The Paranormal Council Complete Series 1-5

by Laura Greenwood

  “Eden,” he whispered, not really sure why he was saying her name, but knowing that he wanted to.

  In a flash, Eden was crouched in front of him in human form again, and without saying a word, she captured his lips with hers and kissed him passionately. Tony deepened the kiss, pulling her to him, and toppling them over.

  The kiss broke as he landed on his back, with Eden on top of him, her naked body pressed against his clothed one. He lifted a hand and stroked her cheek gently, the look that passed between them saying much more than either of them could actually voice. He knew that there was something special between them; there had to be. He’d never felt even half of this with anyone else before.

  Eden’s eyes took on a worried expression, and she looked away, almost like she was guilty.

  “Eden, what’s the matter?” he asked, his voice laced with need. And as much as he wouldn’t have admitted it yesterday, the need was far more than just a physical one.

  She shook her head, and refused to look at him. Frowning, Tony gently lifted her chin so that she was looking at him again.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I think I mated with you,” she said, fear radiating from her.

  “When you bit me?” She nodded. “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Yes, no, I don’t know.” She was clearly agitated, and he longed to make it better for her.

  “What does it mean?” he asked. He’d heard Kem use the word mated when he’d talked about his brother, but then he’d also referred to Lia as his wife as opposed to his mate, so there had to be some kind of distinction.

  “That you’re mine, and I’m yours.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” he said. He actually quite liked the idea, but she looked so unsure that he didn’t really want to push it.

  “Forever,” she added. He waited for the panic to set in at her words, but it didn’t come. Instead, a sense of rightness flowed through him. It was almost like this was meant to be.

  “How many mates does someone get?” he asked, already thinking he knew the answer, but wanting to be sure.

  “One,” she answered instantly, trying to avoid his gaze again.

  “And you can’t mate accidentally?” he asked, this time trying to make sure that his thoughts were travelling along the right track.

  “You can, but it’s rare. And with how dormant my shifter side is, it seems unlikely.”

  “So you’re stuck with me forever?” he joked, liking the idea more and more with each passing moment.

  “Why aren’t you freaking out?” Eden demanded, something akin to anger flaring in her dark eyes. He smoothed back a piece of hair from her face, taking in the set of her mouth and the true expression on her face. While her words suggested she wasn’t happy with the situation, her body language was saying differently. Especially as he’d noticed that she was pushing herself against him as they spoke.

  “Everything happens for a reason. Even last night had to happen so that we could find one another,” he said, voicing an opinion he’d had for almost his entire life, but had kept quiet about until now.

  “I thought I was supposed to be the sappy one,” Eden muttered, making Tony chuckle.

  “You’re old and jaded though,” he said. Eden stuck her tongue out at him in a surprisingly juvenile move, but also one that changed the mood, and proved to him that really, Eden was just a little scared, and wasn’t actually doubting what was between them.

  “Maybe,” she attempted to grumble, but failed.

  Tony closed the gap between their mouths, and kissed her sweetly, taking his time to enjoy the soft feel of her lips against his as they moved against one another. As far as he was concerned, spending the rest of his life with this woman was a definite plus; even if she wasn’t quite ready to accept that.

  11

  Eden’s phone chirped, and she scooped it off the side, hating that more than a small part of her wanted it to be a text from Tony. She didn’t know when she’d become so man obsessed, but since meeting him, Tony was almost always in her thoughts.

  “Hello,” she said after hitting the answer button; still excited over the prospect of speaking to Tony again.

  “Eden?” A woman’s voice came down the line, stopping Eden dead. “It’s Aella,” the voice said, and Eden breathed out slowly, calming herself after her momentary panic.

  “Hi, Aella,” she said, unsure about what the other woman wanted.

  “I’m going to put you on speaker phone.” Eden frowned, despite knowing that the other woman couldn’t see her. Whatever was going on, she had a feeling that she wouldn’t like it all that much.

  “Okay,” she said slowly, drawing out the word to make her hesitation clear.

  “Eden, this is Arabella Reed, Ari, this is Eden Chambers, I was telling you about her,” Aella introduced, and all the blood rushed from Eden’s face. The last thing she wanted was a conversation with the alleged leader of the Shifter Council.

  “Hi,” Arabella said, sounding decidedly more chirpy than Eden would have expected from a serious defence attorney.

  “Hi,” Eden replied warily.

  “Aella tells me you’re having some shifter trouble. Anything I can do to help?” she asked, the sincerity in her tone almost making Eden cave and tell her what was going on. Almost, but not quite.

  “Eden, you’re going to have to talk about it if you want to sort it out,” Aella said after the uncomfortable silence had gone on for too long. Eden could almost imagine the brunette was in the room, standing with her hands on her hips and a no nonsense look on her face.

  “I know, but…”

  “But nothing,” Aella interrupted down the phone. “You have as much right to Arabella’s support as any other person under her jurisdiction.”

  “Trying to impress someone with the big words, Aella?” Arabella’s amused voice cut in.

  “Well you’re a lawyer and Eden does fund management of some kind, the big words come with the territory,” Aella threw back, her tone revealing that she was only joking around with the shifter.

  “What’s the problem, Eden?” Arabella asked softly. “If I can help, then I will, and I know that the others will feel the same.” Eden took a deep breath, knowing that she had to take the plunge and reveal her deepest secret to yet another person.

  “Can shifters mate with creatures related to death magic?” she asked slowly, despite thinking that she knew the answer already.

  “I hope so, or Alden and Rory have a lot of explaining to do,” Arabella said with a chuckle. “Why? Has a shifter mated with you?”

  “Not quite,” Eden muttered. Arabella waited silently, as did Aella if she was even still in the room. “I mated with a vampire,” Eden said finally.

  “You are a vampire,” Arabella returned instantly.

  “Kind of. I was a shifter before I was turned,” she admitted. Silence greeted her at the other end of the phone, and she was worried that she’d managed to scare the other woman off. That wasn’t what she wanted to do, especially if Arabella really could help her.

  “I didn’t even realise that was possible,” Arabella said eventually.

  “No one really does,” Eden replied. “As far as I’m aware, I’m the only one. But then, I’ve never actually told anyone until this week. Maybe there are others after all.” Eden shrugged, despite no one being able to see her.

  “It shouldn’t work. The mix of death magic and life magic should counteract each other and cause dead dead, not vampire dead,” Arabella mused.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Eden responded.

  “How do you know so much about it?” Aella asked, breaking her silence.

  “Rory likes to talk about it. Mostly while saying how disappointed Alden is that she can’t shift,” Arabella replied.

  “Rory’s the necromancer, right?” Eden asked, fairly confident that she knew who they were talking about, but wanting to be sure.

  “Yes, she’s mated to an owl shifter who sits on the Council,”
Arabella replied.

  “Surely you shouldn’t be telling me that,” Eden said.

  “You’re a shifter, you have every right to know.”

  “I’m also a Vampire Elder, you may not want me to,” Eden said back. To her surprise, Arabella started laughing.

  “And you’re probably the only Vampire Elder who doesn’t have spies in my Council.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Eden asked indignantly.

  “For a start, because I have a spy of my own in the Vampire camp,” Arabella sounded amused.

  “For how long?” Eden said, frowning again. She didn’t know whose side she should really be on. On the one hand, she was a Vampire Elder, and the sanctity of their meetings should be protected. On the other, she was kind of glad that someone other than her was keeping an eye on Maurice.

  “A couple of days,” Arabella said, not sounding the least bit concerned. “We had one before that, but he met an unfortunate end. There’s still an old school faction of vampire hunting shifters. We’re trying to get them to stop, but so far we don’t seem to be getting anywhere with them.”

  “Oh,” Eden replied, thinking back to try and recall if she’d seen anyone suspicious about, but drawing a blank.

  “But we’re getting side tracked. You were saying about being mated?” Arabella prompted.

  “Yes, I think I mated with someone accidentally,” Eden said.

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “What?” Eden snapped back, instantly regretting how curt she sounded.

  “It’s actually really difficult to mate accidentally.”

  “How? All it takes is a bite.” Eden said, thinking back on all she’d ever heard about shifter mating before.

  “That’s just a myth. Well kind of. The bite helps seal the bond, but the real mating happens the moment the two people meet. And it’s…undeniable,” she said, pausing as if thinking of her own experience. While she’d heard of Arabella, and knew that she was mated, Eden didn’t know about any of the circumstances, and thus had no idea of the other woman’s thoughts.

  What she did know, was the way that she was drawn into the alley two nights ago. Something had guided her there, and while at first, she’d thought it was Todd and her desire to teach him a lesson, maybe it was something more.

  “Do you believe in fate?” she asked cautiously.

  “Yes,” Arabella responded. “Why?”

  “What if I only successfully turned because of who my mate was?” The other two women were silent.

  “I suppose it’s possible. We’ve never really understood how it works,” Arabella admitted.

  “It explains the way that Kem and Lia came back together though,” Aella said.

  “I suppose it does,” Arabella agreed.

  “But where does this leave me and Tony?” Eden interjected, needing to know the answer.

  “What does your gut say? If it’s saying that you want him, and only him, then I think you need to start listening to it,” Arabella said.

  “And if it’s not?” Eden asked, knowing that there was a good dose of truth in Arabella’s words already. In fact, all three of them probably already knew where Eden’s gut lay, and that was the issue.

  “Then call me, and we’ll come up with something,” Arabella said. “But somehow, I don’t think you will.”

  12

  It was all Tony could do not to skip down the street in his haste to get back to Eden. There was something undeniable about his feelings towards her, and, while most men would probably be freaking out about that, he was taking it with a pinch of salt. At the end of the day, thinking of her made him smile, what else could he truly want from life?

  On a whim, he stopped to buy some flowers. He didn’t know what she liked, but found himself drawn to some simple and elegant looking lilies, in a vivid shade of pink. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he thought she’d like them.

  He walked up to her front door, which weirdly already felt like coming home, and raised his fist to knock on it. Before he could, the door swung open, revealing a frazzled looking Eden standing on the other side.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “We need to talk,” she replied, and something heavy settled in Tony’s stomach; those weren’t words that anyone ever wanted to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” He frowned. Eden opened the door wider, and waved for him to come into the room. He did, taking a seat with the lilies still in his hand. Silently, he handed them to her, and watched as her eyes softened and a smile lit up her face. Maybe things weren’t quite as serious as they seemed after all.

  “I spoke to someone this morning about what happened last night,” she said, pacing up and down, clutching the flowers to her chest.

  “About how freaked out you got after we had sex?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.” She quickened her pace, making Tony more and more worried by the second.

  “Eden?”

  “We’ve properly mated,” she said finally.

  “Yes, you said that last night,” he said, confused by why she was freaking out about this.

  “Don’t you get what that means?” she demanded, clearly agitated.

  “That we’re effectively married,” he said, thinking back onto all the shifter lore that he knew was about. He hadn’t known much about it until he’d googled it at work earlier. While he was sure parts of what he’d read were complete fiction, one of the common themes seemed to be that mating with shifters was for life. He supposed that he could have asked Kem, but a pat of him was still mad at the man for hiding the truth for so long. It wasn’t like Tony couldn’t handle it.

  “It’s like being married forever, Tony.”

  “I get that. What I don’t get, is why you’re so against that idea,” he said, careful to keep any hint of an accusation out of his tone.

  “Because…” she trailed off, clearly not having the words that she wanted. Tony stood up and closed the small distance between them.

  “Because nothing, Eden. Tell me there isn’t a part of you that knows this is right. Because that’s how I feel. I don’t care that I’ve only known you a short amount of time, this bond between us is real.” He said, feeling every word in his heart.

  “It’s too soon, Tony.”

  “How long have you been alone?” he asked, sure that he knew the answer already.

  “Truly alone?” she asked meekly, a tone that he was surprised to hear from her, and suspected he wouldn’t hear ever again. “Forever.”

  “So, you’ve waited over two hundred years to meet me, and yet you’re saying it’s too soon?”

  “Well, when you put it like that…” he held a finger to her lips, hoping that she wouldn’t take the gesture as an insult; that wasn’t the way he’d intended it.

  “You’re my other half, Eden, and I guess I was lucky to only have to wait decades for you,” he said. A tear began to fall down Eden’s face, and he wiped it away automatically.

  “And you’re mine,” she admitted, almost too quietly for him to hear, but thankfully, that was one of the senses that seemed to be improving for him.

  He pulled her to him, crushing the flowers, but not caring; he could always buy her more. Her lips crashed into his, and they got lost in a blaze of passion as she gave herself over to him.

  Epilogue

  Eden tilted her head back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun against her face, glad that this was one of the myths about vampires that was completely false. After she’d first been turned, she hadn’t gone outside until she’d absolutely had to, as she’d been too worried that she’d fry to a crisp.

  “Remind me why he isn’t ripping everyone’s throats out?” Lia asked from her spot on the picnic blanket next to Eden.

  “Because vampires don’t tend to actually do that,” she responded without opening her eyes.

  “Then where do the rumours come from?” the other woman asked curiously. This time, Eden moved her face so that she could look at Lia. They’d become decent
friends in the past few weeks, mostly due to Kem and Tony getting closer, and so Eden didn’t feel that the dryad’s questions were rude as such.

  “Every now and again a newly turned vampire will go feral. And a handful of the older ones will choose to act like that. My guess is that someone important got on the wrong side of one of those vampires, and they started the rumour that we’re all bad. It always seems to happen that way,” she said, feeling saddened that her entire species was tarred with that brush. For the most part, vampires seemed to be like humans; there were some bad ones, but most of them were decent, not going to drink anyone dry, kind of sort.

  “That’s sad,” Lia said.

  “It is,” Eden replied, thinking back to her other, failed, fledgling. She was just grateful that Tony hadn’t turned out like that. She didn’t know what she’d have done if he did; maybe she’d have lived out the rest of her life completely alone, never finding anyone to share it with her.

  She watched as Tony and Kem played football with their work colleagues. Apparently, the company had a summer picnic like this every year, including the football game, but like Eden, this was Lia’s first time at one. Not that knowing that had stopped the men from disappearing on them and playing a game.

  “How can they play football against humans? They have far too many advantages for that to be fair,” Lia said, watching as Kem made a particularly impressive tackle. Or it would have been particularly impressive if he hadn’t had increased senses and reflexes.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Having Tony on the team doesn’t seem to be doing them any favours,” Eden said, as she watched Tony fail to kick the ball in the right direction.

  He saw her looking, and waved. The large smile on his face revealing that he didn’t care how bad he was at football, he was having fun. Eden returned the wave and the smile, her heart swelling with love and pride. She hadn’t said it to him yet, but she knew she loved him. And if the rest of her long life was going to be like the past few weeks, then she was going to be very happy for a very long time.