Sapphire (Rare Gems Series)

Sapphire

Rare Gems Series

Book 1

By

Kathi S. Barton

World Castle Publishing, LLC

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as
real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright
© Kathi S. Barton 2013

ISBN:
9781629890050

First
Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC October 1, 2013

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover:
 Karen Fuller

Photos:
Shutterstock

Editor:
 Eric Johnston

Chapter 1

The house was not only too big, but
fucking huge. She walked around the front of it, then around to the back, and
didn’t really see any improvement on the size. What the hell had she been
thinking buying a house this flipping big, sight unseen? Sapphire looked around
to her grandmother when she came up beside her.

“It’s a monstrosity, isn’t it?” her
grandmother said and looked up as she continued. “The land is nice, but oh, my
Sapphire, how on earth are we going to heat this thing in the winter months,
not to mention keep cool in the summer?”

Sapphire had been thinking the same
thing. And even though she and her family didn’t need a great deal of heat,
some was better than none at all. But this thing? She might have to dip into
her savings a bit more before it was finished. Not that she minded all that
much…they were finally safe.

“I’ve talked to the local pack last week
when I got here. He’s a shit. Told me that I was going to be put to the
kitchens when the meetings were held.” Her grandmother snorted as she continued
berating the new alpha. “Arrogant ass. I told him we’d be to the mandatory
meetings, but we were only telling him we were in the area, not becoming a part
of his whole.”

“I bet that went over well,” Sapphire said
as she followed her grandmother to the front of the house again when they heard
the truck pulling up the drive. “I guess we’ll be moving in now. I hope the
rest of them will be more help unloading than they were loading this sucker.”

“They will be. I put the fear of me in
them last night. Once they realized I was serious, all of them agreed that
they’d be helpful.” Sapphire laughed at her grandmother’s threat, then took a
good look at her. She looked like she might blow away in good wind, but she was
tough as nails. Her sisters spilled out of the house just as the driver was
getting out.

“You Sapphire Erickson?” the man called.
She nodded at the man. “The other truck is behind me about an hour. He got
himself stuck in that turnpike and didn’t get off when I told him. Stupid kid.”

He opened the back end up and all of
them looked inside. Who would have thought they could have so much in that tiny
little house they’d lived in before coming here? And there was still another
truck to come. Smiling, she thought of all the crap they’d left behind.

Her sisters did help unload. It was hot
and they bitched a great deal, but mostly it was because they were fighting
over which rooms they wanted. Sapphire had already decided she didn’t really
care where she slept so long as her bed fit in the room. She’d gotten used to
her super king and wasn’t giving it up for anyone. So when she was directed to
the upper level with her mattress, she thought they were doing it to get back
at her for buying this house, but when she entered the room was just what she
would have picked for herself.

“Like it?” a voice asked from behind
her. She turned to look at Jade after the truck pulled away and they were
assigned to fix their beds. “I’m just down the hall. You and I are the only two
on this floor. The rest of them decided to stay on the lower levels. I don’t
think I’ve ever seen a four-story house before.”

“It was cheap and big,” Sapphire
replied. “Plus the yard and woods behind us come with it.” She looked around
the room and loved it even with all the boxes and furniture haphazardly put
everywhere. “Do you have the same view? I can’t wait until tonight to see if I
can see the moon as clearly as we can the trees.”

“Yeah, but not as large as yours. You
have the best room, and me…well, come on down and I’ll show you.” Sapphire
followed her sister down the hall and could hear someone coming up. She looked
over the circling staircase and saw the others coming toward them. All of her
sisters seemed to have something they were trying their best to hide.

“What’s going on?” Sapphire demanded.
Jade shrugged and stood outside her room. “Jade, what the hell is going on? You
know how much I hate not knowing everything.”

“I do. That’s why this was so hard for
me and the others. And you’d better be nice when this goes down, or so help me,
I’ll feed you something to make you bloat up like a woman on PMS.” Sapphire
looked at her sisters coming down the hall, then back at Jade. “Behave.”

“We love the house,” Opal, one of her
sisters, said. Sapphire nodded at her, still not sure what the hell was going
on. “We got you something. Something for your room to say thanks. Please don’t
be pissy about it.”

Sapphire felt a pain in her heart. Two
people—two people that she loved more than anything—had just told her to be
nice. When had she…she supposed she had been a little stressed lately with the
move and other things going on, but it hadn’t been that bad, had it? Then she
looked at the small gifts that they were holding out to her, and all she could
think about was money wasted. She didn’t reach for the gifts right away as she
thought about what she’d just had run through her mind. Christ, she was horrible.

“I’m glad…. I’m really glad you like it.
I was…I was afraid that you’d all hate it and would want to….” She took a deep
breath and looked at her sisters. “Have I really been so horrible? No, don’t
answer that. I have been. I’m really…I’m really sorry.”

She moved down the hall toward her room,
intending to go inside and lock the door. She was fighting the tears hard, and
she didn’t want to break down in front of them. Before she could get the door
opened, she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to her grandmother.

“Hiding won’t settle this and you know
it,” her grandmother said. Sapphire nodded. “Then if you understand that, I
want you to get your ass back there and hug them. You need them, and they need
you more than ever before. You can be a little human for once.”

“I’m not a nice person,” Sapphire
lamented, but her grandmother just shook her head. “I’m not. And the worst part
of it is I don’t know if I want to change. I hurt so badly.”

“Of course you do.” She turned to look
at Ruby as she pulled her into her arms. “Christ, he was a fucking asshole, and
you should have listened to me when I told you he was a jerk.”

Sapphire laughed and looked at the rest
of them. Diamond, Jade, Ruby, and Emerald stood with her and Opal. Her father
called them his gems, his rare gems. Sapphire took the gifts then and held them
to her.

“I’m not going to change, you know. I’m
still going to be a pain in all your asses,” Sapphire said. Diamond groaned,
and the rest laughed. “I mean it. New house, but the same rules apply. We have
to…Grandmother said the pack alpha is a prick, so we’ll have to be on our guard.
You know what happened before.”

They’d been the target of the alpha when
he decided that giving them to his men would be a good way to break them in
before they met their mates. But that hadn’t been all he’d tried. He’d tried to
hurt them just to get back at her, and she’d found out. Almost too late, too. Sapphire
had nearly killed Jeffery Benetton, the alpha, that night, and she and her
sisters were hunted for nearly the entire time she looked for this house. Jeffery
thought it was his duty to bring her to heel; all of them, including their
grandmother, so that whatever reasons he had to make her miserable were
justified in his mind. Well, fuck his pack now.

“Do you think he’ll come here?” Emerald
asked. Sapphire started to tell her no, but really wasn’t sure. “I mean, we
didn’t really hide the fact that we were leaving. But he really didn’t give us
much of a choice, either.”

“No, he didn’t, but I would assume he
will get the hint and leave us alone. I’m going to meet with the alpha tomorrow
to see what he thinks is going to happen now that we’re here. I don’t know what
he’ll say about us, but fuck him, too.” She looked at her sisters. “I’ll
protect you with my life. You know that, right?”

“Yes, you moron, we know you’re all bad
assed and all.” Ruby laughed and turned to the stairs. “The truck is here. And
the sooner we get this sucker unpacked the sooner we can order pizza. I’m
starved.”

As they went down the stairs, Sapphire
opened her room up and put her gifts on the dresser. There in the middle of her
mattress was a large box with a big pink bow on it. She tore the paper off and
laughed out loud when she saw what was in the box. She was going to have to
have a talk with Diamond. The woman was just too much.

But as she went down the stairs she
wondered about the toys her sister had given her, and wondered maybe if she
used them she’d be a bit more relaxed. A vibrator would probably be less
stressful than a man right now.

The truck took them nearly five hours to
unload. Tempers were much more relaxed this time, and the young man who had
driven this load helped them. The other man had sat on the porch and complained
about how hot it was. She invited Tim to stay for pizza with them.

“No thanks, miss. I have to be getting
back. I’m real sorry again I was so late. The directions he gave me were
very…wrong.” He handed her the paper, and she could see right away that the
person who had written them had written the wrong exit. It was a small wonder
the man ever got there. “I had my phone and the GPS on it. I don’t know what I
would have done if he had written down the wrong address, too.”

She gave him a fifty dollar tip, and he gushed
over that for five minutes before he got in the big semi and left. Sapphire
went into the house to start moving the furniture in the dining room to where
they wanted it. She was glad now that she’d bought the big house. It meant they
could all live together.

Each sister was to take a room. It
wasn’t as if they needed much in the way of help moving the furniture. All of
them had superhuman strength as wolves, but the thing that set them apart from
most females in any pack was that they were independent, too…much too
independent to want to wait for a big, strong man to move things around. They
simply did it themselves and said screw waiting around. Their grandmother had
taught them that.

“Do you suppose the garden out back will
produce more than some weeds?” her grandmother said. Sapphire laughed and turned
to her grandmother as she sat in one of the chairs she’d just set around the
large table. “I would love to grow some vegetables, though why I have no idea
since none of you eat them.”

“I like grilled vegetables. And the guy
I bought this place from said he’d come out and turn the ground for you if you
wanted him to. He told me that he and his wife grew a nice garden and sold some
of it to the locals. You thinking of trying your hand at that?”

“Would be nice for the extra income.
Give me some pocket money, too.” She reached for the centerpiece and started
fussing with it. “I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to the job
offer.”

She had, a great deal as a matter of
fact, but she was no closer to knowing if she should take it or not. “I would
have to be gone most of the day. And you would have to pick up the slack around
here. I know we’re all supposed to be adults and all, but Emerald and Ruby won’t
finish college if you don’t make them go.”

“I’ve thought of that, too. And I can
make them attend. I know that Emerald is excited about being somewhere new, and
Ruby was looking at the paper when I came in here to see if she could start her
internship somewhere close. I think that sounds promising.”

Sapphire thought so, too. Her younger
sisters hadn’t been all that happy with the situation at their other place, as
the alpha had made things difficult for them. Education for women was not high
on his list of things that he wanted.

“Emerald and Ruby both are in their last
year, so maybe they’ll be okay,” Sapphire said. Grandmother nodded but fussed
with the plant more. “Okay, spill it. You hate that thing, and all that tweaking
is not going to make it look any better.”

“This was a wedding present from someone
when I married your grandfather. Have some respect.” She shoved it away. “I’m
throwing it out the next trash day. But I do have a concern. Not about the
house, though. As I’ve said, it’s going to be expensive to maintain, but we’ll
manage. I’m concerned about you.”

“Me? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m
just fine.” Sure she was, she thought. And monkeys had feathers. “I told you
before that the wounds have healed well and I’m getting stronger all the time.”

Which was a flat-out lie. She knew it,
and so did her grandmother. The wounds would never heal if she didn’t pledge to
a new alpha or take a mate…not really much of an option since she was never
doing either. She’d rather hurt physically than have a man boss her around.

“But you’re not healthy enough to take
on the new alpha if he is anything close to Jeffery.” She nodded and put the
last dish in the china cabinet, then sat down as Grandmother took her hand and
continued. “I’m very worried about you. You could have…you should have died
that night.”

“But I didn’t. And we got away without
much in the way of fines, too.” Not any fines that any of them knew about,
anyway. “I’m going to take the job. I’ve just decided. And you’ll see, the
alpha will fall all over himself when he gets a good look at all of us. We’re a
sexy bunch of women.”

She wiggled her brows at her grandmother,
which made her laugh. When Opal came in to say that the pizzas were there, she
and her grandmother pulled out the paper plates and napkins as ten large pizzas
loaded with meat and cheese were carried in. The pizza guy could hardly talk he
was drooling so badly, and it wasn’t because of the tantalizing smells coming
from the boxes. Once he was on his way, they sat down to dig in.