Shifter Secrets: Shifter Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

“Well, it hasn’t been confirmed by a doctor or anything. I’ve been afraid of going to an actual doctor, you know, because of what he is. But, I’ve had the feeling the entire time. Esme’s certain of it, too, and she’s supposedly never been wrong about it before.”

  There was a hint of resentment in the air around Asher when she mentioned Esme. Olive guessed it was understandable, seeing as how she had run away with her. Asher didn’t hold onto that feeling for long, though, the smile growing on his face as he rubbed her stomach. “I have a son,” he exhaled, sounding as though he was saying it to himself to make it real.

  Anytime Esme stated something matter-of-factly about the baby, Olive would laugh it off and tell her there was no way to know. But when Asher did it, it felt right. It felt real, now that he was involved. Olive had no idea what was going to happen in the next few minutes, let alone weeks or months to come. It would all come down to what he was willing to cooperate with. Her son wasn’t going to be around Carlyle Tallant.

  Asher leaned in and pressed a sweet and brief peck on her lips, leaving her blushing and dazed, before he opened the door for her. By the time Olive had gotten in and buckled her seatbelt, Asher was in the driver’s seat and starting the engine, only fumbling to put on his seatbelt once he was backing out of the parking space.

  “Where exactly are we headed?” Olive asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Asher admitted. “I just need to get you out of this town.”

  “Can you tell me why?” He licked his lips nervously as he battled his thoughts and pulled out onto the main road.

  “I’m not sure where to start…” He sighed defeatedly as he glanced over to her. “I guess with that. Can you hand that to me?” he asked, pointing to her necklace.

  Olive complied, though she wasn’t sure why he was so hung up on the jewelry. Dropping it into his open hand, Asher hardly took a glance at it before he chucked it out of his open window.

  “Asher!” Olive exclaimed, her jaw going slack from shock. “I told you that’s Esme’s! I’m going to have to give it back to her! What if it’s a family heirloom or something?”

  “I’m sure it is,” Asher grumbled. “If we had the time, I would throw the car in reverse and back over it.” Olive was becoming fed up with his hostility toward Esme. She was innocent in all this, and him holding a grudge after Esme was just redirecting the anger he held for her.

  “I know that you don’t particularly like me being friends with her, but you don’t have any real reason to be so angry with her. It’s me you’re mad at, and if that’s the case, then be mad at me, not her.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Liv. I’ve been hurt, but like I said before, I understand now why you did what you did, even if I don’t agree with how you went about it. I do, however, have every right to be angry with Esme. As do you.” Taking his eyes off the road, Asher glanced over to her to express grave seriousness. “She isn’t who she says she is. She’s been lying to you probably since the day you met.”

  Olive had no response, having no idea where he would have drawn that conclusion from. Was Esme to an Honest Abe level? No, but who was?

  “I’m going to start from the beginning,” Asher announced. “I’m sorry if this is hard to follow, but just stick with me.” Taking a deep breath, he let it flow out of him. “Perhaps I should have told you this before. I mean, you know dragons and dragon-shifters are real, so that sort of throws everything into the realm of possibility… Ugh. Anyway, I believe I’ve mentioned that my people are originally from Europe, right? Well, dragon-shifters, that is. Dragons go so far back that we have no idea where they originally came from. That’s unimportant. What you should know is that we were centralized in England through the Middle Ages and onward. My grandfather, Osric, was the first dragon-shifter.

  “Well, during this time, there were also covens of witches—and I mean actual witches. Women who sold their souls to whatever hellish creature they chose so that they, and their offspring to come, would have supernatural powers. They began hunting dragons and dragon-shifters. They were harvesting my people for our bones, scales, and blood to use in their potions and rituals. They were sly, managing to come into our dens at night and slaughtering one of our kind while we slept, before escaping in the dark of night to nearby villages, knowing that we wouldn’t go into public spaces to find them. That would have been outing ourselves.

  “They killed off nearly all of the full-blooded dragons before coming for the shifters. Something had to be done. We were fierce beasts, and yet we were being picked off by women in the night…”

  Asher paused then, shaking his head. In the darkness of the car, Olive couldn’t see the details of his face, but she could somehow feel his pain. He was reliving it as he told the story.

  “Something had to be done. Osric decided the best course of action would be to join the humans and rise to some sort of status. The thought behind it was that the witches wouldn’t dare to kill noblemen. The town would be in an uproar and hunt out the killers, eventually catching them. For a while, that worked. Osric rose to be the community reverend. The title suited him well. While he didn’t have a lordship, he had immense influence, and the eloquent dictation and charm to get anything he desired.

  “However, the witches were running out of materials, I suppose, I don’t really know, but they started attacking us again. Boldly, too. That was when Osric began preaching about witches, telling the masses that the land was plagued with them and we had to weed them out. It was a scare tactic to run them out of the village. Some did, others did not. Some lowly witches were caught and brought to death.

  “Things escalated when a witch killed my mother. My father was catatonic for months after. It was then that Osric persuaded a duke to send knights to find an elder witch, a leader in the witch coven. My brothers and I were all soldiers at that point and helped lead the search. We captured her, dragged her back to the town’s center… and then Osric burned her at the stake.

  “As she burned, she cursed us all. We weren’t sure what exactly it was at first, but it didn’t take long. Any woman dragon-shifter who was pregnant at the time miscarried at nightfall, even those who were just about to give birth. We thought perhaps that was the end, but…”

  “But no babies were ever born again,” Olive finished.

  Asher nodded. “Osric burning an elder, however, petrified the witches. It didn’t stop humans from going on brazen witch hunts, killing many that weren’t even associated with the coven. Ever since, the witches have been out for our blood, looking for any opportunity to bring down our entire Kingdom. Which finally leads me to my main point. There is no doubt in my mind that Esme is a witch.”

  Olive was still trying to digest all that she had just been told, but she tried to stay focused on the conversation. “You’ve never met her, though. Why do you think she’s a witch?”

  “Well, I never suspected it until tonight. It would be one thing if she was just some loon that believed in dragons, but she knew that I was one. There’s just no possible way she would know.”

  “It didn’t feel right when she told me that,” Olive agreed, a frown beginning to form on her lips.

  “Then there was that necklace. That was all the proof I needed. It wasn’t a good luck charm, as she put it. It was an amulet. I don’t know what its purpose was, but I know I’ve seen it before. It could have been to track you, to ward off dragons, to make you submissive, anything. Whatever it is, we’re safer without it.” Asher’s hand rested on her knee. “I’m sorry, babe, but she’s been deceiving you. I’m not implying the entire friendship was a lie, but the moment you told her that you were pregnant… Well…”

  Olive’s own mind was reeling at the thought. She had no doubt that the story Asher had told her was true. She tended to be able to detect when he was lying, albeit she hadn’t experienced that very often. Almost all his lies and diversions had come before the night he revealed he was a dragon-shifter. Besides that, it would have been one hell of a lie to come up with on the
spot. Furthermore, why would he lie about that? Esme would have told her it was Asher tricking her, getting her away from the safety of Esme and eventually leading her back to the family estate.

  Esme couldn’t be trusted, though. It had been a red flag to Olive that she had known about Asher being a dragon-shifter, but she had so easily let Esme explain that away. Though it hadn’t been very convincing, Olive supposed she had allowed herself to believe her, since Esme was all she had at the time. They had been through so much together. How much of it had been a lie? What if Esme hadn’t joined Olive on the road out of the kindness of her heart and love for her friend, but to get to the baby? Had she been leading Olive into a trap?

  A migraine blossomed, and Olive let out a groan, placing her head in her hands. Asher rubbed her back with one hand as he drove with the other one. Esme had been so sincere. They had an amazing friendship. Never had Olive felt in danger or even uneasy around her. Had she been putting up that much of the façade? Her mind attempted to battle it out, but it was impossible with her head pounding. Olive wanted so desperately to believe in the sanctity of their friendship and tell Asher he was wrong, but how could she say he was wrong when she was having doubts herself? Should she still be having doubts about Asher? Even if she should have, she didn’t. He had been sincere, open, and vulnerable with her the entire time. That was, except for one detail.

  “So, were you really out here on business?” she asked as she sat up again.

  “So, you caught my white lie,” Asher sighed dramatically, attempting to lighten the mood just a bit. “I will never be able to hide anything from you. That could potentially be annoying, but I still like it.” An airy chuckle sounded from his throat. “Not exactly business. Also, I lied to you one other time, but I hadn’t known I was at the time. Our family has scouts spread throughout the region to keep an eye out for suspicious activity from the witches. A couple of our scouts picked up on the scent of a dragonborn with no other dragons around. It was a reason to believe a human was pregnant with a dragon, and, well, I was ordered by my father to hunt the woman down. Never for a second did I think it could be you.”

  “My scent, huh…” Olive mumbled, wondering what exactly she smelled like.

  “Oh, yes. I caught the smell at least fifty feet away from you.”

  She shot him a puzzling look. “Then how didn’t you know when you first walked into the diner?”

  “I was trying to figure that out myself. I think our bond had such a hold on me that none of my senses were really aware.”

  “Bond?”

  Asher cleared his throat. “I know we’re doing full transparency, but could that be a conversation for later? Please?”

  “I suppose,” Olive submitted, despite the subject sparking her interest. It wasn’t imperative at that moment in time, or else he would have told her.

  “Thank you.”

  Olive nervously chewed her lip. “We’re not going to your estate, are we?”

  “No. I respect the fact that you’re scared, and I’m not going to put you through that. What we’re going to do is try and figure out how in the hell I got you pregnant. We can go from there.”

  “Where would we even start?” Olive pondered. She personally had no idea how to take on such a complex and bizarre task.

  “From the bottom up,” Asher suggested. He was quiet then, but he had something on his mind. “I know you probably don’t want to explore this, but it’s going to be our best bet. We’re going to have to get some information on your biological family.”

  “You think it could have something to do with me personally?” The notion was shocking to Olive. The entire time, she never contemplated that this could be something to do with her. She figured it had to have been either something with Asher, or something beyond their comprehension.

  “I think it’s what makes the most sense. I’ve certainly never been a participant in conceiving a child before.”

  “What do you think it could be about me to let this happen?”

  “I wish I knew, sweetheart,” he answered. “It may take some time, but I’m sure we can get to the bottom of it. Do you know where any of your records are?”

  Olive’s stomach churned. She knew exactly where they were: her parents’ house. She had been in minimal contact with them in the past six months, telling them she was traveling before contemplating graduate school. They had no idea she was pregnant.

  12

  That evening, after a short stop in a hotel to get at least a few hours of sleep, Olive and Asher pulled up to her parents’ house. She had called that morning to ask if it was okay to drop by later in the day. Asher had met her parents a few times during the months he and Olive had been entirely inseparable, and they had taken a liking to Asher right away, always insisting that he and Olive come by more often. Yvette and Don were a bit on the older side. Olive was only twenty-two, and her parents were already entering their sixties. They bickered the way old married couples did on television, had honorable hobbies—crocheting for Yvette and restoring a vintage car for Don—and simply radiated happiness and love, neither of which shined brighter than when they were around Olive.

  Despite all of this, Asher was racked with nerves. If he had been a lesser man, he would have sent Olive to get the records on her own after dropping the bombshell that was her pregnancy. She had also told them she had left Asher six months ago. That didn’t exactly set him up for a warm welcome. Yvette and Don were probably going to assume he had knocked her up, perhaps gotten so angry at the news she was pregnant that it hurt her enough to leave him, and then somehow lured their vulnerable daughter back into his web.

  Even though he had done nothing wrong, Asher was going to face the music. He could take an evening of uncomfortableness and accusations if it meant they were pointed in the right direction. Even if they didn’t find anything of note in Olive’s files, at least they would know they needed to look elsewhere.

  Asher wasn’t sure which of them was fidgeting more as they stood on the porch step, in a silent standoff for who would knock on the door. Taking in a deep inhale of the suburban air, Asher raised his fist to the door. Before his knuckles could brush across the wood, the door flung open, and there stood an elated Don.

  Don was a short man with a bit of a gut on him, dark olive-toned skin from his Italian ancestry, and a dazzling white grin. His silver hair was slicked back with pomade. Asher didn’t think he had ever seen the man in anything but plaid button-downs and jeans.

  “I knew I heard a car pull up!” Don exclaimed excitedly, throwing his arms open to pull Olive into a hug. Olive, who had strategically dressed in an oversized cardigan and flowing blouse to hide her pregnant belly from first glance, turned to her side when she hugged him. After a warm, loving greeting to his daughter, sealed with a kiss on her forehead, Don turned to Asher. “I must say I’m surprised to see you back over here, but I’m glad to see ya.”

  Don’t speak too soon, Don, Asher thought. The old man then gave Asher a hug, deepening Asher’s worries on how he would react to the news. He found himself wishing once more that Olive had told him months ago and avoided this entire mess. All that mattered at the end of the day, though, was that Olive was back at his side, and their baby was safe. Asher returned the hugged and followed Olive into the house.

  The décor hadn’t been updated in decades. Asher recalled the first time Olive had taken him there: she had been bashful about her childhood home, knowing it hadn’t been extravagant like Asher’s. Once she knew he was a dragon-shifter and they came to visit again, he had made a joke about how his childhood home had been a cave.

  Besides, Asher loved Olive’s house. It was full of character and memories. Much of the furniture had been handcrafted by Don and his brothers, the curtains had all been handstitched by Yvette, each knick-knack that lined their shelves had a story, and there wasn’t a single wall in that house that didn’t have at least one picture of Olive. The smell of homemade soup filled the house. Asher could pick up on th
e notes of basil and thyme.

  As if on cue, Yvette sprinted through the kitchen doors. Once again, Olive turned to her side to meet an embrace. “Oh, I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen you! I’m so glad you called. I’ve got your favorite soup going on the stove!”

  “Aw, you didn’t have to do that, Mom. We could have just stayed for an hour or two. Didn’t have to go to any trouble.”

  “You think it’s trouble to feed my own daughter?” Yvette playfully remarked. “As if you’re going to leave this house unfed! You’ve always been so skinny. Though it looks like your trip has been doing you well! You have some color in your face and a little bit of meat on your bones.”

  “Mom,” Olive blushed horribly. Asher wrapped an arm around her. Olive had always been petite, so he knew the transformation she was going through must have been taking a toll on her self-esteem. He would be sure to fix that later.

  “It’s a compliment, Oli, don’t be so sensitive.” Yvette playfully swatted at her daughter with a serving spoon before heading back into the kitchen to tend to the soup. Neither she nor her husband had noticed anything.

  Asher was beginning to wonder if they could get away with not sharing the news, stowing away on holiday, and coming back with their son to tell them then. Dragonborns grew very, very slowly. He would be the size of an infant for at least a year. However, he didn’t think that Olive would take to that idea. She expressed the immense guilt she had been feeling about hiding it from her parents. She wanted to come clean, no matter their reactions.

  Soon, they were all sitting in the living room, with Asher and Olive on the couch and Yvette and Don in their favorite chairs. For a while, it was just chit-chat and catching up, asking about Olive’s road trip and if she had met any interesting people. They shot Asher a few questions, asking about the family business and if he had been up to anything new.

  With each passing minute, Olive was getting more nervous. She began rubbing her clammy hands across her jeans in an anxious rhythm. In an attempt to comfort her and remind her he was there to take the heat with her, Asher clasped one of her hands.