by V. A. Dold
Thomas
The Five Shifter Rules
Always put your mate before yourself.
Respect another shifter’s mate.
Do nothing to expose the existence of shifters.
Do no unnecessary harm to shifters or humans.
Respect all nonhumans.
Copyright 2014 by V.A. Dold
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author–except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the web. For information, please contact the author via email at [email protected].
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real–life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
ISBN–13: 978-0990523543
ISBN–10: 0990523543
Print edition April 2015
This is Dedicated
To all of my readers and fans of the Le Beau Series, I appreciate you more than I can say.
Thank you to my friends and family who cheered me on and gave me the energy to keep writing when I was running low on sleep.
A special thank you to all the Bayou Babes who support me every day.
Thank you, Denise Greathouse Griffin, Karen Hall, & Christa Reed for your input and ideas for the proposal dinner.
BJ Gaskill, Mary Pavek, and Carolyn: you rock!
...Enjoy the adventure!
Thomas
Le Beau Brothers
Book 4
By
V.A. Dold
Prologue- The Plan
Only the birds singing and the leaves ruffling in the breeze shared Emma’s solitude. Reverently, she knelt before the dais constructed for John’s conversion. As part of its preparation, she had taken her daily meditation time at its base.
Closing her eyes and lifting her hands in supplication, she began to pray. “Mother Luperca, I ask that you bless this holy site and give it your approval.”
As she knelt quietly, a soft voice greeted her, “Beloved daughter, I give this site my approval. All is prepared for my newest son, John, to join my family.”
“May I also inquire about my unmated sons?”
“You ask about your sons, but that is not what I feel in your heart. Your true concern is for Thomas, and the plan I have for him.”
“If it pleases you, may I be honored with the knowledge of your plan?”
“Thomas is destined to be Julia’s mate.”
“How may I be of assistance in bringing this mating to fruition?”
“Julia will attend the gathering. Ensure that they meet.”
“Thank you, Mother. How may I be of further service?”
“Your daily worship pleases me well, child. You do enough. Blessed be.”
“Blessed be, Mother.”
Emma completed her prayers and final preparations, excited to tell Isaac her news.
*****
Isaac sat in his office responding to emails from the other pack patriarchs. The gathering was shaping up to be a complete success with every family in the region attending.
“Isaac! Isaac, where are you, cher?” Emma called through the house.
“In here, mon amour.”
“I can’t believe it!” Emma perched in the chair opposite him. “The Goddess has given me the next mate.”
“Who?” he asked excitedly. “Lucas? Marcus?”
Emma leaned toward him and whispered her incredible secret. “Thomas.”
“No! How?”
“Julia.” Emma clapped excitedly. “She’s his mate.”
“I never saw that coming.” Isaac laughed.
“That’s why he isn’t being converted with John.”
Isaac nodded. “He’ll be converted by Julia during the ritual.”
“The Goddess told me Julia will attend the gathering, and our job is to ensure they meet.”
“All right,” Isaac grinned, “that should be easy enough. I’ll keep tabs on Thomas, and you watch Julia. If they don’t meet on their own, one of us will make sure they are introduced.”
Chapter 1
“Hello?” Julia Le Beau yawned into the phone.
Her alarm never had the chance to go off, because her mother, Lucinda, beat it by a good thirty minutes. She was convinced the woman could hear her biological clock ticking, which was ridiculous since she had another six hundred years for children. No matter what Julia said, it didn’t seem to penetrate her mother’s ears, so, here she was, having the same conversation again.
“Julia, are you still in bed? Did you forget I’m bringing another family to your house this morning?”
“I thought I told you not to bring them. I’m finished with your parades, Mother.”
“For Goddess sake, get showered immediately. We’ll be at your door in one hour.”
“I’m not going to answer the door, so don’t bother.”
Her mother ignored her as usual and exactly one hour later was at her door.
Julia hung her head in frustration. She lost count years ago how many men her mother brought for the ‘sniff’ test. Each time it was the same: no mate. Like the Little Engine That Could©, Lucinda refused to give up.
The last time Julia locked the door and ignored her mother’s knocking, it resulted in a very ugly scene. Lucinda in the throws of an angry tirade was not a pretty sight. Her face turned a mottled shade of red, and she broke the door down, dragging the shocked men in behind her.
Since that day, she'd grudgingly opened the door. If not for her house’s sake, then for the sake of the men, she could at least spare them the humiliation of the tantrum sure to happen.
Two hours later, Julia’s stomach churned. She loathed the questions that came after each ‘visit’. Couldn’t her mother forget to ask, just once?
“Well?” her mother asked impatiently from the doorway.
“Nothing,” Julia mumbled, not bothering to look up from the romance novel she was reading. “I had no attraction. No, scent. No, telepathy.” She didn’t even bother to say she was sorry this time because she wasn’t.
Lucinda snarled in frustration as she came fully into the room.
“I met all the men you just paraded through my house and had none of the mating signs. I don’t know what more you expect from me.” She sighed wearily.
“I expect you to accept one.”
Julia’s chin fell to her chest as a heavy sigh escaped. “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m sure if you made the extra effort to at least date them, something would shake loose. How hard can it be? Just look at Cade and that human, Anna, they met in a bar in the French Quarter of all places. Not to mention, Simon and his mate Rose, yet another human to dilute the royal gene pool. Rose showed up at Cade’s house after she lost her job in Denver, and now the family is stuck with her. And I heard a rumor that Stefan has found his mate, and you guessed it, a human. He bought her at the auction Simon had a couple months ago. I can’t believe Isaac can still hold his head up in public with his sons mating lowlife humans. My daughters will mate pureblood shifters and maintain the integrity of the bloodline.”
Julia wan
ted to scream. A mating didn’t just ‘shake loose’, and there was nothing wrong with humans. Heck, most mates were human. There was no reasoning with her mother anymore. That ability had left the building along with Elvis years ago. She wasn’t sure if the animal part of her mother was taking over and acting erratic or if the human side was slipping into insanity.
Her mother leaned forward forcing Julia to sit back. “For years, you have rejected the males I bring to you. It’s time you made a—”
“Mother, I know you want your children mated, but no matter how badly you want it, you can’t force it.”
“Just watch me,” Lucinda spat. “We are in line to gain the throne. The lineage must be continued and ready at all times.”
It was true the family needed to continue, but mates and children came into a shifter’s life when the Goddess deemed it was the right time. The last thing you wanted to do was push the Goddess or try to circumvent her plan. Thinking that way was suicide.
Lucinda turned on her heel toward the door and then paused. “There will be a group of available males here Friday. This pack is out of Arizona. Pray one of them is acceptable to you.”
Once Lucinda was in her boat and headed out of her private bay, Julia finally breathed easy again. Krystal would be home in a few hours and available to talk. They needed a plan; somehow they needed to find a way to approach Father about Mother’s behavior. The problem was her father, Charles, was completely blind to her mother’s oddities.
Julia turned the page of her book and settled deeper into her favorite easy chair; there was nothing she could do until Krystal got home. Tonight she would suggest again they bring Logan and Quintin into the conversation. It was about time the boys knew what was going on behind the family’s back. Thinking it through, she shook her head. She wouldn’t bother the twins, Rémi, and René, just yet. They were too young to be drawn into this.
Once Lucinda got a notion in her head, she had a tendency to twist it until it fit her needs and desires. After that, she could never be swayed.
And her mother’s drive to force both Krystal and Julia to find mates had reached critical mass.
“What are we going to do?” Julia whispered to herself.
Two weeks later
Morning was Julia’s favorite time of day. The bar wasn’t open yet, and she had it all to herself as she wiped down tables and checked the bar stock.
The only problem was; it sometimes gave her too much time to think. Today was one of those times. She had her mother on her mind.
It wasn’t that her mother didn’t love her—she did. At least, she was pretty sure she did. But the woman had some pretty extreme ideas of late. She apparently believed shifters should only mate other born shifters, and humans were a scourge and diluted the bloodline.
In her disturbed mind, she believed if she dragged her daughters around to enough eligible shifter males, she could somehow force a pureblood mating.
Julia and Krystal were tired of being paraded before one shifter family after another. Tired of letting hundreds of males sniff them in the hopes of finding a mate. It was straight up embarrassing.
As much as she loved the bayou, she was seriously considering tagging along with Krystal to Lucas’s ranch in Texas. She heaved a sigh and took a good, long look at the bar. All right, she would do it. If her mother tried to drag her out ‘visiting’ one more time, she’d pack up and head for Texas.
*****
It had been a busy shift at her bar The Backwater, and she was ready to relax in a bubble bath with a good romance novel.
Julia came through the front door of her home to a horrifying sight. Her beloved novels lay shredded and callously thrown in a pile. It must be her entire collection to create a mountain of pages and covers five feet high in her living room. Next to the carnage lay a note on a side table. The room smelled of anger, frustration, and her mother.
She was going to have to store her books in a safer place from now on. Huffing out an angry breath, she picked up the note.
You need to get your head out of the clouds and look for a mate. You won’t find him in one of these human books. I’ve had it with your lack of interest in settling down. Pick out a mate, or I will pick one for you.
“Pick one for me? She has completely lost touch with reality.”
Every shifter knew you couldn’t just pick any old mate; you had to find the one who held the other half of your soul. It was time for a private talk with her father. He needed to know how crazy she was acting.
Sighing, at almost two hundred, she was well past the age by which she hoped to be mated. Every year her mother had marched available men into her quaint little house like she was presenting the latest fashions, or worse, dragged her to them. Not a single one had been her other half. How exactly was she to blame for that?
Then she read the last sentence of the note.
You will attend the dance at your Uncle Isaac’s on Saturday. Perhaps this time you will find your mate.
Your Mother
She audibly groaned. She hated being sniffed by every single male who came within five feet of her. It made her feel dirty. The First thing she did after these setups was take a long, hot shower.
Julia thought back to the beginning of her ‘shame’, as her mother described it. She had gone to yet another event where she was set out like a prize to be won. When none of the men were a match, her parents informed her they were buying the Gator’s Tooth Bar and Grill, and she would be the full-time bartender. Their hopes were she would stumble upon her mate amongst the patrons and visitors. The first thing Julia had done was rename the bar The Backwater to spite her mother.
Has it really been twenty years?
“Oh well, I have six days before Isaac’s party; time enough to stock up on new books. And I’m not going to waste another second thinking about the party. Take that, Mother.”
At least her uncle’s party actually sounded fun. Her cousins would be there, and she could hang out with them while avoiding her mother.
The Day of the Gathering
Stretching, Julia considered what to do with her free day. The gathering didn’t begin until seven that evening, and since everyone was invited, The Backwater was closed for the day.
Grabbing her robe, she slipped on her bunny slippers and made a beeline to the coffee maker. Goddess, she loved her new programmable machine. No more waiting for the coffee to brew for this girl.
Steaming cup in hand, she grabbed one of her new romance novels. A friend had recommended it, saying the storyline and names sounded like her cousin, Cade, and his mate, Anna. She’d never read V.A. Dold before, but she hoped it would be as good as her friend said it was.
Not two chapters into the book and the last person she wanted to see walked through her door. Her mother. Lucinda took one look at the book and turned an interesting color of purplish red.
“Do you always barge into a person’s home without knocking?” Julia asked coolly.
“Where did you get that?”
“The coffee? From the pot in the kitchen.”
“You know very well I’m not talking about the coffee.”
“Well, if you’re referring to my NEW book, touch it and die. And if you think I’m kidding, try it.”
Lucinda was dumbstruck; Julia had never spoken to her like that before.
“Since I have a day of relaxation planned, why don’t you tell me why you’re here so I can get back to it?”
“I bought you a dress for the gathering. I was shopping for one for myself and saw this. It’s your favorite color, and I’m sure it will be stunning on you.” Lucinda held it out to Julia a little hesitantly.
Interesting. She’d never seen her mother unsure of herself.
I’m going to have to tell her off more often.
“I wasn’t planning on wearing a dress, but I’ll try it on later and see what I think of it.”
“Wonderful. We’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
“No. You won’t. I’m going
by myself.”
“But you have to ride with the family.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way you travel to these gatherings. You arrive as a family pack.”
“Then I guess I’m starting a new tradition because I’m going by myself.”
Lucinda narrowed her eyes. She was so mad, Julia checked to see if steam was rising out of her ears. “You wait until I tell your father.”
“Go ahead. I’m still going by myself.”
Lucinda growled, spun on her heel, and slammed the door on her way out.
“Well,” Julia chuckled to herself, “that was pleasant.”
Chapter 2
Thomas scowled at the crowd below. He had little patience for parties on his best day. And this wasn’t even a good day.
The main yard was filling with family packs, as one after the other joined the celebration. Glancing to the right, he checked on the band doing a sound check. Near the rear of the designated party area, the caterer was busy filling the buffet table with every meat, salad, and dessert imaginable.
Scanning the milling crowd below, Thomas observed a woman moving through the throng of people. His position on the raised deck attached to the rear of his grandparent’s house gave him the advantage of elevation. He scowled as his attention kept returning to her. Sure, she was pretty, and curvy, and sexy as hell, but he had a job to do. Besides, he avoided getting involved with women. Hookups – yes. Serious interest – no. Still, he felt the woman's presence and found himself staring at her again.
