Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Her birthday.
“I know you’ll never spend this kind of money on yourself,” his mother had said with a smile right before the end, when she’d insisted he take it. “You and your dragon’s hoard.”
All those years he’d been denying his instincts to nurture and protect a pack, determined he’d never be an alpha, he’d still hardly spent anything. He’d told himself he was saving for retirement…even when he’d believed with every fiber of his being that he’d fuck up his life well before then.
“Rem-Rem.” A whisper of a word from the woman with the muddy scent.
One that kicked him right in the gut.
“So tired.” She swayed left and right. “My wrist is so thin this is falling off. Wonder if my Rem-Rem will figure out I bought it for him in the first place.”
Remi fought not to lash out, not to react in a rage of grief. Because she couldn’t be reading his mind. Changeling shields were too powerful. She’d have had to launch a violent telepathic assault before she could have ever gotten to his memories—and such an assault would’ve probably destroyed his brain in the process.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t mind reading.
“It’s my mother’s,” he said, his voice harsh. “She left it to me.” She was also the only person in the entire world who’d called him Rem-Rem. But only when they were alone together. Because it was a little boy’s name, and “oh my Rem-Rem, what a man you’ve become”—words she’d spoken to him more than once, her eyes shining with love.
But the blue-eyed woman who knew his deepest memories was listening only to her own internal voice. “One last gift.” Her face softened. “My boy, I’m so proud of you.” Her lashes quivered, her eyes staring hard into nothing. “Cake. Brown cake. Small brown cakes.”
“Chocolate cupcakes.” His mother’s favorite; she’d baked them at least once a week.
Later, after she was too sick, he’d baked them for her.
“Pieces of color. Tiny pieces of color on the small brown cakes.” A blink that appeared to have been forced by her watering eyes. “It hurts.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Oh, it hurts.” Then she made soft sounds…that were an exact mimicry of his mother’s small heart monitor signaling an emergency alert.
Remi jerked away his hand.
She stumbled, swayed.
Feeling like shit, though his face was hot, his grief tangled with anger at the intrusion into the most painful part of his past, he gripped her upper arm to stabilize her. A jolt under him before her head shifted, her eerie, beautiful eyes meeting him head-on.
At that instant, there was no lack of clarity to her, no fuzziness to the edges of her.
And no muddiness in her scent.
It was complex, and bright, and intoxicating.
“She was happy the last time she wore that watch.” Clear words, the intent in them potent. “No pain, just comfort at being with you, at lying by the window in the sun, with the forest just outside.
“She was so proud of what she’d accomplished in life. You were her greatest pride…” Gaze turning dull and unfocused, her eyes drifting away, her muscles going slack under his grip…and her scent twisting once more in that funhouse mirror.
Shaken, he released her.
She turned and walked back the way she’d come, until she stood in the same spot as when he’d first seen her. But she’d left carnage in her wake.
Bending down, his hands on his thighs, he gulped in lungfuls of air as his mind filled with memories of the mother who’d brought him up with love and heart and courage. She’d also held his feet to the fire when needed, especially during his teenage years, when he’d wanted to rage at the entire world.
“You sit your ass down, Remington, and we’ll have this out until I know what’s hurting you.” Fierce eyes of palest brown locked with his, her leopard a golden glow on the edges of her irises. “No son of mine is going to go off the rails because he’s got a fear inside him that he’s allowing to fester.”
Her strong, capable hands cupping his face, holding him in place. “You are not only your father’s son, Rem-Rem, you are also your mother’s son. Don’t you ever forget that.”
You were her greatest pride…
His throat closed up. How could a Psy know to say that? How could a Psy understand what a blow it struck to his weathered but never-forgotten grief to know that his mother had died proud of the man he’d become?
In the sun, in her favorite chair, in the little cottage he’d built for her when she got too tired and sick to get up to her aerie. She’d wanted to die at home, not in the antiseptic environs of a hospital. “I’m dying anyway, baby boy.” A husky whisper of memory. “I’d rather spend my last days surrounded by the green that’s always fed my wild heart.”