Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
I sucked in a startled breath.
“What just happened?” I asked Ivy House desperately.
“What you were meant for. If you’d worked through it at home instead of hiding from all this at the bear’s house, it wouldn’t have come as such a shock.”
I waited patiently, hoping for more. When she was in a bad mood, she really made me pay for it.
His emotions curled around him—I could feel them!—shock and delight and sudden determination. It was like he’d taken the first deep breath after almost suffocating.
“He has sworn to protect you and your mate,” Ivy House finally said. “He has spilled blood for you. He is a brother in arms. A battle partner. Your gargoyle has found him acceptable and therefore secured your bond. He is one with you now. He’s part of your cairn.”
“Is that why I can feel his emotions? Because of this bond that…my gargoyle…initiated? Also, I don’t like that the gargoyle, on my behalf, is randomly forcing bonds between unsuspecting people.”
She made a sound that said her patience was wearing thin. “As I said, if you’d dealt with all of this instead of hiding, you’d have more control over your primal abilities. And if your mate would accept the protector’s magic as he ought to, you two could work through it together. Your whole situation is tits-up. I’ve never known an heir to be so reluctant to assume her full abilities.”
“If we could just skip ahead?”
Her pregnant pause felt like some kind of threat. “No bond can be placed unless both parties are willing. He felt your influence and welcomed the deeper connection, securing him at your side and into your cairn.”
“Do male gargoyles have the ability to create bonds like this?”
“Male cairn leaders have but a fraction of the strength you do. They can create bonds, but not so fluidly. Reading emotions is part of your primal magic. You need to assess those around you in order to properly lead and protect them, and to do that, you need to intuit more than what they are saying.”
“Why is this just happening now? Broken Sue is the only one I can read outside of those I have an actual bond with.”
“Because you are slow? Because you are fighting the gargoyle’s influence at every turn? Because you are more stubborn than any male gargoyle I have ever known or ever hope to know? And that is saying something. Ask around.”
“Right. Okay. Good talk.”
I passed the back of my hand over my forehead like a woman in an old movie.
“I gotcha.” Ulric grabbed my hand and linked our arms together. “What’s going on?”
“Here we go,” said Mr. Tom, moving behind me. “Let’s loosen you up.” The sides of his hands started chopping my back in a very bad rendition of a massage.
“I feel like I’m in a circus,” I grumbled.
“Ironheart,” Broken Sue said again. He had a new light in his eyes. He felt our connection, I could tell, born in blood at Graves’s meetup. “You’re being challenged as the alpha of this territory, co-ruler with Austin Steele. It’s a sanctioned challenge for pack placement. That means the pack’s rules of engagement will be followed, or the offending party will be ostracized or punished. Do you understand?”
I widened my eyes a little, snapped back into the moment. “Understanding the rules has nothing to do with obeying those rules. Maybe you can talk some sense into Austin? I lose control very easily. This is a very bad idea.”
“We’re on hand to keep you from killing her,” Sebastian called out.
“No.” Broken Sue shook his head and lowered his voice. “Only the alpha can interfere, and he won’t unless one of the parties is under duress and taps out.”
“Austin won’t get the chance to interfere.”
Broken Sue nodded slowly. “I don’t make a habit of speaking for the alpha, but he knows that.”
He stepped a little closer. He towered over me, a foot or so taller and with shoulders so wide it almost made him look shorter. Sebastian would’ve been evacuating his bowels at this proximity.
“Listen, Jessie, the pack isn’t going into this situation blind. We made sure your challenger, Zoe, knows what she’s getting into. We’ve made her listen to stories of your magic, both when it works the way you want it to and when it doesn’t. She knows you took down a phoenix and a thunderbird. She’s challenging you anyway because she doesn’t think a non-shifter should be ruling this pack. She doesn’t think you’re a fit mate for an alpha—especially this alpha, whom some are now referring to as the king of the shifters. She wants the pack to ridicule you. If she succeeds, it will unsettle the whole pack structure. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
I flared my hand out helplessly. “You want me to make an example of her, yes, I get that. Do you hear what I am telling you? That example might be death. Then…what? Austin has to punish me or ostracize me? In what world is that going to happen? He won’t harm me, and I’m the heir of Ivy House. I’m not going anywhere.”