Seeking Sanctuary_A Shelter Me Novel

by Annie Anderson

  “Are you okay?” Isla asked as she adjusted in her seat for the fifth time.

  That. That move right there was making me forget the ring in my pocket and the question I needed to ask. She’d been doing that all damn day, and it worried the shit out of me. I was half tempted to just spit it out so I could find out why she couldn’t get comfortable.

  But I was pretty sure the answer to both questions.

  “Isla?”

  “Yeah, baby,” she said around a mouth full of burger. She’d gotten a lift to her bed rest three weeks ago, Doc Carpenter telling her that our baby girl was pretty close to cooked and she could come at any time. Now we sat at week forty, and Isla’d had enough.

  Enough of snow on the ground and her not able to tie her winter boots. Enough of her belly being too big that she couldn’t fit behind the wheel and press the pedals at the same time. Enough of being pregnant.

  “Sugar, I love you. I love our little girl already. I love our life, and I want you in mine as long as I’m breathing.”

  Isla whipped her head up, eyes wide as she swallowed her bite, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

  She started nodding, and I hadn’t even asked yet. I slid from my seat, dropping to one knee beside hers, the motion familiar as I recalled the last time I’d been in this position.

  “Will you be my wife?” I whispered the question, and she didn’t quit nodding.

  “I’m gonna need the words, Sugar.”

  “Yes, you fool, now help me up so I can kiss you properly,” she grouched, and if it wasn’t Isla, I’d have thought she was unhappy. But no, not my girl.

  Together we worked to get her out of the booth, the seating choice probably not the best idea for a full-term pregnant woman.

  But as soon as she stood, Isla’s face went slack.

  “Sugar?”

  “Umm, babe? I think we may need to put a pin in that kiss.”

  “Why?”

  “I think my water just broke.”

  * * *

  Ten hours later, my ring was on Isla’s finger, and Miss Mia was in my arms.

  “Sugar?” I called, quiet enough to not wake the baby.

  “Yeah?” Isla answered, her voice rusty from the nap she’d just woken up from. Birth – so I’d seen at Isla’s side – took it out of you, but Isla powered through everything like a champ. I’d never been so proud of anyone in my life.

  “What do you think about putting Grady on Mia’s birth certificate?” I asked, not moving my eyes up from the eight-pound ball of fucking adorable that turned my heart to goo.

  “You’re… you…” Isla stumbled, probably shocked to shit that I’d lay claim to a child that I knew wasn’t really mine. But Mia was mine in all the ways that counted. She had my love, she had half my heart, and her mother had the other half.

  I looked up to watch a tremulous smile form on her lips. “She looks like a Grady to me,” she whispered, her eyes shedding tears, but her smile shining through.

  Just like that, we were a family, and I’d always be grateful that Isla chose to find her sanctuary here with me.

  * * *

  THE END

  The Shelter Me Series will continue with Reaching Refuge Coming in late 2018/early 2019!

  * * *

  For news of Annie Anderson’s next release and to receive a FREE copy of LOST, sign up for the author's Newsletter HERE.

  * * *

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of Scattered Ashes, an adult paranormal romance novel!

  If you need help, you’re not alone…

  The National Domestic Violence Hotline

  1-800-799-7233

  www.thehotline.org

  RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)

  800-656 HOPE (4673)

  www.rainn.org

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  If you enjoyed SEEKING SANCTUARY, pretty please with a cherry on top… leave a review. Unless you email me directly, I have no other way of knowing if you enjoyed my work or not. It means the world to me, so just boop Moonshine’s nose to make it happen. (It helps if you say ‘boop’ while you do it, too.)

  Sneak Peek of Scattered Ashes

  About Scattered Ashes

  To say I'm having a rough century would be a vast understatement. I'm on the run, plagued by visions of death, and forced to rely on the man who killed my husband. Yeah, my life is just peachy.

  * * *

  But when the truth shakes out, I find that maybe Rhys didn't ruin my life those many years ago. Maybe he saved it. Now, it's my turn to save us both.

  * * *

  Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.

  Get ready to burn.

  Prologue

  AURELIA - 1855

  I can’t breathe. The trees are a blur of green, brown, yellow, and red, the colors tumbling and writhing together as I whip my head searching. I can’t see them, but I know they’re out there. Just like I know something’s wrong.

  I can’t find him. I can’t. I can’t.

  But more, I don’t want to find him. I don’t want to see another reality to a vision I can’t change. I don’t want to confirm the truth that is etching its way into my soul.

  The bracken and rocks on the forest floor crunch and squish together under my feet as I scramble through the bedrock and finish climbing the first foothill.

  Stupid skirt. Stupid slippery shoes.

  I’m not moving fast enough, but in my state, I’m surprised I can move at all. A stitch in my side cuts off my breath, stealing my air as I try to climb faster.

  Where are they? I stop and search the sky for them - for their flames, for their wings, but I know it’s too late. The sky is rapidly turning the inky black of evening in the early Fall, and with no moon out tonight, I’ll never see the sky as properly as I should.

  The first blow comes, ripping against my flesh, and I cry out in agony as a wound splits open on the back of my forearm.

  But I’m alone.

  I hear no one and see no one, but a large gaping wound has torn open my arm from wrist to elbow. I smell the coppery bite of blood as the warm, sticky stream seeps down past my fingers and drips onto the dirt, swiftly devoured by the dry soil below.

  Blackness clouds my vision for a minute, but I force myself to forget the constant pulse of my wound and pull myself together. I rip a swath off my billowing skirt and use the fabric to bind my arm in an effort to stem the bleeding. The navy blue patterned fabric turns indigo from the blood quickly oozing from my wound.

  I should be healing already, but I’m not. This is not good.

  I pick myself up off the gritty forest floor and start walking, rather than the panicked pace of before. I can’t run with this wound. I’m already pushing it with this silly corset and dress, especially in my delicate condition. As if motherhood was anything but delicate.

  There.

  I hear it, and I know I was right. They are clashing together somewhere in the distance. They are going to kill each other.

  The chilling growl of an angry male carries through the trees, and I know I’ve found them. I begin to run again, but when I get there, I realize I should never have stopped to catch my breath.

  I should never have bound my wound.

  I shouldn’t have waited.

  My husband is on the ground, and I know he’s dead. I know just how I knew I was with child long before my cycle refused to come. How I knew so many things that I wished I didn’t.

  “Lucien,” the whisper falls from my lips on a sob.

  Lucien’s eyes don’t move. Not towards me. Not at all. They simply stare at the rapidly darkening sky. Neither does his chest rise nor his mouth respond.

  He’s not breathing, and Rhys is just standing there bleeding, holding what I’m assuming he used to kill my husband. Holding that blasted knife.

  No. No. No.

  I don’t know what made me do it. And looking back, I don’t know how the knife got from Rhys’ loose grip and into my hand or how I knew just where
to pierce his flesh to hurt him the worst.

  But as I thrust the knife into his belly, I knew then that when my arm was sliced, it was actually Rhys who got the cut first. It was Rhys who bled first.

  As I drive the blade home in his flesh, blood instantly pours from my belly, down my bodice, and through my skirt. I cut him, but we both bled.

  Then the contractions start.

  And I will forever blame Rhys for two deaths that day.

  Chapter One

  AURELIA

  It started just like they always do, from the blackness of sleep so deep the fabric of what was real and what was dream wove together to make what would be.

  The room is small, an entryway or vestibule. A little girl had opened the door. It was a lovely walnut wood inlaid with a blue, green, and red stained glass window. A little red flower decorated the center of the oval. The floor was cream tile, Travertine or maybe marble. The mother’s heels clicked with an urgent gate as she walked towards her daughter.

  The mother was tall with dark blonde hair, dressed in a pink skirt suit and elegant cream stilettos. She wore a simple strand of understated pearls around her neck. The girl was white blonde with two dutch braids in her hair and was wearing a nearly matching pink dress. She was young, maybe six or seven. She was deeply tan, as only children can get with their terminable immunity to the heat and sun.

  The mother moved behind the girl, the surprise on her face morphing to fear so quickly, her face seemed to warp, like a piece of untreated wood left to the elements to rot.

  Her hands gripped the daughter’s shoulders, shaking her violently in an attempt to get the poor girl to move, to back away from the looming shadow. The shadow was male, certainly, but the figure was backlit by the rising sun, so his face was left a mystery.

  The mother recognized the man, though. She didn’t need to see the face to know what danger was before them, she could easily see the large caliber handgun gripped in his meaty palm.

  The mother shrieked for the daughter to run, and roughly tugged the poor girl behind her back. But the daughter was either in shock or too scared to move because she stayed right there, clutching to the seat of her mother’s designer suit.

  The man raised the gun slowly, calmly, as if he had all the time in the world to take his shot. The muzzle fired once, and a tiny hole appeared in the mother’s chest. A small trickle of blood bloomed over the heart of her blouse where the tiny hole appeared. She went down slowly, dropping to her knees first, sliding to her bottom and then to her side. Even in death she was careful not to fall on her child. The muzzle fired again and this time, the daughter fell, her wound considerably less pretty, given the caliber of the gun and her small size.

  And right there in that tiny little vestibule, in what was surely a beautiful home of a nice family, the mother and daughter were left to cool in their drying lifeblood.

  * * *

  I should wake up screaming, but I don’t. After these many years, dreaming night after night of the horrors people inflict on one another, I stopped screaming many decades ago. As per usual, though, I sat bolt upright in my bed, bedclothes tangled with my legs, damp with cold sweat.

  My best friend Evan would call me a psychic, but I tell her daily she’s full of shit. Psychics know things before they happen - and I do on occasion. But not enough for me to actually make a difference. Not enough to save the people who need saving.

  For curiosity’s sake, I pull my laptop onto the bed praying I don’t blow this beautiful piece of equipment up. I have a bad habit of frying electrical devices. In fact, this is my fourth laptop this year. I type the local news site into the browser. Sure enough, the breaking news story is of Victoria Ness, thirty-four and Vivian Ness, seven, who were gunned down in their University Park home two hours ago. The shooter, Victoria’s ex-husband, then turned the gun on himself.

  Figures.

  What kind of psychic am I? Well, I’m the shitty kind. I see maybe ten percent of what I should, and I can’t change a second of it. I see what I see, and then I brace because it’s going to happen. There isn’t a thing I can do.

  Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s a waste of time, and it weighs too much on my heart.

  And let’s not forget about the tenuous hold I have on sanity. I just thank the fates I live alone now. How many times could I have woken a roommate, looking like a horror movie reject before I booked a one-way ticket to a padded cell? I’ve already lived through one involuntary incarceration under an insane Primary’s thumb; a repeat stay is not in my future.

  I’d rather chew a bullet.

  Hiding my abilities when under constant surveillance is almost impossible. I’m a Seer, born with the ability to observe things that will come to pass in vivid Technicolor inside my little noggin. I also sometimes randomly electrocute people without meaning to. Well, sometimes I mean to, but not all the time, and that is pretty scary. If people weren’t already looking at me funny before, which they are because as a Seer, my eyes freak people way the fuck out, they would after I zapped them randomly.

  Then there’s the phasing. As a fledgling, I sometimes transitioned from my resting form to the Ethereal without even trying. Meaning, when I got angry or upset, I would burst into flames, and my wings would pop out. I got angry a lot in those days. Puberty sucks - even in the 1800’s.

  Then, there is my eyes, which are a very pale, milky green. All the time. You remember old westerns where the old guy is blind, and he has those freaky eyes where the iris and pupil nearly blend into the sclera? Yep, you guessed it, that’s what’s going on here. Only I’m not blind. I can see better than most humans. Probably better than most Ethereals, too.

  I wear contacts when I go outside my home because if I don’t people assume I’m blind, for one, and they act all awkward and try to help me do stuff. Or their face says they are squicked way the hell out, for numero dos. Also, when I’m pissed they kind of, well, glow. Like an incandescent bulb, glow.

  So the fact I’m not exactly human is really fucking obvious. Hello, my name is Aurelia Constantine, and I am a Phoenix.

  No offense to the almighty Harry Potter Queen, JK, but I’m not a damn bird. I’m a person. I just happen, on occasion, to burst into flames, have visions, and electrocute people with a shield that I can’t seem to control. Oh, and the wings, those are real. And they’re a bitch.

  The last phase totally ruined my favorite leather jacket. I’ve had that jacket for the last twenty years. They just don’t make leather like they used to. Replacing it was a pain in the ass, and in the end, I had to have it custom made.

  Also, I don’t age. Or die.

  I’ve looked thirty-ish for the last one hundred and fifty years or so. Since I was born about thirty years prior to the aging halt, I’m assuming my kind ages at a normal rate until we reach our bodies’ maturity. Then we stop aging altogether.

  Or it could be just me.

  I should know all these things for sure. I should be knowledgeable about my species, but escaping my Legion at twenty means I was never in the know about some important facets of my species. What I do know is that when you’re a Seer in my culture, at maturity, you get permanently blinded so your visions will be “pure” which makes a Seer into an Oracle.

  Our visions are important. Seers and Oracles alike see visions of death, and in seeing death, we can direct the Gentry to the dead or dying to send the souls on to be reborn. Seers cannot change the outcome of their visions. Oracles, however, have enough advanced warning and the power to change the future.

  In my mind, it is the only advantage from the price they paid when they gave away their eyes.

  As in, they cut your eyes out of your head and smear the wound in Morganite. We can heal from anything, and I do mean anything - beheadings, explosions, whatever - but once a wound or our ashes comes into contact with Morganite, it’s all over. Meaning, we have to heal at the regular human rate, which is the slowest freaking healing rate ever and for mortal wounds, it means bye-bye.

&n
bsp; And women are wearing them as wedding rings nowadays. That’s a fuckton of nope, right there.

  Since I enjoy seeing with my eyeballs securely attached to my skull, I got the hell out of there before some Oracle decided it was high time for the torture to stop and for me to join the fold. Unfortunately, I was about twenty when I left (escaped, but who’s splitting hairs). In 1855, being an widowed, wounded woman was a bit daunting to say the very least.

  I used to have a family. I used to have friends. I even had loved at one point.

  But those days are long gone.

  The problem with Oracles is the fact they believe they are omnipotent when they are not. When I refused to do what they wanted me to do, they tried to force it. By force it, I mean they had my Soldier kill my husband right in front of me.

  Remember me mentioning I was two nuts short of a full bag? Well, that’s a part of it. Not all of it, of course, but hey, you can’t live for one hundred and eighty years without some bumps in the road. And one of those bumps is the fact I wake up a sweaty, basket case pretty much every night.

  Visions are a bitch, what can I say?

  * * *

  I stare out the huge picture window in the master bedroom with its view of the mountain range below. It looks so very different from where I started my life. There are fewer trees here in the subalpine Rockies than in the Pacific Northwest, and you can see the sun more days a year. The difference helps me breathe when I wake up this way. Seeing the sun and the blue sky goes a long way to calm me down when I should be rocking in a corner after one of my visions.