“Ashton,” she whispered.
Chapter Fifteen
He loved her. He’d said it. No one had told her that in a hundred years. Not since her mother had been alive. She was the last and only person who’d loved her. Vampires didn’t love. At least not the vampires she’d been exposed to. She doubted her father was capable of love even when he’d been human. A thousand of years of life had bled all tender emotion from his cold heart.
Isabella couldn’t keep her eyes off of Ashton, even after Domingo and her father stormed into the room.
“She’s been tainted by the shifter. She can’t be turned now. Not while he lives,” Santiago said with contempt. “This is a problem.”
“Why don’t we just kill him now, solve the problem.”
Her father sniffed the air. “Even now, the animal’s whelp buries itself in her womb. She is ruined. Isabella, you have always been a disappointment.”
“I know, Father. You made me, and you hate me for it. It makes me wonder how you feel about yourself.”
“Hold your tongue, you insolent girl,” he commanded as he turned out the door, his long robe swishing around his tall, slender frame.
“Should I do it now?” Domingo asked, still looking at them.
“We must prepare,” her father said. “Killing a vampire, even a halfling, takes preparation. Come!”
The door slammed closed, and Isabella was left alone with Ashton, the man who loved her. The words her father had spoken were slowly sinking into her mind. The shifter’s whelp? What did that mean? Was she pregnant?
“Isabella, we have to get out of here,” Ashton said again.
“Did you hear what he said, Ashton?” she asked breathlessly.
“I heard him. I heard him say he’s going to kill us both.”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. Her mind reeled. She’d had all kinds of sex with all kinds of men but had never been pregnant in all her hundred years. Getting a halfling pregnant wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t like with a human woman who was fertile every single month. She was barely ever fertile, maybe once a decade, for just a few days. Ashton’s seed had taken hold inside her womb, and she was now with child.
“I know, Isabella. But now we need to get the hell out of here, or we’re all dead.”
She pulled against the chains on the bed but it was useless. She didn’t have the strength to free herself that way. “Any ideas?” she asked Ashton, the sound of rattling chains filling the room.
“Look around. See if there is anything we can use to pry the handcuffs loose,” he suggested. He was against the wall, too far from anything else in the room to reach. Isabella stood from the bed and walked the foot or so that the chains allowed, trying to reach an empty bookshelf. She strained against the chains, but she couldn’t make it to the shelf.
Moonlight shined down through the slight window above them and touched the skin on Isabella’s outstretched hand. A spark ignited inside her as if the moonlight had started a fire.
It raged within, burning her entire body from the inside out. She felt herself contorting, growing, changing. At the edge of her awareness, she heard Ashton gasp with shock and call her name. Her clothing ripped as her limbs elongated.
Seconds later, she stood in the middle of the room, chains broken, a giant yellow cougar. She panted in the dim light, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Her senses sang with supernatural strength beyond anything she’d ever known. She went to Ashton and clawed at his chains, setting him free with two quick swipes.
Ashton threw his arms around her neck and kissed her furry muzzle with his full lips. “You’re beautiful, Isabella. I had no idea this would happen.”
Isabella could sense his feelings and words deep inside her mind. She could send him messages, even though she couldn’t physically speak. “Let’s go,” she said.
She bashed the window above them and shifted into her small human form. “Quickly,” she said, pointing at the window. Ashton helped her through and she turned to pull him up behind her. Outside, the full moon shone down on them both. She was about to shift back to her lion from when Ashton gave a low groan and collapsed on the ground.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he told her, his voice agonized.
“You’re changing!” Isabella said with surprised certainty. “We have to get out of here now, Ashton.”
“Go Isabella, go now.”
“I won’t leave you here to die Ashton. Get on my back,” she demanded. Isabella shifted and knelt so that Ashton could climb aboard her back. Strength and power coursed through her and she could feel herself a thousand times more formidable than she had been before.
Ashton clung weakly to her back as she charged through the woods. She didn’t even stop for the wall. In one quick jump, she was up and over. Ashton fell to the ground and screamed. He’d turned pale and cold, the color of his eyes going dim.
She knelt before him and clawed at her own wrist, drawing thick lion’s blood for him to drink. She pressed her wrist to his lips, and he choked on the hot liquid as it dripped into his mouth.
“Drink,” she told him through the psychic link. She’d never made a vampire before. She didn’t even know it was possible, let alone as a newly formed hybrid vampire shifter. The implications blew her mind.
Ashton moaned from the ground, and he stopped drinking. She removed her paw and licked his cheek, trying to comfort him. She laid beside him and purred in an effort to keep him warm as he changed or died.
There was nothing else she could do. No doctors, no supernatural ambulance to call. The paranormals of Mystic Harbor stayed separate, even though it was to their detriment. Trying to mix with the human population hadn’t done anyone any good. What was the point of living in a supernatural community if there were no resources?
Ashton began to convulse beside her. She put her foreleg over him but he turned to the side and threw up. Shifting onto all fours, he heaved into the grass. Isabella watched powerlessly as he cleared his stomach. The moments seemed like centuries. She knew that Domingo and her father were right behind them.
At any moment the two of them would descend and kill them both. “Are you all right?” she pleaded through their link. Ashton growled and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Slowly he stood, seeming to grow an extra couple of inches. The light of his blue eyes flashed yellow as he came to his full height.
His muscles bulged and his fangs protruded from his upper lip. “This feels better,” he growled. Isabella’s lion roared with laughter.
“We should go,” she pleaded.
“No more running,” he growled.
Chapter Sixteen
Power poured through Ashton’s blood. He and Isabella had turned each other. Now they were both hybrids. With that knowledge, Ashton began to understand why there had been a taboo against shifters and vampires mating. The mating bite would change them both, creating a creature more powerful than either had been before.
A slow smile spread on his lips. He was going to rip her father’s head off and then shove it up the other one’s ass. He shifted into animal form, ruining his clothes. He didn’t care. The thrill in his blood was worth more than all the clothes in the world.
His mate hurried behind him. They took the wall in a single bound and ran together through the gardens toward the mansion. In the moonlight, they could see three figures standing on the front steps, looking into the darkness. Ashton knew they could seen them coming.
Santiago hissed and flew forward, flanked by his two flunkies. Ashton and Isabella pounced as one, knocking the ancient vampire and hurling him toward the stairs behind him. He landed on his feet and hands, his eyes bright with rage and his fangs long and sharp in his growling mouth.
“You dare to challenge me!” he roared. His voice cracked in the cool night air. Ashton could feel Isabella’s panic and anger. He could smell her desperation as she focused on her father. The child within her still wanted to be loved by the man
who had never loved her. Ashton knew what it felt like to never get what you needed from someone important to you. For an instant, he wondered what his brother Ronan would think of his transformation.
In unison, the two hybrids pounced again, their long fangs exposed in the pale moonlight. The other vampires charged them, but Ashton and Isabella were able to throw them back with a flick of their heads.
With the other men disposed of, they pounced at Santiago, but the patriarch was too fast for them even still. He leapt to the roof of the mansion and began to run. The lions jumped, landing on a balcony on the second floor and then bounded again to the high roof. The vampires were all together again, standing at the far end of the mansion.
Isabella shifted, and Ashton stopped. “What are you doing,” he bellowed through their link.
“Father,” she pleaded. “Let us end this.” She held out her arms in supplication her pale skin glowing in the moonlight.
“This will not end until you are dead, daughter. You’ve become an abomination.”
Isabella cried out in rage and agony. Still trying to be the good daughter, still disappointed. She looked at him with utter hatred in her eyes, her chest rising and falling in quick heaves. “Let’s end this,” she bit out before falling into her shift.
The glorious giant cat stood beside him, her lines sleek and beautiful, her smell intoxicating. He would go to the ends of the Earth for this beauty. He would defend her and their growing child with his life.
They roared as one and pounced at the vampires. Instead of attacking from the front, they landed on either side, bookending the group of vampires. In one swift motion, they swiped at the three men, knocking them down, under their powerful lion bodies.
Screeches of rage and pain erupted from the three men as the lions devoured their bodies, tearing, clawing, and destroying the men. But one of the bodies scurried away and scampered across the roof. Santiago jumped down to the ground, leaving the other men to be torn apart.
Looking up, Ashton nudged Isabella and they hurried after the escaping elder. A man that old was hard to kill or even catch. They send questioning messages to each other through their animal link. Neither really knew how to kill an ancient.
He jumped into a car and sped away just as they hopped down to the ground. They shifted, naked, bloody, and panting. “What do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. We’re evenly matched now. He can’t take us.”
“But we can’t take him either.”
“How do you kill a vampire that old?” Ashton asked her.
“A stake through the heart or fire,” she said definitively.
“Will he come back?”
“Perhaps. But I know one way to make sure he doesn’t.”
Isabella stormed into the house and Ashton followed her. She marched into the parlor and picked a fireplace lighter up off the mantle. Walking to the drapes, she flicked on the lighter and then held it to the long curtains. As they lit, she walked to the next and the next, until the room was alight with fire.
She stood, smiling gleefully at her handiwork. “Come darling, this isn’t safe,” Ashton said, pulling her out of the burning room. As they walked down the hall, flames licked behind them. “Hurry,” Ashton yelled, pulling her out of the mansion and down the front steps.
Outside, they could see the fire spreading quickly through the old house. Isabella’s eyes were alight with glee and remorse. Her childhood home and her prison burned before her.
“Let’s go, Isabella. You don’t have to watch.”
“Oh. But I do want to watch,” she whispered. A gas line caught inside the house, exploding in a loud burst of flames. She stepped backwards but didn’t take her eyes from the fire.
“We should go,” he warned again. “The fire department will be here soon.”
“No. I want it to burn to the ground.” Another loud explosion sounded from within and the entire building was alight with deep red flames.
“And it will. But I don’t want to be here when the authorities arrive.”
She sighed and turned to him, sorrow in her beautiful face. “Okay,” she finally whispered. They shifted together and ran through the gardens and jumped over the walls to disappear in the forest.
Chapter Seventeen
They ran through the night under the dappled moonlight below the forest’s canopy. Isabella’s lion form bounded on deft feet through the underbrush. She’d never felt so alive. With her mate Ashton beside her, the entire world felt open and free for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. Knowing that a child grew even now in her womb filled her with a kind of gleeful joy she thought reserved for the few.
As they approached Ashton’s family home, they shifted in the shadows of the forest beyond the pavement. On quick feet, they hurried through the backyard and through a sliding door into the family room. They stood naked and smiling in the dim moonlight streaming through the glass.
“Who’s there?” a voice called from the doorway. The light came on and Ashton pulled a throw blanket around their bodies. “Ashton? What are you doing here?” Ronan stood in the doorway in his black jersey pajama bottoms looking rugged and irritable.
“We came here to get some things,” Ashton growled showing his hybrid teeth. Isabella looked up at him half proud, but halfway thinking he was overdoing the power display a bit. She giggled and snuggled closer to his warm body.
“What happened?” Ronan asked, confusion clouding his features. Makayla walked in the room behind him, wearing a red silk robe, with perfectly manicured nails to match.
“What have you two been up to?” she asked in a teasing voice, her nose twitching. The newly formed lion shifter was as sassy as they came for someone who’d once been human. “Are you two…? No.”
“We’re hybrids,” Isabella offered, raising an eyebrow.
“Hybrids?” Ronan said from behind Makayla. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“You should see what we can do,” Isabella said, happily feeling her power course through her veins. Perhaps now she could be free. Perhaps now she could be happy.
“I can smell the power coming off you in waves,” Makayla teased, holding her nose. “You need a shower.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Ashton said, holding Isabella tighter. Isabella purred in agreement, her caramel eyes flashing. “Come on, darling. Let’s get you into something more comfortable.”
Ashton led Isabella through the house and up the stairs. Ronan grumbled behind them, but Makayla settled him down in the living room.
In Ashton’s bathroom, they showered and changed before going back downstairs. They found Ronan and Makayla still sitting in the living room drinking tea, Makayla trying to talk sense into her growly husband.
“We’ve scared off the High Lord,” Ashton started, coming into the room to sit down. “We doubt he’ll be coming back.”
“You confronted the vampire lord?” Ronan roared.
“Since he wanted to kill us, it seemed like the thing to do,” Ashton said. Isabella sat beside him and let out a dry laugh.
“Yes, I usually confront anyone who wants me dead. Some people consider it rude. Maybe it’s a cultural thing.” She shrugged, keeping a perfectly straight face.
“You two think this is funny, but it will start a war in Mystic Harbor that could tear this town apart,” Ronan stated.
“The war has already begun then,” Isabella hissed. “That man, my father, wanted to force me to marry a man I loathed. And force me to bare his child. When I didn’t do what he commanded, he decided I was better off dead. I’m sorry if you don’t think my life is worth saving, but I do. You won’t have to worry about my father. Ashton and I are a match for him. Even a vampire a thousand years old cannot beat two hybrids. We will defend this town. We will bring the races together.”
“Well said, darling,” Ashton said. She cooed and rubbed her cheek to his broad shoulder.
“I’ve been thinking,” Ashton said. “There should be some kind o
f emergency service for shifters. As it is right now, we have no one to call. We need to bring the clans and families together so that we have a safer place to raise our children.”
“Since when do you care about raising children?” Ronan asked him. Ashton raised an eyebrow at his older brother and smirked.
“Are you pregnant?” Makayla wailed, coming to sit next to Isabella and bring her into a hug.
“Yes. I suppose so. It’s the reason my father wanted me dead.”
“We’ll have to have a celebration. All paranormals will be invited.”
“How is the paper coming along, Makayla?” Ashton asked.
“We’ll have our first edition soon. I’m so excited. A news outlet for all the paranormals in Mystic Harbor.”
“If you think this will bring an end to the fighting and friction between species, you are wrong,” Ronan warned.
“Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, big brother, but it’s a start,” Ashton said.
Chapter Eighteen
Ashton sat on the bed watching Isabella undress, her sensuous curves illuminated in the moonlight. Thoughts of his cub growing in her softly rounded belly made a warm tingle run down his spine.
She pulled off her pants and climbed on his lap, settling onto his stiff shaft. He brushed her hair back with this hand as she grinned down at him, the thin sheath of her panties the brushing against his boxers.
“Do you think the clans will come together?” she whispered in his ear as she kissed him on the neck. He gripped her hips in his hands, his cock growing harder as he touched her soft skin.
“I do. They must,” he said in a low rumble.
“They haven’t worked together in a hundred years,” Isabella said just before Ashton tossed her down on the bed under him. He sank between her warm thighs and growled, sniffing her neck. She shrieked playfully and pulled him closer.
“They will now,” he said, pressing himself against her. He slid his hand under her bra and gripped her ripe breast. “We will make sure of it, my love. It is the only way to ensure your father never has power over this town again.”
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