by Renee George
Eustan said, “We’ll take care of the clean-up, cousin. You go get some air.”
“Cousin?” Benie looked at Gray for an explanation.
He scrunched his brows. “Oh, yes. Didn’t I mention I had some sons?”
“No. No, you did not.”
“That’s right.” Gray smiled. It made his face look a little off balance. “I didn’t, did I?”
Destan crossed his arms and thrummed his fingers across his elbows in quiet contemplation. “Damn, we sure blew this place to shit. It’s going to take a while to get it in living shape for you all. I’d say we can have it ready in four weeks?” He looked to his brothers.
Max nodded, but held up two fingers. Eustan said, “Three.”
Destan shook his head. “Okay, three.”
“We have to live here?” Trace whispered in her ear.
“Can you build me a laboratory?” Ian asked with barely contained excitement.
“Only if you tell me about the Benie juice,” she said.
“What?” Ian shrugged, innocently holding his palms out.
“Uh huh,” Benie said. She had no plans in letting it go, but for now, she linked her arms in theirs. The contact with her men satisfied the Truine. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I could use a hot shower and about a week of sleep.”
Trace stopped mid-step. “The babies?”
The new power within Benie flared. For once she was completely in charge and in tune with her body. She could feel them both, little hearts beating fast and healthy. “They’re fine. Perfect even.” She grinned at her lovers. “Just like their fathers.”
Epilogue
One year later…
Being queen had its perks, but Benie had never imagined all the paperwork involved. She had a stack in front of her that she was told couldn’t wait until morning. They had to be signed and faxed tonight, and Eustan, who’d volunteered to be her go-to guy, was waiting for her to finish.
Apparently, the Caledonian Empire incorporated several large businesses including computer software and pork bellies. Luckily, Trace had a great head for numbers and legalese. Without him, Benie would have been lost ninety-nine percent of the time.
Ian no longer treated Benie like a lab rat, constantly exploring what made her tick. Nevertheless, when he’d asked her for a few stem cells for a new project to help someone she’d become very close to over the year, Benie agreed. Her cousin Max hadn’t stopped talking since Ian had grown him a new tongue.
Uncle Myron had moved back to Caledon now that his exile had been lifted, and he no longer needed to hide. The remaining wardens swore fealty to Benie and became part of Gray’s rebels, his shadow warriors. Her uncle convinced her to pardon Keane Silvertail, but only after Trace had agreed it was the right thing to do, and he put the man in charge of training new recruits.
Strangely enough, now that the war was over, her uncle looked like a slightly older version of the triplets—dark hair, blue eyes, rather handsome actually. She’d assumed the triplets looks were from their dragon shifter mother, but apparently not so. It seemed Gray had the ability to not only blend in with shadow, but to alter his features. It was how he’d managed to stay hidden from Garrick for so long.
Eustan, at her behest, found and purchased some property in the Mark Twain forest region, and once Benie figured out how to move Caledon, she shifted it there permanently. The underground tunnels of the kingdom were really vast. Benie couldn’t believe just how far they reached. It was an entire city beneath the earth housing thousands of her people. She’d finally convinced them to stop bowing every time she was amongst them.
She dotted her i’s and crossed her t’s on the last document and pushed the intercom button on her desk. “Finished.”
Eustan walked into her office and quickly grabbed the stack of paperwork. “Finally.”
“Are you really bitching at me?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” He smiled.
“Go on, get out of here.” This was Benie’s life now. She’d gone from monster slayer to paper shuffler all in the span of fifteen months.
Tired, she stretched her limbs to restore the blood flow. She couldn’t wait to go to bed. Quickly and quietly, she walked down the hallway to her bedroom. She managed to open the door without even a squeak.
A heavy blissful sigh escaped her lips as she took in the beautiful sight of little Marta Elise, a little under four months old now, sprawled across Trace’s chest in their king-sized bed. Both Trace and Marta were asleep. She was such a pretty baby. Benie had chosen her name using her biological mother’s name along with her adoptive mother. Ian and Trace had been great about it. The tiny princess was perfect, and Benie couldn’t have been happier.
On the other side, Ian cradled Leopold Ray in his arms. Her son had been born two months after his sister. He’d been a little early, but Benie had never felt more grateful to be done with pregnancy. His birth had been difficult, but man, was he worth it. He’d been named Leopold for Ian Leopold Arent, and Ray, for Trace Ray Calder. Even if only one of them was the father, the three of them had agreed it didn’t matter. They would raise the children equally.
They weren’t a traditional family by any sense of the word, but they were family.
Ian looked up at Benie, smiling. “He’s been a very good baby today.”
Benie walked to Ian’s side of the bed. “We did good, huh?”
“Definitely.”
Leaning over, Benie kissed Ian’s forehead and picked up her son. “Leo, my sunshine, my boy,” she sang softly to the infant. Ian’s hand slipped between her thighs, making her lower bits grow warm and tight.
She chuckled. “You trying to make me drop the baby?”
“My parents dropped me. Didn’t hurt me one bit.”
Benie smacked his shoulder. “Who says?” Gently, she settled Leo into his crib.
“Come on.” Benie took Ian’s hand. He followed without question. She walked to the other side of the bed and softly kissed Trace and Marta on the foreheads, and then led Ian toward the master bathroom.
He pinched her ass on the way in. “Feeling frisky tonight?”
“Oh, I just thought it’d be nice to have you loofah my back.”
“Is that the euphemism we’re using these days?”
Benie turned in his arms and whacked him on the shoulder. “You gonna talk or are you going to kiss me?”
“Kiss you, definitely.”
“Still talking.”
“Nag.”
“Geek.”
Trace’s voice entered their minds. Can you guys keep it down? You’re going to wake up the kids.
Ian raised a brow and gave Benie a crooked smile. She grinned back. You can always join us.
He didn’t bother to answer. A few seconds later, the bathroom door opened. Trace pursed his lips. “I think I might need help with the loofah as well.”
Myron Gray sat in his office scrolling through a backlog of email. Since Garrick’s death, he’d finally felt able to breathe. He’d visited his parents in Canada, and the four of them had finally mourned Marta’s death. Benie would have made Marta so proud. She was a fine woman, a good leader, even if she could be a little head strong at times.
An alert popped up on his computer monitor. He sat forward, the headline grabbing his attention. “Three dead at Osage Reservation in Oklahoma.”
He picked up his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and hit the call button.
The call was answered on the first ring. “Gray,” Ty Wasape said on the other end.
Gray looked at the pictures attached to the email. All three men had been gutted and their throats slit. All three were bear shifters like Ty. All members of his tribe. “I’m sending you a file. You are going to have to make a trip home.”
He hung up, grimacing as he read through the entire report. Garrick’s reign of terror had ended, but there always seemed to be some new maniac to deal with.
&nbs
p; His son Max knocked at his office door. “You coming down for supper?”
Gray smiled at hearing his youngest son’s voice again. “I’ll be right there.” He clicked to forward the email to Wasape, shut down his computer for the night, and eagerly joined his family for a meal.
The End
Note from Renee: If you liked Midnight Shift: Episode Five, please consider leaving a review or a rating on the site where you purchased the copy. Reader reviews help the author and the author’s books to remain valued by the distributors.
I appreciate ALL the readers who take the time to offer feedback or recommendations for other readers who might enjoy my work. You all are the reasons I keep telling stories! If you do leave a review, please email me at [email protected]. I’d love to thank you personally!
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New from The Midnight Shift World
The Bear Witch Project
By Renee George
Bears and witches are natural enemies, so when bear shifter Ty Wasape meets curvy witch Solange Tremaine at an Osage casino, he is naturally torn between killing her or making her his mate.
www.midnightshifters.com
First Chapter Excerpt
Solange “Sol” Tremaine could feel the jackpot getting close as she fed the machine two quarters from her winnings back into its hungry maw and pulled the handle again. She held her breath, seven… seven… bar. The air puffed from her mouth in defeat. Determined, she put in two more coins. She widened her eyes as she squirmed and fidgeted, fingers crossed. Bar… bar… bar!
“Woo hoo!” She leapt from her chair as the slot paid out twenty-five quarters. Not the big jackpot, but satisfying all the same. Sol had been on the same machine for two hours, a Lucky 7 three-reel quarter slot. She’d been playing the max bet of fifty cents and had already filled up one large plastic tumbler. Shaking the cup, she estimated she’d won about two hundred dollars. Yes indeed, after a bad week, the Sun Casino in Oklahoma was just the right way to avoid her problems and parental smothering for a little while. Besides, she was an eighth Osage—at least that’s what Mom had told her, so in a way, when Sol had driven by the casino on her way from Dallas, Texas to Springfield, Missouri, it felt like fate.
Sol loved the Native American casinos. For one, they weren’t federally regulated, and for two, the slots used real money! Not like those oh-so-seductive paper tickets in the riverboat casinos. She’d gotten herself in trouble more than once when she forgot she was spending actual money. Her hands were stained black from the soiled quarters, but she didn’t care. It’d wash. She pushed two more coins into the slot and pulled the handle.
Bar… cherry… seven. Which added up to nada, zip, nothing. Oh well, she sighed.
How had things gone so wrong? She’d taken an accelerated track at the University of Texas and had graduated from college a year early, and then she’d been named one of Texas’s emerging young artists. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but her professional star was rising. That is until her twenty-first birthday several weeks ago. She’d started experiencing headaches, and the way she saw colors had inexplicably changed. She’d even yelled at an exhibitor because she thought he’d changed the lighting on one of her pieces. He hadn’t. It was exactly what she’d asked for, but it hadn’t looked right. Nothing looked right anymore.
She attributed her mental weirdness to the stress of keeping herself financially afloat while pursuing her art career. However, two nights ago, the faucets turned on and off on their own, her garbage disposal whirred without anyone flipping a switch, and her paintings for the Dallas Art Fair had been scattered like someone had played Frisbee with the canvases. She felt like she was stuck in some low-budget horror movie. She got so freaked out, Sol called her mom, and her mother insisted she come home immediately.
Normally, Sol would have argued. She was a grown-up, after all, but there had been something oddly urgent in her mother’s voice, and she reluctantly agreed. She knew stopping at the casino was more about avoiding home than gambling. She loved her mom, but the woman, by definition, was a helicopter parent. She’d hovered over Sol, never giving her a moment of privacy or room to breathe.
“You’re not a teenager anymore,” she mumbled to herself, feeding the slot more coins. “Concentrate on Lucky 7.”
* * *
Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching.
Ty Wasape almost jumped out of his skin, ready for battle, when the creature leapt off her seat in front of a slot machine and hooted.
He had to bite back a groan of rising lust as he watched her breasts bounce in the excitement of her victory. His bear snarled. These were not his feelings, he told himself. Her magic drew him. Her hair was auburn and her skin tawny, beautiful. She had wide curvaceous hips and large breasts, soft and feminine. Her oval eyes held the most delicate shade of golden brown he’d ever seen. If she had been just any woman, he would have admired her and moved on, but no, she wasn’t just any woman. He knew inside the luscious package was the soul of a sorcellarie, but the humans would have called her a witch.
When Myron Gray aka the gray man, leader of the shadow warriors, had tasked him to investigate a rogue witch who was killing shapeshifters on his tribe’s reservation, Ty had jumped at the chance to go home. Three men were dead—his brothers by race if not blood. He’d arrived early in the morning, and until this woman found her way onto the casino floor, had not felt any magical presence.
Joseph Big Horse, one of the elders, arranged for Ty to pose as an employee so it was easier to move around without arousing suspicion. He spotted Joseph’s wife, Meredith standing by the black jack tables. She gave him a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgement then turned away.
Good. She was a serious woman, and had the reputation of being fiercely loyal to Joseph. Unlike most the tribe, she knew that Ty was special. Not quite human. His last name Wasape, meaning bear, was more than just his name—it was his legacy. Tribal elders, like Joseph, were aware of Ty’s ability to transform. He’d been born to the Osage Bear Clan. Actual bear shifters were honored protectors for the tribe of mostly human Native Americans. He’d been given the last name at the age of thirteen—the first time he’d shifted into his other form. After he’d mastered his shifting abilities, he’d learned he was also considered an other worlder. The OWs were part of many species that secretly coexisted with or outside the human race. He served the realm of Caledon as a shadow warrior, but his first priority would always be the tribe.
When he’d been a boy his grandmother, Mi Wak’o, told stories of the French sorcerers who discovered the Osage in the late 1600s. She’d used those boogy man tales to frighten the youngster into behaving. According to the legends, the sorcellarie could wield magic powerful enough to make shifters do unspeakable horrors. Ty had never seen a sorcellarie before, but in one of her oft-told stories, his grandmother claimed she’d watched a battle between Ty’s Great Uncle, Red Sun, and a powerful witch. Mi Wak’o had said the magic called to her, and she felt it crawl over her skin. Red Sun—an other worlder, though not a shifter—carried a token from Brother Bear, the tribe’s spirit guide, which kept him from falling under the witch’s spell. Red Sun had gifted him that very token after Ty’s first shift. The magicked flint had been chipped into the shape of a bear. He pulled it from his pocket and squeezed it tightly in his fist, but eased up when he could smell his own blood.
Ty couldn’t stop looking at the beautiful woman. Even with his token’s protection, he felt her strange energy wash over him. Ty held back his bear as it roared inside his human form, desperate to bathe in her magic. She was definitely a witch. He felt the truth in his bones.
But was she the murderer?
The shadow warriors had a strict policy of proof before punishment, so he still had to make sure she was the one killing the shifters.
He reached out with his senses, trying to discern what he could from the woman’s essence. The ability to test auras was a trait in the Osage bear shifters. But her spirit resisted his p
robing, and like a door, it slammed shut, cutting off the connection. Determined to test her, he reached out once more and strengthened his hold.
Want more of The Bear Witch Project?
www.midnightshifters.com
About the Author
Award-winning author Reneé George has been a medic, a nurse, a website designer, a small press editor, an artist, and a teacher, but writing is her true passion. Reneé loves creating stories about sexy alpha men (BEST JOB EVER!). She and her family live in a small, mid-western town, sharing their home with two dogs and a very independent cat.
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