Stranded: A Mountain Man Romance

by Piper Sullivan

  Roman Williams was a secret occultist? It was hard to imagine his handsome nose buried in any of these. A thick red text adorning the spine of another book caught her eye as she moved to the other side of the room. It was weathered, but well taken care of. She slipped it from its place and admired the front, a detailed gold drawing of a naked female form that held a crescent moon, almost like the Midnight Den’s symbol.

  The first page wasn’t blank. A note in elegant handwriting read: “To my sweet prince, You will rule with honor and glory. If you seek to find what I’ve left you then look toward your heart.” Next to the note, she puzzled over a strange illustration. Two thick dots with a dash between them. She’d never seen a symbol like that. It wasn’t like any emoticon she’d ever seen nor did it match any Morse Code symbol she’d studied or rune.

  A dull sound came from somewhere down the hall and she jumped like a burglar caught mid heist. She cursed under her breath and prayed she wasn’t about to get busted for snooping. She placed the book back on the shelf and rushed out of the room, relieved to see that no one was in the hall. She crept back down towards the staircase, but a heated voice from a nearby room caught her attention.

  “She has to go!” Roman’s muffled voice bellowed. She held her breath as her feet remained frozen to the Persian carpet beneath her. “I’ll find another historian.”

  Someone replied to him, in a quieter tone, but it was so low that she couldn’t hear it.

  “I can’t control myself. What if I turn?” Roman’s voice went quiet after that. He said something else, but she wasn’t waiting for him to raise his voice again. She darted down the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door. Leaning back against it, she tried to calm her heaving chest.

  She had to prove to him that he needed her; that no one else had the necessary experience. Regardless of what had happened between them, if she let this opportunity go...

  She could help him. She knew that she could. There was nobody better at pulling research from the archives than her.

  Her hand found the phone in her room. Robert’s voice picked up after she dialed the number he’d left for her on the nightstand.

  “Yes, Ms. Baxter?” His smooth voice was devoid of any secrecy. Perhaps he hadn’t been the one that Roman was yelling at.

  “Robert, can you show me to the library? I think I have a lead,” she told him. She caught her reflection in the mirror, ruffled but determined.

  Chapter 6

  About half an hour later, Roman found her bent over sprawled maps that Robert had unlocked from an iron chest.

  “God’s teeth,” he said with a quick glance over the covered table. “You have the entire plans for the city out.”

  She smiled, keeping her eyes lowered on the carefully drawn illustrations. “I had a hunch.”

  “A hunch?” he questioned in a dry tone. “How quaint.”

  She ignored him and tried to bury the rising heat in her body as he pulled out a chair sat across from her. From the corner of her eye, she watched him lean across the diagrams, his face pinched in a scowl.

  “Are you avoiding me?” he asked. Her breath stalled in her throat as she finally raised her gaze to meet his. His glittering eyes sent her stomach into knots.

  “No,” she lied and then sighed. “You just seem to be in a bad mood.”

  He grunted. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

  They sat in silence as she returned to scanning the documents while he merely watched. The weight of his eyes on her was excruciating. She pushed past the rising tension in her nerves and reached for another map beneath the one she’d just gone over.

  There.

  Right there, as if it had been waiting for her.

  “Roman!” she cried out with an excited gasp. He lurched forward, the sour expression replaced by intrigue.

  “What? What is it?” he demanded, squinting to make out the symbol that she was excitedly gesturing to.

  “This symbol,” she said in a rushed voice and then stopped. She couldn’t tell him that she’d snuck into his secret supernatural library. “I’ve...I’ve seen it somewhere else before. I think we need to investigate.”

  He swallowed her excuse and rose to trace his fingers over the lines.

  “This place,” he mused. “I’ve seen this symbol before as well, it marks something in my mother’s side of this house. Her rooms haven’t been touched since she passed away, when I was younger.”

  Her heart throbbed painfully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know-”

  “It’s fine,” he said quickly. “Let’s go.”

  They abandoned the maps on the table and headed off into a wing that she’d never been in before. Unlike the rest of the estate house, it was dusty and dim.

  “Nobody cleans here,” he explained when he caught her staring at cobwebs that had gathered on the stairs. “My father refused to have anyone in here after my mother died. He wanted everything left just as it was when she’d last touched it.”

  “Oh,” she said. Silence lapsed between them as they headed further down the hall. “How long has it been? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Twenty years? She passed away when I was seven years old. Robert would love to send a housekeeping team down here, but he respects my father too much to do that.”

  “Your father, where is he?”

  “He’s ill,” he answered slowly. “He’s with our private physician.”

  The stale air seemed as suffocating as the tension between them. She trailed behind him as they finally reached a large sprawling study.

  “The symbol,” she breathed suddenly. “There.”

  He followed her pointed finger to a magnificent, albeit dusty, statue of the same naked form that she’d seen in the book. On the woman’s stomach, the symbol could barely be made out in a shallow carving.

  She heard his sharp gasp as he approached it, as if some realization dawned on him.

  “My mother brought this statue out to the house shortly after the contractor finished and my father was furnishing it. She felt it added a touch of home. I never thought much of it,” he admitted.

  Josephine kept close to Roman as they approached the stone structure. He reached out his hand and she watched as his fingers inched towards the symbol. He paused, extended finger in midair and briefly closed his eyes. Reopening them, he finally made contact with the symbol.

  What happened next was too fast for her to process. With a sudden bang, she was thrown back onto the carpet. A cloud of dust rose up as a flash of light exploded from the statue, consuming Roman’s form.

  “Roman?” she called and squinted to see through the thick air.

  A roar resounded throughout the room and it chilled her to the bone. She gasped as a lumbering form emerged from the clearing dust and she saw that it wasn’t Roman.

  It wasn’t even human.

  “A bear,” she whispered in a shaking voice. Her hands quivered as she shook her head in disbelief. “That can’t be. Where did Roman go?”

  As she spoke his name, the beast reared in the dim light. It turned on her with wild eyes. She screamed as the bear lunged for her. Without thinking, she cried out Roman’s name again. Suddenly, the same light permeated the room.

  The bear was gone. In its place, Roman stood, hunched with a hand to his head. She gasped when his head jerked up and she saw the same wild eyes as the beast. Before she could scream, he lunged towards her. His lips were on hers in a burning kiss. She gasped, a mix of pain and pleasure.

  He sunk his teeth into her collarbone and she cried out. It was a blissful agony that surged through her entire body. She groaned as she fell back against the carpet and Roman slumped beside her.

  A small amount of blood pooled from his bite. She patted it wildly as she stared down at his unconscious form. What happened? Her mind refused to believe any of this was real.

  Footsteps descended, quick and hard, towards them. Robert’s panicked face emerged into the roo
m as he rushed towards them.

  “Your Highness!” he yelled as he came towards Roman’s body. She stared, looking back and forth between the two men. “Prince Roman!”

  “Prince?” she muttered before everything went black.

  Chapter 7

  “Fuck,” Roman groaned into his hands. His bitter expression didn’t soothe Josephine’s nerves. She’d finally come to, sprawled on a couch across from Roman’s reclining body. Robert hovered in between them, administering water and tending to her wound.

  “That’s about the thirtieth time you’ve uttered that,” Robert remarked dryly. Roman glared at him in response.

  “I think I deserve to curse in this situation,” he snapped and then sighed. Robert didn’t seem bothered as he handed Josephine an aspirin.

  She fingered the gauze on her collarbone with a sense of dread. “I don’t understand. What happened? What was all of that?”

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “We need to tell her,” Robert insisted. Roman grunted, his scowl deepening.

  “I know,” he replied gruffly and then his gaze flickered back to her wide eyes. “I’m surprised you’re even this calm. Most people would be screaming their heads off. You’re either in shock or shockingly open minded.”

  She offered a small shrug in response. Truly, she was surprised that she wasn’t screaming or freaking out, but her curiosity always trumped any other emotion. Even in the face of danger, a new discovery seemed stark against her own fear.

  “I want to understand,” she said softly. “If you’ll let me.”

  He nodded slowly and hoisted himself further up against the cushions. Every movement seemed to drain him. The dark circles under his eyes only served to make him more appealing, adding a primal edge that reminded her of their kiss in the library. Now, they’d kissed twice. And he’d bitten her. Clara wouldn’t believe her if she told her; especially that biting bit.

  “The Midnight Den is not just a social group,” he began. “We’re different. Special, if you will. There are groups that exist in this world that humans can’t begin to understand. My clan has existed for thousands of years with this particular power. We are bear shifters, as you saw. Most of the time, I can control it. We formed The Midnight Den centuries ago inorder to train our kind to control their powers. We wanted to coexist peacefully among humans. Our kind has since taken human mates, but even they have been shut off to the secrecy of the group. All the world knows about us from the outside is that we’re a secret society, a boys’ club that seems more like a fraternity than a bed of supernatural energy.”

  She stared as the gears in her mind turned. Bear Magic. It seemed unbelievable, but she’d seen it for herself. It explained everything. She turned to Robert with a surprised look.

  “Even you?” she asked. The thin older man nodded. “What about Leo?” She thought back to her comment about his height being like a bear’s stature and blushed when they both nodded. Well, that explained his laughing, at least.

  At that moment, one of the tall security guards popped in. “Sir, should I radio for any medical assistance?”

  Roman shook his head and dismissed him. She watched as the guard disappeared back into the hallway. Her employer caught her curious eye.

  “Leo mentioned that you had a military contract,” she said. “Do they know?”

  He and Robert exchanged glances. Finally, Roman turned to her and nodded. “My clan has served within the armed forces since the Revolution. Every man in my family does four years of service and then we technically leave with honor, but the government contracts us. As you can imagine, our abilities come in handy in some situations. They want this document as much as we do to ensure that my father lives.”

  She gasped. “Your father?”

  “Yes,” he said with a grave look. “My father has been ill since late last year. Our physician first suspected that it was natural, but he found traces of other magic within my father’s blood and now he thinks the werewolves cursed him.”

  “Werewolves can be quite shady,” Robert commented.

  “Werewolves?!” she echoed.

  “There are other shifters,” Roman explained. “You have to understand, there are deep tensions within the supernatural community that reach back to ancient times. I don’t even fully understand it. Nobody does. All I know is that my father and the leader of this wolf pack have been in a cold war situation before I was even born. There are fights over territories. This wolf pack is particularly aggressive. My father confronted them about some mysterious deaths among the homeless population in town.”

  “They killed them?” she asked, horrified.

  “Not all packs are like this, but this one targets people who won’t be missed. When my father confronted the alpha, they fought. I believe the leader cursed my father with an ancient form of wolf magic. That’s why I need to find this document. Bear shifters barely know anything outside of our own magic,” he explained.

  She nodded, slowly taking all of the information in. “So, this document contains information about wolf magic?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I should’ve suspected my mother might’ve had it. She was always interested in magic in all forms. I suspect she hid it because she didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. If an unscrupulous shifter came across it, they might attempt something that could create havoc.”

  “And your father,” she said in a shaking voice. “How long does he have?”

  His eyes sparked painfully, but it was gone in an instant.

  “Not long,” he confessed. “A few months, according to our physician. If he passes away, I have to take his place. My clan and the military both understand that I’m not ready. There are rituals that must be done. They require time that we don’t have.” He finished his remarks in a desperate tone, one that she knew he must not use often.

  Her wound throbbed painfully. She hissed as she placed a hand on it. His eyes flashed to it.

  “How deep was it, Robert?” he asked slowly.

  The older man sighed. “Deep enough.”

  She frowned and looked between them. “What are you talking about? Deep enough?”

  Roman’s pale face turned to her. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  An icy feeling washed over her. His dazzling eyes met her fearful gaze.

  “We’re mated now, Josephine.”

  Chapter 8

  Mated? Her mother had been taking bets with Josephine’s aunts for years about this. Now, she it looks like she had accidentally married her new supernatural boss.

  “Robert will move your things to the room beside mine,” he told her. Now she was practically hyperventilating.

  “Mated? Is that like married?” she repeated with wide eyes.

  “When shifters bite the neck of someone, it’s a mating ritual,” Robert explained calmly and then cleared his throat. “I’ll begin moving your things.” He flew out of the room, leaving her alone with Roman.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered with his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to bite you. Touching that statue, I just...it did something to me.”

  She winced when she noticed her ears were ringing. She sucked in a deep breath and gasped when her wound began to ache again.

  “It hurts,” she confessed softly.

  “It’s because we’re connected now,” he offered. “When a shifter mates, it forms a sacred bond. The bite burns whenever your mate is in distress,” he explained and heaved a sigh. “I hate to admit that I’m in distress, but there’s no point in lying. I can’t believe I lost control like that.”

  “Your eyes,” she whispered. “Before you bit me, your eyes were clouded. You didn’t seem like yourself at all.”

  His lip twitched upward. “I wasn’t. My clan practices control. I can typically keep myself from shifting, but there are times when even I can’t stop it.”

  “When you touched the statue,” she added and he nodded.

  “I can’t explain it. I’ve never felt so
mething as strong as that,” he said. His eyes flickered to the gauze bandage on her collarbone. “Apologies have never been my strong suit. For what it’s worth, I truly am sorry. There are things that might reverse it, but you don’t have much time.”

  She bit her lip, processing everything. Everything from the past few days replayed in her mind. This job, Roman, the danger…

  “Let’s talk about it after we find the document, Roman.”

  His eyebrows shot up and he leaned towards her. “You still want to help me?”

  “We’ve already this far in,” she said with a shrug. The movement reminded her of the bite when it stretched painfully, but she resisted the urge to wince. “I want to help you find that cure for your father.”

  His smile was warm, a gesture that she wasn’t used to. She shivered. His nostrils flared and he opened his mouth to say something.

  “Ready?” Robert asked as he walked in.

  “Ready,” she said.

  Her original room was already luxurious and her new digs connected to Roman’s quarters were even nicer. She admired the elaborate tapestries hanging on the wall and lowered herself to sit on the lush rug before the massive bed. Her eyes roved over the decorated ceiling arched high above her. It was a room fit for a queen.

  In a way, she was. Or a princess, at least. If Roman was the prince of the Midnight Den, then did that actually make her a princess in their eyes? She stifled a chuckle at the thought of herself with a crown.

  As the sun dipped and her room grew dark, she rose from the floor and climbed onto the bed where she snuggled underneath the luxurious comforter. Minutes ticked by as she tossed and turned against the silky sheets. She peeked out from beneath the blanket to stare at the clock beside the bed. An hour had passed. She groaned and collapsed against the pile of pillows behind her. Outside, the soft sound of crickets added to her insomnia.

  Finally, she pulled herself out of bed and pulled on the short kimono robe hanging nearby. She tiptoed over to the connecting door to Roman’s room. Her hand hovered above the polished wood, begging her to knock. She thought of him, his handsome sleeping face, and felt a wave of guilt. How could she wake him up just because she couldn’t sleep?