Creatures ok anthology, p.13
Creatures of the Dark Anthology, page 13
"So you are afraid then?" the male asked.
The insinuation angered him and he almost opened his mouth to give the command for his clan to attack but as he glanced at them, he hesitated. They understood enough of language to know what the male had said. He couldn't allow them to think he might be afraid of one insignificant human.
"No," he snarled, tightening his grip on the girl’s hair and lifting her out of the mud slightly before shoving her back down.
"I'll give you a fair fight," the male offered, emptying the rounds of bullets from his guns and tossing them all into the dirt. He spun slowly on the spot to show that he had no more weapons.
Oscar surveyed him with a scowl, considering his offer. A human had never treated him with enough respect to offer anything like a fair fight. He was tempted to accept, relishing the thought of a fight with a true opponent. No one had offered him a real challenge for years but something about this male made him think it would be a good fight.
The girl started sobbing as terror consumed her but he ignored it, keeping his attention on the male before him.
She sobbed harder and he let a small growl escape him as he shook her again. In a twist of movement, she snatched a concealed knife from her boot and swept it up towards him. Before he could react, she sheared through her own hair and spun away from him.
Oscar bellowed angrily as he threw aside the handful of silver hair he'd been left clutching, glaring at the Orla girl as she smirked at something over his shoulder.
He turned just in time to catch the male's fist square in the face and a sickening crunch sounded as his nose snapped for the second time in his life, sending blinding pain through his skull.
He dropped the machete as he stumbled backwards, blood pouring into his mouth from his shattered nose. The male followed, closing the gap between them and driving three sharp punches to Oscar's stomach.
He smiled as he realised he'd been right. This was a worthy opponent. Rage flooded him, filling his muscles as he launched into his own attack. Oscar's fighting style had been obvious from the moment he grew beyond six foot tall when he was fourteen. He was a powerhouse, bulldozing his way into fights and flattening anyone who stood against him. But this male was fast, he ducked and dived slamming his own attacks home five times for every one that Oscar landed.
Gunfire sounded close by and Oscar roared with rage at the cowardly weapons. His clan were engaged in their own fights around him but Oscar couldn't spare any attention for them.
He leapt forward, grabbing the male around the waist and trying to grapple him to the ground. Somehow his opponent kept his feet, throwing an elbow into Oscar’s kidney. Oscar held him close despite the pain and threw punch after punch into his side. The male yelled as Oscar felt a rib crack beneath his knuckles and twisted around, swinging a foot behind Oscar’s ankle. He used their combined weight to force Oscar to release him and stumble aside to avoid falling.
As his opponent tried to press his advantage, Oscar swung his elbow back, catching him in the face and sending him sprawling to the ground.
Before Oscar could leap forward to finish the male, a knife flew through the air from somewhere above him and sank into his thigh. He howled his pain into the sky but didn't let it slow him, running forwards without removing the blade and jumping on top of the male, fists flying.
His opponent got his arms up to cover his face. Oscar had him pinned beneath him and wasn't about to let go. He could taste blood from his broken nose and death was calling him on, begging him to finish the man who fought for his life beneath him.
Impossibly, the male managed to force his knees up and launched Oscar backwards. He crashed into the mud where his head slammed into a rock, dazing him for a few precious seconds. The male leapt to his feet and threw himself on top of Oscar, pinning his arms down with his legs and punching again and again, striking him repeatedly in his already broken nose. The pain was blinding. Consuming. It rattled through his skull like nothing he had ever experienced before.
The whole world condensed into the merciless pounding. His arms stopped straining to escape his opponents’ knees. There was only pain. So powerful that everything else he had ever been became irrelevant. There was only pain.
He was going to die. The thought didn't fill him with fear. Death was power.
His opponent’s knee shifted and suddenly his arm was free. He couldn't resist the urge to fight. If it was his time, so be it. But he would fight until his last breath.
Oscar swung his arm wide before launching a fist straight into the male’s side and throwing him off.
He pushed himself to his knees, blinking as darkness curtained his gaze and trying to get his bearings. Oscar blinked up as his opponent swung a foot straight into his face.
Everything went black. Death was power. So he let the darkness take him.
When he finally woke, it was nearly dawn. The clearing was empty, the humans and his clan long gone.
He pushed himself upright on unsteady feet as his head spun.
He frowned around the clearing in confusion, trying to piece together what had happened.
He'd been defeated but his opponent obviously hadn't finished the job. He snarled as shame washed over him. If his clan had thought him dead they'd probably scattered. The humans might even have managed to escape.
Oscar paced the clearing until he found their tracks. Four humans had walked away from him hours ago.
Anger filled him as he glared at the boot prints in the mud.
He had been defeated in front of his clan and to make it worse, they'd left him alive. Everything he'd worked for was gone. The clan would never accept him as King knowing he'd been beaten.
Unless…
He frowned at the boot prints as a plan started to form in his mind. They'd left him alive so there hadn't truly been a victor. If he managed to find the male again and beat him, the clan would have to keep following him.
The thought made him smile. The humans would never expect a Creeper King to track them down but he would. Because he wasn't just a Creeper. He was a man too. And the humans didn't know what hell they'd just released.
First he had to gather his clan. Then, they'd hunt.
Wondering how the world coped when the contamination was released? Read Kaitlyn's story in...
Afflicted
(Tainted Earth Saga book one)
Books by Susanne Valenti
Cage of Lies Saga:
Chained
Linked
Broken
Bound
Free
Cage of Lies novellas:
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Embers
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Afflicted
Altered
Adapted
Age of Vampires Saga
ETERNAL REIGN
ETERNAL SHADE
ETERNAL CURSE
ETERNAL VOW
ETERNAL NIGHT
ETERNAL STORM
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BEARLY MARRIED
By Zoe Ashwood
Chapter One
Alexandre
June 4, 1991
Alexandre Thibault stood on the doorstep of an extravagant town house in the old center of Quebec City, gathering the strength—okay, fine, the courage—to ring the doorbell. Somewhere behind that door lived a woman who would, hopefully, become his bride.
The only issue was that he’d never seen her before.
She was the last of the three pure-blood black bear shapeshifters who’d made the cut when he’d been compiling a list of potential wives. Her father, a successful businessman with ties to copper mining and logging, had agreed to this meeting when Alexandre had suggested a business proposition.
Her considerable dowry in exchange for certain logging rights on Thibault ancestral lands.
The deal made him sick if he was being honest with himself. He was essentially trying to buy a bride—like she was property. At twenty years old, an arranged marriage was hardly what he’d imagined, but after attempting every other option to save his clan and failing epically, he realized there was only one way to bring money into his family’s accounts. He was going to have to marry an heiress.
To make matters worse, his first two meetings of the day had gone to hell. The two families he’d invited to Quebec clearly lusted after the Thibault influence, or they wouldn’t have even considered selling their daughters.
The first, a lovely woman in her early twenties, had burst into tears five minutes into the meeting, explaining—through heaving sobs—that she was pregnant with her father’s young business partner who’d convinced her to elope with him as soon as she returned home from Canada. Alexandre had wished her well and made a mental note to send her a nice card for her wedding.
But the second meeting had really pissed him off. The parents, a power couple from Saskatchewan, had presented him their sixteen-year-old daughter who looked absolutely terrified at the prospect of marrying a stranger. Enraged, Alexandre had sent them packing, then made a phone call to the Shifter Assembly of North America to inform them that the parents were trying to pressure their underage daughter into marriage.
Now, he tugged at his shirt collar, wishing he could loosen his tie. But he needed to make a good impression, so he smoothed down his hair, rolled his shoulders back, and pressed on the button that read: Bergeron.
Moments later, he was being shown into a large, light salon by a uniformed housekeeper who bowed mutely and retreated the moment he cleared the threshold of the room. A cluster of fancy armchairs and sofas, done all in pastels, circled a coffee table, which was all he could make out for a moment. The light pouring in through the windows was enough to blind him after the darkness of the hallway, and he blinked once, twice, before the room came back into focus.
He registered the shifters’ scents before he distinguished their faces. Three of them, all bears, a man and two women. Then the man stood, striding forward to extend a hand.
“Pierre Bergeron,” he barked, his voice a touch too loud in the quiet of the room. “This is my wife, Claudette.”
A slight woman with bowed shoulders stepped up, offering him her hand. “Enchantée,” she murmured.
Alexandre bowed over her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, madame.”
Then he focused on the third person in the room. She’d got up from the sofa but hung back, her hands clasped in front of her. Her light-blue summer dress complemented her eyes, and her fair hair had been swept back into a severe coiffure, accenting the delicate features of her face.
Her father must have registered Alexandre’s interest, since he motioned her forward with an impatient flick of his hand. “And my daughter, Christine.”
Alexandre didn’t dare to breathe. He took her cool hand and shook it, wishing he’d thought to bring her flowers. Then maybe he’d make a better impression on her. He found himself wanting to impress this serious, cautious woman, not just because she was his last chance at saving his clan, but simply because she was stunning.
“Bonjour,” she said, “pleased to meet you, Monsieur Thibault.”
Chapter Two
Christine
Alexandre Thibault isn’t old at all. That was the first thought to enter Christine’s mind when the man who would perhaps become her husband had stepped into the room. She’d been afraid that the man her father brought home for her to marry would be twice her age, but for once, her fears had been unfounded.
Her second thought was that he was ridiculously handsome. Taller than her by almost a head, he had broad shoulders that were not as bulky as her father’s yet showed where he would fill out in the years to come. His jaw, clenched with what she guessed were nerves, was strong and clean-shaven, and the expression in his dark eyes was intense enough to have her squirming.
He seemed to be about twenty, probably younger than her by a year or two, but the furrow between his brows hinted at a life less frivolous than was usual for men that age. What had happened to him to make him so serious? And what would drive a man who looked like that into an arranged marriage?
Money, her father had said. Pure and simple. But now, peering at Alexandre over the rim of her porcelain teacup, she was wondering whether something else was behind his decision.
“Please, call me Alexandre,” he’d said as he’d taken her hand and shook it with just the right amount of pressure. He’d looked her in the eyes, unlike most of the men of her acquaintance, and she’d blushed like a school girl.
Now he kept sneaking glances at her while her father bored them all with stories of his business ventures, and she studied him, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She tried to calm her nerves by counting her breaths but kept losing her count every time his intense gaze met hers. What kind of a husband would he make? Would he be faithful to her?
And most importantly: What kind of wife did he want? The answer to that question would inform all her behavior from this point onward, because Christine had every intention of being the perfect mate.
Anything to escape her home.
If her only means of escape was marriage to a stranger, so be it. He could hardly be worse than her father. So she gave him a shy smile, fluttered her eyelashes just a bit, and stamped down all feelings of guilt when Alexandre’s cheeks turned a deep russet and he tugged at the collar of his crisp white shirt.
She intended to be a good wife to him. Give him children, run his home, support his business, anything he needed, as long as he took her far away from this place.
But he would hardly fall in love—or at least lust—with her if her parents continued talking at him, so Christine set down her cup and did something she’d learned not to do when she was a little kid: she interrupted her father.
“Papa, I would very much like to speak to Alexandre alone.”
Her father’s fist tightened on his knee, and he turned an ugly mottled pink, but he controlled his temper—public displays of rage were bad for business. “I don’t think that’s—” he started to say, but to Christine’s surprise, her mother stood, replacing her own teacup in its little saucer.
“That’s a wonderful idea. Come, Pierre, let’s give the young ones a chance to get to know each other properly.”
Since this was the most her mother had said in a while, Christine stared at her, open-mouthed, before she remembered that this was exactly what she wanted.
“Merci, Maman,” she said. “We’ll keep the door ajar if that makes you feel better.”
With Alexandre looking curiously from one to the other, Christine’s father had no choice but to get up and leave the room. Christine hoped she and her mother wouldn’t pay for this boldness later on—but maybe if she caught Alexandre’s attention and secured this transaction, her father would be mellow enough to let it go.
Moments later, she was left alone with Alexandre Thibault, who stared at her over the glass-topped coffee table. And under his dark gaze, Christine found herself at a loss for words. What did one say to her future husband? Please, save me would sound too desperate. I would love to be your wife would clue him in to the fact that something wasn’t right here. She’d practiced conversation starters, but the man she had imagined talking to had always been some middle-aged businessman of her father’s choosing, not this—this young, handsome man with shining eyes and a delectable, woodsy scent.
“Do you want children?” she blurted instead, then closed her eyes in mortification. Do you want children? Seriously? What twenty-year-old wanted to discuss children?
As she expected, Alexandre let out a huff—half laugh, half surprised gasp. But when she lifted her gaze to gauge how badly she’d messed up, he appeared thoughtful.
“Eventually, yeah. Sooner rather than later, I guess.” His mouth was pursed like he hadn’t given this too much thought, but he was being serious, considering her question carefully. “I’m not sure you know, but until several months ago, I never thought I’d be the one taking over the clan. Now that I am, I suppose I’ll need an heir.”
An heir. Wow, no pressure there. But he’d given her a bit of information she needed to explore. “Who was supposed to inherit?”
“My sister,” he said, and a shadow passed behind his eyes as he said it, enough to make her wonder what the full story was. “And now my cousin is saying he is going to contest my claim, meaning that I need a solid foundation from which I can defend it. Having a wife—a pure-blood wife—would help me with that.”
And there it was, the real reason he needed her. It was slightly better than just wanting her for money, but it still made her feel like an object who could just as easily be replaced by a better alternative if one came along. He spoke quietly, though, like maybe he wanted to keep this reasoning between them. His cheeks were still flushed, and he gripped his hands together until his knuckles whitened. Was he as desperate for this match as she was?
“Why do you want to marry me?” he asked before she found a good answer to his confession. When she narrowed her eyes at him, he added, “I know what your father wants from this deal, but why are you going along with it?”
Because my father is a monster. Again, the full truth was out of the question, so she gave him a partial one.
“I want my own house, a home. Children. My father has very clear ideas about who I can marry, and since potential husbands aren’t exactly knocking down our door, you’re my best choice of achieving that.” She paused to look down at her own clenched fingers and forced herself to untangle them, smoothing her palms over the embroidered fabric of her dress. She counted the tiny roses on the hem, sliding the pad of her finger over them until her heartbeat slowed down. “And it doesn’t hurt that by agreeing to this, I’d be marrying into one of the most powerful clans in North America.”
