Contents
Dedication
Copywrite
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Epilogue
Author Notes
Nicole
By
Sherry Foster
Dedication
To the family I adore,
my friends who keep me sane,
and the readers who love to read.
A special thanks to the man who
continues to believe in me.
I have some incredible readers.
I want to thank each and every one
of them for reading these books.
A special thanks to the JIT team
Kimberley Devine
Ellie Brearley
Melanie Robinson
If I missed anyone I am terribly sorry.
This book is a work of fiction.
All of the Characters, organizations, events,
and places portrayed in this novel are products
of the author's overactive imagination.
Copyright © 2019 Sherry Foster
DAS Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means.
ASIN: B07RTN3DNY
If you want to stay up to date on what is happening in the series join me on face book at
https://www.facebook.com/SafeHavenWolves/
Chapter One
“Well?” Nicole spun slowly around while trying to keep her eyes on her parents. She looked from them to the wedding dress before turning her attention back to the couple in front of her. “Isn’t it beautiful? Do you think Drew will like it?”
“Honey, it is beautiful and Drew will love it.” Pride shown from Kim’s eyes as she looked at her eldest daughter. She felt worry waft from her mate before his voice pierced their bond.
We need to go. Get her back in her regular clothes and take the small ones with you, I smell others. I will try to figure out who they are and get rid of them.
She is waiting for your approval on the dress, Cameron.
“You will be the second most beautiful bride to ever walk down the aisle. And if Drew doesn’t like it, well I can break his legs for you.”
“Dad! I don’t want his legs broken. Do you like the dress? You aren’t just saying that are you?”
“No Nicole, I love the dress. Now, go change, we have to go.” He tilted his head toward the door with a grimace before looking down at at Chris and Sammy.
Nicole felt his worry and eyes wide, glanced toward the door before whirling around and almost running toward the dressing room. Six more days and she would be forever safe from those who would use her. Her family needed six more days. With her marriage to a non-shifter she would be free of the scent and free of the worry. Her dad would only have little Samantha to hide after she was married.
Kim watched Cameron as he stood at the door of the dress shop and searched the mall. He warned them coming to such an open place could lead to trouble but their daughter had fallen in love with a dress she found online from the store. She knew the only reason her mate gave in to the pleas of his daughter was due to guilt. They had discussed the situation many times and in the end the choice had been Nicole’s. The guilt didn’t go away though. They knew her choice to marry outside the shifter race meant she would never know the joy of racing against her mate under a full moon. She would never know the freedom of her wolf. She would never have the bond between mates and Cameron was finding it harder and harder to let go as the wedding day got closer. He felt the decision was a mistake. They both worried Nicole didn’t understand what she was giving up to marry a man with no wolf. After Nicole and Drew married Cameron had decided they would petition an Alpha they knew about to join his pack. Cameron had gotten the name years ago but hadn’t wanted to move so far from where they called home. He had tested a few packs over the decades but they always fell short of his expectations so he kept his family clear of them. He could see the rogues in the packs. After Sammy was born he had stayed clear of all packs. He had a seeker’s sight so he could see the aura of blackness to the rogues and usually he was able to avoid them before they were close enough to smell him. He had the training to rid the world of the ones he could not avoid and he knew ridding the world of rogues was the right thing to do so he lost no sleep over the few he had taken out over the years.
He told Kim he was tired of having to be alert and aware all the time. He wanted Sammy and Chris to be able to frolic in a pack with others of their kind. He wanted them to be able to go outside without him having to check first to make sure the area was clear of rogues. He had done all the investigating he could concerning the Alpha in Alaska and he was reluctantly prepared to move his family if they were accepted into the pack. He had plans on top of plans and for the last few weeks had checked daily with Nicole trying to convince her to break off her engagement with Drew in favor of moving to Alaska and becoming part of a pack. He worried constantly about being accepted. When he had first found out about the shifter in Alaska he had made a phone call and asked the man if he would accept him and his mate into the pack. He hadn’t mentioned they had two daughters. Every pack in the world would take in a shifter with two daughters, but that didn’t mean the rest of the family would be given the opportunity to take the oath. He had to have a safe pack who would take him and his mate, with the pack oath, before he mentioned the two females he and his wife had.
The man, Gammon, had been abrupt in his refusal to take the family. But Cameron had learned a few things since then and he was almost certain the Alpha could be brought around. Females were rarer than he and Kim had realized in the beginning. In all his forays into other packs he had found no other families with two females and rumor had it less and less females were born each year. According to what he had been able to find out only females in large packs with lots of security had female children. He didn’t believe the truth of that rumor but he couldn’t deny females were hard to find. He and Kim appeared to be a rarity among the shifters with two daughters. He often wondered if it was because of his seeker sight. According to others Gammon had a refuge for females, a school of sorts and took in all females. The deciding factor for Cameron wasn’t that the man took in all females who petitioned him for safety, it was the fact when the female reached mating age she had the option of returning to her pack to try to find a mate or trying to find one from another pack. One of the packs he had checked out had a female who had returned from Alaska and settled down in the pack. He was moments away from requesting his family be allowed to join the pack when he had caught sight of the black shadow that seemed to cling to a man going into a small coffee shop. He had broken off his conversation with the Alpha and returned to his family. They had left the area within the hour and hadn’t looked back.
Now in six days he would watch his daughter exchange vows with a human and he would mourn for the loss she would never realize.
Chapter Two
“Come on Sammy baby hold still and let me comb your hair. Look at the pretty bow I picked out for you to wear tomorrow. If you will be super good I can get your hair braided for bed.” Nicole glanced over at her brother to make certain he was in bed before turning her attention back to her baby sister. Since that disastrous day at the mall everyone had been on pins and needles worried rogues would track them. She supposed at least one had since her dad had gone out later that night and returned with spots of blood on his shoes. Most daughters would never even notice but she had and she knew the blood was shed to keep her and her baby sister safe. She hated being a shifter female and contrary to what her dad believed she would be glad to get rid of any trace of the wolf. She wanted a normal life filled with normal dangers. None of this covering your smell and trying to watch everything and everyone all the time because you could be kidnapped at any moment.
She thought it possible she would feel differently if she could see the blackness her dad talked about. But she couldn’t smell someone till they were too close to run from them, and she couldn’t know their intentions until it was too late. Being mated didn’t matter to the rogues anymore, not if you were young. She wasn’t going to live life always looking over her shoulder and wondering if just being a shifter would get her husband killed.
Tucking her sister into bed she leaned over and kissed her forehead then turned to Drew patiently waiting at the foot of the bed. She reached out her hand and caught his and tugged him toward the door.
When they walked into the living room her dad looked up from his book, “Last time, are the two of you sure you are ready to get married? Don’t you want to date for a few more years first?”
“Dad!” Nicole shook her head in exasperation, “We are getting married tomorrow and that is final. We get married, head off on our honeymoon and you and mom take Sammy and Chris and go visit our family in Alaska. That is the plans and we are not changing our part of them. Are you sure you and mom want to go stay in Alaska? You know the two of you will probably be popsicles before the end of the year right? It gets like 40 degrees below zero there and stays dark for months at a time.”
“So Mr. C., how much of your family live in Alaska? Every time I ask Nicole about your family there she changes the subject almost like she is hiding something. I have to admit, it worries me a bit. I mean, we already know you have to be insane to live in those kind of temperatures but I gotta know, does the insanity run through your family?” Drew laughed, “Not that I don’t already know Nicole is crazy, part of the reason I love her so much. I never know what she will come up with next. Keeps me on my toes.”
“She has never met any of our family from Alaska. We have one branch of the family up there but none of us have actually met any of them. But family and all, you know how that goes. I figure we need to get to know other branches of our family.”
“But you will be coming back here later right? You were not serious about moving away and leaving Nicole with no family around were you?” Drew sent a penetrating looked toward Cameron.
“No son. I mean yes we are serious and no we will not be returning. Nicole will always be welcome to visit us. We are not turning our backs on her. Besides, we are not leaving her without any family, she will be staying with her husband. Newly weds need time to build a life together and grow as a family. I think I can trust you to love her and care for her for the next fifty or sixty years or maybe seventy years. Her mother and I hope the two of you have many children and grandchildren over the years. Who knows, the two of you may visit us and fall in love with the area and move. We would love to watch our grandchildren grow but we think the most important thing, at this point, is for the two of you to grow as a family.”
“I see, so all the furniture and things in this house, you are just going to give it to the two of us and walk away? I don’t understand.”
Cameron dipped his head down to look with unseeing eyes at the book he held in his lap. When he lifted his head moisture pooled in his eyes as he told the young man, “The things in the house are just that, things. When you look inside your home and all you see are things you don’t have a family, you have possessions. With the exception of my daughter, who choose you, everything important in my life will move with me. Nicole will always be my daughter, but from tomorrow on she will be your wife. She won’t be my little girl after tomorrow, she will be a completely different person. She doesn’t realize the impact getting married will mean to her and her future, but we do. We support her choice. Kim and I have two more children to raise and to care for and we think the best choice for their future is in Alaska. So yes, the paperwork has been done putting the house in Nicole’s name, we have packed our things in the trailer, and tomorrow when the two of you fly out on your honeymoon we will pull up stakes and move. The choice wasn’t easy. When you have children you will find sometimes you make choices for the family you never dreamed of making. I hope the choices the two of you make along the way are the right ones.”
Chapter Three
Nicole listened in terror to the men. Some of the things they said made no sense. She thought, at first, the men had found them because of the outing they had the week before when she went to the store to try on her wedding dress. But the comments from some of the men made it sound as though someone had told them about the family. They came looking for her specifically by name and they knew the layout of the house. She had been hiding in the attic when the men found her. She had listened as the men killed her mother and father. She fought hard to keep them from taking her. She had the upper ground and a bat, but in the end the men had overwhelmed her. She thought she got at least one before going down. She tried to keep her screams to a minimum. Her parents had told her if anything every happened stay as calm as possible for the sake of the other two. If they didn’t hear screams maybe they would stay quiet in their hiding place. She thought her parents had died as quietly as they could, but they had not gone down without a fight. She didn’t know where Drew was, he had to have heard all the noise from the fighting but she had not heard his voice. They either got him in his sleep or they had not found him yet. She hoped he managed to get away, maybe through a window or something. She wished she had not gotten him to spend the night, he would be safe at their future home if not for her.
Bound and gagged in the back of the van they had thrown her in she listened to the men. She sagged in relief when she heard them start the van and tears trickled down her face when the van jolted into motion. She had no idea how long they had been traveling when the call came through the speakers on the van. The voice on the other end of the call was one she knew as well as she knew her own family. But apparently the man on the other end was not one she knew at all. She listened in shock and horror to the man she was suppose to marry in a few hours as he checked with the men to make sure they had gotten all the monsters. Numb with pain, she barely registered when he told the men about her brother and sister. He didn’t know where the hiding place was but he did tell them they should turn around and go back to find the children. She felt the van stop and when it changed directions she began to scream through the gag.
Tears tracked down her face as she realized the man she loved had given them up to the real monsters. She struggled against the bonds holding her but the more she struggled the tighter they felt. An eternity later the van stopped and all but one of the men left. The blow when it fell rocked her head back against the side of the van. Pain exploded through her. Squinting against the pain she stared at the man kneeling down beside her as he hissed at her to shut up and be still. Fear filled eyes followed the man as he stepped outside. She struggled to breathe against the gag as her crying caused stuffiness in her head.
Bound and gagged she waited helplessly for the other men to find her brother and sister. She hoped they fail but her hope proved to be in vain. The
men were not gentle when they threw the her brother and sister inside with her. Chris tried to free her but one of the men saw him and backhanded him. When he placed her head in his lap and worked the gag free she took deep breaths and the encroaching blackness faded away.
Chapter Four
“Hush Sammy, shhhh, everything will be okay. Don’t cry. Daddy said we have to be quiet and very still.” Chris stoked his baby sister’s hair while he fumbled with the phone. The house had been quiet for a while and he needed to make the phone call. His dad had given him the directions on what to do many times. Turn on the phone and find the G and call. His dad has assured him a man named Mr. Gammon would answer the phone. He could probably make the call in his sleep he had practiced so many times. It was truthfully one of the only things he knew how to do with the phone other than turn the volume down.
He listened to the phone ring a couple of times before a gruff voice answered,
“Yeah what do you want?”
“Mr. Gammon?” His dad had not said the man would sound so mean. Maybe he woke him up.
“This is Gammon.”
“Mr. Gammon, we need help. Please, help us.” Chris tried to sound brave but his voice quivered and broke.
“Sweetheart helping is what I do. But where are you and how can I help you? What’s wrong?”
“Some men came and killed mommy and daddy. Daddy hid me and Sammy in the bathroom under the floor and then he used the bathroom and he didn’t even flush.”
“He said his stinky would hide us.” Sammy whispered.
“Where are you now baby? Do you know your address?” The man on the other end of the phone didn’t sound mean anymore and Chris wanted to cry with relief. But he couldn’t afford to cry. He had used a rag earlier to stuff in Samantha’s mouth to keep her quiet, he had stuffed one in his own mouth. But the man on the other end of the phone said helping people was what he did and Chris had to believe that.
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