Twin Alphas: Claimed
Copyright 2014 by Georgette St. Clair
This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author. No shifters were harmed during the creation of this book.
License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Thanks so much for buying Twin Alphas: Claimed! If you’d like to be notified of future releases, freebies, contests and more, please sign up for my newsletter at http://mad.ly/signups/83835/join I blog regularly at www.georgettewrites.com, and my Facebook page is www.facebook.com/georgettewrites
Amelia Baxter’s got one simple assignment: she is to sneak through the Breach into the universe where werewolves exist and observe, document, and report back. But when the sassy-mouthed, chubby college professor discovers that she’s crossed over right in the middle of the annual Alpha Claiming Festival, she’s fascinated. And when two handsome Alpha brothers beg her to spend the weekend with them in their Mating Cabin, she can’t say no. Of course, it’s all for research, right? After all, no human from her world has ever had this opportunity to get this close and personal with werewolves before!
Unfortunately, leaving behind two deliciously sexy Alphas who have locked their sights on her as their Forever Mate isn’t as easy as she thought it would be…and when she crosses back over to her world, she walks straight into a nightmare of betrayal and deadly threats to all she loves most.
Will her Alphas get to her in time, or will secrets from another world prove to be even more deadly than those who seek to betray her?
Cedar Heights, a small farming community in Northern California
Chapter One
Werewolves. I’m going to hang out with real live werewolves.
Amelia Baxter had seen werewolves before, from a distance. She’d even had brief interactions with one of them. She was one of the few people in the world who could make that claim. However, today she was going to go one step further: she was about to go mix and mingle with werewolves on a very close and intimate basis. It was an anthropology professor’s dream.
What would they wear? What would they eat? What kind of jobs did they have? Did they even have jobs?
She was pretty sure that they did, from when she and her sister Karlie had sneaked through the Breach before. It seemed as if they lived regular human lives. They looked so normal, walking around in jeans and shirts and regular shoes, driving cars just like people did in the humans’ universe. Well, they looked normal until you saw them seem to ripple and melt, fur suddenly sprouting all over them, their bones changing and lengthening. Then they sank down on all fours and you were looking at a massive wolf where there had been a man less than a minute before.
As she and Karlie walked down Main Street, heading for her car, she was so lost in her reverie that she didn’t even notice Tiffany Pratt walking towards her until it was too late. Tiffany was a slim, pretty bleached blonde with big white Chiclet teeth, who’d dedicated her high school years to taunting Amelia and her twin sister Karlie about their weight. Tiffany was accompanied by her fiancé Bradley, who’d been Karlie’s fiancée up until recently.
Bradley was big and blandly handsome in a Ken doll kind of way, and he’d been a high school football star. Poor Karlie, always insecure about her weight and her looks, had been bowled over when he proposed to her – and Amelia had forced herself to keep her thoughts to herself. Thoughts like – he’s a mooch, he’s using you for our family’s money, you’re too good for him.
Then the Big One had hit, and wiped out their family’s business, and Bradley had ditched Karlie like she had bubonic plague.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the Blobbsy Twins.” Tiffany’s pouty little mouth puckered into a sneer.
Amelia felt Karlie tense up, and a bolt of rage shot through her. Nothing made Amelia angrier than seeing her sister’s feelings get hurt, and she was tempted to lash out and scream insults at Tiffany, but she’d learned early on that what infuriated Tiffany the most was when her insults failed to hit their target.
Besides, she had some news that was about to wipe the smile off Tiffany’s smug face.
“Look who had her bitch flakes this morning,” she said to Karlie, and she saw a small smile tug at her sister’s mouth. She moved to walk past Tiffany and Bradley, and Tiffany quickly moved to block her path.
“Not that she needed them, because she does just fine on her own,” Amelia continued.
“Watch who you’re calling a bitch,” Tiffany said, anger sparking in her huge blue eyes. She glanced at Bradley. “You won’t let them get away with that, will you?”
Amelia let out a scornful laugh. “What’s tall, dumb and stupid going to do – hit me?”
“Maybe.” Bradley glowered at her, and slung a protective arm around Tiffany’s narrow shoulders. Tiffany shot him a look of pure hero worship, then turned back to Amelia and Karlie with a bright, malicious smile.
Karlie clenched her fists. “Touch my sister and see what happens,” she said, her voice shaking with hurt and anger.
“Oh, let him,” Amelia scoffed. “I’d love to see him go back to jail. He’s already on probation for that DUI.”
“What DUI? He doesn’t have a DUI,” Tiffany snapped, glancing quickly at Bradley, whose face turned red. Everyone in Cedar Heights liked Amelia and Karlie, so they always got all the gossip. Nobody liked Tiffany, but they were forced to maintain a superficial politeness to her face because her daddy was one of the richest men in town.
“You didn’t! How could you embarrass my family like that?” Tiffany demanded angrily. As usual, it was all about her.
Bradley didn’t say anything. He just glowered at the ground like a toddler caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Tiffany raked Amelia with a heated glare.. “I see you just came out of my daddy’s bank. Did the teller like it when you begged and groveled to keep your home?”
Karlie drew her breath in sharply, but Amelia gave a calm, placid smile in return. “No, she liked it when I paid all of our past mortgage payments, and got us completely caught up. So sorry that your dad’s not going to be getting his filthy mitts on our property after all,” she added. “Hope that doesn’t affect his business prospects.”
Anger and surprise flashed across Tiffany’s pretty face.
Unfortunately, Amelia had only been able to get her family caught up to the present month, but as soon as she came back from the other side of The Breach, she’d have an amazing, high-paid new job, and she’d be putting every cent of that salary into supporting her family’s farm.
Of course, this was going to throw a major monkey wrench into the Pratt family’s plans. Tiffany’s father, Cordell Pratt, was a co-owner of Pratt Lumber. Ever since Amelia could remember, he’d been itching to get his hands on her parents’ property, so his logging company could start slicing into the beautiful old growth redwoods on their property. He’d recently been bragging all over town about how he was going to plow over their farmland and send all of their dairy cows off to the slaughterhouse.
The Great Quake, and the opening of the Breach, had hit his business incredibly hard. His sawmill had been destroyed, and most of his land had been confiscated by the federal governm
ent because the Breach ran right through it.
However, rumor had it that there were investors who were promising to rebuild his sawmill if he could just get his hand on the Baxter family’s land.
Tiffany struggled for a comeback, but couldn’t come up with any. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” she said finally, marching off down the street. Bradley trailed after her with a resentful look on his face. Now he was going to have to sit and suffer through one of Tiffany’s famous tirades. Amelia wished she could stick around to hear it.
Once he was a block away, he turned to yell over his shoulder at Karlie and Amelia.
“You two better learn to keep your mouth shut!”
“Just as soon as you learn how to tie your shoes by yourself,” Amelia called after him.
They rounded the corner and Amelia quickly yanked open the driver’s side door of her car and climbed in. She had an appointment to keep.
“Do you ever wish you looked like her?” Karlie sighed as she climbed into the passenger’s seat.
“God, no,” Amelia said, pulling out of their parking space and heading in the direction of their house. “Remember in high school when we were in the bathroom and we’d hear her in the stall making herself barf up the salad she ate for lunch?”
Karlie laughed. “And then she’d come out with her breath smelling like puke and her eyes all red and watery and she’d scream ‘What are you looking at, losers?’ ”
Amelia rolled her eyes at the memories. “Good times, good times. So no, we were born with the body type that we have, we like to eat, and we don’t make ourselves sick five times a day. Also she’s a mean, spiteful bully who spends all her time putting people down so she can feel better about herself. I’d rather be me than her.”
She wasn’t quite as blasé about Tiffany’s taunts as she tried to let on, but she kept it hidden well. Yes, she was kind of self-conscious about her size, and Tiffany’s incessant jabs hurt, but as her mother always told her and Karlie, being happy was the best revenge.
Their mother also said things like “Pretty is as pretty does”, which was a nice sentiment, but didn’t really help on all those dateless Friday nights. She stifled a sigh.
“Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “forget those a-holes, let’s concentrate on the good news. Our farmhouse is safe.”
“It’s nice when the good guys win for a change,” Karlie said with satisfaction.
“Isn’t it though?”
“I can’t believe this job fell in your lap just when we needed it most,” Karlie gushed. Amelia forced a smile, and nodded. She hated lying to her sister, and she hadn’t been completely honest about what the job entailed.
She really had gotten a job offer from the University of Upstate New York, along with a massive signing bonus – which she’d used to make the past-due payments on their mortgage that morning. However, she couldn’t tell Karlie or anyone else what she’d agreed to do to get the job, or why it had been offered to her in particular.
Someone, somehow, had found out about the family secret – that the Baxters could cross over into Clair De Lune, and come back alive.
The University of Upstate New York wanted Amelia to cross over into the other world and observe werewolf society up close. They wanted her to come back with pictures, and magic talismans, to prove she’d been there. The talismans would be put on an exhibit at the university that the entire world would flock to see. Amelia would use her observations to write a paper on this strange new world, and every prestigious academic journal in the world would be clamoring for the honor of publishing it.
She’d put the University on the map in a big way.
Of course, what she was doing was illegal – several days after the Breach had opened up, the werewolves had sent through a mysterious edict commanding that nobody was allowed to cross over into their world. The Federal Government had responded by stationing soldiers along the hundred and fifty mile long breach – much of which ran through the Pratt’s property. Since then, there had been next to no communication between the two universes.
However, her hope was that she could demonstrate that the werewolves had a peaceful society, and perhaps she’d even be able to help facilitate relations between the two worlds. She knew she was risking getting in big trouble with what she was about to do, but she had a legal contract sitting in her desk at home assuring her that the university would take full responsibility, would represent her in court if necessary, and most importantly, she would receive her full salary even if jailed – which meant that she could continue to keep up payments on the farm.
“Our luck’s turning,” she assured Karlie.
“Yeah, wish I could say the same for everybody else.” Karlie sighed. “I don’t think Cedar Heights is ever going to be the same, do you?”
As they drove, they passed heaping piles of sticks and bricks and debris along the roadside. Those piles had once been homes and businesses.
People were still living in tent cities, in the auditorium of the high school, in their cars, in FEMA trailors…insurance companies were overwhelmed, and in many cases, dragging their feet on making the payments they were supposed to. The Baxter family had invited several dozen families to move on to their property and they were giving them food from their fields and orchards, and milk and cheese and butter from their cows, so they wouldn’t have to apply for food stamps. There were no jobs to be had, no way for the Baxters to ship their goods to their suppliers any more…
Odds of Cedar Heights ever recovering from the earthquake were looking more and more remote.
“It’s hard to imagine,” Amelia conceded.
A half dozen military vehicles passed them on the road, and Amelia gave them a half hearted wave. A lot of people were afraid that armies of werewolves were going to pour through the breach and kill them all – despite the fact that all of the shifters who’d stumbled through the breach had been just like them. Peaceful, decent people wearing modern clothes with brand name labels on them.
Then, the werewolves had attempted to return home, as had the humans who had found themselves in the werewolves' world. Everyone had assumed, at that point, that it was the start of a new era, that werewolves and humans would travel to each other’s worlds and learn about each other’s cultures.
Tragically, after they’d strolled back through the breach, they’d found out that crossing over was a one-way ticket. Both the werewolves and humans who went back to their own worlds had died within the hour.
The edict from the werewolves’ world had come through the next day, on a letter that was tossed through the breach. Stay on your side, and we’ll stay on ours, it had said.
Chapter Two
“Looking good, brother. I’m liking our odds of getting lucky this week,” Clayton grinned at Holt. Holt snorted with amusement, as his fraternal twin looked in the window of his pickup truck and ran his fingers through his thick brown hair to tousle it. He was freshly shaved and showered, and wearing a splash of cologne, along with his favorite jeans and a black t-shirt.
“Really. You think? Like, a girl might actually talk to us?” Holt said mockingly.
Clayton was joking. It was the Alpha Claiming Festival. Every eligible, unclaimed human female over the age of 21 on the West Coast was swarming to the festival grounds. Clayton and Holt would be getting lucky again, and again, and again. When the festival was done they’d stagger back home and sleep for an entire day, they’d be so exhausted by their luck.
“Well, they’ll talk to me.” Clayton winked at him. “Since I’m the good-looking one.”
The two of them were physically very similar, actually, with Holt an inch shorter than Clayton’s 6’3”, and both of them had the broad shouldered, muscular build typical of an Alpha. Clayton did end up with a lot more women, but that’s because he’d always been the flirt, whereas Holt was more the quiet, reserved one. If anything, he frequently sent women his brother’s way if he wasn’t in the mood – and Clayton never said no.
“
Aren’t you confident. I’d love to see some hot little number knock you down a peg or two.” Holt climbed in to the passenger side of the pickup truck.
“When Hell freezes over. There’s not a woman alive who doesn’t want a piece of this.” Clayton gestured at himself with his thumb, then slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. He’d stopped by the Spellectricity Station earlier that morning to make sure that their pickup truck was fully charged.
Their mother, who was standing outside of their house talking to one of their farm hands, waved at them cheerfully as they drove off. Clayton and Holt waved back, and Clayton gave the horn a quick honk before heading down the dirt driveway to the main road.
“I hope the Red River Pack doesn’t try to pull any crap while we’re gone this week.” Holt glanced back over his shoulder.
The Red River Pack owned the property bordering theirs, and ever since the pack’s old Alpha pair had retired a couple of years ago, their sons had taken over and had been causing nothing but trouble. Trying to challenge the Blue Hills pack’s property lines in court, trespassing, to say nothing of the sheep and cattle who’d been disappearing from the Blue Hill’s flocks and herds…
“We’ve literally got every available hand on patrol along our property line, for the entire week. Our dads will take care of it if those dickwads try anything,” Clayton shrugged. “Relax. You worry too much.”
That was true. Clayton was definitely the carefree one out of the pair. That was why Clayton was the one who’d ended up with broken bones and concussions all throughout their childhood. “What’s the worst that could happen?” was his catchphrase. Holt was pretty sure that Clayton was responsible for half their mother’s gray hairs.
“I wonder if we’ll actually really get lucky,” Holt said, as they headed towards the festival. “I wonder if we’ll finally find her.”
“Sure we will. Eventually. We’ll know it when it’s the right one. In the meantime, this isn’t exactly a painful chore, is it?”
Twin Alphas: Claimed (A BBW Werewolf Romance) Page 1
