“TMI, sis,” Carmen said with a fading smile.
Carmen was happy for Charice, but she wanted more time with her warlocks before they considered adding to their trio. If Claire was pregnant too, she just knew her competitive streak would appear. Habit would also make her want to have a baby to call hers. They were sisters, after all. She silently thanked the goddess that Charice was the only one expecting.
“If she says it’s too much information, then it has to be true,” Charice said.
Carmen couldn’t help but feel cautious. A baby meant they needed to be extra careful about protecting each other and the ones they loved.
“Car, how can you go from happy auntie to sad witch in less than thirty seconds?” Charice asked. “That’s a record, even for you.”
“He’s still out there,” Carmen said. She didn’t need to elaborate because they all knew who she was referring to. No one had heard from or seen the former Master of Fire since he disappeared.
Carmen thought that only meant he was up to something big, and she knew that they were all going to be a part of it, whether they wanted to or not.
It’s why she didn’t chastise Royce and Ryan for their hovering so much. They felt it too, although they tried hard not to let Carmen see their worry.
“We’ll get him,” Claire said. “Don’t worry, Car.”
“How do you know?” Carmen asked. “I mean, he could show up at any time.”
“Doesn’t matter. We have each other,” Charice said. “That has to count for something.”
Carmen felt a small flicker of relief fill her as she realized her sister was right. It counted for everything.
~~~~~~
Thank you for reading The Alpha Warlocks’ Own. Can’t get enough of the sexy supernatural characters of Kala West, Florida? Be on the lookout for other stories in the Alpha Warlocks of Kala West series and the upcoming Curvy Paranormals of Kala West. Coming Soon!
As a thank you for reading Carmen’s story, enjoy this bonus and extended edition of The Alpha Warlock Shifter’s Gift!
If you missed the first two Alpha Warlocks of Kala West stories, The Alpha Warlocks’ Claim and The Alpha Warlocks’ Desire, keep reading for a preview of them.
It’s Christmastime in Kala West! Can a headstrong wolf shifter and an half-breed warlock find a gift in each other to enjoy beyond the holidays?
It’s Christmastime in Kala West, but the last gift Danika wants is a husband she doesn’t know, even if it is for the good of her wolf pack. For most of her life, Danika has felt like an outsider in the Kala West Pack. Lance, her adopted brother and ruling alpha, has been the only family for her to lean on after the death of both of their parents to rivaling packs. But now that the time has come for Danika to strengthen their pack through an arranged marriage, she’s torn between duty and the memory of a young warlock that she can’t quite shake. Can she find the grown warlock before her pack commitment becomes a reality?
Blaine is an outcast in more ways than one. He’s been shunned by the warlock community of Kala West for being part shifter, and the wolves have no need for a warlock who can’t even shift. There’s only been one person who didn’t see him as a monster or a failure, and he hasn’t been able to find her since their fated meet all those years ago. Is it too late for this half-breed warlock shifter to find love?
Danika and Blaine may not be in the holiday spirit, but a long-awaited reunion is destined for them. When the two realize their past connection to each other, will the magical heat between them be enough to outlast the Florida weather?
This 14,000-word story is part of the Alpha Warlocks of Kala West interlinked series but can be read as a standalone. It takes place after The Alpha Warlocks’ Own. The story has strong sexual situations and explicit content, and it is for mature and brave readers who can handle magic and strong Alpha Males only.
Shifter’s Gift Chapter One
12 Years Earlier
Kala West was beautiful in Christmastime, especially along the Gulf. All the shops and hotels had lights, making it seem like a Florida wonderland. Danika loved sneaking away from her pack to find moments of solitude, and at twelve, she was used to having her own mini adventures.
It made her forget her life and focus on other worlds.
She always chose to visit the spot under the Golden Pearl Fishing Pier. The pier was never crowded. It usually just had a couple of stray humans fishing here and there or stray visitors enjoying the sights of the beach.
Still, Danika always enjoyed swimming beneath the wooden pillars. When she first found it, she used her claws to carve her name into the pillar at the farthest end. She’d silently staked claim to the underside of the pier. It was hers, and no one could take it away from her.
Holding her breath under water was her odd thrill. It was never about timing herself or seeing how long she could stand it. She didn’t have a death wish, either. Instead, it was about the peacefulness of the water. She loved how the world faded away to quiet serenity as she watched the sea life move around her. Schools of bright-colored fish, fluorescent jellyfish, and even small sharks had made their way across her path. It was a quiet underwater world away from the above-ground craziness.
It was enough to make her forget the tragedy that took away her birth parents so many years before. She’d been too young to remember them completely, but she did have stray memories here and there. Glimpses would flood through her, times when her mother told her stories at bedtime, and the playfulness her father had when he shifted into his wolf skin and she rode his back through the woods. Both were so full of love and life.
Her old life all came to an end when a scavenger pack killed them for not giving up their lands. She didn’t know why they spared her. All she remembered was the fear and loneliness, the feeling of blood on her hands when she tried to wake them up, and they wouldn’t move.
She’d been only five, but her father’s best friend and alpha of the Kala West Pack had taken her in. The rest of her parents’ small pack members either moved on or joined her Kala West. She became the alpha and his wife’s daughter, and she had an instant new family along with an older brother. Over the years, she took to calling them “Mom” and “Dad,” since they were the only ones she ever really knew.
Immediately, she learned that the Kala West Pack was made of fighters. She was loved and cared for, but they taught her what it meant to survive. It was what she needed, but at times it became too aggressive for her.
Danika’s refuge was the pier, a place where she could simply be herself and nothing more or less.
The serenity was nothing like the hunter her family wanted her to be all the time, the proud and strong future of the Kala West Pack. Her older brother was made for that. Hell, it was in his blood, even if it wasn’t in hers. Lance had been an alpha-in-training all his life.
Their father saw to that with the frequent wolf hunts and tracking shifts he made her brother take. He’d even forced him to hunt for deer one winter without the help of the pack. Lance wasn’t allowed to come back without a kill. He was gone for three days before he dragged a deer back home. To Danika, Lance was never the same after that. It was as if he’d left a pup and came back a strange wolf, no longer the brother who told stupid jokes to make her laugh or the risk-taker who took her on midnight runs with him when everyone else was asleep.
Her father had made an oath with the Tampa Pack alpha to secure their heritage and strengthen them from larger scavenger packs wanting their territories. When she asked her father about it later, he just said she would have to fulfill her duty in the years to come. It wasn’t until she heard her father talking with seventeen-year-old Lance that she realized she’d have to marry a boy she had never even met.
That’s when she ran away to her safe place, and that’s where she first saw him.
A boy who looked around her age was standing at the end of the pier and looking over the edge. His eyes were unlike anything she’d ever seen. They were gray, but the fading sunlight
made them look silver. His hair was dark brown and slightly curly. He was a person she could stare at for hours and not get bored looking.
She was under the water and peering back up at him, so she was almost certain he couldn’t see her. That didn’t stop him from looking through the water as if he knew she was down there, just beneath the surface.
His face was sad, and she had the biggest urge to emerge just to give him a hug and tell him not to worry anymore.
Then she realized he wasn’t alone. A man was yelling behind him. In her watery haven, she couldn’t hear anything, but she watched as the man lifted the boy up and over the banister until he was dangling over the side. He had him gripped by his leg and shirt.
She quickly moved closer to the pillars underneath the pier to stay out of sight as she emerged.
“Think you can talk back to me, you little bastard?” the man asked. “Huh?”
The boy looked nervous, but Danika noticed that fear didn’t take over. He seemed almost numb to what the man was doing to him.
“Next time you talk back, I’ll drop you over here,” the man continued. “I don’t care how much your mother loves you, you hear?”
The boy remained quiet.
“Nothing to say now, Foul Blood? Don’t tell me you’re stupid too!”
Rage filled Danika, and she wanted to shift and tear the man’s throat out. She began thinking of how she could get up the pier when the man yelled out.
“Shit!” he cried.
She saw the boy as he fell into the water in front of her. Instead of swimming, he just went under the surface.
Without thinking, she followed after him under the current. She saw his body fall downward into the dark depths. He didn’t struggle or thrash about. It was like he had given up before even attempting to save himself.
Why isn’t he fighting? she thought to herself.
Danika reached him and saw his eyes close just before she grabbed him. He was weightless under the water, so she pulled him up to the light with her.
It was easy to break the surface with him, since he didn’t fight against her, but it still felt like forever until they reached the shore.
She got him to the sand and dropped him on his back, but he didn’t move. Fear ripped through her. What could she do? She knew some people could breathe life back into others. She’d seen it in a movie once, but she had no idea where to start. Did she just breathe into him? That didn’t seem right.
Her hand touched his cheek and felt the warmth slowly fading away. If she didn’t do something soon, she was sure he would leave her. Although she didn’t know him, her heart hurt with that thought.
She leaned over his head, wondering how she was supposed to blow air into his mouth, when something weird happened.
His skin warmed where she touched him, and the drops of water on his skin vibrated. Then each droplet started to turn into an odd blue color, something Danika didn’t think even had a name. Every one of the drops merged together, making a large sheet of water that hovered over him. It was as if a force was pulling the water out of his body.
An odd sensation covered Danika, almost as if she vibrated with the water. She realized it wasn’t her. It was the boy, who she still had her hands on.
The boy’s mouth opened, and water floated out of him and merged with the hovering water.
In an instant, the boy’s eyes opened and the water cascaded onto the sand.
Danika jumped back in time to avoid it soaking her. She knew there were witches and warlocks in Kala West, but she’d never seen one use magic up close before. The boy had to be a water warlock for him to control that element. She knew that much from the lessons the teacher gave in the pack community.
The boy sat up and looked around, a daze filling those eyes that now had a silver glow to them. When they rested on her, he smiled.
She felt a fuzzy feeling in her tummy and couldn’t help but smile back.
“Blaine! Blaine!” The man who had knocked the boy off the pier was approaching them.
Danika felt a growl escape her lips. That man had almost killed the boy, and that was something she was going to rip him apart for.
“Go,” the boy said. “My stepfather doesn’t like shifters. He’ll hurt you if he sees you.”
“Let him try,” she said. “He might try to kill you again.”
“I’ll be fine. Promise. Now go. Please.”
Something about the way he said it made Danika scared to leave the boy alone with him, but she didn’t want to cause trouble for her family. They’d just made a pact with the witches and warlocks to have more lands in Kala West. If she harmed a warlock, it could ruin what her parents had done for expanding their pack.
She got up to leave him.
“Wait,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Danika.”
“Thank you, Danika,” Blaine said. “For helping me.”
She nodded and made her way to the bushes near the boardwalk before his stepfather came into view.
“There you are,” his stepfather said. “I thought you fell in. What the hell do you think you’re doing down here?”
“Sorry, Pete,” the boy said. “I just slipped. It’s my fault.”
“Damn right it’s your fault. Get up off the sand so we can go home. I’m hungry.”
Danika wanted to bite something off the man for being so cruel. Just one bite in the right place could end him, but she remained hidden until the two were long out of sight. Even in their absence she remembered the boy with bright silver eyes.
***
She saved him. Danika had saved him, and all Blaine could do was pray silently to the gods that Pete didn’t see her. She didn’t have to say she was a wolf shifter. He could smell the otherworldliness that covered her, a scent that he’d never encountered before, but his shifter half knew exactly what it was.
And then he saw her eyes. There was no magic there like the witches and warlocks he was used to being around. Instead, he saw the beast shift behind them. Pete had called for him, and she was ready to attack him. Then her growl confirmed it.
Danika couldn’t have seen Pete drop him on purpose, could she? The slip of Pete’s hands was so quick that even Blaine thought he’d imagined it. But his jerk of a stepfather had let him fall off the pier. He knew with everything in him that it was no accident.
When he lifted Blaine over the wooden banister, he thought Pete was just in another one of his drunken rages again and making empty threats. Sometimes the idiot was just a loud and mean drunk. Other times, he could get violent. Blaine was sure he knew how to sense the two.
Blaine’s mom had sent him out to find Pete and bring him home for dinner. He used his bike to go to his stepfather’s usual bar haunts, and Pete had been at one a few miles away. Of course the loser was wasting his mother’s hard-earned money on damn alcohol behind her back. Again. He was an errand runner for the Elemental Board, and he made money at it. According to Pete, it wasn’t enough, so he would take his mom’s paycheck and splurge it on booze. Blaine only found out after following him a couple of times.
This time though, Blaine had had enough. The man was using his mother. It didn’t matter how Pete treated him. Everyone hated that his warlock blood was mingled with that of a wolf shifter. He was used to the teasing and taunting at school, and had accepted the nasty looks teachers gave him.
Pete’s hatred toward him even became normal. When he threatened to tell his mother what Pete was doing with her money, Pete snapped and chased Blaine all the way to the pier, where Blaine thought he’d lost him.
“You think you can turn your back on me, you half-breed punk?” Pete snapped behind him.
Blaine didn’t bother turning around. Instead, he tried to tune him out. That worked best. Otherwise, the beatings came.
Maybe if he held really still, he’d get annoyed and walk away. Blaine gripped the pier banister tightly until his fingers hurt, and he almost felt each granule of wood dig into his skin.
P
ete slapped him upside the back of his head. “You hear me talking to you!”
“Asshole,” Blaine muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” Pete asked.
The man reeked of old alcohol. Pete moved closer to Blaine until his beer breath crawled down Blaine’s neck and made him want to gag.
Don’t move, Blaine thought to himself. Act like you don’t exist. He already does. Maybe he’ll just go away.
That’s when Blaine saw something move under the water, or more like someone move. The water was blue, but not completely clear to see all the way down to the bottom. He was positive he saw a figure down there. Was it a girl?
“Think you can talk back to me, you little bastard?” Pete asked. “Huh?”
Blaine glanced back at Pete for only a few seconds before staring back down at the water. Whatever it was no longer drifted below the surface, and he saw no sign of life in the depths below.
That’s when he felt Pete lift him over the banister, gripping his shirt collar and his leg. They were too far out for anyone to see or even care about what was happening to him, so Blaine was on his own. He wouldn’t scream or show fear. Not in front of him. He wouldn’t give Pete the satisfaction of a reaction.
Did it even matter? His mother saw Pete as the center of her universe, so she wouldn’t care if her eldest son died. Not if she had Pete.
And Baxter? Well, Pete treated him more like a son than Blaine, probably because Pete fathered Baxter. Not once did he hit him. No punishments for the prodigal son. His half-brother would be fine without him. Everyone would.
Pete’s hands choking him through the tightened collar and angry threats of letting him drown didn’t make Blaine struggle against him. He felt sorry for him more than anything. He was sorry for his poor mother, who knew what a deadbeat she’d married but refused to accept it and remained in denial. Sorry for Baxter, who trusted too easily and saw Pete as a good father.
The Alpha Warlocks' Own: An Alpha Warlocks of Kala West Story #3 (A BWWM and BBW Paranormal Ménage Romance) Page 12