Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
“Knowing that if I didn’t have a twin, I might’ve been one of the bodies carted out of here for disposal.” Words unadorned with emotion on the surface, but her pain was a song in the air.
His claws sliced out, his bear in no mood to be calm any longer.
Yakov gritted his teeth, but his anger continued to rise and rise. He’d done a good job of controlling it at her dog-on-a-leash comment, but after witnessing how this place had stolen the shine from her through the day, he was done. His bear was so angry for her that it wasn’t rational at all. He needed to burn it off, but no fucking way was he abandoning Theo to go rampaging in the forest.
“Your claws are out.” Theo’s voice, her body close to his. “Can I touch them?”
Of course she wasn’t scared. Not his Theo. He held out one hand so she could examine his claws. “I want to punch something,” he muttered in a low grumble because it was nice having her close and he didn’t want to scare her off by being loud and angry. “Since I can’t—would you like to go dance?”
She blinked, looking at him as if he’d taken up speaking in hieroglyphics. “Excuse me?”
“Dance. Move to music.”
Theo parted her lips. Her instinctive reaction was to say no. Of course it was to say no. Theodora Marshall did not go about dancing with bears. She didn’t go dancing at all.
But when she went to speak, she found she didn’t want to say no.
Perhaps it was the anger on Yakov’s face on her behalf. No one but Pax had ever been angry for her—but her twin was bound to her by bonds of birth, of genetics. Nothing bound Yakov to her . . . yet she mattered to him.
He’d made that crystal clear.
And now, he was inviting her to dance because he was a physical being and he needed to work off the anger inside him.
Theo thought of the rage that stretched her own skin until it felt as if it would explode. For so long, she’d tried to convince herself that she had it under full control, that she was an iceberg cold and contained, nothing inside any longer. But that was exactly the problem she’d always had—there was too much inside her.
Even before being separated from Pax, she’d been by far the more emotional of the two of them. She’d cried when she’d seen the bird wounded on the lawn, and she’d sobbed to Pax when they were punished for things no human or changeling child would ever be punished for—simply for being children.
And now, here she stood in a world where emotion was no longer illegal—and yet she felt locked in chains. Because her grandfather had painted her with his evil, made her an accomplice to his crimes.
Then the bear who’d invited her to go dancing said, “I promise we don’t bite.” Light words, but he simmered with contained fury.
For her.
And Theo found herself grabbing at this chance to be wild, to be normal for this moment in time where her whole future hung in the balance. In that space in between, she could allow herself to believe that she wasn’t evil, that she hadn’t made the choice for her grandfather’s approval . . . and that she deserved a glimmer of happiness.
“I have no idea how to dance.”
A sudden grin that lit up his face and made her stomach flip in an unsettling way that somehow wasn’t unpleasant. “No bear has ever let a lack of knowledge or skill stop them from dancing.”
Chapter 36
I appreciate StoneWater settling the bill for damages so quickly.
Thank you also for the crew of hungover bears you sent to clean up the mess. I almost felt sorry for the lot of them, especially after they were on their best behavior and didn’t leave until they’d swept up the last bit of debris.
At least they enjoyed one hell of a New Year’s Eve party.
—Email to Anastasia Nikolaev from Nina Rodchenko, manager and owner of Club Moscow (1 January 2083)
YAKOV KNEW HE should take Theo to one of the more refined clubs in Moscow, the ones where people sat and conversed over cocktails and only occasionally danced rather than all crowding onto the dance floor in a mass of bodies and heat. But he didn’t want to go to one of those fancy clubs with their muted music and delicate furniture—tonight, he wanted a bear kind of club.
Which was why they ended up at Club Moscow. It wasn’t the least bit disreputable—it had, in fact, recently been voted “the” club in Moscow by Wild Woman magazine—but it was built for hard use. Including by bears who forgot their strength and got carried away.
Rather than a small and cramped space, Nina Rodchenko’s prize project was housed in a sprawling warehouse in the middle of an even bigger piece of land. All sides of the warehouse featured accordion-style doors that could be folded back in good weather to leave the space wide open to the outside.