Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Well she’d known that, because she’d heard Corbin talk with Dr Cooper about it. “My mom only tried to kill me once.”
Camden’s eyes snapped to her. “Your mom tried to kill you?” he asked, his voice low and kind of empty, not filled with the shock and outrage she was used to hearing.
Aspen only nodded.
“Why?”
“She was real sad when my dad died. She needed to be with him. She wanted us all to be together again. Why did your mom try to kill you?”
“She liked to hurt people.”
Well then no wonder he was glad she was dead. Aspen tilted her head. “Do you want to be like her?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. “No.”
“Then you should let the spider go, and only hurt the meanies. Then you and me can be friends.”
“Maybe I don’t want a friend.”
“There you go with the ‘maybe’ again. Look, I heard Dr. Cooper talking. She thinks you need to go somewhere to get ‘special help.’ Some kind of center. Corbin said no, but she’s trying to change his mind. If you don’t want to get sent someplace else, you’ve got to start acting like other people. You can’t draw gross pictures. You need to draw nice stuff like animals or beaches. You need to blink more—the staring freaks people out. You’ve got to stop ignoring everyone, too. And you can’t break things or kill insects or hurt people. It’s okay to be mad. But you can’t do mean stuff when you’re mad.”
“I don’t get angry,” he said. “My tiger does. A lot. I don’t.”
“Then why do you sometimes do stuff like tear up your room and start fights?”
He shrugged and looked away. “Sometimes it’s like … I don’t know, like there’s a balloon inside me. A pressure. It builds and builds and builds until I have to let it out.”
Well that would suck. “You don’t have to do bad things to let it out. We’ll find other ways you can do it.”
He shot her a suspicious look. “Why? Why would you want to help?”
Aspen rolled her eyes. “Because that’s what friends do, silly. And I’ve decided you’re going to be mine.” She tipped her chin at the spider. “So, you gonna let it go?”
He said nothing. Did nothing. Just stared at her. Then, not moving his gaze from hers, he tipped back the glass and let the insect escape.
Aspen smiled and jumped to her feet. “Cool. Now we can begin Operation Make Camden Seem Like Everyone Else. Step one: We have to get rid of those creepy pictures under the bed, because they’re weirding people out, ’kay?”
He bit the inside of his cheek and then nodded. “Okay.”
CHAPTER TWO
Present day
A rumbling sound broke into Aspen’s dream and pulled her out of sleep. No, not rumbling. Vibrating. She clumsily reached out and snatched her cell phone from the nightstand. Seeing her Beta’s name flashing on the screen, Aspen snapped fully awake.
“Is Havana okay?” she asked on answering, referring to her honorary sister and Alpha female.
“She’s fine,” Luke assured her. “I need you to come down to the communal yard.”
Aspen sat up straight. “Why, what’s going on?” The apartment building’s backyard was like a miniature jungle that the pride used as their personal playground.
“Camden’s tiger … well, he ain’t happy.”
Hell. “I’m on my way.”
She quickly pulled on some clothes and headed out of her apartment. The complex homed many of her pride mates, most of whom were pallas cat shifters. There were no other bearcats—why humans referred to the full-blooded animals of her kind as red pandas, she didn’t get because they weren’t freaking pandas—but she’d been welcomed all the same.
She’d joined the Olympus Pride five months ago when Havana mated its Alpha, Tate Devereaux. It might have been much harder to adjust if Aspen had really felt like a lone shifter all these years. But she, Havana, and their other honorary sister, Bailey, had formed a sort of unofficial clan long ago.
Camden had only ever hovered on the edges of the aforementioned clan, so Aspen had worried that he’d refuse to join the pride. Particularly since he didn’t like being under anyone’s rule. Although he’d agreed to join, he hadn’t yet fully immersed himself into pride life.
Just the same, his tiger seemed to be finding it difficult to settle here. But then, the big cat didn’t like people. Or animals. Or insects. Or living creatures of any kind.
The tiger was very much a … lone wolf, for lack of a better term. As such, she worried that he might be pressuring Camden to leave. More, she worried that Camden might actually do so. Even the thought of him leaving made her breath catch.
They’d been best friends since that day they first talked at the foster home He’d always been at her side from then on. Like a shadow.