EarthBorn (The Elemental Born Book 1)

by Reders, E. M

  Nodding, I allowed her to drag me back into the room and over to the bar. “So Kaia, let me introduce my friends here.” And she began pointing out everyone and telling me their names. Some I remembered from school, others not so much.

  “I think I remember you,” Wendy said suddenly, looking at me strangely before her eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh my God! You’re the one that went all crazy; starting fights, playing cruel pranks. Didn’t you get kicked out of school in the end and sent to some kind of boarding school?”

  “More like kicked out of the house and sent to live and train with the Crone,” I answered honestly. A couple of rumours had gone around after my sudden disappearance from the local school; guess that was the one that stuck. At least it was better than the rumour that I had gotten pregnant and sent to a convent.

  “I remember when you rigged flea spray in all the males lockers, so when they opened them, they got sprayed in the face. That was so funny.” Reece laughed.

  “And when the girls from the coven were having one of their special dinners for the Sabbath and she put a potion in the punch bowl so all their hair turned green.” Yeah, that joke hadn’t turned out quite so great in the end. It had been funny, hilarious even, but one of the girls had an allergic reaction to something in the potion and all her hair actually fell out.

  Soon everyone was laughing and joking about all the crazy things I had done, some of those things I’d even done to them. But no one seemed angry. No one wished revenge upon me. They all just found the things I had done hilarious.

  “Yeah, sorry about all that,” I said when the laughter had quieted down.

  “One thing I have always wanted to know is why you did it? I mean, you were one of the most popular members of the coven at school, then everything changed and you were like at the bottom of the school hierarchy.”

  “It’s a long story. Let’s just say that finding out that I’d been lied to my whole life kind of pushed be over the edge.”

  “Let me guess… your parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Join the club. Parents always lie,” Jennifer said, patting my hand. “Like my mother; when she started dating my stepdad, before I knew all about werewolves, I heard howling in the garden. Scared me to death. I ran around the house screaming that there was a monster outside. Anyway, she sat me down and told me that it wasn’t a monster, it was my rabbit Buttons. Because, apparently, rabbits howl at the moon just like wolves. The sad thing is, for the next year I believed her.” And that set everyone off, me included. I was laughing so hard tears were rolling down my cheeks.

  “So what’s it like?” Reese asked, mixing me another drink. I wasn’t sure what was in it, but it tasted great and was going straight to my head.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Being mated to Ethan? You’re so lucky to have found a generally nice male for a mate. I’ve heard some right horror stories of females finding themselves mated to evil bastards.”

  They thought we were already mated. Was that why they were being nice, because they thought they were already stuck with me in the pack? I could have lied, but they would have sensed it anyway. “Well, we’re not quite mated yet.”

  “He hasn’t claimed you?” Wendy asked in disbelief. “What the fuck is he waiting for? The daft prick.” She put her arm around my shoulders, giving me a small encouraging squeeze. That set them all off, telling me that he was an idiot for not putting his marks on me the instant he was chosen and that they were all going to box his ears for it. I smiled along, laughing at their crazy ideas of how they could punish him for his stupidity. The whole time, the guilt of denying him, of pushing him away all over again built inside my chest.

  ~

  Ethan

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Kaia was laughing and drinking with a bunch of the pack females. She was dancing around the room, looking the happiest I had seen her in a very long time. And not just any females either, these were females she hadn’t exactly been nice to back in our school days. What had I missed while I’d been down in the vault?

  After we’d left the dust filled, cough-inducing vault, I’d left the guys and headed straight back up to my room with the book Isaac had suggested I show Kaia, expecting her to be there. But upon knocking and getting no reply, I’d opened the door to find an empty room. For a moment I’d panicked, thinking that she’d run off. I knew the thought had crossed her mind numerous times since her arrival. Leaving the book in my room, I’d used the fragile bond between us to guild me to her, shocked when it led me downstairs to the lounge on the third floor.

  The third floor was where all the young unmated females rooms were. The lounge, the place where they all tended to hang out at night, away from the disapproving eyes of the older generations, was right down at the end of the corridor. That was the room I had been pulled towards.

  Knocking on the frame of the open door, I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at my lips when all the females froze, their heads spinning round to look at me. With their sensitive hearing they heard my knock over the loud music, while Kaia carried on dancing a moment longer before noticing that the others had stopped. Spotting me, all the laughter and fun that had been lighting up her face vanished. What I wouldn’t do to be the one to put and keep that smile there.

  “Hey girls, mind if I steal Kaia back?” I smiled, trying to ease the tension I could feel building in the room.

  “We were just…” Kaia started to say before Jennifer cut her off.

  “Of course you can,” she said, smiling at me strangely. Turning to Kaia, she whispered low in her ear, but still loud enough that I could hear. “Go talk to him. I promise you, she means nothing to him. Forget what she said.”

  Okay, I didn’t like the sound of that. And I didn’t like the slight anger I felt directed at me from not just her but the females in the room.

  Reluctantly, she approached, waiting for me to step out of the doorway so that she could pass by without getting too close.

  Okay, she hadn’t been this uncomfortable with me before I’d left to go to the vault this morning. Sure, she hadn’t exactly been warm to the idea of us being mates, but she hadn’t been like this. Something had happened in the past few hours to make her pull away from me, more than she ever had before. I needed to find out what Jennifer had meant.

  “What’s wrong, Kaia?” I asked once we were clear of the females’ floor, even though I knew for a fact that some of them had followed us out of the lounge and were listening at the top of the stairs as we headed down.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, looking down at her feet as she fidgeted with her fingers.

  “Bullshit! Things weren’t exactly great between us this morning, but they weren’t this bad. What the hell has happened to make you hate me?”

  Stopping mid-step, she sighed heavily, turning to look me in the eye. “I don’t hate you, Ethan. I just feel… Hell, I don’t know… Annoyed maybe. Pissed.”

  “Why?”

  Taking a deep breath, she clenched her fists tightly at her sides. “You’re mate came to see me today while you were gone.”

  Hold on, my mate? What mate?

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Kaia?” I asked, grabbing her arm as she made to continue down the hall.

  “You should know what I'm talking about, Ethan. That girl! The one that, according to her, is your mate. She turned up at your door this morning looking for you and told me, not too politely I might add, that you were hers and I needed to stay away from you.”

  What was she talking about? I didn’t have a mate. Who would say that?

  Dumb question… “Chelsea,” I snarled, my wolf raising its hackles in anger as it too clicked onto who Kaia was speaking of. “What did she do, Kaia?” The anger and rage of both myself and my wolf were pumping through my blood. My own fists were now clenched tightly at my sides as I did my best to calm my emotions. A wolf on the edge was a dangerous thing. A loose cannon. I couldn’t put Kaia at risk like that. I ha
d to get control of myself.

  “Nothing. Just what I told you.”

  She was lying. “Kaia, I know your lying, I can feel it. Tell me.”

  “Really, it was nothing.”

  “Tell me, Kaia.”

  Shifting nervously, shuffling her feet on the floor, she sighed, “Well, she kind of pushed me a little. Might have threatened me a bit.”

  “She what!” I roared, my body shaking with the need and want to shift, but I held the wolf back, barely.

  Eyes widening, she backed away from me, which was probably for the best. I was losing control, fast. Fur was sprouting along my body, claws releasing. I needed to calm the fuck down. Luckily, having sensed my growing rage, my father rounded the corner. Allowing his wolf to rise to the surface, he placed his hand on my shoulder, holding me in place. My wolf instantly calmed upon his touch, reassured by the presence of his Alpha. “You need to control your emotions better, Ethan. Do not let them rule you.”

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed my wolf back, little by little, until I was once again in control. “Yes, Alpha. Thank you.”

  Releasing me from his hold, he turned to look at Kaia. “You okay?” Her nod was the only response she gave. “Ethan, you care to explain the problem here?”

  “No problem, father. We’ll be fine.”

  Eyeing me suspiciously, knowing full well that something had to have been majorly wrong for me to lose control like that, and that I was most definitely keeping something from him, he said, “Okay, if you say so. Just don’t let yourself lose it like that again.”

  It had been a very long time since I’d lost control of my wolf. The first and only time had been shortly after Kaia had disappeared when my wolf matured at sixteen. All Were are born with their beasts within them, but they are nothing but pups, children, until the age of sixteen. That’s when we have to learn to control them, keep some of their more aggressive instincts at bay. Shortly after my wolf had matured, I’d overheard someone talking about Kaia, saying things about her being a slut and that she had left because she’d gotten knocked up. It had set my wolf off, big time. I hadn’t understood why he had gone off the way he had at the time, but now I understood. She was my mate, and somewhere deep down, even all those years ago, he had known that.

  After my father left and I knew he was out of earshot, I turned to Kaia. “I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it like that. It’s just… I care about you, Kaia. I always have. And the thought of someone hurting you… well, it kills me.”

  A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “It’s okay. It was just a shock to have her telling me that she was your mate. I know were not exactly mates, because I'm not completing the bond, but… well, it just hurt when she said that you and her…”

  A small bubble of hope began to build in my chest. If Chelsea’s words had upset her, hurt her, then maybe she did feel things for me, want me. “I won’t deny it, I have been seeing Chelsea on a regular basis for a number of years, but never once have I told her that we were mates, or that I would mate with her. And I was going to end it even before the ritual.”

  “I know, Jennifer told me.”

  “Jennifer?”

  Jennifer was Chelsea’s step sister. She wasn’t a werewolf, but when Chelsea’s father had married Jennifer’s human mother she had been adopted into the pack. She and Chelsea were the same age, even had the same light blonde hair, but apart from that they were worlds apart. While Chelsea was self-centred and arrogant, Jennifer was selfless and caring.

  What the hell had I ever seen in Chelsea, apart from being an easy lay that is?

  “Yeah, she overheard her yelling at me and came in to stop her. Then she invited me to have a drink with her and the girls.”

  “Did you have fun?” I asked, wanting to change the topic, steer it away from Chelsea.

  “Yeah, I did actually. I was surprised they were so nice to me after how mean I was to them all at school.”

  We spoke a little more as we made our way downstairs and outside into the evening air. She seemed to be relaxing a little more around me. Maybe now would be a good time to talk about our past, dig a little to find out what had happened to make things change so drastically between us. Making up my mind, I took her through the gardens over to the edge of the wood. It was time to revisit a place from our past.

  ~

  Kaia

  I’d thought Ethan was going to show me around the packhouse gardens or something, but instead he walked me quickly through them, before disappearing into the trees to shift, returning a moment later with his jeans hanging from his mouth. Nudging my side, I took the hint and climbed up onto his back, leaning down to wrap my arms around his neck. I knew straight away where we were going. The question was, why?

  Ten minutes later, Ethan came to a stop in front of the cave we had used to meet up in all those years ago. Sliding from his back, I moved towards the entrance while he quickly shifted back and dressed.

  “Why are we here?” I asked, spinning around to face him once he was descent.

  “I thought it would be a great place for us to talk, get to know one another again.”

  Entering the cave, it was like walking back through time, back to a time when life wasn’t so complicated, to when I was just a normal Wiccan with no threat of death hanging over my head. But I also remembered the last time I’d been there, the day I’d left to train with Grace, the day I told him to stay away from me. Now here I was again, almost five years later, and it hadn’t done any good. I had tried to save him, tried to spare him the pain that was to come. But here he was, my protector… doomed.

  “What are you thinking about so hard?” he asked, sitting down on the large boulder in the middle of the cave that served well as a seat.

  “Just how pointless it all seems now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I always knew it would be you,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes as I acknowledged the truth I had denied all these years. I turned away from him so he wouldn’t see them. My emotions were already in turmoil after the incident in his room with Chelsea. Now, being back in this place after so long, I just couldn’t hold it back anymore. “I felt it deep inside, in my heart, my soul. And when my mother told me the truth of who I was, I panicked. It wouldn’t be just me the demon came after; it would be everyone I cared about, everyone I loved. And there was one thing my mother said to me that stuck in my head, echoed over and over. She said that at least I would die before I met my protector, bonded with him, so I would never have to live with the knowledge that it was my fault he was doomed to die a gruesome, painful death like myself. But that wasn’t true. Because I knew who my protector would be. And I knew I had to do everything in my power to make sure he survived, even if it meant making him hate me, him and everybody else I cared about.

  “But what good did it do? Here we are, five years later… Doomed.”

  He moved so silently I never realised he’d moved at all until I felt the power of his wolf behind me a second before his hands slid down my arms, entwining our fingers and pulling me back against his chest, wrapping me in his arms.

  “So that’s why you pushed me away?” he whispered in my ear, his breath warm upon my neck.

  “I had to do something. It’s bad enough that I'm doomed to die, but you… I couldn’t just let that happen. I had to do something, anything. And I didn’t think you would care anyhow. It’s not like anything had ever happened between us. You wouldn’t even acknowledge me out of this cave.”

  “Kaia,” he sighed, turning me to face him. Gently he whipped the tears from my cheeks. “I cared a great deal, Kaia. I’d planned on telling my father about my feelings for you. I was going to ask you out no matter what his thoughts on the matter. But I kept putting it off. I was so scared of how everyone else would react. I left it too late. I came here to meet you, to tell you, but you never showed. And then when I finally did see you again, you weren’t the same girl I had fallen in love with.”

  Love? He�
��d loved me?

  “I want to get to know you again, Kaia. I want you to give me a chance. Forget what your mother said. Finding your protector gives you a chance that others like you never had. Being named your protector doesn’t doom me, it gives me a chance to spend the rest of my life – be it long or short – with the girl that I was born to be with.”

  “I can’t, Ethan. I can’t put you at risk.”

  “Just give me a chance. Give us a chance. We don’t have to complete the bond. I'm not going to force you into that. Even if the thought of bonding with you, of having you laid bare beneath me, taking me into your body, is something I have dreamed about for many years.”

  A shiver ran through me at his words, my panties dampening with my arousal as he pulled me tighter against his hard body. The evidence of his own arousal pressed hard against me and I couldn’t help my instant reaction of rubbing against him.

  “Don’t do that, Kaia. My wolf is snapping at me to take you, to claim you as my mate. The scent of your arousal isn’t helping as if is.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, mortified that he could smell that.

  “Never be sorry of being attracted to me. I like that I affect you in that way. We just have to be careful with my wolf; he doesn’t think like us. He’s desperate for you, Kaia. For your touch, your taste, your surrender. He’s been driving me mad since the ritual.”

  “Is there anything I can do… to calm him?”

  A smile pulled at his lips as he lowered his head, closing the distance between us. “Well, there is one thing that I think might hold him off for a while.”

  “And what’s that?” I breathed.

  “This.”

  And then he was kissing me. At first his lips were just a light caress against my own, then his tongue swept along the seam of my lips, seeking entrance that I gladly gave. Within moments, what has started out as a sweet meeting of mouths turned into a hungry kiss of passion, of lost years, both of us determined to conquer the other.