Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 168701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 844(@200wpm)___ 675(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 844(@200wpm)___ 675(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
“I’ll win her over,” I say and give her a smile.
She smiles back, but it’s hesitant.
I turn my attention back to the jar and grab another folded paper. “Matched up kidney donor and recipient? AJS. Nice one. What’s AJS?”
“Just the initials of the recipient so I’d remember. We’ve been involved in a few similar situations. Some other things were going to get in the way of that one because of some magic performed by an irresponsible coven. One of their elders came to us to ask for help. We occasionally work with some of them. It was destined to happen, so we had to help get the interfering thing out of the way.”
I drop the paper in the jar.
Another: “Helped woman find out her husband was cheating in time for her to meet the love of her life. Now happily married and spend thanksgivings feeding homeless.”
Next: “Reunited a man with his adult child that didn’t know he existed in time to give him a bone marrow transplant.”
“More eggs?” she asks.
I lift the fork and she gets another bite.
“Your sister said you don’t eat breakfast,” I say.
“I do when I’ve been extraordinarily active multiple times leading up to breakfast time.”
“Guess you’re now a breakfast person,” I tell her, lifting a slice of bacon from the other plate and popping it in my mouth.
Her eyes light with humor, but I’m not sure she believes that this is real. I’ll prove it.
After washing it down with some coffee, I lift another piece of paper from the bed. There are dozens more of these.
“Delayed a flight with Vivi and Jessica’s help. Might have saved 327 lives.”
“Vivi got a vision.”
I give her a pointed look and sip my coffee again before reading the next one.
“Worked with Jessica to redirect stoned airline mechanic away from their job so they would not make a critical error.”
“Vivi called from the dentist’s chair all frozen mid-filling because she got a vision of someone slipping a drug into a woman’s macchiato in a coffee shop.” She sips her coffee. “It might not have hit the airline mechanic until she was at work. We think Vivi got the image for good reason. Could’ve caused a problem with that flight.”
I read another. “Helped a student find their acceptance letter into a prestigious program. It went to the wrong house. That student will meet the love of their life in that prestigious program.”
My mate softly responds, locking my gaze with hers. She has such beautiful eyes. “They’ve probably met by now, in fact. Sometimes it’s lives at stake,” she says, “And sometimes it’s love at stake. And love is worthwhile. Sometimes we’re called to intervene and maybe that intervention is only a small piece of a bigger puzzle. Butterfly effect kind of thing. You know what I mean?”
“I do,” I say without breaking eye contact until I have another folded piece of paper opened. The only blue one in the batch.
She bites her lip and looks nervous. Red creeps over her cheeks.
“Helped your mom narrowly miss a head-on collision with a truck during an ice storm.”
I do a double-take and read the paper a second time, but in my head.
“Helped your mom?” I ask.
“Yours. Yeah. Whoops. Kind of selfish of me to list the extra detail. I’m not a complete martyr, I guess. It was her and your sister in the car.”
She lifts a piece of bacon from her plate and feeds it to me.
“I’ll read the rest of these later,” I say after swallowing and scoop up the remaining folded pieces of paper, setting them all on the chair. I move the plates and the jar to the floor, feeling her eyes on me.
I roll into her and cup her jaw. “I was hungry for food. Now I’m hungry for you.”
“I was enjoying my breakfast,” she teases, looking embarrassed.
“I failed you, Rikki.”
Her expression drops. “Huh. What? How did you fail me?”
“I’m your mate. It’s my job to protect you. I didn’t.”
She jolts in surprise. “You didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s my job.”
“But it wasn’t yet. You couldn’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter. Still my job.”
“We…you…” She looks adorably confused. “That doesn’t make sense. It was an impossible situation.”
“Right. Like the one you’re in right now, little witch?”
She opens and closes her mouth, looking speechless.
I scoff. “Because to me it seems like that harsh punishment is to blame more than you here. You beat yourself up, but you were in an impossible situation, too.”
“How could I not? It’s my fault. I drank the wine that was already opened. I cast the spell.”
“Did you know the wine was open?”
“It didn’t really dawn on me until later. I was being careless. I can’t be careless. I know better.”
“We’re all guilty of that sometimes aren’t we?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Right,” I continue, “And did you then do something awful, or did you do what the universe intended anyway?”