Shifter Secrets: Shifter Romance Collection Read online

  Shifter Secrets

  Shifter Romance Collection

  Juniper Hart

  Lola Gabriel

  Text Copyright © 2019 by Juniper Hart

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2019

  Publisher

  Secret Woods Books

  [email protected]

  www.SecretWoodsBooks.com

  Contents

  Eternal Vampire

  Fated Mate

  Dragon Desire

  Mate’s Baby

  Shifter Scandal

  Mate’s Call

  Fire Dragon

  Werewolf Spell

  Other Books You Will Love

  Secret Woods Books

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Eternal Vampire

  Council of Seven

  Prologue

  Jamie Robinson pulled her hair.

  That was how it started.

  It was a typical day in April. The sun was shining outside the kindergarten classroom as the children played inside, Lane among them. She had her hands deep in the sand when she felt a tug at her twin braids.

  Lane turned to see who had done such a thing and why it had happened. Of course it had to be Jamie. He had been making her life miserable from the first day of school, all those months ago. Lane decided it was going to be the last time he put her hands on her, and when she set her wide, emerald eyes on him, he withered back and began to cry. In her mind, she was trying to make him disappear, the base of her long orange tresses still stinging from where he had grabbed her.

  She couldn’t be sure if she had chanted a spell she’d heard her mommy and grandma use, but one was certainly echoing through her mind.

  “Lane! What did you do to Jamie?” Mrs. Morrison demanded, striding toward them, but Lane continued to stare at the boy until he was whimpering with fear. Whatever she was doing seemed to be working.

  “I didn’t touch him!” the five-year-old declared truthfully, finally pulling her eyes away to innocently look up at the teacher. Mrs. Morrison didn’t buy it, and she was sent to the principal’s office to explain her actions. Jamie continued to bawl, unable to talk. Lane vowed that next time, she’d melt his vicious tongue out of his mouth.

  Her mother had been called, and when nothing came of the incident, Julia Aldwin took her daughter home without a word.

  Lane didn’t remember much of what happened after that, except that there was a trip to the stone house on the hill.

  “He must die,” someone told her from a seat that looked like a throne. “Her, too.”

  A long finger extended from the void, but Lane was too busy counting to pay them much mind.

  Seven, Lane counted. There are seven thrones. Are they princes and princesses?

  “Please!” Julia sobbed, dabbing her own green eyes with a tissue. “She’s a child! We make allowances for children!”

  It was only then that Lane realized her mother was crying.

  Why is Mama crying?

  “She continues to disobey the rules,” another ominous voice intoned. “She must suffer the consequences.”

  “Mother, please!” Julia wailed. “Do something!”

  And Lane’s grandma was there, leaning down from the high counter to sigh heavily.

  “Lane, approach, please,” Miriam Aldwin ordered. Lane looked at her mother, who pushed her forward, and the little girl shuffled toward her. “Lane, do you know why you’re here?” Miriam demanded.

  “I tried to disappear Jamie Robinson. I used the spell you taught me, but he didn’t disappear, even though I stared really hard.”

  “Haven’t we told you before that you can’t do that?” Grandma groaned, but Lane thought she might be smiling. It was hard to tell in the strange lighting.

  Lane genuinely could not recall and said so.

  “I thought I was supposed to practice my spells,” she replied in confusion. “Aren’t I?” She looked back and her mother, who hung her head. “Mama, why are you crying?”

  Julia didn’t answer and didn’t meet her daughter’s eyes. Miriam sat back and looked at the others in their chairs.

  “She’s still too young to enforce the rules,” Miriam declared, and there was a wave of protests among them.

  “She fakes it!” one snarled, and Lane saw the flash of his teeth.

  He looks like the Big Bad Wolf, she realized, drawing back toward her mother, who enshrouded her in trembling arms. Suddenly, Lane was afraid.

  “Mama, am I in trouble?” she whispered.

  “I’m not sure yet, Lane. You need to apologize for what you did to Jamie.”

  “I didn’t do anything! He pulled my hair. He’s always picking on me, and no one cares! I only looked at him!”

  There was a groan of resignation among the throne-sitters, and the small woman on her grandmother’s right threw up her hands.

  “Julia, you must control her. How many times must she be brought before the council?”

  “Yes, Laurel,” her mother sighed. “I will control her better.”

  “There will not be a next time, Julia,” the one called Laurel insisted. “You must find a way to keep her from exposing herself to the mortals, or…”

  “Do you understand, Lane?” Grandma asked, but Lane didn’t comprehend anything that was happening, and she wouldn’t for several years. All she knew in that moment was the nearly palpable fear radiating off her mother.

  “Lane, answer Grandma,” Julia whispered. “Say you understand.”

  “I understand,” the child muttered. “Can we go home now?”

  “No,” the Big Bad Wolf snapped. “Not until we have some assurances here.”

  “What would you have me do, Landon?” Julia demanded, her eyes flashing with annoyance. “She is five years old!”

  “I would have you keep her at home until she knows better or until she can accept the consequences of her actions.”

  “Landon, you cannot expect Julia to keep the child at home—” Miriam started to say, but there was a murmur of consensus around the high counter. Lane felt herself begin to tremble.

  “Yes,” Laurel agreed. “You must keep her out of sight until you are sure she understands her powers and what she is capable of.”

  “I-I have a job!” Julia choked. “I have to make a living, and I can’t afford full-time daycare! This is absurd! How will we live? The authorities will come looking for her if I pull her out of school.”

  “The choice is yours, Julia. We can sentence her and that boy to death as mandated by the Rules of the Enchanted. You must know we have already bent over backward to accommodate you because of who you are,” Landon reminded her. “What will it be?”

  “Homeschool for a couple of years might be good for her,” Grandma offered, though there was a note of sorrow in her voice.

  “Make your choice, Julia,” another one ordered.

  “Death?” Lane whispered. “Mama, am I going to die?”

  She had learned about death, her cat Vittorio having passed away recently. Her mother had done a little ceremony for him, but the image of his frozen, dead face was forever etched in Lane’s memory.

  I don’t want to look like V
ittorio! I don’t want to be buried in the ground! It’s cold there! I want my bed!

  “NO!” Julia gasped. “No, baby, you’re not going to die. You’re… you’re just going to stay home with Mama for a while.”

  “It is so ordered.”

  There was the slam of something heavy, and Lane jumped in her mother’s arms. Then they left, the car ride home unbearably quiet as Lane tried to make sense of what had happened.

  “Mama?” she murmured. “Am I in trouble?”

  “No,” Julia answered firmly, steering her Buick into the townhouse parking lot. “You’re not, my love.”

  “Are you mad, Mama?” Lane asked in a small voice. “I’m sorry I tried to disappear Jamie even though he deserved it.”

  “Not at you, Lane. You did nothing wrong. You’re a child, and you deserve better protection than this.” There was a peculiar tone in Julia’s voice, one that Lane had never heard before, and even then, she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  “Mama?”

  “Shh, Lane, everything is going to be fine. You know why?”

  “Why, Mama?”

  “Because one day, you’ll be sitting in that council, and you’ll be able to take down those bastards one by one.”

  “I don’t understand, Mama.”

  Julia turned and smiled wanly at her daughter, patting the child’s knee.

  “Not yet you don’t, but you will. Together, you and I will crumble the Council from the inside out, and they will each pay for all the injustices they’ve ever bestowed upon us.” Julia caught Lane’s confused look and shook her head. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. In due time, you’ll know what needs to be done. For now, just trust your Mama, okay?”

  Lane nodded.

  That was easy to do. Her mother was her whole world, after all. Julia would never steer her wrong.

  1

  “You need to stop looking at me like that,” Sylvie insisted. “I didn’t find anything. I looked twice.”

  Henry snorted and shook his mane of black hair, the ends tickling his neck. He sneered at he paralegal contemptuously.

  “I wouldn’t believe you if your tongue came notarized,” he replied. “Go back through the files and look again. There’s something in there, and I don’t care if it takes all night to find. You’ll do it.”

  Sylvie pouted and leaned across the desk, her ample bosom flashing in his peripheral vision. As always, she was trying to distract him with her sensuality instead of doing her damned work. It might have worked for some of the other partners, but it didn’t do a thing for Henry.

  “Sylvie, I really don’t have time for this,” Henry told her, rising from his desk so abruptly, she fell back in surprise. “I have a meeting that won’t wait.”

  “Oh, can I come?” she asked, and Henry scowled, unsure if she was teasing or not. It was hard to tell with Sylvie, after all.

  “Didn’t I just tell you to go through the discovery box again and find what we missed for the trial tomorrow? I won’t have the prosecution one-upping us on the witness stand. Do you hear me?”

  “Fine,” the paralegal grumbled. “Just leave me to work all night while you go to some party or something.”

  “When you’re named partner, Sylvie, you can do whatever the hell you want. Until then, you do whatever I want. Understood?”

  She grinned impishly. “I like the sound of that,” she joked.

  Henry snorted and stalked toward the door, shaking his head. If only Sylvie had any idea what the impending meeting was about.

  She’d never wave her breasts in my face again. If she didn’t run screaming, she’d come to work in a 17th century puritan dress, covered from head to toe, lest her neck be exposed.

  It was one of those moot thoughts that had no bearing on Henry or how he dealt with his life, and as he made his way to the elevators through the posh law offices of Brandis, Carter and Ross, he dismissed it as quickly as it had come. The fact that he was a vampire was no more a thought in his head than the air he inhaled naturally and freely.

  He had far more pressing matters to attend to that day than the uselessness of his paralegal and the impending murder trial scheduled for the following day.

  Today was the day the new member was introduced to the Council of Seven, although Henry knew as well as anyone that Lane Aldwin was hardly someone who needed to be presented to the elders.

  Many years ago, the little witch had been called before the Seven numerous times, and while that was not the reason Henry remembered her, the Aldwins were renowned, with no real need for formal introduction.

  Even the ones who don’t show themselves in public.

  “Mr. Brandis,” someone called as the elevator doors opened on the fiftieth floor. Henry stifled a groan. He reluctantly turned to eye one of the senior partners as she stood, her arms folded. Her blue eyes flashed with the same annoyance Henry felt. Never did Marjorie miss an opportunity to bother him. Sometimes he wondered if she didn’t just wait by her window, hoping he would chance by.

  What is she even doing up here? She’s supposed to be on the forty-sixth floor, pretending to work. There are too many people in this firm.

  “What is it, Marjorie? I have a very important meeting—”

  “I know what today is,” Marjorie interrupted in a voice which was, in his opinion, too loud. “I just wanted to let you know that several of us are opposed to this.”

  Henry’s annoyance turned to anger, and the elevator doors slid to a close when he did not embark upon the lift, but his attention was fully on Marjorie and her brazen approach.

  “I don’t think I need to tell you how little your opinion matters in this regard,” he spat. “Moreover, I have no idea why you would dare bring this up here.”

  His own crystalline eyes darted about the entryway, but as he suspected, no one was paying them any mind, even though he wished they would. The last thing he wanted in that moment was to be having this discussion.

  “You have some pull,” Marjorie insisted. “You can—”

  Without warning, Henry was in her face, his movements completely undetectable to the naked human eye, and Marjorie gasped at his sudden closeness.

  “First of all,” he hissed, “mind your mouth in public. It would be a shame if you said something that would land you before the Execution Council, wouldn’t it?”

  Marjorie’s already fair face paled even more, but her jaw clenched in determination.

  “I’m just telling you what half of us think,” she retorted, though her tone was much quieter this time, much more reserved. “You are a representative of the Enchanted. You should hear me out.”

  “Secondly,” Henry continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Lane is an Aldwin. There is nothing anyone on the Council can do to keep her from serving, no matter how much you kick and scream.”

  Marjorie’s shoulders sagged slightly, and she shook her head.

  “It’s been five thousand years, Henry,” she whispered. “How much longer must we abide by this ridiculous law—?”

  “You will abide by the Council’s laws as long as they exist!” Henry snarled. “If you bring this up to me in such a manner again, I will see you punished swiftly and severely.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply, and he spun to leave Marjorie staring after him. He didn’t bother with the elevator this time.

  As he fled into the stairwell, his body shifted, his lean, muscular form becoming a small winged creature to take the stairs in a sweeping swoop. He knew he was simply trying to put distance between himself and Marjorie, but it didn’t much matter—her words were only the echo of thousands who were just as disgruntled by the Council change.

  I really don’t know what the other vampires expect me to do about this, Henry thought. I don’t have any choice in the matter. I have no interest in swearing in another Aldwin, not when I liked Miriam so much. Lane will have massive shoes to fill in the wake of her grandmother’s death.

  As he reached the parking level, Henry transformed back to his mortal s
hape and exhaled, straightening his suit jacket before pushing his way into the underground. He wasn’t looking forward to the ceremony, knowing what he knew about the newest council member, but he couldn’t deny that there was a morbid curiosity burning in him about the witch who had been hidden away for the past twenty years.

  Henry vaguely remembered Lane Aldwin, the orange-haired girl with the mass of freckles and wide green eyes.

  She had only been a child the last time she’d been before the Council, but there had been so many who had come and gone throughout the years, it was impossible to recall much more than that. Aside from those earliest days, Henry had not seen nor heard about Lane, though he was not the only one. Something strange had become of the girl after that last council visit, and the rumors were wild.

  Some believed her mother, Julia, had hidden her away to keep her from trouble, long after it was necessary, while others claimed she was simply reclusive and chose to live away from the others. It didn’t much matter to Henry which was true. All he knew, and all he was required to know, was that she was next in the Aldwin line and that Miriam had named her as her successor. It was the rules of the Council.

  It doesn’t matter how up in arms everyone else is about it—she is the descendant of Alaric Aldwin, and her place stands.

  Henry made his way to the Mercedes parked near the stairwell and slipped inside. Even though he had enough to worry about without squeezing the initiation ceremony into his day, his top priority had always been the Council of Seven, and despite his desire to blow it off completely, he knew he couldn’t. Henry had held his seat for almost a thousand years, taking it over when he had stopped aging at twenty-seven. His predecessor had been bitten by a demon in a brawl back then, naming Henry as the Vampire Regent.