by Roxy Mews
“If I hadn’t just taken the reins for this whole wagon of crazy, I would worry about my mates’ ability to stand their ground.” Shelly stood up, she wobbled, but I caught the whiff of her arousal on the air.
I looked down at the blazing erection that jumped to her attention. At least I knew she wasn’t disinterested in seconds. Then her words registered. “What do you mean, you took the reins?”
“This cannot be happening.” Rick stepped out from his hiding spot and held up his wrist like he was looking at the time on his non-existent watch. Then his eyes darted up to me and he thrust his arm my way. “Did you know this would happen?”
I looked down at his arm. Holy crap. A deep red line was snaking around and around his wrist. It was a matemark. I had never seen one in the process of being created, and I was fascinated. I reached out to grab Rick’s arm, but he pulled back.
“When we are naked and there is no woman between us, you keep your damn hands to yourself.”
“You were the one who was shoving your wrist in my face.”
“It’s not like you don’t have one of your own to gawk at.” Rick sighed as I looked down long enough to see that he was right.
Trails of red had already formed around my wrist, but my matemark wasn’t complete. The little blaze of red kept winding and weaving around.
“So I guess you didn’t know. At least I can comfort myself with that now that we are playing second fiddle to our mate.” Rick’s words jarred my concentration.
“What do you mean second fiddle?” But before I could pronounce the last word, I felt it. Shelly’s pull. That same drive to follow her that had me become the Beta to a werewolf I created. Shelly was our lead now.
“Looks like we inadvertently formed a Clan, boys.” Shelly’s smile was darn near reptilian. “And I get to be your queen. Your queen wants a real bath and…” Her confidence faltered. She looked down at her stomach and the organ that had been empty since birth growled. “Um…I guess, I need food.”
I knew just the food to treat her with. We had a house full of women. Kari was here. It was time to teach Shelly about chocolate.
The scene in the kitchen was surreal. First of all, the kitchen was huge. Our entire workout building could have fit inside this thing. Dual islands, two refrigerators, and a breakfast nook fit for ten made plenty of space for us to stand around and smile as Shelly unwrapped a piece of chocolate.
“Why do they wrap it up separately?” She held the piece up to her nose and sniffed. You would think we were offering her food from a bin marked rat poison.
“They are wrapped separately because it is a fucking experience to eat one. Every bite of that is worth savoring.” Amber grabbed some of her own.
I shook my head, knowing her daughter was going to be quite a handful too. Served Amber right.
Then the lighthearted exchange took on a much less lighthearted tone. The chocolate began to melt in Shelly’s mouth and she moaned. My cock jumped to attention. From the smell that began to emanate from my Alpha, I was not the only one that knew we would keep chocolate around the house from now on.
“This…is…amazing.” Shelly put another piece in her mouth. “I have eaten food before, but all my senses are so alive right now. Is this how it always tasted? Man, I missed out on a lot being a vampire.”
“Bite your tongue, hybrid. I still have to lead a Family, and now it seems that I am out a miasma, unless you want to carve it out for me.” The words thickened the air, as we all remembered what apparently had slipped Brandon’s puny vampire brain.
“Might want to rephrase that, my former Matheo. You realize the last Matheo Meyers used that line to try and kill quite a few people in this very room.” Shelly licked her fingers and grabbed another piece of chocolate.
“Shit. I’m sorry. I was joking. I am not trying to behead anyone. I swear. I just was letting you all know that Shelly is no longer under my leadership and the miasma has split and gone…somewhere.” Brandon’s lip curled up in a grimace at the sight of Shelly eating real food.
“So everything worked out like it was supposed to?” Amber asked, and Shelly ignored her. Amber slapped Shelly’s arm, and when that didn’t work, Amber grabbed the bag of chocolate and pulled it out of the way.
“Hey!” Shelly grabbed for the bag, but when Amber dodged her, Shelly grudgingly answered. “I guess it went as well as could be expected.” Then that light went into Shelly’s eyes when she realized that she had a piece of information that could annoy those around her.
Amber picked up on it right away. “You formed a Clan, didn’t you?”
Amber looked at me and her father and then back to Shelly. With a precious bundle tucked tight in her arms, she hopped up on the seat next to Shelly and put the bag of chocolate between them.
“It seems that it happened without my trying.” Shelly shrugged.
“Are you going to keep your current surname?” Amber asked.
Shelly looked over at me and Rick. She didn’t make a smartass comment, and that let me know she was about to say something that meant a lot to her. “I was hoping to go for something different. There’s this rune Annabelle told me about that means rebirth. I don’t know, but it feels like we all get to start over now. So I was thinking we could be called the Berkano Clan.”
I could tell it meant a lot to her, and moving away from the names that had been fighting for so long to one united title, seemed like a great idea to me. Shelly grinned back. She knew it was right, but she included us in the decision. The glint returned to her eyes as she said. “I think this means I get to be the Queen B.”
“If you get either of them to actually call you Queen, I want it on tape. At bare minimum, you get it recorded on your phone. Can you dazzle them? I can’t dazzle Jake yet. I am wondering if it is because I started out a wolf, or if it was just the fact that I don’t understand how I do it yet.”
“I’ll teach you how to do it as a vampire. Maybe we can practice and share notes.”
They went off talking on their own. I never thought I’d see them in such close proximity without bloodshed. I was just enjoying the scene when I got hit in the arm with a sandwich.
Craig slapped me two more times with the turkey club before I grabbed it and took a bite. I was hungry, but it wasn’t the complete drive to fill my stomach that it usually was.
“You know you are screwed, right?” Craig’s words muffled from around the masticating food between his molars.
“What do you mean?”
Rick flanked the other side of me eating an identical sandwich. “He means those two are going to work together. At least for a while, and then we are going to serve under two of the most powerful beings the planet has ever seen.”
I waved Rick off. He was being overly dramatic. I hoped. Craig noticed the red I sported at my wrist.
“More man matemarks? This crap is too much. At least yours can be covered up with a thick watch. Poor Jake is stuck with his massive womanly hickey.” Craig went back to eating his sandwich.
“I’d get branded by that woman all over again.” Rick and I shared something special, and I didn’t mind taking a back seat to Shelly in the least. Rick swallowed his bite before he continued. “It’s not like we haven’t seen this already. Amber is the one who began this whole business. She created the first Clan. Whatever magic is working around her was not satisfied with just one sect. Shelly is our Alpha female.”
“Queen B.” Shelly shouted the word over her shoulder before going back to her chocolate.
I was not expecting to do a change of organization with my first orgasm as a hybrid, but I wasn’t surprised. I felt settled for the first time in my life. It plastered a permagrin on my face so big, I couldn’t continue the sandwich.
“You need to help me out. Shelly and Amber are working on their new powers together. Amber is hard enough to handle, but if she and Shelly
put their heads together… we have got to do something.” Jake looked the least composed I had ever seen him.
“You know what you can do? You can get me some diapers for our daughter, because…damn, whoever’s shirt this was is going to need a replacement.” Amber got up with the little bundle in her hands, but even with her wolf nose, she held the baby close and kissed her head.
I put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. His worry had faded to the stupid grin that spread across every face in the kitchen. They were both alive. We were all alive, and everyone we had come to save had come out in one piece. Fate was on our side for the first time in quite a while. I’d give up what little influence I had as Beta if this was the outcome. The baby’s cries stopped and Amber laughed and we all filed into the living space adjacent to the kitchen. Amber was raining kisses all over the tiny little hands and feet and ended the kissing spree with a peck on her tiny little nose.
“Elizabeth Hart, what am I going to do with you?”
“Elizabeth?” Rick’s voice came from beside me.
Amber looked up for just a second before returning her attention to the tiny and now much cleaner bundle of baby. “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Lily Hart.”
I looked to Rick. Hearing Lily’s name given new life helped give us both closure. There are ways to remember those we loved, and now we could dote on this child and give her a family. This is what our Lily would have wanted.
Shelly went up to the baby. Shelly was the one to bring together our trio in a way that was never meant to be with Lily, but there had to be some hard feelings that she wasn’t the first woman we loved. And Shelly wasn’t exactly the type to share something she wanted. Rick was the one to hold me back when I stepped forward.
“You are beautiful, kid. Almost makes me want one.” The longing in her voice showed me something that her words would never admit. Shelly was envious of another woman.
“You realize you are a grandma now right? You need to learn to knit, Barbie.” Amber wrapped up Elizabeth and handed her to Shelly. “We do need booties.”
“Amber, you have enough booty for all of us. But this little one will have everything she needs, and more than she could ever want while she grows. Don’t screw her up.”
“Nah, she’s too perfect to ever get screwed up.”
The tiny child sighed and curled into Shelly’s arms. No doubt about it. The kid was perfect.
Chapter Forty-Three
Shelly
There was something wrong with me. It had to be the transformation. I was a vampire, I had no biological clock. I didn’t want children. I didn’t need offspring. I needed my men to give me hot and totally inappropriate levels of sex.
Double penetration with an infant around would not be easy. It was a blessing that the rooms were sound proofed. That child needed tending to every damn minute. And I was really annoyed that nobody was asking me for anything.
I had gone out shopping as soon as the stores opened and found the nicest baby boutique there was around here. I quickly realized we needed to fly out to a bigger city and get some nicer things. This kid was not going to be outfitted in anything less than the best.
“We could have bought another house with all these clothes and baby supplies.” Craig and Mary were accompanying us for the trip. I was about ready to punch Craig if he talked about money one more time. But for some reason the man could not shut up. “How many hair bows does a bald baby need?”
Mary was the one to slap him and tell him to shut up. Good thing. She probably hit a lot softer than I would have. “This is the first baby born into our Clan. Don’t you think Elizabeth deserves some nice things? Especially since her grandma is buying them?”
I growled at that term. If we were making up Clans and queens, I was reinventing the term grandma. And I didn’t want to spend my time being irritated. Everyone was leaving tomorrow. This tiny little child would be moving out of the mansion, and so would we. We all had to find our next place to live. The witches would keep the mansion, and they gave us the open invitation to stay if we wanted, but we needed to move on.
Kari was not staying in the mansion. Mary was getting her back to Chicago. There were some great doctors there. The cancer was winning the battle against Kari’s body, and the doctors were running out of hope. But as she began to thin more and more, I had to wonder if she was even trying to fight the disease. Someone was going to need to make her want to live. Her caregivers were just as distraught. Steven and Matthew were compelled to take care of the woman, and Amber hadn’t quite figured out how to undo the spell.
They were good vampires. I’d bet money they wanted to do something to help her recover. Maybe she’d help them see there was more to life than their own needs. And maybe they’d help her dress a little less hippie-chic.
Packing up again and leaving the mansion was bittersweet. I was glad to be heading out with my mates, and for the time being we were sticking close to Amber and the Hart Clan hybrids. Rick didn’t want to stay in Indiana any longer. The Paulson Pack had elected a new Alpha and despite his seconding me in the Berkano Clan now, he wasn’t keen on sharing the space.
“Shelly, are you about ready?” Rick came in and zipped up my last bag for me.
“Yes. I am. Do we have enough vehicles?” I asked Craig.
“Yup, got it all taken care of, but if I am lending out my services, do I get some kind of dual Clan citizenship?” Craig dropped a key in Rick’s hand and slapped him on the back.
My eyes might have sparkled, because Craig immediately covered his own.
I laughed. “Relax, I wasn’t going to compel you.”
“Shit might make me reconsider going hybrid.” Craig rumbled out of the room.
Rick took me in his arms. “It’s going to be crowded until we find some place to settle. Are you going to be all right with our close quarters? I know how hard it was for me to interact with another Alpha male. Are you and Amber going to have issues working together?”
“It hasn’t been a problem so far. I won’t say it won’t happen, but we will jump off that bridge when we come to it.” For some reason, the fact that I was in control had me much more relaxed.
The miasma was even listening to me better. I didn’t have the times where it overtook without my permission. Whether that was a product of the connection I had with Rick and Trevor or if it was a bonus power that came with my new status, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I was a lot happier. I didn’t have any demands from a Matheo either, and that also could be a factor.
“Shelly! I am not your Matheo any longer, but you still need to get down here and fix this.” Brandon’s voice echoed up the stairs. I raised a brow at Rick and he shrugged. Looked like if I wanted to find out what Brandon’s problem was I was going to have to avoid breaking his jaw for issuing me orders.
But it was laughter instead of anger that bubbled up from me as I entered the Conservatory. There by the fireplace with a single leather suitcase stood Courtney. Brandon’s ex. The woman that had abandoned us after my Father’s death. But the reappearance wasn’t the reason that I was laughing.
Neither wanted to be there, but both were insanely aroused.
“She’s my new Protector.”
Then the laughter took me over and I folded in half with the pressure.
“Dammit, Shelly, isn’t there something you can do to take the miasma back?”
“Sorry, Brandon. It won’t unsplit. You got your new Protector. Now the old one needs to vacate the building and get it on with her two sexy hybrid husbands.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and did the same to the woman who had abandoned us. Fate had pulled her back. Karma was about to make them both her bitch. Courtney’s ex-boyfriend was about to be in charge of her. If there wasn’t somewhere else we had to be, I would have loved to stay and watch this unfold. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t come back and visit.
I would at least be back for a sk
inny dip in that water feature at some point. But it was time to leave. Maybe my mates and I would have sex in a bed sometime soon. With silk sheets. And candles. Maybe some of those ones that turned into massage oil. The thoughts had my heart beating on its own, and I felt the flood of arousal wash over me.
Without a sound, Rick turned toward me.
“Whatever you are thinking, yes. We will do that.”
Trevor charged into the den a second later. “We have time for whatever just went through your mind before we leave. Fuck. If we don’t, we’ll make time.”
And what more could I want in my mates?
About the Author
Roxy wrote her first story at age six on an electric typewriter. It was about a cat and a haunted house. Thankfully, her stories and technology have matured since then. Now Roxy spends her days fighting the evil day job in hopes of conquering the stories that run rampant in her head when she comes home at night.
When she discovered Erotic Romance, Roxy fell in love. She can’t wait to share all her fun and sexy stories with everyone. To connect with Roxy Mews find her babbling on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RoxyMews, friend her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RoxyMewsAuthor, visit her Blog at roxyrocksme.blogspot.com, or find all these links on www.roxyrocksme.com
Look for these titles by Roxy Mews
Now Available:
The DMA Files
Coral-600
Hart Clan Hybrids
A Love Worth Biting For
Love’s A Witch
Coming Soon:
Interlocking Hearts
Don’t miss the other titles in Roxy Mews’s Hart Clan Hybrids Series!
Who’s afraid of the big bad hybrid?
Hart Clan Hybrids, Book 1
Amber Paulson’s wolf has chosen a mate for her, but Amber is not amused with its pick. Jake Meyers might look amazing in a wet T-shirt and have the cheekbones and strong jaw that artists drool over. Too bad he is missing a pulse.