by Leela Ash
She held him tight. The Archstone Tribe were excited about all the happenings and were talking in loud tones with the rest of the people. They didn’t notice the little blade of grass that slithered away from the patch Drake had missed.
Antiope slithered as grass until she reached the edge of the forest, then she changed into her real form. She would get her vengeance on the lot of them, she vowed.
She entered the portion of the forest where the Krilce’s Sobriety was and she let her senses guide her until she reached the spot where the magic was the strongest.
She looked at the compass again and it indicated a spot just above some very poisonous flowers. Great. Who had managed to hide the diamond there?
She reached for it but her fingers brushed against empty air. Finally, she grabbed a long stick, so long it was practically a pole. She stretched it towards the spot and poked. The portion of the stick touching the flowers withered instantly and she cursed ripely underneath her breath.
The stick snagged on something like a pouch and she yanked. Her efforts were rewarded when she got the pouch in her hand. She opened it and smiled genuinely for the first time in years. It had all been worth it then.
Kricle’s Sobriety was the most powerful weapon for and against shifters. It created shifters and it could take them all out. She drew a small circle on the floor, chanting some of the incantations she had learned for this purpose. She held up the diamond to the faint light and grinned when she saw the tooth of the very first shifter trapped in the very heart of the diamond exactly like the lore had said.
If she did this right, all humans in Weirna wouldn’t know what hit them. They would become shifters in a heartbeat and she could control them. And then she would wipe out all other shifters; the Weirnas and the Archstones would be adios in minutes.
She placed the diamond in the center of the circle and drew a second circle.
She started to pour some liquid onto it and a hiss of smoke went up. Before she could do anything else, Drake appeared at the mouth of the cave.
Antiope gasped, “Have you been following me, you crazy bastard?”
He grinned, “I prefer to think of it as chickens coming home to roost.”
She yanked a knife out of her boot and flung it in a wide arch. He shot fire at it out of his eyes, as casual as you please, and it landed on the floor.
The diamond in the middle of the circle started to shake and vibrate. Antiope reached for it and it zinged her hand and flung her hard against the wall of the cave.
Drake stared in shock. She lay frighteningly still. The diamond had killed her. She began to disintegrate, turning to a pile of dust in a second.
He looked at the still vibrating diamond. It had already been activated, which meant it was dangerous to touch. This must be the Krilce’s Sobriety Palma had mentioned before she died, he realized.
He had to get it out of that circle. He opened his mouth and poured fire onto the diamond. The force of the fire flung it out of the circle and it clattered onto the ground and was still. A sharp white light shot up out of it, straight through the roof of the cave and then it vanished.
19.
“Caily!” Marissa screamed as her daughter ran up to the house. She knelt and opened her arms wide and embraced her daughter, peppering her little face with kisses.
Caily was giggling as she kissed her mother back, her hands enfolded around her.
Everyone stood around, smiling down at the duo.
Joshua’s eyes were proud as he clapped a hand onto Luke’s shoulder “You did good son. You did good.”
Caily disentangled herself from her mother’s arms and then she ran to hug everyone spreading it like a charm.
She ran back to Marissa, almost breathless with excitement, smiling happily when all of a sudden she wilted and collapsed in a heap.
“Caily!!!” Marissa screamed almost going crazy as everyone rushed to pick her daughter up.
A while later at the hospital, everyone gathered around Caily’s bed trying to make sense of what had happened. Marissa had cried until she had no more tears left.
“I’m sorry Dr. Stanley, but your kid is going to be just fine. Just as soon as she gets a transfusion,” the pediatrics doctor said as he adjusted his glasses.
Caily’s genotype was an O negative. She couldn’t help Caily because hers was B positive. And even the only O negative they had found, Caily’s body had rejected it. The moment the blood touched hers, it started to flow back up. It was most mysterious and something the doctors had never seen. They were baffled, but she wasn’t. She knew exactly why it had happened. Caily’s body was just beginning to adapt to being a shifter which meant she was a cross between human and shifter. No human blood would work for her now.
She had to tell Luke the truth, she decided. She had to tell him that only he could give Caily blood right now because he was O negative and he was a shifter, too.
Her mother was also at the hospital, weeping her eyes out. Marissa stood woodenly in a corner. She didn’t know what to say to anyone. Luke wasn’t around and he hadn’t been answering his phone.
Finally as though she had conjured him, he strode into the hospital with Drake and Derek.
“Luke,” she breathed and immediately dissolved into tears.
He caught her up in his arms, burying his face in her hair. She was sobbing so hard she was barely coherent but somehow he managed to understand her.
He agreed immediately to give his blood and the doctors took him away. After what seemed like hours later, he strode back out to join his family. He wasn’t the slightest bit woozy and Marissa knew his shifter abilities were the reason.
She ran to him and hugged him tight and voiced the one thing she had known for years, “I love you Luke. I never stopped.”
He tipped up her face and kissed her hard. Then he whispered against her lips, “I love you too Marissa. I love you so much that every wall in my room at home is covered in paintings of you.”
She stared. “I thought you only ever painted Caily.”
He shook his head, “I painted the woman I loved over and over. I couldn’t bring myself to sell paintings of you. So I tortured myself, by looking at them.”
She laughed, a watery chuckle.
Then her grin faded, as she recalled the issues still between them. “Luke that night I waited for you but you never showed up.”
He frowned and started to answer but her mother, Sara cut in, “Yes, he did.”
Marissa sighed, “Mum, I already told you it wasn’t Luke that attacked me in the park.”
Everyone froze and turned to look at both of them. Luke was the first to recover his voice, “What are you talking about Marissa?”
“I’ll tell you,” her mother Sara said. “I never liked you because you were a shifter. I wanted a better life for my daughter than what I had with her father and I thought she could never have that if she married a shifter. So I hated you all those years ago. That night you came to Weirna, I told you Marissa had a fiancé.”
Marissa gasped.
Her mother plunged on, “In truth, she had gone to the park to wait for you. I sent someone over to attack her, wearing a shirt similar to the one she got for your birthday last. His instructions were to make her ill enough to have to go to the hospital so she wouldn’t see you. Then I learned she was pregnant, and I regretted what I had done. Luckily her abilities protected her and the child.”
Marissa slid to a boneless heap on the floor, shocked by the startling revelations. “Mother, how could you?” she moaned.
Sara swallowed and focused a teary gaze on Luke, “I managed to convince you when you came to the house that she had a fiancé and that was when I showed you the video. In truth, it wasn’t even Marissa in the video; it was Sandra Quinn. I paid her to pretend to be Marissa in the video and I paid her to lie about the paternity of her child. She left town three nights later and never returned. Marissa was too weak when you came to the house, I knew she was watching out of a window.
I lied to her that you had gotten Sandra pregnant too and hadn’t wanted her child. I told her I would prove it to her by giving you a check. Everything went according to plan. I told Marissa you weren’t interested and when she saw me hand you the check, she believed me. She didn’t see you fling the check on the ground. It all fit with my plan and convinced her to stop wanting you. I told her you had hurt her that night at the park because you didn’t want the child. And I told her she had to pretend now that the child wasn’t yours, because if you saw Caily now you might try to take her or hurt her.”
Shocked silence followed these stunning revelations.
Joshua was very disappointed. “How could you, Sara?”
Marissa watched as her mother began to sob. Then she looked at Derek, “Please get her out of my sight.”
She didn’t have to ask again. Her mother was firmly escorted from the hospital and Luke bent to gather her in his arms. “I am so sorry, baby. I believed her.”
She kissed his cheek through her tears, “I believed her too. I’m also to blame. I knew she disliked you but she caught me at a vulnerable time and I didn’t connect the dots.”
Luke grabbed her on either side of the face, “Is what she is saying true? Is- Is Caily really mine?”
Marissa nodded.
He caught her lips in a long happy kiss, enjoying the feel of her soft body in his arms. She made the circle of his life complete. She was all he needed… her and their daughter.
He looked up at the only father figure he had ever known, “Did you hear that Joshua? I’m a father.”
“Yes my son, I heard. Congrats.”
His brothers were all beaming proudly at him and he felt his heart swell. He kissed Marissa again hungrily and he had to tamp down on a sudden animal hunger for her. He wanted to make love to her now.
“Let’s go see if Caily is awake,” he muttered.
“Come on,” Marissa agreed.
She led him down a winding passage that looked unfamiliar. They ended up in an on-call room.
He looked at her in confusion, “Did you lose your way honey? This isn’t Caily’s room.”
She grinned at him, “We’ve always made love in the most unconventional places. What’s one more?”
With a growl, he tumbled them both onto the bunk and proceeded to show her just how much pleasure they would enjoy together for the rest of their lives.
Out in the corridor, Joshua’s smile had dimmed a little as he examined he pictures Drake had brought back.
“What’s wrong Joshua?” Drake asked uneasy with his reaction.
Joshua looked up at his boys, “This is a tear in the veil of this world. This can only happen when the Krilce’s Sobriety is used wrongly and by a wrong hand.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means my boys, that worst is yet to come. When this ‘Nabradia’ handled the ornament, she caused this to happen. The dead will walk among the living through that crack in the veil between the two worlds. And the worst part is, only a witch can stop it.”
“Where the hell do we find a witch?” Drake growled.
Joshua smiled sadly at him, “Only you can find witches when they don’t want to be found, my son.”
“Dragons and witches are enemies,” Jack protested.
“Yes,” Joshua agreed. “But maybe this is how his own story unfolds. This must be your destiny calling Drake,” he finished, patting a gentle hand on his son’s shoulder.
The End
Her Forbidden Dragon
Damaged Pack Shifters 5
Leela Ash & Pamela Avery
Copyright ©2020 by Leela Ash and Pamela Avery. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1.
Drake Alcorn leaned back against the booth, sighing with satisfaction as he knocked back a big cold one, while seated in his favorite bar with the unlikely name of Hook It Bar. A beer was just the ticket to get his mind off his problems for a minute, he decided. And if there was one thing the humans of Weirna enjoyed, it was their beer, he thought, raising the cold glass and giving it an admiring glance.
Pity, no beer was cold enough to wash away the bitter taste his argument with Joshua had left in his mouth, he thought, scowling at the amber liquid in his glass.
As he lowered his glass, a luscious, raven-haired beauty in a corner of the bar was also lowering her own glass, her gaze locked on his as she dimpled at him. Drake realized belatedly that she had thought he was offering her a toast and had toasted back.
Or maybe she was just the cougar sort who was astute enough to know he’d only been inspecting his glass but was just bold and sly enough to pretend she’d thought it was a toast. Her bright red lips parted in a smile that was undeniably sexy and hot but he wasn’t in the mood.
He grinned uncertainly at her, before flicking his gaze back to the contents of his glass. He wasn’t in the mood for company. Every time he turned around, there was a willing woman with Texas-sized jugs just waiting to entice him into her bed and he was always an eager lover. He liked women a lot; heck, he thought the feel of a woman’s soft skin against his naked body was incomparable to any other pleasure in life. But today, he truly wanted to be alone.
“Seems you caught the eye of that hottie,” Ben Mason drawled. He was one of the Mason boys and worked waiting tables in the Hook It Bar. He waggled his brows as he set a fresh can of beer before Drake. “Good job, Alcorn. Every man in here has been salivating for the past hour, but she’s been rolling out the arctic mat with extra ice on the side. But you walk inand she perks right up and thrusts her chest so far out it’s a wonder her boobs didn’t spill right out of her top.”
Just as he’d suspected then: she was a woman on the make. The best kind of woman, in his humble opinion, but right now, he was so upset he didn’t think he could get it up even if he were in a roomful of naked women.
“Keep her away from me, Ben,” Drake drawled as he slapped a twenty into the waiter’s hand. “I’m serious, man.”
The waiter nodded, bowed happily and left, pocketing his tip.
Drake took another sip of his drink and his mind drifted again to last night. He needed a cigarette, he thought with an inward groan, feeling the familiar craving he hadn’t felt in years. For the first time ever, he had exchanged words, very harsh words, with the father he’d known all his life. Joshua Cox had brought him and his shifter friends up as his sons and Drake had never respected any man more. But after Luke and Marissa had rescued their daughter Caily from the Archstones, Joshua had decided to foist an impossible mission on Drake; he wanted him to go seek out any surviving witches and bring them back to Weirna.
It chafed that Joshua, of all people, who should understand the age-old conflict between dragons and witches, would ask Drake, a shifter-dragon, to go on a mission to bring a witch to Weirna. Joshua thought the veil between the worlds had been torn but Drake didn’t agree. And even if it was torn, there had to be a better way to heal it.
He hated witches and it wasn’t just about being a dragon. He despised them as much as they despised him. They weren’t worth the slippers on their feet as far as he was concerned and he was so grateful that Nabradia, the dead Queen of the Salem witches, had managed to wipe out all the witches for a thousand miles around, just before she died. It was just bad luck some shapeshifter had taken on Nabradia’s form, wielded a powerful ornament known as Krilce’s Sobriety and supposedly caused a tear in the veil of the world.
A tear in the veil was a big deal because it meant there was nothing stopping the dead from walking among the living and wreaking havoc. Joshua was convinced the veil was torn and only a witch could help heal it.
Personally, Drake thought that was a load of bull. Witches could only kill, hurt and cause damage. They did nothing good; his parents had
learned that firsthand years ago when they trusted a witch and she rewarded their trust by killing them all.
With a sigh, Drake slammed his glass onto the tabletop, forgetting to temper his supernatural strength as he did so, and it splintered into a million pieces. Another waiter rushed forward to clean up the mess, and Drake rose to his feet, tossing enough bills onto the table to cover the damage, his drinks and another tip.
As he neared the door, he heard a voice unlike anything he’d ever heard, “Leaving so soon?”
The voice seemed to echo and reverberate through him. A few glasses nearby shook in response and he paused mid-step and swung around in surprise, every hair on the back of his neck standing on end as his entire frame tensed for a fight.
His gaze went unerringly to the cougar who had been staring at him since he walked into the room. She lifted her glass in yet another toast, her gaze still locked on his. Her lips were unmoving as she spoke again, “I want you. Now.”
Immediate lust filled him and he was shocked to find himself within an inch of tearing off his clothes and mounting her right there in full view of everyone in the bar. His huge cock strained eagerly against the material of his jeans and he growled in surprise. He never reacted to any woman like that; this had to be magic, and not the good kind. Years of training and self-discipline kicked in and he backed away from her with no small effort.
What the hell? Who was she? She was obviously a supernatural being, he could tell. No one had heard her speak except him, which meant she was in his head.
“How the hell are you doing this?” he ground out glaring at her and drawing a few surprised glances from other revelers.
She let her gaze rove hungrily over his frame, her gaze glinting, as she replied still without moving her lips, “We are already joined mentally, bright eyes. Why don’t we make it official, physically?”
He growled, “Get out of my head.”
She stood up and grinned as she spoke aloud for the first time, “Wrong answer.”
