Shifter Overdrive

by Scarlett Grove

  Ella whispered, “Yes.”

  Tate thrust forward, burying himself inside her in one motion. She was so wet, he slid right inside, deep in her core. Her mouth dropped as the sensation overtook her and she came. Ella moaned loudly and Tate petted her hair, moving back and thrusting again in a quick rhythm.

  He growled into her ear, not stopping as her orgasm slowed. He took her hands over her head and pressed them to the pillow, raining kisses and bites over her neck and breasts and mouth.

  “Fuck, I need to have you, Ella,” he growled in her ear. He pulled back and turned her over on her hands and knees. Ella shook with excitement. They had made love many times in the last month, but each time felt like Tate was holding back. She knew he wasn’t holding back now. His animal intensity made her want to give herself up to the passion inside him.

  He gripped her hips and thrust inside her. They both groaned as he filled her again. Tate’s claws extended from his fingertips and dug into her flesh, almost breaking the skin. Ella couldn’t get enough. He pumped into her forcefully, taking everything he craved all along.

  As she felt herself barreling toward another climax, Tate lifted her back against his chest, cupping her breast with one hand. He rubbed her sex with the other.

  Tate growled in her ear, “I claim you, Ella.”

  Ella moaned and Tate’s teeth gripped her neck. He continued to pump into her from behind, holding her tight to him. His long, sharp teeth broke through the skin, cutting off her voice. She wanted to cry out from pleasure and pain, but couldn’t speak.

  Ella could feel her blood trickle down her neck and Tate’s cock grow wider inside her core. She was so overcome, she could barely breath. She was a live wire of sensation, like the string of an electric guitar, ready to be plucked. As he shot his release deep inside her, it hit a deeper pleasure within. Ella’s mouth dropped open with a silent groan.

  He pinched her nipple and rubbed her clit as they came together. His sharp teeth held her as their bodies throbbed with release.

  Ella could feel the bear inside her at the fringes of her mind. It was just out of sight, just out of reach.

  Slowly, Tate retracted his teeth and licked the open wound on her neck. She sucked several sharp breaths and fell forward on her stomach, groaning with pleasure and amazement. He fell down beside her and took her into his arms.

  “Holy shit, that felt good,” he said, petting her hair. “I hope I wasn’t too rough with you.”

  “I loved feeling you let go and take what you wanted.”

  “That’s why I love you so much, Ella,” he said, kissing her head.

  She hugged him tighter, anticipating what was next. Tonight was the full moon. Now that he’d given her the claiming bite, she would shift. She could become like him, wild inside.

  “When will it happen?” she whispered, still a little afraid.

  “As soon as we stand under the light of the full moon. Are you ready?”

  “I am. Let’s do it now. I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  “Come.”

  Tate stood from the bed and held out his hand. He pulled two blankets from the bed and draped one around her shoulders and then one around his own. They tiptoed down the cold stairs to the first floor and opened the door to the back porch.

  The moon rose full in the clear night sky. Snow covered the lawn that had once been green and lush. She couldn’t believe she was actually going to go naked into the cold winter night in Alaska. It was crazy. But not as crazy as the fact that she was about to turn into a bear.

  “Are you ready, baby?” he asked her, looking down into her eyes. She could see the clear green of his eyes shining in the moonlight. It filled her with such love and trust, it almost broke her heart that it took so long for her to realize it.

  “I am,” she whispered.

  Tate let the blanket drop away from his body, and he bounded into the snowy yard.

  “I’ll shift first. When the moonlight touches your skin, the bear will want to come out. All you have to do is let it. It’s going to hurt. But only the first time. Okay?”

  “I understand,” she called after him.

  She let the blanket fall around her feet. The crisp air pricked her skin, and her teeth started to chatter. As she walked forward into the snow, the moonlight glowed over her skin. She could feel her inner bear awakening. She could hear it growl and roar with new life.

  It almost felt as if it had been there all along, just waiting to come alive at Tate’s touch. She threw her head back and roared, her body breaking apart. Her mind fractured as she fell forward on all fours.

  In the span of an instant, she stood in the snow, her hot breath puffing out into the moonlight. New senses opened to her that she had never imagined possible. She could feel Tate beside her. Not just in the flesh, but the animal link between their minds told her what he was feeling.

  She could feel how much he loved her, feel his concern for her wellbeing. She knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt, they belonged together forever.

  She growled and reared up on her back legs, roaring at the moon that had changed her. She would never be the same again. She’d been changed when Tate had filled her with his seed and created Andrew, but now her very nature had shifted.

  She was like Tate now. A bear. The wild creature within would always have a say in what she did with her life. For the first time, she could truly feel the driving force to be with Tate. She knew what it meant to be fated for love.

  The intensity of that need blew her away. No wonder Tate had been so desperate all those years. Even with her animal mind, she felt a sense of empathy for his long struggle. All she wanted now was to share her life with him. Share her feelings and love.

  At the other end of their link, Tate projected back to her that he wanted the same thing. They had everything either of them could want. Each other, their child, a home and family.

  If a grizzly bear could cry, Ella would have done it then. But since grizzlies don’t cry, instead, she roared and ran into the night forest with her love by her side.

  Warrior Witch and Raven

  Everyone has a talent. Mine is death.

  I'm Olivia Fanning. It's been five years since I got my father killed. My family hates me. And Raven? I can't even think about facing him again.

  I have to go back, have to reclaim my job as an executioner for the Council of Elders. There's an influx of new monsters in Portland, with more showing up all the time. It's my job to fight them, so I'll do whatever it takes. Even make peace with my family.

  But Raven ... the boy I grew up with. Shaman. Shapeshifter. These days, a detective with Portland PD. Sexy as hell ... and the only man I ever loved.

  We're bound together by deepest magic ... but seeing him again is going to tear me apart.

  I can't let him get close to me ... can't admit that part of me, deep inside, hungers for his touch. I'm a warrior witch, and killing is all I'm good for. If only I could make him see that.

  Full length novel. Happily Ever After.

  Chapter 1

  Run.

  After all these years. After all those nights of stalking paranormal criminals, it had come to this.

  Running.

  Home.

  Like a beaten dog with my tail between my legs, I drove my 1965 black Camaro down the dark highway north, my long black hair whipping around my face and shoulders. The windows down, music up, my white knuckles showing through the holes in my fingerless driving gloves as I gripped the steering wheel.

  My nerves were shot to hell. I’d screwed up and would pay the price. If not with my job, then, in the end, with my life. And I would bring this to their door.

  My family.

  Him.

  My thigh throbbed from a deep puncture wound, my heart pulsing. Blood spurted into the makeshift bandage bound around my leg. The wooden stake in the passenger seat dripped with blood. Not the criminal’s blood. It was my own.

  In the end, I’d banished him. Where was anyon
e’s guess. Had it been my only option? Had it been because I somehow still held feelings for the man? The vampire. I didn’t know. But the Council of Elders, my employers, didn’t care why I’d done it. They wanted him dead. There was no room for failure.

  I pulled off I-5 as dawn broke over the Cascade Mountains. I slipped on my aviator sunglasses and turned toward downtown Portland, headed west to my mother’s house. I ground my teeth, anticipating the return of the prodigal daughter, the ex-lover. I’d been avoiding everyone for five years, and now, at my weakest moment, I was coming home. Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about that fact.

  If I hadn’t been fired and thrown out of the only job I was capable of doing, I never would have come back.

  But I had failed. Me. Witch warrior. Assassin. Killer of mages and men and the creatures of darkness. I’d met my match in a six-hundred-year-old vampire. I’d executed plenty of vampires in the past. Whenever the Council of Elders decided a paranormal creature was overstepping its bounds, they sent in an Executioner like me to put an end to it. Swift justice. I was good at my job. I’d never faltered. Not once in five years. Until tonight.

  Chapter 2

  As I drove down my mother’s street in the heart of the oldest neighborhood in Portland, early morning life erupted around me. A kid on a bike rode down the street throwing newspapers at the doorsteps of Queen Anne and Victorian homes. A middle-aged man in a silk bathrobe stood on his front lawn with a West Highland white terrier. Commuters pulled their cars out of their driveways, ready to commute to their human jobs.

  I cringed as I pulled into my mother’s driveway. The massive periwinkle blue house had been in our family for six generations—seven if you included my sisters’ kids. Set on almost an acre of land in the middle of Portland, the place was worth more than my mother could make in a lifetime. But Nelly Fanning was not one to sell a family treasure.

  I cut the engine and pulled off my sunglasses, squinting up at the three stories of historic splendor. A curtain dropped on the third floor and my heart jumped. They knew I was home. No point in stalling any longer.

  I pushed open my door and limped out onto the driveway toward the porch that wrapped around the first floor. Baskets of flowers hung from the eaves in pinks and blues and reds. I gingerly took the stairs, my wound aching more with each step. As I rose to the last stair, I could hear the sound of chickens clucking in the backyard and my mother’s voice cooing.

  “Peep, peep, peep. Here chickie chickie,” her voice rose around the side of the house. I rounded the corner of the porch and saw her in all her glory.

  Nelly Fanning wore a long white nightgown with a flowery silk shawl over her pale shoulders. Her strawberry-blond hair, streaked with white, fell in long waves down her back. She threw chicken scratch at the birds she let range freely in the backyard. I stood silently, crossing my arms, bracing myself for the crash.

  Her sea-green eyes moved from the chickens, across the ground, up the porch stairs, to me. Her facial expression didn’t change. She simply stared at me, the deep lines around her eyes and mouth not giving away her feelings. Slowly, she smiled and stepped too quickly for a mortal woman her age across the distance. She closed in on me and up the stairs in the span of a few seconds and had me gripped tightly in her slender but supernaturally strong arms.

  “Olivia Malone Fanning!” she said, only loosening her grip to look at me. She tilted her head back to stare me in the eye. I was at least four inches taller than her in flat feet and with the heels on my leather boots, it was more like six. Somehow the tiny woman had me in a death grip, pinning my arms to my sides. “I can’t believe it’s you! We’ve missed you so much!”

  I forcefully pulled my arms out of her grip and put my hands on her shoulders as if holding something slightly dangerous away from my body.

  “I missed you too, Mother,” I finally said, cringing inwardly. I mean, I did miss her. I wasn’t the worst daughter ever. I was only somewhere in that general vicinity.

  “Where have you been? What have you been doing? The last I heard you were working for the Council of Elders as an Executioner. To think, my daughter, an Executioner. It makes the other covens shake in their boots when I mention it.”

  I tried to keep from rolling my eyes but only halfway succeeded. I hated the idea of her bragging about my job. For one thing, it’s far from glamorous. I kill things for a living. Secondly, I was no longer an Executioner.

  “I’ve been super busy. You know, with my job. It’s hard to get home when you do what I do,” I lied.

  “Well, let’s get you inside. What are you wearing anyway, and what did you do to your hair?” she asked, finally giving me the Nelly Fanning inspection. “Are you injured?”

  “It’s fine,” I lied again. The wound was deep and I hadn’t stopped to heal it properly or to go to a mortal doctor.

  “No you aren’t,” she said, leading me inside. She shoved her quilting aside, pulled a chair from the ancient oak table, and pushed me onto the seat. I looked around my mother’s kitchen. Things hadn’t changed much in five years. Bookshelves full of recipes for both food and magic overwhelmed the space. The Spanish tile floor was swept clean but the counters were stuffed full of knickknacks and potions, implements and tools, and a few things I couldn’t even identify. Pots and pans hung from an iron wheel above the stove and rows of dried herbs hung in bundles against the far wall.

  “I should call Iona to come heal that wound,” Mother said, bustling about in the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator to pull out cream before she poured me a cup of coffee and fixed it just the way I liked it. She set the mug in front of me and sat across the table with her own.

  “Thanks for the coffee, but you don’t need to call Iona. I’ll be fine.” Iona was my older sister and a talented healer. The oldest of the five Fanning daughters. I hadn’t seen her in five years either. She had always been the family rock, the one who kept us from all simultaneously going crazy or killing each other during a full moon. But the way I’d left didn’t make me overly eager to see any of my sisters any more than I wanted to see my mother.

  “I’ve already contacted her through the witch network.”

  “What is a witch network?” I asked. I avoided technology like the plague. Most communication led to weakness and heartache.

  “Iona’s husband Shane installed it on my phone,” Mother started. “It’s one of his genius inventions and better than texting.” My mother began showing me the magical app on her phone. “Iona says she’ll be here in a jiffy. She’s excited to see you.”

  “Great,” I muttered. So it begins.

  Chapter 3

  I took another long draw of my mother’s famous coffee, tasting the spices and herbs under the bittersweet brew. It lapped against my tongue, evoking memories long past. I heaved a sigh, already feeling the heavy pressure I always felt around my family. They wanted…things. They wanted my smiles and hugs and affection, things I couldn’t give without feeling like I was about to be crushed.

  The discomfort of my mother’s love and my sisters’ concern was a small price to pay for what I needed from them. How I would get it, I still didn’t know. But without Benedictus, a magic sword that had been in the family longer than the house on Knott Street, I would never be able to get my job back.

  Being an Executioner was all I knew. It was more than a job for me; it was an identity. Without it, I had no idea who I was. With a magical talent like mine, I had to find some way to make my way in the world. Being a killing machine doesn’t exactly land you a job in corporate America, nor was it common witch fare like herbalism or crafting. It isn’t the kind of thing you can talk about at polite dinner parties among humans.

  I’d lived in the shadows most of my life. As a teenager, I’d tried to run from my abilities, wanting to be like the rest of the girls in the coven and my family. I didn’t read cards, I didn’t knit bones or blankets. I was a killer. I didn’t accept that fact until it was too late.

  The stairs above my he
ad creaked as someone walked down to the main entrance hall at the front of the house. I craned my neck to see who it was. Having Iona come fix my leg was bad enough. God, I hope it isn’t Margery.

  I let out a sigh of relief when I saw my younger sister Twyla’s bleach-blonde head. Unlike the rest of us who were varying shades of dark blonde and red, Twyla had bone-white hair like no one else in the family. Her bright blue eyes were lined with dark eye makeup and she wore a long lacy black dress, looking a bit like the bride of Frankenstein or Morticia Addams.

  “Olivia?” she said in her slow, soft voice. She blinked and seemed to float down the hall to where I sat at the kitchen table. I was in her arms before I knew it. The smell of wild roses and baby powder lifted off her black dress. “I dreamed of you. You made the choice.”

  Twyla’s soft voice and cryptic words sent a chill down my spine. Her psychic abilities always had that effect on me. No less creepy than her other ability. She let me loose from her delicate hands that were tipped in immaculately manicured black fingernails. That’s when I saw the tiny preschool-aged child hiding behind her skirt.

  She was as blond as Twyla and had blue eyes as big as a Kewpie doll’s. I stared down at her in amazement. The child seemed to glow with ephemeral light. A witch warrior like me is able to sense the magic in a being in order to better know how to kill it. It is one of my few magic skills besides fighting. Now that the Council kicked me out of the Executioners, all I had left were my native abilities.

  “This is Lenore,” Twyla said, patting the child’s head. “My daughter.”

  “I didn’t know you had a child,” I said, bending down to look the little girl in the face. She hid further behind her mother’s black, lacy skirts.