AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can check,” she says, getting up and going over to the bookcase in the corner of the room.
“We can poison them,” Fox reminds me, through another mouthful of cookie.
“That depends on how many there are and how smart they are,” I tell him. “The same trick doesn’t always work twice.”
He pulls a face and continues to stuff his face.
Snake’s tongue whips toward the tin and curls around a cookie. He opens his mouth wide and brings the cookie into his mouth. A moment of stillness is followed by a lot of crunching, and a little bit of the throaty murmuring sound he usually makes in agreement with our comments.
Our reptile brother has a happy snacking sound.
He seems to be just as fond of the sugary treats as Fox.
My tastebuds have changed, I think. They are still good, but I don’t feel the need to eat any just because they are right there in front of us.
I take a drink of water while it is on offer, feeling strange getting used to taking it from a container once more like I used to when I was a child. It is more satisfying, I decide, once I feel more used to the glass. The water is cool and refreshing and this is the easy way to drink it.
Lapping from the stream in the forest is time consuming and messy in comparison.
Scratch watches me before he attempts to drink some out of the glass himself.
He seems to find it trickier.
“Open your mouth and hold it a little above,” I tell him. “Tilt it slowly.”
He tries and pours too much into his mouth at once.
Spluttering, he swallows a little and spills a lot.
He frowns at me. “Humans have such annoying habits.”
He puts the glass down and I know he will never pick one up again.
Fox has less of a struggle with his much shorter snout. He seems happy with himself when he tries it.
Of course, Snake has to outdo all of us with his tongue winding around the glass and bringing it over to his mouth where it pours slowly into his open mouth until it’s empty. He makes a happy sound as he sets the empty glass back down on the tray.
“Show off,” Scratch mutters, pulling his blanket closer.
Fox snorts. “Trust the Snake to show the Wolf how it’s done.”
“Here it is,” my mother says, as she moves back to the couch with a book.
She sits down and starts flipping through the pages.
When she gets to the right page, she uses her finger to read a few sentences before she says, “The chimera can be difficult to kill due to its size and abilities, but demon hunters agree that a well-timed fire can be one of the best methods to ensure a nest is destroyed. The chimera is easiest to kill when it is hiding its true form. Other methods that have been known to work are poison and beheadings.”
“I’m not sure a fire would be a smart move considering where we are,” I admit.
“I’m sure that’s why the Alpha’s father picked this place when he did.”
“What happened to the Alpha’s father?” I ask, wondering why his son might kill him if the point was to create more chimeras. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“At the time we were told William Masters killed his father. He buried the man himself, apparently, and then he took over as Alpha. It’s possible he just left town. We’d have no way of knowing. No one was told where he was supposedly buried.”
“So, our father was trying to make more chimeras when he had us?” Fox asks.
My mother shakes her head. “He would have known he had to mate with another chimera for that. It seems as if he had you created for another purpose.”
