by Maia Dylan
Grey River 3
Cassadee Sings the Blues
What do you do when your fated mates don’t recognize you as theirs? Cassadee Shaw had absolutely no idea. She was a shifter with incredible psychic talent and didn’t see it coming.
Add to that the fact that the males in her family were all…well, psychotic, and wanting her back home come hell or high water, and you get a woman who is looking for a safe haven to make her home. Grey River is exactly what Cassadee is looking for! That is, until her mates walk into the bar where she works and don’t recognize her as theirs.
AJ and Sam Carter have just got out of hospital having survived a recent brush with death and were celebrating life when they meet their new bartender. They don’t recognize Cassadee as their fated mate at first, and when they do? Well, it might just be too damn late.
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length: 49,642 words
CASSADEE SINGS THE BLUES
Grey River 3
Maia Dylan
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
CASSADEE SINGS THE BLUES
Copyright © 2015 by Maia Dylan
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-366-5
First E-book Publication: May 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my father. If I were to sum you up in one word, it would be family, and all my life I have known that as far as you were concerned we came first. You and mum sacrificed and worked yourselves to exhaustion to make sure we had what we needed. I watch you deal with the cancer and now the stroke, and know you fight it with everything in you because of us. I love you, Daddy.
And to my husband, who makes my heart sing every day.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
CASSADEE SINGS THE BLUES
Grey River 3
MAIA DYLAN
Copyright © 2015
Chapter 1
Cassadee hated every damn thing about hospitals. She hated the way they smelled. She hated the way that the only time people ever came to one was when they or someone close to them was either sick or hurt. She particularly hated needles, which seemed to be the first thing a doctor reached for these days, and for someone like her, who required blood transfusions on a regular basis, that was so fucking unfair!
Whenever she pushed herself too much, her blood cells would collapse and she wouldn’t be able to hold enough iron in her system. In a huge ironic choice against her nature, Cassadee chose to be a vegetarian. It wouldn’t have been such a strange thing for most, but for a shape-shifter, it was considered the worst kind of sacrilege! It also meant that the majority of her daily iron intake came through multivitamins, but she could never enough. So this led ultimately to a serious case of anemia, from which she would collapse and then came the sadistic bastard doctors with their huge bloody needles again. Vicious cycle, thy name is anemia.
Not for the first time in her life and sure as hell not for the last she cursed her brother and father. Why were the men in her family such pricks!
“Okay, Miss Shaw, this is the last bag. Once we get this in you’ll be all topped up and no doubt feeling a lot better!”
The nurse was entirely too chirpy as far as Cassadee was concerned. Not wanting to get into a drawn-out conversation on how she shouldn’t let herself become so anemic, Cassadee just smiled, then closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. She had heard it all before.
If this woman knew how bad it could actually get, she wouldn’t be so overly concerned. Cassadee had survived worse, much worse and lived to tell the tale. A case of anemia brought on by extreme fatigue from overtaxing herself stopping her maniac brother, Bryan, and their power hungry father—meh, this was nothing!
Going into her head to write lyrics and compose the music that went along with it had kept her sane when Bryan would start testing her, desperate to prove to their father that he was stronger, smarter, and more deserving than she was to succeed him. Even with her screaming at him that she didn’t want to follow their father into the next room, let alone into the future, he seemed hell-bent on forcing the issue.
Feigning sleep, she waited until the nurse left before opening her eyes and trying to figure out what her next move would be. Her brother had drawn her out, making it impossible for her not to engage him. Hell, he had almost succeeded in killing two people just to get her to come out of hiding and stop him. He truly was all kinds of fucked up, brother or not. He was going to go too far, and no doubt very soon, and then someone
was going to have to put him down. Permanently.
Cassadee wanted to believe that it wouldn’t be her, that Bryan wouldn’t go so far as to make it impossible for her to walk away and leave him alive. But she was quickly coming to see that Bryan was determined that there would be an ultimate battle to the death between them. He no doubt believed that it would lead to her death and his father’s immediate forgiveness who would then welcome him home with open arms.
She thought about Grey River, about this town that she had purposely headed toward in the hopes of finding sanctuary, knowing it was a shifter town. She wanted to settle down. She wanted a place where she could be who she was and be accepted for it, to find a place where she could build a home and perhaps find someone to settle down and share it with her. Was that so wrong?
Just because the crazy gene ran rampant in the male members of her family shouldn’t mean that she had to give up on her dreams just to assist a mad man with his. Nope, no way, not a chance in hell was she going to allow that to happen. She had played the docile, submissive daughter and sister for far too long, allowing them to use and abuse her in a way that had left her scarred and no doubt cynical as all hell, but it hadn’t destroyed her yet, and she wasn’t about to let it do so now.
Taking her Android tablet from her backpack, she pulled out the stylus and started making a list of things that she needed to do as soon as she was released from the hospital. The first was to find a place to live, and because she only had a limited amount of cash with her, and didn’t want to risk using her cards, she was going to need a job.
But what was a woman who had no experience or proof of any formal education to speak of going to do for a job? Anything that someone was willing to pay her to do. Ahem, correction. Anything legal and morally acceptable to her that someone was willing to pay her to do, that was what she was going to do. Grey River had called to her as soon as she stepped into town, so she was claiming it as home and damn anyone to hell if they thought to try to stop her!
* * * *
“Chris, I swear to God, if you don’t sign the fucking release papers that will get us out of this hell hole, I will fucking end you!” Sam growled to his doctor and pack mate as soon as he stepped into the hospital room Sam shared with his brother. They had been here for three days now, and when the seven days they had been in the special care unit down in Amarillo were added to those three, it made ten damn days too damn long as far as he was concerned.
Chris, the bastard laughed. “You’re going to make me think you haven’t enjoyed our hospitality! And that would just hurt my feelings.” He laughed even harder when he and AJ flipped him off at the same time. Sam just wanted out of this damn bed and out of this hospital. Granted, when they had first been chopper evaced to Amarillo, they had both been in pretty bad shape. But they were back to 100 percent now! Well, okay, maybe more like 85 to 90 but still much better than they had been, and they wanted to get back to their home and their lives. Was that too much to ask?
“Keep it up, chuckles. Sam is contemplating how we could dispose of your body in a way that Ty and Trent wouldn’t be able to pin it on us, and I gotta tell ya, I’m thinking his idea of a bathtub and a couple of industrial barrels of hydrochloric acid would do the trick.” AJ narrowed his eyes at the doctor.
Sam had thought he was going to lose his brother in a fire that had started up on Red Ridge, and their unit had been called in. They were part of a specialist firefighting unit called smoke jumpers, and their job was to parachute into a hot zone and fight the fire from within. He and AJ had been cut off from their line, and then a tree had come down, right across AJ’s lower back.
Try as they might, and even with all their preternatural shifter strength, they couldn’t get the damn thing off him. They had tried to contact their alpha Ty Jamieson along their common telepathic bond that connected all beta wolf shifters in their pack to their Alpha, but something must have gone horribly wrong because the link had disappeared.
AJ had told him to run, to leave him there and get out, to which Sam had told him to shut the fuck up. Then Sam got down to the business of surviving that clusterfuck. He had them both hunkered down in fire shelters, but it had definitely been touch and go for a while.
When he and AJ had first signed up and trained as smoke jumpers, their mother had almost had a conniption! It had taken months for them to get her to forgive them and to understand that it wasn’t just the thrill of the work, which, to be honest, was a huge draw card but also was a necessity for a community built in a forest environment like the one surrounding Grey River.
For as long as he lived he would never forget waking up in that hospital in Amarillo with his mother, flanked by his fathers, sobbing her heart out in a chair between his brother’s bed and his. He had lain there for a few moments, listening to her distress and calling himself all kinds of asshole for putting his parents through that amount of pain and anguish, before letting them know that he was awake.
He had been humbled when she had pushed his and AJ’s apologies and promises never to do it again aside and simply wiped her tears, kissed them on the cheek, and said, “Baby boys, you do something that saves lives every time you go out with your team. I have heard the stories and been thanked by the people you have helped. I am and always will be, so very proud of you both.”
Sam, who hadn’t shed a tear when it had felt like he was going to burn alive in that fire, teared up. He heard AJ clear his throat at the same time.
They had quite a few visitors to their hospital room over those seven days. Their alphas Ty and his twin brother Trent came with their mate Faith. They told them about the day of the accident, and all the reports from the other members of their team talked about the erratic behavior of the fire itself. Sam knew all about the fire acting strange, hell they had watched the fucking thing dance around like a marionette!
When Sam asked why they couldn’t get through to Ty or Trent on the communal link to their alphas, Ty talked about someone putting up a psychic barrier across the link making it impossible for them to communicate through it. He had to admit that thinking about the fact that someone was capable of doing that freaked him the fuck out. Then when Ty talked about a second person who had appeared stronger than the first, he suddenly knew how humans must feel when they find out that there are people in the world who, like him and most of the population of Grey River, could shape-shift into wolves.
They had been searching the area since extinguishing the fire to see if they could find any sign of them. But even now, ten days later they had no clue as to who they were or what it was they had been trying to do. Sam and AJ had noticed the signs pointing to the fact that an accelerant had been used, and he had no doubt that at least one of the psychic bastards had started that fire.
Their cousins Cody and Brendan had come with their mate, Lucy, to tell them they were getting married and binding their lives together in the way of their kind. Their Binding Ceremony was to take place in a week’s time and they had asked him and AJ to stand for them. He had been surprised that they would ask them and not Ty and Trent, but incredibly honored.
He and AJ had talked about the ceremony and about what they needed to do and organize to fulfil their role. During that conversation they segued into a discussion on what they wanted in their mate and attempted to define the characteristics of a woman that they could learn to love. They had talked about her beauty, her intellect, and her giving and soft nature. Like their cousins’ mate Lucy, she would have a heart of gold and embrace the pack as her own. They had become so involved in building the profile of their perfect mate that AJ had taken out his iPad and started to take detailed notes.
For the first time in forever, Sam actually accepted that AJ had the same desire to find their mate and settle down that he had. Oh, there had been their fair share of women over the years, and he and AJ had even shared a woman a time or two, but just recently, Sam had begun to want more. AJ, on the other hand, hadn’t acted like he had reached that point yet. H
ell, just the week before the fire he had taken a few numbers home from the Country Blue, the bar and restaurant they owned in town. Sam wasn’t sure if he followed through with any of them, but he certainly hadn’t declined taking them.
Now that they were back in Grey River the number of visitors they had had grown. They had seen all their crew at least twice, and Faith and Lucy came every day at lunchtime with barbeque from the Country Blue and tales of how the place had been going. Lucy had been a godsend for them with the bar. Since she had stepped into a management role, AJ and Sam had been able to hand over a lot of the administration and human resources work that did their head in. She mentioned that she had even managed to fill the three roles that had been vacant for some time.
Coming out of his thoughts, Sam heard Chris and AJ slinging insults and threats back and forward. Yep, it was good to be pack.
“Hey, don’t make me pull out my pack healer card and make you stay here for another three days, just because you two decided to threaten your medical professional,” Chris threatened, mischief dancing in his eyes.
Sam and AJ looked at each other. Then both growled and made to get out of their beds as if to make good on a few of AJ’s threats when Chris finally relented.
“Okay, okay, don’t get your panties in a twist. You’re both doing fine and can go home this afternoon. I think Ty is coming to pick you up shortly, so feel free to get dressed then take your grumpy asses out of my hospital.”
As they dressed and packed the few belongings they had with them, Chris talked through the treatments they needed to continue. AJ needed to keep doing the core-strengthening exercises to help with rebuilding his strength where he was wounded. When the tree fell on him, it had cracked some vertebrae in his lower spine. The doctors had fused them and were leaving it to his wolf and their natural healing ability to bring him back to normal. AJ was adamant that he was already there, but Sam caught the odd twinge of pain down their bond before he had time to close Sam out from it.