How It's Meant to Be

by T. S. Joyce

  And Moore crushed his wings.

  He crushed them.

  It took only a moment.

  Krome’s caw turned into a man’s scream as he changed back to his human form, but his giant crumpled wings stayed, protruding from his back like he couldn’t change all the way.

  “The woman you hurt tonight is the only reason any of you are still breathing,” Moore gritted out as he stood. He was covered in claw marks, his body marred by streams of red. Warrior. He was tall and flexed and his eyes held rage and a promise of death to any of the crows who came near. So many had changed to the shapes of their men and hung back, on the edge of the woods.

  “This war is done!” His voice cracked with power. The crows dipped to silence. “This is the only mercy I will ever show, and I only give it because my mate asked for it. She saved you.”

  Aurora slipped her hand into his, and he squeezed it. That little gesture, that small affection told her he was okay. As the crows dragged Krome’s broken body into the woods, Moore turned and picked her up. Just folded her into his arms and strode back toward the car. Back to where Trinity and another woman, Gwen…back to where they knelt by the wreckage. There was a row of shotguns and ammo lined in front of them. Around them, a few men laid on the ground, but they were being helped away.

  Aurora slipped her arms around Moore’s neck and buried her face against him as they passed Laken, being helped away by one of his friends. She hated him. Hated what he’d done to her, but there had to be peace. Peace was the only thing that would keep Moore safe.

  Peace was the only thing that would protect this life he was trying to give her.

  She was making friends and growing an unbreakable bond with a loyal man, and her future was bright and happy if only there could be peace for Moore. And God, she wanted to keep this life. She wanted to keep him. Her heart had never felt like this before—so consumed and full of joy with another person.

  War would steal that joy, but peace?

  It was the only thing that would protect the man she adored and the happy life they were building.

  Peace was the only thing that mattered.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I know where we are,” Aurora murmured, leaning forward to look out the front window of Moore’s Bronco better. “This is the road to your parents’ cabin. Why did your brothers want to meet us here?”

  Moore squeezed her leg comfortingly. “They wouldn’t say.”

  “I thought things were going good.” She wrapped her arms around his bicep and rested her cheek on his shoulder. He always relaxed with her touch, and so did she. “We’ve been doing family dinners every week, and Trinity and Gwen are becoming my best friends, and the crows have left us alone. They aren’t even in the trees anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t like bringing you back to this place when you’re doing so good.”

  Moore grinned at her. “This place isn’t so hard anymore. I kissed you for the first time here.”

  That surprised her. A slow smile spread across her face. “We kind of took it back, huh?”

  He shrugged up one shoulder. “It’s still haunted as hell.”

  With a snort, Aurora nodded. “These woods are seriously creepy.”

  He looked so handsome here in the midday light filtering through his Bronco windows. The last few months, since the crow war, he’d grown lighter. He’d growled less and smiled more. He’d even trimmed his beard shorter, and cut the sides of his hair. He bore more scars from that awful night of war, and his eyes went a little darker when they talked about the crows, but Moore was okay. He laughed more, and had an easier time around humans in town. He took her on dates, and made sure he was there for her emotionally, and helped her grow her business. He helped her grow as a woman, and she did her best to help him grow too, and that was what love was. At least it was for her.

  Moore called her a medicine woman. Said she loosened up his soul.

  She’d never heard a more meaningful compliment. To have the power to loosen up the soul is something she’d always wanted…she just hadn’t realized it before Moore.

  Power wasn’t how she looked on the outside to the world. It wasn’t only personal success, or how many friends she could maintain. It was being a balm to the heart of the people she loved, and she utterly loved Moore. And he did the same for her.

  Power.

  It was the positive effect they could have on each other and their world.

  So, yep, she was a little nervous about the Bane brothers asking them to come here, to revisit their haunted past again. She didn’t want them to move backward. She only wanted these men to push forward, with her, and Trinity, and Gwen.

  The cabin came into view and in front of it stood Aux and Gwen, Brick, Trinity, and Tuck.

  “Gwen is crying,” he murmured in confusion.

  She sure was. Her heart was pounding as Moore parked next to Aux’s tow truck.

  They got out, and Moore waited at the front of his Bronco for her, hand out. She slipped her palm against his. No sparks. Only warmth. Only comfort.

  He was her mate and she was his.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked Gwen as they closed the space between them.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything is right,” her friend said thickly.

  “This place has a lot of bad memories for us,” Aux said softly. “But our lives are different now. We’re different.”

  Trinity knelt and set two pictures in the dirt. It was Aux’s destiny picture. The one of his mother kneeling down holding grain out to a chicken, and the second was the picture he’d taken of Gwen, doing the exact same thing. Eerily similar to his mom’s picture. Next, Trinity set her and Brick’s destiny pictures in the dirt. One was of their dad spending time with them and an old horse they had for a while. Holding their hands. Brick was up on his shoulders and they were walking through a field of grass. And then a picture of Brick with Tuck up on his shoulders, leading his horse he worked cattle on. Eerily similar. So similar.

  And then…

  Trinity set the picture of Cyrus Bane in the middle of that killing field, surrounded by dead crows.

  She glanced up at Moore and Aurora before she placed the last picture in the line of photographs in the dirt. It was a picture of the night of the crow war. In the halo of headlights, Moore strode toward the camera with Aurora held close. His body was wrecked with claw marks, and he was mid-stride. Beside him, Laken was being helped away, and behind him, more were dragging friends into the woods. But Moore? He wasn’t soaking in the bloodlust like Cyrus had been doing in his picture. Instead, he was kissing Aurora’s forehead as she clung to him.

  Trinity said, “I rushed my phone out and took this that night. It felt important. You didn’t kill them all, Moore. You focused on Aurora.”

  Aux said, “You aren’t him.”

  Brick repeated in his deep, snarling voice. “You aren’t him.”

  Aurora held onto Moore’s arm as she looked up at his face. His body was rigid as he stared at that picture of them, and his eyes were rimmed with tears.

  His destiny wasn’t his father’s. It was written right there in his destiny picture. He’d veered from the path that had been made for him.

  “I gave the crow’s history journals back to them,” Aux said softly. “That is their history. Not ours. We have no use for what happened to them.”

  “We have no use for what happened to us either,” Brick told him. “Moore, you used to be a burning house. And who wanted to walk into a burning house? Who wanted to figure out why you’d started your fires? No one could get to you.” Brick smiled at Aurora. “You did it. You stuck with it and did something no one else could’ve done. You changed his fate.” He looked to Moore. “And you…you allowed it. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen you do. It was the moment I stopped hating you, and respected you instead.”

  “This is the part where I want to ask huge favors,” Aux said. “I’m going to tell you we need you, and hope you don
’t freak out or back away.”

  “What do you need?” Moore asked in a hoarse voice.

  “A family,” Gwen said. She dragged her hand to her stomach and pressed her palm against the small swell there. “Protection. A village to raise a cub, and make him good, like you three.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Aurora and Trinity said at the same time.

  They tackled Gwen with a hug. They all three nearly toppled over, and the haunted clearing was full of their crying laughter.

  There was going to be a cub. A cub. Oh goodness, a sweet baby cub. He wouldn’t be a monster. He wouldn’t. He had Tuck, and the goodness of Gwen, and Trinity, and Aurora would be the best aunt she could be. And Moore…

  She turned to see him staring at Gwen, his gray eyes so soft, those tears still sitting right there, unspilled.

  He looked to Aux and nodded. “You have me. You have us.”

  Aurora couldn’t stop the emotions inside of her. She was so damn proud of him.

  Aux handed him a red gas can, and then one to Brick, and picked up his own. “Fuck this place. Forget the history here. It doesn’t control us anymore.” Aux made his way to the porch and poured gasoline onto it. He turned and looked at his brothers. “From this day on, we will make our own destiny.”

  The slow smile on Moore’s lips was stunning. It reached his eyes and made them dance. One glance at Aurora, and he followed his brothers.

  And they soaked that damn house from their past.

  Soaked it.

  Aux handed Moore the match, and he lit it, flicked it onto the porch and stood back from the building flames that licked at the home that had haunted him for so long.

  And as they all stood there in a silent line, watching the past burn, Aurora said aloud, “I’m really happy.”

  “Me, too,” Trinity said.

  “Me, three,” Gwen murmured thickly from where she cradled her tummy.

  “I’m happy, too!” Tuck said from atop of Brick’s shoulders.

  “Same,” Brick said with a chuckle.

  “Meh, I’m pretty happy,” Aux teased, only to get a swat in the arm and a smile from Gwen.

  Moore pulled her against his side dragged his gaze away from the flames to Aurora. He kissed the top of her head and smiled down at her. And then he said those important words. The words her heart needed. The words that made everything okay.

  “I’m happy, too.”

  Up Next in this Series

  Krome Gets his story in

  How It Is

  Coming May 2021

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  For More from this Author

  Check out her The Official Reading List of T. S. Joyce

  Or visit

  www.tsjoyce.com

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  T. S. Joyce’s Amazon US page

  About the Author

  T.S. Joyce is devoted to bringing hot shifter romances to readers. Hungry alpha males are her calling card, and the wilder the men, the more she'll make them pour their hearts out. She lives in a tiny town, outside of a tiny city, and devotes her life to writing big stories. Foodie, bear whisperer, ninja, thief of tiny bottles of awesome smelling hotel shampoo, nap connoisseur, movie fanatic, and zombie slayer, and most of this bio is true.

  Bear Shifters? Check

  Smoldering Alpha Hotness? Double Check

  Sexy Scenes? Fasten up your girdles, ladies and gents, it’s gonna to be a wild ride.

  For more information about T. S. Joyce and her work, visit her website here.