Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) (13 page)

Lucien pauses. He is deliberating how much to
tell her again, Shannon knows.

He clears his throat and continues:

“The only thing they found was a circle
around him scattered in chalk dust. The circle had symbols in it.
It was a witch’s circle, something my ancestors would have used to
contain a dangerous being.”

“Is Kyle a dangerous being?” Shannon says
carefully.

She knows she is onto something here and she
has mostly put everything together, but she also knows Lucien will
never reveal all his secrets.

“Is any human being dangerous?” Lucien
smiles. “We are living in the Pacific Northwest which is known for
its vast number of serial killers. So yes, every person is
potentially dangerous. You, me, anyone.”

She nods at his deflective answer.

Lucien says, “My family history is in the
annals for anyone who wants to read them. We have never covered up
the fact that we had ancestors who were accused of witchcraft and
burned at the stake back in New England. But it doesn’t mean we are
the only witch family in Dolphin’s Bay, and it doesn’t mean we are
practicing witchcraft. We should not be held culpable for the deeds
of our ancestors.”

She agrees. Except that she doesn’t quite
believe that the Walkers have stopped practicing witchcraft. She
remembers the change that had come over Lucien when he was
arm-wrestling her brother. Was that witchcraft, or does Lucien have
innate powers he will not speak of?

She says hesitantly, “Lucien, I remember the
day we met.”

He nods.

“I saw you watching me. I kept my eyes mostly
on you, if you remember. You were the most beautiful thing I’d seen
in a long time.”

She flushes. No matter how many times she has
received a compliment from him, she will never get used to it.

He continues, “Your brother is very strong.
The strongest man I’ve met so far since – ”

He trails off. Shannon supposes he is going
to say Kirk Fitzpatrick.

“Are you a witch, Lucien?” she asks.

He doesn’t reply for a long while. They have
come to the ocean on one side of the drive, and the sun dapples the
wave caps with dazzling highlights.

He says, “I have inherited certain powers
that I have some control of, and others I have none.”

She licks her lips. She has known this all
along. “What powers?”

He gazes at her out of his brilliant blue
eyes. “I can enhance my strength, speed, agility, memory when I
choose to. It’s like taking a booster. An immense booster. But it
doesn’t last, depending on how taxing the circumstances are.”

“Do you know witchcraft?”

“I won’t deny that when I was a child, I was
very curious about it. There are books and tomes in the library
back in my father’s home with spells in them. Some of them require
a coven to perform the incantations.”

She has her answer. So he knows witchcraft. A
sliver of anxiety trails down her backbone.

“But I don’t practice witchcraft, Shannon,”
he says gently. “I don’t live in my father’s house anymore. We have
no need for witchcraft. We have money. It’s ‘fuck you’ money, the
kind which can buy off islands and small banana republics. We have
the world at our feet. We have no need for witchcraft.”

“But your father and sister use it from time
to time.”

He doesn’t reply to this for a while.

Then: “They have never used it to harm
someone. And they certainly didn’t kill Kyle Fitzpatrick.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. The police investigated it for
a long time, found no evidence to link this to any of us and anyone
else in town, and left it as an unsolved crime. So the Fitzpatricks
have no grouse with us. I won’t deny some sort of witchcraft has
been involved in killing Kyle Fitzpatrick, but we are not the only
witches in the vicinity.”

“Who else is a witch?”

“Those are not my secrets to reveal.”

They have come to a scenic outlook which is
placed on the promontory of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Lucien
parks the Mustang and they both get out. Part of her wonders,
irrationally, if he would push her off the cliff now that he has
told her his secrets.

She shivers in the wind.

This is Lucien!
her brain tells her.
Lucien who held you and made sweet love to you only this morning,
and gazed into your eyes with such ardor and passion and love, even
though he has never uttered the words.

He says, looking out into the ocean, “Your
brother, Jared, has powers too, doesn’t he?”

It’s no use denying it.

“Yes.”

“Witch?”

“Shapeshifter.”

Lucien holds his breath, and then releases
it. “Then he would not be alone here.”

“You’re telling me the Fitzpatricks are
shapeshifters as well.”

He holds her eyes.

“Not all of them. Mainly the males. Brothers,
cousins. They are not the only ones here. There are other families
who prowl the dark forest and in all kinds of guises.”

He is right. The Pacific Northwest is full of
killers.

“I think the Fitzpatricks know about Jared
and me.”

He nods. “It would eventually come to that,
yes. Shapeshifters like to map their territory and mark it out.
They are not as territorial as true beasts, and they understand the
need to co-exist to avoid investigations by the rangers. Still,
accidents occur now and again – especially if a strange
shapeshifter comes to town – and someone is killed.”

“Like old man Pullnam.”

“Like old man Pullnam,” he agrees. “What
about you? Are you a shapeshifter as well?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Any powers then?”

She decides to tell him about the healing and
Conchita Ruiz.

He comes closer to her and takes her hands.
“So you’re a witch as well.”

“No. A healer.”

“Some would call you a green witch.” He moves
his lips to hers and gently kisses her.

She responds, needing the assurance of his
touch that everything still is as it was between them. Their kisses
grow more fervent, and pretty soon, they are frantically feeling
each other’s bodies all over.

A car whizzing by brings them down to ground.
They part for air and laugh.

“Public sex can be enervating,” he
teases.

“That’s one thing that will bring the police
down on us quicker than your coven of witches.”

“I don’t belong to any coven.” He holds her
fiercely. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Shannon.”

Her heart beats faster with a surge of love
for him.

“I know.”

They embrace each other for a long time
before returning to the car and driving back to Dolphin’s Bay.

THE WITCH

Back at work, Shannon and Kirk do not speak
of the incident. It is as if nothing had happened. Kirk is as busy
and cordial as ever, and so is Shannon.

Jared has managed to land himself a job as a
supervisor in a logging company, and so he is near the forest
during the day and kept happy. She hopes he doesn’t get the urge to
shapeshift at work, or it would be most uncomfortable if he were
found out.

Weeks pass. Everything seems to have settled
into an equilibrium, where people are content to be in the exact
same place as they are. Shannon and Lucien are still a couple
without the ‘C’ word, and they are happy. Deliriously so.

Then of course everything has to go to
shit.

*

Shannon is at a Laundromat with a pile of
dirty laundry when a woman walks in to confront her.

“Shannon Bellamy?” the woman says.

The woman is dressed simply in a green shirt
and blue jeans. Her hair is strawberry blonde and she has the
sharpest blue eyes Shannon has ever seen. She is extremely tall,
and she would have been pretty if her features weren’t so
hard-looking.

“Yes?” Something about this woman looks
terribly familiar, and suddenly it hits Shannon.

The woman confirms it.

“I’m Margarete Walker, Lucien’s sister.” She
holds out her hand.

“Hi,” Shannon says cautiously.

She takes the woman’s hand and shakes it.
Margarete’s flesh is cold. Shannon wonders if this is her natural
skin temperature or if she has just come in from the chill. An
instinct tells her that it is the former.

“I wonder if I may speak with you privately,”
Margarete says.

In the brief months that Shannon has dated
Lucien, he has barely spoken about his family. Nor has he offered
to bring her home to meet with them. Shannon attributes this to
Lucien’s resolve to keep her as far away as possible from the
witches. She doubts he has even spoken to his family about her, and
she is content to keep it that way.

But now, apparently, a spoke has been thrown
into the wheel.

Shannon looks around the Laundromat. Only one
other customer is there – a huge man in a plaid shirt and ripped
jeans who resembles the typical logger stereotype. He looks up at
the pair, takes in Shannon’s slim form appreciatively, and looks
away again. Shannon notices the ring on his fourth finger.

“Sure,” she says. “If you could wait till I
finish up. I’m at my final spin cycle, I think.”

“Maybe we could go outside,” insists the
woman.

She looks like one of those impatient types,
Shannon decides. The kind who thinks that people should be moved
around like chessmen. Deciding that the logger would probably not
be interested in her clean clothing, Shannon grabs her jacket and
purse and exits the Laundromat with Margarete Walker.

Once outside, Margarete says: “You are seeing
my brother.”

“Yes,” Shannon says. She is not quite sure
how to approach this. Has Lucien mentioned her? Is she supposed to
play dumb about their relationship? They haven’t rehearsed this,
obviously.

“Well, don’t,” Margarete says abruptly. She
reaches in her jeans pocket for a pack of cigarettes. She offers it
to Shannon. “God, I’m dying for a smoke. You want one?”

“No, thanks, I don’t smoke.” Shannon is
beginning to be irritable. “What’s this all about and what is it to
you if I am dating your brother?”

“He hasn’t spoken about you to us, for sure.”
Margarete lights up, blows a smoke ring into the air and doesn’t
apologize for it.

“He hasn’t spoken much about you either to
me.”

“So he intends to keep you a secret.”

“We are not exactly secretive about going
out. Anyone would have spotted us in a dozen places. He isn’t
married, and we’re not exactly creeping about behind anyone’s
backs.”

“No. But you don’t know everything there is
to know about him.”

“I do know plenty, yes.” Shannon senses the
challenge, and she refuses to back down from this bossy woman.

“Then know this.” Margarete takes a long puff
of her cigarette. “Since he was sixteen, he has been engaged to a
girl named Flora Janssen. She lives in Seattle and she is due to
visit him this weekend.”

Shannon is taken aback. OK, that would be
putting it too mildly. She is sucker punched in the gut. Shock
impacts every sense she possesses.

“Wh-what?” she says.

“You heard me right. Since he was sixteen –
”

“I heard that.” Shannon’s head is reeling,
and the ground suddenly feels a lot closer than a second ago.

How does anyone in this day and age in the
Western world get engaged when they are sixteen unless they are
royalty? Even royalty doesn’t do that anymore. But even as the
thoughts tumble in her head, she thinks she knows why.

Flora Janssen must be a witch. The witch
clans must have gotten together and decided that a union between
the eldest Walker son and the daughter of the Janssens would
produce further lines of powerful witches.

“Then which part of what I said didn’t you
understand?” Margarete says.

Shannon doesn’t think she said that to be
cruel. Margarete is simply someone who has the E.Q. of a worm.

Margarete continues, “My brother is taken. He
has been spoken for. You have no future in his life, and I’ve come
here to you today to ask you not to complicate things. Things are
complicated enough for our family as it is already.”

Shannon has to fight hard to keep her lower
lip from trembling. “Then how come he doesn’t tell me about her
himself? Does he even have a choice in who he is marrying?”

Margarete clicks her tongue impatiently. “I
don’t know what he does or does not tell you, though I suspect he
is telling you more than he should be.”

She pauses significantly at this.
I know
he told you we are a family of witches.

“Lucien Walker isn’t like other people. He
has a birthright. He comes from a very structured lineage, and he
is expected to toe the line or lose his inheritance and standing in
our family completely. My parents had an arranged marriage, as did
my grandparents on both sides.
I
will have an arranged
marriage. In fact, I have been engaged to man from Boston since we
were both fourteen. We are both simply continuing the tradition
passed to us by our parents and their parents before them.

“You are a distraction to him. You are just
another one in a long line of Lucien’s girlfriends – girls he has
been seeing and having casual sex with to bide his time until he is
married to Flora. He may have been seeing more of you than the
others, true, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he will be
married to Flora by the end of October.”

The end of October. Shannon knows what that
signifies.

Samhain.

Halloween.

“Flora knows about Lucien’s girlfriends,”
Margarete continues. “She tolerates his wanderings with
understanding, dignity, and a worldly eye because she knows he has
to sow his seeds before settling down. And that is exactly what he
is doing with you. Sowing his seeds. Nothing more.”

Shannon can’t help feeling like her world is
sinking around her.