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)
She fanned herself for a second before scowling. “On second thought, I hope she rips off his pretty face. I mean, she is meant to be a wolf alpha. No one kidnaps an alpha and lives to tell the tale. I’ll stop watching if they make her act like it’s romantic.”
Shaking her head, Rina picked up her plate and cup to return to the counter. “Feather, last month you had me watch the episode where one twin pretended to be the other twin and no one caught on even though it was meant to be a pack of bears with hypersensitive noses.”
“I know, I know, Reens.” Lark scrunched up her face. “I’m an addict.” She grabbed her own dirty dishes before the two sentinels walked off together.
Of all the friendships in the pack, that one struck Remi as the most unexpected. Where Rina was driven and ambitious with a fiery temper, Lark was all sunny temperament, cheerful delight in the world, and an ability to forge bonds that was unparalleled.
He was fucking lucky to call them his own.
Angel waited until he and Remi were alone to say, “You doing okay?” A direct gaze from the only person in the world who understood the relevance of today’s date.
It wasn’t that Remi didn’t trust the others; they just hadn’t been around when he lost his mother. Angel alone had witnessed his grief. Their friendship had only been of six months’ duration at that point, born when they’d ended up working the shutdown shift of the last operating oil rig in the world.
You’d never usually find a changeling on a site like that, but they’d both had their reasons to choose work that hurt their very nature. And, despite the nascent character of their friendship, the then-nineteen-year-old tiger had come home with a similar-aged Remi when Remi’s mother realized she was sick in a way nothing could fix.
Angel, the boy who’d walked alone since he was sixteen, had then stayed with Remi and Gina for seven months…all the way to the end. Gina had hardly slept toward her final rest, and the tiger had sat up with her during the times when she’d ordered Remi to sleep. He didn’t know what they’d talked about, but they’d had their private jokes neither would explain to him.
His friend had made his mother laugh in her last days and it was a gift Remi would never forget. Angel had also been one of Gina Denier’s pallbearers on the day they’d laid her to rest in a sunny meadow, with no headstone or other sign to mark her grave.
It was the changeling way and what she’d wanted.
“Close to the earth, Rem-Rem. So that my body nourishes the flowers that bloom in the spring.”
The other pallbearers had been his mother’s closest friends, four women who’d wanted to mother Remi in the aftermath because that was their way. But Remi had only ever had one mother, and he couldn’t accept their kindness. After doing the last thing his mother had ever asked of him and laying her to rest in that field eleven years ago today, he’d left with Angel—because Angel let him grieve and run and rage without trying to make it better.
“Just remembering her,” Remi said today, and though his sorrow would forever be a part of him, the loss had long ago stopped being an open wound. He could remember the good times now, laugh about how often she’d allowed him to think he was getting away with mischief as a cub. “Thinking how she would’ve been the warm core of RainFire had she had the chance.”
“Yeah, your mom knew how to love with open arms. I miss her.”
Angel rarely made such emotional statements; he’d come too late into Gina’s life for Gina to bathe him in maternal love as she’d wanted to do, Angel already closed off, remote. Yet there had been the laughter, and the nights when they’d spoken of things that made Gina squeeze Angel’s hand while she shook her head in affectionate denial.
Remi had never asked Angel what his mother had told him not to do, what his friend had shared with Gina between them alone.
“I’m thankful every day that she was my mom.” Feeling a rustle under the table, Remi reached in without looking and grabbed a cub in leopard form by the scruff of his neck.
“Snuck away from your parents, did you?” he said with a grin, and nipped the cub on the nose before cuddling him against his abdomen. Asher wasn’t much more than a year old, all soft edges and playfulness and affection.
“She told me you’d be an amazing alpha if you’d only give yourself the chance,” Angel said, his eyes on the cub who was currently trying to chew the tongue of Remi’s belt. “Did I ever tell you that?”