Hunting Hearts (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  Hunting Hearts (Trilogy Bundle)

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Melissa F. Hart. All rights reserved worldwide.

  No part of this book may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  http://www.melissafhart.com/

  Books in the series

  The Book of Unbound Chains - Volume 1

  Dreams of a Restless Sleep - Volume 2

  The Wolf Released - Volume 3

  ***

  Synopsis

  Book One: The Book of Unbound Chains

  Tara spends her days teaching at the local college and her nights dreaming of something more, but she never thought that picking up a strange old book at a used bookstore could change her life like this! Before she knew it, there were monstrous winged creatures knocking on her door, and the handsome but mysterious werewolf Mads Magnussen coming through her window!

  Tara's careless purchase sets off a chain of events that put her body and her heart to the test, and soon she realizes that there is far more to the world than she has ever considered.

  Book Two: Dreams of a Restless Sleep

  Thrust into the middle of an ancient conflict between werewolves and the beings who call themselves angels, Tara has learned to face dangers that she never knew existed. Now she has sworn to help the werewolf leader Mads Magnussen wake up the ferocious Fenrisulfir, the legendary leader of his kind, but along the way, she realizes that Mads may not be telling her the whole truth.

  As if that wasn't enough, now they are faced by the formidable being known as the Three in One, and Tara soon sees that some of her greatest enemies come from inside her own heart and soul.

  Book Three: The Wolf Released

  Mads and Tara's journey has taken them to the heart of Scotland, the ancestral home of Mads' people. As they come closer and closer to their goal of waking the wolf, Tara comes to understand that her heart will always belong to Mads, but what does Mads most desire? Their love burns as bright as a bonfire, but there are dark shadows on Mads' heart, ones that could destroy them both.

  As Tara and Mads approach an end to their hunt, and as the angels close in. Tara is forced to see Mads for who he is. Now she has a choice to make: will she stay by his side, or must she find a way to free herself with the help of an enigmatic winged man who calls himself Lukas?

  ***

  Table of Contents

  The Book of Unbound Chains

  Dreams of a Restless Sleep

  The Wolf Released

  ***

  The Book of Unbound Chains

  ***

  It all began in a bookstore.

  The day should have been perfect. It was a bright and warm day, she had just finished grading her students' final papers, and the university itself was buzzing with the energy of being finally free of a cold wet spring. It was the perfect day, unless you were Professor Tara Roth, who had previously dated the man who was making his way down the street toward her with a gorgeous blonde on his arm.

  Tara, who had had nothing on her mind besides possibly lunch at her favorite Thai place, felt a blush of panic and shame creep up over her face, and before she knew it, she had dodged in the doors of the used bookstore.

  As the heavy door closed behind her and she watched her ex pass by with her replacement on his arm, she sighed at herself. It was a little silly to be this distraught over a relationship that had lasted only a few months, but she’d had a good feeling that had turned out, as it so often had, to be false.

  “Oh, Tara dear, welcome back. Are you looking for more cookbooks?”

  Mrs. Pillson was the elderly proprietor of the used bookstore, and she smiled kindly at the young woman who stood so sadly in the entryway.

  Tara Roth was twenty-eight, but with her slender figure, round face, and mass of ash-blond curls, she could have passed easily for one of her own students. She tried to dress up in skirts, leggings and cardigans, but she always had the sneaking suspicion that she looked like a little girl playing dress up.

  She shook her head at Mrs. Pillson, who had a habit of lightly mothering everyone who came in the door.

  “No, I'm still working my way through the last one I bought, but thank you. Is there anything new?”

  Tara figured that even if her love life was doomed to end in with a whimper rather than a bang, her fantasy life didn't have to. She was an avid reader and had been since she was a child. It led to her life-long love of language and words, and eventually, to a scholarship to study ancient linguistics in France.

  She drifted toward the New Arrivals cart that Mrs. Pillson pointed out and ran her finger haphazardly across the spines of elderly romances and self-help books. She was wondering if she was looking at her future, spent entirely in used bookstores and take-out Thai when she blinked and noticed something different.

  The book was small but thick, and to her surprise, it seemed to be bound in genuine leather. There was no name on the spine, but when she opened it up, she was greeted by a vivid red illustration of a dragon chained to a pillar, surrounded by words she thought she recognized.

  It had the look and feel of some of the manuscripts she had worked with, the ones from the very earliest days of printing, but she knew that was foolishness. Those books were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was a faint sticky spot on this book where Mrs. Pillson had probably scraped off an old price sticker. Still, it was odd and the leather cover was attractive, so she brought it up to the front.

  “Oh, that's part of that strange lot that came in the other day,” said Mrs. Pillson, checking the price she had lightly penciled into the front cover. “Hm, I said ten for this, but we'll just say five for you, dear.”

  Tara smiled, because if Mrs. Pillson continued to treat her like a broke college student, she wasn't going to complain too loudly.

  She only remembered the book after she had finished her dinner that night. There was still a chilly bite to the spring air, and she was cozily wrapped in a blanket on the couch. Turning off the television, she fetched the book from its plastic bag and opened it curiously.

  Now that she was looking at it much more closely, she realized that it was indeed very old. Her area of expertise was in the words, not the pages that they were written on, however, so she turned her attention to them instead.

  It was not Latin or Coptic, as she had assumed, but instead it was a code, one used by a group of people who considered themselves wizards. They were known as the Sybelline Brotherhood, and she had done her thesis on them just four years ago. An odd shock ran down her spine as she realized that this must be a piece of writing from the same group that she had spent so much time researching.

  They were strange men, convinced that they held the keys to the universe, and now, she was holding something that she was becoming more and more certain was part of their library. Her excitement rose, and she hastily opened her laptop, consulting her notes on their strange code. There were perhaps five people in the world who would have even known where to start when confronted with this book, and Tara was one of them.

  In a fever of excitement, she wrote down the words that she saw in the book, typing them hastily onto her computer. She was so consumed by the act of
translation that she didn't even look up to see what she had until she had finished.

  “For the freeing of things once caged, and for setting right the wrongs that have been done...” she murmured in confusion. Deep inside her, she felt a cold shiver, something that chilled her to her fingertips.

  Things are changing, she thought incoherently, and for a moment, Tara was almost frightened.

  The moment passed, and she started to laugh at her own silliness. The Sybelline Brotherhood was a group of rich men with too much time on their hands, she reminded herself. They had produced some fascinating works, and they offered a glimpse into the mystical minds of the era, but no matter what fantasies they spun, they meant nothing in the new era. She knew this.

  The knock on the door nearly made her jump straight out of her blankets. Then she remembered that a knock meant that there was someone at the door and, pulling her robe over pajamas, she went to investigate.

  Her hand was just on the knob when her window exploded inwards. The shattering glass was terrifyingly loud, and she instinctively threw herself to the ground, covering her head with her arms. When she looked up, she realized that she was completely unhurt, but now there was a wild-looking man standing in her living room.

  He was tall enough that he seemed like a giant in her home, and she froze as his startlingly bright blue eyes roved the room. He saw her crouched by the door, and with a sound like a bestial growl, he strode toward her as she tried desperately to push herself to her feet.

  His hand clamped like an iron band around her shoulder, hauling her to her feet, and he loomed over her, menace etched in ever line of his body.

  “Where is it?” he growled. “You have it; you must tell me where it is.”

  Gulping back a whimper of fear, Tara tried to tell him that her purse and her wallet were on the table, that he should take it as long he left her alone, but she couldn't make the words come out. Her voice shivered and shook, and for a brief moment, the intruder looked almost repentant.

  He started to speak, but then the knocking at her door came again. No, not knocking, pounding, and to Tara's shock, she saw the door, heavy and steel, start to bend inwards.

  The man swore in a language that Tara's distracted mind recognized as Scandinavian of some sort and thrust her behind him.

  “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “Damn me for a fool but I have led them right to you.”

  She knew that she should be running to her bedroom where she could lock the door, or that she should take her chances going through the window that had been broken. Instead, she skittered back and away, unable to take her eyes off the man who was staring so ferociously at her door.

  “Come on, come on, you feathery son of a bitch.”

  The man crouched like an angry animal, and as they both waited, the door bent further and further until one final blow flattened it, revealing the thing behind it.

  Tara caught a glimpse of wings tall enough to brush her ceiling, and a face that was ruined with scars before the thing was borne to the ground by a snarling whirlwind of fur and teeth.

  Her brain refused to believe what her eyes told her. Where there had been a man, there was now a wolf, and it hit the thing in the door with a demented snarl. She was frozen to the spot, unable to do anything, unable to breathe or scream or call for help, but then she saw the winged being wrestle the wolf to the ground. The menacing growls turned to a pained, choked howl, and now she acted on instinct alone.

  It took two steps to the large heavy vase on the table, and three steps to the fight on the ground. With a calm and grace that would always surprise her in years to come, she brought the heavy vase down hard on the winged thing’s head. The vase shattered into a thousand shards, and the winged thing uttered a startled shriek that sounded like sharpened nails over chalkboard.

  It drew away for a moment, giving the wolf enough of a chance to bound to its feet and chase it again. The winged being seemed to decide that that was enough, and in a flurry of feathers that dragged a cold wind into the room, it plunged out the window and was gone.

  The adrenaline that had been holding Tara up let go abruptly, and she wound up on the floor, her teeth chattering hard. She couldn't seem to keep her eyes open, and the next thing she was aware of was a pair of warm, strong hands wrapping around her shoulder.

  “Oh, hell below,” the man swore. “Are you hurt? Did that bastard harm you?”

  He’s back. The wolf is gone and he is back.

  She shook her head as best she could, but she couldn't make herself speak. The man stared at her, confused and concerned, and it occurred to her that he was quite handsome. He was clean-shaven, with features that were perhaps a little too rugged to be conventionally handsome, and his mouth, even when twisted into a worried frown, was almost shockingly sensual. His hair, she could see now, was a deep brown, cut too long for fashion, and with just a hint of a curl at the ends. He filled up the space like a stone, solid, immoveable and strong, but she had seen how fast he had moved, and how powerful he was.

  She was too shocked and cold to do much more than whimper when he lifted her up in his arms, and then all she could do was be grateful for his warmth and the solid bulk of him against her.

  “I'm sorry, precious, but we have to move,” he said urgently. “That coward's gone, but his friends will be back, and though I wish to god you could take them all out with pottery, that just won't work.”

  She chuckled a little dryly at his words, but even that took enough effort that she fell silent, burrowing into his comforting warmth. The smell of him was warm and woodsy, and underneath it, there was something so elementally male she couldn't resist a soft sigh.

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue to get her attention, and when she looked up, he nodded.

  “This is important, love,” he said softly. “Where's the book?”

  In all of the fright and fear of the past few minutes, she had forgotten about the book that seemed to cause it all. After a blank moment, she pointed at the table, where the leather-bound volume sat so innocently, unharmed by the flying glass.

  The man who held her so carefully picked it up with reverence, sliding it into the inner pocket of his long leather coat, and with nothing more than that, he leaped out the broken window, carrying her safe and sound in his arms.

  ***

  When she woke up, Tara had dim memories of moving with great speed, of being carried by a man who seemed unnaturally strong, and of feeling almost shockingly safe. The remnants of those memories clung to her when she awoke, and it took her a few moments to realize that she wasn't in her own bed at all.

  Instead, she realized that she was sleeping on what felt like a feather mattress, tucked tight under a thick quilt that smelled of pine and sage. Startled, she sat up, and by the light of the fireplace nearby, she saw the shape of the man who had taken her.

  “Who... who are you?” she asked, her voice stumbling and small. She staggered to her feet, relieved to see that she was still wearing her flannel pajamas. She took a few lurching steps toward the man, suddenly furious, and he held his hands up.

  “I'm not going to hurt you,” he said softly, and she could sense real regret in his voice. “I'm sorry that what happened last night occurred, but if I hadn't stepped in, it would have been a lot worse, believe me.”

  Tara shuddered at the thought of the scarred, winged thing that had broken down her door, shaking her head.

  “This isn't real,” she muttered, pressing her hand against her throbbing head. “This can't be real.”

  “I'm very much afraid it is,” he said, stepping a little closer to her. “And I am sorry to say that you are right in the middle of it.”

  “I haven't done anything...” Tara trailed off when she realized how close he was. She should have been frightened out of her wits, but instead, this man's presence made her feel safe. She resisted the urge to reach up and pet him, pulling her hand back at the last minute, and his lips twitched in a quick smile as if he knew exactly what
she was thinking.

  “I haven't done anything wrong,” she continued lamely, retreating to sit back on the bed.

  It was probably the wrong move because he came to sit down next to her on it. In all fairness, there did not seem to be any other chairs in the room. The mattress dipped under his weight and now she was imagining how it would feel to lie down with him on it.

  “You haven't,” he agreed, looking at her with those bright blue eyes. “You've just been dragged into the center of something that by all rights should have nothing to do with you.”

  “And what is that?” she asked archly. She did her best to ignore how much she liked the way he tilted his head to listen to her and how the lines of his body made her want to touch him. He had stripped out of the leather coat, and now she could see how broad his shoulders were and how thickly muscled he was dressed only in a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans that looked as if they had been painted on.

  “A war,” he said, after a long moment. From the suddenly hungry look in his eyes, she thought he could feel the attraction between them too, and he levered himself off of the bed, going to pace on the floor instead.

  “My name is Mads Magnussen, the alpha of the Cairn Rock pack,” he said.

  “Pack...” Tara murmured. “Like wolves?”

  “Close. Men who walk as wolves sometimes.”

  Her memory flashed back to something that she had been sure was a hallucination, to the wolf that growled so terrifyingly and defended her from the winged monster she had seen.

  “That's impossible,” she stuttered, staring at the man who called himself Mads, and he smiled slightly. It transformed the lines of his face, giving him a look of such sweetness that for a moment her breath was taken away.