Mates & Magic: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Box Set Collection

by Jade Alters

  So far, it’s been a pretty satisfying way of life, running this business with my best friends just a couple minutes from the woods where we can shift and be free bears.

  The only thing missing has been… Well, it’s hard to say. But there’s been an understanding between us that something is missing. We want a mate. We truly love each other, but there’s been an unspoken sense between us that there is a missing piece to our little jigsaw puzzle, and life won’t be quite complete until we find it. So when that woman with the pretty burgundy hair walked into our store and it felt like spring had arrived inside us, I had to wonder if she was it.

  Of course...I haven’t said this to any of the guys. It just seems a little too crazy to suggest that a completely random customer might be the mate we’ve been waiting for. But I’ve never felt like that on first seeing anyone, except perhaps my sleuth mates. It must mean something. Either that or I guess the woman is just a very powerful witch and had us enchanted.

  If nothing else, it’s been hard to think of much else but this mysterious woman as I work on our balance sheets for the official store and the unofficial store. We keep two sets of books, one for each business. When I see our revenue for the quarter, I think I’ve calculated everything incorrectly, and I take off my glasses and rub my eyes before taking a long sip of coffee. This can’t be right.

  I do all my work in a tiny little office at the top of a narrow set of stairs. The house where we live and run the shops is huge, and it’s right in the middle of town. The town was actually built around the house, and Mr. Coleridge actually lived here. There’s a plaque on the front because it’s a historical landmark. That means that once a year we have to hide all the magic stuff and give tours through the historical society. But I don’t mind that as much as Grant and Jesse act like it’s a huge pain. I think it’s kind of fun. My office has a window that looks out on Coleridge’s main drag. It’s a nice view, and it looks pretty when it rains. Now it’s autumn and all the leaves are changing.

  I would like to be spacing out and staring out the window, but the books are throwing me off, so once again, I calculate everything, which takes me a good hour. I check my watch and push my glasses to the top of my head. The shop closes in a couple hours. That’s the official shop, anyway. The magic shop stays open until ten, assuming you’re already in the know. All you have to do is go around back, ring the bell, and we’ll come downstairs.

  I hear footsteps on the stairs, and Grant comes up to linger in the doorway and peek over my shoulder. “Whatcha doin’?” Grant says. He holds out an open bag of trail mix he’s nibbling from. “You hungry?”

  “No, thanks.” I titter and sit back in my chair. It’s an old school wooden swivel chair from the Edwardian era. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but I love the piece, so I slapped a cushion on it, and now I’m just used to it. “Grant, I’ve run the books twice and I...I can’t believe this.”

  “What’s that?” Grant says.

  “The revenue for the magic shop is ten times what the revenue for the antique shop is,” I say, shaking my head. “That is insane.”

  “Wow!” Grant grins. He’s got his “big hair” on today. He has a thick head of wild brown hair that stands more than a couple inches off his head even when he barely does anything to it, and now it flops over his eye as he bobs his head. “That’s really cool!”

  “Yeah,” I say with a snort. “It’s very cool.”

  Grant is the head salesman of both the antique store and the magic shop. All of us know something about magic, but Grant is the one who can charm, not one, but two shops packed with customers, and somehow all of them will end up leaving with half the stock at a huge mark-up. When I first got to know him, I thought he was some kind of siren. But it’s not a magic power, or rather, it’s a natural power he has. He’s just very likable and charming and cute. He has big, soft brown doe eyes, and you just kind of want to please him all the time. Now, he smiles at me sweetly, and even I’m flustered. On second thought, maybe he is a siren.

  “Yeah, good job, Grant,” I say, shaking my head. “You could sell saltwater to a fish.”

  “Well…” He tips his head, shrugging. “I mean Jesse’s the one doing the buying. He has very good taste. He bought all those dragon candles a couple months ago. Those sell like hotcakes!”

  “Well, I’m giving you all the credit,” I say, patting his shoulder as I get up from my seat.

  “Thanks, man.” Grant looks sheepish. He’s humble on top of everything else. It only makes him more likable.

  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you still thinking about that woman from yesterday—”

  “With the hair,” Grant says, suddenly going a little googly-eyed. “And the little freckles…”

  “Yes.”

  Grant nods and kind of slumps against the wall like he feels a little faint. “Yeah. Still thinking about her. Is that weird? I don’t know. I’ve seen pretty girls before I was still thinking about later. But this feels…”

  “Different,” I finish for him.

  “Yeah.” Grant nods. “Jesse’s on the same page too.”

  “So’s Nathan,” I mutter, shaking my head. “It’s like she bewitched all of us.”

  “You know what we need?” Grant’s wagging his eyebrows. That usually means he wants to go for a run.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to say—”

  “A run.”

  “A run,” I say, nodding. He’s already heading down the stairs and I follow, bumping between the walls as usual because the staircase is just that narrow, the steps quite steep. At the bottom of the stairs, I hear Nathan and Jesse talking in the magic section and we crowd in.

  Grant nods at Nathan and says, “Let’s close the store for an hour and go on a run.”

  Nathan does that little squeaky thing he does when he takes issue with something and frowns. “An hour.”

  “C’mon,” Grant says, throwing his arm around Nathan. “It’s drizzling and nobody’s come in since lunch. Also, Brett has very good news about income this month. Don’t you Brett?”

  Nathan looks at me expectantly, and I smile a little sheepishly. I think of all three of the guys as my best friends in the world. But Nathan is older, and he’s the alpha and he still makes me nervous from time to time. It’s not like I’m afraid of him. It’s more that I constantly want to impress him. “Yeah, our revenue is about thirty percent over what we shot for,” I tell him. “That’s in total for both stores. But the magic shop is doing ten times what the antiques are. Literally. Ten times.”

  Nathan lights up at that, and we get hit by one of his million-watt grins. I can feel the rest of us perking up at that. Grant and Jesse play it cool sometimes, but I know all of us want to impress Nathan.

  “Well, alright fellas,” Nathan says, slapping Jesse and Grant on the back. “Let’s go on a run then. Close for an hour.”

  Jesse pumps his fist and says, “Yes!”

  Grant heads out to the front of the store to put out the sign with the little clock face on it that tells passersby when we’ll be back, and then we all put on our coats and head out, walking to the woods that begin just a few blocks off the main drag behind the house. It’s drizzling a little harder outside, but we don’t mind that. If nothing else, it gives Jesse an excuse to tease Grant who is always paranoid about his hair getting wet. Jesse tosses an arm around him, and they walk off together ahead of Nathan and me, but I hear them talking about the girl with the burgundy hair.

  I nod at Nathan and ask, “Are you still thinking about her too?”

  Nathan just nods mutely, but he does look a little disturbed. “I don’t know what to think about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s bad,” I say, sighing. “Except that I do have a feeling like we’re supposed to be protecting her. And it’s strong.”

  “Very strong,” Nathan mutters.

  The thing is, we’re bear shifters. That makes us m
ore in tune with our emotions than other sorts of shifters. It also means we’re closer to each other than some types of shifters. I like that about us. We tend to be pretty empathic with each other and sensitive to each other’s needs. Trust me, Nathan and the rest of us are badass in a fight, and Nathan is a tough alpha. But we’re caring about each other too. We’re not all stoic and super aggressive like wolves and lions. We’re also...incredibly protective of each other and of anyone we care about. That means that this strange woman, who’s inspiring this sense of protectiveness in us, is driving us a little nuts.

  “I think we should find her,” Nathan says. He rubs his face and looks a little tired. Things tend to hit Nathan the hardest. “I don’t think we feel this way by accident. I think we’re supposed to protect this woman.”

  “Sounds stalkery,” I say uncertainly. We step out of an alley and head down the block toward some fencing near the woods where we like to shift and spend our time on runs.

  Nathan sighs heavily at that, and I snort a chuckle as we trot into the woods. Sometimes things that shifters are used to doing are considered a little weird in the human world. This is one of those things. We know that what we’re feeling must mean something. It’s the right move for us to act on it, or those feelings would be for nothing. It’s just different from the human world.

  “It is stalkery,” Nathan says. “Except that we’re bears.”

  “Except that we’re bears,” I say, having to agree.

  In the woods, we all shift, and I feel my muscles pulling and stretching and that comforting weight and bulk of my bear body. I lumber after Nathan who leads the sleuth deep into the woods. We enjoy the cold, crisp autumn day and the pleasing rain on our fur as we climb trees and wrestle around in the mud. We race, we roar, we catch a fish or two. After a time, Nathan nods down the river and we follow, heading back to the road. We’ve probably taken more than an hour now. We tend to lose track of time when we shift. Bears are notoriously bad at telling time, even when the sun is obviously moving. I race Grant and Jesse through the woods, and we laugh in that happy, growling way that bears do, knocking into each other and wasting even more time until Nathan stops and looks back at us, roaring and tossing his head.

  We all run to our alpha and shift back as we head out of the woods. Now we’re a bit muddy and wet in our clothes, but we’re in lighter moods and Grant runs up and tackles me from the back as I make my way down the street. I swing him around and get him into a headlock and Jesse shoves his way into us.

  Nathan looks back at us and shouts, “Hey!” It’s exactly the same move he does as a bear and we all separate and race each other back to the house. Jesse wins, like he always does, because he’s always been the fastest.

  Back at the store, we open back up and straighten up a little. Running always makes me hungry, and I end up scarfing down all of Grant’s trail mix. Done with the books for the day, I wander around the store, fixing displays, sweeping, and tidying. We get some more customers. A few new residents of Coleridge come in, and Grant only needs to smile with his big, soft doe eyes to charm them out of several thousand dollars. That means we’ll be delivering furniture this week, and Nathan handles the scheduling.

  Once we close up for the day, we head upstairs. The rest of our lives are lived on the second floor of what the locals call Coleridge Manor. The kitchen, the laundry, the living room...all that stuff is actually on the second floor. Our dining room is crowded. Sometimes we keep a few extra pieces from the store up here. There’s one very wide stairwell in the back that’s good for moving furniture, and the four of us being both physically strong and bear shifters on top of it, we’re good at moving heavy furniture around.

  We crowd into the dining room because Nathan says we need to meet. Since I already know what this is about, I have the magic elements we’ll need; a map of the town, a black candle, mustard seeds…

  “What are we doing?” Jesse blinks his pale blue eyes at me as he takes a seat. He’s always the last to know anything. And yet, once a decision has been made, he’ll throw himself into whatever Nathan has decided.

  “We’re going to find the girl,” Nathan says. “Then Brett is going to make pork chops.”

  “We don’t have pork chops,” I say blankly.

  “Good thing there’s a grocery store right down the block,” Nathan says.

  I snort at that and roll out the map. It’s a very detailed map of Coleridge and shows individual building and landmarks. “The chant is easy. Do you have the receipt that she signed? I need something she touched.”

  Nathan places the receipt next to the map, and I set the candle in the middle of it and light it. We already know the chant. We’ve tried it before. We’ve usually used the spell to search for enemies, but it works just as well for anyone else. It’s a pretty basic spell. The four of us chant, watching the candle burn down and drip wax on the map. We focus our energies and watch the wax move on the paper of the map, sliding in a single direction toward the north of town on the main drag. I think it’s going to ooze right over where our house is marked on the map but it instead it stops there.

  “It says she’s here,” Nathan says.

  “Well, that didn’t work,” Grant says.

  Jesse rubs his chin and says, “Maybe it did. Let’s go downstairs.”

  We all thunder down the stairs, and Jesse runs to the backdoor out of habit since people who know the magic shop is open “after hours” usually already know to go to the backdoor. The rest of us go to the front door, and we all feel it even before we see her peering through the window, squinting into the dark shop. We see her start to turn away, and Nathan goes running to open the front door.

  Nathan throws the door open, and we all crash into him, trying to get a look. I feel Jesse come running up behind me.

  It’s her, and she’s just as pretty as she was the day before, and I’m just as confused as to why she’s affecting us this much. She looks unhappy and more than a little nervous. I look her up and down. She’s wearing a long leather skirt and booties. She’s so sophisticated, and her dark purple-red hair falls in soft, silky waves. She smiles at us, looking a little embarrassed.

  “Hi!” She says brightly. “Sorry, you’re closed—”

  “That’s okay!” We all say it at the same time, and Nathan gives us a look.

  “That’s alright,” Nathan says firmly. “How can we help you? If you’re here about anything to do with the magic shop, that actually stays open until ten. You can always ring the bell around back. Just so you know. For next time, that is.”

  “Oh!” She grins at that. Even her teeth are cute. It’s absurd, really. “That’s good to know, thank you.”

  “It’s raining,” Nathan says kindly. He opens the door wider. “Please come in. We’ll help you however we can.”

  She looks at each of us then, and I can feel it. You know that peculiar feeling you get when something momentous is happening and you know your life will never be the same?

  I’m feeling it right now.

  Dora

  “So what do you need?” The one who helped me when I bought the roseheart weed is grinning at me, and he’s so good-looking that I have to concentrate all my energy on just being coherent.

  The thing is, they’re all insanely good-looking. The big one looks like Superman, another is tall with pretty, fluffy hair and big doe eyes, the one in glasses looks soulful like some brooding vampire, and then this one who’s blonde has these pale blue eyes and a flawless face… I don’t know how I’m going to handle these four hot men and get help for this spell at the same time. I shiver a little, and the biggest one pats my shoulder.

  “Are you cold?” He asks me. “My name is Nathan. How about some coffee?”

  “Oh, you don’t have—”

  “Please.” The one with the big hair is giving me sweet eyes. “We have a coffee maker in back. And I’m Grant. It’s lovely to meet you.” His hands are soft, but I can feel the strength in his arm when he shakes my hand. They all l
ook pretty muscular. Damn.

  “I’m Dora.” I look around at them all. “Dora Langley. It’s nice to meet you guys.”

  “Dora,” the big one says in a low voice. He says it like we’re in bed, and I swallow. He’s standing close, and I lick my lips absently. “Can I take your coat?”

  You can take anything, I want to say. But I just nod and let him help me with my coat which he hangs on an antique hat stand.

  “I’m Jesse,” the blonde one says, giving me that killer grin again. He nods at the brooding vampire-looking guy. “That’s Brett. He’s the quiet one.”

  “I am not,” Brett murmurs. He casts me a quiet smile. Mmm. He does look soulful. “I just don’t babble like these goofballs.” He nods at Grant and Jesse who look good-naturedly offended, and I stifle a chuckle. Oh gosh, they’re hot, and they’re really cute together. They’re obviously really close. Still can’t help but wonder if they’re all gay, but the way they’re looking at me...I don’t think so.

  They lead me toward the back of the store and make me coffee. Then they sit me down around a table they keep clear for working with customers. I feel so embarrassed now that I have to explain what happened. I’m pretty sure something went wrong with the spell, but it’s going to make me look like such a helpless amateur...which I guess I am. Apparently. I just don’t like admitting it.

  “What can we do for you?” Nathan says, handing me a mug of coffee.

  I take a long sip of coffee to settle my nerves (which I know makes no sense, but it does make me feel better). “Okay, well. You know how you warned me about the roseheart weed?”

  They all look at each other knowingly, and I sigh, feeling foolish. “Yes, yes. Look, I tried to do the spell I was casting very carefully, but I was interrupted. Other than that, I don’t know what could have gone wrong. I was interrupted for maybe half an hour, and then I was fine! I thought it was successful. But I’m pretty sure something went wrong.”