by Juniper Hart
“Stop!” she hissed. “You know that Hale is powerful, too. I can’t lose you again. I won’t lose you again.”
“I will never run from a man like him,” he rumbled. “If he’s coming here for a fight, he’ll get one.”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt!”
Wait. She was only worried about Terran? She hadn’t felt a tad bit of remorse for Hale possibly getting hurt, which startled, amazed, and disturbed her all at the same time.
Terran stroked her cheek. “I love you, Cass, and I appreciate your concern, but we have to face Hale eventually. And I would rather start our new life together now, without having to worry about Hale ever again.”
“Okay,” Cassia said. “What can I do to help?”
***
Terran and Cassia quickly dressed. Cassia was impossibly unprepared. All she had was her dress, and that had been ripped to shreds by Terran. Instead of trying to piece the dress back together, she settled for a pair of boxers and a t-shirt from Terran.
Much more comfortable, she thought as she slipped the shirt over her head.
Boom!
The whole house shook from the impact of the cannon on the cliff firing. A moment later from outside the house, there was a scream, and a man plummeted—presumably tossed off the cannon he was operating.
More screams and shots fired sounded from outside the confines of Terran’s home. Terran and Cassia waited. Terran had a plan. Hale was likely outside on the staircase, slowly descending the cliff to get into the house.
“This is a bad idea,” Cassia said, nervous about the fight that was about to take place.
“For him,” Terran replied in such a way that led Cassia to believe he had been waiting a long time for this. He probably had.
Terran had never attempted to hide his dislike of the sorcerer, and Cassia guessed that the dislike had turned to burning hatred through the years. She could see it in his eyes as he smiled at the door. Cassia almost believed he was looking forward to it.
An eerie silence filled the house, and then Hale appeared at the glass door.
He looked manic and angry.
Red lightning crackled around his hands, and his eyes glowed with the same red hue. His clothes were torn, possibly from escaping EDJ. His body twitched wildly like he was unable to control its movements.
“Hello,” Hale said as he slid open the door. His voice was broken and shaking. “T...t…time to die.”
“Hale, you’re not thinking straight,” Cassia implored, hoping to bring him to his senses.
Hale was never a good man. He was deceptive and sneaky. But seeing him like that, outwardly violent, was…odd, to say the least. “Turn yourself in. They’ll be fair.”
Hale’s jaw clenched. He seemed to be grinding his teeth. “You know something?” He bared his teeth in a smile. “I never cared about you.” He raised a hand and pointed at Terran. “I just wanted you so he couldn’t have you. Terran tried to be the good guy. Do you know how many times he’s ruined my plans? He’s cost me billions over the years. I finally had something he wanted, and you ruined that, Cassia. You should have never left!” His body jerked wildly as red and blue sparks flew from his hands. He continued his berating, “Cassia, you’re so fucking stubborn, and I never cared about your altruism and how you tried to help disadvantaged kids. You’re not fit to be a mother. You’re as fucked up as I am, Cassia.” He took one step forward. “You know what you are? You’re a poisonous bitch! Every hour I spent with you, every year, I could just barely tolerate you. The only way I could was knowing that Terran longed for you like a dog.”
Okay, that was it. Terran could rip him to shreds, and she’d sit there and watch.
Terran didn’t let Hale keep talking. “You will not talk to her like that!” he bellowed, physically spewing flames from his throat.
Hale spread his hands. “Stop me, beast. I dare you.”
Terran roared and dashed across the room at the sorcerer. Hale turned his hands towards the dragon with lighting spewing from his fingers. The crackling electricity hit Terran full in the chest and spawned from there, striking nearby and popping up pieces of furniture with miniature explosions. Cassia, taken by surprise, jumped back to avoid being in the path of destruction. Terran was practically invincible, but Cassia was not as strong as him. Getting hit with Hale’s magic might have killed her.
The room was too small for Terran to shift into his dragon from, so he kept running straight through the lightning, the electricity illuminating his muscles. Terran didn’t stop. Most men would’ve either been shocked unconscious or dead. Then again, most guys weren’t Terran. He was the Keeper of the Mountain and had the strength of Mother Earth and the Dragon King tied into his genes.
Terran got ahold of the sorcerer and threw him like he was weightless, even while he was being electrocuted. Hale sailed across the room and slammed into the wall. He hit with enough impact to shake the artwork from the walls and rattle the glass décor from the shelves.
Cassia couldn’t take the anticipation any longer. In one corner, you had Hale: quick, dangerous, doped up on magic steroids, and absolutely insane. In the other corner, there was Terran: powerful, strong, and had the ability to move mountains.
And then there was Cassia. She was a dragon and was more powerful than humans and most enchanted beings, but she was no match for Hale or Terran.
Cassia needed a stronger defense in case Hale came after her. Sure, she could use her strength and fire-breathing abilities, but there had to be something more. What could kill Hale? She snuck over to the kitchen nearby and looked for a weapon. Without looking, she wrapped her hand around a solid object hoping it was a gun.
No such luck. The hard, metallic object was a frying pan.
Well, at least it’s something, she thought, but was unable to convince herself that the pan would help her in any way.
She heard the thud of flesh hitting flesh, and Terran skipped over the counter and smashed into the wall. He dropped like a stone before stumbling up. “Ow!” He wiped a hand across his mouth. When he pulled his arm away, he had blood on it.
Hale’s voice rang out from over the counter. “How I suffered so you couldn’t have her!”
Just keep talking, asshole, thought Cassia as she wrapped her hand around a pan.
It was hefty. She stayed hidden behind the counter as Hale got closer. He was content in gloating over his strike on Terran.
“I don’t know how you can tolerate her,” Hale said.
Terran saw what Cassia was doing, but he didn’t say anything. He maintained eye contact with Hale.
“You’ll never win,” Terran snarled as he stood.
“Oh, somehow I—”
That’s about as far as he got before Cassia popped up and swung the frying pan like a bro baseball player swinging for the fence.
Wham!
She put all her dragon force into it, meaning the pan actually snapped off at the hilt across Hale’s face. The strike sent a reverberation through Cassia’s entire body, from her hands down to her bare feet. Hale, meanwhile, looked like he’d been hit by a truck. Cassia had never actually been in a fight, so she didn’t know her own strength.
Hale went down and came back up with that electricity. Aimed, unfortunately, at Cassia. She tried to dodge, but she didn’t stand a chance.
Describing it as painful was the understatement of the year.
The pain felt like her skin was ripping free of her body, that every cell on her body was on fire, and that she had jumped into a large barrel of hydrochloric acid. A scream of agony choked out from her hoarse throat, and she dropped like a ragdoll. No matter what she did, she couldn’t escape. The electricity followed her, inside her body and into her mind as though it was breaking her will along with her body.
She writhed like a snake, batting at the lightning. Hale stared at her, eyes wild, angry, and crazed. His hands were pointed at her. Cassia couldn’t see Terran. He was likely behind her somewhere, coming fast. She met e
yes with Hale, pleading with him to stop. He was killing her, and surely, the centuries they had spent together must have given him some sort of feelings for her. Even though he evidently despised her, he must not want to see her dead.
Wrong.
Green vines shot through the floors, snaked around Hale’s legs, and dragged him towards the wall. The rock wall formed hands and grabbed him. Before he could do anything, he started to get sucked into the earth.
Then, abruptly, Terran was there with blood dripping down his face, hands out. “You will never hurt her!” he bellowed in an animalistic voice. “Never again will you touch her!”
Hale snarled in rage and pulled free of one hand only to have another stream of rock come from the wall and wrap him up. “You don’t have the balls!”
Terran stopped right in front of the crazed sorcerer and grabbed him under the throat. Hale bashed him with magic spells, all of which would’ve killed a human man.
Terran snarled at him and exposed his dragon fangs. “Try me.”
He threw Hale like a shotput into the wall. Hale had one brief moment to howl in rage before the wall gulped him down. The howling stopped. Hale was dead. The wall shifted as Terran moved him deeper and deeper into the stone surface, moving him down to the Earth’s core.
Terran rushed to Cassia, dropping to a knee and lending her a supportive hand. He touched her as gently as he would a porcelain vase. His powerful fingers ran across her body as she shuddered from the fading electricity in her body.
“Please,” he said, pressing his forehead against her shoulder with the urgency of a man losing something he cannot live without. “I beg of you…please be okay!”
Cassia shivered and laid back on the ground. She coughed as her muscles contracted. “I’m okay,” she gasped. “I think.”
She could do nothing but lie still and allow Terran to comfort her. She felt weak, and ripples of pain still coursed through her body, although the intensity of the pain was fading.
The EDJ arrived minutes later.
Chapter Ten
It took Cassia about ten minutes to stop hurting and another ten to get the motivation to move. Finally, though, the EDJ’s paramedics convinced her to get checked out to confirm what she already knew: She was fine. She was safe.
Terran took her to the couch where he sat down next to her. “I thought I was going to lose you,” he breathed.
Cassia leaned into him. “So, what’s going to happen to me? I had nothing to do with it! The EDJ has to know that…”
“I’ll pull some strings,” Terran promised. “Besides, it’s pretty obvious you had no knowledge of what happened. Hale has been causing problems for hundreds of years—much longer than you were with him.”
“What about Sam, Ivan, and Igor?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out. All I know is that a lot of Hale’s people are in deep trouble.”
“Do you know why? Why did he kill the Chancellor?”
Terran sighed. “The same reason he hated me. The Chancellor blocked some of his unscrupulous business deals, which cost Hale a lot of money. Hale didn’t like people getting his way.”
Finally, Terran got a message from his men outside.
“Your friends are here,” Terran said after hanging up the phone. “My men tracked them down.”
Cassia felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
When Cassia’s friends were escorted into Terran’s home, Cassia ran to them and hugged them tightly.
Cassia took Sam aside to talk to her privately. “Are you okay? You got out in time?”
“About an hour before all hell broke loose,” Sam said. “Don’t worry. We’re fine. We were questioned, but let go when they realized we had nothing to do with Hale’s crimes.”
“What a relief!” Cassia exclaimed.
“What about you?” asked Sam. “Are you all right? Will you be all right? The EDJ will likely seize all of Hale’s assets.”
Cassia looked back at Terran, who was telling a story about an assassin to the Russian brothers. The brothers looked absolutely fascinated. “I will be fine. I’m exactly where I need to be.”
“Are you sure?” asked Sam. “It’s a big decision. You don’t want to rush into something like this.”
Cassia smiled at friend. “Sam, I know how it looks, but I’m not rushing into this. I’ve known him for eight hundred years.”
Epilogue
Cassia was exhausted, but the nine months of waiting and the excruciating labor was worth it. Cassia and Terran both looked down at their daughter with enough love to fill the universe.
She was perfect. Her rounded nose looked just like Cassia’s, but her eyes were the same vibrant green as her father’s.
“I’ve never been so happy in my entire life,” said Cassia as her daughter wrapped her fingers around Cassia’s pinky.
Terran kissed his wife’s forehead before leaning down and placing a gentle kiss on the top of the newborn’s head.
Should I go and grab Sam? She’s been pacing outside the door for hours waiting to hear the news.
“Not yet,” said Cassia. “We have waited so long for this moment. I don’t want to share her with anybody quite yet.”
Terran smiled widely. “What should we name her?”
“Gila,” said Cassia.
As she said the name, the newborn’s opened her eyes, as if expressing her approval.
“That’s beautiful,” said Terran. “What does it mean?”
Cassia smiled. “Eternal joy.”
***
THE END
Brother’s Best Friend
Scarlet Oak Shifters
Text Copyright © 2017 by Lucy Penn
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, 2017
Publisher
Secret Woods Books
[email protected]
www.SecretWoodsBooks.com
Brother’s Best Friend
Scarlet Oak Shifters
By: Lucy Penn
Brother’s Best Friend
Chapter One
He had no reason to be excited as the car pulled off I-95 and made its way through the cedar-lined backroads.
They were closer to their destination than he realized, and his apprehension was mounting.
I shouldn’t have come back here, he thought angrily, eyeing Branson with disgust.
As if sensing his annoyance, his best friend turned to him, removing his starch white hat from atop his blonde head, and grinned disarmingly.
“It’s only for three weeks,” Branson said optimistically. “What else were you going to do while we were on leave?”
“I don’t know, Bran. Maybe go to Europe? Maybe Vegas? Maybe anywhere but back to the trailer park in Scarlet Oak, Georgia where I’ll be scraping my mama off the floor when she’s passed out from too much bourbon again.”
Branson half-smiled and shook his head.
“Ah,” he replied with understanding. “Does she know you’re coming home, or did you conveniently fail to mention it again?”
Rocco scoffed and turned back to watch as they fell further into the country with each passing mile.
“What’s the point of telling her? She would only forget, anyway.”
“Good,” Branson said, clapping his best friend on the back. “Then you can stay with me. No need to tell her anything. She won’t leave her trailer long enough to hear that you’re here, and even if she does, she’s apt to forget, anyway.”
Rocco glanced back at Branson, a spark of hope growing in him for the first t
ime as he considered the offer.
Do I really want to stay with the Carringtons? Rocco asked himself. Don, Cindy, and Zoe watching my every move?
The Carringtons had been like a surrogate family to him since he and Branson had attended grade school, but they were still exactly like family. Rocco was not sure that he had the energy to endure the platitudes and small talk.
Instantly a mental picture of his mother’s bloated, tearful face popped into his mind.
“Shouldn’t you check with your folks first?” he asked, and Branson laughed.
“Nah,” the slightly smaller man replied, extending his fingers to examine his nails. “The family is so happy that I’m home that they wouldn’t care if I brought the enemy to stay at this point.”
Rocco wondered what that was like, having a family who missed him after being gone for three years.
He reasoned that the Carringtons would be happy to see him, too.
It had been the appeal of joining the military to Rocco, leaving behind the oppressiveness of Scarlet Oak and the pack, putting his natural killer instinct to good use.
But he couldn’t deny that a fire burned inside him, a longing for something more than shifting and war.
What it was, he couldn’t say exactly, but as the years passed, the conflagration grew hotter and Rocco did not know how to calm the flames.
“Lieutenant Carrington, Lieutenant Burnaby, we will be in Scarlet Oak in twenty minutes,” the driver announced, and Branson turned to him expectantly.
“So? What do you say? You coming to stay with me?”
Rocco found himself nodding in agreement. What else could he say? Neither of his options was appealing, but at least staying with Bran would be the lesser of two evils.
“No need to stop at Burnaby’s location, Bryce,” said Branson. “Just straight to Pine River Drive.”
