Blind Tiger by Jordan L Hawk
Summary:The Pride #1
1924, Chicago. Prohibition is in full swing and gang bosses rule the city with might—and magic.
When Sam Cunningham flees his small-town life to try his luck in the big city of Chicago, he quickly finds himself in over his head in a world of gangs, glitz, and glamour. Fortunately, he has his cousin Eldon to teach him the trade of hex-making.
Everything changes the night Sam visits The Pride speakeasy and meets grumpy cheetah-shifter Alistair Gatti. After losing his first witch to the horrors of the World War, Alistair isn’t interested in any new entanglements, romantic or magical. Especially when said entanglement comes in the form of kind, innocent Sam.
When Eldon is brutally murdered, Sam becomes drawn into the dark underworld of the Chicago gangs. Sam must find the missing hex Eldon created for one of the crime bosses—before whoever killed Eldon comes back for him.
Together, Alistair and Sam begin the search for the mysterious hex, diving deep into the seedy side of Chicago’s underworld while dodging rival gangs. And as they come to rely on one another, Alistair realizes he’s falling for the one man he can’t afford to love.
👀The Pride takes place in the same universe as the Hexworld books.👀
WOW! Just WOW! WOW! and WOW! again.
Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I can continue.
Blind Tiger ticks so many of my boxes:
Historical✅Post-WW1✅1920s✅Prohibition✅Chicago(Upper Midwest so it's sorta local-ish)✅Paranormal/Supernatural✅Romance✅Friendship✅Witches/Familiars✅Mob✅Mystery✅Mayhem/Danger✅Opposites Attract✅
It may seem there is almost too many boxes ticked but the author blends them all together perfectly.
Jordan L Hawk has not only started a new series but made it a spin-off(or next generation style) of one of my favorites, Hexworld. For those who have already read the Hexworld series, you know how amazing the world building is, taking a historical setting and making witchcraft and their familiars a known element, they don't have to hide who they are because the world knows, history incorporates paranormal as part of it's reality. To me that's harder than keeping the paranormal world a secret, blending the two to make an alternate universe or timeline. Genius!
Now having mentioned Hexworld and that The Pride is kind of a spin-off, don't think you have to read Hexworld first because even though it's the same universe, the same alternate reality, you won't be lost, you won't be left wondering "how did this happen?" "why does this work?". The author lays it all out for you but be warned, if Blind Tiger is your introduction to the Hexworld universe, you will want to go back and read it as well, this AU is addictive.
Now let's talk Alistair and Sam. Opposites attract probably puts it pretty mildly, completely different backgrounds and ways of life but once they lock eyes, you just know nothing is ever going to be the same for either. There were so many times I wanted to smack Alistair for not being open to the possibilities of happiness but also I wanted to give Sam a good shake to erase the self-doubt that often crept in usually in the form of his family's voices. Truth is there is probably just as many times that I wanted to wrap them both up in Mama Bear Hugs and tell them everything is going to be okay. For me, those warring emotions inside of me is what told me this is a journey worth reading and that their chemistry is off the charts.
And where would 1920's Prohibition be without a little murder? The mystery is the element that pulls everything together, brings(or perhaps "keeps") Sam into Alistair's world. They mystery may be secondary plot-wise to Sam and Alistair's journey but it is what weaves everything together and kept me guessing till the reveal.
I think I'm going to stop there before I'm tempted to give too much away. I'll just end by saying the blending of all the boxes I ticked earlier make Blind Tiger pop! I was not only sucked into the story and didn't want to put it down but I felt I was right there in the Gatti's club, The Pride and witnessing it unfold right next to me. Another brilliant bit of storytelling from an amazing author. Jordan L Hawk has brought another winner to the table.
RATING:
Summary:
Fae Out of Water #2
Professor Bryce MacLeod has devoted his entire life to environmentalism. But how effective can he be in saving the planet when he can’t even get his surly neighbor to separate his recycling?
Former Queen’s Enforcer Mal Kendrick doesn’t think his life could get any worse: he’s been exiled from Faerie with a cursed and useless right hand. When he’s not dodging random fae assassins in the Outer World, he’s going toe-to-toe with his tree-hugging neighbor. And when he discovers that the tree-hugger is really a druid, he’s certain the gods have it in for him—after all, there’s always a catch with druids. Then he’s magically shackled to the man and expected to instruct him in Supernatural 101.
All right, now things couldn’t possibly get worse.
Until a mysterious stranger offers a drunken Mal the chance to gain back all he’s lost—for a price. After Mal accepts, he discovers the real catch: an ancient secret that will change his and Bryce’s life forever.
Ah, what the hells. Odds are they won’t survive the week anyway.
Summary:
You belong to me and I know it down deep, in muscle and bone, where my wolf lives.
Avery Rhine isn’t an average homicide detective with the Chicago PD. In fact, Avery isn’t an average anything. Sure, as an omega he knows he’s at the bottom of the food chain, but that’s never slowed him down. He’s got a great life, complete with a loving family and a best friend who’d take a bullet for him, so what more could he possibly want or need? Except, maybe, for the world to change. And to find someone to spend more than one night with, but that isn’t high on his list of priorities. He’s never been one to believe in destiny or whatever else the fantasies sell about there being someone special out there meant just for him.
Then a chance encounter at a party changes everything.
Graeme Davenport has no delusions about finding his true mate. The consensus is that if an alpha doesn’t find their other half by the time they’re thirty, the chances of it ever happening go from slim to none. He’s not a mere alpha, though; Graeme is a cyne who sits at the pinnacle of lupine hierarchy, so he’s obligated by tradition and duty to choose an omega now, sign a contract, and bond with him. Love is not part of the equation.
When Graeme and Avery meet, their fierce attraction to each other flies in the face of reason and logic. Avery’s intense physical reaction to the alpha is something he’s never experienced before, while Graeme, who has always been the soul of discretion, loses all his inhibitions to desire for the man he wants to possess. They are two very different men trying to navigate expectations, separate reason from innate primal drive, and do it while working together to solve a murder.
It will take everything they are to find a middle ground, and to learn to trust in a fated kind of love.
Summary:
The Fantastic Fluke #2
After escaping a murderer and resurrecting his boyfriend, Sage figures he deserves a little time to recover.
Unfortunately, life is rarely fair.
So instead of a break, he gets to deal with a magical law enforcement rookie asking uncomfortable questions about his brush with death. The quaesitor is acting downright suspicious. Or is it suspiciously?
Things go from awkward to dangerous when the man who murdered Sage’s mother is released from prison, and soon after there's a break-in at the bookstore. The situation escalates so fast that Sage is afraid he's going to end up with whiplash. Or worse, end up dead. He wanted a break, but not a permanent one.
Fluke and the Faithless Father is a direct sequel to The Fantastic Fluke, and should not be read first. It is an ~85k word novel that follows the continuing adventures of Sage, Fluke, Gideon, and their whole family, found and otherwise.
Summary:
Jordan L Hawk
EJ Russell
Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
Mary Calmes
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
Sam Burns
Sam lives in the Midwest with husband and cat, which is even less exciting than it sounds, so she's not sure why you're still reading this.
She specializes in LGBTQIA+ fiction, usually with a romantic element. There's sometimes intrigue and violence, usually a little sex, and almost always some swearing in her work. Her writing is light and happy, though, so if you're looking for a dark gritty reality, you've come to the wrong author.
Rhys Lawless
Magic Emporium
Roman and Jude: Monster Hunters #1
My legacy is to hate him, but I can’t.
This woman appears and tells me I’m an elf and she’s my grandmother. Not quite what I expected on a Thursday evening after another day at the office.
Soon, I’m thrown in a world of duty, magic, and monsters.
And a family feud as old as time itself.
I would have run. I would have gone back to my old life. Or started a new one.
But when the man I’m supposed to hate turns out to be my elven soulmate the only thing I can do is fight for my right to love him.
No matter what kind of monster gets in the way.
Elven Duty is part of the multi-author Magic Emporium Series. Each book stands alone, but each one features an appearance by Marden’s Magic Emporium, a shop that can appear anywhere, but only once and only when someone’s in dire need. This book contains a forbidden love, a ton of creatures, a secret “baby”, and a guaranteed HEA.
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Random Paranormal Tales of 2021
Blind Tiger by Jordan L Hawk
1
The rumrunner waited for them behind a burned-out building just north of Chicago.
Philip steered the Model T truck over the bumpy ground, every pothole jarring Alistair’s spine. Doris sat in the wooden bed behind them, the occasional lights reflecting in her eyes. The moon had set with the sun, clouds blotting out the stars. The electric glow of the city tapered out a mile back, the only illumination from the headlights.
They pulled up beside the rumrunner’s truck and climbed out. The rumrunner strode toward them, her hair hidden under a cap and her clothes—and no doubt weapons—mainly concealed by a long overcoat. The nights still held a definite chill in April, and Alistair had to resist the temptation to stick his hands in his pockets. No sense in making anyone think he was reaching for a concealed gun.
“About time you showed up,” she said, shooting a glare at Philip.
“We’re right on schedule, Camille,” Philip replied. He was a big man, solidly built in contrast to Alistair’s own lean ranginess. The headlights washed out his pale, almost colorless hair and gleamed in his yellow-gray eyes. “Do you have the goods?”
One of Camille’s men flung back the tarp covering the crates stacked in the back of their truck. “Straight down from Canada,” she said. “Do you have my scratch?”
Alistair removed a thick envelope from inside his jacket and passed it to her. She looked inside, quickly thumbed the stack of bills, and then vanished it into her own oversized coat. “A pleasure doing business with you. Load ‘em up, boys.”
“Not just yet,” Philip said, holding up his hand.
Camille rolled her eyes. “We’ve always dealt straight with you, Gatti. Do you have to do this every time? It’s a little insulting.”
“Sounds like what someone who’s planning a crooked deal might say,” Alistair observed.
Camille focused on him, her eyes narrowed in anger. Philip merely looked pained. “You aren’t supposed to say that part out loud, Alistair,” he muttered.
This was why Philip was the front man, and Alistair usually stayed in back and counted the money. Ordinarily their busboy, a burly young man by the name of Frank, would come along and help move boxes. But Frank had run off to Mexico with his sweetheart a week ago, so Alistair volunteered to come just this once.
He didn’t regret speaking up, even though he’d obviously pissed off Camille. She might not be slipping them watered down hooch—or worse, booze doctored with rubbing alcohol or gasoline—but she’d thought about it.
Of course she had. You couldn’t trust anyone, certainly not in this business.
Camille took a threatening step forward. Her hand dipped toward her pocket—she was definitely packing heat. “I don’t like your tone,” she said. Her goons shifted, not yet pointing guns, but waiting on the signal.
Apparently, they’d forgotten who they were dealing with.
A warning growl sounded from the darkness near the truck. Nothing showed of Doris: not a hair, not a whisker, not even the gleam of eyes in the night. But she was out there, and she wasn’t happy.
Shotguns were all well and good, but an angry tiger was even better.
The men paled, and the chilly air smelled suddenly of fear. Camille’s eyes darted to the shadows, then to Philip and Alistair. Taking in Philip’s yellow-tinged eyes and Alistair’s deep amber. Remembering, no doubt, why the Gatti family might work with the gangs, but hadn’t been subsumed by them.
Not that the Gattis were related by blood. No one would look at pale, sturdy Philip and think Alistair, with his rangy body and Italian looks, was his literal brother, or brown-skinned Doris his sister. But the bonds between them were no less for it.
Camille stepped back and gestured to the crates. “Work your magic, then.”
“Thank you.” Philip took out a leather wallet, shuffled through its contents, then removed a sheet of paper with an elaborate hex drawn on it. He chose a crate from amidst the pile. One of Camille’s men unloaded it, opened the lid, and stood back.
Philip held the hex over the bottles packed securely in straw. Joel and Wanda had charged it earlier, so he spoke the activation phrase: “Reveal to me the impure.”
Alistair barely kept from rolling his eyes. Eldon, their hexman, had such a flare for the dramatic it was ridiculous.
If any of the booze had been cut or otherwise tampered with, a betraying yellow glow would appear. This time, at least, there was nothing.
“See?” Camille snapped at Alistair. “It’s good.”
“This time,” he replied.
Her scowl deepened. Philip hastily stepped between them. “Thank you for your indulgence, Camille, and I apologize for my brother.”
“Maybe you ought to keep your ‘brother’ on a tighter leash, then.” She folded her arms angrily over her chest. “When we first went into business together, I told you I wouldn’t haul anything but the real McCoy. Now you bring this asshole along to insinuate my word’s no good?”
“Of course I trust you,” Philip replied with his charming smile. “But you get the stuff from somewhere, and it’s them I’m not so certain about.”
Alistair and Philip stood back while Camille’s men went to work. Doris emerged from the shadows in human form, dressed in boots and denim overalls, a cap pulled down over her sleek black hair. Despite the cold, she wore her sleeves rolled up to display muscular arms. Her pale yellow eyes were startling against the brown skin of her face, and one man nearly dropped a box in fear when she drew close to him.
A long time ago, it had bothered Alistair, how frightened people were just because he could turn into a cheetah, or Philip into a snow leopard, or Wanda a lioness. No one wanted to adopt a so-called dangerous breed of familiar; even witches feared them, as though they had less ability to reason than the animals whose forms they took. Seeing the fear on someone’s face had hurt, made Alistair want to do something, anything, to prove that he wasn’t a wild animal ready to lash out.
Then the war happened. And now here they all were, back together again and calling themselves the Gatti family, working in a business where that fear was all to their advantage. Not even the toughest gang leaders wanted to run the risk of waking up to find a tiger in their bedroom.
Thank God, Sullivan wasn’t the toughest gang leader, just the smartest.
When the shipment was transferred, Camille tipped her hat to them. “Safe travel home,” she said. “I’ll see you next time.”
She climbed into her truck, along with her men. Within minutes, the chug of the engine faded away into the darkness.
“Will there be a next time?” Doris asked, leaning idly against the side of their own truck.
“Good question.” Philip turned to Alistair. “You’re such an asshole. This is why I don’t usually bring you along.”
Alistair grinned at him. “I love you, too.”
“Seriously, though,” Doris said. “We still doing business with her?”
They both looked to Alistair, since he was second in command after Wanda. “Camille’s thinking about double-crossing us,” he said. “Maybe she won’t now that she knows we’re suspicious, but the temptation is always going to be there.” He paused. “And once we get back, have Joel charge some more of those hexes. I want every bottle inspected, just in case she hid a bad batch near the back on the truck, where you wouldn’t look.”
“Fur and feathers,” Philip muttered. “Should I feel around for a new supplier?”
“Leave that part to Wanda.” Alistair hunched his shoulders deep inside his heavy coat. “Come on. Let’s get back to The Pride before we freeze our tails off.”
The Druid Next Door by EJ Russell
Chapter One
A jar of pickles.
A fecking jar of fecking pickles, gods damn it to all the hells.
Mal Kendrick stood in the middle of his kitchen, the victorious pickle jar jammed in the crook of his right elbow, his thrice-blasted useless right hand flapping in the air. Foil a coup to topple the Queen from her throne and this is my reward?
Sod it, he was a bloody legend on both sides of the Faerie threshold: the never-defeated Enforcer of the Seelie Court, the designated muscle for every supe council from vampire to dragon shifter, the undisputed lord of Outer World bar hookups, who’d never failed to pull the hottest man in the place for his shag-du-jour.
Yet he was helpless against a jar of fecking pickles.
“It’s not fair.”
“Talking to yourself is a sign of mental instability, Mal.” His brother-in-law swept into the kitchen, a grocery bag in one arm and a cardboard box tucked under the other.
At least David hadn’t brought his infernal physical therapy machine this time.
“Don’t you ever knock?” Mal set the pickles on the counter next to the bloody energy-efficient refrigerator.
“Why bother? You never answer.”
“I could have been banging some guy over the counter for all you know,” Mal grumbled, relieving David of the grocery bag with his left hand.
“In that case, I’d have discreetly withdrawn and done a happy dance all the way down the sidewalk.”
“Spare the neighbors that sight—they hate me enough already.”
David pouted, which was far more adorable than should be allowed. “Alun loves my dancing. He told me so just last night.”
“He’s your husband. He has to say shite like that. Besides, maybe he needed a good laugh.” He peered into the bag. Beer. Thank the Goddess. He was running dangerously low. “The sight of you dancing would be enough for the covenant committee to fine me for violation of the eyesore ban. They might ask me to vacate the premises.” He stopped, one six-pack of microbrews in his hand. “Although that might be a good thing. Go ahead, boyo. Dance away.”
“I don’t know why you don’t like this place.” David set the box on the fecking recycled glass countertop. “We thought you’d like it because you’ve got the whole wetlands preserve practically in your backyard.”
Mal shrugged. “It tries too hard. Solar panels. Geothermal energy. Drought-resistant ground coverings. Feh. Besides, I never asked you to buy me a fragging house.”
David’s gray-blue eyes turned serious and so kind that Mal wanted to punch the refrigerator in its energy-efficient gut. “If you hadn’t stopped Rodric’s sword strike, Alun would be dead. I’d buy you fifty houses, a hundred, the whole freaking subdivision, and it still wouldn’t be payment enough. Besides,” he flipped open the box, “I’m the one with the dragon treasure. I can afford it, and we’re family now, so you can just shut up and deal.”
Although David’s chin lifted with the stubborn pride that kept Mal’s perfect big brother totally dick-whipped, he still looked like an apprentice brownie who’d spent hours on a feast for his master, only to have the bastard throw the beautifully prepared meal on the floor.
Ah, shite. I can be such a bloody arse sometimes. Most times, actually, but he used to be able to cover it up with something resembling charm. Seems he’d lost that ability along with his hand, his job, and his place in Faerie.
He pulled one bottle out of the six-pack and pried the cap off with the opener Alun had mounted on the underside of the counter. Shite, he wouldn’t have been able to open his own damn beer without help from his brother. “Yes. Sure, Dafydd bach. It’s great.”
David smiled crookedly and turned away to poke about in the box, but not before Mal caught the hurt his lake-storm eyes. “You know, I’m still not used to your face without the scruff.”
Mal rubbed his perfectly smooth chin. None of the highborn fae sported facial hair, although when he’d still commanded his fae powers, he’d manufactured a little magical stubble to make the club boys swoon. “What can I say? No connection to the One Tree—no glamourie. No glamourie—no scruff.”
“Oh. Right. Well, um, I brought you some things.”
“You brought me beer, so you’ve already qualified for sainthood.”
“You don’t believe in saints.”
“Just because the fae don’t have any doesn’t mean I can’t adapt to my new home.” His permanent home. Away from Faerie. Away from the Seelie Court and everything he’d ever known. Away from the only work that gave him any satisfaction. He chugged half his beer. “Not like I have much choice.”
“Mal, you can’t lose hope. Alun says there’s always a way to reverse a curse, that the end is always contained in the beginning.” He took Mal’s unresponsive right hand. “That night, the Queen said—”
“I have to make whole what I cost her. Not a chance.” Mal pulled away and strode to the French doors that opened onto his patio—paved with recycled concrete, for shite’s sake—and stared at the greensward that sloped to the edge of the wetlands. “Even if I could put that bastard Rodric’s hand back on his arm, I wouldn’t. That piece of shite deserved what he got and more.”
David’s footsteps whispered on the cork floor. “Believe me, no one is more on board with that than I am. I’m the one he planned to sacrifice, remember? You didn’t only save Alun that night. You saved me. You saved the Queen. You saved every single Seelie fae from suffering under Rodric’s rule. Trust me—I don’t blame you. But there has to be a way to lift the curse. We just have to find out how.”
“Can you . . .” Mal swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
He immediately wished he could take back the words. David had recently discovered he was achubydd, the last known member of a meta-magical race who could heal with a touch, whose essence had the power to reverse catastrophic harm or effect extraordinary physical change. But the bigger the change, the higher the toll on the achubydd. Until now, Mal had resisted begging for help because—well, for one thing, he never begged. Why the hells should a jar of fecking pickles push him over the edge?
“I’d do anything for you or your brothers. But I’m still learning how this stuff works.” He recaptured Mal’s hand, stroking the palm, but Mal felt nothing. Not a touch. Not a tickle. Nothing. “With Alun’s curse, I could see the lines of energy running through his body, the pain backed up in his veins. But with your hand . . .” He shook his head. “It’s as if it’s not there at all. Your energy patterns are perfectly normal. They simply stop at your wrist.”
Mal tugged his hand away and tucked it under his left arm. “Maybe you should just amputate the useless thing. At least then I could get a prosthesis.”
“Don’t say that. We’ll find a way.” David sounded so fierce that Mal had to chuckle. His brother-in-law had more determination than any ten men, and he’d needed it to break through Alun’s armor of guilt and self-recrimination. “But, in the meantime, come and see what I’ve got for you.”
Mal groaned. “Goddess preserve me.”
David grinned and smacked Mal’s shoulder. “Don’t be a jerk. Accept our help. It won’t kill you.”
“No. I’ll just wish it had. At least you didn’t bring that blasted physical therapy machine this time.”
David caught his lower lip between his teeth, and his gaze skittered away from Mal’s face. “Well . . . as a matter of fact . . .”
The front door creaked open, and something scraped and clattered against the slate tiles in the entryway.
“Dafydd bach?” That sounded like . . . No, it couldn’t be. “Where the hells should I put this thing?” But even the obvious irritation in the tone couldn’t mask the beauty of a true bard’s voice.
Mal turned a stunned look on David. “Gareth? How did you . . .?”
David shrugged, sheepish. “Um . . . surprise?”
Mal set his beer on the table and bolted around the corner into the living room. Sure enough, his younger brother was standing inside the door, the cables of the PT machine draped over his shoulder, the sun backlighting his golden curls like some freaking halo.
Mal covered the distance between them in three strides and grabbed Gareth in a tight hug, pounding him on the back, one-handed. “Shite, man. I had no idea you were back from your tour.”
Gareth returned the hug and the pounding with interest. Little brothers. Always trying to one-up their elders. “I’m not. Portland’s one of our stops. We’re playing the Aladdin tonight, so I decided to squeeze in a trip out here to the wilds of—what is this benighted place again? Oh right. Hillsboro.”
“Smart-arse.” Mal pulled back and flicked Gareth’s hair with his fingers. “Get a haircut. You look like a revenant from the Middle Ages. Or the seventies.”
Gareth’s expression locked down. “I like it this way.”
Shite. It wasn’t Gareth who liked the outdated hairdo. It was his lover, gone these two hundred years and more.
“Well. Come in and check out the house Alun and his husband have forced on me.”
Gareth handed the machine off to David and strolled into the living room. “Seems like a nice enough place. Beats the hells out of that hut where you squatted in bleeding Faerie, right?”
“It wasn’t a hut.”
“A hut, Mal, face it.” Gareth pointed to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. “You have anything like that in Faerie?” He waved a hand at the L-shaped sofa upholstered in slubbed natural fibers. “Furniture that doesn’t numb your arse? Hells, indoor plumbing?”
“I didn’t need it.” Mal gritted his teeth. “I had magic.”
Sorrow flickered across Gareth’s face before he recovered his habitual sardonic half smile. “Nothing technology can’t replace. Trust me—in another few days, a month at most, you won’t miss Faerie at all.” He wandered through the archway into the dining room. “Goddess knows, I never do.”
Mal followed in time to catch David opening the insulated blinds in the kitchen, flooding the rooms with unwelcome sunshine.
“I don’t know why you want to live in a cave, Mal, I really don’t.”
“Don’t you know, Dafydd bach?” Gareth sauntered over to the table and dropped into one of the ladder-back chairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him “It’s his natural habitat.”
“Then sunlight will do him good. You too, since you spend most of your time in dark studios or concert halls.”
Gareth snorted and got up to wander off down the hallway.
Mal waited until he was out of earshot. “He’s spending time with you and Alun now?” he murmured. “They’ve made up?”
“They’re . . . working on it. Gareth still gives us the side-eye sometimes because you know—” David gestured between the two of them. “Cross-species relationship. He’s still not a fan. But at least he’s not treating Alun like a monster anymore.” He held out a strange wooden object: a hinged wooden rod, each arm bowed out in the middle into a padded half circle. He brought the ends together to form a full circle, about ten centimeters in diameter. “Here.”
Mal took it, letting it fall open again. “What is it? Some kind of kinky sex toy?”
“No, doofus. It’s a jar opener. Aunt Cassie asked Nola to make it for you.”
Mal dropped it on the counter as if it were hot iron. “Druid crap? Not on your life. With druids, there’s always a catch.”
“It’s not bespelled, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can buy something like it at Fred Meyer or Kitchen Kaboodle, but Nola’s is prettier.”
“No, thanks. I’ll manage without.”
“Honestly. You and your brothers. Does y Tylwyth Teg mean ‘stubborn as a twenty-mule-team hangover’? Go club-hopping and find someone to bang over the counter, for pity’s sake. Work off some of that temper with sex the way you used to.”
“How many guys do you think would be interested in me now? I can’t even jack myself properly, let alone live up to my reputation.”
David propped his fists on his narrow hips and glared. “Listen up. You’ve sustained a traumatic injury, like many other soldiers, and you’ve got a disability—a temporary disability. Don’t you think it’s time to accept that and learn to take help when it’s offered?” His expression softened. “From where I stand, you’re a hero—but not even heroes can handle everything on their own.”
Mal scooped up his beer bottle and drained it. Damn it, he’d never had to ask for help before. Goddess knew he didn’t want to do it now. He’d had no trouble twisting people around to do his will before, when it was only a matter of taking the mickey out of Alun or Gareth or even David. But now? When he had no choice? It stuck in his craw like an enchanted fishbone. He couldn’t do it.
“Where’s Alun today? I’m surprised he didn’t tag along to make it a full family funhouse.”
“He’s mediating the quarterly supe council executive meeting.” David shot Mal a half-guilty glance as he jockeyed the PT machine into position next to the dining table. “I’m sure they’d have asked you, just like usual, but two of the werewolf packs had a territorial dispute and the council leaders thought Alun’s psychologist chops would be necessary.”
Mal’s hand clenched around the empty bottle. Typical of David to try to spare his feelings, but Mal held no illusions about his usefulness to the council. He’d only been the stand-in, the understudy, the Queen’s Enforcer.
Alun had been the Queen’s Champion.
Once the Champion was back, the Enforcer had to retire from the lists, and Alun had been miraculously restored to his full status, rights, and abilities, thanks to David helping him overcome his curse. So the councils, the Queen, even the club boys could get along without Mal just fine now.
But if I hadn’t cut Rodric Luchullain’s hand off at the wrist, Alun would be dead now—David too, and maybe Gareth as well.
Some sacrifices were worth the cost.
“Mal?” David fidgeted with one of the machine’s cables. “Is that— I mean, are you okay?”
He forced a smile for David’s benefit. “Aye. Alun’s a manipulative bastard. Much more suited to the job. He should be able to get them to toe the party line.”
David chuckled, the anxiety fading from his expression. “It takes a manipulative bastard to know one, Mal.”
Mal glanced around, checking for Gareth’s whereabouts. Judging by the sounds emanating from the back of the house, Gareth found the place just as ridiculous as Mal. Not that Gareth, the last full bard in all of Faerie, ever sounded anything less than perfectly musical, even when snorting derisively at low-flow toilets, LED light fixtures, or whatever else had caught his fancy.
“Has Alun had a chance to talk to the Queen yet?” Mal kept his voice low. With Gareth’s longstanding hatred of the Queen, he’d have a fit if he knew Mal was angling to get an audience with Her coldhearted Majesty—even though it was to get his sentence commuted and his curse removed.
David didn’t meet his eyes as he set up the PT machine and affixed the contacts on Mal’s right arm and hand. “I told you. He’s been tied up with the supe councils.”
“They can’t take all his time. He has a practice to run and a husband to shag. You’d be a damn sight less chipper if he’d been neglecting that particular duty.”
David’s cheeks pinked—adorable, really. No wonder Alun had fallen so hard, but it had made him even more self-righteous than usual, holding his relationship up as the way to true happiness.
True happiness would be the end of this fragging exile and a return to my rightful place in Faerie.
Mal knew why he’d earned his cursed hand—he’d broken one of the primal laws of Faerie when he’d maimed the Queen’s Consort. But why had he been cursed with one brother who believed the process of redemption was a necessary part of recovery, and another who didn’t care if he ever set foot in Faerie again?
Mal wanted his old life back. All of it.
David turned on the machine, fiddling with the dials. “Do you feel anything?”
“No. Come on, Dafydd bach. It’ll be awkward for Alun, begging a favor of the Queen, but you can talk him into it. You can talk him into anything with a flutter of those eyelashes and a wiggle of that perfect arse.”
Instead of rising to the bait, David took Mal’s right hand in both of his, his brow furrowing and his eyes losing focus. Mal felt the bone-deep heat that signaled David’s achubydd powers and jerked his arm away.
“Stop it. Alun would kill me if I let you waste your essence on me.”
David grabbed his hand again. “I’m not wasting it. I’m not giving you any more than a boost.” He opened Mal’s crabbed hand and pressed the fingers wide and flat. “Push back.”
“I told you, I—”
“Damn it, Mal. Push back. As much as you’d like to think there’s a magic bullet for this, there’s not. One way or another, you have to put in the effort, just like any other wounded veteran.”
Heat burst under Mal’s sternum at the unfairness of David’s words, and he leaned forward. “I—”
“There! You did it. You pushed back.”
Mal stared at his hand, the heat dissipating under a flare of hope. “I did?”
“Absolutely. See? Human PT, plus a little achubydd special sauce, and you can make progress. But you have to do the work.”
This work is shite. I want my old work. A position backed by the full tradition of Faerie. Mayhem sanctioned by the Queen. Magic as full and easy as breathing. Men who fell to his charm as easily as his enemies fell to his sword. Why was it that the one time he’d done a selfless thing, he’d gotten everything stripped away from him?
Right, then. Lesson learned: screw self-sacrifice. And as for taking the high road to recovery? Bollocks to that. He’d find an easier way.
He always had.
“You know what? Never mind. I’ll figure this out on my own.” He jerked his right arm, dislodging the machine contacts, and surged out of the chair.
“Mal—”
“You two can let yourselves out. And take that infernal contraption with you. I never want to see it again.”
Ignoring David’s wide-eyed hurt, he threw open the gods-be-damned triple-glazed French doors and stalked across the fecking reclaimed concrete patio toward the wetlands, his empty beer bottle still clutched in his hand.
Muscle and Bone by Mary Calmes
1
Avery
Without question, the gatherings were the worst part of being an omega.
If the guys at work could see me dressed in my black tailcoat and matching dress pants, the wing-collared shirt with studs and cufflinks, white piqué waistcoat and white bow tie, along with the black silk socks and the patent leather cap toe dress shoes…they would laugh themselves into a coma. The good news was, they never would.
It wasn’t that I was hiding anything. They all knew I was a lupine, and therefore only part human. My ancestors were not fully homo sapiens but homo canum as well, because, to put it simply, I was part wolf. It was a mutation that gained a foothold at the same time humans were evolving from apes, and instead of us going extinct, like a million other species that blipped in and out of the fossil record, lupines stuck. And even though both species moved through the centuries together, one was hidden in darkness and one lived in the light.
A hundred years ago, the species were segregated, not allowed to marry, barely even permitted to be friends, but like progress of any kind, there were reformers and radicals and people fighting for change and equality and inclusion.
Seventy-five years ago the courts ruled that humans and lupines were equal, and if a human being could be a police officer, then so could a lupine. I was lucky, because I grew up in a time where me wanting to go into law enforcement had never been the pipe dream it was for my grandfather. Even if it did mean I was still somewhat of an anomaly. He was very proud the day I graduated from the academy, as was my mother. My father, on the other hand, had explained to me, ad nauseum, that the occupation was both beneath me and not something that would, or could, even be tolerated once I was mated. He changed his tune a bit when it was written into my contract, but assured me that a smart alpha could work around any clause, no matter how ironclad the language. I would give him the indulgent nod at that point, which would bring about a quick end to our conversation.
As the son of one of the richest lupine families in Chicago, I was part of the jarl, the upper class, the elite, and was supposed to concern myself with only the glitterati of the city. That had never interested me in the least. And while my father had insisted I join the family business, as only he would—I was an omega after all, good for very little—and my brother tried guilt to get me to come on board, and my sister threatened me with bodily harm, my mother had always been on my side. She taught middle school in the inner city; I was a police detective. We were the rebels in our family, two peas in a pod, each of us following our dreams.
“You’re late, Avery,” my parents’ housekeeper, Corvina, informed me tersely as I walked through the kitchen. She was there supervising the caterers, snapping out orders, something she loved doing.
“Good evening, Corvie,” I called out cheerfully, grinning wide.
“You, with the face and the dimples,” she fumed at me, but couldn’t help smiling. I was her favorite after all, had been since birth. “You’re not eating enough!”
“You always say that,” I teased her, breezing through the swinging kitchen door and out into the short hall.
From there I went to the closet, hung up my coat, and then slipped into the meandering crowd, moving through the ten thousand square foot limestone mansion in Chicago’s Gold Coast area. I was hoping to fly under the radar until I could locate the sanctuary that was my mother. I just needed to keep my head down,
“Avery.” My brother, Ambrose, called out my name.
Normally, I was able to get the lay of the land first, but he’d spotted me before I could avoid him. Someone, probably my brother, had gotten wise to me climbing up the side of the house on the rose trellis to my old bedroom. That maneuver would dump me out on the second floor and allow me to make sure I looked presentable before I walked out my door and peered over the balustrade and down to the level below to check and see where everyone was. But tonight, when I was about to start my climb, I saw one of Ambrose’s many assistants standing on my old balcony, clocking me and talking on his cell phone at the same time. No doubt he was reporting my position to Ambrose. My partner, Wade Massey, would have asked how I knew he was one of my brother’s flunkies. And I would have told him it was because they all looked the same, like little clones from a GQ photoshoot, sycophants with their two-thousand-dollar suits, polished wingtips, and three-hundred-dollar haircuts.
“Come here!” Ambrose ordered, actually yelling, which he never did. I would have told him it was gauche and stood there in mock horror, trying my best to look aghast, but I knew he was thinking it to himself as he looked around, appalled at his own behavior. I’d hear about it later, what I’d “forced him to do,” but I didn’t care, and had no idea if it was the volume or his spontaneous action he was so chagrined over. Either way, I continued with the pretense that I hadn’t heard him over the din of conversation, and said excuse me and pardon me a hundred times as I moved through the crowd to evade him.
“Avery!” my sister, Andrea, bellowed, which was in just as bad form as Ambrose, but I spun around and headed the other way through the press of people, moving under one of the arches in the cavernous living room of the house I’d grown up in.
“Avery,” Sandor Graves, our butler, a man who had served our family for as long as I could remember, barked, hoping to get me to stop so he could deliver me to my father.
I turned and waved at him like I was on the jumbotron at the United Center, but didn’t alter my course in the least because, really, did he think that was going to work? Had it ever? He was not my father, and if I wouldn’t stop for the patriarch of our family, did Sandor honestly think I would stop for him?
Being a wolf, I could feel everyone closing in on me, and worse, because I was an omega, there was always that extra layer of hardwired, genetically engrained trepidation that came from being at the bottom of the food chain. My brother and sister were both alphas. My mother had impressively birthed two, which was a feat that not many betas, as she was, could boast of. When she had me, she’d received hundreds of condolences. The odds were—in scrutinizing the members of her family tree, as well as my father’s—that I’d be a beta, or at least a gamma like many of my cousins. It was just bad luck I turned out to be that which another family could claim for their own.
“Avery,” Sandor growled, closer than I’d thought, and I had that moment of fear, of dread, and I hated that even after all the years of police training, and the fact I had a Glock 22 strapped to my calf under my pants, still, I was responding like an animal and not a man. It was one of the many reasons my wolf and I did not get along.
I felt our butler’s hand on my shoulder, slowing my momentum toward the salvation I could now see, and because I didn’t want to deal with him, or any of them, I cheated.
“Mom,” I yelled, shrugging off his hand, and I made sure my voice carried like it did when I used it on suspects to freeze or get on the ground.
People turned and stared, which would have mortified any other member of my family but not my warm, down-to-earth mother.
Elira Rhine Huntington snorted and quickly abandoned the circle of fawning admirers she was constantly at the center of at any party she, or anyone else, had ever thrown. “My baby,” she gushed, rushing over, her movement made possible because people cleared a hole for the golden-haired goddess that was my mother. “How are you, love?”
I lifted my arms, walking toward her, and she filled them, wrapping around me tight. “I’m good, Mom. How’re you?”
She pulled back to look up at my face, her own lighting up with a smile that made her charcoal eyes, several shades darker than my own, crinkle in half. “I’m wonderful, and so far I’ve got the winning bid in the silent auction for Chicago Blackhawks tickets,” she informed me gleefully, rubbing her hands together.
“That’s creepy as hell,” I assured her, pointing at her hands, which she instantly dropped to her sides.
“Pardon me?”
“You and blood.” I shook my head in seemingly solemn judgement.
“I’m sorry?” she replied, affronted.
“Action movies, MMA fights, hockey, documentaries about the mob, boxing, you’re all about blood and gore, lady. Back in the day I bet you would have gone to the coliseum and watched the gladiators.”
“Who?” She feigned shock, clutching her chest. “Me?”
I tsked at her, curling a piece of hair that had come loose from her long, thick side-braid, around her ear. “I can tell I’ve insulted you deeply.”
“To the quick,” she agreed, cackling as my father, Alexander Huntington, owner and chairman of the board of Huntington, one of the biggest builders in the country, stepped in front of us, scowling.
“Hello, darling,” she cheerfully greeted the man she loved, reaching for his hand, which he instantly clasped.
“Hey there, old man,” I taunted, giving him a quick clap on the shoulder.
I didn’t think his scowl could get any darker, but with those blue-black eyes of his, made somehow even more foreboding with his black hair and silver sideburns, it was possible.
“When your brother calls you,” he admonished through clenched teeth, “you treat that the same as if I were calling you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m serious, Avery.”
“No, I know. But how many times in my life would you guess you’ve said that to me? Throw out a number.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Avery.”
My name was always uttered with the same mix of exasperation and resignation by the man who’d carried me around on his shoulders when I was a child. He loved me and wanted to throttle me in equal measure.
“C’mon, let’s quantify it,” I baited him, pushing like I always did.
“I’m certain I have no earthly idea.”
“Let’s say a million, just to be in the ballpark.” I snickered and turned so I was beside him, draping my arm across his shoulders. “Tell me, and be truthful.”
“You––”
“Has telling me to listen to Ambrose ever worked out for you?”
“This,” he growled at my mother, gesturing to all of me, “is your fault.”
“Well, yes, I should hope so,” she agreed, beaming at him, completely unfazed.
He sighed deeply, clearly resigned, long-suffering, and then turned to me, pulling me into a tight hug, nuzzling his face into my hair and inhaling deeply. That maneuver was all wolf and left his scent on me, which marked me as his offspring, his child, his son. His own.
“Oh!” My mother whimpered in delight at seeing us together.
When he leaned out of the embrace, I noticed his furrowed brows were back. “You couldn’t have shaved?”
“I was in a hurry,” I assured him, drawing out the last word. “I work out of the Eighteenth District, old man. Do you know how far that is, in traffic, from here?”
“Yes, but––”
“And you wanted me here at six?” I scrunched up my face and shook my head at him. “You’re lucky the monkey suit is clean.”
He was about to say something when my bicep was grabbed and I was spun around to face my brother. Ambrose’s deep, dark midnight blue eyes, the same as our father’s, were trained on me, along with the familiar glower perfected by Alexander Huntington. Only the silver at the temples was missing from my brother’s hair. What was different, what softened his face, were the laugh lines. Ambrose Huntington was a serious man, but his wife never let him get away with anything, and she made him smile often. I was grateful for her every day and thankfully she was there, slipping between us, a sliver of joy in a scarlet crushed-silk gown.
Dove Huntington lifted her arms, and I bent and hugged her, lifting her off her feet for a moment, making her giggle with delight.
“Can you two please not,” Ambrose groused at me as she kissed my cheek.
“How are you, you gorgeous thing?” she purred as I set her back down on her feet, gazing up at me in absolute adoration, waiting for my answer.
“I’m good,” I told her, taking her hand as she slipped it into mine. “We caught the guy wanted in those acid attacks on the models.”
She gasped. “Was it who you and your partner thought?”
I nodded. “It was, fortunately, and we caught him before he hurt anyone else.”
“You know what he’s doing?” my brother asked her.
“You don’t follow the crime in this city?” Andrea Donahue, my sister, appeared beside my father. “My God, Ambrose, how can you not?”
He threw up his hands in defeat as Andrea stepped into the small family circle we made and opened her arms for me.
I greeted her just as I had Dove, lifting her off her feet and squeezing tight.
She laughed, even though I knew she didn’t want to. She never did. In her mind, anything that she considered feminine or girly was bad. Wolves, on the whole, were a sexist, misogynistic lot. Had she been born into any number of other families, she would never have been allowed to work in whatever business made them their fortune, even having been born an alpha. But Andrea was my father’s daughter, and he saw no difference between her and my brother, even with my brother being his heir. For my father, whoever was the smartest and most capable would take over from him when he retired, sex be damned. At the moment, my brother was CEO and my sister was CFO, so it was a crapshoot, unless you knew them. For me, my money was on Drea, because she could think outside the box, and Ambrose only saw four corners. I also secretly hoped Ambrose would throw caution to the wind and return to his real love, which was painting, but thus far that had not happened.
“Don’t shake her too much,” my brother-in-law, Crawford Donahue, ordered me when he reached us. “Your sister’s pregnant.”
“What?” I put her down gently to take her chin in my hand. “Poppet, you’re gonna be a mommy?”
She snorted out a laugh, and then, seconds later, uncharacteristic tears filled her eyes as she nodded.
I grabbed her again, and she melted against me, shivering, unable, it seemed, with the new hormones coursing through her body, to resist the pull of my warmth. Omegas were like candy to alphas, betas, and gammas, all ranks falling under their spell pretty quickly. It was why we were both loved and hated so fiercely. History was filled with stories of evil omegas twisting poor unsuspecting wolves, especially alphas, around their fingers and forcing them to commit abominations. To me, the omegas in the stories had always seemed like easy scapegoats.
“Let her go,” Ambrose ordered me, and once I did, after giving her a kiss on the forehead, he stepped in front of me. “Did you hear me yelling?”
“You yelled?” My mother gasped dramatically.
“For the love of God, Mother,” he grumbled, letting his head fall back on his shoulders in total defeat. I chuckled as he slowly lifted it to look at me in utter dejection as Crawford leaned in to give me a hug and kiss, the only one, apart from his wife, that he was ever so touchy-feely with. Again, him being a beta, he couldn’t resist me.
“You’re supposed to come when I call you,” my brother muttered belligerently.
“I think you have me confused with Cosmo,” I countered. “I’m not your beagle, I’m your brother, in case you got us mixed up again.”
“Avery––”
“Don’t be a dick, all right? Just gimme a hug,” I placated him, holding my arms open.
His sigh was as deep and resigned as my father’s had been, because I exhausted them both equally, but he took a step forward and leaned into me anyway. He didn’t even protest when I squeezed a grunt out of him. His wife made the awww noise when he pushed his face down into my shoulder, needing me just for a moment.
“I’ll try and listen to you next time,” I soothed him.
“See that you do,” he mumbled.
I was making the rounds of the room, greeting people I only saw at these frou-frou gatherings, when I was yanked sideways into an alcove. Rounding on my attacker, I found Linden Van Doren, who was both one of my oldest friends and enemies. He was loyal to a fault, while still prone to throwing me under a bus at any given opportunity. It had been particularly bad when we were younger, doing everything from smoking weed to sleeping with boys. I was always the one grounded, and he was the one sneaking pizza to me.
“What are you doing?” I groused at him, noting that he’d curled his strawberry-blond mane rather than pulling it back into the normal queue.
“It should be perfectly obvious that I’m hiding,” he snapped back.
I crossed my arms, going for bored.
“I have some admirers—don’t bat my hands away,” he chastised me. “You’re a mess.”
I made sure to sigh like I was dying, but he wasn’t fazed in the least. Instead, he fussed with my bow tie, my shirt, my cuffs, smoothed a hand down the lapels of my jacket, and tugged and patted until he looked me up and down, shrugged like that was as good as it got, and leaned back against the wall.
“Seriously, why’re you hiding?”
“Because Daw, Tyne, and Colby are looking for me.”
“Those are people’s names?”
“You know they are,” he scolded.
“And which ones are they, again?” It was hard to keep up with all his suitors.
“Steel, oil, and venture capital.”
“Ah,” I said, recalling the last party a couple months back.
As an omega, no matter whose son I was, and probably more so because I was a rich man’s progeny, I was required to attend all gatherings where unmated alphas would be in attendance to see if any of them wanted to lay claim to me.
It was an antiquated custom that wasn’t going away anytime soon.
When I had moved out of the house and got my own place downtown, I had tried to skip the mandatory social interactions, and my father had threatened to make such a scene in front of everyone I worked with—which was a fate worse than death, with me trying to make detective—that I quickly gave in. But now, years later, at thirty-two, I understood how unconcerned I should have been from day one. No alpha in their right mind, no matter how rich my father was and how fat my dowry would be, wanted me. I was by no means a typical omega.
If an alpha hadn’t found their fated beta or gamma, usually between eighteen and thirty, then it became, statistically, a crapshoot that they ever would. There was a pull thing that went on, this overwhelming draw. I didn’t fully understand it, even when Ambrose tried to explain, but if they had not discovered their one true mate, who would somehow magically appear, then they would decide to settle down comfortably with an omega. A beta or gamma was a soulmate for an alpha, like my mother was to my father. There was a shared sense of building a life together, forging a path and a future. An omega, on the other hand, was an ornament.
When an alpha was in the market for an omega, they were looking first for someone to bear their children or, if the alpha and omega were of the same sex, parent the alpha’s offspring from a surrogate. Second, an alpha wanted someone with exquisite taste and style who would oversee their staff, and host as well as arrange to attend all society engagements and, of course, run their household. An omega was expected to be immaculate and represent their alpha with grace, poise and beauty. If the alpha was a member of the jarl, the whole perfect omega thing was even worse. It was all completely beyond me and always had been. My interest in being anyone’s 1950s housewife was utterly nonexistent. I had friends, though, who had been training to be perfection-in-the-flesh their entire lives.
Linden, among others, was the epitome of delicate omega beauty. Me, on the other hand, who showed up with black eyes, various cuts and contusions, and smiling with a split lip, was no one’s idea of genteel, ephemeral loveliness. I was too muscular as well. Omegas were supposed to be lithe and lean, fragile. I was the exact opposite of that. The only fun part of attending the parties was seeing the alphas recoil in horror when they met me.
“Are you listening to me?” Linden snapped his fingers in my face. “I said that the whale is here.”
“No, I was checked out. Sorry.”
He groaned miserably.
“Whale?”
“Yes. There’s a cyne here tonight, and you know you can’t find an unmated one here in the States anymore. You have to travel abroad to land one.”
“You are aware that a whale isn’t a fish, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you land a marlin, you don’t land a whale,” I instructed, winking at him. “I feel like you should be watching more Discovery Channel.”
“God, I hate you.”
“I know,” I agreed with a smirk, “but tell me who you’re looking to catch.”
“Graeme Whitaker Davenport the Fifth.”
“Okay.” Linden spoke the name like I should know who this alpha was. I didn’t, of course, and was not at all impressed by the suffix he made sure to emphasize.
He sighed deeply, utterly beleaguered. “He’s the Earl of Wakefield and Muir.”
My scoff was fast. “You’re making that up,” I baited him. “We don’t have earls in this country. Maybe you need to watch the History Channel too.”
“Listen––”
“It all started with the Mayflower and––”
“Can you just be serious for five minutes?”
“I dunno, let’s find out. Start the timer.”
His growl was loud in the small alcove. “Graeme’s family is from England, but he was raised here in America and then went to college abroad,” he explained to me. “Apparently his father died when Graeme was very young, and then, tragically, his mother, who was an omega, succumbed to grief, as you know some do. His grandparents, who lived here, raised him and his brother.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“They have real estate investments all over the world.”
“Like my family.”
“No,” he assured me, the patronizing tone not lost on me. “They make your family’s company look positively bougie by comparison. They do ten times the business your father does. He’s worth billions.”
“What’s bougie mean again?”
“Avery.” He said my name like a curse word.
“So he’s super rich.”
“Yes,” he replied irritably.
“Cool” was all I could think of to say.
“For heaven’s sake, Avery, you need to take this seriously.”
“Why do I?”
“Because at some point, as an omega, your own body is going to force you to bond. The pull can’t stay dormant forever.”
But I was betting the “omegas were slaves to their need to be bonded to an alpha” panic was a good story, same as Santa and the Easter Bunny. I had done my research, as well as talked to many older omegas who’d never bonded, who had regrets, same as anyone else, but none of them had gone mad because they remained single. In the wild, yes, a lone wolf was in danger. The pack took care of all its members, and everyone got fed and stayed warm. But in the world around us, a lone wolf went to Costco and ordered Grubhub and shopped on Amazon. This whole terror about being unbonded was exhausting. This wasn’t the 1850s, or even the 1950s. Being single needed to stop being the worst thing anyone could think of.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” I lied, because when I heard his voice go up I tuned back in, figuring he was asking a question.
“I don’t care what all those unbonded omegas told you,” he stated, the irritation thick in his voice. “They either don’t remember or didn’t want to scare you. But I’ve seen omegas go into heat after having sex with an alpha who didn’t offer for them, and it’s horrifying to watch. They lose all sense of themselves.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Avery!” he nearly yelled. “The facts are indisputable. You sleep with an alpha and he casts you aside, you go into heat, calling all-comers until it subsides. Some omegas find mates, but most of them just go insane.”
“Insane?” I parried. “Really?”
“Avery, you––”
“Tell me, Lin, where are these hundreds and hundreds of crazed omegas kept?”
“They’re thrown out onto the street, Avery. You know that.”
“This whole thing is perpetuated by––”
“Heat happens to an omega when the alpha they trust with their body doesn’t claim them,” Linden replied flatly. “That’s crushing for an omega.”
But that part I knew for certain was bullshit. I’d slept with many alphas and betas, gammas, and more than a few humans, and fucking the alphas was the same as fucking the others.
Did omegas go into heat? Yes. Without question. But heat, for all intents and purposes, was an omega pumping out a ridiculous amount of pheromones to lure a mate, basically drowning the other wolf in their scent, and that, I suspected, could be overwhelming for the omega as well as for anyone in their vicinity. But did I think the omega lost control during any of that? Hell no. That was ridiculous.
“You need to form a bond,” Linden declared, “and so do I. And since I know what I need to be happy, which includes exorbitant amounts of money, my strategy for happiness is to seduce the earl, marry him, and live like a queen.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, because it was not my place to judge him. We were different people, raised in vastly different circumstances. He was a commodity to his family, nothing more. He had been polished like a priceless jewel his entire life. Every moment he wasn’t with me when we were younger had been filled with etiquette, grooming, and diction. I remembered watching him learn how to walk into a room, hold a cup, and to be the embodiment of beauty and sophistication and good breeding.
His father had nothing at all to do with him. His mother was merciless in his preparation for his debut, at eighteen, into society. As far as I knew, me and my mother were the only ones who ever hugged him. It always made me sad to see him look up for approval and never receive a smile from anyone. Most omegas were just like him. They fell into one of two categories: either their family was interested in using them as a bargaining chip to merge with a another, equally affluent family, or the omega was flat-out sold to the highest bidder.
I annoyed the crap out of my family, but they loved me, and I knew that with absolute conviction because my childhood had been completely and utterly normal. Usually omegas were sequestered. In my family I was treated the same as my siblings; all of us were hugged and kissed, scolded and grounded, and told we were unique and smart and funny. Beauty, how we looked, wasn’t all that important to either of my parents. They were much more concerned with what kind of people we were.
Being born into my family was a blessing. If I never bonded, it didn’t matter; my family wasn’t dependent on me making a match. Linden’s was. I had no right to criticize him or his motives.
“No one here is more beautiful than me,” he stated without a hint of self-doubt. “The earl is mine for the taking.”
I gave him a quick pat on the cheek. “I one hundred percent agree with you,” I conceded. “Except for Bridget.”
“Oh, Avery,” Bridget cooed as she swept into the alcove that was suddenly a bit tight with three of us in there. “You’re so right.”
“Get out,” Linden demanded icily.
“Calm down,” she tutted at him, leaning into me as I put an arm around her. “If the earl is into men, then you win. You’re the prettiest one I know.”
I never understood why there wasn’t some list that was given out before these things: this alpha likes girls, this one likes boys, this one loves every color of the rainbow. It only made good sense not to waste everyone’s time. Why, even now, every alpha had to meet every omega was beyond me. There were so many antiquated customs.
“I’m the most beautiful person you know, period,” he corrected her, bringing me back to the conversation.
She cocked her head sideways to look up at me. “You’re the most handsome, though,” she murmured, reaching up to touch my jawline. “But would it kill you to shave?”
“You sound like my father.”
“Honestly, Avery, I can barely see your gorgeous dimples.” I chuckled as she squinted and tipped my head to the side. “Why are you covered in lipstick?”
“My mother, my sister, my sister-in-law, they were all over me. You know how it is.”
“It’s because we’re like catnip to all the others—alphas, betas, and gammas. They can barely keep their hands off of us,” she said, using her fingers to try and clean me up. “And you especially, because your family loves and wants to smother you in equal measure.”
“Who, me?”
“Ugh,” she groaned, pulling a handkerchief from her tiny clutch to get the rest of the lipstick off before she turned to Linden with accusing eyes. “You were just going to let him go out there with lipstick all over him?”
“It made him look like a lothario, and I understand the earl is quite the prude.”
“I see,” she said sourly. “So you thought, ‘Let’s make Avery even less appealing just to be on the safe side?’”
“Something like that.”
“Even less appealing?” I repeated, pouting. “Was that nice?”
“Dearheart, we both know that as omegas go, you’re far too––”
“Rugged, rough, unkempt,” Linden offered in quick succession. “Stubbled?”
“––capable,” Bridget finished, completely ignoring him, “to have an alpha offer for you.”
She wasn’t wrong, and I’d come to count on that.
“Omegas, as you know, are supposed to be cared for, lavished with attention and tokens of affection, as well as opulence and wealth. We are not something a poor man could ever hope to possess, but with you having a job—and a scary one at that—you don’t need an alpha. You can provide for yourself.”
“Without question,” I affirmed happily.
“You’d make an alpha feel positively impotent, and not one of them has the intestinal fortitude to be able to deal with that. They’re actually quite vulnerable and needy, and you know this because you have not one but three in your immediate family.”
“Again, I’m in total agreement with you.”
“Well, for those of us who want to live in the lap of luxury, it’s showtime, because look”—Linden pointed—“I think he’s arrived. All the others are lining up under the arch to the living room.”
I just needed out of the alcove; the reason wasn’t important. It was getting hot, and I had layers of clothes on.
As we stepped out into the crowd of onlookers, Linden bumped into a woman. At first I thought she was a server, but upon closer inspection, I realized she was wearing a black suit, not a uniform, and her white shirt and patent heels were expensive, so I knew she was a guest. Her hair was a deep, rich brown, a shade just a touch lighter than her suit. I loved the messy pixie cut and her enormous brown eyes.
“Be careful,” he snarled at her.
She tipped her head in acknowledgment of him, but before she could walk away, I interrupted her exodus. “Are you all right?”
“Oh yes, perfectly,” she replied smoothly.
“I’m sorry about him. He’s an ass.”
Her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized me. “It’s to be expected from a spoiled, rich omega.”
I laughed softly. “I promise you we’re not all douchebags.”
She smiled then, and it was kind, and she offered me her hand. “I’m Kat Holt, and you are?”
“Avery Rhine,” I replied, taking her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
“The pleasure is all mine, I assure you.”
“Will you stop with the help, already,” Linden grumbled, coming up beside me. “Look at the earl over there.”
“Excuse me,” I said to Miss Holt, “I need to murder my friend.”
She chuckled, and it was a good sound. I slid my hand from hers so I could whack Linden in the abdomen,
“Ow,” he groaned, bending over just a bit.
“Dear God, what is that on his face?” Bridget gasped, suddenly breathless. “Is it—is that some kind of scar?”
“Yes, I noticed it when I walked by him earlier,” Miss Holt answered, and we all turned to her. “It begins high on his left cheek, crosses through a portion of his lips, and runs down to his chin.”
“He’s disfigured,” Bridget whispered with a shudder. “That’s why he’s not mated. No beta or gamma would have him, so he’s decided to claim an omega.”
“What does it matter? He’s rich,” Linden announced like this was news. “He can get his face fixed if his omega insists upon it.”
“It depends,” I reminded him. “If the scar was given to him while he was in his wolf form, then it can’t be altered. You know that.”
He shivered. “How can we find out before we go over there?”
“I think you just have to roll the dice,” Bridget whispered, squaring her shoulders. “But when all is said and done, it doesn’t matter. Only the manner in which you’d be kept does.”
“Yes, true,” he admitted, nodding. “Though how are you supposed to look at that for the rest of your life? It’s gruesome.”
“No,” I disagreed, looking the man up and down. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Bridget croaked out. “Are you looking at him?”
“Yeah, I am. He’s got a great face,” I replied sincerely. I had no idea what Linden and Bridget were seeing. The man was stunning. “And the scar’s sexy as hell.”
“You’re deluded,” Linden declared patronizingly.
“Not this time,” I assured him with a wink.
“You’re just trying to get a rise out of me, because yes, that scar is hideous.”
But to me, the scar was such a small part of what made up the man.
The earl’s hair was chestnut brown with streaks of silver, which he wore in a combed back undercut, but I suspected he was graying prematurely, as he couldn’t have been a day over thirty-five. He was tall, easily six-four, built like a swimmer with wide shoulders, a broad chest, narrow hips and long legs. The suit he wore, complete with tails, like the rest of us, fit him like a second skin. He was a designer’s wet dream, and the man could have walked off the cover of any fashion magazine. But it wasn’t the body that was truly mesmerizing; it was, in fact, his face. The scar made him seem dangerous and deadly, and the primal part of me I worked hard to quash each and every day, responded to the strength and raw power that rolled off him even at a distance.
I felt it then, the throb of arousal that came only when I lured an alpha—not a beta, gamma, or human, but an alpha—to my bed. One part of being an omega was absolutely true: we craved submission, and that, only that, got us off. Only an alpha could make me submit, so I had to either get drunk enough to let someone else control me or find the real deal and bed an alpha. With the others, the pretense of succumbing to the power of another was short-lived. Most times I didn’t get off; I sobered up too quickly, or the guy offered to bottom. I could top as well as anyone, but there was no way to climax doing that. With an alpha, I could come, but I lost interest as soon as the passion faded, because no one I’d met could ever sustain the dominance I needed. It was an act they put on, and that simply wouldn’t do. I had to surrender, had to be made to do so, and staring across the room at Graeme Davenport, I saw a man who could take what he wanted. I nearly gasped with the yearning that rushed through me.
My wolf would accept a bite from his, and to the man, I would submit. As both reactions were terrifying, I remained rooted to the spot and tried to breathe through my desire.
“Really, though, the scar’s not important, and maybe he’d be open to sharing his omega with others,” Linden said, breaking the trance I found myself in as I stared. “I don’t have to fuck him every night, and I certainly don’t have to look at him when I do. That’s what a light switch is for, after all.”
But what a pity it would be to have him in the darkness. Even from across the room I could see that the man’s eyes were a lovely, warm, peaty brown. Having those on me, watching me, heating as he stared…I couldn’t think of anything I would want more.
His chiseled features were perfect, even his nose, long and aquiline, his high, sharp cheekbones, and his full, lush mouth that I wanted all over––
“Bridget, you whore,” Linden hissed under his breath as she slipped around him to get into line behind the other omegas who were there to meet first the cyne, and then, if that failed, all the other alphas in the room.
“You better go,” I told Linden, bumping him with my elbow.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m too capable, remember?”
“I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t––”
“I’m not the omega an earl is looking for,” I reminded him. “You know that.”
He grunted and then left me, getting in line several people behind Bridget.
“Watch this,” I said to Miss Holt, leaning close to her, my interest in the man ebbing with every second that I didn’t go to him. Always, this was how things worked for me. If I could hold off acting on my impulses, slowly, steadily, my logic kicked in. Because clearly, I was out of my league. He was there to find an omega to wait on him hand and foot, to breed with, and to make his house a home. Nothing wrong with that; I just didn’t have time. “Keep an eye on Linden.”
“Why? What are we—oh.” She chuckled. “How is he managing that?”
One by one, the omegas in front of Linden saw him and surrendered their place in line, letting him creep up to Bridget.
“His family is one of the richest in these here parts,” I teased her, giving my voice a ridiculous twang, and she grinned back. “And because all those guys and girls know he’s a vindictive asshole, they’re gonna let him cut in line until he gets to Bridge.”
“But she won’t let him go in front of her, will she?”
“No way,” I replied as she slipped her arm into mine. “They’ve been rivals way too long for her to let him get away with that shit.”
“And you’re friends with both of them?”
“Friends is a strong word,” I apprised her playfully as she leaned into me. “We grew up together, and I think because I can’t, and don’t, compete with either one of them, they don’t see me as a threat. They both treat me better than they do most people.”
“What do you mean you can’t compete with them?”
I snickered and turned to her. “You can’t tell me that even though he was a prick to you, you could deny, empirically, that Linden Van Doren is the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen in your life. That hair is natural, you know.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ve traveled all over the world with my boss, Avery Rhine, and I’ve met more than my fair share of drop-dead gorgeous men”—one eyebrow lifted mischievously—“but you know the one man I’ve never come across before tonight?”
“No, who?”
“One who thinks my boss’s scar is, and I quote, ‘Sexy as hell.’”
Fluke and the Faithless Father by Sam Burns
“Grandma has been with me today, which I’m sure she’d have told you if you’d asked her beforehand instead of just showing up.”
“Grandma,” he repeated, a sneer in his tone and his nose turned up in disgust like the very word smelled bad.
“What do you expect him to call her?” a low, smooth voice asked from behind him.
I glanced back to find a man lounging in the doorway there, looking like an ad for something expensive. Probably the tailored black suit he was wearing, with a cobalt blue tie that matched his bright eyes hanging untied around his neck like he’d just come home from a fancy party. He was a little scruffy too, with just enough dark stubble to prove he could grow a beard if he wanted to, and his relaxed stance screaming “you should buy whatever product this ad is for, so you too can be this amazing.”
I definitely wouldn’t look that good in that suit—I’d look like a kid playing dress up—but he had the model good looks to pull it off.
He gave me a casual smile, almost a smirk, that matched the model persona, full of secrets and smolder. “I suppose you’d prefer he call her ‘grandmother?’” He over-enunciated the word ridiculously and with a British accent, as though it were a royal title, his eyes twinkling. “Or maybe you’d just prefer he didn’t exist at all.”
Ding, ding, ding, we had a winner.
Somehow, Roger’s face turned even more sour, like someone had teleported a lemon directly onto his tastebuds. “Go wait in the parlor, Frederick. I’ll see mother’s friends out and—”
“You mean her grandson,” the man countered.
“My grandson,” Iris agreed, tightening one arm around mine so hard I was afraid I was going to lose feeling in my fingers. “And Sage isn’t going anywhere.”
When the foyer went silent, Frederick pushed off the doorjamb and came over to us. I was once again struck by jealousy as he did, because even the way he moved was model-elegant. He walked like a cat, on the balls of his feet, silent and graceful.
When he reached me, instead of demanding I stay away from Iris and her money, he held out a hand to shake. “You must be Sage. I’m Freddy.”
Freddy, of course. Iris had told me Roger had a son called Freddy, I just hadn’t connected the two immediately. It seemed impossible that this elegant, beautiful man was related to me in any way. His hand in mine was so smooth—how did a person get hands that smooth? I refrained from asking since it would probably sound weird and skeevy.
Maybe I’d look it up online, though. Gideon would probably like it.
Freddy had an oddly slow, languorous handshake, and his fingers brushed my palm as he pulled away, making me shiver at the feeling. I hadn’t realized it was possible to shake hands like a cat too. Weird.
Without waiting for him to turn, Gideon reached out and grabbed his hand to shake it. “Gideon Knight. Sage’s boyfriend.”
Given the way Freddy winced, Gideon’s grip was a little harder than it needed to be. I shot him a glance, one eyebrow raised, but he was staring into Freddy’s eyes, jaw clenched.
It was exactly how he’d reacted to David when the man had been flirting with me, but—”He’s my cousin, Gideon. Roger’s son.”
Somehow, that didn’t seem to make a difference to Gideon. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, Freddy looking amused and Gideon near-murderous, before Freddy inclined his head. “It’s nice to meet you, Gideon Knight Sage’s boyfriend.” He looked down at Fluke, who was cocking his head curiously, staring at my cousin. “And who’s this?”
If nothing else, that convinced me Freddy wasn’t much like his father, who had ignored Fluke completely the first time they had met.
“This is my familiar, Fluke.” I reached down with my free hand and scratched his head.
Freddy held out his hand for Fluke to sniff. When Fluke nodded in approval and wiped his face against the proffered hand, some of the tension went out of me. Fluke’s approval might not be proof Freddy was good, but given his prior dislike of everyone who’d tried to kill me last week, his instincts were clearly better than mine. I could have dealt with another douchey relation, but it was a nice thought that I might not have to.
Elven Duty by Rhys Lawless
The lighthouse loomed over us the closer we got, its beam swirling around itself in a dizzying endless dance.
“Wow. It’s beautiful,” Jude said, looking out at the white building and the nature it illuminated.
“Yeah. It’s my favorite place on Earth,” I told him. “There’s a local legend about it.”
“What is it?”
I drove us over the last part of the road that would take us to the building.
“That the light will go out when one meets their soulmate,” I said.
Jude leaned back in his seat, and although he tried to appear composed, I could hear his heartbeat going haywire, pounding in his chest, courtesy of my super-sensitive hearing.
“What does one do around here?” he asked.
I turned the wheel slightly to the left and brought us to a stop. The land continued for a few more feet before ending in a small cliff that led directly to the water.
“Local trade. Farming. Deliveries. Fishing,” I said.
“Which one are you?” he asked, and we both unclipped our seatbelts.
I pressed the button to pull the roof down and watched Jude as he followed it with his gaze until it was nestled in the trunk.
“My trade is… different,” I said.
That was putting it mildly.
“What does that mean?” he smirked, staring right at me.
“It’s… long and complicated. And I’d rather we talk about anything else,” I said.
“Mysterious…” he hummed. “I like it.”
“And dangerous,” I added with a laugh.
He raised an eyebrow, and I pursed my lips.
“That came out wrong.”
Jude nodded and laughed.
“You think?”
“I meant my trade is… danger—”
I didn’t get to finish. He leaned close to me and closed the distance between us with his lips, claiming mine with a gentleness I’d never experienced before.
I leaned forward a little and reciprocated the chaste kiss we found ourselves entangled in until my hands came up on either side of his face and smoothed my fingers along his jaw.
He pulled back slightly and opened his eyes, looking at me with a beautiful grin that made me want to give in to him even more.
“You’re a good kisser, Roman,” he said.
“You-you’re not so bad yourself,” I told him.
“I always kiss without tongue first. That’s when you can tell a good kisser,” he whispers. “As soon as tongues are involved, it becomes a sloppy, hot mess.”
I tittered and licked my lips. He was so irresistible.
“Shall we test some more?” he asked.
Just as I leaned to kiss him some more, we sunk into darkness. Jude paused, and we both looked up at the pitch-black lighthouse.
Jordan L. Hawk is a trans author from North Carolina. Childhood tales of mountain ghosts and mysterious creatures gave him a life-long love of things that go bump in the night. When he isn’t writing, he brews his own beer and tries to keep the cats from destroying the house. His best-selling Whyborne & Griffin series (beginning with Widdershins) can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook.
If you want to contact Jordan, just click on the links below or send an email.
Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
Sam lives in the Midwest with husband and cat, which is even less exciting than it sounds, so she's not sure why you're still reading this.
She specializes in LGBTQIA+ fiction, usually with a romantic element. There's sometimes intrigue and violence, usually a little sex, and almost always some swearing in her work. Her writing is light and happy, though, so if you're looking for a dark gritty reality, you've come to the wrong author.
Rhys Everly-Lawless is a hopeless romantic who loves happily-ever-afters.
Which would explain why he loves writing them.
When he's not passionately typing out his next book, you can find him cuddling his dog, feeding his husband, or taking long walks letting those plot bunnies breed ferociously in his head.
He writes contemporary gay romances as Rhys Everly and LGBTQ+ urban fantasy and paranormal romances as Rhys Lawless.
Jordan L Hawk
EMAIL: jordanlhawk@gmail.com
EJ Russell
Mary Calmes
EMAIL: mmcalmes@hotmail.com
Sam Burns
Rhys Lawless
EMAIL: rhys@rhyswritesromance.com
Blind Tiger by Jordan L Hawk
The Druid Next Door by EJ Russell
KOBO / RIPTIDE / GOODREADS TBR
Muscle and Bone by Mary Calmes
Fluke and the Faithless Father by Sam Burns
Elven Duty by Rhys Lawless
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