by CJ Cooke
Shadow Wars
Stoneridge Pack Series: Book Two
CJ Cooke
Contents
Disclaimer
1. James
2. Grey
3. Calli
4. Tanner
5. Calli
6. River
7. Calli
8. Grey
9. Calli
10. River
11. Tanner
12. Calli
13. Grey
14. Calli
15. Tanner
16. Maverick
17. Grey
18. Calli
19. River
20. Calli
21. Maverick
22. Grey
23. Tanner
24. River
25. Calli
26. Maverick
27. Calli
28. River
29. Calli
30. Grey
31. Maverick
32. Calli
33. Tanner
34. James
35. Grey
36. Calli
37. River
38. Grey
39. Tanner
40. Calli
41. River
42. Calli
43. Maverick
44. Calli
45. Grey
46. Calli
47. Tanner
48. Grey
49. Calli
50. Tanner
51. River
52. Maverick
53. Calli
54. Grey
55. Calli
56. Tanner
Authors Note
Also By Cj Cooke
About the Author
Shadow Wars
By
CJ Cooke
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Version 1.0: April 2021
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Published by CJ Cooke
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Copyright © 2021 by CJ Cooke
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Discover other titles by CJ Cooke at https://cjcookeauthor.wixsite.com/home
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All rights reserved, including the right of production in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the author, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in review.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover design by: Mibli Art
Formatting by: BookishDuet
Created with Vellum
Disclaimer
This is a reverse harem romance novel. It covers sexually explicit scenes in a multiple partner relationship and is not meant for readers under the age of 18.
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If you are offended by this type of material, maybe reconsider if this is the book for you.
1
James
My life consisted of nothing but pain. It consumed me; it was all my existence boiled down to. I didn’t even remember who I was before all this started. White-hot pain was my constant companion, and I begged it to drag me into death. Maybe this was death, perhaps I’d lived a life that had thrown me into the pit, and this was my eternal damnation.
It felt like fire burned through my veins, and every time my back bowed as a scream tore from my ravaged throat, I got the sensation of material underneath me. The strange realisation I was lying on a bed flitted through my mind, but was quickly pushed aside by the thought that it didn’t matter. Why should I care what I was lying on when I was in the process of dying? No one could survive this. It was like everything which had once been me was burning away with the flames that rushed through my body.
A hazy memory of a woman and a house floated across the edges of my mind. I think I’d been happy once. That was possibly crueller than not knowing, realising there was someone, something out there, a place I could be happy, but had no way to return to. Now the only wish I had, the only thing I craved, was the sweet oblivion of death.
2
Grey
Calli slept for nearly the entire day before she finally woke. She looked pale and weak, and, much to her annoyance, we made her stay in bed. She was currently camped out with all the kids, watching some Disney movie. She had Jacob under one arm, Abby under another and Coby was lounging across the bottom of the bed. We kept a steady supply of popcorn and drinks flowing into the room, and they all seemed happy enough to just laze the evening away.
Tanner, on the other hand, was currently sitting at the kitchen table, sulking as he started to sift through the pack’s accounts. It was a job we’d been putting off, and we all wanted to be in bed with our mate rather than doing this. Tanner was taking it worse than the rest of us, though. He was always the one who craved fun and excitement, and the accounts just didn’t have that no matter how you looked at them.
“For god’s sake, Tan, just go and watch the movie. I can’t take your constant sighing for much longer,” River finally snapped at him.
Tanner didn’t even pretend he was going to fight the sudden chance of freedom and jumped up out of his chair and charged into Calli’s room.
“You realise you’re only punishing us because now we have to do this without him,” I laughed, even as the relieved look flooded across River’s face.
“He deserves a break,” River said, lifting his eyes from the same sheet of paper he’d been staring at for the last ten minutes. “He stayed up most of the night watching over her.”
“The only way you’d know that is if you were awake as well,” I pointed out.
In an attempt to avoid the conversation, River stood up from his chair and walked over to the kitchen. He had nothing to be embarrassed about, we’d all been up most of the night watching over Calli. It was why we were all so exhausted now.
River busied himself making coffee, and I was relieved to see two mugs make it to the counter, praying one was for me. All of us were on edge that she’d be taken from us again. It would probably take a few days before any of us would be able to sleep for a full night. Caffeine was definitely a must right now. The tension around River’s eyes gave away just how tired he was as he placed the mug of coffee on the table in front of me.
“When are you due back to the school?” He winced as I asked. It had become a bit of a sore subject. It was hard for my brother having a job outside of the pack business. He loved being the school counsellor, though, and now that we had two of the pack pups at the school, his job was important to the pack.
“Tomorrow.”
“You can go back, River. I know how much you love your job. Besides, we need to try and get back to normal at some point,” I told him. I hated that he was feeling so nervous about leaving us. It wasn’t like him.
River sighed and slumped back in his chair, cradling his coffee in his hands. “I know, and I do love the job. I just, I don’t know. I don’t feel right leaving the pack, anymore.”
“You mean you don’t feel right leaving Calli,” I pointed out.
He nodded sadly, his eyes dropping to his coffee mug like it held the answers to all his problems.
“Have we even solved anything? The Council knows about her, and we don’t know what they’re planning. We might've put a stop to the witches for now, but some of them got away. I feel like we’re going to be constantly looking over our shoulders.” His eyes nervously cast over to Calli’s bedroom door, and he stared longingly at it for a moment before shaking his head and sitting up to shuffle the paperwork about.
River was right, and for a moment, my br
ain faltered as I struggled to find any words to reassure him. How the fuck were we going to get through this? Self-doubt was something that seemed so at odds with my alpha nature. I was supposed to have all of the answers, I was supposed to keep everyone safe, but these days I felt like I was barely breaking the surface for air. I couldn’t hold everyone else up at the same time.
“How about we just take our problems as they come to us?” Calli’s soft voice came from behind me as I felt her hand trail across my chest before she wrapped me in an embrace.
My runaway emotions slowed, and my wolf sighed dreamily as he felt our mate wrap her arms around us. She was the calm in the storm, the centre of everything.
I could see River take a breath, ready to disagree with her, so I shot him a scowl, effectively halting him in his tracks. Even if it was unwise not to prepare for what was most likely coming our way, Calli deserved a few days to decompress from what she’d just been through. We all did.
“What time is Sean due to arrive? I can arrange for someone to meet him at the airport if you want?” I asked her, before River had the opportunity to change his mind and start to argue.
“He’s renting a car from the airport. He should be here sometime this evening. He didn’t give me an exact time in the message he sent me.”
I hooked an arm around Calli’s waist and pulled her onto my lap as she spoke. Calli just smiled at me, not saying a thing about being manhandled. Burying my face in her neck, I took a long inhale of her scent. Lilac and twilight jasmine flooded my senses, and I tightened my arms around her. What I wouldn’t give for her bed not to be filled with kids at this moment.
“That seems like a long flight,” River mumbled, frowning in confusion.
“Once he got word we were all back safely, I think he decided to make a stop somewhere,” Calli shrugged.
My eyes hit River’s across the table, who was also frowning in concern, probably just as much as I was.
“Oh, stop!” Calli suddenly laughed, jumping out of my lap and heading towards the kitchen. “If you keep seeing conspiracies and danger everywhere you look, you’re never going to have time to enjoy the life you have in front of you.”
Calli filled the kettle and switched it on before turning back to us. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Aidan and Blake took Nash, Hunter and Cassia to the packhouse so they could sleep. Cassia’s still in pretty bad shape and Hunter won’t leave her side. Davion disappeared last night to go and make sure that everyone made it back to the clan house,” River filled her in.
My wolf bristled in my mind at the mention of Davion’s name. Now that we'd enlisted Davion’s help with the witches, moving his clan out of the area was going to be impossible. Not to mention the fact that Calli still owed him a favour. I didn’t trust the smarmy vampire at all. There was something off about him, and it wasn’t the fact he was technically dead and lived off the blood of others.
“How about we start with a small problem first and then work our way up?” Calli laughed as she took a seat at the table with us.
Her green eyes twinkled in amusement, and I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face at the mere sight of her. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
Her smile spread wider at my look, and a slight blush touched her cheeks when River and I didn’t answer, both of us just captivated by the sight of her.
Shaking my head to try and restore some sense to my brain, I asked her, “What are you suggesting, sweetheart?”
Calli suddenly started to shuffle nervously in her seat, and my wolf started to practically pace in my mind, not liking the way our mate was so suddenly unsure of herself.
“I was thinking… if there’s room… you can totally say no, just, maybe Jacob and I could move into the packhouse.” She didn’t look at me as she said it with a visible wince, and I realised she was expecting us to say no. Didn’t she know we could never deny her?
“Sweetheart, look at me,” I told her as I dropped to my knees at her side. She gave me the side-eye, not entirely fixing me with her stare, but I’d take it for now. “Nothing would make me happier than for you both to come and live in the packhouse. But don’t do this because you feel like it’s expected of you. I know how much you love this house, and how hard you’ve fought, so Jacob had a home here. If you want to stay here, we’ll find a way. We can always extend, and we could come and live here with you,” I suggested, not wanting her to feel like she had to give up the home her parents had made for them, even if it did have my wolf howling in joy at the thought of her and our pup coming to live with the pack.
I saw Calli take a moment to really think about it, but knowing her as I already did, I doubted she would’ve come to us with this if she hadn’t already put a lot of thought into it.
“This place is special to me because my parents found it and made it a safe haven for Jacob and I. I’m not saying I want to sell it at the moment. I don’t think I could bear to part with it. But the pack needs to be together, and that means they need to have their alpha with them. I love you, Grey. I love all of you. But this is my pack too, and I’m not going to be selfish and keep you from them. Jacob finally has the opportunity to grow up in a pack. I never got to have that. And after everything, how could I ever deny him that opportunity?” Her eyes glistened with tears as she spoke, but from the soft smile on her face, they didn’t seem to all be sad tears.
“Calli, set aside thoughts of the pack and what’s best for Jacob and everyone else for just a moment,” River told her from the other side of the table. “What do you want? If everything was different, if you were just making this decision for yourself, what would you want to do?”
I understood where River was coming from. But Calli could never do what he was asking of her because she was the most selfless person I’d ever met. She walked straight into a witch stronghold without any guarantee of an escape, just to make sure Jacob was safe. There wasn’t a single part of her that could make a decision without his best interests at heart.
“You have met her, right?” Came Tanner’s laugh as he walked out of Calli’s room to join us.
Dipping down, he laid a kiss against Calli’s cheek and then sat in the chair on the other side of her. She sighed happily, no doubt from the feeling of being surrounded by her mates. This was so new to all of us, but equally, there were times like this when it felt like we had all been together forever; we just clicked so seamlessly.
“Yeah, I knew it was a long shot, but I think you get my point. You need to make this decision for yourself, as well as for Jacob, because, honey, he’s going to be happiest wherever you are.” Calli all but swooned at the sound of River calling her honey, and Tanner chuckled lightly at the look on her face. At least we knew she was affected by us just as much as we were by her.
“Did the grown-ups talking manage to drag you away from your cartoons?” I joked with Tanner as I slid back into my seat before dragging it closer to Calli. I much preferred to have her sat in my lap, but this would do for now.
“Haha, very funny,” Tanner scowled, but he could see it for the tactic it was, and I knew he wouldn’t hold it against me. “We need to ask the little man what he wants to do as well,” Tanner pointed out.
Calli’s slight wince told me that not only was she about to disagree, but she seemed nervous to do it. This was the part of a new relationship that we needed to work through. I didn’t like that she felt like she needed to censor herself. Before I could say anything, though, she’d come to whatever decision she needed in her mind and spoke her feelings anyway.
“You know Jacob is only five, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Tanner said, his face scrunching up in confusion.
“Right, it’s just, while I will talk to him about the move and get his thoughts, he doesn’t really get to make the decision… because he’s only five,” she tacked on the end, and I could see her point.
“Good point,” Tanner conceded, jumping up from his seat
. “I’ve been sent on a mission to make lunch. Anyone else hungry?”
Why is it when anyone mentions food, you’re immediately hungry? River jumped up from the table to join him in the kitchen, and after a round of agreement from everyone, they got to work making lunch while Calli and I cleared the table for the kids to eat at.
“Something’s still bothering you,” I pointed out, after watching her silently frown for as long as I could take.
“Hmmm,” was the only response I got while she continued working away.
Before I could press her any further, a stampede of kids stormed us. How the three of them were capable of creating so much chaos was a mystery to me, but it was nice to see Jacob and Abby acting like kids. I’d been so worried Jacob would disappear back into that silent shell again after everything that happened. If anything, he seemed more outgoing than before, and I had a feeling the reason was the bouncy little red-haired girl beside him. The two of them clearly shared a bond. What that bond would end up being was a mystery so far, but they were quickly becoming inseparable.
