Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (15 page)
Read Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) Online
Authors: Elodie Chase
Luke
I heard the explosion. It was impossible not to, regardless of how deeply buried in my own subconscious I was. My Bear heard it too, and I felt it push me toward an awakening that I didn't know I was ready for.
I was ashamed by how easily that Vampire had gotten in my head, how quickly she'd separated me from my spirit, from the Bear that shared my life.
Enough
, I growled at myself. Zoe needed me, and so did her son.
I opened my eyes just as an intense wave of flame was rolling toward us. My body full of adrenaline and magic, I was able to act before it struck my little group. As if in slow motion, I pushed myself to my feet and threw myself through the air, grabbing Jake in one arm and Zoe in the other and dragging them beneath me in before the flames washed over us all.
The noise stole my senses, and the room immediately filled with thick black smoke. I felt a blast of pain across my shoulders, and smelled the unmistakable sent of my own shirt burning.
That was fine. Good, even. The very fact that I had enough of my faculties remaining to catalog the smell and acknowledge it for what it was had to be a good sign, or so I told myself.
With Zoe and Jake still underneath me, I risked a glance back to the bar. It was in shambles, blasted to pieces. Bright yellow and orange flames licked at every surface, hungrily expanding along the wood that had spent several decades soaked in thousands of alcohol spills.
I didn't see Carla back there. The explosion might not be enough to kill her, but it would certainly slow her down. I dragged myself to my feet, pulling Zoe and Jake along with me as I hurried to the front door.
It was bright out here. Daylight. More importantly, sunlight.
The old guy from the outfitter was running down the street to us, and when he got near enough I let him take Jake out of my arms so that I could concentrate on helping Zoe away from the building, now beginning to be fully engulfed in an inferno this town would most likely be talking about for years.
“Is she dead?” He asked, and I could see in his eyes that he'd known exactly what Carla was. At least, he’d suspected.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “If she isn’t now, she will be soon. There’s not going to be enough of a roof over her head in a couple of minutes to keep the sunlight out, and there's no escape.”
He glanced around, nodding. It was at least fifty yards of open snow in every direction surrounding Bruno's flaming establishment. She wasn't going anywhere.
I cradled Zoe in my arms, and when she finally began to swim back to consciousness, I held her close.
When she regained enough of who she was to remember what happened, she and I silently watched her son.
Our son
, I told myself,
isn’t that what you told Carla
? I nodded to myself, inwardly vowing to raise the boy as my own.
Jake’s eyes went from glazed to crystal clear, and he shook himself all over the way a dog does after climbing out of a river. That was when I knew Carla was gone, when I watched him shrug her influence off and smile like a beacon of light at his mother.
Zoe
“Mommy!” Jake called, and Old Man Cole let go of him so that he could run into my arms. “Mommy, you're here. You came back for me!”
“No honey,” I said, hugging him as tightly as I could and standing up, lifting him into the air as I spoke into his ear. “You came here for mommy. You saved me.”
“Please don't go away again,” he begged.
“Never,” said Luke from beside me, and I felt a strong arm loop around my waist as he patted Jake gently on the back. “You'll never have to be without her again. I'll see to that.”
I stood there in the cold and snow, holding my boy and watching Bruno's burn down to the very foundation, letting myself leaning against Luke.
We were a family now, and I was going to make this work.
Luke
As we drove South, the enormity of what we’d done started to hit me. There was one less Vampire in the world, and those that remained would know. Some of them would be happy as their power grew, but there was no doubt that she'd had allies as well.
They'd be seeking us out. If we were smart, we'd find a place to hide and never leave it.
I shook my head. We were hours from Barrow now, with a full tank of gas and destination. Zoe's grandparents’ house. We had to make sure that they were okay, and we also had to set their mind at ease that Jake was safe.
I’d do what I had to do to make sure that they let Zoe raise her son, but I had a good feeling. We had already collected her money from the motel, and I had some too. Cole demanded to help as well, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when he cracked open a safe and stacked several bars of gold that he'd prospected himself over the years in my arms.
By my estimation, we were probably carrying a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold in the back seat right now, right next to Jake’s happily sleeping form. Zoe had assured me that it was be enough to pay off her debts. It would even be enough to buy her way out of whatever trouble she was in.
But still, in the light of all our victories, there was a burning sadness in my heart that refused to go away.
“What is it?” Zoe asked from the passenger seat.
I glanced over at her, then looked into the rearview mirror and made sure that Jake was still asleep. He was exhausted, and I knew exactly how he felt. Being in the thrall of the Vampire was draining. It would take both of us a few days to be back to normal. “I'm just thinking,” I told her. “That's all.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Nothing.” I was hoping that she’d drop it even, if though I knew that she wouldn’t. Zoe was like a dog with a bone with stuff like this.
“It's all that fated mate stuff, isn't it?” she asked. “That's what's got you down. You think that somewhere out there is the
right
one, and you're leaving her behind for me. You’re too head strong to admit it, but even you know that there's a chance that you made the wrong choice with me. Is that it?”
“It's not that I'm making the wrong choice,” I told her, locking eyes with her for a split second before I returned my gaze to the road. “It's not like that. I don't have doubts. It's just…”
I sighed. What was the best way to tell her? How did I say to this new love of my life that I was the magic one, the one who understood these things best? Darius and Timber, they’d both waited until they found the one who would be with them forever, a daughter of Virginia Dare. The universe had put them and their Mates together…
But me, I’d grabbed the bull by the horns. I let myself fall in love before the universe could show me who would be mine. It wasn't like I was turning my back on faith, but I was certainly preempting it.
“Just spit it out”, Zoe said, and I heard her voice rise with a hint of anger. “If I'm not the right one for you, here’s your chance to tell me.”
“It's not that.”
“It is. Luke, what makes you so sure that I'm not the one you've been looking for your whole life?”
I couldn't see a reason not to tell her. The truth didn’t mean that I'd abandon her, and the longer I went without telling her the backstory of the Bears and the Wolves the worse it would be when she found out. “Okay, this may sound silly, but hundreds of years ago there was a girl. She was born to the pilgrims, the first female born in the New World to the settlers. Her name was Virginia Dare. She vanished. That whole Roanoke thing, you know?”
Zoe was nodding enthusiastically. “I know exactly what you're talking about. They never found her. She was a special baby, and she grew up into a special girl but when they came back to look for her, she was gone. Just poof, up in smoke.”
I shivered, but not from the cold. “Exactly. Well, the Bears are only supposed to Mate with a descendant of Virginia Dare. The Wolves too, I suppose. You’ve really heard of her?”
“Of course. When I was a kid, I wanted to be her. In fact, hang on a sec, you're gonna love this…” She reached back and grab whatever bags, and in a moment she'd withdrawn a folder. She set it down on her lap and rifled through it, clearly looking for something specific.
“What's that?”
“Paperwork,” she answered. “Mostly court stuff. I guess you could say that it’s the things I ran away from. Pull over,” she said, extracting a couple of the papers. “You're going to want to see this.”
The freeway was quiet, and I did as I was told, easing the truck over into the emergency lane before turning to her. “What’s am I looking at?”
Zoe smiled. “I never really told you I what was in trouble for. Different places have different names for it. Fraud, mostly. Basically, I signed up for a whole bunch of credit cards under a fake name. Jake and I needed the money. We were about to be homeless, and if I hadn’t done it I wouldn’t have been able to feed him. But that's not the point,” she said, stabbing her finger at the paper that she placed my hands. “Read this. Right here.”
The defendant is accused of filing 36 false credit card claims under the false name of
Virginia Dare
.
“How?” I stammered, uncertain as to what this meant. “How could you have known?”
Zoe winked at me and shrugged as she pointed forward. “Keep going, big guy,” she said. “I told you that I always wanted to be her. Maybe that counts for something, huh? Maybe fate is going to let you catch a break this time.”
I smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her as passionately as I ever had.
Maybe she was right
, I thought, as I eased back into traffic and brought the truck up to speed.
Maybe she was more correct than she knew.
Maybe I was sitting next to the spirit of Virginia Dare. My Mate.
I thought it would be fun to include Darius here, as a gift to those who hadn’t read it yet. He’s Luke’s older brother, and he’s hurt. The only person that can save him is a woman he’s only seen in his dreams… Enjoy!
Darius
New World Shifters
Elodie Chase
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters and places depicted are fictitious or have been used fictitiously. They are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, be they living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 by Elodie Chase
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Every time Darius touched me, I felt myself pushing back against him. His hands were so strong, and they knew me so well. I liked the way that being with him felt like I was restrained. It let me give in to the emotions rushing through me in a way I couldn’t have done otherwise.
“Grace,” he said into my ear, his breath hot against the side of my face. “Don’t do this to me.”
I couldn’t resist the smile that sprung to life on my face. “I’m not doing anything,” I whispered.
“Yes you are. You just don’t know it. You make me wild.”
I reached up between us and put my hands flat against the chiseled muscles of his broad chest. Even though this was a dream, I couldn’t help but gasp at the strength of the heart that beat within him. The heat of him, the thud of his pulse. It was like laying your hands on the hood of a car when someone put it in neutral and gunned the engine.
“Why can’t you be real?” I asked him.
“Why can’t you?” he answered, smiling down at me.
He was much taller than I was, and as he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground in a massive bear hug I tilted my head to stare into his eyes. Dream lover or not, I wasn’t able to stop a moan from escaping me as our mouths crushed together.
Darius was as hard as a rock, and the way he was holding me meant that I could feel his cock stiffen against my thigh. If it weren’t for the clothes, he could simply let me slide down his washboard stomach and twitch his hips to one side in order to line himself up with me slick pussy.
I wanted that. God, I
needed
that.
And, because it was a dream and I was better at dreaming than I was at anything else, the clothes I was wearing vanished and I felt the thick heat of his perfect cock run through me like an electric current.
And then my alarm went off…