A Time for Change
Isle of Paradise [2]
Marquaylla Lorette
* * *
In Book Two of The Isle of Paradise series: James is a mixed shifter living on the human side of the world since his parents had to flee the Isle of Paradise thirty years ago. Back then, many shifters weren’t thrilled with having a mixed shifter couple on the Isle. After receiving death threats, and countless attempts on their lives, they finally left to protect their unborn child.
Thirty years later, James’s parents are killed, and James flees back to the Isle of Paradise with his sister, Charity, after barely escaping the clutches of their parents’ killers. To the one person he knows that can help him and his sister, his best friend, Eli. There he discovers his mates and a life he only dreamed of, but there are some questions he has to get answers to before it is too late.
Chelsea and Ace have been dreaming of finding their mate for years now. When their mate arrives, they are in the middle of The Beta Battle and building an unsegregated school for the different shifters on the Isle. But there are those out there who don’t want to see them succeed.
Can they finally bring the Isle together, let go of the past to accept their future, and be able to win the Beta Battle?
Warning: MMF
A time For Change
Isle of Paradise Series
Book Two
Author: Marquaylla Lorette
Editor: Caroline Kirby
Artwork by JK Publishing INC
Published by JK Publishing INC
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
© Copyright April 2013 JK Publishing Inc.
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Dedication
I would like to dedicate this in the memory of my papa Cornelius Savage Sr.
4/29/1951-03/01/1997
The memories we shared will be cherished for a lifetime. No one had a bigger personality than you did, without even having to say anything your presence was known. I will always see that smile in my mind that could light up a room and the kindness you showed everyone around you.
I would like to dedicate this book to my cousin Dorjon as well. Happy Eleventh Birthday, Djo.
A special thanks to my JK Publishing family, especially my editor, Caroline.
Table of Contents
~Prologue
~Chapter One
~Chapter Two
~Chapter Three
~Chapter Four
~Chapter Five
~Chapter Six
~Chapter Seven
~Chapter Eight
~Chapter Nine
~Chapter Ten
~Epilogue
~Books Available by Marquaylla Lorette
~Excerpt from Meridian Warriors
~Excerpt from The Trinity
~Excerpt from Forever Levi
~Excerpt from The Beast at the Gate
Prologue
Katarina and Zuri woke with a start from the sound of glass shattering in their home.
“What the hell was that, Zuri?” Katarina asked her mate as she sat up in bed.
Just as Zuri was about to answer his mate, an unfamiliar voice could be heard as it shouted cruel words at them from the front of their yard.
“Zuri, Katarina, you are a disgrace to every type of shifter. It is unnatural for a cat and wolf shifter to be mates. Let Ursula perform the un-mating spell on you and we will leave you alone, but only if you stay away from each other and let us help you find a mate. They will not be your true mates but at least they will be of your own kind,” a voice from Zuri and Katarina’s front yard shouted.
Katarina and Zuri were the first shifters to be true mates with a different type of shifter species. Zuri was a cat shifter while Katarina was a wolf shifter. Their lives had been put through hell from different shifters ever since they learned they were mates on Katarina’s eighteenth birthday seven years ago.
Zuri pushed Katarina onto the bed just as a brick flew through their bedroom window. If Zuri hadn’t acted quickly, the brick would have hit Katarina in the head. Brick after brick soon began flying through their bedroom window.
“Come on, Katarina, I have to get you to the bathroom before one of those bricks hits you,” Zuri said before he covered Katarina’s body with his and carried her to the bathroom.
Zuri sat Katarina inside the bathtub and climbed to the window in the bathroom. He could see shifters of different species on their front lawn with bricks and shotguns in their hands. Zuri was shocked to see some of his and Katarina’s family members in the front of the line leading the pack. This pissed Zuri off. He felt as though family should stand by you, no matter what the situation was, not lead a pack of vultures to their house with bricks and shotguns in their hands.
Zuri jumped down from the window and shifted into a huge lion, he was going out there to give the Isle of Paradise a piece of his mind. Bullets began flying through their house before Zuri could make it to the bathroom door. He leaped into the air and landed on top of Katarina, who was still in the bathtub. Zuri was careful not to crush the pup in Katarina’s stomach as he landed on top of her.
Katarina pushed Zuri off her and roared as she shifted when the bullets stopped. She couldn’t believe they tried to kill them, and now she was going out there and killing as many of them as she could.
Zuri, still in his lion form, leaped over Katarina and blocked the bathroom door. He roared out in a language only he and Katarina could understand. ‘Katarina, NO! Think about James, he could be harmed if you go out there,’ Zuri said.
Just before they went to bed a few hours ago, Zuri was able to sniff out the sex of their pup. They agreed to name him James, before drifting off to what they thought was a peaceful sleep.
The mention of James’s name stopped Katarina in her tracks. She had let her anger overpower her commonsense, causing Katarina to act before she thought it through. She had to release her anger somehow or it would fester inside of her until it was uncontrollable and finally exploded. Katarina growled as loud as she could, releasing her anger in the process. The vibrations from her growl shook the ground beneath them. Her energy quickly depleted, causing her to shift back, with Zuri not too far behind her.
“We have to make it to Alpha Baron’s house somehow,” Zuri said as he opened the bathroom door and crawled into their room, just in case the shifters outside had something else to throw or shoot into their home.
As they were crawling into their room, the only Gypsy alive appeared in front of them. Zuri was shocked. He didn’t know whether Aishe, the wolf shifter, was on their side or not, so he dove on top of Katarina to protect her.
“Get off me, Zuri, it is fine. Aishe is Baron’s first Beta’s mother. She is here to help,” Katarina said as she strugg
led to get Zuri off her.
“Zuri, Katarina is right. I am here to help you both,” Aishe said as she watched Zuri stand.
“How are you going to help us?” Zuri asked, as he looked up at the woman that he had been scared of when he was a child.
“I am going to get you two off the Isle, somewhere where you’ll be safe,” Aishe answered.
Katarina and Zuri looked at each other in confusion because neither of them had ever been off the Isle.
“We cannot live amongst the humans, remember what happened the last time a shifter or magical being tried that,” Katarina stated with a worried looked on her face.
“If you stay here, your child, as well as you both, will be killed before the Alpha or anyone else can arrive to help. You will be fine living with the humans as long as neither you, nor your children, accidently shift in front of them or tell them our secrets,” Aishe said as she reached into her pockets for her secret potion.
“Wait a minute, you said children, we are only having one child, a boy, who we will name James,” Zuri said as he looked up at Aishe.
“For now you only have one child on the way, but if you stay on the Isle you will not live long enough to have another. Now you have a choice: stay on the Isle and die, or move to the human world and live long enough to bring two beautiful children to the world,” Aishe said as she gave them the potion.
“We will leave the Isle if only to give our children a fighting chance,” Zuri said to Aishe as he accepted the potions for both him and Katarina.
“I already have a home and clothes on the human side for you. There will be a job waiting for you, Zuri, working with my parents’ human best friends. Do not worry, they know who my parents really were before they were discovered by the other humans. If you need anything, do not be afraid to ask them.
“I need for you both to take the blue potion and pour it over your clothes and body. So the shifters outside will not be able to track you. Now drink the red potion. It will make you both invisible and make sure no one is able to sense your presence on the plane.
“I am going to teleport you both to the plane. My parents’ friends will be at the airport on the human side in a black sedan waiting for you to arrive. There will be a sign in their car window with your son’s name on it. They are the only two who will be able to sense your presence,” Aishe said with an urgency in her voice.
Zuri and Katarina poured the blue potion over each other before drinking the red potion.
“Will we ever be able come back to the Isle?” Katarina asked.
“No, but your children will and my grandson and the Alpha’s daughter will be at the airport to meet them. I will stay in contact with you two as much as I can and tell the Alpha where you are so he will not worry,” Aishe said before teleporting Zuri and Katarina into the plane right before takeoff.
Chapter One
James was slipping on his jacket when his sister started banging on his door.
“James, hurry up, my friends are already at the bar waiting on us,” his little sister, Charity, yelled out. “James!” Charity yelled, again when he didn’t answer.
“Alright, Charity, I will be out in a minute,” James yelled back as he made his way to the mirror.
“James, hurry it up in there!” Charity yelled out again.
James chuckled as he listened to his younger sister mumble on the other side of the door. Today was her twenty-fifth birthday and they were headed to the bar to meet her friends. His parents, Zuri and Katarina, never let either of them go anywhere alone and why he was crashing her party, as Charity’s friends would say. He didn’t mind tagging along everywhere his sister went after his parents told them what happened to them on the Isle of Paradise. Ever since then, he never complained when Charity had to tag along with him and Eli or vice versa.
Damn, I wish Eli was still out here so we could celebrate making detective, and I wouldn’t be the only male with Charity and her friends tonight, James thought as he grabbed Charity’s birthday gift.
It was a charm bracelet he had custom made. On one side of the charm was a lion and on the other side was a wolf. Looking at the wolf side of the charm brought him back to the first time he shifted. A week after his sixteenth birthday, his parents and Eli’s father took him and Eli to a secured location where their parents helped them shift into their wolf form. What he never told Eli was he had been shifting into his lion form for a week already. He hated having to keep a secret about who he truly was from his best friend. It felt as though he wasn’t proud of his lion self when he learned he couldn’t tell Eli. He would have told him if his parents’ and sister’s lives weren’t on the line. For some reason his mother never trusted Eli’s parents’ tri-mate, Ella.
James smiled as he made his way to the door. James had found out he made detective at the end of his shift yesterday. His Chief gave him the rest of the week off to prepare for his new job title. Being detective was his dream job, he loved analyzing the evidence before reacting. When he was on the streets, sometimes reacting before you got all the evidence was the difference between life and death. He couldn’t wait a whole two weeks when he and Charity were on the Isle to tell Eli he finally made detective, so he decided to call him instead, when he made it back to the house. Something they both were working for until Eli’s father became too ill to stay on the human side.
“James!” Charity yelled again as she pounded on his door.
James chuckled at his sister’s impatience as he made his way to his bedroom door and opened it. Charity grabbed James’s hand as soon as his door was opened wide enough and pulled him down the hall and stairs.
“We’ll be back in a few hours, Mom and Dad,” James yelled to his parents as Charity pulled him out the front door.
“Come on, short stuff. We are taking my trike,” James said as he made his way toward his bike. James admired his golden motorcycle, which was called a trike since it had three wheels, before climbing on. His bike also had three seats as well. Eli and his sister had made fun of him for buying a three-seated motorcycle at the dealership. At the back of his bike was an open backseat, where the back end of his bike split into two. His bike could fit four if the fourth person sat in the middle part, which separated the two backseats. He had no clue what possessed him to buy a three-seated motorcycle or why on the right side of the back seat he had a golden-brown wolf painted on it and a dark-brown wolf on the left side.
He waited until his sister climbed on to the backseat and snapped her seatbelt and helmet on before driving off. He hated wearing a helmet but had to unless he wanted a ticket and that would be bad seeing as though he was on the police force.
James and Charity pulled up to the bar twenty minutes later. The bar looked as though it was empty when they entered until many of both Charity’s friends and James’s coworkers jumped out of several different places yelling.
“Congratulation and Happy Birthday!”
James looked around the room confused, thinking only Charity’s friends would be here. Besides, he only had one friend, Eli; everyone else on the police force were just his associates. Without even looking at her, he knew it was Charity’s best friend who invited them, knowing she always over-stepped her bounds with him and everyone around her.
“Sorry, James, I didn’t know she would do this after I told her not to,” Charity said before walking toward her friends. Charity knew he really wasn’t much of a crowd person or maybe it was just the human crowd. He always felt anxious in a large crowd unless another shifter was around him.
James made his way to the bar. He needed at least one shot of Patron if he was going to deal with this crowd. As he took his shot from the bartender, he told him not to serve him again, no matter what he said. James wanted to be sober by the time they left the bar so he could drive his sister home. He would never put anyone in harm’s way by being a drunk driver.
James turned around on the barstool and scanned the crowd. Many people thought it was an occupational hazard but for Ja
mes it was something more. Ever since his parents told him about what happened to them on the Isle, he tended to scan the room he was in and plan every exit strategy he could see. He searched the room for any signs of danger before turning his attention elsewhere.
James slid off the stool and headed to a quiet corner where he could see everyone, but they couldn’t see him. He leaned back against the wall into the shadows and let his thoughts consume him. Ever since he could remember, James always felt different from everyone around him, even before he knew about shifters. His parents waited until he was eight before telling Charity and himself anything about shape shifters and who they truly were. It was then that they also told them why they had to leave the Isle as well. James couldn’t understand why it was a problem for two people to love the person they were meant for, even if they came from different species.
The violence that was cast upon his parents because they loved someone others didn’t approve of, was one of the reasons he went into the police force. James wanted to protect others from violent acts and jail those behind the violent attacks on others. He wanted to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves from the danger others brought forth.
James envied his coworker, Dan, and watched as he left the bar earlier than everyone else. Not because he was leaving the bar early but because of the family he had. James had attended Dan’s wedding sixteen months ago and now he and his wife had a two-month-old daughter. James wanted what Dan had, a mate to grow old with and a couple of kids running around. He had girlfriends and even boyfriends over the years, but none of them gave him that spark he was looking for. James was looking for someone who made him feel complete inside, but he couldn’t seem to find that person anywhere. Eli had told him it was because they weren’t his mates.
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