by M. L. Briers
“It’s not a plan,” Nathan grumbled.
He just didn’t want anything to go wrong.
He’d built a good life for himself and he needed to keep it that way.
He was the alpha of a flourishing pack.
He’d found his mate.
He wanted pups … at some time in the near-ish future, and he didn’t want anyone dying on his watch.
He knew that the last wish on his list was a hard ask. People died – especially in the world of the supernatural. But still, he would do the best that he could to keep them safe.
That uninvited vampire had put that all in doubt.
He had to question the sanity of hunting the vampire by himself, without the full force of his pack, but he was the alpha, and that meant that he was best placed to take on the bloodsucker and win.
Or, if he lost at least it would only be one life – his.
“No, but if it makes you feel better we can pretend that it is,” Monty offered with a big dollop of sarcasm and a smug smile on his lips.
There were definitely times when Nathan just wanted to put his fist in the vampire’s face for the sheer satisfaction of how it felt. Right there and then was one of those times.
But he certainly had bigger problems that Monty’s snarking form of sarcasm.
“Ok, smartass. What’s your plan?” Nathan said, grinding to a halt as the vampire did the same, they both turned towards each other like they were sizing each other up.
“Sure you want to know? Cos I’m feeling like there’s a little tension here between us…”
“Spit it out,” Nathan said, urging him on with a wave of his hand.
“Ok, Kill the vampire, save the pack, the witches, and my mate,” Monty offered back.
Nathan scowled back at him for a long moment. The deafening silence hanging in the air between them.
“That’s my plan,” he growled.
“Not a plan,” Monty offered back.
“What?”
“We agreed that your plan was not a plan, so when I steal your plan then it still doesn’t make it a plan, but as it’s the best – not-a-plan – that we have, then I’m going to run with it and call it my plan. Even though that doesn’t make it a plan, now does it?” Monty grinned as Nathan’s brain raced to decipher what the vampire had spewed out.
Nathan turned to move off, but hesitated, pursed his lips as if he had a question, but then he shook his head…
He was more than confused, but he wasn’t about to admit that and have the vampire start his explanation all over again.
He’d rather be facing off against Jaxon…
“Right.” Nathan growled.
He was still lost in the vampire’s words, trying to decipher them, and with his mind still going around like a child’s spinning top, he nodded thoughtfully like he knew what the hell the vampire had said.
He could ponder on it all day, and yet he didn’t feel like he would find clarity anytime soon.
“We good?” Monty gave a small silent chuckle to himself. He could see just how flummoxed he had made the alpha, and that was the plan.
Because in the grand scheme of things, and without putting too fine a point on it like he had with the alpha, when push came to shove - they really didn’t have a damn plan…
“Yeah,” Nathan nodded, doing the only thing that he was sure of and that was putting one foot in front of the other. “I think…” He grumbled to himself.
~
~
~
“I know that look,” Hank said, eyeing his mate across the way as she sat in the chair at the widow as gazed out into the grounds of the Inn.
“Do you?”
Dorothy didn’t turn her eyes towards him, because she didn’t want to confirm to him what he thought he knew … what he might have known, and what she didn’t want to show.
“It’s the look that says you will do anything to defend your granddaughter,” he offered gently, and got a grunt of annoyance back in return, “even if that something, is something stupid…”
“Oh, not just senile, but stupid, good to know.” Dorothy said, folding her arms, and back on the defensive once more.
“Here we go again,” Hank grumbled with a hand tossed up in the air in frustration. “Can I say anything that doesn’t miff you off?”
“Right now, probably not,” Dorothy shot back, telling it to him straight.
She hated being so damn impotent. With age came limitations, and she didn’t much care for that reality.
It wasn’t Hank’s fault, and she knew it. That didn’t stop her from taking it out on him though.
The man was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right in her sights in the firing line as she tried to figure out a way to keep Fallon and everyone else safe from the vampire that thought he had some kind of a claim on her…
No damn bloodsucking leech is going to mess with my Granddaughter, my kin…
I’ll see him in hell first, even if I have to take him there myself…
“There’s that look again,” Hank grumbled.
“I’m sorry my stupid face annoys you so,” Dorothy tossed back.
“Woman, if I wasn’t a gentleman, I’d put you over my knee and spank your backside until it shook your brain awake,” Hank growled, leaning in slightly towards her across the space that divided them, and eyeing her like she was a nice juicy steak.
“If I wasn’t a lady I might let you,” Dorothy tossed back, still sounding grumpy, but there was a wicked glint in her eye that he got a real big kick out of as she threw him off guard.
“Well, now…” Hank’s greying eyebrows dropped down over most of his eyes. “I don’t rightly know how to answer that one.” He gave a small chuckle and she offered him a killer smile.
“Well then shut up you old fool, and let me think,” Dorothy tossed back, good-naturedly, and he grinned back at her.
“It takes a while,” Angela said as she strolled into the sun room with Lark following on behind her.
The man knew that she was safe inside the Inn, and yet, both he and his beast worried about her doing something silly for her best friend. That was the downside to having a mate…
“Says the woman who has a brain fart and has to check to make sure that she put on her panties in the morning,” Dorothy shot back.
“I solved that problem. I don’t wear any,” Angela lied, but that didn’t stop Lark from growling at the thought.
“That can get messy when you cough or sneeze,” Dorothy mumbled…
“That was a conversation I didn’t need to overhear,” Sarah said on a small chuckle as she stood by the doorway and propped up the wall with her shoulder.
She wanted to keep an eye on the elders. They were family, and family was the most important thing in her world – except for Chloe – she didn’t think she’d mind so much if her vampire Aunt took off never to be seen again in her lifetime.
“It comes to us all,” Angela tossed back over her shoulder.
“Wait til you’ve had a pup and see how your bladder reacts to that one,” Dorothy sneered at the thought.
“Can’t it be a surprise and we change the conversation?” Sarah offered back, wincing at the thought of it.
“We can talk about menopause and the joys that holds,” Dorothy grumbled.
“The male prostate is a favourite of mine,” Hank offered with a teasing grin.
“Erectile dysfunction,” Lark offered, and everyone turned to look at him…
“You don’t have erectile dysfunction,” Angela screwed up her face in disbelief.
“Not yet – give it time,” Lark growled.
“Oh, look at those roses…” Sarah lifted her hand and pointed the way in case everybody needed a map to being distracted.
“My roses,” Chloe’s disembodied voice rang out and Sarah groaned inwardly.
“Mine now,” She shot back, unwilling to play the game with her Aunt one more time…
“Not for long,” Chloe’s sing-so
ng voice grated on her nerves.
“You want in the Inn, behave,” Sarah berated her.
“Vampire’s, so annoyingly lurky,” Angela sighed.
“Old witches, so tasty, and yet so annoyingly off limits,” Chloe shot back with a sigh.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~
“You can get off me now. You’ve made your point,” Fallon said with a small sigh of resentment for his good looks, his, sort-of charm, and his ability to pin her on her back when the mood took him, and a body that was as hard as it was sexy…
She hated that. All of it, but especially the last one.
It didn’t seem right that fate would leave you with only one real out to mating, and that was to kill your mate.
Of course, you could always leave him behind, but that amounted to the same thing, because a male who lost his mate was nine out of ten times likely to go rogue…
You would have to be one frosty female to walk out on your mate and leave him for dead…
“I could, but you’re so cushiony soft,” Jamie teased back, and he had no choice but to grit his teeth when the sting of her magic ripped across his body…
She could, of course, reconsider her frosty side at any damn time that she chose…
“A woman doesn’t like to hear that she’s fat,” Fallon bit out, and she meant it…
“Not fat … curvy … and in all the right places,” Jamie managed to bit out the words from between his clenched teeth. The witch definitely had a sting to her magic.
The instant relief of her magic being turned off made every inch of him relax at once, almost every inch, because lying against her like that meant that he wasn’t going to get any instant relief from the ache at his groin.
He allowed his muscles to relax and almost forgot to hold his weight off of her body … he snapped back to attention because he knew that a squished mate would be a bad thing…
“That’s different.”
“Glad to hear it. Maybe you should ask questions first and zap later,” Jamie berated her.
“Where’s the fun in that?” She offered him a smug grin and her eyes shone with bright mischief of a witch that was enjoying flexing her magical muscles.
“Fun – for who?” he tossed back, trying to pull his mind out of being bedazzled by her.
It was a rhetorical question, and she knew it, but that didn’t stop a smirk from growing on her lips, or a twinkle of mischief to reside in her eyes – eyes that he knew he could get lost in given half the chance.
Mine…
His beast knew it too. It knew his moods and he was in the mood to love her.
Zapped or not – that didn’t stop every inch of his body from wanting to be pressed naked against every inch of hers.
It certainly didn’t stop his hard length twitching against her thigh.
And it definitely didn’t stop the fever that was growing within his blood to taste her on his tongue…
“Don’t you want to make your mate happy?” She turned her head slightly and offered him a sideways glance and a cheeky grin that was full of mischief and mirth.
“Sure,” he said on a slow nod. “I just don’t want to give up a pound of flesh to do it.”
“How about a little fur? Smoking or non-smoking?”
Jamie opened his mouth to speak, but his beast made a sound like Scooby Doo, questioning their mate’s words, and the man couldn’t help but smile.
“I think you just scared my wolf,” Jamie offered on a teasing smile.
“Ok, but going after a poor dumb creature is wrong…” she shrugged, and the beast grumbled…
“My beast is glad to hear it,” Jamie smiled.
“I was talking about you – your wolf is safe with me.” That mischievous smile was spellbinding, and he was once again lost in it.
Jamie couldn’t resist the urge that shot through him to kiss her, and he brought his lips down on hers before she saw it coming.
Her eyelids slammed shut, her heart lurched, and her body flooded with a massive jolt of pure pleasure that hit her womb and made her gasp at the sheer intensity of it.
Fallon didn’t have a chance to second guess what her body did as she melted beneath him.
Fire met ice and turned it to steam.
~
~
~
“Don’t you have anything more productive to do?” Sarah admonished her aunt.
“Yes, I could be feasting on a witch, care to join me out on the porch?” Chloe snarked back.
Chloe wasn’t in the mood to be nice and chatty – or maybe that should have been nice or chatty. She wanted to play in the big sandbox and her mate had made her promise to stay out of it.
How was she going to learn to kill the big, bad vampires if she wasn’t allowed to kill the big, bad vampires?
She got that Monty was one big ball of nervous hypersensitivity when it came to her, a newbie, going out in the world alone, and possibly dying at the hands of someone – anyone – but she would never hone her fighting skills if she didn’t practice them.
After all, she’d been practicing her magic from a very early age and by the time that she’d died, some eight decades and change later, she still didn’t know everything…
I was a wickedly badass witch back in the day though…
Now I need to be a wicked badass vampire in my new life…
How am I going to do that if Monty keeps benching me?
Simple …
I go around Monty…
“I hate to say bite me, because that really must grate of your last damn nerve … oh wait, bite me!” Sarah tossed back, and Chloe rolled her eyes and allowed her fangs to elongate…
If I can’t have fun with the witches…
Bring on the vampire.
Chloe had one last thing on her to-do list before she joined the hunt – she stepped out in front of the large picture window and waited for Sarah to snap her eyes towards her – then she flipped her the bird.
Actions speak louder than words – I think I spoke quite eloquently.
~
~
~
Nathan caught the scent of the unwelcome vampire in the air and he scanned the woods looking for anything out of place.
He knew that Monty had gone high to his going low, and the vampire was up in the trees somewhere. He couldn’t see him or hear him, and he’d pay a pound to a penny that Jaxon was just as damn stealthy.
He regretted that he’d traded his beast’s weight and power in order to be able to communicate with Monty when he’d decided not to shift into his wolf.
His fangs were in place and his claws were out, but aside from that – he only had his strength and speed to rely on.
Nathan spun on his heels at the sound that came from behind him. The air around him was displaced by the speed of the vampire as he launched his attack.
He got in one good swipe of his claws down the man’s chest, opening up his skin, before he was knocked sideways with so much power that his head spun.
Nathan’s back hit the solid trunk of the tree with enough force to fill every inch of him with screaming pain, and knock the breath right out of his lungs…
He knew that something was broken inside of him – he just didn’t know what.
‘Jamie, I’m down – Monty will be fighting alone…’
‘Damn it, brother, recon – you said recon…’ His brother’s anger made him second guess his own choices.
He may have screwed up. He may have been wrong.
He just hoped that Monty could do the job alone…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
~
Fallon’s head was still spinning.
One moment; she was being kissed to oblivion by her very persuasive mate whose lips made a good case for why she should mate with him, and the next he was shouting apologies over his shoulder and heading out the bedroom door at break neck speed…
“Something I said?” Fallon muttered as she shimmied to the edge of the bed and l
istened to the sound of fast, heavy thuds from his feet on the staircase.
She knew that there was only one thing that could tear a shifter away from the possibility of bonding with his mate … trouble was afoot, and Jaxon must have been attacking someone, somewhere, in his determination to leave her no choice but to adhere to his words.
There was only one thing to do – give the vampire what he wanted – her…
~
~
~
For elders, Lark and Hank had managed to move pretty damn fast at the sound of the alpha’s words within their minds, and Jamie’s quick as lightning reaction to them…
“We’ve got your back…” Lark assured the beta as he started towards the front door after him.
“You guard the mates – keep them in the Inn … all of them…” Jamie tossed back over his shoulder as he headed out of the door.
The beta didn’t stop long enough to throw off his clothes.
He scented the air and followed his nose – shifting into his beast in mid-run – with his clothes standing no chance but to become shredded rags in his wolf’s wake…
‘How far out are you?’ Jamie demanded …
The sound of silence that hung heavy within his mind sent a cold chill of fear to Jamie’s heart.
He didn’t need to tell his wolf what that meant. The beast dug in with his claws, tossing up the dirt behind him as he sped into the heart of the woods, man and beast praying that Nathan wasn’t already dead…
~
~
~
Dorothy heard the sound of the commotion at the front door. Angela had joined Lark and Hank as they’d followed Jamie towards the outside world, and she’d intended to follow them into the hallway, she really had, but something tugged inside of her mind – it was the start of a feeling that she could do more…
Now was her chance if she was ever going to take it.
Now was the time to act when her mate wasn’t watching her like a hawk, stuck to her side like glue.