A Promise on White Wings (Wiccan-Were-Bear)
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A Promise on White Wings
A Wiccan Were-Bear Novella
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2013 R. E. Butler
A Promise on White Wings (Wiccan-Were-Bear 7)
By R.E. Butler
License Notes
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 recipient. 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 the author.
Cover by Ramona Lockwood
This eBook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I would like to extend sincere thanks to Jennifer Moorman for editing this story.
It was an honor to work with the fabulous Chelle Olson of Literally Addicted to Detail, who beta-read Jes’ story.
Many sincere thanks to Amanda Pederick for her beta-reading and help with the story’s continuity. Thank you for everything.
To my Aunt B. L. and to my husband, B. B., I love you both. To Jacq McNeill, I love you bunches and I’m glad to have you in my corner.
To the Shifter Babes Street Team — You girls rock!!!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Contact the Author
Other Works by R. E. Butler
Chapter 1
Jesuit Denali, Prince of the only were-falcon nest in the state of Ohio, stared mutely at the computer monitor and then read the email. He’d read it several times during the last hour but couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than stare at the screen.
From Adriel Stalking-Horse to the Leaders of the were-houses of Northern Ohio:
In celebration of the newly formed alliance between the were-houses and the were-lion pride, the den will be hosting a welcoming party on Saturday, October fifth. All leaders are expected to attend.
Jes had first met Jantha, the head of the lion pride, in early September, when the pride came to Ohio and met with the leaders of all the were-groups. Jantha had approached the heads of the groups, asking to bring his clan of white lions to Cleveland to join the were-group alliance. Jes didn’t have a problem with more groups coming to Cleveland as long as they kept their noses clean and didn’t cause trouble, and the other were-group leaders had agreed.
The heads of the current were-groups – tiger, wolf, serpent, bear, and falcon – met last week when the heads of the were-houses gathered to vote on whether to extend their alliances to the lion pride or to encourage them to move on to another, less populated, area. Jantha was a large man with a mane of graying blond hair and a goatee. His pride was small, only thirteen, but lions were rare in the states — and white lions even rarer — and it was a boon to the area that they considered Northern Ohio a place they would like to live.
“Sire?” his right-hand Ley asked from the door of the office in Jes’ home. “Will you be sending your regrets to the party?”
Jes exited his mail program and swiveled in the office chair. There was only one reason not to go, and that would be if he were still harboring hurt feelings over being cast aside by the Wiccan Elizabeth, when she chose to collar twin were-bears. He could admit, at least to himself, that his pride still stung a bit, even two years later. But he knew that he’d never loved her, and it had been his foolish pride that had caused him to lash out and try to come between her and her mates.
“I’ll be going.”
Ley nodded his happiness that Jes was being agreeable and left him alone after asking if he’d like lunch brought in. At eight hundred and sixteen, Ley was an old falcon, even by their long-life standards when every supernatural creature, except for vampires, aged one body year for every twelve years that passed. Jes was twenty-three plus two. Technically, he was eighty years old. As Prince of his nest, he was the leader, responsible for the welfare of the one hundred and thirteen falcons who called their territory home.
When he found his mate, he would become King, and his mate would be Queen. His father had been King and ruled the nest for three hundred years, until he lost a leg in a car accident. His kind could repair most injuries, but a severed limb was not one of them. During his father’s recovery, Jes’ mother took him back to her home nest in West Virginia, and Jes stepped up to rule in his stead.
Once he found a mate, they would be expected to produce heirs so that the line of leaders would continue uninterrupted. Someone in his family had been head of the falcon nest for more than two thousand years. He wasn’t about to break that streak.
His people wanted him to choose one of the unmated females in the nest to mate with, but he couldn’t bring himself to commit to any of them, and he thought it was cruel to ask a woman to enter into a loveless marriage. No, his woman was out there somewhere, and if he believed in all that Wiccan nonsense, she’d have white wings as the prophecy from the Wiccan coven had proclaimed two years ago. With a snort of derision, he knew that was impossible. There were no shifters with white wings, which meant that the prophecy was a joke and he was, perhaps, fated to be alone for the remainder of his very long life.
A disturbance at the door made him lift his eyes, and he found his younger brothers, Tonik and Revere, watching him.
“Yeah?” he asked, swiveling the desk chair back and forth slightly with his foot.
Tonik asked, “Do you want to go to the get together alone or do you want us with you?”
Jes raised a brow. His brothers came into the office and sat down. Where Jes inherited his father’s curly black hair, olive skin, and forest green eyes, Tonik and Rev favored their mother, both looking like muscular blond surfer boys with sky-blue eyes and nearly identical grins. They weren’t twins, and Tonik was a year older than Rev, but they acted like twins often enough and they looked similar enough that they were regularly regarded as such.
“I had hoped you would come along willingly to the den and not make me have to call rank and force you to go.”
Rev chuckled. Although Jes was no slouch in the muscles department, Rev was nothing but muscle, and if he didn’t want to go somewhere, only his sense of duty would make it happen.
Tonik elbowed Rev. “We’ll go. We just wanted to make sure you wanted company.”
Rev’s face softened. “Are you worried about seeing the witch?”
Exhaling loudly, Jes said, “Not really. I made an ass of myself, but that’s in the past. I’m not crazy about going to the den, but Adriel and his people have been good allies to us, and he’d take it as an insult if we didn’t show.”
Tonik’s voice lowered to almost a whisper. “We could go in your place.”
“No, you can’t. I’m the leader of the nest, and I’m expected to be there to show my support of the new alliance. I’ll go, but you two will be by my side.”
Both nodded. They’d had their arguments as youngsters, and still butted heads from time to time, but he loved his brothers fiercely an
d knew that they would do anything for him, the same as he would do for them.
His brothers left him several minutes later, and he turned his attention back to work. The nest owned a home improvement store called The Tool Box, in Bishop, Ohio, where their nest was located. Jes ran the company from his home, and any falcon who wanted to worked for him in some way. A construction company run by a local were-tiger pride in Whisper Creek, twenty miles from Bishop, was one of their biggest customers, and Jes was good friends with Midas, King of the tigers.
Jes looked at the supply order and decided that maybe he really did want lunch, so he called Ley and asked him to whip up something and bring it to the office. When he took over the nest, he moved into a home more than a hundred years old located at the center of their territory. He liked the old-world feel to the home, but he had modernized most of the interior. The eleven-bedroom home reminded him of a mansion, complete with stately columns along the front. It even had servants’ quarters. Ley and the house staff lived in the servants’ quarters and took care of the home and made sure that Jes’ life ran smoothly.
After eating, he decided to shift and get some fresh air. He headed downstairs and out into the garden. As a falcon shifter, he could shift into a very large falcon or into his half-form, completely human except for his wings. He stripped off his shirt and laid it on a stone bench and let his wings unfurl from his back. After stretching them out, he lifted off the ground with a few strong flaps and headed for the roof. When he was young and wanted to disappear, he used to fly up to the roof of his parents’ home and hide. As an adult, he enjoyed the solitude of the rooftop.
He settled onto his back after tucking his wings back into his body and let his mind wander. Was his mate out there somewhere? Was she thinking of him right now? Closing his eyes, he felt a stirring in his soul, as if someone was answering him. It gave him hope. If she were out there, he would find her, and he would never let her go.
Chapter 2
Chance Aroyo, oldest son of the King of the white lion pride, rolled over and jerked awake quickly when his hand landed on a warm arm. He blinked his sleep-blurry eyes and found the slumbering form of the woman he’d taken to bed last night.
Shit.
He didn’t realize she’d stayed over. He explicitly remembered telling her to let herself out, but then he must have passed out.
He sat up, cracking his neck and snarling inwardly. He shook the young woman awake. She rolled over, flashing her small breasts with the motion, and cooed with a sleep-roughened voice, “Up for another round?”
“Sorry, but I need you to take off. I’ve got a meeting to get to and I can’t be late.”
He stood and ignored her unhappy glare as he found her clothes on the floor and placed them on the bed along with her purse and keys, and then he escaped into the bathroom to shower. It was a cowardly move, but he wasn’t feeling up to having an early morning argument with a woman he had no interest in seeing again.
He heard her cursing under her breath as she dressed, and then she slammed the front door. Breathing a sigh of relief, he showered the scent of her off him and grabbed the sheets and tossed them in the washer.
He’d been feeling jumpy for the last few days, his lion pacing under his skin. At first, he’d shaken off the strange feelings as just a bit of loneliness. In their former home of Kaushega, Washington, he’d never had a shortage of dates with the local humans and she-wolves. His father, Jantha, had tired of the weather in Washington and at first wanted to move the pride to Michigan. But Michigan was a mostly-wolf state, and Chance was pleased that his father had changed his mind and decided to settle in Cleveland. Besides large vampire and Wiccan covens, the northern part of the state was home to a small wolf pack, a tiger pride, a falcon nest, a bear den, and a serpent nest. It was a melting pot of supernatural creatures. And all the groups were allied together except for the vampires, who didn’t like to ally themselves to anyone but other vampires.
When the anxiety hadn’t eased over the last month they had been there, but actually grew increasingly worse, he decided to speak to his dad about it.
His dad was sitting on the deck of the townhouse that was part of a cluster of four rented by the thirteen-member pride in the small town of Thickett. Northern Ohio was fairly large, and they were in no rush to settle someplace permanent until they’d gotten the lay of the land.
His dad looked up from the newspaper and said, “You look troubled.”
Chance sat down on one of the wrought iron chairs that the previous tenant had left behind and let out a sigh. “I’m feeling strange.”
“Strange good or strange bad?” His dad folded the newspaper and set it next to his coffee cup on the matching table.
“When is strange good?” Chance frowned.
Chuckling, his dad said, “Depends on the situation, I suppose. Sometimes strange can be very good. Or very bad. At any rate, tell me why you’re feeling strange.”
“That’s just it…I don’t know. We’ve been in Ohio for a month, and at first, I thought it was just coming into a new area that was making my cat twitchy. But it seems to be getting worse.”
Raising a brow, his dad said, “So you brought a human home with you last night and that didn’t settle your cat or make you feel less strange?”
Chance willed away the blush that threatened to heat his face. “Dad,” he sighed, not looking his father in the eyes. Chance was twenty-two plus four, which meant that although he looked like a college student, he was actually seventy. Therefore, he was far too old to be embarrassed because his dad overhead the noisy woman in bed with him last night.
Still maintaining no eye contact, Chance confirmed his dad’s words. They had a very open and honest relationship, and he’d never kept any secrets from his dad. He respected him too much. Not only as his father, but also as the leader of their pride. “I thought I just needed to get laid. Clearly, that’s not the case.”
His dad looked thoughtful. “Or maybe she just wasn’t the right female for you.”
Chance looked at his father in confusion, and then his words sank in. “You think my cat is sensing his mate?”
Shrugging, his dad leaned back in the chair and folded his large hands over his abdomen. “Before I met your mother, my cat was driving me batty. I went hunting one night, thinking I just needed a good, long run when I stumbled on this scent. I knew that I’d found my mate. Her family was vacationing in the area, and if it wasn’t for that night of hunting, I would have lost my chance to meet her because they were heading back home the next morning.”
Chance hummed thoughtfully and looked out over the small patch of grass enclosed by a six-foot fence. His cat didn’t like the fence, and he didn’t particularly care for it either.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said finally. “Maybe my mate is here somewhere and I just need to find her.”
“Well, you can start looking tomorrow. We have the meet-and-greet with the were-houses at the bear den tonight.”
Chance smiled, feeling suddenly hopeful. “Who knows? My mate may be in the den tonight.”
“Anything’s possible, Son. Even finding a woman who can put up with your shit.”
Chance stood and stretched. “I’m not the one who causes you so much grief. That’s Gam.”
His father snorted with a smile and returned his attention back to the paper. Gamble was Chance’s younger brother, who had earned a reputation in their former home for being a love-them-and-leave-them kind of male. On more than one occasion, their dad had to bail Gam out of tight situations involving disgruntled females.
Chance left his father’s townhouse and walked next door to the one he shared with Gam and another lion, Chance’s best friend, Pyre. All the townhouses had three bedrooms, and except for their father who had one unit to himself, the rest of the lions shared the homes.
Pyre was standing at the stove in sweatpants, sliding over-easy eggs onto a plate. “You hungry, Chance?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.
“He went home with that hot little bartender from Killian’s last night, and he’s not home yet.”
Chance joined Pyre at the table. “Hopefully, he had better luck than I did.”
Pyre shrugged as he dug into his eggs. “You know how Gam is. I doubt he’ll remember her name.”
It was true. Gamble had never been in a relationship that lasted beyond one night. He was all about the one-nighters and made no apologies for it.
“He’ll change his tune when he meets his mate.”
“She’d have to be a very understanding female to put up with his bullshit,” Pyre mused, and Chance agreed.
He decided to finish his coffee at the computer in the family room so he could begin his search for a place for them to call home. They’d need land. Lots of freedom to roam and fast, furry things to hunt. And it wouldn’t hurt if he happened to meet his mate at some point, too, so he could have someone to take home and spend time with.
His lion roared in agreement, and he willed away the distraction of being lonely and focused on a realtor website. It was going to be a long day.
Chapter 3
The shower pressure was so high in the tiny bathroom that it felt like needles were trying to poke through Danika’s skin, which prompted her to move quickly and finish up. She’d been in a lot of bear dens in her life — she was raised in one after all — but she’d never been in one like this. West of Cleveland, Ohio, by an hour, the den itself was situated deep underground in a cavern. The entrance was hidden inside a large, red barn. Stepping down from the surface into the den was like stepping back in time in some ways.