II. Chapter 23 | Part 1 - Aubree

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Aubree crawled out of the bed about half an hour after Stone fell asleep.

She considered everything he told her. The luna title sounded nice, but she wanted to know more about it before saying yes, even though she was fairly certain she would agree to it. She liked that he wasn't forcing it on her. He seemed to think she'd make a great luna, even though she was human.

The whole training bit made her nervous. She'd never been particularly athletic and didn't enjoy sports. However, she had to agree with Stone on one thing. If she ever found herself facing a threat on her own, she would like to know how to defend herself—at least well enough to get away. Vampires were faster and stronger than humans after all, weren't they?

Then there was the Council and the strict laws they had in place. He was very concerned about that—for good reason.

One thing was for certain though.

He loved her, despite the laws put against them and biology set to destroy them. He wanted her to be happy, but he wanted her to be safe too.

Around mid-afternoon, her brain needed a break from thinking about everything he told her and opted to do a bit of mindless housework. She dusted the living room, swept the kitchen floor and the hardwood floor in the living room before mopping everywhere afterward. She sat in the sunroom for a little bit after that and picked up one of the books sitting on the wicker chair.

Hoping to get her mind off things, she delved into the book, called 'Hausfrau' and before she knew it, Stone was wandering in an hour or two later with a perplexed look.

"Why are you reading Gunner's book?"

She snapped it shut, her face hot with embarrassment when the book had taken a steamy twist. She blinked in confusion for a bit. "Huh, what? Gunner's? I thought this was Gwen's."

Oh lord, this was embarrassing!

She tried to divert her embarrassment off of herself. "Um, has he read this book yet?"

He stepped toward her, the corners of his lips perking up. "Yes, he finished reading it in a few days. It's psychological, right?"

Psychological? That's part of it...

"I-I never would have suspected that he'd read a book like this," she mumbled. Stone obviously hadn't read it. "I found it sitting here and decided to give it a try."

"Ah, Guinevere must be reading it now. She loves reading in here. Gets it from her mother. Reading was something the three of them shared in common," he said as he sat down in the wicker loveseat next to her.

Aubree still couldn't wrap her head around the fact that the book belonged to Gunner. It was psychological, as Stone put it, but also very sexual—in an extramarital way.

She slipped the book under the chair, still feeling embarrassed to be caught reading it. "Do you like to read?"

He shrugged. "If I'm really bored, perhaps, but I'd much rather be outdoors, going for a run. Running relaxes me."

"Oh."

"Adelaide taught me to read, you know," he said, turning his gaze out the window. "Well, to read Roman characters, that is. Amora taught me to read Lykostroya, which uses a different alphabet. Anyway, it was a good thing she did, otherwise, she would have been miserable during the second half of her pregnancies."

Turning his attention back to her, he continued. "You remember I told you that lycans are unable to shift freely in the second half of their pregnancies? They remain in their stronger, natural form, their wolf, and Adelaide was miserable because she couldn't read, so I read to her."

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