Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 67140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 336(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Cries in the stairwell echo above us as people open their doors to find the blood and bodies. We pass thug number two on our way out the door. I avert my eyes from the body.
The sun blazes on our faces the second we walk outside. Jaeger doesn’t hesitate. His car is again illegally parked in front of the building, but no one has touched it.
He sets me gently in the passenger seat and buckles me in. I let him. I’m not catatonic, but I’m taking in everything around me like it’s a movie playing on a screen.
He pauses, and I blink up at him. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop reliving the moment he took a bat to the thug who threatened me in one breath and screamed for mercy the next.
Jaeger cups my cheek, and I startle, coming back to the present. He looks like a Viking, returned from pillaging new lands. But his touch is gentle.
He doesn’t speak. He swipes my cheek with a thumb and then pulls away to shut my door.
I watch him slip some cash to the old men who sit on the bench. They smile up at him, calling him ‘sir.’ One of them salutes him.
Jaeger gets into the driver’s side. “Vini vidi vici,” he murmurs with that cruel smile. At least, I think that’s what he says. How does a guy like him know Latin?
The Lykan engine roars to life. The car goes zero to sixty, and just like that, my apartment building is in the rear view mirror and disappearing.
I don’t know where he’s taking me.
I can only hang on for the ride.
Jaeger
My bunny lies in my king-sized bed, tucked on her side with her ankle carefully elevated. She passed out almost as soon as I set her down. The events of last night and today wiped her out.
Good. She needs rest to heal.
I can’t stop looking at her. Her hair is a dark flame against the blue blankets. Her eyes are closed, and her breath comes softly, but every once in a while, her nose twitches, and she mumbles something. Her forehead knots until I reach down and lay my palm on her knee. My touch settles her every time.
She’s beautiful like this, asleep and serene. I like her like this, but I also like her when she’s glaring up at me, eyes snapping. She has dark eyes unlike any I’ve ever seen. They’re almost purple with a reddish tint, like mulberries. And her freckles are a wonder. I want to trace each one, even though my rough, tattooed hands on her pure, freckled skin look obscene. Like a demon’s claws on an angel’s wings.
She was frightened today on the stairs, but she didn’t shrink away from me. For a moment when she looked at me, there was a savage excitement in her dark eyes. She didn’t just accept my violence; she embraced it.
She was made for me.
The money Fraternitas makes affords me this luxury penthouse, but I’ve never felt it was home. Not until now. Before Elodie, I only came here to crash between completing my duties for Fraternitas. The brotherhood is all that matters.
Now, I’m getting a glimpse that life might have more to offer. It’s like I’ve been living in darkness and someone flipped on the lights.
There’s not a lot of space in my life for soft, sweet things. The world is violent and cruel, and I’ve made myself even more violent and cruel to survive it. But maybe surviving isn’t all there is. Maybe after all the struggle, there can be a reward. The wolf can make space for a sleepy little bunny in his den.
Maybe this one I get to keep.
6
Elodie
Once again, I wake up in a strange but beautiful space. Jaeger’s bedroom is dim and contains nothing but the gigantic bed I’m lying in and two matching bedside tables with lamps. No other furniture. But the sheets and blankets are soft and smell like him.
There are worse places to wake up. I try to sort through everything that happened—the night in the woods, my return to the apartment, Margot leaving with the kids—and my brain stutters when it gets to Jaeger’s body count.
I’ve never seen a murder before. Much less two. It makes the violence he committed against Mr. Wilson seem friendly by comparison. And at that moment, that violence had been the worst I’d ever seen.
I have to be careful. I’m in the wolf’s lair with no way to escape. At least until my ankle is feeling a little better. The last thing I remember is Jaeger carrying me into his penthouse. The place was dark but I got a sense of how vast it is, and how empty. It’s like this bedroom, furnished in a modern style but with no personal touches. He might as well be living in a hotel.