by M. L. Briers
Dangerous beast … dangerous beast … dangerous beast…
“Or, you could go sit on your bed, I could go sit on my bed, and we could talk in the morning,” she offered back, and she couldn’t help the teasing smile that graced her lips when he gave a small grimace at that idea…
“Are you planning on running?” Liam got right to the point…
“Running…?”
She’d thought about it. Heaven only knew how that thought had been swirling around inside of her mind with all of the others.
If she left then Kent and Marco would follow her. No harm no foul to the pack or Connor, and especially her mate … but, it was just a thought like all the others.
She hadn’t exactly plotted on how to get out of Connor’s castle and steal away in the night, missing the bear shifters along the way … or maybe she had, just a little, and for that she felt a pang of guilt for what that meant for him as her mate…
She’d already had a crazy bear in her life – but her own mate going crazy wolf – rogue – that didn’t sit well with her need to protect those around her that had shown her kindness when she didn’t think that she deserved any. Throwing Liam to his dark side was a definite no-no.
“You know…” he drew his arms against his sides and pretended to run on the spot.
Agatha couldn’t help but find amusement in the sight of that. A big, grown, growly, shifter, looking like an idiot for her benefit. She wasn’t so sure that wasn’t what he’d intended, lighten the moment and all that, because the man did have a stupid look on his face, even if his eyes were dark and deadly serious.
“I know what running looks like. I just don’t partake in sports, but thanks,” Agatha bit down on the smile that stretched her lips.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Liam said, placing his hands back on either side of the door and leaning in towards her once more.
That time it felt more personal. It felt like she was a schoolgirl again and he was her first ever date, leaning in for a goodnight kiss…
One kiss from him made her doubt that it would feel like a goodnight one … although, she had the feeling that a good night would be had by the both of them…
“It was a stupid question.”
Agatha rushed back her answer on a frown that wasn’t necessarily for him, more at just how her mind had run off on its own path once more – leading her to think about all things mating when they weren’t even out of the starting blocks yet...
CHAPTER EIGHT
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“I’m male. I have those,” Liam offered back.
He could sense the change in her. There was a look of sheepishness, guilt for something that she’d been thinking, and he guessed it might have been the mating pull egging her on, but he couldn’t be sure.
“You’ll not hear me rush to deny that,” Agatha muttered, again with a small flash of a grimace about her.
“I think this is called; deflecting,” Liam offered her a teasing smile.
“I think this is called; flogging a dead horse.”
Liam’s eyebrows raised towards his hairline, and she found that look just as effective as the frowny, looking under her eyebrows thing, that he did. Especially when those same eyebrows decided to dance a little…
“Fine. No. Not thinking about running, ok?” She tossed back with a rush of frustration within her at just how potent the man really was…
Geez, he frowns and my womb dances a jig…
He berates me and there goes my womb again…
Damn his expressive eyebrows and those stupid … sexy … puppy dog eyes…
Damn fate.
Damn the mating pull.
Damn that I haven’t had sex in so damn long that my body thinks I’m going for sainthood…
Damn, damn, damn it all!
I want ice cream, covered in chocolate shavings, strawberry sauce, and a whole chocolate fudge cake on the side … with cream, sugared, not whipped… oh whipped that sounds dirty…
Not that I’d let a man near my backside with a whip – I’d shove it right up his…
Deflecting. Diverting.
Damn sex again!
He’s potent.
He’s … bewitching, and there’s me thinking I was the damn witch around here.
“What are you thinking?” Liam asked.
He’d watched a million and one emotions travel over her face and he wanted to know her – know her to the point where he could tell exactly what it was that she was thinking with just one look…
The moment that he’d asked that question, she flashed up guilt, then embarrassment as her cheeks coloured a darker red, and then she looked as if she was chewing a wasp…
“Night!” Agatha bit out.
She flicked the door closed in his face with just a little magic, and Liam had to whip his head back on his neck to avoid the hard wood hitting his forehead, and yet, there was still a small thud when he didn’t make it in time…
Agatha heard the thud on the door and grimaced.
“Whoops,” she said, but that didn’t stop her from clicking on the lock and reinforcing it with her magic.
Done talking … she told herself.
Done considering. Thinking. Imagining…
Who am I kidding? This is going to be one, long, lonely night of tossing and turning in bed.
Damn it. I’m doomed.
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Connor had been over the castle twice already. He’d made certain that every window was sealed, every door was bolted, and that if they came for Agatha, then they’d make one hell of a noise doing it via a window.
It was all that he could do.
It was too late at night to gather the pack and clan witches and get them to put wards up around the castle specifically aimed at bear shifters, but in the morning; he might just throw that idea out to the witches and see what they come back with.
He knew that he could have dragged his mate and Agatha around to every damn window and door to place wards there, but that would take all night. No, the more witches the better – they could just use their collective powers to seal the whole damn place in one go…
Until then – he prowled through the halls, moving towards the staircase that led to the roof – that alone was a weak spot if the bears were smart enough to see that the long lying branches hung above the damn castle. He’d toyed with the idea of removing them, but then he would have lost his own element of surprise should he need it.
He turned the corner into the adjoining wing, and stopped in his tracks as Liam spun towards him, snarling a warning, and fighting the urge to get his claws down and his fangs out…
“Heel, bad puppy,” Connor bit out, enjoying the look of sheer disbelief that the shifter offered him…
“Lurking…” Liam bit out. Anger flashed in his eyes as he forced his wolf to stand down.
The beast considered anyone and anything a threat to his mate now. Even Connor.
“I can’t lurk in my own castle,” Connor offered back.
“I thought it was Vicky’s castle,” Liam tossed back and Connor rolled his eyes in his head and grumbled to himself.
“Technically…” Connor grumbled. “And does it really matter?”
“To your mate? Yeah,” Liam’s eyes flashed with amusement.
“Funny, ha-ha.” Connor’s tone was acidic.
“Stop lurking,” Liam warned him.
He’d barely been able to keep his damn wolf in its cage when it had scented the vampire out of nowhere like that. The beast was on full protection alert and Connor’s actions weren’t helping matters.
“I’m not lurking, I’m moving from one place to the next. I believe they call it walking – or at least, they used to,” Connor’s sarcastic reply did little to sooth the man or his beast’s nerves.
“Where are you going?” Liam asked with a whole heap of suspicion in his tone.
“Roof,” Connor shot back without feeling the need to explain his reaso
ns. The fewer people that knew about the roof access the better.
“Spot of stargazing?” Liam shot back with as much sarcasm as Connor had shown him.
“Yes. I do love those comets,” Connor offered dryly.
“You think there’s a problem?” Liam growled at the thought of his mate being vulnerable.
“I always assume that there is and cover my options,” Connor shoved back at the man’s questioning of his motives.
“Good plan,” Liam nodded thoughtfully.
“Glad you like it. I did so long for your approval,” Connor smirked and the shifter growled. “Don’t wake your mate.”
“Why don’t you kiss my…?”
“You’re not my type.” Connor shot back before the man finished that question.
He had no more time to shoot the breeze and placate the worried wolf. The roof was the last place that he needed to secure, and he wanted to get it done so that he could spend five minutes soothing his own mate’s ruffled feathers. Although, Vicky wasn’t truly mad at him – she still liked it when they both pretended that she was.
That thought of makeup sex spurred him on. They’d do the dance around each other, back and forth a little, and then beg each others forgiveness. He loved that thought.
One moment; he was facing the shifter, and the next he had sidestepped the man and was at the bottom of the staircase, with vampire speed and stealth, that the shifter had either missed, or not bothered to try to counter on his way by him. It saved both time and any more confrontation that way.
Connor pushed up the staircase and out into the night air. He scented the breeze and found little but nature on it.
That was the way that he wanted to keep it.
It wasn’t just Agatha that was at risk if the bear’s decided to attack – Vicky was also on the property. His mate had a way of sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong, her magic where it shouldn’t be, and her backside on the line.
None of those thing filled him with joy, and he’d protect his mate at all costs.
Even against her own kind of stupid.
Not that he was going to tell her that.
He valued his balls.
CHAPTER NINE
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Agatha was driving herself insane on two main fronts. Firstly, there was her mate, the one that she kept thinking of naked – thanks in part to her mind farting when he was standing at the adjoining bedroom door looking all broodily sexy and temptingly available.
Secondly, there was the ice cream, chocolate, and all things tempting her in the kitchen that she knew Vicky had stored there, because the woman of the house was a sweet-toothed creature after her own heart.
She wanted that taste upon her tongue, even if only to stave off the other taste of Mr Tall, Dark, and Handsome that she was imagining.
In her mind neither one was right. Neither was fair … but she had a craving for both.
Agatha had heard Liam and Connor outside the bedroom door doing their little manly-butt-heads-together thing, and she’d rolled her eyes at the thought of getting by either one of them, or having her mate following her like a stray puppy. She needed chocolate cake and some alone time to truly enjoy and savour it…
There was one thing that she knew about that her mate didn’t, and that was the secret passageway that she’d discovered hidden behind a wall of mock panelling. She’d been inside before, and while the thought of those tunnels didn’t thrill her, it did come with the added bonus of not having to confront her mate.
Those tunnels were dark, cold, dank in every respect, and filled with cobwebs that must have come from some damn big spiders – or gazillions of little ones that had been working the overtime shift, but if she braved all that – then she could be free of her mate, and free to stock up on the tasty goodies that awaited her.
Hmm, chocolate and ice cream … or tossing and turning in that big old bed all night…?
Maybe if I eat enough – like bloaty-Macbloat-face then I’ll fall asleep doing the beached whale thing in my bed…
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do…
And … not get caught while I’m doing my super-duper, speedy, stealthy midnight foodie run…
Sounds like a plan…
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It had been the last place that Marco had wanted to go, but apart from scaling the trees and seeing if the branches would hold his weight as he investigated the height of the drop to the roof; it seemed like the only other way in, and he wanted in.
Raul had given him an order to end the witch and he was all about following the new alpha’s orders to the letter.
The alpha had told him not to tell Kent the plan unless he absolutely had no other choice. Raul wasn’t sure if Kent had a soft spot for the witch or not, but from the discussions that had already taken place between them; the alpha wasn’t taking any chances, and that was why he’d sent Marco down there in the first place.
Marco figured that if the witch rarely came out of the castle, and the shifters and vampire were going to try to protect her anyway – then he might as well go in. Sometimes doing the unexpected and catching people by surprise yielded the best outcomes.
But the old sewer tunnels wouldn’t have been his first choice. They still stank with the stench of their original purpose, and he’d breathed through his mouth the whole way in, and yet, he could still smell it thick in the air all around him.
Marco could hear the footsteps in the knee high water behind him. It wasn’t as if Kent knew how to be stealthy, or had even tried, but then Kent wasn’t the one that he needed to be worried about – Connor was reputed to be very old, and very deadly, and he wanted to avoid a run-in with the vampire at all costs.
He wasn’t there to die or be a hero. He was there to kill the witch and complete his alpha's orders to the letter.
Marco had envisaged having to crawl through the tunnels the closer into the castle that he got. It surprised the hell out of him when he stumbled upon a stone staircase that wound upwards…
He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he would take things easy and make sure that he wasn’t about to walk into a trap.
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Agatha wasn’t about to go investigating where all of the tunnels led. She’d already discovered that there seemed to be some kind of network that ran around the old castle, and yet, all she wanted to do was get out of there as quickly as possible and be somewhere far enough from her mate that he didn’t hear her exiting another room.
She didn’t know if one of those darkened passageways would lead her right to the kitchen, and she didn’t much care – they gave her the creeps, and the last thing that she wanted to do was run into one of those big butt spiders along the way.
She searched for a way out along the walls, with the small bright orb of light in her hand that she’d created with her magic she could see enough to light the way. She was cursing her own stupidity, and patting herself on the back for her brilliance in equal measure as she went, with only a flash of guilt for the mate that she’d left behind her.
If she played it right – she could kill one craving, maybe two as chocolate was as good as sex, or so they said, and be back in her room before anyone even knew that she was gone.
At least, that was the plan.
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Mine…
Liam’s beast wasn’t best pleased that their mate was on one side of the door and they were on the other. He felt that clawing within him.
The need to be with her was a powerful thing, and in part he guess he had the mating pull to blame for that. He turned towards the door and placed his palm against the wood in an attempt to, at least, feel a connection with her…
Panic gripped him the moment that he realised that he couldn’t hear her moving about, breathing. He listened harder and found that there was no steady beat of her heart…
He reached for the
door handle and found that it wouldn’t move. A rush of panic made him twist and push the door as it protested against the lock, against the frame, but he certainly wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Liam used his shoulder like a battering ram and when the door gave way to brute strength and determination; his eyes took in the room – a small open door within the panelling on the other side of the room caught his attention and he cursed.
He scented the air and found her Fae essence mixed with the dankness that came from that opening…
Stalking towards it; Liam finally realised what it was – a way to escape – and she had done just that … escaped him.
She’d lied. She’d said she wasn’t going to run and he’d believed her. He cursed again…
His beast roared within him, trying to push forward and take charge of the hunt for their mate, but Liam slammed that cage door closed with the certain knowledge that his beast had no place inside the tunnels.
Without thought to what might happen when he found his runaway mate; he stalked in through the opening and scented the air. It seemed thicker inside those closed in walls, but he found her scent, and then he set off to follow in her footsteps, cursing all the way.
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Connor had made safe the roof access and was on his way back towards Liam when he realised that he was going to have to deal with the man one more time. He cursed that he hadn’t had the foresight to take the other route back and cut out dealing with the shifter all together, and yet, somewhere inside of him; he relished winding the man up for his lack of wooing skills.
Being on the wrong side of his mate’s bedroom door was something that the vampire knew all too well, and he liked to poke fun where he could. After all, how many times did a man get to woo his one true mate in life, and how many shots would Connor have to wind him up?
Connor had watched the shifters of the mountain find their soul mates. One by one falling under the mating spell, and now pups and cubs were being born. His mountain was taking on a new lease of life and he was more than grateful for it.