Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Help me! Get me down! Put me down now!”
“Sorry, darling.” Nyx. My handsome, strong, bare-chested, devilishly grinning Nyx stepped into view. “That’s not going to work on me.”
Nyx held a hand out to me. I couldn’t move— Couldn’t think about moving—as a shower of palm fronds surrounded, then slipped under me. Gently, they cradled and lifted me into the air.
Nyx floated me to his side. Up close, I made out the thick black bandana wrapped around his forehead. “Now”—his charming, jovial tone vanished in an instant—“which one of you soon-to-be dead fuckers laid a finger on my mate?”
“You think you’re tough, mud boy!?” someone roared.
“Yes.”
“Let me down from here and we’ll see who’s tough!”
“It’ll still be me.” Nyx lazily swept the space as his vines choked, attacked, and suspended wolf after wolf—shifted and human. “No one’s going to fess up?”
“Argh!” A figure charged Nyx from the back.
I gagged, choking on the blood in my mouth to warn him.
Boom!
The floor exploded under the attacker’s feet, propelling him like a canon blast through the open window.
Of course... I’d have smiled if my mouth would’ve responded. Hardwood. Wood.
“Well, if no one’s going to admit it... I’ll just have to punish you all.”
The hardwood ripped off its subflooring, finding new life as vines, twigs, and thigh-sized branches sprouted from its polished surface.
“Attack.”
The living wood surged forward—punching, pummeling, stampeding every being breathing and non-breathing that came into their path.
I lifted high above it all, carried away from Nyx.
“Wait for me outside, won’t you, darling?” Nyx blew me a kiss. “I won’t be long.”
I didn’t get a chance to see if I could voice the “no, let me stay with you,” that sprung to my lips.
Darkness had already come for me. Roughly, it dragged me under.
“...GETS HERSELF INTO...”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mom. My lady’s always pissing someone off.”
That woke me up.
Indignation cracked my eye open, then the other. I blinked freely—mildly surprised that I could.
Slowly, my vision cleared.
Nyx sat on a wooden chair, elbows propped on the table while he leaned over his phone. Next to him a large, weird greenish-brown moving thing loomed over his head, but he didn’t seem concerned.
I squinted, my brain cells slowly connecting. It wasn’t a freaky writhing creature. It was a wall... made of palm fronds.
I turned my head, finding three more of the same frond walls surrounding us and another above, acting like a roof. Beneath me, I stretched out on a bed of leaves, vines, and moss that was more soft and comfortable than it sounded.
“When are you coming to Italy, love? You’ll be much safer here.”
“I can’t go without Daciana. She needs me and I need her.”
Even in those dire circumstances, I heated up like butter on a Florida sidewalk.
“Every time I leave the girl alone, someone tries to kill her.”
“Didn’t need... to add that last part,” I rasped.
Nyx lifted his head, showing off the black bandana still wrapped around it. “She’s awake. I’ll call you back.” Nyx ended the call and turned to me.
We stared at each other for a solid minute—jaws opening and closing with all the things we needed to say.
“We’re in the forest,” Nyx began, breaking first. “A quiet, secluded spot. No one comes this far, I promise.”
I just nodded.
“You took a long time to heal,” he continued when I didn’t say more. “So long, I had to call Mom again. She helped me create a poultice for your wounds.”
Flicking down, I noticed for the first time the hard, cracking brown stuff caked all over my body.
“To keep the wounds from getting infected until your body took over.”
“Okay,” I croaked.
“What happened, Daze?”
“I was going to ask you that.” I laid my head down again, eyes fluttering shut. “Edric... Paxton... Are they okay?”
“They’re in the infirmary along with half the school. Halfway through giving those bastards a lesson, I smelled an instructor coming,” he said. “I got out of there before they could all point the finger at me, but I had to leave Edric and Paxton behind.
“I didn’t know what I walked into, Daze. I didn’t know if they were part of what happened to you. The best thing to do was to get you to safety—where you could heal in peace. But they are okay,” he added.
“How do you know that?” Tears stung my eyes seeing visions of Edric and Paxton broken and bleeding. “Did you check on them?”
“Next best thing.”
Nyx tapped something on his phone and turned it to me.
“—arrest them!” Nia’s voice echoed loud and clear. “These bastards used us! They turned us against our friends and forced us to hurt and kill p-people.” Her voice cracked in distress, although I couldn’t see her. Her camera was too busy panning over the full and bursting infirmary.
Groaning lumps were on every bed, and in the last shot before she spun away, were my lumps—Edric and Paxton.