Shifter Secrets: Shifter Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  She eagerly walked over to him and accepted his affections. He kissed her gently and took a step back, and grinned at Sarah.

  “What?” asked Sarah, confused by his smile.

  Ember took Sarah’s hand in his own, and moved it down to her stomach. Her abdomen felt warm to the touch as the heat moved from her stomach to every cell in her body. She looked more closely at her arm, which was sparkling as if it was laced in glitter. Her back tingled and as she looked back over her shoulders, a pair of shimmering wings began to form on both sides of her spine.

  “What’s happening?” asked Sarah, scrambling away from the wings. They followed her.

  “It’s okay!” Ember said, trying to calm her. “It’s okay.”

  “There are wings coming out my back! How is any part of this okay?”

  He smiled gently at her. “You’re shifting. It’ll take a little getting used to, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

  She hesitated and focused. Her wings flittered. “Am I just a tiny dragon? Oh. Oh, they’re still growing.” They shimmered out of existence. “Okay, what happened now?”

  “It’s a process,” he replied. “And you know the craziest part?”

  “That I’m turning into a dragon?” she guessed. “That I’m apparently now immortal?”

  “Well yes…but no. The craziest part…” he paused and kissed her. “Is that you’re pregnant.”

  THE END

  Download Element Dragons to continue reading this series.

  Werewolf Spell

  Enchanted Werewolf Book One

  Werewolf Spell

  Text Copyright © 2018 by Alexis Davie

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2016

  Publisher

  Secret Woods Books

  secretwoodsbooks@gmail.com

  www.SecretWoodsBooks.com

  1

  Cara Stone typed on the keyboard of her laptop, sprawled out on her bed in her apartment. Her fingers flew across the keys as a thunderstorm boomed outside her window. The sound of rain inspired her, drove her to write more and more compelling characters of passion and play.

  The chilled rain splattered against the window, soothing her as the rich sound of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” came from a little portable speaker that an ex-boyfriend had given her and forgotten about.

  A bolt of lightning crackled through the sky loudly from a distance away, barely visible from the skyscrapers that surrounded her apartment complex. Someday, she’d be a famous writer. Eventually, she’d work up enough courage to finally publish. She’d been working on several novels for, what, five years? She’d started writing the summer after she graduated from college. Most books took about the same time as a baby to grow in the womb—nine months. This was kind of funny to her. But after all the time she’d spent laboring over them, they were like her children. This one was especially close to her heart. She cared for it. Cherished it. That was probably why she had so much trouble publishing.

  Cara always tried to use her life experiences as inspiration for her novels. In this particular one, she used the death of her parents to convey the raw pain of losing them through words. The coroner said they hadn’t suffered after the car accident, and their deaths were quick. Although that was supposed to be comforting, she didn’t hurt any less.

  Writing was a sort of therapy for her, one that was less expensive and more relaxing. Putting the words on the laptop helped her work through the memories in a healthy way, all while maybe making some money if she ever found the courage to actually contact a publisher.

  To publish the story and put herself on the line like that was troubling to say the least. She’d never been the first one to jump into the front of the line and push for what she wanted. She had always patiently waited her turn. Someday, it’d be her moment to publish a book. Until then, she’d just write on and on.

  Cara zoned back into writing her story. Thunderstorms calmed her. She wasn’t sure why, but they soothed her and took away the memories of her stupid job at that damned newspaper. Her boss loved to criticize Cara’s writing. Everyone else thought she was great. But him? Nah.

  One of these days, she was going to straight up tell him that he didn’t own her. That all he actually owned was a small-time newspaper, and the digital world was taking over anyway. She was willing to bet that within ten years, the paper would shut down. Soon enough, he’d be working for her when she was rich and famous!

  Someday she’d that say.

  Maybe.

  Probably not.

  After an hour of writing, her phone buzzed beside her. She glanced over. It was one of her friends from work.

  Hey girl, you coming to the party?

  A couple of Cara’s friends were going to a bar to enjoy a night out on the town. They’d been trying to convince her to go for weeks, but she never found who she was looking for at that kind of event. She unlocked her phone to reply.

  Going to have a headache right before it starts. Thanks though.

  She wasn’t sure why those kinds of things never worked out for her. She’d dated a ton of guys—and she did really mean a ton—but none of them ever really did it for her. She always felt like they were missing that spark. She didn’t want a guy that was as meek as she was. She wanted to find someone taking life by the horns, the kind of guy that would take her into the bedroom and strip off her clothes and…

  Anyway.

  She realized she’d been staring at her computer screen silently for the past few minutes. She blinked, trying to snap out of the mental fog, and went to fire up the coffee maker. It was still early in the morning on a Saturday. She had nowhere to be. Nobody to please. No chores to do until late Sunday night when she’d regret not doing anything on Saturday.

  As the steaming hot coffee poured into her cup, someone rang the doorbell.

  She paused.

  Ring, ring!

  That didn’t make sense. She hadn’t invited anyone over.

  Ring, ring!

  “Who is it?” she called.

  Whoever it was just kept ringing the bell, so Cara pulled on a bathrobe over her skimpy pajamas and went to answer the door. After a moment of thought, she grabbed the coffee cup. If it was someone with bad intentions, she wanted to have something to defend herself with, and unless the assailant was ten feet tall and made of solid steel, hot coffee to the face would get a strong reaction. She’d watched plenty of those home invasion shows to know better than to trust strangers.

  Wondering when she’d gotten so skeptical of the human race, she opened the door. She had broken the little peephole glass years ago, but she couldn’t be bothered to fix it so it had stayed broken. She was starting to regret not asking her landlord to repair it.

  There was a man outside, tall, gaunt and somewhat awkward.

  Jeffrey.

  The postman.

  “Hey, Jeff,” she said, lowering the coffee.

  “Package for you, ma’am!”

  “A package? I didn’t order anything.”

  “That’s something you’ll need to take up with someone else,” he said with a cheery smile. Jeffrey was like Cara—he hated his job, but he could put on a happy face when he needed to.

  “Um…okay.”

  She closed the door on him and returned to her bed, setting the coffee on the nightstand. She ripped into the package. There, inside some bubble wrap, was a single cobalt blue business card.

  There was nothing on the card. No name or address—just a single, stark phone number in the very middle, printed with shimmering gray letters.
>
  She frowned, flipping it over a couple times to see if she had missed something. Nope. She’d been right the first time; it was just a mysterious, single card. It felt nice under her fingers—rich and pleasantly textured.

  Cara set the card aside. Whoever it belonged to, she wasn’t interested. It was probably just some scam artist. Nowadays, you could get five-hundred cards like that for less than a nice meal. She was willing to bet it was like those email scams; just click on the link and get a lovely virus. The last thing she needed right then was someone to remotely attack her phone.

  The rest of the day was pretty boring. She just worked on her story and waited for the rain to die down. It never did. It kept pouring the entire day, nonstop.

  2

  On Sunday, the rain finally broke. Cara took the opportunity to run to the store to grab some groceries. As she was driving, she couldn’t help but think about that card. Why would someone send her a card? It just didn’t add up.

  First of all, a true scammer wouldn’t have just put a number on the card. They would’ve made it all pretty, nice and attractive – probably with a pamphlet that tried to convince victims to call the number by promising debt consolidation or a fat burning solution.

  Second of all, she was hardly a good person to target for any sort of scam. Fat burning? She was already slim. She took care of herself. She ate kale and quinoa, and drank kombucha. Sometimes she went to the gym before all the guys checked her out and made her uncomfortable to the point of making her leave. Debt? Nope. She was one of those rare people that plugged away at debt and lived frugally. Except for Netflix, her laptop, and basic necessities, she had a very inexpensive lifestyle. She wasn’t sure what she was saving for. It wasn’t like she had some grand plan, daringly buying into real estate and becoming crazy rich. It just felt right to have a nest egg hidden for emergencies.

  She shifted lanes in traffic and spotted a glaringly unattractive car behind her. To some folks, it was probably an awesome car, but to her, it just spewed classlessness. It was a supped-up town car with spinning rims and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the front mirror. The whole body was covered in glittering purple-black paint. She couldn’t see much of the guy driving it from behind the darkened windshield. She just assumed it was a guy. Sexist? Maybe. Did she care? No, not really.

  She kept driving and put on the blinker to get off the interstate. The obnoxious car did the same.

  She shifted off the interstate toward the grocery store. A little while later, she changed lanes. The other car did too. Finally, the store’s sign came into view and she pulled in.

  The car kept driving.

  She let out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She was awfully tense recently. First, she got nervous about answering the door and getting attacked, and then, she thought the guy in the ugly car was following her. The poor guy was probably just trying to head home after dropping a kid off at choir practice or something, and here she was, wondering if she should be ready to call the cops. She wasn’t normally that nervous. Maybe it was the card that was putting her on edge.

  She tried to shake it off as she shopped. It was like a game—pick up one thing and put one down. Pick up one gallon of almond milk and put down the stress of being single for the past year. Pick up some bananas and put down the irritation that everyone was texting her about their one-night-stand regrets from the night out that she had skipped.

  As she checked out, she noticed the cashier taking a glimpse of her. His eyes widened for just a moment as he glanced over her body. It was gross. Sometimes she was okay with guys checking her out. Other times? No.

  This was one of those no times.

  “How are you today?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  All she wanted to do was get her food and go. He kept trying to engage in conversation, obviously flirting. Some people are good at flirting; they smile at the appropriate times, wink, and ask the right questions. Cara thought she was quite talented at it, on the rare occasion she was actually attracted to someone. Sadly, the cashier didn’t do it for her. He was too…soft. She felt like she could just push him over and he’d apologize for falling. If she, quiet little Cara, felt that way about him…it wasn’t good for his cause.

  She wandered back out to the parking lot to put the groceries in her car. It was a Honda, one of the old ones. She wasn’t going to wow anyone with its looks, but it was dependable and had good gas mileage. Mindlessly, she tossed the groceries in the back and sat in the front seat.

  She inserted the key and the engine fired up. She put it in reverse and turned to back up, when she saw the man in her back seat, calmly smirking at her.

  She shrieked at the top of her lungs and accelerated wildly, then slammed on the breaks, sending the guy flying between the front two seats into the dash. She accelerated again and spun the wheel to avoid hitting another car or one of those cart corrals, but this time, her foot stayed on the gas.

  The mystery man involuntarily jerked forward from his seat due to Cara’s erratic driving, and his face hit the gearshift with enough force that the car shifted into park. The car screeched to a halt, saved from smashing into any number of inanimate objects.

  Cara screamed. “Holy shit! Who are you and what are you doing in my car?”

  He peeled himself off the gearshift. A thin stream of goldish liquid was leaking out from his mouth. “You made me bite my tongue!”

  He had golden blood? But she had other things to worry about, namely the fact that there was a man she didn’t know that had somehow managed to sneak into her locked car.

  “Get out!” she screamed.

  Nobody outside the car looked worried. When she’d nearly plowed through some other vehicles, she’d attracted a couple glances, but nobody seemed too concerned.

  “Calm down,” he snapped, putting a hand to his nose.

  She went for the door, but he beat her there. He lunged across her chest and slammed the lock button. It slid down with a pleasing snap. He grabbed her hands to keep her from running away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

  His voice sounded like a cello being gently stroked – deep, strong, and oddly soothing.

  “Just listen to me.”

  Cara wasn’t sure if it was the shock setting in, but she nodded her head in agreement. She couldn’t believe it; someone was in her car. She was being held captive in her own vehicle in the parking lot of a large store, with lots of people around.

  He released her hands, and she didn’t go for the door. He’d beat her to it once. He could beat her to it again.

  “W…why are you in my car?” she hissed. Where was that pepper spray? She’d carried around one of those little vials of pepper spray for years. Dammit! She’d left it in the glove box.

  He clambered into the front seat, which is where she got a great view of him. He was built like a bull, laden with muscle, but not too muscular to inhibit his movement. He looked strong and fast, like a professional athlete. His golden, tanned skin complemented his dark hair.

  “You’re in danger,” he said, meeting her eyes. His eyes were striking, and were like nothing she’d ever seen before. They were light brown, almost orange, with a tint of gold right around the pupil. Cara wasn’t sure why her brain decided to isolate the peculiar color of his eyes right then, but it did.

  What really confused her was that her heart fluttered.

  “In danger? From you?” she snapped back.

  “No, from Ezekiel.”

  He raised his brawny arm to point across the parking lot. There, across a couple minivans, was the glittering purple car.

  He had followed her after all.

  Any doubt she might have had was eliminated when she saw the fuzzy dice. She noticed the smallest hint of movement inside.

  The guy in her car kept talking, which was a good thing. She couldn’t even form words. A stranger—a male stranger—was in her car, and it seemed that someone was following her. It was
like an action movie, one that she wasn’t willingly a part of. No, it wasn’t an action movie; it was a horror movie.

  But she didn’t see any directors and she didn’t see any cameras. She had no choice but to hear her captor out.

  “Ezekiel’s been following me for months now,” he said. “Ezekiel and a bunch of bastards just like him. Now they’re following you. They think you’re working with me. Speaking of which…why didn’t you call me?”

  “You’re the one who left me the card?”

  “Obviously.”

  There was a pause. She groaned.

  “You’re waiting for me to ask, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why’d you send me the card?”

  “I need your help.”

  “I can’t help you! I tend to have a strict policy against helping men who have kidnapped me.”

  “I didn’t kidnap you.”

  “You’re holding me hostage in my own car!”

  He raised his eyebrow, folded his arms, and sat back.

  “Go ahead. Leave if you want. But know that Ezekiel won’t buy your story of innocence. He’s going to kill you.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “What if I told you that there are things that you don’t know about the world? What if I told you that your mortal eyes have only seen the smallest sliver of reality? Just one page out of an entire book?”

  “I’d take the blue pill. Or is it the red one?”

  His smile faded into a snarl for a moment, which is when she noticed he had sharp teeth. His two canines were sharp, almost like fangs.

  “Ha. Very funny. I knew you wouldn’t be easy to convince.” Sighing, he said, “You humans never are…”

  With that, a frightening change overtook him.

  One moment, he was human. Then his jaw grew longer, his fangs sharper, his eyes brighter. He had a small, professional beard that sprang across his entire face, covering his head in shaggy black fur.