by Amira Rain
Mark clinked his glass with mine. "Always...together."
Heart soaring, I looked into his eyes while we sipped, realizing that I'd never before been filled with such perfect joy.
THE END
BOOK FIVE
GIFTED
TO THE ANGEL
A PARANORMAL PREGNANCY ROMANCE
AMIRA RAIN
Copyright ©2016 by Amira Rain
All rights reserved.
About This Book
Lauren Grant was gifted with supernatural powers from birth and because of this she had always known she was special.
She also knew that one day she might be TAKEN by those who would want to use her gift to their own advantages.
Now, it seems that day has come and Lauren has found herself kidnapped by a handsome Angel named Cole Marlowe.
However, this is no routine kidnapping.
Cole has shocking news to share with Lauren and that news was that, despite having never met before, Lauren was already pregnant with his child...
This is a Paranormal Pregnancy Romance like no other written before. Twists, turns and sensual scenes makes this a must-read for any Paranormal Romance fan...
CHAPTER ONE
What he was telling me wasn't true, wasn't even possible. He was Cole Marlowe, the fairly new leader of the New Bad Axe Angels, and what he was telling me was that I was pregnant with his child. He was clearly insane. I'd never even met him. At least, I'd never even met him until earlier that day, when he'd abducted me from the battlefield.
It had been my first ever fight as a Gifted, my first time ever fighting for the lions of North Haven, where the government had assigned me. My first and last fight, I now thought, almost sure that I was never going to be able to escape Cole Marlowe and the Angels of New Bad Axe. As a new Gifted, my powers were still too weak for me to take on all of them. My only hope was that maybe in time, I could become strong enough, even if that took years. Or, just maybe, Mark Northrup, the leader of the North Haven lions, would send some kind of a rescue party for me. Being that I'd only arrived in North Haven a few weeks earlier, I didn't really know Commander Northrup very well, so I wasn't sure if this was something he'd do or not.
After Cole had rendered me immobile on the battlefield by way of temporarily stunning me with a single powerful zap, he'd then scooped me up and carried me off into the woods north of North Haven while his Angels and shifters fought off the North Haven Gifteds who were frantically trying to get to me. Once in the woods, he tied my wrists together tightly, with numerous lengths of rope, and then secured my arms to the front of my body with a quick double loop of rope, so I couldn't extend my palms and use my powers against him and his men, several of whom had been waiting in the trees, making it clear my abduction hadn't been spur-of-the-moment.
While he was hastily binding my wrists and arms, I'd tried to zap Cole, but without success. With my palms roughly facing each other, the zaps just made loud crackling noises and brief, shimmery clouds of light around my hands. Struggling to get free from the grip of one of Cole's men, I continued trying anyway, feeling myself becoming increasingly fatigued. As a new Gifted, I'd been warned that even just a few minutes of fighting might leave me exhausted or even unconscious, and as it was, I'd been fighting for at least twenty minutes already, exceeding all expectations of my stamina. Not to mention that being zapped seemed to have drained some of my energy as well.
By the time Cole had me bound and sitting atop one of his wolf shifters, I barely had strength left to ask him why he was doing what he was. My voice had come out in a near-whisper. He didn't answer, though, at least didn't answer that particular question. Instead, in a tone of voice that was commanding to say the least, he'd just told me to hold on to the wolf's fur unless I wanted to fall off along the way to New Bad Axe.
"And when I say hold on, I mean hold on tight. The wolf you're on is going to fly. The others flanking you will try to catch you if you do fall, but it's best that you try your hardest not to. I may have bound your wrists, but I left your hands free so that you can get a good grip."
He'd looked into my eyes while speaking, and that alone had made my adrenaline surge. Glowing a deep, dark blood red, his eyes were terrifying. They were eyes that made me feel as if I wanted to scream, though for some reason, I was pretty sure no sound would come out. I couldn't even see what color they might be normally. Honestly, I wasn't even completely sure that Angels' eyes didn't glow red a hundred percent of the time.
Turning my face away from Cole's, I was beginning to feel ill. However, when he immediately told his wolf to take off, I was able to overcome my feelings of nausea, dizziness, and growing disorientation just long enough to yell.
"Commander Northrup! Help! Paulina! Christy! Help me, someone! Alexa! Please!" I shouted a few more names of people I'd met during my brief time in North Haven but, looking back as the wolf began speeding away, I could see I was already out of range to be heard by anyone, not to mention it looked like numerous North Haven fighters were already trying their damnedest to get to me anyway.
Far in the distance, I could see at least a dozen of them in a tight, roaring, zapping cluster, trying to break through a wide line of Angels to get to the woods, and presumably me. But then, within a second or two, they were gone, obscured by the trees and the growing group of Angels blocking the path to them. Cole was soon gone, too, becoming a blur of gray as he shifted from Angel form to his wolf form, eyes still glowing red. He then raced through the trees heading south, toward the fray, in the opposite direction of the wolf carrying me.
I still didn't know much about Gifteds, shifters, and Angels, but while in North Haven, I'd been told that an Angel with the ability to shift into an animal form was almost unheard of. In fact, Cole was said to be the only Angel in Michigan who could do this. From what everyone in North Haven could gather, this was part of why he'd been chosen to be the new leader of New Bad Axe about five months earlier, and this was the reason I'd even been able to identify him on the battlefield. Rapidly shifting between his Angel form and wolf form, he'd been pretty hard to miss.
However, he hadn't been the only unique fighter on the battlefield. Apparently, I was one of only a handful of "triple Gifteds" in existence. I was a zapper, a levitator, and a spinner, the latter gift giving me the ability to levitate enemies and then spin them in midair with such speed that they literally became cyclones for several seconds before dropping back to the ground, thoroughly disoriented. Weeks earlier, when this gift manifested, I'd levitated and spun a potted plant on my apartment balcony, sending dirt and leaves flying in all directions. My palm had just shot up of its own accord. I hadn't even been trying to do anything; I'd had no clue that I was a Gifted.
When the government agents came to my apartment the next day, they'd thought I was a "latent Gifted," which was to say, a Gifted whose powers had been activated by pregnancy. However, once I'd made it clear I definitely wasn't pregnant, they'd told me I must simply just be an incredibly "late bloomer" Gifted, one who strangely hadn't yet come into her powers in the several years since Alistair Jordan, the first Angel sorcerer, had unleashed all his powerful-yet-half-baked spells on the world. It happened, one of the agents told me. Maybe my Gifted powers had just been "percolating" inside of me, dormant, another of the agents had said. I was still just trying to get used to the thought of it all, the thought of me being a Gifted. My time in North Haven had kind of passed by in a haze of shock. As much as I'd tried to make my brain accept the reality of everything, I just couldn't. I'd walked around with a vague feeling that I was in some sort of a funny dream.
Straddling the wolf's back as he raced north, however, I had no such dreamlike feeling. In fact, things were all too real, and all too frightening. As exhausted as I was, adrenaline still coursed through my veins with every beat of my heart, giving me a strange and completely unpleasant "tired yet wired" feeling. Like Cole had told me to do, I clutched the wolf's coarse fur tightly, not wanting to fall, while two w
ords that hadn't even been spoken echoed in my mind. Kidnapped and prisoner. It had all happened so fast. At the rate of speed the wolf I was riding was traveling, I figured we'd probably be to New Bad Axe within twenty minutes or so. And then what, I had no idea, except that in the back of my mind I did, but I was just trying not to think about it.
The truth was that although he hadn't answered my question, I had an idea why Cole had abducted me. It was no secret that the Angels would benefit from having a few Gifteds fighting on their side; and in fact, a North Haven Gifted named Paulina, who was now married to Commander Northrup, had once fought for the Angels because their former leader, Dylan Darringer, had coerced her to. So, it made sense that Cole might have abducted me because he wanted a Gifted fighter of his own.
I sensed there was more to it, though. Not long after he and his men had attacked us North Haven fighters just to the north of the village, it had become clear Cole was making efforts to get to me, specifically. Seeming to ignore all other Gifteds near him, Gifteds who were nearer to him than I was, he began working his way through the North Haven shifters, glancing over at me frequently as if to make sure that he didn't lose my location in the fray. And despite how I tried to lose him, I just hadn't been able to. As if hip to his plan, his fighters kept on steering me back toward him every time I'd tried to fight my way over to a different part of the field.
Because of this, and especially because Cole could have grabbed any other Gifted, I had the feeling maybe he wanted me for more than my Gifted skills. I supposed it was possible that he'd seen I was a triple-Gifted, and because of that, had sought me out specifically, but I was pretty sure I hadn't even yet displayed all three of my gifts when I noticed him seeming to be making a beeline for me. So, I figured it was more likely that he simply liked the way I looked and had signaled to his men that he'd made his "choice." Just like it was no secret that the Angels likely wanted a Gifted or several fighting for them, it was also no secret there was a distinct shortage of women in New Bad Axe.
This hadn't always been the case, but I'd heard that after Dylan Darringer, the first leader of the community, had been killed a few years earlier, many of the women that lived in the village had left across Saginaw Bay for parts unknown, probably back to their homes of origin in Michigan's northern half, along with many of Dylan's fighters. Then, there had been a rapid succession of new leaders; most of them had been killed by the North Haven fighters. So, from what I'd been able to gather, it had been a tumultuous couple of years for the ever-fluctuating population of New Bad Axe, and women had came and went, but mostly went.
Riding on the back of Cole's wolf fighter, I tried to force myself not to think about how Cole had likely abducted me to be some sort of a personal sex slave for him. Still reeling from having participated in my first fight as a Gifted, being zapped, and then being kidnapped, I just couldn't let my mind fully go there yet.
Despite my fear and my adrenaline, by the time we made it to the village I assumed was New Bad Axe, I was barely hanging on to the wolf's fur, exhausted almost beyond comprehension. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I couldn't ever remember feeling so weary in my life. After dismounting the wolf's back, I was aware of staggering around a little with different little buildings and structures swimming in front of my eyes. That was the last thing I was aware of; I must have fallen right where I stood, because the next thing I knew, I was waking in a bed, in some room dimly illuminated by a small bedside table lamp, feeling like I'd been out for hours. Maybe even days. All I knew was I'd been out long enough for my bladder to have become full to bursting.
Still kind of tired and just generally feeling out if it, I got out of the queen-sized bed and flicked on an overhead light, realizing that although the ropes that had been restraining my wrists and arms had been removed, I was still in the same clothes I'd worn to the battle, making me think Cole probably hadn't violated me in any way while I'd been passed out. Taking comfort in this, I headed straight for the heavy wooden door opposite the bed, intending to try to quickly find a bathroom but I found that I was locked in the room. Wondering if Cole expected me to just wet myself, I gave the door a bang with one tightly curled fist, then began stomping around the tile-floored room, fuming. I'd been stomping around for at least ten seconds when I spotted a closed door on one side of the room and discovered that it led to a master bathroom. Feeling just a bit sheepish, I immediately zipped inside and made use of the facilities.
Like the bedroom itself, the bathroom was spacious, and it was also a bit more luxurious than I might have expected to find. The flooring was dove-gray marble, as was a sunken bathtub larger than any I'd ever seen. The tub's gleaming fixtures appeared to be gold. Across from the tub, a shelving unit made of polished dark wood held at least a dozen thick, plush towels in various shades of cream and peach. On the top shelf sat a large, cream-colored satin bag with a sticky note printed with my name, Lauren, in black pen on the front. I stared at this little detail while standing up from the toilet slowly, wondering just how in the hell Cole knew my name.
After washing my hands and splashing my face with cold water, just trying to make myself wake up a bit more, I took the satin bag from the shelf and found it contained a plush white robe, white slippers, and a smaller bag filled with soaps, shampoos, and various other toiletries. Apparently, Cole wanted his new concubine to be squeaky clean, I thought, and then immediately shivered, experiencing a wave of dread. I knew I likely wouldn't be able to escape New Bad Axe soon, and I knew what that meant. However, if Cole thought he was going to violate me without encountering any resistance, he was dead wrong. I wasn't going to just lie down and give him what I was becoming sure was what he wanted from me. The very thought made my stomach churn. However, right then, I was determined not to think about what might happen in the not-too-distant future. I couldn't have cared less about how Cole wanted me, but I wanted a warm shower, and my sore muscles were practically screaming for one. After double-checking I'd locked the bathroom door, I undressed, turned on the shower, and stepped into the spray.
A while later, wearing the plush white bathrobe and slippers, I emerged from the bathroom probably as relaxed as any prisoner in Angel territory could be. However, not two steps into the bedroom, I stopped dead in my tracks. Appearing perfectly casual and laid-back, with one long, muscular leg loosely folded over the other, Cole was sitting in a chair, paging through a tattered book.
Upon seeing me, he set the book on a nightstand and looked at me with his expression unreadable. "How do you feel?"
At that precise moment, what I felt was surprise on a few different levels. For one, I was surprised to see Cole's eyes were no longer glowing red. His body wasn't enveloped by silvery light, either. The second thing was that now he wasn't in his fearsome Angel form anymore, he was actually a very good-looking man, some might have even said he was an exceptionally good-looking man. With a long, well-muscled physique, dark hair, and a strong, masculine jaw, he was certainly classically handsome, and his pale gray eyes greatly added to this affect. The third thing that surprised me was that I was even thinking about how handsome Cole was or wasn't.
Now angered by his question, I asked him why he even cared how I felt. And that was when he told me that he cared because I was pregnant with his child.
For at least three solid seconds, I just stared at him, speechless, as if waiting for him to say that he was just playing some kind of a sick joke because I knew he had to be. However, contrary to confirming this, he just looked at me, silently, expression still unreadable. And finally, through my bewilderment, shock, and anger, I found my voice.
"You're lying. What you said isn't true."
Cole slowly rose from his chair, revealing his height in non-Angel form to be a good several inches above six feet. "I'm not. And it is. You're pregnant with my child, Lauren." Something about the conviction in his deep voice made me grip the bathroom doorknob, nauseated.
*
Nearly overcome by nausea, I couldn't speak,
and Cole asked me if I was hungry.
"It's nearly nine in the evening now, and considering the battle was about thirteen hours ago, I know you're probably starving."
I was starving. I was ravenous, hungry in such a sudden, deeply profound, primal sort of way that the feeling was beginning to soar high above my nausea, urgent and insistent. For some reason, I didn't want to let Cole know this. For some reason, I just wanted to be contrary to everything he said. I wanted to rail against him, fight him in any way I could. In fact, while I looked into his pale granite-colored eyes, my fists curled, seemingly of their own accord.
"How dare you presume to know anything about my hunger level."
Expression still neutral, he lifted his broad shoulders in the slightest shrug. "So, you're not hungry, then?"
Just then, my stomach growled, though maybe roared would have been a better descriptor of the noise. In an attempt to cover it, I cleared my throat, though I wasn't fast enough. Cole lifted one dark brow just a degree, just enough to make me certain that he'd heard auditory evidence of just how hungry I was. Now trying to deny my hunger would only make me look like an obstinate fool.
So, trying to muster as much dignity as I could, I folded my arms across my chest. "I guess I could eat."
"All right, then. Go ahead and get dressed. There are clean clothes in the closet in your size, and whether you dress in day clothes or pajamas is entirely up to you. I'll go tell my housekeeper and cook, Mary-Alice, to heat something up for us." With long though unhurried strides, Cole made his way around the bed and over to the half-ajar door before looking at me over his shoulder. "I'll be back in a while to lead you down to the dining room. Also, Lauren...and maybe you've already worked this out for yourself...but any attempt to use your Gifted powers to harm me will not go well for you. Just thought I'd make that crystal clear. You may be having my child, but that doesn't mean I won't place you in solitary confinement within this house to teach you that you won't be getting away with attempts to harm me."