Sylvia Frost - Heartbound (Moonfate Serial Book 4)

by Sylvia Frost

  I knew he was offering a deal, but still… How did he manage to find so many beautiful men in need of photographs?

  “How did you do all of this?” I ask.

  “The old gun shop went out of business, so I bought the space.”

  “No, I mean all the people!”

  Lawrence smiles slyly and hands me a card. “Richard came up with these.”

  I turn it over and gasp. “Oh, these are cool!” On the front of the business card is a picture of a buff man posing with his hands hooked into his jeans. Superimposed over him is the face of a red fox.

  “Richard figured that if the shifters have to be tracked, they may as well have quality photos on their profiles. Thanks to my contacts of former FBSI agents, we’re government authorized.”

  I trace the contours of a coyote shifter’s abs visible through his dark shirt. They’re nice. But he’s no Orion North. “It’s smart.”

  Lawrence winks. “Richard gave me the idea, after I almost ignored him the first time he tried chatting me up on Tracker.” He leans in conspiratorially. “His photo made him look like a serial killer.”

  “You and your shifters, Lawrence.”

  “You’re one to talk.” He laughs, a sound as warm and soft as his smile, and touches my arm. “But that’s not the real reason I asked you here, and I know the wolf is anxious to get going.”

  I look over my shoulder instinctively. Orion is leaning against the concrete wall, obviously ignoring the bevy of shifters inside the building. Which is good. As a predator, it’s probably best for him to stay away from penguins and the like. Especially when I’m around.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I say.

  “It’s fine. I’ve got to get back to work anyway. But—” He pulls something out of the pocket of his skinny jeans, which is a little bit like a magic trick. I have no idea how he fits anything in there. It’s a photograph, shiny, new, and, if the smell wafting off of it is anything to go by, freshly printed. “I restored this for you.”

  I take it in my hands and my heart twists, although this time the twisting feels pleasant.

  It’s the picture of my parents, the same one that was on the magnet. Lawrence has edited out the political message that Edward, the owner of the now out of business gun shop, had pasted on. He’s improved the quality of it, too. Now I can see the sparkles on my mother’s tacky sweater, and the way her eyes are focused on me and gleam with love.

  “T-thanks,” I sniff before wiping away a tear running down my cheek. “Thank you so much for this, Lawrence.”

  “Why are you crying?” Orion growls, wrapping his arms around me from behind before pressing a kiss to the top of my head.

  “They’re happy tears.” I nudge him with my shoulder, but it’s hopeless. Even though he understands that Lawrence is gay, he’s always still a little wary of the other male in my life.

  Lawrence in turn seems to take the whole thing in stride and holds up his hands as if to say “oh well” as he smiles mildly. “She’s all yours, Orion.”

  “I know,” Orion says. “Now, Little Mate. Shall we?” As usual, it’s not a question.

  I throw Lawrence an exasperated look, but by the time Orion and I pull out of our parking spot and pass by the storefront, Lawrence is already back inside and tinkering with his equipment. I wave goodbye, knowing he can’t see me. Then, before Orion can try to molest me in the car, I flick on the radio. I like to play classical music, not just because it reminds me of my mom, but also because Mozart is the only thing in the world that seems to cool Orion’s libido. And mine, if I’m being honest.

  Except I’ve accidentally hit the wrong station. Instead of Mozart, an oldies station comes on. I recognize the melody immediately. It’s Elvis’s “Love Me Tender.” I bite my lip, staring out the window at the cars whizzing by. In my hands I turn over the photograph so that my sweaty palms don’t crinkle the paper.

  “Is something wrong, Little Mate?” Keeping his eyes on the road, Orion tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear so he can see me better out of the corner of his eye.

  We try not to talk too much about the past. Neither of us has the nightmares anymore. Our sleep is free and easy thanks to the matemark, but that makes the few times the past does sneak up on us all the more potent. Part of me wants to turn the song off, to not think about Lola at all, about what she and Orion’s father did to my family, what they almost cost us.

  But another part of me knows that it’s remembering the bad stuff that gives the good stuff meaning. “No, it’s fine,” I say. And as the strip malls give way to the greener suburbs of Rochester, I bend my head and kiss Orion’s knuckles.

  When the song ends, I turn the radio off, and Orion pulls onto a side street. I recognize it, of course. It’s the one next to the alley where we met. But I have no idea why we’re here. The pit in my stomach is worried he’ll propose. But we agreed that there’ll be no marriage or baby wolves until our school is up and running.

  “Where are we going?” I frown, even though I can guess. I don’t really want to see my old house. The new owners will have changed it in the three months since the sale. Little changes, but that’s all it takes. A new car in the driveway. Plastic kids’ toys on the lawn. All things that aren’t part of my life.

  I wish I hadn’t sold it at all. But to get the school started we needed cash, and it was either that or sell the cabin.

  “Close your eyes,” Orion says as we turn the corner.

  “Okay,” I say, and I obey, although the morning is bright enough that I can still catch glimpses of green grass. I cross my fingers. Please, don’t propose as some kind of gesture. Not that I’d say no, but I don’t really want to have the “we’re not ready” conversation again.

  “Alright, open,” Orion says.

  I open my eyes.

  He’s not down on one knee, and there’s no ring in sight. I exhale. Thank you, God. But we are in front of my old house, and it does look different. The first thing that strikes me is the paint. The house used to be a bright pink, even though my mom always promised she’d repaint, but now the walls are dove grey. Her favorite color. The white iron fence is still there, as is the lawn. But there’s one new addition.

  A sign. It’s wooden, hand-painted and swinging gently in the breeze, so it takes me a moment to read it. The Williams-North Institute for Werebeast Studies.

  “The Williams-North Institute?” Before I can get out another question, Orion drags me up the walkway to the house. He opens the door easily with a key. His key.

  “Orion, did you buy my house?” I’m not sure whether to be furious that he did all of this without asking me, no doubt totally eradicating all of his remaining savings, or grateful that I have my house back.

  “The owners were willing to accept a trade, especially considering that the cabin has the mineral rights to a quite lucrative reserve of oil.”

  “Oh my god.” I blink back my surprise as I enter the foyer. While the outside was mostly unchanged, the inside is not. Instead of the empty shell of a hallway my aunt left, or the clutter of coats and shoes that was there when my parents were alive, there is a simple round desk.

  Sitting behind the round desk, with her combat-booted feet propped on it, is Cal.

  “Hello, Artemis,” she says with a lazy wave. “Judging by your stupefied expression, Orion didn’t take my advice and tell you about his insane plan to buy this house.”

  “Cal,” Orion growls.

  She puts her feet down and smirks. “Right as always.”

  My mouth feels like it’s about to fall off of my face, and I ignore Cal. “Orion, you didn’t have to do this. There were more affordable ways.”

  “I know what this place meant to you, Little Mate.” He strokes my cheek, the harsh planes of his face at odds with his tender smile. “And I know what you mean to me.”

  “Before you start making out again, need I remind you that you have an appointment with Stefania at three p.m.?”

  “An appointment with St
efania?” I ask with a raised eyebrow aimed toward Cal, trying to suss out whether anything has changed between her and Stefania in the month since Stefania was let out of the hospital. But Cal just shrugs.

  “Cal, I don’t think I’ve actually hired you to be my secretary,” Orion says.

  “You’re welcome anyway.”

  But all of Cal’s snark slides right off me, buffered by my cocoon of shock. Orion bought my parents’ house. He was the anonymous buyer. Even with selling the cabin, it must’ve cleaned him out.

  “Come,” Orion commands. “Let me show you the rest of the house.”

  “Okay.” I laugh. “Why the hell not?”

  I trail behind him as he walks down the hallway, rotating my body as I go to take in the changes. Other than the desk at the front, there haven’t been that many; the house is still mostly empty. It was sweet of Orion not to make any more alterations without asking me, and although I do wish he had asked before spending his life’s savings on my house, I know that asking isn’t in his nature.

  As we go, he points out walls we might want to knock down and the possibility of digging out the back yard to include some kind of werebeast training obstacle course.

  “Eventually, of course, we’ll need a bigger campus, but in the meantime you and I can live upstairs.”

  Although he moves with his usual cool certainty, as he finishes each sentence his eyes flick back to me, looking for approval. When we reach the last room, Orion pauses and finally gives his full attention to me. “So…”

  “I like it, Orion.”

  He smiles in a way he never smiles with anyone else. It takes up his full face and lights up his eyes, bright green like spring grass. It’s so charmingly boyish, I can’t resist pulling him in for a kiss on the cheek. “To be honest, I love it.”

  “Good.” As usual, he reels me in closer to his body, transforming our chaste kiss into something more.

  I tap his chest. “But there’s no way we’re putting an obstacle course in the back yard.”

  He takes my hand from its position on his chest and leads me to the last door we’ve yet to open. Wisely, he doesn’t disagree with me about the obstacle course, although I know we’ll fight about the topic later.

  Instead he opens the door, revealing what used to be my bedroom.

  “I wanted to let you decorate it yourself, but I thought that I could help you start…” he says, trailing off as I walk past him into the room.

  Gone are my air mattress, my duffle bag, and the white walls decorated only with electrical sockets, although the room isn’t that much fuller than when I inhabited this house with Lawrence only a year ago. On one wall is a periwinkle-colored bookshelf only half full with books. Most of them are werebeast-related texts, Beasts, Blood & Bonds among them, but there are some of my old favorites as well, including Mates of Darkness and the sequel I’ve never read that was published only a few years before my parents’ murder, Mates of Light.

  Now it’s my turn to smile like a little kid.

  Next to the bookshelf is Lola’s bar’s old electric piano. Orion must have scooped it up at the foreclosure sale. Although he’s never commented on my singing at the cabin, I know he likes it. He’s always made time to stop whatever it was he’s doing when I practice.

  “I thought, perhaps, that you could use music to help the other weremates control their werecalls,” he says.

  I can feel his eyes on the back of my head as I stroll over to the piano and flick it on. My fingers find the keys instinctively, settling into a familiar chord, the same one I played all those months ago at Lola’s bar.

  I open my mouth, but I can’t find the words. I don’t want to. All the pain and suffering and sorrow of the round doesn’t fit me anymore.

  My fingers begin to slide off the plastic keys, but just as they reach the edge, I stop.

  I don’t have to use the old lyrics.

  I can write my own now.

  * * *

  The End

  Afterword

  Wow! What a ride writing this serial has been. I know in particular the final installment has taken me much longer to write than I’d anticipated. I’d just like to say again how grateful I am to all my readers who hung in there. In the future I’ll be focusing on stand-alone works, and if I ever do return to writing serialized fiction, I promise I’ll only publish once I have the whole series complete. That said, I hope you enjoyed Artemis and Orion’s story as much as I did and are satisfied with how things turned out!

  Please let me know your thoughts by connecting with me via my mailing list or secret facebook group. There you can also get exclusive access to great deals and the latest release information.

  And while it may be a while until we return to Artemis and Orion, I do have something fun cooking up in the writing oven. Turn the page to see what deliciously sinful story I’m writing now, and find out how to get it for only 99 cents, along with over 25 other stories from best-selling writers like Mandy Roth, Michelle Pillow, T.S Joyce, Tasha Black, V.M. Black and more!

  BBW and the Beast

  No one should have found him.

  Six miles of snow-clogged side road, an abandoned summer camp, and more ‘keep out’ signs than a human could count stood between Samson’s farmhouse and civilization. He had no mailbox. No phone. And when he’d purchased his childhood home from its new owners, he did so under the name of his brother’s company, Rom Investing.

  No one should’ve found him.

  But someone had.

  A silhouette stumbled through the snowstorm toward Samson’s yard, holding something above its head and shouting.

  Samson leaned toward his front window, his bare chest brushing against the freezing glass. He rubbed the windowpane with the edge of his half-undone flannel shirt to unfog his view.

  The stranger was human, that Samson was sure of; but the cold hid their scent. Samson smiled as the intruder stopped at the front porch. It was frozen over. The human wouldn’t be able to climb Samson’s stairs, let alone ring his doorbell.

  But then, instead of turning around, the stranger started toward the footpath leading to Samson’s backyard.

  Samson frowned, a memory tugging at him, longing awakening in his chest. Only one other person had broken into his house through the back.

  What if…?

  No.

  It couldn’t be her.

  Isabella.

  A phantom ache shot through the mate mark on Samson’s back. But it was hard to say if that was from the memory, or because his mate was close.

  The figure pushed the fence open, following the cleared path to his backyard. And his greenhouse.

  “Damn it, Rex,” he growled.

  His brother must have left the gate unlocked when he went hunting. Samson headed outside through the back door, not bothering with shoes or even a coat. His inner wolf relished the biting wind and the grit of white powder between his toes.

  When he reached the greenhouse, the door was ajar and a set of footprints made the rest clear. Samson’s heart clenched.

  The first and last time he had ever seen Isabella had been in this very greenhouse twelve years ago. The big, beautiful brunette had snuck in on a dare. A hasty seduction, thirty minutes, and one passionate kiss later, Samson had been sure she was his weremate. But then she’d run away. Mates didn’t run away.

  But if they do, a voice crooned in Samson’s mind, they always return.

  With the silence of an expert hunter, Samson slipped through the door of the greenhouse and shut it behind him. Thankfully, the temperature was still warm, and only a few of the closest orchids were freckled with snow.

  Samson sniffed the air. It would be much easier to find the intruder by following their scent then by trying to navigate the labyrinths of bushes and trees. One smell stuck out like a wilted weed -- mothballs and the sour tang of sickness accented with polyester.

  It took Samson six seconds to follow the smell to its source, and the moment he arrived, it was clear the intr
uder wasn’t Isabella. A portly man dressed in a heavy frayed coat was bent over a row of Samson’s pink roses. To him, they probably looked ordinary, though with more petals than average.

  “What are you doing?” Samson growled, trying not to let his disappointment stoke his rage.

  The man jumped. “Oh, excuse me.”

  Samson could taste the fear in the intruder’s dank sweat, even underneath the man’s many layers of clothing. “Turn and face me.”

  Trembling more than a rabbit, the man stammered, “I’m so sorry. The door was open, and you didn’t answer, so …”

  Samson’s nostrils curled. There was another smell in the air besides the flowers and the old man’s stench. Rusty and hot, he knew it immediately. Blood.

  The man had one of Samson’s roses in his right hand, and he’d clutched it so tightly that its thorny stem had pierced his skin and sent blood trickling down his fingers to the clipboard he was holding in his other hand. Samson cocked his head to read the fine print of the paper on the clipboard.

  CLEAR WATER CREEK, ORDINANCE 189—FILING FOR A CREATION OF WOLF HUNTING SEASON

  Due to the recent attacks on livestock, we are asking you to re-approve the hunting of wolves to help protect our children and livelihoods.

  Samson’s inner wolf roared. The man hadn’t just come to steal from him. He had come to kill his wolves, albeit unintentionally. Samson clenched his fists, fighting back the claws threatening to emerge from his skin.

  But Samson couldn't yell at the man for that. Not without inciting suspicion. Werebeasts might have been gone for two hundred years, according to the public, but there were always those who still believed.

  But threatening his kind with hunters wasn’t this man’s only sin.

  “You took one of my roses,” Samson growled.