It’s #bookqw and our hero questions if shapeshifter habits are ‘bad’?
More from Chapter 3:
Tap, tap, tap.
Daeryn froze. Not Miriam. Please. She’d skin him alive.
“Ha.” Grinning broadly, Rivley called, “Come in.”
He grabbed his sheet and dropped into the wing chair just as the door opened.
Annmar walked in carrying a tray. “I thought you might like—ohh.” Her eyes flashed to him. In an instant, her face turned red.
Oh, hell. What was wrong?
She backed up. “Sorry, I—I’ll go.”
“Don’t!” Rivley spun to stop her.
She held out the tray. “Cake. For dessert.”
Rivley didn’t reach for the tray, but instead assumed a concerned look. “Could you do me a favor?” he asked.
What happened to giving her a chance to adapt? They had no idea what the delicate girl was thinking. The birdbrain should let her go, and by instinct, he sent Rivley that message, only to realize that without a pack mark nothing happened.
Still gazing at Rivley, the girl dipped her head slightly, indicating he should ask. Yet her fingers clenched around the tray edge belied her apparent comfort. Her scent drifted to Daeryn. The city smells were fading, giving way to that sweet fragrance that wasn’t quite honey. Maybe she wasn’t that distressed. He filled his nostrils. Gosh, she smelled great.
The avian also took a deep breath and released it slowly. He was laughing at her nervousness, damn him. Not Riv’s usual sensitivity…oh. Riv was laughing at him. “Daeryn is set on walking, but his foot”—he waved to it—“isn’t taking the weight. Could you stay with him while I go hunt down some crutches?”
Her sympathetic gaze darted to Daeryn. The Great Creator still made girls this sweet?
She nodded. “I can do that. I didn’t realize he’d injured his foot as well.”
“One pest bit into a tendon,” Daeryn offered.
“Oh, dear. Is it bad?” This time she looked at him longer, but her cheeks colored red all over again.
Why…oh, damn. No clothes. Daeryn plucked at the sheet, but pulling it any higher meant getting up, and now he couldn’t…
“Bad enough for a few days off it, if some of us would listen to Mr. White,” Rivley said. “Thanks for staying.”
Annmar finally crossed the room and set her tray on the table, and this time Daeryn’s gaze skittered off first. Rivley was not leaving him nearly naked with this proper girl.
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Ingenious Victorian contraptions. Enchanted farmlands. Can a struggling orphan switch gears and run full steam into freedom?
The Unraveling is the first volume in a serialized novel, The Luminated Threads, that is complete in three volumes.
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