Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Have courage, daughter! My courage I give you!” the Goddess said.
Miri felt her spine straighten and her chin lift.
That’s Saxon in there somewhere and I love him, she reminded herself. And I’m not letting him go!
She threw herself in front of the blaster that Lynx had aimed at the wolf’s enormous head.
“No! I won’t let you!” she gasped, spreading her arms, making herself into a human shield.
“My Lady, be careful! Don’t do this!” Lynx’s voice was anguished with fear now as he reached out his free hand to her as though to coax her back before it was too late. “He can bite your head clean off. Please, Mirabella—come back to me!”
“No!” Miri stood her ground despite the snarling, red-eyed beast at her back. “No, I can bring him back—I know I can.”
“You’re not Bonded to him—to either of us! There’s no way you can reach him!” Lynx protested.
“You have a partial Bond with the Lykan Shifter, daughter. Try for yourself—reach out to him and see,” the Goddess said in her ear.
“I have a partial Bond with him!” Miri exclaimed, still keeping herself between the snarling wolf and the blaster. “Just let me try to reach him, Lynx—let me try!”
“My Lady, do you know what it will do to my heart if I have to watch you torn to bits before my eyes?” Lynx’s golden eyes were filled with despair. “Please—come back to me!”
“Not until I at least try to reach Saxon!” Miri said stubbornly.
She turned and took a step towards the big beast—he was so huge the shaggy tips of his ears brushed the ceiling and he was still snarling warningly.
“Saxon, please,” Miri pleaded in a low voice. “Please, listen to me. You love me and I love you. We were together last night—we made love, you and I and Lynx. Don’t you remember?”
“It is not your physical voice that you must use but your mental one, daughter,” the Goddess whispered in her ear. “Close your eyes and feel for him—send him the lifeline he needs to come back to you!”
“All right—got it,” Miri muttered back. Though it felt like suicide to close her eyes with the enormous animal ready to spring on her at any moment, she did as the Goddess asked and squeezed them shut.
“Saxon,” she thought, throwing her mental voice like a stone into a void. “Saxon, it’s me—Mirabella—your little one. Please, can you hear me?”
For a long moment there was nothing and she had the mental image of herself throwing stones into a void again—an enormous, deep well that went down and down to unknown depths.
“Saxon,” she tried again. “Where are you?”
Then, just when she had almost given up hope, the wolf stopped growling. And a moment later, Miri heard a reply. It was so faint and distant she could barely make it out but the low, growly tone was familiar.
“Mirabella? Little one?”
Again she had the mental image of a deep, dark well. And Saxon was stuck down in it—somewhere near the bottom. “Throw him a lifeline” the Goddess had said. And Miri intended to do just that.
“Saxon!” she sent again and she took another step forward.
It was a blind step, since she had her eyes tightly shut, picturing the well. Her foot landed in a slippery puddle of blood and she slid and fell forward with a gasp, expecting to land face-first on the inlaid floor.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, a warm pillar of fur insinuated itself between her and the floor. Miri opened her eyes and saw that she was leaning against the wolf’s foreleg. The enormous creature was looking down at her but his eyes were no longer burning red. He nosed gently at her and she heard a deep voice in her head.
“Little one? Where are you?”
“Here! I’m here and I’m going to get you out of there!”
Closing her eyes again, Miri pictured herself holding a rope—a long, thick, strong one. She stepped to the edge of the well and, holding one end, threw the rest down into the darkness.
“Grab on!” she called down to Saxon, using her mental voice. “I’ll pull you up!”
It wouldn’t have worked in real life—Saxon was a huge, muscular Monstrum warrior and Miri was just curvy, slightly-shorter than average woman. But physics didn’t seem to matter in the mental realm—if that was where they were.
Miri tugged on the rope and felt a heavy weight on the other end. Slowly, hand-over-hand, she dragged it up out of the well—dragged Saxon back to the daylight of sanity and humanity.
At last, she saw his face appear, his pale eyes piercing in the darkness. And then he dropped the rope and was heaving himself up, over the lip of the well.
“Mirabella?” he growled softly reaching for her. “Little one?”
“Oh, Saxon!”
Miri ran to him and threw her arms around him. At first all she could feel was fur but then he seemed to Shift and change in her arms.