by M. L. Briers
“You mean like — human people?”
“I mean like — not giving their mates any more reason to run away screaming,” she offered back with a shrug. She wasn’t backing down, but she could sidestep the point.
“Okay.”
The alpha had to admit she had a point. Fleeing mates could never be considered a good thing. Screaming and fleeing mates was definitely not a good thing.
“So do something.” She had that damn expectant look on her face again, and the alpha grunted in annoyance.
Kiel took two long steps to the edge of the porch, tossed his head back, and roared. The betas froze in place, both of them had their hands and the other’s throat, both had a fist pulled back ready to strike, and both turned to look at the alpha.
“Job done,” the alpha said and stuck his chest out with pride.
“Sure,” Jackie walked up beside him and offered him a slap on the back. “Because that probably didn’t scare the hell out of the witches and make them want to run for their lives.”
She strolled down the steps and walked away. The alpha grimaced, he hadn’t considered that.
“Yep, might have been a little loud,” he grumbled to himself.
~
~
~
“Did you hear that?” Eliza bit out in disbelief.
“Are you serious? I think the international space station heard that.” Nancy shook her head in dismay. “How have these shifters not been discovered yet?”
“People probably think it’s just an earthquake,” Ashley grumbled as she snatched a peak out of the tiniest gap she’d made between the curtains at the big guy outside.
“Just an earthquake?” Nancy sniggered.
“I’d rather an earthquake then a shifter mate,” Eliza nodded agreement with herself before she drained her wineglass dry.
“Wow, you two are just so — morose,” Nancy chuckled again. “Think happy thoughts.”
“What do I have to be happy about?” Eliza tossed back.
“Well,” Nancy pulled a face. “There’s another bottle of wine in the kitchen.” She shrugged, and Eliza immediately pushed up from her comfortable chair and started across the living room.
“I wonder how much wine it would take for me to be permanently drunk, and therefore, not really give a damn that I’m a mate?” Eliza grumbled as she padded across the floorboards on sock-clad feet.
“See,” Nancy announced, stopping Eliza in her tracks, and bringing Ashley’s attention towards them. “Now, you’re thinking positively.”
“Geez, Nancy!” Eliza huffed as she disappeared into the darkened kitchen to retrieve the wine.
“Don’t tease,” Ashley berated her. “It’s not fair. How would you feel if you had a shifter mate?”
“Despondent — inconsolable – positively, nope, scrap the word positive…”
“It’s not a laughing matter,” Ashley berated her again.
“Come on; there’s really nothing she can do about it besides killing him,” Nancy offered as she considered it. “We could kill him for her.”
“For doing what? Being a mate?” Ashley rolled her eyes and turned away from Nancy. She snatched another peak out behind the curtain. There was the alpha — tall, built like a brick outhouse — and a sexy as hell.
She certainly had positive thoughts about him.
Ashley berated herself for that thought, any thought where the alpha was concerned. He was as sexy as hell, but did she really have to notice?
What she did notice was the other shifter that was stalking toward the cabin. It was the one that had been fighting with Drake.
That wasn’t a good sign. She craned her head on her neck and tried to hear what they were saying to each other, but a lot of it was deep male mumblings.
“It’s his fault that I found a mate…” Jeff growled.
Ashley snatched her head back and gasped in a breath. That was even worse than not a good sign. That meant that there was another mate inside the cabin.
Ashley managed to slowly turn her body away from the window, even though her feet felt as if they’d been encased in concrete. The moment that Nancy laid eyes on her friend’s ghostly white face, she knew that something was wrong.
Nancy narrowed her eyes at Ashley and questioned her with raised eyebrows. Ashley slowly lifted her hand up and pointed towards the front door.
“I…” The sound of heavy feet stomping against the outside boards made Ashley’s head snapped around on her neck in the direction of the front door. “We’re screwed.”
That was when the thudding started on the front door, and Ashley’s heart matched that beat.
CHAPTER TEN
~
“Gee, couldn’t tell that’s a shifter,” Nancy grumbled.
“We have to leave…” Ashley rushed out the words as her mind and body rushed to panic.
“No we don’t,” Nancy offered back.
“Yes, yes we do,” Ashley said.
“Weren’t you the one that said there’s a blizzard out there?” Nancy pinned her with a hard stare.
Something was wrong — that was obvious, but what could be so wrong that Ashley wanted to run out into a blizzard?
“I suddenly like blizzards,” Ashley said as she started across the living room toward the kitchen door. “We can get out the back.”
“Can you hear yourself?” Nancy followed her friend.
Ashley almost collided with Eliza in the darkened kitchen. Eliza squeaked in surprise and grasped her wineglass to her breast so that there would be no spillage because spilling your wine was a travesty.
“Of course I can hear myself,” Ashley tossed back over her shoulder as she sidestepped Eliza, grabbed her friend’s upper arm, and whirled her around to the sound of another squeak as she risked spilling her wine again.
“The wine! The wine!” Eliza protested.
“Well, drink it. We need to leave,” Ashley demanded.
“We do?” Eliza asked, confused by the new change in direction.
“We do!” Ashley was adamant.
“Okay, what brought about this change of heart?” Nancy demanded, as she lent her shoulder against the doorframe and eyed her friend with curiosity and a lot less panic than Ashley was exhibiting.
“Oh, you didn’t hear what I just heard!” Ashley was shaking her head in denial.
“Well, it might be helpful if you told me what I didn’t hear that you just heard,” Nancy tossed back.
“That’s true,” Eliza agreed.
“Just — stop!” Ashley held her hand to silence friends.
Her heart was pumping in her ears, her hands were sweaty, and she was just a little bit too drunk for everyone to come at her with questions and responses all at once.
“So, tell us already,” Eliza asked.
“Yes, tell us already,” Nancy demanded.
“Fine! Just let me get a word in edgeways,” Ashley protested.
“Edgeways, sideways, upside down, I don’t care just tell us,” Nancy demanded.
“There’s a mate inside this cabin!” Ashley announced.
“Well, doh!” Nancy offered back.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Eliza grumbled.
“No,” Ashley shook her head. “Another mate!”
Nancy’s mouth opened, but not a word came out. One of her eyebrows were raised up toward her hairline, but the other one declined to follow, and she looked more than confused.
“Huh?” Eliza wasn’t as silent as her friend, but she was just as confused.
“That — that,” Ashley lifted her hand and pointed over Nancy’s shoulder. Nancy jumped in place and turned to find nothing there. “New shifter guy that was fighting with Eliza’s mate — he said that he had a damn mate in here and he didn’t look happy.”
“Well, I don’t want two shifter mates,” Eliza spat out on a chuckle.
“Oh no,” Nancy managed to push the words out as she continually shook her head in denial.
“It
’s me — or you!” Ashley announced the obvious.
“Well, it’s not me!” Nancy snapped back, shaking her head in denial.
“But, you don’t know that,” Eliza offered up with a small glint of amusement in her eyes.
She might have been leaning towards the drunk-as-a-skunk side of the spectrum, but she remembered the fact that Nancy had been more than ready to throw her under the mating bus before — now the tables had turned, and the shoe was firmly on the other foot.
Payback was a bitch.
“No, no I don’t,” Nancy’s eyes roamed around the room as she contemplated what to do next.
“We need to leave,” Ashley demanded action.
“Oh, now you want to leave? Now that it’s one of you.” Eliza tossed up her hand and snorted contempt for them before she put the wine glass to her lips and drank her glass of dry.
“Not the point,” Nancy said as she wagged her finger at her friend.
“Definitely not the point,” Ashley agreed.
“We have to leave,” Nancy announced.
“What have I just been saying?” Ashley tossed up her hands in dismay. “Does nobody listen anymore?”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” Eliza shrugged.
While the fact that she was a mate to a shifter obviously hadn’t gone unnoticed by her, she also didn’t like the odds of being out there in a blizzard either.
“You have to leave,” Nancy said. She eyed Eliza as if the woman was insane.
“No, I don’t,” Eliza tossed up a shoulder. “I already know who my mate is.”
“And that makes it okay?” Ashley asked.
“No,” Eliza shrugged again as she considered it. “But if it’s a choice between becoming Mrs frosty the bloody snowman, or staying in this nice warm cabin with some really good wine…”
“You cannot be serious?” Nancy shook her head again.
“When life gives you lemons — swap them for grapes and make wine,” Eliza chuckled.
“I think she’s lost her mind,” Nancy sighed.
“I think she’s drunk. We need to make decisions for her,” Ashley said.
“No you don’t,” Eliza scowled at the thought of it.
“I think you’re right,” Nancy nodded in agreement.
“I think we need to leave,” Ashley said.
“No, we don’t,” Eliza shook her head in denial.
“I think you’re right,” Nancy agreed.
“Would you two just…” Eliza kind of freaked out on the spot, she even stomped her foot, and then she hissed out a few unsavory words and eyed the pair of them with disdain. “I might be a little drunk. I might be the mate to a shifter. I might be a witch that fate has picked on. But! I can still make my own decisions, and I am not going out there.”
~
~
~
Eliza was almost certain that she must look like she was wearing one of those padded sumo wrestler suits because she was dressed in almost every bit of clothing that she’d had in her suitcase. Not only that — but they were headed outside and into a blizzard.
How stupid was that? Even more stupid than her friends wrenching on layer after layer of clothes to try to ward off the cold.
The trouble was, those clothes were meant for a tropical island vacation. Luckily, they hadn’t made her wear her swimwear and undergarments. But she still felt like a sumo wrestler in disguise.
“It’s cold,” Eliza grumbled the moment that the back door was pulled closed behind them, and the frosty gusts whipped up across the land and blasted them hard.
“It’s called winter. Suck it up,” Nancy hissed out in a whisper right by Eliza’s ear. Eliza smacked her in the face as she swatted her away.
“I’d much rather be sucking up wine.”
Eliza’s teeth were already chattering. She didn’t do well in cold temperatures, let alone the arctic conditions that they were facing.
“Hush up, and let’s get moving,” Ashley said. Then her foot caught on something that was propped against the side of the cabin, and it clattered to the wooden boards.
The three witches froze in place.
“Don’t move,” Nancy hissed out on a whisper.
“Does that include my jaw? Because I can’t stop my teeth from chattering,” Eliza grumbled back.
“Can you two shut up?” Ashley hissed back over her shoulder.
“They’re making a damn run for it!” Someone growled out.
The three witches gasped in unison. All of them drew back their heads back in horror at being caught red-handed.
With squeals of surprise, they all took off in completely different directions.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
~
“Damn it!” Kiel growled, as he rounded the cabin and saw the witches in flight. Not on broomsticks, but running, slipping and sliding over the snow as fast as their pointy heeled shoes could carry them.
“Mine…” Drake growled out as he ran by the alpha and took off after his mate.
Jeff ground to a skidding stop next to his brother and sniffed the air. His lips pulled back in a wolfish grin, and a deep, hungry growl rolled through his chest.
“Mine…” He took off in the opposite direction to Drake.
“No, don’t mind me. I’ll just go get Broom Hilda before the stupid woman gets hypothermia, or lands head first in a snow bank somewhere with her striped legs flaying and her pointy shoes pointing…” he grumbled a groan. “Or I can just stand here talking to my damn self while Winnie the stupid Witch gets away.”
Kiel took off after the last remaining witch that didn’t have a mate, and on his mind; it had better stay that way. He knew one thing; he wasn’t about to sniff.
It didn’t feel like the odds were on his side.
His beast was already agitated within him. That was only natural considering the fact that there were witches around.
His eyes took in the slipping and sliding witch as she raced toward the woods as best she could. He grumbled a groan within him at the sight of her.
He couldn’t quite decide if she was drunk, stupid, or both.
Hell, he could have taken a leisurely stroll and still caught her up. At one point; it looked like she was trying to ice skate with her feet going left and right, left and right, and yet she still managed to stay upright.
“Hold it there,” the alpha growled out.
With a shriek of surprise, the witch tossed a look over her shoulder at him, tripped over her own feet, and landed face first in the snow. The alpha groaned in dismay as he rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath.
“Stay back — Satan!” The witch bit out as she pushed up from the snow onto her hands and knees and spluttered.
“I didn’t take you for religious folk,” Kiel chuckled.
“Oh, it’s funny is it?” Ashley bit out.
The alpha was about to come back with a snappy remark when she zapped him where it hurt the most. The alpha’s eyes widened in pain that was mixed with surprise, his hands grasped his balls, and with a squeak of a drawn-in breath; he collapsed to his knees.
Mine…
~
~
~
“Oh no, you don’t,” Nancy tossed back over her shoulder as she stumbled over the snowy ground away from the shifter that was following her. “I don’t know you — stay back.”
“I think we’re going to get to know each other real good,” Jeff growled as he closed the distance between them.
Nancy pulled up sharply, and Jeff had to do the same, or he would have steamrollered right over the top of her. She turned narrowed, accusing eyes back at him.
“You had better not be saying what I think you’re saying,” Nancy ground out between clenched teeth. It was the only way to stop them from chattering with the cold.
She wouldn’t show weakness — any weakness of any kind toward the damn man, and she’d be dog food in his eyes. Shifters responded to strength, and she was as strong-willed as they came.
“A
nd what is it you think I’m saying?” Jeff asked.
“You know what I’m saying that I think you’re saying, and I don’t want you to be saying it got it?”
Nancy didn’t want to say it either. Because then it would be real.
“I think you’re drunk,” Jeff said. Either that or making little sense came naturally to her.
“And I think you’re…” Nancy stumbled over her words, so she tossed her hands up in frustration. “A bully!”
“How am I a bully?” Jeff was stumped.
“I don’t know — yet —but I bet you are,” Nancy offered back.
“Oh, wow. You are drunk,” Jeff offered back.
He took a step toward her, and she tossed up her hands out in front of her to ward him off.
“Don’t you do it — not one more step,” Nancy warned.
“Don’t you get all witchy on me now,” Jeff offered back.
“I am a witch!” Nancy looked at him as if he just grown another head.
“Not the point,” Jeff growled back.
“Well, would you make it already?” Nancy tossed back. “Some of us are freezing out here.”
Jeff’s beast growled within him. Jeff growled at Nancy.
Nancy pulled her head back, and her top lip curled as she gave him a long hard stare of disbelief.
“We need to get you inside,” Jeff said, and before Nancy could offer her own opinion on that idea, he’d taken one long step toward her, dipped at the waist, and tossed up and over his shoulder.
“Oh, I’m so going to throw up down your back,” Nancy grumbled.
Jeff groaned. For one perfect moment, the symbolism of tossing his mate over his shoulder and carrying her off had been perfect. Then she’d had to open her mouth and ruin it.
~
~
~
“Come back!” Drake growled out to his mate.
“I didn’t want to bloody well leave in the first place!” Eliza tossed back over her shoulder as she tried to keep her footing in the snow.
“Then why are you running?” Drake growled again.
