Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Why are you doing this to me again? Not that I mind,” I grin cheekily. Spinning me up like this takes a lot out of Order. He doesn’t have endless web available. I watch his muscles ripple as he takes a long drink from a water vessel before turning each of his eight eyes back to me, slightly narrowed.
“The locals are developing tales about a man-spider and a she-wolf.”
“They’re very imaginative people.”
“Or you’ve been running your mouth, or worse, they’ve seen us as we truly are.”
If my arms were free, I’d wave his concerns away.
“People out this far aren’t as worried about that sort of thing as people in other places. You and I are basically mythological creatures, and this is a place where myth still lives.”
“You’re very good at talking,” he says. “But I know you’re lonely. You miss your friend. But that doesn’t mean you can make new ones here. We have to keep to ourselves.”
“I am good at talking. I’ve been doing it for quite a while.” I don’t address the part about missing my friend. I miss Sally a whole lot. Order is great, but there’s something about having a good girlfriend that cannot be replaced by a lover, even one as wonderful as him.
“We have to keep our secrets to ourselves. Stories spread, even out here. They’ll be looking for us.”
He’s talking about both factions of the war. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that ructions are never far away when I am concerned.
“Maybe I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in hiding. Maybe there’s some way we can be something other than monsters in the outback.” (Though I do actually really enjoy the way monsters in the outback sounds.)
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life secured in silk if you don’t start behaving yourself,” he lectures. I try not to grin too broadly.
“There are no threats that work on you, are there,” he sighs. “Absolutely incorrigible human brat.”
I smile and swing in my disciplinary cocoon, sharing his wondering of what will work. I really don’t know. We’ve run and we’ve hidden. That should be enough, right?
Order’s plane sits in the shadow of acacias and corkwoods, hidden from the skies above. Nobody can find us, even if they wanted to. This is the closest to a happily ever after we’re going to get. But it doesn’t feel like everything is over. It feels like we’ve taken a step out of an ongoing mystery, one that’s going on without me. I do hate that. I wonder what’s happening with Chief Connor, and Sally. I wonder if she’s had a dozen more babies. I wonder if he is hunting her the way he hunted me, and if he intends to turn her into a werewolf as well.
“Does it ever bother you that all that is going on over there and we’re just… here?”
“No,” Order says. “The moment I was forced to choose between you and them, I chose you, and in choosing you I chose to leave them all behind. The war, such as it is, will never be ended, and we as a family are fractured. Our purpose has evaporated, and now we must find our own lives, our own purposes. Mine is you.”
“You’re the sweetest,” I say, my voice cracking just a little with emotion. I have been chosen by him. I have his faith and his love and everything else I could ever want.
“Yes, I am,” he agrees.
We have escaped to an antipodean idyll, but sometimes escape isn’t as complete as one imagines. And sometimes, others continue to choose us even when we no longer choose them.
On this fine afternoon, the past is closer to the present than either one of us expects.
A shadow passes over the scrub nearby. A moment later, wings overhead make us both look up as great spans of orange and black block out the sun with an oversized yet whimsical fluttering.
“The absolute fuck,” I curse to myself, sounding very New York all of a sudden. I had started to develop a faint Australian accent, but that’s gone instantly.
Order leaps for me and cuts me down immediately. He is trying to free me as quickly as possible, and he is so focused on me he cannot turn to face the potential enemy that just landed nearby.
“Shift,” he growls. “Shift. And run. Do not allow yourself to be caught. I will find you again.”
“I’m not running,” I growl. The wolf is rising in me, but it has not taken over yet. I am still human, and I can still think like a human - though that conscious control is slipping by the second.
“The king has come,” Order hisses. “The monarch is here.”
The way he says those words is so intense, I feel all the hairs on my skin rise up with sudden goosebumps.