Galen's Lovely Mate (Saber Chronicles Book Four)
Read Galen's Lovely Mate (Saber Chronicles Book Four) Online
Authors: R.E. Butler
Tags: #fairies, #tiger shifters, #saber chronicles, #sabertooth tigers, #belle terra
Galen’s Lovely Mate
Saber Chronicles Book Four
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2015 R. E. Butler
Galen’s Lovely Mate (Saber Chronicles Book
Four)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
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enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other
people. If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re
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Cover by
S. Frost
Designs
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is
coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for
mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is
intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I’d like to thank Jennifer Moorman for
editing the story.
To Joyce – the bestest sisterfriend in the
whole universe.
Many thanks to Shelley for beta-reading.
To BB & BL - I love you both.
Table of Contents
Galen’s Lovely Mate
Saber Chronicles Book 4
Galen Carmichael is officially in hell. His
two brothers and sister are all mated, but he’s still painfully
single. As a saber-tooth tiger shifter, he’s been having mating
dreams for the last week, but he can’t make any sense out of the
fuzzy pink and gold dreams.
Fairy Serena Fontaine has been away from the
Belle Terra Supernatural Hotel for a week when she has a dream
urging her to return to town. As she draws close to the arena where
the were-fights are being held, she has a vision of a saber-tooth
tiger and passes out. She wakes up in the arms of her truemate, a
gorgeous saber shifter.
This book contains a fairy with pink and gold
wings, her sexy saber-tooth tiger truemate, the hotel where they
live and work, and their growing family. Expect plenty of growls,
neck biting, fluttering wings, and sex-fueled flower gardens.
Chapter 1
Serena Fontaine woke up with a start and
nearly fell off the couch. The TV was on, and the afghan was
twisted around her legs. Sitting upright, she untangled her legs
and tossed the afghan over the back of the couch. She picked up the
remote and turned off the TV and stood, unable to stop the
trembling in her limbs.
She didn’t normally fall asleep on the couch
in the early evening, but the previous night she’d received a
message from her mom and it had kept her up late last night.
Tiredness had seeped into her bones while she ate dinner and
watched a reality TV show. As she rubbed her neck, she remembered
the dream she’d just had about her sister.
It was times like this when she wished she
hadn’t been exiled from her people. She could have called her mom
and asked for her to cast a telling spell on the dream so Serena
would know if it was a true foretelling or if it was just her
brain’s way of freaking her out. Her mother’s fairy talent was
dreams, one of the lesser known but more powerful forms of fae
magic. Serena took after her father, whose power was the ability to
control plant life. She had forayed that talent into a successful
florist shop in the Belle Terra Supernatural Hotel, where she lived
and worked.
Shoving the unsettling dream aside, she
walked into the bathroom of her suite and turned on the shower. She
had been living and working at the hotel for a year, ever since
she’d been exiled from her people. The owner of the hotel, master
vampire Caleb Night, had been really gracious and allowed her to
open the flower shop in an empty storefront in the lobby of the
hotel. At one time, it had been a gift shop, but that shop had
moved to the other side of the lobby closer to the restaurant, and
the storefront had sat empty. It suited Serena just fine. She had a
workshop in the back where she could coax the flowers to
perfection, and she’d even hired a cashier, Jocelyn, so she could
work instead of dividing her time between the back and the front.
She liked Jocelyn, a human who enjoyed pretty flowers, and was glad
the young woman had been looking for a job.
Serena’s wings, hidden by magic within her
back, tingled, and she had the urge to throw open the balcony door
off her bedroom and go for a long flight. Master Caleb, however,
had asked her to stop flying off her balcony. The local police had
been called to the hotel a number of times when Serena had hopped
off the balcony. Humans seemed to think she was committing suicide
or being killed. She understood their misunderstanding – fairies
didn’t normally live where other supernatural creatures lived. They
usually lived in communes deep within wooded areas where they could
live and work in peace. To continue to live in her family’s
commune, where her father sat on the council of elders, she would
have had to agree to marry the fae male the clan’s king had chosen
for her. One look at the male – a thin, pale man with a shock of
red hair and wings the color of burnt toast – and she’d said no
thanks. Her king had given her an ultimatum, but she wasn’t about
to play house with a guy she wasn’t attracted to just because her
king thought it was a good idea.
Being exiled sucked. Contact was cut off from
her family. She wasn’t able to see her sister, Alanah, or her mom,
who she loved dearly. Her mom sent notes to her every now and then
through woodland creatures who responded to her sister’s ability to
communicate with them. The day before, Serena had been turning a
bouquet of roses an enchanting turquoise color with her powers when
a mouse had hopped onto the counter and nearly scared her to death.
If she hadn’t seen the tiny scroll tied to its neck, she would have
shooed it away with a broom.
Written on the scroll in her mom’s beautiful
scripted handwriting were two sentences that made the center of
Serena’s body run cold:
King Orpheus is pressing Alanah to marry
Cenrik or he will remove your father from the council and exile us
all. Your sister is marrying him in two weeks to protect us.
When Serena had dozed off, she’d dreamed
about her sister being hurt by the redheaded fairy, Cenrik. She had
no reason to believe the guy was particularly evil, but she figured
that any guy who would marry a girl who didn’t want to marry him
wasn’t a good guy in general.
Not that there was anything she could do
about the situation. If she returned to the commune, she’d be
jailed. Exiled meant to stay the hell away from their land forever.
She had penned a note back to her mom saying she wished she could
help and missed them all terribly, and the mouse had scurried off
as soon as she’d tucked the note behind the string around its
neck.
After showering, and still feeling unsettled,
she decided to go for a flight and try to clear her head. She liked
to fly for days sometimes, finding places to sleep in the canopy of
trees or in caves tucked into mountains.
She dressed in a pair of jeans and a
specially designed top that would allow her wings to slip through
the material so she could have her wings out without being topless.
She packed a small messenger bag that she secured tightly to her
body, unfurled her pink and gold translucent wings, and headed out
of her room.
She had a suite on the twelfth floor. Among
the other tenants she shared the floor with were a sweet she-wolf
named Gretchen and a warlock, a heavily tattooed mountain of a male
named Dredge. She knew Gretchen, the assistant of the hotel’s
manager – a human named Aubrey – fairly well because they both
worked in the lobby.
Still unsettled from her dream, she strode
down the hallway to the elevator, pressed the button, and began to
pace. When the door opened, she came face-to-face with
Gretchen.
“Hi, Serena, are you okay?” Gretchen asked as
she stepped from the elevator.
“Yes. No.” Serena shook her head. “I fell
asleep watching TV and had a bad dream.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want to talk?”
“No, I need to fly and sort out my thoughts.
Master Caleb asked me to stop flying off my balcony because it
freaks out the humans when they think someone is falling from the
twelfth floor.”
“Humans are so silly,” Gretchen said. “You
can knock on my door if you want to talk after your flight.”
“Thanks,” Serena said, smiling. “You’re a
sweetheart.”
After taking the elevator down to the lobby,
she waved at the concierge and headed outside. The hotel was in
downtown Belle Terra on the Belle River, which her room overlooked.
On nights when she didn’t feel the urge to fly, she enjoyed sitting
out on the balcony and looking at the stars, but tonight she needed
to spread her wings.
Striding to the back of the hotel, she moved
her wings and lifted from the ground. Flying over the river, she
moved high into the sky and left Belle Terra behind. Her assistant
could handle the flower shop for a few days while Serena mulled
over her sister’s problem. She wished she could help, or that her
dad would stand up for Alanah and not let her be forced into a
mating just because he liked being on the council and living in the
commune. Unfortunately for Alanah, Serena could do a lot of things
with her power over plant life, but she couldn’t change the future
that lay ahead for her only sister.
Chapter 2
“Damn pink and gold,” Galen groused as he
rolled to his stomach and buried his face in the pillow. It had
been a week since he’d begun dreaming about his truemate. As a
saber-tooth tiger shifter, he was the recipient of mating dreams,
meant to lead him to his truemate, the one woman on earth who was
meant for him. The dreams, however, weren’t a map to lead him to
her. They would strengthen the closer he drew to her, but because
they were so fuzzy, he was certain that he wasn’t anywhere near
her. His mate, whoever she was, didn’t live in Belle Terra.
He was the last single saber. His family –
consisting of his brothers, Alaric and Slade, and his sister, Lia –
had all found their mates within a week of their arrival at Belle
Terra. He and his brothers had joined up with the National
Were-Fighting Association, which was owned by an alpha wolf named
Jonathon Black. Alaric had been having the mating dreams for more
than a year when he finally found his truemate, the sister of the
master vampire of Belle Terra.
Galen glanced at the clock on the nightstand
and groaned. It was before dawn. He hadn’t slept well in a week. He
woke up frequently because of the dreams, and more often than not,
he was completely aroused. How anyone could be turned on by colors
in a dream and no other indication of what they meant he didn’t
know.
Deciding to duck out and go to the arena
where the NWFA fights would be held that night, he got up, dressed,
and hurried from the hotel. The NWFA arena had at one time been a
high school football stadium. A developer had purchased it, turning
it into an event arena where everything from concerts to stunt
shows amused the locals. He drove the SUV he shared with his family
to the arena. For the year they’d traveled with the NWFA, they’d
also shared an RV, but it had since been emptied of their
belongings and given to another group within the NWFA who needed a
place to live.
He pushed open the doors to the training
center within the arena and found the workout room empty. A
four-lane track ran the perimeter of the large room, and within the
circle was every kind of exercise equipment known to man. Popping
his earbuds in, he turned on his mp3 player, turned up the volume,
and headed for the weight bench.
* * * * *
Galen waited in the staging area for his turn
on the sand. The previous week had been the inaugural fight, and
the crowds were just as intense as they’d been that first time. He
never fought without his family by his side. Alaric and his mate,
Aubrey, and Slade and his mate, Gretchen, were in the owner’s
private box so they could watch the fights. He felt strangely
alone. Although he liked the idea of being the big winner – he and
his brothers never lost their fights – he didn’t like how it made
him feel to stand by himself while the other fighters stood with
others.