His Kind of Beautiful (Carlisi Familia Book 2)

by Maia Dylan

  The two men spoke quietly for a few more minutes and then Gavrill left. Tony lay quietly while his mind whirled with what Gavriil had said. Tonight, they had won the battle, but the war was far from over. There would be losses on both sides, but Tony was determined to keep his woman safe.

  “Tony?”

  He glanced down at the angel in his arms, who was staring sleepily up at him. “You’re not sleeping. Are you okay?”

  “I have you in my arms, bellezza mia, everything is right in my world.”

  He’d once told her that she was his kind of beautiful, and that would never change. She was everything to him, and she was his. And Tony would thank every deity he knew for that for the rest of his life.

  The End

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  BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER

  SHIFTING GEARS

  Blackwater Falls, 1

  Maia Dylan

  Copyright © 2018

  Chapter One

  Ryker Barrett was pissed. Hell, he was more than pissed. He was verging on raging homicidal, and there was only one wolf shifter in his sights. It didn’t take a damn psychic to guess who that was. There might currently be four of the mongrel bastards standing in wolf form in front of him, but there was only one fucker standing as a human, holding one of Ryker’s clan around the throat with a partially shifted claw. They all stood on the road that marked the boundary between Ashford Pack lands and the lands he and his bear clan called home. The sight of blood sliding freely down the side of Jake’s throat had Ryker’s bear growling with barely suppressed rage within him.

  “You wanted to speak to me, Ash, all you had to do was call.” Ryker strode right to the middle of the road with his brother, Bastian, right behind him, ignoring the growled warnings of the wolves that flanked their Alpha. “We could have had a nice little chat, and there would have been little to no bloodshed. Now, that’s off the table.”

  The wolf Alpha sneered at him, his lip curling back of his teeth. “You think that was ever really on the table, Barrett? Hell. No. You have been avoiding this for too fucking long, and I was sick of waiting. I want you and your kind out of Blackwater Falls, and I want you out now.”

  “Get used to disappointment,” Bastian said with an air of boredom to his tone. “We have all had to live with it for the past three decades. We’ve avoided nothing. There is a treaty in place, dog, and there is no changing that.”

  Ash’s eyes flashed. “That treaty was the only thing keeping us from tearing you all to pieces and taking back what is rightfully ours. Chubbuck is dead.” Ryker knew that the head of the shifter council had passed into the arms of his ancestors three days ago. He and his clan had felt the loss as all shifter nations throughout the world would have. “With his death, that sham of a treaty dies with him.”

  Ryker tilted his head to level a gaze at the man. “I’m not so sure that’s true, but is that really what you want, Ash? You want the Ashford Pack to go to war with the Blackwater Clan?”

  “Too damn right I do!” Ash yelled, his face turning an interesting shade of purple. “That treaty gave you all the rights to live in Blackwater and drove my pack out into the damn woods. You were given ownership of lands rich with natural resources worth millions of dollars, and yet it sits untouched and wasted. You have the potential to live like kings, while we live in squalor. Your fathers stole the right to that town from mine, and I can no longer allow that to continue. It is a matter of honor!”

  “Honor?” Ryker said incredulously. “I find it astounding that you stand there and use the word ‘honor’, and yet you still threaten a nine-year-old boy who has never done anything to you or your pack. Jake, you okay?”

  The young bear shifter, still very much a cub to their clan, was pale and shaken, but nodded his head as much as he could with Ash’s fingers closed around his throat. Despite the fear that lingered in the young boy’s eyes, there were defiance and anger there, too, and that made Ryker proud. “Yeah, Alpha, I’m okay.”

  “See, the cub is fine,” Ash said with a dismissive wave of his free hand that had Ryker’s bear growling with displeasure.

  Ryker stepped forward, letting loose a wave of dominance that only an Alpha could. He watched dispassionately as the wolves that stood to the right and left of Ash all dropped their heads and swayed beneath the weight of it. “You have a very distorted view of history, Ash. One that I will be only too happy to rectify for you, but I have a feeling you aren’t here to simply advise us that you’re turning your back on the treaty your fathers signed thirty years ago.”

  Ash grinned. “I have been keeping track of you and your people, Barrett. You have a clan of twelve left in that town. Six adult males other than you and your brother. All of them having seen too many summers, and none of them near dominant enough to be of any threat to my pack. Three women,” the disdain in his tone was clear, “and three cubs. There is no one in your ranks with the ability or dominance to succeed you, at least not yet, and you have yet to sire an heir. And without that damned treaty, we can act without interference from the council. I reckon if we cut off the head of the clan, the rest will crumble without much of a fight.”

  Ryker’s bear began to pace within him and his skin began to feel too tight, a clear sign that he was close to pushing for control. He wanted to rip Ash limb from limb for daring to suggest his clan was weak. The shit of it all was that their numbers were few. Bear shifters needed to roam, and it took finding their fated mate to ground them. When that happened, the fates would lead them to the lands they would call home. Sometimes it was their familial clan lands, sometimes not. For Blackwater Falls, that meant that the other males in his clan, those closest to his age, were still roaming.

  Ash’s expression twisted into one that gleamed with bloodlust. “In a move typical of your arrogance, you came out here with no one but your brother for support. Just as I suspected that you would.” The forest behind Ash filled with growls and snarls, but Ryker didn’t even flinch as at least another ten shifters in wolf form stepped out, stalking closer to the road.

  Ryker’s gaze never wavered from Ash’s. “Let the boy go, and then we can get on to that history lesson I promised you.”

  “We won’t hide behind a cub,” Ash spat as he pushed Jake away, and he stumbled, but never went down. The look Jake shot back at Ash was one that Ryker read well. The young boy wanted retribution.

  “Head on home, Jake,” Bastian said as he reached out to pull Jake behind him, and pushed him in the direction of town.

  “But, Alpha, I can—”

  “No,” Ryker said, his voice filled with dominance. “You will go home to your parents. Now.”

  Jake chuffed low in his chest, his bear clearly unhappy with the order, but turned and headed back to town. When he reached the other side of the road, he stopped and looked back at them for a moment before sprinting into the forest, no doubt heading home to bring help, not knowing that the clan were already on their way. Ash might think Ryker arrogant, and truth be told, he had more than his fair share of arrogance within him. But he was most definitely not stupid.

  “So, I guess now it’s time for that history lesson.” Ryker strode forward to stand within arm’s reach of the wolf Alpha, his brother right behind him. “You and your pack,” Ryker spat the last word with all the contempt he felt inside, “never had any rights to Blackwater Falls. It has always been home to me and mine. A forced bond never gave you any rights to the land, the resources, or anything beyond this highway.” He sensed the snarling and growling wolves moving to flank him, surrounding them on that strip of neutral highway, and knew Bastian had moved to stand back to back with him.

  “You and your brother will die here and now. With no other Alpha in
your ranks, your clan will crumble into oblivion. Blackwater will be ours, as it should have always been,” Ash growled, and in a shimmer of air, and to the sound of snapping bones and ripping material that always accompanied a shift, he became his wolf. Shifter wolves were a lot larger than their natural brethren and would drive fear into anyone unfamiliar with the shifter world.

  “Then the war between us begins,” Ryker snarled as he called to his bear and welcomed the pain of the shift.

  ****

  Blackwater Falls, thirty miles.

  Hannah Browne grinned at the sign that announced how close she was to her final destination. She had been on the road for the past three days, taking her time with the journey and enjoying the cross-country trip with every town she passed through. It had been a long time since she had taken her 1970 Chevy El Camino SS out on the highway for a decent run, and the past three days she had enjoyed every mile the V8 ate up.

  She wound the window down and breathed in the Wyoming mountain air, taking the chill of it as deep into her lungs as she could. This was what it felt like to be free, and she relished the feeling. This was a new start for her. An opportunity to shift gears had presented itself, and she was going to take a hold of it with both hands and never let it go. After everything she had been through in the last five years, all the sacrifice and the loss, this was the start of the chapter in her life that was going to be all about her.

  “That’s right, Daddy,” Hannah shouted aloud. “Your baby girl is starting her new life as of today and living it just how you always wanted me to!”

  Her excitement level began to increase, and hearing one of her favorite songs starting up, she reached out to turn up her car stereo. She started singing along with Meryl Streep as loud as she could, not something she would ever do with anyone else in the car, but when it was just her, her Chevy, and the open road, it was almost a sin not to. There was something about the open road, music blaring, and a sweet, sweet ride that really brought out the—

  “Motherfucker! Shit, oh shit!” She wrenched on the wheel, turning off the road as hard as she could, aiming her beloved Chevy into the trees that lined the highway.

  She slammed her foot on the brake, but as soon as the truck’s eighteen-inch tires met the gravel on the roadside, any hope of stopping before she made impact was lost. The truck left the road and might have actually caught a little air before it plunged into the forest. The trees loomed large in the windshield, and she knew she was about to write off her prized possession. But no one could blame her for her actions. When she had rounded that corner, two men had been standing in the middle of the highway, surrounded by a group of wolves.

  But they didn’t look like any of the wolves she had seen on the animal channel or any of the wildlife programs her dad had forced her to watch over the years. These wolves were huge, and if they were standing right in front of her, she was certain they would come up to at least her shoulder. And if she wasn’t mistaken, just as she made the decision to drive her truck into the forest rather than into the animals standing on the highway, the taller of the two men exploded into a bear.

  End of sample chapter

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