Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 120031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
“Mom, back off,” Eli warned through his teeth.
Kathy looked at him. “Everything was fine until she came here. Fine.”
“Except for the part where I was miserable, yeah, it was fine,” he said.
Kathy flicked a dismissive hand. “Now you’re just being dramatic.”
“You’d know all about dramatic, wouldn’t you?” Casey folded her arms. “Go on, say everything you’ve been itching to say to me since the day I came here. Let it out. Have your tantrum. See if anyone respects you for it. See if you can still respect yourself afterward. Because in your shoes, I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to.”
Some of the Mercury Pack members gathered on the porch, but Casey didn’t give a single flying fuck if they’d come to defend Kathy. The woman needed to hear this shit.
“You know, people have told me to be patient with you; that you’re scared of seeing Eli go through what you went through and that it’s messing with your ability to be happy for him,” said Casey. “But me? I think it’s about more than that. You clung to your kids to get you through a difficult time. But you lost Nick to his mate, then you lost Roni to hers, and Eli was all you had left … until me. Now you’re feeling adrift, aren’t you? Like there’s no one to hold you here anymore.”
Kathy’s eyes flickered, but she didn’t confirm or deny it.
“I can sympathize with that. I can. I do. But I can still judge the everloving shit out of you for not putting your son’s feelings before your own.”
“You know nothing about me,” clipped Kathy.
“Maybe not. But you know nothing about me either. Hasn’t stopped you from passing judgment or being a passive-aggressive heifer, though, has it?”
“I am not passive-aggressive.”
“And my tits are big.”
“Nor am I a heifer.”
“And my ass is small.”
Kathy’s eyes narrowed. “You have a hell of a mouth on you. Does your mother know you speak to people that way?”
“Probably not. I haven’t seen her in over a decade.”
The bluster left Kathy in a rush. “Oh.” The tension began to leach out of her muscles, and she sighed. “Your inner bitch really doesn’t play nice, does it?”
“Not even for a second. Now are you done with your boring, self-centered bullshit or what?”
Kathy looked at Eli. “You going to let her speak to me like that?”
Eli pursed his lips. “Yeah, as it happens, I am.”
Kathy harrumphed, but she didn’t seem angry. “Don’t come crying to me when her mink kills you in your sleep.” And then she stormed into the lodge.
Casey turned to Eli. “Does that mean it’s over?”
He curled an arm around her and pulled her close. “It’s over. Sad as it is, that’s the closest to ‘welcome to the family’ that you’re going to get from her.”
Casey shrugged one shoulder. “I can live with that.”
It was dark when Casey’s eyes fluttered open in the very early hours of the morning, but her shifter night vision enabled her to see clearly. It hadn’t been a noise that woke her. It was a sense of restlessness humming down the mating bond, so it didn’t surprise her to see that Eli was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts.
She snuggled closer to him. “What’s wrong?” Her voice sounded thick with sleep.
Blinking, he looked down at her. “Nothing.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
Nothing? “Liar,” she said softly. “I can practically feel you brooding through the bond.” She let out a contented sigh as his fingers began exploring her back, even though she sensed he was taking comfort rather than offering it. “You’re lying here seething about something. Is it the falcons? Or is it that Donovan’s contact hasn’t responded yet?” But he didn’t answer. “Talk to me. Please.” It seemed to be the plea that got to him.
He sighed. “It’s not so much the attack that gets to me. I don’t even care that I had to kill the falcons—and yeah, I am aware that that doesn’t say good things about me. What really pisses me off is that they were told to record it.”
Casey stiffened, anger rising inside her. “You didn’t mention that part yesterday. Don’t think I didn’t notice how vague you were—” She broke off as it hit her. They’d tried to record it, just as one of the humans had tried to record the attack on Roni. “Motherfuckers.”
“This shit has dredged up bad memories for her. My sister is one of the toughest people I’ve ever known, but her attack took something out of her. Not just because it was as traumatic as any assault could be, but because her brother had been forced to kill for her. It weighed on her, ate at her.
“It was hard for us to watch Nick change little by little over the years. Every time we visited him at juvie, he seemed harder. Colder. But he never regretted what he’d done. I think the thing that bothered him most about his actions was that he’d been able to kill so easily without feeling any remorse. He was only thirteen.”