least favorite roommate, pulled up a chair and sat too close beside her, radiating a coldness that made her zip up the collar of her fleece.
A noise down below in the basement quarters, quiet though it was, reminded her she wasn’t actually alone, and a moment later the cellar door opened. Excellent timing. She’d found the best thing for composure was the requirement for her to find some.
“So are you and Lassiter staying in tonight—” Beth straightened as she saw Rahvyn’s face. “What’s wrong?”
After the tragedy, the quiet, mysterious female had been such a source of strength, and when Beth had moved out of the mansion, it had seemed only natural to have her and her mate move in with her. They hadn’t had anywhere else in mind to live in the physical world, and over the years, Lassiter had proven to be as loyal a friend as he was a protector of the race. And you know, The Golden Girls wasn’t so bad as TV went, after all.
Abruptly, she realized what time it was. “Rahvyn, aren’t you going to the Audience House? The civilians will be arriving soon.”
The female came over and sank down onto her haunches. If the strange expression on her face wasn’t alarming enough, the way she took Beth’s hands sealed the deal on OMG.
“Do you remember,” Rahvyn said softly, “a long, long time ago, when I told you to trust me.”
Beth nodded numbly. Yes, she recalled everything about that white-hot-painful time when the female had come upstairs to the bejeweled suite—and she especially remembered the first moment she had seen her hellren’s face emerge from the features of the female.
“Yes,” Beth breathed. “I do.”
“I want you to believe what you are about to see the now. Know it is not a dream. This is everything you’ve been waiting for, everything I haven’t been able to tell you.”
“What are you talking about—”
“The fallow time is through.” The female reached up and brushed Beth’s face. “You have been so very brave.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Do not try. Just feel.” Rahvyn rose to her feet. Then she bent at the waist and pressed a kiss to Beth’s forehead. “You have done well—”
The security system let off a beep as a door was opened, the front one. And justlikethat, Rahvyn up and disappeared.
“L.W.?” she called out in a shaky way. “Is that… you?”
Probably not. He didn’t come around much at all, anymore.
Except then she heard the footfalls, heavy ones. “L.W.?”
She was in the process of standing up and turning around when a figure appeared in the doorway that led to the living room. It was a tall… male… with long black hair that fell to his waist from a widow’s peak and shoulders that were as big as the whole world and a muscle shirt that showed off… forearms that were tattooed with lines and lines of Old Language symbols.