by Zelda Knight
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Brighton will be fine,” my father said. “Caine too, but he needed to come here.”
His statement, though nothing I didn’t already know, had my stomach clenching with worry. With shifter healing, it had to be bad to need a human’s intervention. I could already feel my bruises fading, my body realigning.
We waited for what felt like a lifetime until finally, a nurse came to us and said we could enter.
They were both in the same room in identical beds. Brighton was sitting anxiously. Caine though, was unconscious, hooked into machines. My heart twisted at the sight of strong, steady Caine, so vulnerable.
Brighton jumped to his feet the moment we entered, despite the nurse’s warning.
For a long moment we held onto each other, breathing deep.
I wanted nothing more than to retreat to my bedroom and bury myself under the covers with my mates. I wanted to hide them and protect them.
Of course, now I didn’t know if I even had a home to go back to.
I’d thought I was ready for that the night that I ran. Today though, the thought felt daunting.
“Is he okay?” I whispered.
“I’m fine.”
I gasped at Caine’s quiet voice.
Together, we went to his side. His eyes had drifted open, hazy brown eyes looking up at us. I took his hand and Brighton squeezed his shoulder.
“Can we go home now?” he asked, voice a whisper.
Perhaps Brighton had heard my thoughts because his gaze darted to me and then my father.
“You’ll come home,” my father said, stepping forward, “and when you’re ready, you’ll have my help to build your own.”
I knew his offer came from guilt and obligation. Of course, if we were starting our own pack, I was sure he would want to start our alliance on the right foot. Either way though, I appreciated it.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Our own place…
A spark of excitement found its way into me.
Once my boys were healed, everything would be different.
Chapter Twelve
MINA
“Be careful!”
Brighton stomped to the edge of the roof and glared down at Caine, pointing the nail gun toward him.
“You think I’m not being careful? You keep saying that every five minutes. You want to come do it instead?”
Caine shot me a look, clearly longing to take Brighton up on his suggestion.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said firmly.
Sighing, he shook his head up at Brighton.
“Sorry, Boss says I have to stay down here.”
“Boss says you have to stay down here and finish healing,” I corrected.
Brighton grumbled and went back to work.
He was on the roof of the new house—our new house, fixing the shingles.
A gift from my father.
I was still sore where he was concerned, but it looked like he was trying to make amends despite the awkwardness of our current relationship.
This house was close enough to the Briar Pack land that it still felt familiar and homelike even though half the walls were currently down.
It was in serious disrepair, but we still stuck a bed in one of the rooms and all slept in it overnight. During the day, Brighton worked on fixing it up.
With his shifter healing, he’d recovered faster than any human would have, I was as good as new, but Caine still winced when he moved.
That didn’t stop us from doing other activities, it just meant that I had to go on top and well, no one was complaining about that fact.
Biting my lip at the direction my train of thought had gone, I glanced over at Caine. He was squinting up at Brighton, watching him work with a sharp, worried glare. Clearly, he didn’t trust the other shifter’s carpentry.
He was as sexy as always, even more so now, because I knew how his lips tasted, I knew what his body felt like, I knew he was mine.
“You seem worried,” I sighed coyly. “Let me take your mind off of it.”
“I’m not—“
He finally caught my tone and looked at me, a glint of hunger in his gaze.
Grinning, I leaned in, letting my hand trace the sharp stubble on his jaw as I kissed him. He opened himself up to me, lips following my lead. From the moment we’d started this, he’d always followed me, and I loved that power he gave me. Such a big strong man…
“This is so unfair.”
Brighton’s genuinely disappointed tone brought a burst of laughter from my lips.
I looked up at him where he was watching from the edge of the roof like a dejected child.
“I’m up here working while you two get to have fun,” he pouted.
“Well get down here for a minute then.”
Grinning, he went to the ladder far faster than anyone should ever move on a roof. He leaped off the last five rungs, landing with a spring, tossing the nail gun to the side as he marched toward me.
“Hey! I said be careful with that thing!”
Caine’s shout only made it funnier as Brighton made a show of sweeping me into his arms and dipping me to plant a long, lingering kiss that fully took my breath away.
By the time he lifted me back up and we slowly parted, I could barely think straight.
“Feel better?” I managed to ask.
He nodded, hooded gaze glancing down at my swollen lips.
“Okay, now get back to work.”
He blinked, surprised, and then burst into laughter.
Without arguing and with a much-needed pep in his step, he went back to his job. I settled back down in the garden seat next to Caine.
He took my hand, shaking his head.
“I honestly don’t know how we ended up so lucky.”
I squeezed his hand, for a moment too overcome with emotion to answer.
“I’m the lucky one,” I finally managed.
I meant that with all my heart.
Somehow, instead of being sold to the pack that would take from me until there was nothing left, I was here; with Caine and Brighton as my mates, beginning our own pack.
Starting from this single run-down house, we would rebuild our lives, together.
My every dream had come true, after all.
The End
About Juliet Moon
Juliet Moon is a steamy romance writer who enjoys finding new and interesting ways to twist her characters to her whims.
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Stolen Mate is her debut! Thanks for reading!
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Omegas of the Wilds
Stolen Mate
Unwanted Mate: Coming Soon
Breaking Chains
A La Isla Perdida Paranormal Prison Short Story
© 2021 Margo Bond Collins
About Breaking Chains
A La Isla Perdida Paranormal Prison Short Story
Fae and shifters don’t work together. But Evangeline and Mara did—they were the best burglars in the business. Until they got caught.
Now they’ve been sentenced to La Isla Perdida. The supermax-plus prison designed to hold paranormals, reserved for the most dangerous supernatural criminals.
Rumor has it that in La Isla, there is no peace between the fae and shifters. There’s no peace, period—not unless the alpha fae and shifter declare it. As long as Gage and Clark can maintain their fragile truce, the island won’t descend into chaos.
But it looks like chaos is exactly what Evangeline and Mara bring with them.
Chapter One
MARA
“I have a bad feeling about this job, Mara.” Evangeline twirled several strands of her long, blonde hair into a braid.
“You always say that. Blalock never let us down before.”
My partner
frowned. “Yeah, but he never asked us to run anything this big before.”
“Maybe he’s moving up in the world.” I shrugged and pulled on a black hoodie over my tank top. “And this is it, Ev. Our cut will cover the last of what we owe to the Gray Clan, and then we’re out of here.”
With a sigh, Evangeline tucked the last of her braids into the bun on the back of her head. Shrugging into her own hoodie, she finished her prepping ritual. “I can’t wait to get the fuck away from them.”
Virtually in unison, we scooped up our gear bags and strode toward the door of the warehouse apartment we shared.
One more heist.
When Blalock offered us this gig, he had to have known we would feel compelled to take it.
Five years. That’s how long we had been working to buy Evangeline out of the Gray fae clan.
Getting me free of the Blackwood Pack had been much simpler. All I had to do was let them know I was determined to keep working with a fae partner and they kicked me out. After they beat the shit out of me, of course.
Fae and shifters don’t work together. Everyone knows that.
Except Evangeline and me.
And no matter how hard they tried, neither her clan nor my pack had been able to convince us that our friendship, our partnership, was unnatural.
Besides, we were damn good together, the best thieves in the high-end heist business. As soon as we finished paying off the Grays, we would be living the high life.
This last robbery should have been easy. It wasn’t your normal jewel heist. It wasn’t the kind that meant dealing with several layers of security, both magical and mechanical. No. This was a fashion show—one run by a coalition of fae.
A fae fashion show had garnered enough attention that several major designers were loaning out jewelry for the catwalk show the very next day.
And we just happened to know where those jewels were stashed away between now and then.
Or at least, Blalock did. That came with the territory for him. He was the Gray fae clan’s lead enforcer.
Having grown up in the wolf shifter clans, the term enforcer brought to my mind visions of burly men who used their fists and fangs to mete out justice. But in fae clans, it was a different story. The elite enforcers among the fae were not handing out punishments on their own. They were the guys who came up with a plan to hand out justice to everyone else. Blalock hired people to take care of problems.
In our case, he lined up the kinds of heists that paid big, ones that allowed us to buy our way out of the Gray clan as fast as we possibly could. Truth be told, no one wanted us out more than the Grays did. Well, except maybe me and Evangeline.
So I didn’t think anything of it when he handed us this assignment.
I should have paid more attention.
I should have known he was setting us up.
We had a short window to get in, nab the jewels, and get back out.
At three o’clock that morning, the last of the warehouse employees took off, leaving only one security guard making the rounds.
Blalock had told us there might be more security inside around the vault that held the jewels themselves, but because most urban fae clans relied more on magic than muscles, I suspected spells were more likely than people.
Anyway, between the two of us, Evangeline and I could handle anything that came our direction. I was sure of it.
So when we made our way toward the back entry we had scoped out as our best option, I wasn’t worried at all about getting caught.
I had the same adrenaline high I always got at the start of a new gig, that moment when all the plans come together and start unfolding in real time.
I even loved the moments that played out differently from expectations, the ones that forced us to use our wits and our skills, our imagination and our abilities. Those were the moments that made a heist go from merely fun to wildly exhilarating.
Tonight, though, everything went as smooth as silk, as pretty as I could have imagined it.
We got in past the guard, no problem. When it came time to take down the alarm on the door leading into the room holding the dresses and the vault that the jewels were locked away in, Evangeline spun up her magic, highlighted the wires she needed me to deal with, and I followed my heightened shifter senses to make sure they were not electrified before we snipped them.
We really were the perfect team.
At the vault itself, my hyped-up hearing and Evangeline’s delicate touch combined allowed us to crack the code without any problem at all.
When Evangeline swung open the safe door, I gasped.
I had known that the designer jewelry would be gorgeous.
But I hadn’t realized how breathtaking it would all be when I saw it in one place.
Evangeline didn’t move for a couple of seconds, and my partner’s eyes glowed with fae fire—something I had never actually seen before, though I’d heard about it. Not surprising that she would react that way to jewels of this quality, probably. The Gray clan fae were originally miners—mountain fae who could search out veins of precious metal and stone, then turn it into beautiful works of art, jewels our world has never seen the likes of since the clan was virtually decimated several hundred years ago.
“Hey.” I snapped my fingers in front of her face. Evangeline blinked several times until she focused in on me.
“Sorry.” She shook her head, and the last of the fae fire faded from her eyes. “I think some of those are Gray Stones.”
Stones originally crafted by her clan?
Whoa.
“Shouldn’t there be more security on these, then?” I hissed. What the hell was this? It might not be surprising that top designers would use Gray Stones, but surely they would put more guards around them, right?
Evangeline snapped into action. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s get them and get out.”
She pulled two carryalls out of the equipment bag and tossed one to me. I unzipped mine, she unzipped hers, and we began shoveling jewels into them.
When both our bags were full and the safe was empty, we looped the straps over our shoulders, hanging the bags diagonally across our chests to keep them more secure.
I checked my watch, noting the timer I kept running during heists. “Three minutes until the guard makes his next round.”
I closed the safe door and Evangeline spun the lock. The longer it took for anyone to notice that we had been there, the better it would be for us.
Easy job.
That was the last thought I had before all hell broke loose.
As we turned and took a step away from the safe, lights went on throughout the entire warehouse.
“Put up your hands!”
“Stop right there.”
Men’s voices boomed out around us, flashlights beaming directly into our eyes. But we had an escape plan, a contingency for this kind of thing. We simply had to get out of the warehouse first.
The police had blocked all the exit points.
“Four o’clock,” I hissed out of one corner my mouth to Evangeline.
At her almost imperceptible nod, we broke to our right and behind us, toward a spot not covered by the cops who surrounded us—not covered because it was a solid brick wall and they didn’t think they had to cover it.
But they had no idea what Evangeline and I had been working on.
We had never had to use it before to get away. But if whoever had learned enough to take us down tonight had been paying more attention, they might have been able to track us to a variety of abandoned buildings over the last few months. There, they would have discovered the rubble of what had once been solid walls.
Rubble that we had left behind as we practiced.
Fae and shifters had been so unwilling to work with one another for so long that most of them had no idea of the kinds of things we could do together.
I sometimes wondered if that’s why we were all but forbidden to collaborate.
Old stories of the fae portrayed them as sweet w
oodland creatures with wings. Even older stories and that suggested they were violent and dangerous. And werewolves were shown to be vicious, powerful beasts.
When we were working together, Evangeline and I managed to pretty much be all of that and more.
We headed toward the wall where no one was in our way.
The police around us started yelling for us to stop. But we reached out and grabbed each other’s hands. Evangeline pulled on my power, drawing it into her body and using it to boost herself up the wall, running with her feet perpendicular to the ground, as if gravity had no meaning.
The way she used my energy rebounded into me and forced me to shift. But not in the way shifting usually worked. Normally, my shift felt like my bones breaking and reforming, my muscles ripping and healing. But now, I pulled on a little bit of Evangeline’s power, and when it poured into me, it was like a balm for my body and my soul.
I flowed into my lupine form like water into a glass.
My shift released energy, too, and Evangeline used that to draw her feet back, hover in the air for just a moment, and then kick out with more force than either of us could have applied alone. The wall exploded outward, creating a hole that led to an alleyway. Evangeline dropped down, landing on my back and wrapping her arms around my neck as I leaped through the opening, head down, speeding toward the nearest street.
Together, we were faster and stronger than anyone else I’d ever met. We should have gotten away.
But the cops were smarter than we expected.
They didn’t shoot us. Not with guns, anyway. Something painful and jolting slammed into my shoulder, followed by a blast of electric energy that raced through me in silver spikes of pain.
