Lavinia came up short when she encountered a particularly robust tree that appeared to be misplaced. Odd for a tree that probably weighed a few hundred pounds, those types of things didn’t just grow legs and move themselves. Walking quietly around the large trunk she encountered yet another tree—a spruce—that was supposed to be on the east side of the ballroom. She remembered because she thought to bring a Christmas tree into a Summer Solstice Ball was a little excessive and potentially off-theme. Lavinia remembered she had been outvoted and here the thing stood in all its pine glory.
Leaning into the soft needles, Lavinia held her breath and listened. There was silence and then a low grunt of pain that Lavinia knew was Parker’s. She had caused that same grunt many a time during their sparring practice. Lavinia moved back to the break between the spruce and the tree next to it. Due to their varying shapes, Lavinia was given a small peephole with which to look through.
The scene revealed was bloody and brutal. Parker and Thearon were surrounded by Werebeasts wearing gardener’s clothing. The white and green checked shirts of the uniform were splattered with blood. Before Lavinia could freak out, she noted that there were a few prone bodies on the floor and that some of the Werebeasts in question were nursing bloody lips and noses. While Parker and Thearon had fought hard, Lavinia could tell their strength was failing. She watched as Parker moved suddenly—faster than Lavinia would have guessed he could, given his bloodied hand—and took another Werebeast down with a low kick to the man’s knees. As he fell Thearon punched him and gave a backward kick to another Werebeast who was using the distraction to advance. Thearon negated the threat, but Parker dropped to his knees as one of the two standing Werebears administered a punch directly to his chest.
Lavinia watched as the air left his body in a whoosh, and he collapsed on the floor desperately trying to maintain consciousness.
“See George, I told you a surprise attack was necessary. With all their pride, the Alpha and Omega never saw themselves as potential targets. Come now, let's finish this and hang them from the trees like the animals they are.”
“Winston had the rope, Octavius. It’s still beneath his body,” George said.
“Well then go and get it, you fool. His dead body isn’t worth anything to us anymore.”
Lavinia watched as Thearon tried to take advantage of George’s movement by sweeping the man off his feet. While he succeeded in putting George on his ass, George retaliated by pulling Thearon into a headlock, cutting off his air until Thearon passed out. Watching her husband’s eyes flutter shut was the final straw for Lavinia.
On tip-toe, she moved around the large potted plants, the soles of her shoes silent on the moss covered flooring. Before she turned the corner she tested the slit of her skirt with one bend of her leg. Reaching down she used one finger to cut through the stitching, ripping the design element up to her hip. Taking another glance into the private area allowed her to assess where George and Octavius were in the space. Closing her eyes and asking the gods for help, she ran into the private space with a battle cry that had surely alerted the surrounding guards to her location.
However, there was no time to wait for backup. Lavinia rounded the corner and kicked at George’s head with a sickening thud. The man went down without a sound. Regaining her balance, she narrowed her eyes at the only man left standing, Octavius, before allowing her gaze to take in the positions of Parker and Thearon. She could see that her husbands were far more injured than they had appeared with blood rapidly pooling around Thearon’s prone form.
“So Queen Lavinia, we meet again,” Octavius greeted, his formal tone utterly unexpected in the middle of a war zone.
Lavinia straightened to her full, Queenly height, “I don’t believe we’ve ever been formally introduced.”
“Ahh, you are right. Though I believe we have both spent many a private hour intimately dismantling the other. After that battle cry, Lavinia, you’ve thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into my plans. I’m going to have to kill you with less fanfare than I would have liked.”
“Oh, you’re killing no one tonight,” Lavinia said settling into a battle stance and waiting for Octavius to make the first move.
Keeping her eyes on his, Lavinia forced herself to read his body language—to see the shift in his gaze that would tell her which direction he was heading. For a long moment, it was rock steady on her own and Lavinia worried that she had given him the upper hand by waiting for his attack, then there it was: a flick to her left.
As Octavius moved toward her in a full-body rush, Lavinia instinctively knew this was her only chance. She dropped down to one side, putting all of her weight into her hip and freed her other leg, and it’s spike stiletto into the air. Octavius had too much momentum to stop and he impaled himself on the six-inch spike with a grunt just as the first round of guards came into the wooded space.
The man started to wilt over Lavinia and the unit moved forward to catch the dying man before he fell in a sickening heap over Lavinia’s body. Next, guards rushed forward to help her but she rerouted them.
“No! I’m fine, my husbands are injured. We need medical assistance now!”
In a sudden rush, the lights of the ballroom came up and emergency units were rushed in. Lavinia crawled over as medic units assessed her husbands and moved to staunch bleeding. She barely heard what they were saying as the two men were rushed away.
Epilogue
Callia rushed back and forth between the teleprompter and the smattering of journalists huddled around a table of coffee and danishes. IT buzzed by and announced that they were ready to go and Callia moved to the stage to quiet the crowd.
“Please, ladies and gentlemen of the press, if you would please take your seats.”
Callia watched as the crowd sat in their assigned seating and glanced at the door to check that everyone was ready. When the figures appeared, she stepped away to let them take the stage.
***
After Thearon and Parker had been evacuated by the medical unit, the Ball had disintegrated into utter chaos. Royals of many Werebeast Tribes were instantly locked down by their personal guards and the palace turned into a fortress. A long night followed where Lavinia had to attend to her Queenly duties as the only active Royal Werebear of the LeKing Tribe.
Being constantly updated via message was not the same as falling into bed with her husbands after the ordeal was complete. By that time both men were resting comfortably in her bed and touching them was barely enough to let Lavinia know that they’d made it out of the ordeal alive and well.
Days later, after George had regained consciousness, the entire plan came to light. The group was, in fact, all second and third sons and their mission had been to assassinate all of the non-human conforming Werebeasts in the major Tribes. George had called it a “culling” and Lavinia still shivered to think that she and the men she loved were the focus of such hatred.
The details of how they sneaked into the palace were eerily easy. They’d come in with the gardening staff in the early days of the planning and their tech guy had formatted identities for each that fooled the facial recognition system which, Thearon admitted, had mostly been focused on guests anyway, not on staff that had access to the building for weeks.
In the end, it was the group’s patience that had almost ended the LeKing Tribe and Lavinia’s perseverance that took the group down.
Finally, Parker, Thearon, and Lavinia were holding a press conference for the Werebeast Tribes across the nation and the world, to put out a statement of truth and health. It was a call to action to strengthen their joined traditions and proof of Thearon and Parker’s well-being.
Looking out into the small room, Lavinia gripped her husbands’ arms. She was nestled between the two, a flower in their midst. At Callia’s nod, they walked on to the stage with strong intent. They stopped directly behind a host of microphones and, together, Thearon and Parker spoke their first official words since the final attack.
“All hail
the Queen!”
THE END
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BOOK EIGHT
HER BEAR
IN MIND
A Paranormal Shifter Romance
MARIA AMOR
Copyright ©2015 by Maria Amor
All rights reserved.
About This Book
When investigative reporter Sierra began looking into Joe Basnight, the governor of her state, she had no idea the truth would be so shocking.
She initially thought he might be a crook but the reality is something incredibly different.
Joe Basnight is not just the governor of her state he is also the governor of a community of Bear Shifters that reside within the state. He is known as the “Alpha” and now Sierra knows his secret there are two options.
One is death, the second option is to become his mate.
Whilst Joe wants to go with the second option it seems there are others within the community that would prefer option one and they will stop at NOTHING to make it happen...
CHAPTER 1
“Ms. Christie? The Governor will see you now.”
Sierra Christie took a moment to put on her most nonthreatening smile. She’d spent two hours getting dressed for the interview this morning, rejecting one outfit after the next, before finally settling on a pale gray pencil skirt that nicely accentuated her waist and a flowery blouse showcasing no small amount of cleavage. She topped the look off with a double dose of mascara and baby pink lipstick and left her hair down in a tumble of blond curls. The look said, girly, innocent, and maybe even easy. It said, I’m here for a meaningless fluff piece on your charity work, Governor Basnight. Certainly not to question you about a scandal that could end your career and land me my next promotion. You don’t have a thing to worry about.
Smile plastered in place, Sierra pushed open the imposing oak door and stepped into the governor’s office.
The room within was not quite what she expected. No crystal decanters of overpriced liquor on the sideboard. The walls were devoid of the usual array of commendations and smiling photos of himself shaking hands with people more important than him. Instead, most of one wall was taken up by a massive dry erase board. Tacky, yes, but clearly practical. It was covered in barely legible notes on upcoming meetings, proposals, and bills. It was not unlike the one Sierra herself kept in her apartment, currently covered in color-coded notes on the man sitting in front of her.
The rest of the walls in this office were devoted to a few nice photographs of the woods, a calendar, and, of course, the large windows showcasing a panoramic view of Olympia below. The desk, far from the usual neat and commanding status symbol most politicians have, was a mess of papers and post-it notes. This, Sierra decided, was an office that was actually used. Governor Basnight did not use his position just to have a few drinks and knock off early to play golf.
Before she could let herself be too impressed, she reminded herself he was also, in all likelihood, using his position to embezzle great sums of money.
The reality check was warranted, because if the office hadn’t already disarmed her, the man behind the desk would have done it.
He was staggeringly handsome. Of course, he always looked that way in photographs and TV appearances, but somehow she had still expected him to show some fault lines up close. But Joe Basnight had none of those flaws expected of a man of 46. His button-down shirt barely concealed his obviously muscular frame. Sierra briefly wondered where he bought dress shirts big enough for that barrel-sized chest (no doubt he had them custom made with his ill-gotten gold). His almost black hair fell across his face, threatening to obscure his similarly dark eyes. He had a deep golden tan that could have only come from a lot of time outdoors or cooking in a tanning bed. Sierra was 5’9 and currently teetering on 3” heals, and yet when he stood, he must have loomed over her by at least a foot.
He gave her his best politician smile and held out his hand.
“You must be Ms. Christie from The Post. So nice to meet you.”
His hands were rough.
“Please,” she implored him, “Call me Sierra.”
He quickly rearranged the stacks of papers to clear a space on the desk in front of her as she sat down.
“Sierra.” He repeated with another campaign winning smile. “Like the Sierra Nevada Mountains?”
“You’d have to ask my mother.”
“Well Sierra, you can call me Joe.”
First name basis already, but it didn’t surprise her. Joe won his election on his everyman demeanor. With a smile, a warm handshake, and a plain-clothes look, he had waded in streams with fishermen, picked grapes at vineyards, and tromped through the woods with local hunters. People loved Governor Joe for his approachability and blue-collar quality.
“Joe.” She repeated. “It is great to meet you in person.”
“So you’re here to discuss the Camp Basnight program?”
“That’s right,” she lied easily. “Why don’t you tell me more about it?”
She had her iPad at the ready to feign taking notes as he regaled her with his latest charity project. Half summer camp, half preparatory school, Camp Basnight was a free four-week summer program available to underprivileged children with promising grades and good standardized test scores.
“Kids today spend so much time with their eyes glued to those things.” He waved vaguely at her iPad. “I want to give them a chance to have fun without the screen time. Play outdoors. Fish, hike, rock climb. No television, no computers. These kids will play in the dirt. And get an education too. We’re hiring the best in astronomy, botany, marine biology, and entomology. ”
“Sounds impressive. It also sounds expensive.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But not a dime in tax payer money, I can assure you. All contributions for the project are coming from myself and private donors.”
Careful now, Sierra cautioned herself.
“I hear your charity auction was quite the successful fundraiser.”
“Better than we could have hoped.--We raised over 85% of our goal.”
“Yes,” she said, glancing down at her notes. “The project’s budgeted at ten million dollars.”
“That’s right.”
“Budgets can be tricky, though. It looks like you’ve already purchased the land for the project and hired a contractor to begin construction. Yet, you’ve already spent eight million dollars. May I ask what the rest of the money went towards?”
Just for a moment, his smile slipped.
“You must be mistaken,” he said. “Our budget is right on course.”
“Not according to this.” She showed him the bank statement copy on her iPad. “Most of the money has already been withdrawn. Where did it go?”
His smile vanished as he read over the bank statement.
“Where did you get this?”
“From a friend.” She said simply. If you can call the broke teller she had bribed with almost a week’s pay, a friend.
“Where did the money go, Joe?”
Joe tried his best to smile again, but this time it didn’t quite meet his dark eyes.
“You should recheck your sources, Ms. Christie. This is obviously a fake statement.”
“My sources are-”
“I’m afraid that’s all the time I can spare for you. I have another appointment.”
“You don’t have another appointment, Joe. Your secretary has you scheduled for this interview for half an hour. It’s only been ten minutes.”
He paused, dropping all pretenses now.
“You read my schedule.”
“It was on y
our secretary’s desk. I just happened to glance at it.”
“No. It’s on my secretary’s computer.”
There was a cold fury behind his eyes now that Sierra didn’t like at all. But far be it from her to let this man intimidate her. She leaned back in her chair casually.
“You should encourage her to lock her computer screen when she goes to the bathroom. There’s no telling what someone might find on there. I wonder what else you’re hiding.”
Joe took a deep breath, regaining his composure, and stood up.
“Ms. Christie-”
“Please, Joe, call me Sierra.”
“Sierra, it’s time for you to go now. I’ll have security see you out.”
She stood and smiled at him.
“Do you really think I require an escort, Joe?”
“Yes.” He dialed security, giving her a look of annoyance mixed with grudging respect. “Apparently, you do.”
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