Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105815 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“Maybe Kai would be less afraid of cars if he stood on the roof,” Rei suggested.
Leo lurched upright from where he’d been lounging against the door. “Oh! Oh! Could you imagine if Kai was standing on the roof in his human form but with wings?”
Kai half turned to them. “Hmmm…that does sound interesting.”
“Can you do that?” Huli chimed in.
“I can, but I’ve never tried to be a human with wings. Are you thinking bird wings, or leathery wings like a bat?”
“Oh my fuck, no! No standing on the roof!” Moon repeated. “If anyone tries it, I’m turning this car around and no one gets breakfast.”
The silence was instantaneous.
Leo scratched his jaw and spoke only when he was sure he wasn’t going to bust out in cackles. “So…um…have you been doing this breakfast run a lot?”
“Nope,” Rei said. “Kai wanted to provide Xiang with a meal one morning, and Moon suggested a breakfast run. It was the first time Kai and I had ever done drive-through.” He paused and cocked his head. “Or fast food, for that matter.”
Kai turned in his seat so that he was facing the occupants in the back, his face alight with joy. “Have you ever done fast-food breakfast? They have so many options for potatoes. They have these planks of fried potatoes and these little tots. I love all the potatoes. Plus, every place we visited had these adorable tiny sandwiches.”
Rei leaned his head toward Leo. “In case you missed it, Kai is a huge breakfast fan.”
“It’s a shame there isn’t a Waffle House this far north. We could get some hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered.” Leo sighed.
“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds amazing. Moon! We must find the house made of waffles!” Kai declared.
“No!”
Leo dissolved into another round of giggles. He’d known this would happen, and he couldn’t help stirring the pot. “Waffle House is a normal building. I discovered it on a summer road trip to Florida with friends. They have lots of ways of making hash browns, like smothered in onions and covered in cheese.”
“So we can’t drive there now?” Huli inquired.
Leo shot a sympathetic look at the fox spirit. “No, too far. But I think I can try to recreate it if Ming Yu doesn’t mind me borrowing her kitchen.”
“That would be the better option,” Moon added. “Just clean up your mess and don’t ruin any of her pans.”
“Anyway, Kai has been wanting to do another breakfast run, and Huli has never done drive-through before,” Rei continued. The elf’s expression turned sly as he peeked at Leo. “Now that we have you trapped in the car, we can get all the dirt.”
Leo swallowed hard and glanced out his window, trying to measure whether it was moving too fast for him to jump out. “Dirt? What dirt?”
“Don’t be like that,” Moon teased from the driver’s seat. “We’re the mates. Not the Zhangs. You can talk to us.”
Huli leaned around Rei and smirked. “I’m still a mate-in-training, but I will get Xiao Dan eventually.”
“Yes, you will!” Moon cheered.
“But you and Junjie, you’re mates, right?” Kai asked. “You’ll be coming with us all back to China after the fae are defeated.”
“What?” Leo gasped, but no one seemed to notice because Rei interjected.
“Of course he’s coming with us. He’s totally lost over Junjie, and then he’s got that adorable munchkin to help raise. How could anyone walk away from those chubby cheeks?”
“I don’t think Junjie’s cheeks are particularly chubby,” Huli murmured.
“He was talking about Erik,” Moon corrected him.
The conversation swirled around him for a moment about the perfect roundness of Erik’s cheeks as Leo succumbed to panic.
Leaving Erik and Junjie behind was always the plan.
He couldn’t stay. He was a cat. There was no pinning his people down. They went where the wind blew them, reveling in their freedom. They didn’t do the mate thing.
Except he’d heard of a few special cases that many other cats had sneered at. Cat shifters who’d found mates and settled into nice, long comfortable lives with their one person, raising a litter of kittens.
Waking every day with his arms wrapped up in Junjie. Seeing the vampire’s smile as soon as he opened his eyes. A lifetime of Erik’s giggles. Being there to see him shift for the first time. Teaching him to sneak and hunt. Watching Junjie teach him all his amazing martial arts skills.
Not to mention the rising feelings of jealousy and possessiveness that were leaking into his brain ever since he’d sucked Junjie’s cock. That really didn’t make sense. Junjie did not have a magical dick. But now, he didn’t want to leave the vampire’s side. Looked forward to spending all his time with him.
While having a mate meant sacrificing all his rambling freedom and shouldering heavy words like responsibilities didn’t seem so bad, it would also mean leaving the United States behind and traveling to the Zhang home on the other side of the globe. Could he actually leave behind everything he knew for such a foreign place?