by Lynn Veevers
“Well, now that is something, but the thing is…Eugene has only ever desired and loved one girl, and that is not even the case anymore.”
“OK, so if he is not in that frame of mind anymore, then what’s the problem?” Samantha wanted to know.
“Oh, it’s no problem. It’s just, well; he wouldn’t be attracted to you. No offence of course,” Cara said, cool as a cucumber.
Samantha flushed crimson as her anger took hold.
“Why not? I’m not pretty enough for him?”
Cara couldn’t help herself to stop the rolling fit of laughter. She finally road it out, sat up perfectly straight, and suddenly became deadly serious.
“Don’t get me wrong, you are beautiful. However, Eugene likes a more handsome variety in a potential relationship prospect these days. You simply aren’t handsome enough…mostly because you are not a man.”
Cara giggled as she watched realization dawn in Samantha’s now stormy blue eyes.
Later that evening, alone in her room, Samantha thought about the man she had met and knew so little of. She had been spellbound by him from the second she’d laid eyes on him. It was just her luck such a handsome, intriguing man would not find her attractive because she was a female.
Since she had broken things off with Paul, she had felt unbearably lonely. It wasn’t that she was heartbroken or anything of that nature. She simply missed the companionship, and she would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t miss the nights she hadn’t spent alone when she’d been with Paul. But oh, Eugene was pleasing to the eye with his deep, seemingly endless brown eyes and his sandy blond hair with its light brown hi-lites. It had wisped just past his shoulders, light and airy, when he had walked past her. His hair had not been the only thing the air had stirred. The scent of him was undeniably appealing to her senses. Even now, she could smell him in the guest master suite at the end of the hall.
His scent was driving her hormones to a maddening insanity. Sharp and angular, his face was that of an angel with a perfectly proportionate nose and full, inviting lips that sat above a masculine, squared chin. It was absolutely symmetrical and looked to have gotten its color from the finest birch wood, fair, but with brilliant undertones of soft beige.
As Samantha stared up at her rotating, pink ceiling fan, she wondered if she might be able to persuade him to be interested in girls again. He had, after all, desired and even loved Kaya.
Honestly, Samantha couldn’t see what his fascination with Kaya had been. She wasn’t particularly stunning by any means. To Samantha’s mind, Kaya was just average in the looks department; well, as average as exotic women could look anyway. That didn’t matter because Samantha knew herself to be beautiful; it was hard for her to not know given all the male attention she received on a regular basis.
As Samantha followed the path of the whirling, pink fan blade, she wondered what was wrong with Kaya. She couldn’t understand how Kaya could not want more than a friendship with Eugene; he was drop-dead gorgeous. Cara made it undeniably clear that Kaya never saw him as anything more than a brother. He was truly and completely in her friend zone and had taken that fact rather hard. Apparently, his heart never recovered from the pain Kaya had unknowingly caused. As a result, he’d written women off completely.
So Samantha lay there in the waning light of dusk and contemplated her chances. She had plenty of male friends who preferred men over women. Some of those men were the most genuine people she knew. However, it stood to chance since Eugene had previously felt the way he had about a woman that maybe, just maybe, the possibility of a woman piquing his interest was not totally lost.
Yes, she felt rather confident that she had what it took to grab and hold his attention. Deciding she would gradually try to form a connection with Eugene starting tomorrow through his love for literature. He was an author from what Cara told her, and she was an avid reader. It was a commonality she could use to break the ice and start to get to know him. The night drew over the house and Samantha drifted off to sleep, fantasizing over a man who currently considered her the furthest thing from a romantic possibility.
13
Blast from the Past
Loud screaming and yelling coming from downstairs startled Samantha awake from her otherwise peaceful sleep. She complained under her breath as she threw the covers back and sprang from her bed at lightning speed. Again, screaming reached her and when she recognized it was one of the cubs, Morgan, her heart started racing and fear shot up in her like a hot steel rod.
She was out of her room, passing along the hallway and downstairs in a flash of speed. Coming to a screeching halt in front of the family room door she took pause to take in the sight in front of her.
The four cubs she all but called her own where wrestling on the floor with a young man who had her doing a double take. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was as if Noah had risen from the dead. Cautiously, she entered the room and saw Dahlia and her father sitting on the love seat, taking the whole scene in and laughing hysterically at the grown man being dominated by four young children. Christian let out a blood curdling scream as the man tickled him mercilessly. Seconds later, Kaya barreled into Samantha from behind, landing both women on the floor.
“I am so sorry!” Kaya said as she picked herself off the floor. She offered a hand down to help Samantha to her feet.
Both women turned in unison to see seven pairs of amused eyes looking at them. Kaya was the first to recover her composure.
“You all scared me! What’s going on,” she asked
Dahlia got to her feet and started apologizing.
“I’m so sorry, girls, we didn’t mean to alarm you. This is Eric. He got in at about six. Owen and I were in here watching the news when he showed up. So naturally, when the children got up and came in to watch their cartoons, they went ballistic at the sight of their uncle.”
She motioned toward Eric, and Samantha nodded her acknowledgement, rolled her eyes, and went back to bed. Kaya stared after her then faced Eric, shaking her head in disbelief at Samantha’s less than hospitable actions.
She crossed the room to where the man who had just been dogpiled, literally, now stood, free of his attackers. Eric wore a flushed smile on his face, and the joy of the morning clearly reached his eyes, eyes that were as clear and blue as the purest ocean waters. They were so clear they almost seemed translucent. Eric was no small man. He towered over Kaya, easily reaching six feet tall. He was broad of shoulder and medium in build. While he was not as big as Owen by any means, he was still formidable in his size.
He had blond hair that reminded Kaya of the off-white sands she’d seen years ago in New Zealand. Her family had gone on vacation there for a couple weeks around Christmas time. She remembered she’d thought it strange to go on vacation in the dead of winter, but had soon realized when they had flown into Auckland that it was the furthest thing from winter in the beautiful country down under. It was the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere.
Eric’s voice snapped her back to the present and startled her at the same time. “What a beautiful memory. How old were you?”
Kaya stared with her mouth hanging open for a moment before Dahlia and Owen alike started keeling over with laughter.
Kaya flushed brilliant red as she saw the two of them near tears, they were laughing so hard, then promptly and angrily returned her gaze to Eric.
“It is nice to meet you, Eric, but do me a favor and stay out of my head,” she demanded.
Eric glowered in a frown that looked almost like a scowl. “But it wasn’t intentional…”
He stopped, looking very confused as he stared at Kaya then said, “What’s your name?”
“Kaya,” she said in a cold and clipped tone.
“Kaya. It is not a trait I can control on that level. I am open to all thoughts. I can’t turn it off or on. Some thoughts are louder than others.”
Kaya sighed in resignation.
“It’s OK, Eric. I shouldn’t have jumped to
the conclusion that you were intentionally invading my privacy.”
Kaya felt bad about blowing up at the young man. Now getting a good look at Eric she realized he was indeed a young man…a very young man. She had automatically assumed Eric would be somewhere near Dahlia’s age. Noah and Dahlia had been close to the same age. Eric, however, was much, much younger. The way he was smiling at her just then told Kaya that he was listening to her thoughts again...
“Yea, I was the “oops” baby. I just celebrated my twenty-second birthday. So I am actually more like an older brother to these guys than an uncle. My and Noah’s father died when I was just a couple years old, so Noah was always more like a father than a brother to me.”
He glanced at his nieces and nephew with a brotherly affection. Kaya noticed Owen’s lack of aggression and realized he had come to the same conclusion she had where Eric was concerned. He clearly no longer saw Eric as a threat because there was no way he was here to court Dahlia. The age difference was significant, but more importantly, if Eric saw Noah as a father, then he most certainly saw Dahlia like a mother. Kaya realized her train of thought was not just heard by her because Eric’s eyes widened and he slowly turned to face Owen. Owen’s smile slowly melted away as he caught sight of the look on Eric’s face.
“I caught the undertones of affection you carry for Dahlia and was aware of the brief aggravation you associated with me when I arrived, but Mr. O’Connell, you are extremely hard to hear clearly.”
Owen got a confused look on his face, and noticing it, Eric continued. “I hear your heart’s desire in Kaya’s thoughts. You can’t have thought I was coming here to court Dahlia. I have also heard Dahlia’s thoughts and you two are tiptoeing around the same want. You are both too blind to see it. Dahlia, Noah would want you to be happy, you have to know that. This guilt you feel over your affections for Owen is crazy,” he said, looking sad for the first time since Kaya had encountered him.
“Eric, do you want to go see Daddy with us?” Nadia asked, smiling up at her uncle.
He took the little girl’s hand, returned her smile, and followed her out of the room, the other three children following them. Kaya wanted to tell Owen and Dahlia what an eventful morning it had been, but one look at them told her they would not have heard her. They were in a place all their own right now, clearly processing what Eric had just said. Kaya decided this time was maybe best spent alone, and so she headed back upstairs to bed. After all, it was about six forty-five and she was going to take all the sleep she could get during the Thanksgiving break.
She climbed up the stairs, walked down the hall, and opened the door to Kenneth’s room. Kenneth always insisted on sleeping closest to the door, so she crawled over him and pulled the blankets up to her chin. He rolled into her and draped an arm over her waist, still half asleep. She snuggled in, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep again. Waking three hours later, she was alone in the bed.
She could only assume Kenneth had gone downstairs to be with the family. She made the bed, showered, and threw on jeans and an old Seattle Super Sonics hoodie. Ironically, the basketball team had moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City some years ago. They were now called the Oklahoma City Thunder. So essentially, she was supporting the same team, right? She decided she would stick with that theory.
She went downstairs to join whoever was down there. Walking into the kitchen she saw Kenneth, Samantha, and Cara all sitting around the table playing some card game.
“Where’s Eugene?” Kaya asked.
“He’s upstairs getting dressed to go into town with me,” Samantha said with barely suppressed delight.
Kaya just shook her head and laughed.
“We are going to go to the ice cream shop to get some iced mochas. He is going to tell me about his novel,” she said with the biggest grin Kaya had ever seen on her face.
Clearly she had her sights set on him. Kaya wondered if Samantha knew he preferred men. They seemed like an unlikely pair to Kaya, but weirder things had happened. When Eugene materialized in the room a short while later, the two of them headed out the door, talking to each other in quiet, almost hushed, tones. Kaya walked over to the cupboard to get a bowl and as soon as she heard the front door close, she laughed.
“So when did those two get so chummy?” she asked Cara.
“They were blabbing away this morning over freelance writing. Apparently, Samantha dabbles in it a little, but is more for reading it then actually producing it. Of course that grabbed Eugene’s attention. Then they were getting along better than white on rice on a paper plate in a snow storm down in Antarctica!”
Kaya had to laugh at Cara’s analogy. It was just like her to come up with random sayings like that.
Dahlia walked into the kitchen just then with a big smile for Cara.
“Kenneth, Kaya, can you please come into the family room? We need to have a family meeting. Where’s Samantha?”
“Oh, you just missed her, she and Eugene went to the ice-cream shop,” Kaya told Dahlia and then cast Cara an apologetic look. “Sorry Cara, this hopefully won’t take long.”
“No worries, Kaya. I wanted to take a bubble bath anyhow.”
Kaya gave her a quick hug and left the room with Kenneth and Dahlia. As soon as they were through the family room door and Dahlia had slid it closed, her pleasant smile disappeared and was replaced by a concerned expression. Kaya took note of all who were present: Owen, Dahlia, Eric, Kenneth, and herself. It struck her as weird that Eric was at a family meeting, but then again, he was family in a roundabout way, even if he did belong to a different pack. He and the cubs shared some of the same bloodlines, which made him family indirectly since they all bore the pack’s mark just as Kaya did.
“What’s going on?” Kaya wanted to know. The worrisome tension in the room was starting to get to her.
“Well, I guess we will have to fill Samantha in later,” Dahlia said. She took a seat next to Owen and snuggled into him. Extreme concern wreathed her features. Eric stood and took the floor, the meeting clearly revolving around him.
“I wish my visit was under fairer conditions, but unfortunately that is not the case,” Eric started to say.
He turned his attention to Dahlia before speaking again.
“We found Mom dead eleven days ago in the pond backing up to our property,” he said his face paling. His whole body was shaking slightly and his voice cracked as he ruthlessly held the tears at bay. “She had been torn to shreds and was barely identifiable.”
Dahlia’s gasp had everyone else looking at her. She was on the verge of a breakdown. Everyone could see it coming, but rather than give into it, she was clearly fighting against the urge to lose it, took a deep breath, and asked, “What else?”
Eric continued. “Two days after we found Mom, we buried her. When we made it back to the house, the door had been kicked in, but nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. I scouted through the house and when I was confident that it was all clear, I told Shannon and Renee it was safe.”
Eric must have read Kaya’s thoughts of confusion, because she had most of his attention when he spoke the next part.
“Shannon and Renee are my twin sisters. They were born between Noah and I. Renee is a physical visionary. What that means is she can touch something and see visions of events surrounding what she is touching. It can be something as simple as a piece of paper someone else touched. Then, not only can she visualize the events that happened around the paper in her head, but also the events surrounding people that came in contact with the paper. Shannon is a scented tracker much like Noah was. The difference is she also has what can only be described as photographic sense of smell. It’s like a photographic memory, but for your nose. Once she has experienced a scent, it is almost like her brain archives it and she can access that scent in her brain and retrieve it at will, no matter how much time has passed. She can track anything anywhere in the world. The catch is she has to be in Pure Form to do it.”
Eric gave his attentio
n to everyone in the room once again as he continued his story.
“We stayed at the house and were going to head out to Aunt Pam’s in a couple days. Shannon said she was going into town to get some stuff for dinner. I told her I’d go with her, but she insisted I not leave Renee alone. So I stayed. When she didn’t come back after an hour, we got worried. So at an hour and a half, we went after her to make sure she was all right. We saw her little blue sedan on the side of the road, driver’s door wide open, engine still running. Shannon was nowhere to be found. We searched the surrounding woods…nothing. When we came back to the car and as soon as Renee touched the steering wheel, she was floored with the rush of events that pounded into her head.
"She was bordering hysterical and told me three Lycans had taken our sister. Shannon was still alive, but they had taken her. Renee did not know where. There had been a struggle, Shannon had fought back, but they had knocked her unconscious and retreated into the woods at a fast pace.”
Owen got to his feet and asked, “Did she say anything else about them?”
Eric shook his head and continued, “Not at first, but once we got back to the house, we found a note placed on the entryway table. Renee didn’t bother reading it, just grabbed it and was rewarded with another vision. It was the same three that had taken Shannon. Two were holding an unconscious Shannon while the third placed the note, sniffed the air, and then they were gone. When Renee came out of her vision, she told me the three had been Lycans of the Afflicted kind.”
“What did the note say?” Owen wanted to know.
Eric pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Owen. He unfolded the thick paper and read it aloud.
“Dearest little ones,
I am sorry to have had killed your dear mother, but a message needed to be sent. With her being the oldest remaining of your father’s pack, I decided to start there. No doubt by now, wind of your brother’s betrayal and fitting demise has reached you. Such a shameful waste, he had so much untapped potential. Don’t worry your pretty little heads over Shannon. She is in good hands and will prove useful in my plans to track down that conniving mate of your brother’s. Does she really think joining a new pack will save her and her little mutts from my wrath? They will all die! Her and all her new pack members, right along with her beloved little ones! No one is safe, no one can hide; go and tell your brother’s mate. We are coming for her.