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)
“Your adorable mink is one mean little thing—she bites my wolf if he steps a foot wrong, keeps him in line. But she’s nice to me.”
“She’s nice to you because you won’t let your wolf out to play with her if she’s not.”
“She likes me,” he insisted, using a hand-held blender to smooth the tomato sauce he’d made. “And she likes it when I cuddle her, though she pretends she doesn’t. The purrs give it away.”
Her mink sniffed haughtily. “How was Caleb today? Mad at me?”
Eli frowned. “Why would he be mad at you?”
“Oh, I don’t know … maybe because my mink chased his wolf clean across the clearing and scared him so bad he tried to climb a tree just to get away from her. Wolves don’t climb trees, so that was dumb. Minks do climb trees, which made his choice of refuge even dumber.”
“He was laughing about it this morning. Said he never would have thought something that small could move that fast. His wolf knows better than to cross onto the land surrounding people’s lodges, but he’s a nosy fucker who can’t seem to help himself. We let him get away with it because he’s harmless, but your mink didn’t know that. She saw an intruder and she chased him off. No one’s mad about it.”
“Not even Kathy?”
“If she is mad, she didn’t say so. Or, at least, she didn’t while I was there.” Having added the meatballs to the sauce, he left them to simmer and then set about cooking the spaghetti. “She’ll come around eventually. She just needs to feel that she’s made her point.”
“I think it’s killing her that we haven’t called her on her shit. Is it wrong that this amuses me?”
“No. I say get your kicks where you can.”
“I tend to get my kicks at The Den, just as you do. If you tell anyone I’ll deny it, but watching you fight totally revs my engines.”
Eli felt his mouth curve. Some of the females in his past had been put off by the way he chose to “wind down,” especially since he shed every little bit of civility when he fought. But not Casey. Hell, she liked brawling just as much as he did.
“I could say the same to you,” he told her. “I’ve wanted you since the second you threw your first punch at the fox.”
“Here you are being sweet yet again.”
His brows snapped together. “That wasn’t sweet.”
“It was to me. But back to you … You know some really good moves. Who trained you? Was it Nick?”
Eli hesitated. He’d received training, sure, but he’d learned his savage style of combat in a hard school. “I learned from lots of people.” It wasn’t untrue.
“From what I heard about your pack, it didn’t form until a little over a decade ago. Where were you before that?”
“You could say we moved around a little.”
“How come?”
Again, he hesitated to answer. His life story was no fairy tale, and he didn’t want to darken the good day she’d had. But he also didn’t want to lie to her. She made a point of being completely open to him, even when it was difficult for her. He’d be an asshole if he didn’t give her that same courtesy. Their bond would never progress otherwise.
“It’s not a pretty story,” he warned her.
“Yeah, I guessed that by the look on your face. Tell me.”
Stirring the softening spaghetti, Eli began, “When we were part of our childhood pack, Roni was attacked by a gang of humans. One tried to rape her while the others egged him on—one was even recording it.”
“Motherfuckers.”
“Yeah. Nick intervened. Although the other humans tried to subdue him, wanting to force him to watch, it didn’t work. He maimed two of them badly and killed the one who’d tried raping her. He was sent to juvie for it. He was only thirteen at the time.”
Casey straightened in her seat. “Jesus.”
“You’d think the pack would have rallied around Roni, wouldn’t you? They didn’t. The backlash was bad. Some kids teased her, some insisted she really was raped, and one prick even spread bullshit versions of the assault around. Said prick also made copies of the photos taken of her injuries and then plastered them all around the territory.”
“Bastard,” she spat. “Why would he do sick crap like that?”
“Nolan was a piece of shit. He was also pissed because the court case earned our pack the attention of anti-shifter extremists; they looked for dirt on the pack, and they discovered that the Alpha—Nolan’s dad—was banished from his old pack on suspicion of laundering drug money. People weren’t too pleased to hear that the Alpha had such a colorful past, and many wanted him to step down. Nolan blamed Roni for the whole mess. That’s not even the worst of what he did.”