Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  “I smelled no explosives on her.”

  Haydon nodded. “Good news.” Unless the humans had found a way to hide that smell. Even one year earlier he’d never have considered that possibility. As an added thought, he continued. “The Alpha from Austin is dead, along with the males in his pack. It looks like True Believers.”

  Sal growled. Hours from the appearance of the Full Moon, they all made strange noises he’d prefer to hide from the humans. Even Hayden found it hard to hold them in. Savage never had that problem. He was a much better Alpha and the San Francisco Pack flourished under his care.

  “They won’t get to you, my Alpha. I guarantee it.”

  Hayden patted him on the back. “I appreciate your loyalty. I doubt very much they’re coming for me.”

  Other than his familial relationship with Savage, he didn’t have much of what the True Believers wanted. He would never be a prominent kill. Maybe an afterthought if they took out his brother and discovered Hayden existed.

  Damn it. Things had gone horribly wrong if he had to figure out how the deranged humans would plot his death. But then again, he’d been trained to stay two steps ahead of his enemies at all times. Hayden followed Sal out into the hall towards the front of the vineyard.

  “This office?” He pointed to the storage room where the head of their wine club, Max, kept the orders for the next shipment. Max had been severely damaged in his last fight for Lucian. His left hand barely functioned when he was in human form. Yet he never complained about the pain, and with his help, sales were up.

  “Yes. I really didn’t know where else to shove her. The caves were out of the question. I wasn’t putting her anywhere near the wine barrels.”

  “Good call.” No one went near his product if they didn’t have permission. He loved two—sometimes three—things in the world. His pack and his wine. His brother sometimes fell on that list. Their relationship shifted more than the fault line beneath their feet.

  He sniffed the air before he walked in. Crazy had a particular metallic scent on humans. Usually it made his teeth hurt. But he didn’t get that scent just then. Nothing but sweet honey. He stopped moving at the thought.

  Yes, the human female in the room, whom he could already place in her twenties based on the quality of her scent alone, didn’t give off the uncomfortable sensation of being ill. In fact, her scent reminded him of a Riesling he’d recently drunk. Sweet wine didn’t usually fit his palate, but he’d liked the taste, had bought a bottle, and had even mentioned to Sal that they might consider buying more land in the next two years to grow the grapes himself.

  Using other vineyard’s grapes had never worked for him. He planted the vines, and he followed it to fruition.

  Hayden pushed open the door. The honey girl on the other side needed his attention, and he needed to discover how she knew who the hell he really was.

  Max’s office had large windows that looked out over the vineyard behind the tasting room. One desk sat in the center with a black leather chair behind it. A framed picture of the Napa Valley was the only artwork in the place, which counted as one more piece of artwork than Hayden had in his own office.

  The opening of the door didn’t make the beauty seated at Max’s desk look up. In fact, she didn’t move at all. Her head rested in her hands, and she seemed to be rocking back and forth on the chair. Her scent filled the room, and it made him dizzy. For a second, he thought he might need to sit down, but it passed, leaving him with just a heady feeling of complete…happiness.

  What the hell?

  He rubbed his forehead. Had he been drugged? He turned to look at Sal. The other man appeared unaffected, so it couldn’t be some loopy poison gas.

  The woman finally looked up, and she stared at him. Her pupils were huge. She didn’t smell like illegal drugs. That didn’t mean she hadn’t ingested something he had never encountered before.

  “Oh, Hayden. Thank the universe.” She stood up. He had time to register her large blue eyes that matched the hair dye on the tips of her brown hair. She was small, barely five foot two, but she curved in all the right places. Dressed in a long black dress that hit the floor, she looked out of place for a Wednesday afternoon in his casual winery.

  Where had she been before she’d come here?

  She’d no sooner uttered her words than she leapt into the air. He caught her in his arms, and she snuggled up against him as if they’d known each other—quite well—for a long time. “I knew I’d get to you. I believed it. Even when they held me, I could see it.”

  “Um… Miss…” Hayden struggled with conflicting emotions. This close to the Full Moon it was all he could do not to give into his animal need to carry her off and see if she smelled like honey everywhere. But the reasonable part of him, the part that still had control, at least for a few more hours, knew he had never met this woman before in his life.

  He set her soundly back on her feet. “You seem to know my name, but I have to tell you that you have me at a disadvantage there. I have no idea who you are.”

  She gasped and struggled out of his light hold. Her blue eyes, with their still-too-large pupils, stared back at him as if he’d just told her that he’d murdered her mother.

  “No. That can’t be. It cannot have all been in my own mind the whole time.” She shook her head violently. “What did they do to me? You don’t know me? We didn’t share any of it? Oh God. Oh God. Then you don’t know yet. You don’t understand.”

  “Miss…” He tried to interrupt, but her movements silenced him. He worried about the way she thrashed her head about. Whoever this honey lady turned out to be, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He’d figure out later why he felt that way.

  “You need to listen to me, Hayden Chaucer. If you hear nothing else, if it was all just a dream the doctors made me have, then you have to believe me. They’re going to kill you.”

  Behind Hayden, Sal sucked in his breath, but Hayden raised his hand to stop him from speaking. Still, the woman turned her glazed glare on his second-in-command. “Is this true, Sal? Does he not know me? Do you not? Is that why you wouldn’t bring him to me before?”

  Sal looked at him and shook his head. He had no idea what she spoke of either.

  “Oh damn it to Hades.”

  He grinned at her terms.

  “Okay, listen. None of it happened. I get it. But you are Hayden Chaucer.” She visibly swallowed, her throat clenching. He wanted to reach out and stroke her long neck, but that would be highly inappropriate considering she so clearly needed help of some kind.

  “I am Hayden. I mean, yes, that’s me.” He nodded before he crossed to the other side of the room. Max had a small refrigerator, and inside was just what he hoped he’d find: a bottle of water. He took it out and tried to hand it to her, but she didn’t raise her hand to take it.

  “Then that much was real. You’re Alpha here. Of the werewolves.”

  “Now that we have to talk about.” Hayden cleared his throat. “You have to tell me how you know that. Right now.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me. You didn’t then, and you won’t now, but you have to listen to me. They are coming for you tonight, and if you don’t do something about it, they will kill you. They will kill every one of you, and all Savage will find are your torn-up remains.” She teared up, several of the drops falling from her eyes and running unstopped down the side of her face.

  “Who is coming to kill the Alpha?” Sal obviously couldn’t hold back any longer. Hayden noted his second-in-command didn’t ask about himself or the others. Truly, Sal’s loyalty knew no bounds. Hayden by contrast, cared more about the second half of her dire prediction. His pack mates counted on him. He wouldn’t let them down.

  “The True Believers. They’re coming in a black van. Five of them. A small number. But you’re all shifted and in the tunnels. You won’t hear them until it’s too late. You’ll fight, but they have guns. Big ones. The kind they use in wars. They’ll destroy you.”

  She cried
fully now. “That can’t happen. There’s too much for you to do. And there’s the moonlight. The way it hits you. The way you tell the Moon that you need to be a human to save me—I mean her—Lily. All of that has to happen, Hayden. Don’t you understand?”

  She spoke of so many different things that he quickly lost track. Did she want to talk about the True Believers, or did she want to talk about the story of the werewolf creation? Lily and the Alpha Wolves?

  He would have asked, but just then, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she collapsed. Hayden darted forward and caught her before she hit the floor. She really weighed nothing, at least not to him.

  “Sal, come on, we need to bring her upstairs.”

  His second raised a dark eyebrow. “My Alpha?”

  “To my room.” He crossed past Sal and into the hall. “Clear out the humans here for the tastings. Kill the lights. Make it look like a power outage or think of something cleverer. I don’t care. Just handle it.”

  “Of course, but as your second, I have to point out how ridiculous it is to bring her upstairs. She’s just talked about killing you. About ending all of us.”

  Hayden shook his head. “She didn’t talk about doing it herself. She said some people in a black van would.” Or at least he thought she had. It had gotten downright confusing there at the end.

  “The killing you in general is what concerns me.”

  Hayden shook his head. “That would concern me too if it weren’t for one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Sal didn’t move to let Hayden pass with the girl.

  “She’s my mate.”

  Saying it aloud stunned him as much as it did Sal, whose mouth fell open like a landed fish. At some point as Hayden stood holding her, the scent of honey everywhere, she’d gotten beneath his skin in the rare way he’d only seen happen on a few occasions. The way it happened if the person in question was a true mate. The rarest-of-the-rare findings, the thing some werewolves spent their lives searching for and died without finding.

  And she’d rushed into his vineyard. As crazy as he’d ever seen anyone in his life.

  “She’s my true mate. My wolf knows it. My destined love. A human woman—and clearly not in her right mind. I’ll ask you to get out of my way. She won’t kill me. Or, if she does, there’ll be some kind of poetic justice to the whole thing.” He growled his last words, and Sal moved out of his way. “I want a whole pack meeting tonight. I’ll discuss this with everyone. As for her prediction of dire circumstances and death, I’ll take it under advisement. We’ll set up extra security. No one will get in here with guns.”

  Sal nodded, and Hayden passed him, heading up the stairs. The moon would be in the sky soon, and he wanted his mate in his bed. Not to fuck her, not yet anyway, and certainly not before he helped her get her mind back in order, if such a thing was possible, but he needed her in his bed, surrounded by his scent and protected in what little he claimed as his own.

  He took the stairs two at a time. She hadn’t budged since she’d passed out, and that concerned him. The lady was on something or had something done to her. She’d fainted, and he had no idea how serious that was to the little human. His pack had to shift. He couldn’t be in the hospital with her.

  Hayden felt her pulse. It was strong and steady, not too fast or too slow. That was good. She didn’t feel warm. He couldn’t help, however, noticing how soft she was beneath his fingertips.

  His little honeyed human. How on earth was he supposed to take care of a human mate with the world falling apart?

  Chapter Two

  Chelsea Steefle came around slowly. She’d woken up in a dazed, uncomfortable state enough to know she’d been drugged up. No light pooled through windows, and the room was only lit by one small nightstand lamp that someone had left on its dimmest setting. She knew the room, recognized it even though she knew she shouldn’t. Her memories were from one of her dreams or visions or whatever someone wanted to call them. She’d been in this room many times, except she knew she’d never been here.

  Only she’d never really met its owner, other than earlier when she’d collapsed, and the many relationships she’d shared with him—decades’ worth of time she’d not really lived—would fade to nothingness now that the fugue had passed. Soon, she wouldn’t remember any of it any more than she would some fleeting images her brain let fade away. Which meant she had very little time to make sure the stranger she’d come to warn actually took heed of her advice.

  Chelsea darted to her feet, and then wished she hadn’t, as her head pounded like someone had driven a jackhammer into it. No, she couldn’t have that. She had to get control of the pain before the pain took everything away from her like it always did. The migraines were a symptom of the problem, and solving them did nothing to take away her bigger issues. But if putting a Band-Aid on a gut wound could at least get her moving, then she’d take that in the meantime.

  Hayden wouldn’t have any painkillers sitting around. Werewolves wouldn’t need them, but he’d always have an abundance of alcohol. If she couldn’t knock the edge off, she’d see if she could drown it. The thunder clapping in her head almost took her to her knees. Something had to be done immediately.

  Only where and what? She bit her lip trying to remember. In her “not real” existence, she’d known this place like the back of her hand. Much as she would love to pop open one of his vintage reds and have at it, chugging the good stuff like she some kind of box wine seemed out of place. Hayden didn’t keep booze in his room—he didn’t like to mix business with bedroom, but Sal did.

  She limped out into the hall, every move she made jarring her brain a little bit more.

  Chelsea had no sooner rounded the corner than she stopped short. There, standing before her fully shifted into his werewolf form, was Hayden. If the pain of doing so wouldn’t have completely knocked her out, she would have thrown something at him. He always thought he was so tough in his black wolf form, as if someone couldn’t easily get a shotgun, aim, and put a bullet in his thick head.

  “I know I told you they were coming for you. I know I got that much out. Were you crazy shifting? You have to be ready to fight back.”

  The wolf growled back at her, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m dying with this migraine, and I have more sense than you. Get out of my way. I’m going to Sal’s room to drink so much vodka I can’t feel this throb anymore, and then I’m going to go figure out a way to kill the people coming for you, even though I’m just a puny human and you’re mister tough guy.”

  A flash of light appeared before her, and Hayden stepped forward in his human form. She drew her breath in sharply. “How did you do that?”

  “I’m an Alpha. I shift when I want to, even during the Full Moon.” His voice sounded like music. He was sixty years old and didn’t look a day over thirty. It was so unfair that he got to be so beautiful and still seem so manly. Brown hair and huge green eyes that seemed to look right through her threatened to drown her in their depths.

  “Did I know you that you could shift at will?” She bit down on her lip. Her memory was starting to fade much faster than it should have. What had they given her this time?

  “I don’t know. You tell me. I don’t know your name or what’s going on here. I do know that I need to do something about your headache. Your pain is unbearable, and I won’t allow it continue another minute.”

  She shook her head. “My head is your least concern. They are coming to kill you.” She could see it so clearly. When he didn’t listen to her, the times that her dreams had shown other outcomes, he’d always ended up dead. It had destroyed her.

  “I know you think that. Don’t argue with me. I’m not budging until I make you more comfortable. If you want me to do something else, you’re going to have to comply. It’s up to you exactly how difficult you feel like being.”

  He moved toward her like the predator she knew him to be. Hayden tugged her against him, and she let herself, for one second, be absorbed in how right it felt
and how his scent—pine needles and soap—made her feel as if she’d finally gotten home. “Chelsea.”

  Hayden laughed, and she heard the small rumble in his chest. “That’s your name, then?”

  “Chelsea Steefle.”

  “That’s pretty.” He rubbed her forehead, moving his hand to the top of her scalp. “I’m not a Healer, Chelsea”— he could say her name all day, every day, she loved how it sounded— “but I’m Alpha here. For some reason, you know what that means, and, well, there are other reasons, but I’m not going to go into it now. The point is that you have to do what I say. I have Alpha magic.” He pressed on her head. “I want your headache gone.”

  Her head felt hot. She gasped, not liking the sensation. It wasn’t a warm gooey feeling but more like someone had jammed a heater inside of her and turned it on full blast. She tried to pull back, but Hayden wouldn’t let her go. “Shh. Quiet now.”

  She tried to listen, but it hurt. Chelsea squirmed in his arms until she felt the heat start to leave. Seconds later, coolness invaded her, and she could breathe again. Her headache had eased. It wasn’t completely gone, but she no longer felt as if she might hit the floor.

  “We’ll work on that again. A stronger Alpha would be able to kill your headache no problem, but you’re stuck with me.”

  She tsked. “You’re always like this. If you don’t die today, you’ll still be doubting yourself at ninety years old. You’re a good Alpha. Lucian didn’t know everything about everything.”

  She’d love to see what a little Alpha confidence could do for him. Hayden managed nearly everything he did with perfection. Why couldn’t he see it?

  “Okay, Chelsea.” He took a step back from her and narrowed his eyes.

  “Oh, we’ve got the serious look going on here. You want answers. I know. I want to give them to you, but there’s the little thing about madmen coming to kill you.”

  He shook his head. “If you know me as you claim to, then trust me on all counts. What’s going on here?”