Fallen Angel (Paranormal Romance)
Page 13
“You will have to listen to your father,” Lelani said. “I mated with Gideon. I cannot be your mate now. He will leave with me!” Jack looked at Gideon with rage in his eyes. He was like a brother to him. He trusted him.
It was clear to Gideon that he cannot stay with the pack now that he betrayed them. Too bad for them, he thought to himself, he had no time for them but Lelani.
James nodded his head and just like that, Lelani was running across the clearing to her sister followed closely by Gideon. With a sigh of relief, Lelani held her younger sister tightly to her. From behind Luna, Rodney approached them, putting a gentle hand on Luna’ shoulder. “Welcome to the Steel Fang pack, little sister.” Sniffling, Lelani lifted her head to look up at the alpha. “Thank you. For rescuing me, I mean, and making me an auntie? Luna, I knew you’d been looking for a mate before your next cycle, but why didn’t you tell me?” Lelani fixed her sister with an incredulous smile. Luna blushed. “It’s a long story. Come on, I will tell you on the way home.” The two women turned and walked back to the edge of the clearing, where their new family waited to welcome them. Lelani looked at Gideon, giving him the sweetest smile. She was so pleased that her plan had worked out!
The End
Bear Shifter Romance
Part I
Ivy’s League of Bear Shifters
A Menage Shifter Romance
Part I
Shift Quickie
Part 1
Chapter One
“Okay, Ella, tell me what you think of this,” I said to my roommate as I read the job advertisement out loud.
“Marketing firm seeks excited, hip, hardworking millennial with a bachelor’s degree in communications or English, eager to help launch a social media campaign. Must be great at tweeting and using Facebook. Familiarity with WordPress a plus.”
Ella didn’t even look up from her magazine as she said, “You don’t tweet. You don’t even have a Twitter account.”
“I could learn.”
“You go to BINGO night for fun and you don’t ever update your Facebook account. You’re practically an old person. I think you should try for a different job.”
“Hey!” I said tossing a pillow at her.
“What?” she said, finally looking up at me after she easily dodged the pillow. She didn’t even have the grace to look particularly concerned that she had offended me.
“Just because I enjoy BINGO doesn’t make me an old person,” I said moodily.
“Sorry,” she said with a shrug looking back at the magazine now in her lap.
“I’m going to apply. The worst they can tell me is no, right?”
Ella didn’t answer.
“Helloooo? Are you even listening?”
Turning the page of her magazine lazily, she said, “Nope. Not listening at all.”
I tried not to get upset at her careless words. Ella was just an abrasive person and I knew I shouldn’t take it personally but it was close to the holidays and I was missing home. And it pained me that in a city so big, the closest person I had to a friend was Ella who pretty much spent most of her time wishing she didn’t have to have a roommate. Needless to say, she was a complete jerk most days, but I thought my sunny disposition would at least rub off on her a little. I had been wrong. If anything my cheerful personality made her even more inclined to either ignore me or treat me like last week’s leftovers.
Feeling like crap and not wanting my homesickness to get me down, I got up and told Ella that I was going out. She didn’t respond and so I just shrugged and left. I had the annoying habit of wanting everyone’s approval and I needed people to like me. I couldn’t help it. I was a people pleaser to no end. People in the small town I was from had found it endearing. In New York, it was just seen as a weakness.
As I walked down the street, I thought of how much I missed my grandmother back home. Maybe moving all the way to New York wasn’t the best idea, I thought for probably the seventh time that week. I took my cellphone out of my pocket and called my grandmother. She had raised me after my parents had died and I needed to hear a friendly voice. I was beginning to feel like a loser. I was a cashier at a grocery store although I had graduated with honors from a prestigious college in Connecticut just last year. I hadn’t been able to land a job in my field and I now figured maybe the world hadn’t needed any more communications majors. Add that to the fact that I didn’t have any friends and I felt that I was pretty much losing at life thus far.
To my surprise, my grandmother didn’t answer. I stared at the phone and decided to call again. I was instantly concerned since she always answered when I called. She had suffered a stroke right before my college graduation and although the doctors said that for the most part she had made a full recovery, the idea that a stroke could happen to her again at any time filled me with dread. So much so in fact, that I had put my plans to move to New York on hold until she was better.
“Hi kiddo!” my grandmother said immediately answering the second time I called.
“Hi, Grandma.” I said with relief, smiling at the sound of her voice.
“Uh oh, what’s wrong?”
“Everything. Nothing. No...just about everything.”
“So which one is it? Everything or nothing?”
“Everything,” I said with a sigh.
“Don’t worry about it sweetie. I’m sure whatever it is will work itself out.” I got my undying optimism from her, or as Ella would call it, my annoyingly positive outlook on life. Ella was right about that. After my parents had died, Grandmother had given me time and space to grieve, but she hadn’t allowed me to wallow in sadness. That had been ten years ago, but I could still hear her words in my ear, telling me that life was for the living and that my parents wouldn’t want me to stop loving life just because they were gone. I had known she was right so after their deaths I had vowed that I would live my life to the fullest. And so when I got older, I had taken more risks, been the first in my small town to try new things. And I kept my attitude positive, always hoping for the best even when life’s problems seemed insurmountable.
“What’s going on? Are you heading out somewhere?” I noticed that when she’d answered, she’d sounded harried.
My grandmother took a while to answer and I briefly wondered if maybe she had accidentally hung up when suddenly she said with obvious reluctance to share, “Well, you remember Mr. Davis, right?”
“From the warehouse?” I asked. Since I could remember, my grandmother volunteered weekly at a warehouse that distributed food to needy families throughout the county. My parents and I would help her during the holiday season and I remembered Mr. Davis fondly. He was a tall older gentleman who had at one point been a priest before he started working as a social services coordinator for the small county where we lived.
“Yes, well, he uhhh, asked me out on a date.”
“What!” I said smiling widely and picturing my grandmother blushing. “You’re going out on a date?! That’s great!” I said really meaning it. She hadn’t dated anyone at all as far as I could remember growing up and my grandfather hadn’t been in the picture my entire life.
“I know...I have an appointment at the salon and I think I’ll skip over to the mall to buy a new dress. I’m so nervous. I haven’t been on a date in over thirty years. I don’t know what to expect. I tried researching what to do on the Internet but mostly that just served to frighten me.”
I laughed, “Dating in the twenty-first century is scary. Trust me. I once went out with a guy who insisted I call him Peter Pan and tried to get me to---. Never mind. You can imagine how that date went.”
I could hear my grandmother laughing on the other end and I smiled, feeling better than I had minutes before.
“Well enjoy yourself tonight and tell Mr. Davis that I said hello.”
“Will do. Wish me luck!”
“You don’t need luck. You’re hot.”
She began to laugh so hard, she started to wheeze. I snickered and reluctantly, I
let her go. I tried hard to not think about how my grandmother was able to find a date in our small town but I was in a city surrounded by millions of men yet I hadn’t met one guy who was genuinely interested in me. I had a suspicion that the guy who had wanted me to call him Peter Pan had been on drugs especially when he asked me if I’d ever gotten high on a roof naked before. I had thought he was joking until he asked me if I were interested in trying it right then and there. I had pretended to have to use the bathroom and had excused myself and walked right out the back exit. Sadly, Peter had been the only guy to ask me out in the past six months.
I didn’t think it was because I wasn’t attractive. For the most part, I took pretty good care of myself. I walked everywhere and did some ab work when I felt my pants were fitting a little tightly. I had plain brown hair and green eyes, which I thought were my best features. I thought I was moderately good-looking, but given that I was in New York where supermodels casually walked down the street as if it were a catwalk, I knew I was probably well below average when it came to New York’s standards.
Not that I was looking for a relationship, I was still too busy trying to establish my career to think about a relationship, but some sort of companionship would have been nice. I shook my head. Something had to give soon or I would find myself back in small town Texas without a penny to my name and nothing to show for all the hard work I’d put into earning my degree.
I wasn’t interested in returning to my apartment so instead I went to a coffee shop not too far from where my apartment was located. I sat down and ordered a small cup of coffee and just sat there enjoying doing nothing. I had a ten hour shift later on that day and I wasn’t looking forward to it. The thought of the smell of the grocery store was enough to make me start looking for jobs again and I used my phone to scan the job ads online. I came across a non-paying job at an animal shelter, but it was an internship in their communications department. I applied with one click and continued looking for anything that sounded even remotely related to my field. Soon enough, it was time for me to head to work and so with reluctance I stood up and headed back to my apartment to change.
Chapter Two
“Ivy? Ivy Smith?” asked the young woman in front of me expectantly. She was a short, curvy red-head wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I looked down at my own attire and felt instantly overdressed. I was wearing black dress pants and a baby blue cashmere sweater that my grandmother had given me three Christmases ago. I was just happy that I hadn’t worn heels and had instead elected to wear slip on style ballet flats.
I smiled at her and extended my hand, “Yes, thanks so much for the opportunity to come in today! You must be Liz?”
She nodded and shook my hand briefly, inspecting what I was wearing, “I probably should have told you over the phone that I thought your first day here you could just get familiar with the animals and what we do here at the facility.”
“Oh well, these clothes are old anyway. It’s no big deal.” I lied. The pants had been an expensive gift too from my grandmother. It was part of a two-piece interview suit she had given me as a graduation present.
Liz shrugged, “Well good. Let’s get started.” She took me on a tour of the facilities that was divided by a long hallway. The bigger dogs were in the back and then down the hall were the cats. Smaller dogs were in pens on the opposite side of the cats.
I had an affinity for big dogs even though I’d never owned a dog growing up. There was one that looked like some sort of hound dog. He was tall, dark brown and had large floppy ears; despite my wardrobe I couldn’t help but want to hug him so I climbed into his pen and did exactly that. He surprised me by standing up on his back paws and hugging me back.
“That’s Cola,” Liz said rubbing his ears. “He’s a favorite among the volunteers.”
“I can see why,” I replied extracting myself from Cola’s embrace.
“Mind if I take him for a walk?” I asked impulsively.
“Are you kidding? He would love that!”
And so I found a leash and took Cola around the grounds and then on a brief jaunt around the city. Although my internship hadn’t technically started yet, I was excited about it. It didn’t pay, but I would gain valuable experience to put on my resume and I would also get to spend time with Cola. Overall, I felt it was a win-win.
As we made our way back to the facility, I saw a stretch limo out front and a man climbed out of it. He was talking on his cellphone, but apparently he wasn’t very engaged in the conversation. Instead he was studying the shelter as if trying to make a decision about something. I studied him as he looked elsewhere, marveling at how good-looking he was. He was tall, stocky with long jet black hair that reached his shoulders. He was wearing a business suit, but the tie around his neck was undone and he had on sunglasses. He began to turn in my direction when for some reason, Cola gave a huge bark and ran in the direction of the man, dragging me behind him.
“Sit boy! Stay! Roll over!” I yelled, trying all the dog commands I knew with the hope one would make him stop.
Apparently none of them worked as Cola greeted the man by sticking his nose in his crotch. The man abruptly ended his conversation, extracted Cola’s nose from his crotch and gave me a long look.
“I’m assuming the animal who just violated me is yours?”
I blushed and stammered out an apology when I noticed the corners of his mouth were turned up. He was only joking with me and I secretly gave a sigh of relief. Part of me feared that he would threaten litigation against the shelter for my inability to control Cola. I’ve heard of suits for more frivolous things.
“He’s not actually mine,” I corrected softly. “He’s one of the dogs from the shelter.”
“One of the shelter’s mongrels?” The man said and part of me didn’t like his use of the word mongrel and I felt myself growing defensive.
“If by mongrel, you mean cute dogs like this one looking for a home, then yes, you’re right.”
“Something tells me that this one will be looking for a home for a while here in the city. He’s huge. What’s the average size of a New York apartment? Five? Seven-hundred feet?”
“If you’re lucky,” I grumbled.
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’m not going to give up hope. The right owner will come along.” I said feeling a little silly knowing my unshakeable optimism was showing again. Ella had said my unrelenting optimism made me seem like a grade-schooler. I hoped this man didn’t also think I sounded immature.
For some reason, I cared about what he thought. I’m not sure if it was because of the limo or because he just seemed so well put together and had actually spoken to me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I wanted him to not think less of me.
“I’m guessing you aren’t the one then?” He removed his sunglasses and it was then that I saw how oddly colored his eyes were. One was blue and the other was green, both beautiful in their own right.
I gulped, immediately finding him even more attractive. I was a sucker for a man with pretty eyes. And he had an equally pretty smile. I found myself moving closer to him, drawn in by an invisible force that I couldn’t explain. He had an animal magnetism about him that made me think very unwholesome thoughts about the stranger I suddenly wanted to get to know in a more intimate setting.
“The one?” I said absently petting Cola on the head.
“Yeah, you don’t plan on adopting him is what I’m guessing from your comment earlier about finding the right owner for him.”
“Oh yeah!” I said feeling silly for forgetting my own words used only a few seconds ago. Nice job coming off as an airhead, I said to myself. I stuck out my hand while making sure I had a fast grip on Cola’s leash, “I’m Ivy. I’m an intern in the communications department here.”
“Ivy. I haven’t heard that name in a really long time. My name’s Hollis. So what is it exactly that you do for the communications department?” He said looking actually interested.
“Well I haven’t
actually started yet,” I confessed sheepishly, “But I suppose I’ll be in charge of their email campaign, general copywriting, the newsletter…things like that.”
“Then we might see more of each other…”
His words were innocent, but the suggestive nature of his tone made my mouth dry, “Are you a volunteer...or donor I’m guessing?” I said looking at the limo to keep from having to meet his eyes.
He shook his head, “Neither and this is my boss’ car. I’m too broke to afford a driver.” From the expensive cut of his suit, I thought he was exaggerating his lack of disposable income.
“Oh and who’s your boss?”
“He’s inside actually. Want to meet him?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know. I think I should get back to work. I technically haven’t even done anything work related since getting here. Hopefully I don’t get fired from a non-paying job for chitchatting,” I said jokingly.
He frowned, “You mean this isn’t a paid internship?”
I shook my head, “Sadly, it isn’t.”
“Are you a trust fund baby or something?”
“Excuse me?” I said with a frown.
“You know, are you independently wealthy?”
“No.”
“But you’re doing an unpaid internship?”
I shrugged and admitted, “Well, I have a part-time job at a grocery store. But I need this experience, so I took the opportunity when it was presented. I guess New York’s full of communications majors.”
“Oh so you went to college?”
I found myself offended by his comment so I replied sharper than I intended, “Yes, I’m a well-educated cashier, apparently.”
He had the good sense to look embarrassed, “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply that you couldn’t have gone to college and still work in a grocery store. Stupid comment on my part. Jobs are hard to come by and there’s a lot of competition here. I get that.”