Alpha Temptation: Sanmere Shifters Romance Collection

by Lola Gabriel

  “I think maybe my instincts were always pretty good,” Laila smiled. “The day I came to Greer, I had a moment where I felt such intense fear. Of course, I dismissed it, but it was there. And the moment I saw you, I knew you were the one.”

  “I wish you’d listened to that instinct a bit sooner,” Cedric smiled. The smile faded and his face turned serious. “But while we’re on that subject, Laila, I want to ask you officially. Will you be my mate for all eternity?”

  “Yes,” Laila said without hesitation.

  They kissed, a much more chaste kiss than Cedric would have liked, but he was conscious of Polly there and he didn’t want her to think he was some sort of animal that couldn’t control himself. When he released Laila, Polly hugged her and then she hugged him.

  “Welcome to the family, Cedric. I couldn’t be happier for the two of you,” she said.

  “God, look at the time,” Laila exclaimed. “I have to go and get ready for work.” She turned to Cedric. “Will I see you later?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why don’t you both come over for dinner tonight? In the meantime, I have something to do myself.”

  “Dinner sounds good,” Laila said after glancing at Polly and getting a nod. “Now what do you have to do? Because whatever it is, you made it sound rather ominous.”

  “I was just thinking now that Fabian is gone, chances are his men will float away of their own accord. Most have them have likely gone already. But that castle is always going to be a blight on the town, and I don’t want to risk any of Fabian’s men coming back in the years to come, and taking over where Fabian left off with the Matchmaking. I’m going to go up there and burn the thing to the ground,” Cedric said.

  “Then I’d better call Cassie and tell her I won’t be in today, because I’m coming with you,” Laila said.

  “Me too,” Polly added.

  Cedric shook his head quickly.

  “No, this is something I need to do alone. You have work, Laila, and I’m sure you have better things to do too, Polly. You don’t need to worry. It’s not dangerous, it’s just an empty building.”

  After a few minutes of gentle persuasion, Cedric managed to talk Laila and Polly out of their plan to join him. He didn’t really think it was a big risk. Fabian’s men wouldn’t be stupid enough to return to the castle so quickly, but he wasn’t about to take a chance on Laila or Polly’s lives.

  Cedric walked around the perimeter of the castle, spreading out a trail of gasoline as he went. He hadn’t seen any of Fabian’s men hanging around and he even found himself whistling as he poured out the flammable liquid. For once, Fabian’s protection charm on the castle would work in Cedric’s favor. No one in the town would call the fire department. His pack would know what was happening and leave him to it, because he had informed Cassie of his plan and asked her to spread the word, and the humans in the town wouldn’t be able to see the fire.

  Cedric finished spreading the gasoline and stood back to take one last look at the castle before he put the match to it. It was then that he spotted movement in one of the upstairs windows. It was a brief, fleeting movement, but it had lasted just long enough for Cedric to see that the face that had peered out of the window was a woman’s face.

  He felt his stomach turn. Fabian had a prisoner in there and he had almost burned her alive. Cedric ran into the castle and started to make his way up the wide, sweeping staircase that ran up the center of the castle. He knew he had to save the woman before he torched the place.

  He reached the top floor and began to count the doors down the hallway until he found the one that matched the woman’s window. He tried the door, already knowing it would be locked. He stood back and kicked the door and it flew open then.

  The woman cowered in the corner. Her hair was so long it curled around her, hiding her body from Cedric. It was a mass of knots and it was filthy. The woman’s face was so dirty, Cedric could barely make out any of her features. She wore a dress that he thought had maybe once been white, but now it was an aged yellow-brown color. It hung off her in rags.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” the woman begged.

  She sounded so broken, so afraid, that Cedric almost felt her fear on the air.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a gentle voice. “I’m here to help you. Fabian is dead. You’re safe now. We have to get you out of here and then I’m going to burn this place to the ground and finish what I started.”

  The woman looked at him with eyes that barely focused. He thought she was frowning, and a strange noise escaped her. Cedric thought she was crying at first, but then he realized she was laughing.

  “Fabian is really dead?” she asked.

  “Really,” Cedric assured her.

  He held his hand out to the woman, and slowly, like a dog expecting to be kicked, she reached out and took his hand. Her hand was all skin and bone and he helped her to her feet. She seemed a little shaky, but she held firm on her feet and when Cedric started to walk, she followed him with no resistance. He checked around the building in case there were any more prisoners, but he found none. He led her out of the castle and to a safe distance away from it.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He ran back to the castle, struck a match, and threw it into the gasoline. The flames caught immediately, and by the time Cedric had jogged back to the woman, the flames were sky high. The castle was old and it didn’t take much to get it to burn. Cedric smiled with satisfaction. It was finally over. Greer was finally free of Fabian’s influence, and the dark fae who lived in the mountains and stole women from the town was finally going to be what the humans of Greer had always thought he was. A legend.

  “I’m Cedric, by the way,” Cedric said to the woman as he led her down the mountainside, moving slowly so she could keep up with him.

  “Catherine,” the woman replied.

  “How long have you been in the castle?” he asked.

  It didn’t seem like the woman had only been there a couple of weeks while Fabian arranged her sale. She was so dirty and thin, and the tangles in her hair were even worse than Cedric had first thought. She smelled like she hadn’t had a bath or a shower in years.

  “I don’t know. I stopped counting the days after the first five years. A long time, though,” Catherine said.

  Cedric winced. He could only imagine what that must have been like. They walked down the mountainside in silence. Cedric was impressed by Catherine, at not only her resilience in the face of being Fabian’s prisoner for so long, but also the way she was so nimble on her feet when it was clear she hadn’t seen anything outside of that room for years. When they reached the town, Cedric turned to Catherine.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked her. “I can take you anywhere.”

  “I… I don’t know,” Catherine said.

  She looked like she was on the verge of tears and Cedric didn’t want her to feel like she had nowhere to go.

  “Come to my place,” he said. “No funny business, I swear. You can take a shower and I’ll ask my girlfriend to bring you some clothes and then we can all have lunch.”

  “Really?” Catherine said.

  Cedric nodded and smiled at her. He could see the tears of gratitude shining in her eyes and it made him feel like crying himself. It must have been so long since Catherine had experienced even the most basic kindness.

  He took her to his house and showed her to the bathroom, giving her some clean towels and a robe and telling her to use whatever she wanted. Once he had shown her where everything was, he went downstairs and called Laila.

  “Hi, you,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. “Is it done?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Listen, Laila, I know you’re at work, but is there any chance you can sneak out while you’re on your lunch break?”

  “Well, that’s now, but yeah, I can,” Laila said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I went to the castle as you know, and I found a woman there. She d
oesn’t even know how long she’s been there. Longer than five years, a lot longer by what she’s said. She’s nervous around me, and her clothes are rags. I wondered if you could come over with something for her to wear?” Cedric explained.

  “Sure,” Laila said. “God, that poor woman. I tell you what, I’ll bring my mom as well because I won’t be able to stay long, and she might feel a bit more comfortable if there’s another woman there.”

  “Good idea,” Cedric said. “Thanks, Laila.”

  Cedric paced around the living room as he waited for Laila and Polly to arrive at his place. He could hear the water running above him, so he figured Catherine was still busy trying to get who knew how many years’ worth of dirt off of herself.

  He relaxed a little when Laila’s car pulled up outside of his house and Laila and Polly got out of it. He went and opened the door and brought the women into the living room. They all looked up as one as they heard soft footsteps on the stairs. The living room door opened and Catherine came into the room, wrapped in the robe Cedric had given her, looking clean and much better than she had half an hour ago. Cedric felt his stomach roll when he looked at Catherine. She was the absolute double of Laila.

  “Catherine?” Polly said, her eyes wide.

  “Polly. Oh my God, Polly!” Catherine cried.

  The two women hugged, tears streaming down both of their faces.

  “Fabian told me you were dead,” Polly said through her tears.

  “I always thought I might as well have been,” Catherine said, giving a half-laugh. “Until now. Is that…?”

  She trailed off and Polly stepped to one side, nodding her head.

  “Laila,” she said. “This is Catherine. Your mom.”

  Epilogue

  Laila’s Journal

  November 9, 2019

  My mom suggested I start keeping a journal. My biological mom, Catherine. She said it was something she had always done and it helped her to get her feelings out. I decided to give it a go, and what better day to start it than today, a day I am so full of feelings I think I might burst?

  My feelings are all happy feelings. I am the luckiest girl in the world, and I like the idea of starting a journal on a day like this. A happy day, a momentous day. The first day of the rest of my life, to quote a cliché.

  So where do I start? I guess with my moms. I feel like I have two of them now. It’s been almost three months since Cedric found my biological mom in Fabian’s castle and we’ve really started to bond. But I will always think of Polly as my mom too. She raised me, loved me, gave up so much for me. I love her so much I think I might pop. But it was Polly who told me that with so much love to give, I could love my biological mom as well, and I think I’m starting to, because for all she wasn’t there for my childhood, she, too, gave up so much for me, and she did the only thing she could do to make sure I had a happy life where I was loved.

  Catherine (I’m going to use my moms’ first names from now on. It’s too confusing calling them both “Mom’, and because of how young they both look, I can’t call either of them ‘Mom’ in public anyway) decided to stay in Greer. She said without Fabian here, the town is really perfect for her, and she added that she wanted to be near me. In the end, Polly decided to move here too. Polly and Catherine have opened a little bakery in the town and they’re doing really well with it. And I get to have them both in my life. What could be better than that?

  Well, only the fact that I’m getting married. Today. To the love of my life, my soulmate. My Cedric. I really should stop writing this and get on with getting ready or I’m going to be late for my own wedding. But first, I have one more thing I simply must get down.

  I am deliriously happy. My family is all here now. My two moms, my soulmate, and the extended family I have gained in Cedric’s pack. But the best news? I have a secret. One I’m going to tell Cedric tonight.

  I’m pregnant. I’m going to have the baby I have always longed for. I can’t wait to be a wife, a mom. I love my life, and I think every page of this journal is going to be just as happy as this one (except maybe for the part that covers the labor pains; I’ve heard they can be a right bitch), and maybe when our children—I say children because this one is the first of many—are old enough, I’ll let them read this journal and see how happy they made me every day of my life.

  Dragon’s Clutch

  Sanmere Shifters

  Dragon’s Clutch: Sanmere Shifters

  Text Copyright © 2020 by Lola Gabriel

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2020

  Publisher

  Secret Woods Books

  secretwoodsbooks@gmail.com

  www.SecretWoodsBooks.com

  1

  Callin McKenzie looked up from the script he was going over when there was a knock on his front door. He knew it had to be a member of the dragon pack he was a part of; they all lived in a large apartment block in LA and if it wasn’t someone who lived in the building, the doorman would have called up to tell Callin someone was here to see him.

  He debated ignoring the door. It was likely Valerie, the pack alpha and his co-star in the movie he was due to start shooting tomorrow. Callin didn’t really like Valerie and it was bad enough that they were going to be spending up to fourteen hours a day together filming without her turning up at his apartment too.

  Sighing, he got up and headed for the door. Although the idea of entertaining Valerie wasn’t how he had wanted his Sunday afternoon to go down, he was a professional and if Valerie wanted to go over a part of the script with him, he would do it. He knew that as an A-list Hollywood actor, he was in a position most people would kill for and he wasn’t about to let his personal feelings for Valerie affect his career.

  He already knew his career could only last another ten years, maybe fifteen at the absolute most, and he had no intention of wrecking it before that. Callin was twenty-seven and he would stop aging at twenty-nine. He would have to drop out of the limelight at around forty or so as he couldn’t risk the scandal that would arise when people noticed that he didn’t age. He couldn’t risk anyone finding out that he was a dragon. Valerie had only allowed him to explore the idea of being an actor when he had promised to get her in the door with the directors on his last movie and he hoped she understood the same thing as him. Ten years and it was all over.

  He feared she didn’t get it yet, but he hoped in time she would, or that she would get bored of acting like she got bored of most things, and move on of her own accord, because if she didn’t, he knew she would refuse to listen to reason when the pack tried to tell her why she had to step away from the fame.

  Callin pulled the door open, his face set in a fake smile that widened into a real smile when he saw it wasn’t Valerie, but Lucian standing on his doorstep. Lucian was the pack beta and he was genuinely pleased to see him. Lucian was Callin’s best friend, but he was so much more than that; he was practically his father.

  When Callin had been barely more than a baby, almost two years old, his parents had been killed by a hunter. Lucian had turned up, too late to save his parents, who were shot with bullets made of Ure, a rare metal that could kill any shifter, but in time to save him. Lucian had managed to take the hunter down, and he had raised Callin like his own son, although he had never made any secret of the fact of who Callin really was and who his parents had been. Despite the tragedy of his early life, Callin had had a happy childhood and he would always love Lucian like a father as well as the best friend he had become as Callin got older.

  Callin stood back from the
door and gestured to Lucian to come in.

  “How’s it going?” Lucian asked, nodding to the script in Callin’s hand as Callin closed the door and they made their way back to the living room.

  “Good. I’m just going back over the scenes we’ll be shooting tomorrow,” Callin said.

  “Is now a bad time, then?” Lucian asked.

  Callin shook his head.

  “No. I’ve got it all down, to be honest. I’m just passing the time, really. Do you want a beer?” he said.

  “Sure,” Lucian said, sitting down on the large, black leather couch.

  Callin closed the script and put it on the low, glass coffee table and then walked across to the kitchen area of his open-plan living space. He pulled open the fridge and grabbed two bottles of beer. He opened them and came back to the couch, handing a bottle to Lucian before sitting down in a large armchair that matched his couch. Lucian raised his bottle in Callin’s direction.

  “Break a leg,” he grinned.

  “Cheers,” Callin said.

  They both drank from their bottles.

  “So, you and Valerie starring together in the romance movie of the decade, huh?” Lucian said.

  “Yeah,” Callin winced. “I really didn’t think that part through when I convinced the director to hire her. I should have waited for the next movie—one that wasn’t romantic in the least. I just hope she’s professional enough to know that when the cameras stop rolling, the chemistry between us goes away.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Lucian replied. “She might not have hit the big time like you have but she’s been acting long enough to know the ropes.”

  Callin nodded. Of course Lucian was right. Lucian grinned at Callin.