Stone Wings: A MM Paranormal Monster Romance (The Gargoyles of Arrington Book 1) by Jenn Burke

Author:Jenn Burke [Burke, Jenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Drew

After that amazing bout of sex, we settled into a comfortable hush. Josh had been quiet so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep. I wasn’t tired—content, languid, and eminently comfortable, but not tired. Something about holding him in my arms, still and sated, spoke to a need deep within me. I wasn’t sure what it was. Some heretofore unknown desire to offer a safe haven to someone? That was as good an explanation as any.

My drifting thoughts were jerked back to the here-and-now when Josh spoke. “Tell me about the curse?”

Of all the things that could have made good pillow talk, that wasn’t one of the topics I would have chosen. “You know about the curse.”

“Sure, what’s been passed down through the family.” He scooted around, hissing a bit as he twinged his bruises, until he faced me. “I’ve never heard it from the gargoyle’s mouth, so to speak.”

Careful of my talons, I swept a lock of hair away from his brow. “It’s not a fun tale.”

“I didn’t expect it to be a rom com. Romantic comedy,” he expanded, after seeing my brow furrow. Right, not my favorite genre of movies so I’d forgive myself for missing the reference. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

I knew he would. But if I were going to share the sordid tale with anyone, it would be Josh. Or any of his predecessors, truly, but none of them had asked. I breathed in, filling my lungs to capacity, and let the air out slowly.

“It was 1523—”

“Wow. I knew it was the sixteenth century, but wow. Oh, sorry, go on.”

“It was a totally different world. In some ways, less naive. We were well aware of the things that went bump in the night. Ghosties, goblins, witches, werewolves. Unlike in this modern day, where people rarely believe what their eyes tell them.” That had been one of the shocking things about this century: that science and technology had so completely overpowered centuries of innate human knowledge. We’d seen it the last time we’d been awake, but the twenty-first century had taken that ignorance to an extreme level.

“So you believed in stuff like that back then?”

“When we saw evidence of it, how could we not?”

“But, like…” Josh bit his lip. “Were you sure? How did you know?”

“Well, being cursed was a good clue.” I smiled as Josh chuckled. “But before that, yes, we were sure. We saw the good witches bring farmers’ crops back to life or help a mother through a trying birth and survive. We saw the effects of dark magic too. We heard the werewolves howl on the full moon—”

“There were wolves in Ireland in the 1500s, weren’t there? Could have been non-shifter wolves.”

“You’ve clearly never heard a werewolf’s howl. The sound is indescribable—filled with magic and chilling to your bones.”

“Oh.”

“At any rate, the point is that we knew. We lived with magic every day. Some overt, some subtle, some inherent. But it was always there. Perhaps we were more attuned to it because our grandmother had been gifted with some magic.

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