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)
He halted.
“It’s good,” she gasped. “Please.”
A chuckle, before he began working the muscles of her back. Then he began that purring sound in his chest again, and it did vibrate right through his hands and into her back and oh, oh. Every part of her resonated on the same wavelength, her entire body relaxing muscle by muscle as his purr entered her very bones to melt her from the inside out.
* * *
• • •
REMI’S cock was rigid, but he didn’t do anything other than keep up the massage. Seeing Auden’s tension melt away, hearing the little sounds she was making without realizing it, it was the best aphrodisiac on the planet. As was the fact that she’d sneakily scooted close to him.
He rumbled in his chest, his leopard very close to his human skin right now, felt her shiver…and the excited beat of a second heartbeat from inside Auden.
He smiled. Yes, the cub knew him, too.
“How does she know you?” Auden whispered just then, the curve of her butt pushing into his knee because she kept on backing up to him.
“All cubs know their alpha’s voice.”
A sucked in breath, a pause, before Auden said, “Remi, I need to ask you something.”
His fingers stilled. “What, little cat?”
Shifting, she tried to sit up. He helped her until she was leaning against the headboard. And even though he’d just spent pleasurable minutes kneading the tension from her, she was stiff, lines of strain around her eyes and mouth.
When she spoke, her words had his claws slicing out. “I’m going to ask you the biggest favor of my life.” Those haunted moonstone eyes held his, potent in their pain. “Do you think RainFire can give my baby sanctuary?”
“Yes,” Remi said without hesitation.
“It’ll be dangerous for your pack,” she said. “But I have money. My father left me an enormous trust fund, and no one in the Scott family seems to know about it. It can buy you help, protection.”
Remi sliced out a hand. “You don’t have to worry, Auden. One of my best friends is an Arrow. No one will touch your baby or my pack.”
Remi and RainFire were very careful never to take advantage of the squad, their relationship built on a foundation of mutual respect and trust. But for a cub? Remi would ask and the entire squad would say yes. Because none of them would ever abandon a child at risk.
Auden’s eyes flared wide, and he could all but see the flames of her curiosity. But she seemed to shove that curiosity aside with a conscious hand to say, “I have to make a plan, because I might not be able to do it later, and my baby needs to be protected from whatever it is my mother set in motion before her death. Because there is something very, very wrong with me.”
Remi wanted to argue with her, but he knew they had to face the cold, hard facts. Rising off the bed, he paced around the room. “The scent and personality changes.”
Auden’s nod was hard, her breathing erratic. “Memory issues, too. Periods of lost time.” She exhaled. “All I know of what was done to my brain is that it involved a biograft that malfunctioned. Sometimes, I dream of fire engulfing my brain.”
Her fingers lifting to her temple. “The lesions are still there—my brain has apparently learned to work around them, but they didn’t just vanish. And there’s external evidence of things I did at points where I had to be lucid, and yet I recall nothing. Not just me managing to pretend for a couple of minutes on my better days. I pulled off a meeting with Kaleb Krychek, for one.”
Remi didn’t interrupt, a low-level rumble deep in his chest. The same instinct that made him a good alpha told him that what she was saying was important, and that she needed him to listen.
“I also have no memory of signing a fertilization agreement with another Psy family. But there’s a recording of me having a full contractual interaction with the other family.” She spread her fingers over her belly. “I’m speaking in a crisp and clear manner, negotiating the fee, and watching as the donor signs away all rights to the resulting child.”
Remi knew Psy did things that way, though his changeling mind struggled to accept it. He also knew that the woman in front of him was a creature of emotion. “You think like that, Auden?”
“No. I never have. That was my mother’s problem with me.” Her throat moving, her eyes shining. “My father didn’t mind that I was a psychometric and what that entailed, but I was never Silent enough for Shoshanna—except that I was on that video.”
Remi was caught by something else she’d said. “Why are you with your mother’s family if you were closer to Henry?”