EAGLE (Shifter Kings L.A.)

by Holly Gunn

  EAGLE

  Shifter Kings L.A.

  Holly Gunn

  EAGLE (Shifter Kings L.A. Book 1)

  Copyright © 2020 by Holly Gunn

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Hell Bent Press & Holly Gunn (Publisher)

  Editor: Mostert-Seed Editing

  Cover Design: Hell Bent Press

  Formatting: Hell Bent Press

  www.hollygunn.com

  Contents

  About me, Holly

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword: Why the Shifter Kings?

  Prologue

  1. Elizabeth

  2. Eagle

  3. Elizabeth

  4. Elizabeth

  5. Eagle

  6. Elizabeth

  7. Eagle

  8. Elizabeth

  9. Eagle

  10. Eagle

  11. Eagle

  Also by Holly Gunn

  About me, Holly

  I'm the proud momma to a golden retriever named Charlie, two tortoises named Jake and John, a frog named Toad, and a gopher snake. The latter is my girl, Holly Jr. There's also the fact that I'm a thunderstorm-loving, front porch-sitting, hot cocoa-drinking, beauty product-hoarding, self-proclaimed environmentalist who just happens to write erotic romance. Saddle up sweetheart. I've got a slew of shifters, bad boys, down and dirty men, and smart, sexy babes to get you started!

  Sign up for my newsletter (here) to get up to date news, enter giveaways, and find out about freebies!

  Acknowledgments

  Margot, for real, I am seriously so blessed to have you as my editor and friend, girl. Each new book brings me joy, more confidence, and more passion for my craft. Thanks for being my wingwoman in this adventure. More to come as we hop into 2020!!!!

  Thank you also to my family, my friends, my readers, and all of those who take the time to support me in my dreams. I could not do this without you!

  Foreword: Why the Shifter Kings?

  When I decided to go into publishing, I didn’t just want this small business to be about creating stories that catch the reader’s attention and draw them into a new shifter world. I wanted to do something for the creatures who inhabit this world with us.

  I’ve always had pets. Dogs, cats, hamsters, tortoises, frogs … You name it. Although I spent a good deal of my early life in a cast because of an unusual bone disorder, I would dream from afar of riding horses and braving the wilds (while occasionally sneaking away to do things a girl just shouldn’t try to do with a broken arm, leg, or both).

  In college, I studied all types of animals in the Biology program I graduated from. Before college, I also did an African Safari in the heart of Nairobi.

  All of these experiences led to my love of wild animals and to my wish that sanctuaries stay exactly that. I want to protect the Earth we’ve been given and to celebrate the creatures we often overlook (or even the ones that we adore).

  Hence, the Shifter Kings series was born.

  And also, hence, all of this is the reason why 5% of all profits for my business will go to various charities, shelters, and sanctuaries to help support wildlife and clean habitats.

  I hope you enjoy this series!

  Yours,

  Holly

  To one of my sisters from another mister, Marilena. Congrats on getting the ring, girl, but mostly, congrats on finding the man who I know is going to build an amazing life with you. Lots of love.

  Prologue

  EAGLE

  I’ve known it was coming. After my actions, I would expect no less.

  It’s why my friends pity me.

  It’s why control is necessary.

  It’s why I am the way I am.

  And it’s also why my children will be raised differently.

  In every area of my life, I suck down my opinion. I keep my thoughts to myself. I don’t question.

  In the end, I am biding my time. Because someday, he will not be the ruler of the Eagle tribe.

  However, there are some issues on which I feel I must share my opinion.

  When that happens, I am very much aware of the consequences of my actions.

  Such as now.

  I remove my suit jacket, meticulously. The cuffs of my shirt are next. I undo the links, then the wrist cuffs, then the shirt buttons. Everything I do is deliberate and precise, just as I like it to be.

  When I’m down to just my bare back and bare feet, and trousers are the only barrier between us, I walk to the dais in the middle of the compound where our convocation, a group of eagles within the Eagle tribe, reside.

  Others are there as witnesses to my defiance.

  He’ll even make my younger sister, Annabelle, watch.

  I hate to feel this way about my king, about my father, but I can sense the bloodlust from him. It’s a bloodlust he has always had, but which has gotten worse since the loss of our mother. A king cannot survive without his queen, they say, but the reason for this goes much deeper than just love, companionship, and mating. It is the reason why most kings or queens find a second mate, to avoid the madness that has been reported for centuries when one loses their mate.

  A king’s power is not his own. It is meant to be shared. Just as a queen’s power is not her own, it is intended to be joined with his.

  They are one in every sense of the word.

  It is worse with my father, that drive for power, not just because he has not taken a queen, but because he has always had a lust for blood and punishment. He hid this when his wife was alive, but afterward, he bothered not with such curtain-closed torture.

  That bloodlust will be amplified when my sister, Annabelle, watches. He enjoys ruining innocence, taking the joy from them, twisting it. He enjoys knowing he holds that power over all his children, over his now-deceased wife, over even the future king of the Eagle tribe—me.

  Vera will be there too—and as much as I despise her, the only time she shows even a semblance of humanity is when I am punished.

  As the years have passed, I’ve been disciplined publicly less and less.

  Years of practice have conditioned me to be able to keep my heartrate mellow and my emotions in check.

  And still, the king always finds a reason to debase me, even when I haven’t earned it.

  I’ve come to learn that there is nothing I could do that should mean I deserve this treatment.

  But Father is still king.

  And it is not yet my turn to rule.

  So, I bide my time …

  I submit.

  And I train my eyes on the cold tiles of black and white as the first lash of leather and sharp metal strip through the flesh of my back.

  1

  Elizabeth

  I’m from the generation that says, “You're beautiful inside and out,” as though we need to clarify an important fact. This being, you might be beautiful on the outside, but that doesn't mean you are on the inside.

  We’ve been taught by websites like Hot or Not, from online dating, from Facebook profiles, and from the persona you put out there, that pretty is as pretty does.

  I also happen to live in L.A. where pretty is found at face value.

  That is … unless you live in the depths of the city where there are more tattoo parlors than places to get a facelift; more boxing gyms than commercial conglomerates; more fences that keep the right people in than keep the undesirables out; more of less rather than more … just to have more.

  You see, L.A., like many cities, is broken up into two groups: the Haves and the Have-nots. Okay, scratch that. L.A. is broken
up into a third group: the clingers.

  The Haves and the Have-nots are not who you’d expect, though. They are those of us on this side of the track who are the real Haves. We have family meals together. We have jobs that don’t require sexual favors. We have friends that don’t stab us in the back. We have just enough money to pay for a roof over our heads even if that roof is a cardboard box. We have freedom the likes of which those fenced-in socialites and wannabes—the clingers—will never have. We have real. Raw. Honest. True. Beauty.

  It’s a typical Thursday night for me.

  I’m on the L.A. streets and I’m banging out my feelings on the bongo, my dark dreads moving with the beat just as my feet are tapping away.

  I’m not pretty in the traditional sense.

  I’m rough. My hips and thighs too wide. My chest too flat. My hands too gentle but my arms too muscular. My nose is too small and thin. My face too pale. My eyes too close together. There’s a pink tinge to my cheeks that a bum on Hacienda always tells me makes me look like an angel. He tells every white girl she looks like an angel. I’m not white. Well, I am—white Hispanic.

  Both of my parents are from Guatemala, where I was born, but other than my black hair, I look Spanish European, the kind that doesn’t tan but burns at the first ray of sun. I’ve come to terms with the fact that the snooty white folk won’t accept me because my last name is Argueta, and some Hispanic folks won’t give me the time of day because I look too white.

  I go my own way, smiling and killing the world with kindness.

  A gentleman in a business suit drops a dollar in the bucket where Timmy, Kyle, Jay, and I play. He’s got olive-toned skin and eyes the color of black starry nights, something we don’t often see in L.A. The city lights drown out anything natural we might want to gaze at above.

  Suit guy starts to walk away and then he sniffs the air.

  L.A. is weird, I think, even though I know I couldn’t live anywhere else. This is home.

  I’m still playing, banging out a new rhythm, when I feel his eyes on me. There’s a strange intensity coming from him, it’s another beat in my body.

  I roll with the sound.

  The guys I play with know when I do this to catch up—and do it quick. They can follow any rhythm I give them.

  The new beat is a tapestry of complexity. It’s intricate and seems woven into my soul—and yet, it’s coming from the gorgeous man with the beautiful skin and onyx eyes.

  What it is though, really, is magic.

  It weaves its web, my magic does, and suit guy stays where he is, seemingly transfixed. His aura overpowers everything else around him as the consuming nature of the moment crescendos from within. Others join the audience. A great many others.

  So, I give them a beat that makes them dance. That makes them remember. That makes them feel. I pour my Dabbler family magic into the simple bongo sitting at my feet.

  Siphon witches think they have it tough. Dabbler witches have it worse. Our name gives us away. Dabblers. If the stories are true, we were once humans who dabbled with things they didn’t understand, and in doing this, gained the gifts of the twelve witch families. But that saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none” is sort of our informal family motto. We can tap into any form of magic the other twelve families have, but we can’t touch it to the full extent that it’s meant to be used.

  Hence, Dabbler witches.

  The thirteen families will tell you that there’s no such thing as the lower echelons of witching communities, but there are. The queens reign. Their families take the next echelon. This is followed by various abilities—Sea, Air, Judges, Charisma witches, and so on. The Siphons, the Dabblers, and, ironically, the Scholars are last to the party. We’re the redheaded stepchildren, the ones with the invite to the wedding because someone important couldn’t make it.

  And the Dabblers are at the bottom of the barrel.

  So, I’ve gotten it from both ends.

  The witches don’t think I’m all that special, and the fine folks of L.A., the Have-nots and the clingers, are of the same mind.

  But when I play a beat—on a bongo, on a drum set, even just on an open surface when I get nervous and let loose, all of them forget.

  They forget I’m not special.

  I show them my light, and they soak it up like it’s their bread and butter.

  I could hold them captive for centuries if I chose.

  But I’m not power-hungry.

  And I might have gotten it from both ends, but I know my worth.

  My worth is a currency of sorts—magic or no, fashion-sense or no, a man in my life (as my mama’s always begging) or no.

  I sense when stuffy suit guy with his intense aura leaves. The beat inside me changes. I dial back the magic and finish playing out the rest of our couple hours together.

  Every Thursday night, I play with the guys. I also spend all week herding kids, who are my world, at the Sarah Fitzwilliam House. Those same kids touch on every nerve I’ve got. I’m a chill person in general, but that doesn’t mean I’m not exhausted at the end of a work week.

  Right now, which isn’t unusual, that exhaustion translates into starvation. I’m suddenly ravenous in such a way I know it’s not just for food.

  It’s my soul that needs feeding.

  The music has helped, but there hasn’t been enough of it to feed me, to replenish my spirit.

  “Good one t’day, Izzy girl,” Kyle shares, his brogue thick, his strange green eyes on me, almost worried.

  I smile wanly but try to appear more jovial than I feel. I don’t know what suddenly has me down, but it’s like there’s a cloud surrounding me, and I can’t break through.

  Good thing I can pop by Mama and Papi’s before I book it across the street to my place.

  “Had to rock with the moment, Kyle.”

  “Aye, girl,” Timmy joins in, “but there was somethin’ truly darin’ in t’days’ playin’.”

  He has no idea.

  He, Kyle, and Jay are cousins from Ireland, and all three have these strange green eyes that upon first glance can make a girl nervous. On second glance, the nervousness remains but so does a new sense of comfort.

  Staring into Timmy’s eyes, I don’t brush off the feeling.

  I take it in.

  Like my music, these cousins have power, and their power is a presence that soothes the savage beast as it were. I don’t know if it is actual magic, as we tend to meet up every Thursday, play, then go back to our respective corners of L.A. Little conversation. Minimal eye contact. Today, they’re more chatty than usual.

  Their magic, if that’s what it is, seems simple in nature. Mine isn’t. It’s my beast, it’s my burden, the burden part being that I need a release for my magic, or it starts to eat at me. The curse of a Dabbler witch; we are witches who were once human, ‘enhanced’ humans one might say, although witches would argue they aren’t technically “human.” And as many texts will tell you, there is always a price for magic when it isn’t yours from the start. In a Dabbler’s case, we need an outlet for the magic we stole.

  So, I guess I could say there are more than just a couple kinks and quirks to my gifts.

  “The spirit moved me,” is my reply.

  Kyle and Timmy are both turned toward me. They don’t move. And the intensity they direct my way is too much.

  I inhale audibly then turn my eyes to the ground, picking up my shoulder bag, throwing it across my body and then giving the bongo to Timmy as I pass him.

  Both of them start to speak, but it’s Jay I notice shakes his head.

  “We’ll see ‘ya in a couple weeks now then won’t we, girl?” Jay asks.

  I furrow my brow and turn toward them as I start walking backward. “Next Thursday, you guys got something going? Hot dates all around?”

  Timmy smirks and looks to Kyle who looks to Jay—before all three of their gazes hit me at once.

  If that’s not a whammy, I don’t know what is.

  Yes, I think, ha
ving known them for a few years but for some reason just seeing them for the first time today. These three have power.

  Jay’s voice seems to ride on the wind in a whisper when he replies, “That’s a fair question, love, and as good a guess as any.”

  On that cryptic note, not answering the question, they turn as one and walk away, their hands in the air waving ‘goodbye’.

  I stand on the sidewalk, my arm raised halfway for a moment. I lower it when I realize I’m standing there like an idiot.

  My need for food hits me again, and so, I hail a cab after walking to the corner, hop inside, and direct it to my neck of the woods.

  And yet, the whole time I’m in the cab staring out the window and examining the scenery, it isn’t green gazes superimposed on my mind’s loop. It’s a set of onyx eyes that cause a shiver to trail up my spine.

  Truth be told, however, that shiver is anything but terrible.

  It does make me more hungry, though.

  “Hola, Mama!” I call out and grab a glass of Papi’s homemade limoncello. Papi isn’t much into anything having to do with a kitchen, but he can whip up a batch of alcohol like it’s no one’s business.

  “Mama!” I call again and hear an ‘umph’ and some hasty rushing coming from upstairs.

  Just … my … luck.

  I make a face and plug my ears.

  “Papi! Mama! Gross! My ears are plugged! I’m grabbing limoncello and some Chiles Rellenos for me and the girls!” I do exactly that—and in record time.