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Torn: A Shifter of Consequence Tale (Shifters of Consequence Book 5), page 1
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Torn
A Shifter of Consequence Tale
Copyright 2020 by Mazzy J. March
ISBN: 978-1-68361-448-7
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing LLC
Table of Contents
Academy Books from Decadent Publishing You Might Enjoy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
A Sneak Peek at the next Shifter of Consequence Tale - Tether
An Excerpt from Survivor – The First Shifter of Consequence Tale
I’m stuck between the alpha and his brother, not able to choose. Maybe I don’t have to.
Watching my friend Wendi with her mates has been bittersweet. She deserves happiness, and I want her to have all the best in her life, but I’ve sat in limbo, wanting Samson from afar for years. He wants me but he says his priority is his pack. He doesn’t have time for a mate.
Until his twin brother Tris came back to town and started, well, for lack of a better term, sniffing around me.
They both flirt. They both aggravate the fire out of me.
I want them both.
The thing is, the brothers aren’t technically on speaking terms. Worse than that, Samson banished Tris years ago for something nobody will explain to me. If he learns Tris is back, will he send him away again?
Not the best circumstances to broach the harem idea on them.
I’m torn and honestly, I don’t want to choose.
Torn is the 5th book in a paranormal reverse harem shifter series featuring members of the Midnight Alder Pack. This is the first volume of Christie’s story. It is a why choose werewolf romance with a slow burn buildup sure to make your toes curl. Relationships develop over the course of this supernatural series and, of course, Mazzy guarantees an HEA.
Academy Books from Decadent Publishing You Might Enjoy
The Lycan Academy by Mazzy J. March
First Howling
Second Growl
Third Snarl
Jaded Love
The Academy of Fire and Ash by Mazzy J. March
Betrayed by Dragons
Coveted by Dragons
Mated to Dragons
Alien Academy by Jenna M. Jett
First Contact
Second Sighting
Third Encounter
Shifters of Consequence
Survivor
Legacy
Triumph
Dominion
Torn
Torn
A Shifter of Consequence Tale
By
Mazzy J. March
Chapter One
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I slammed the phone onto the counter and then had to check to make sure I didn’t break the damned thing. Samson wasn’t taking my calls. Tris was acting like I wasn’t alive.
It was hard to live day to day, eating, drinking, breathing, when you felt like your heart was being ripped in half constantly.
But I’d kept it together, for the battle, for my best friend’s wedding, for normalcy. But now, in this stillness, I felt like I was being shredded from the inside out, like dry-rotted fabric that just couldn’t take the weight of being here.
Why were they being so stubborn?
I walked outside, basking in the morning sunlight beaming down on my face. Stopping beside the flower beds, I put my hands on my hips and raised my eyes to the sky. Breathe in and out. Listen to the wind caress the leaves and branches. Feel the warmth of the sun. See the colors of the flowers.
Be here in this moment.
Yeah, I was trying all kinds of things to get my mind off of them. None of it worked.
A noise in the distance caught my attention, and I knew immediately what it was—or rather who it was.
Tris.
He was getting into his truck across the road. My wolf senses picked up on his scent, all crisp linens and amber. He paused outside the open door, his hand gripping the top of the window, and looked down. Even from here, I could see his knuckles turn white as he almost broke the handle on the door. That vein popped out along the side of his neck.
He knew I was here as vividly as I knew how close he was.
There was something between us—even my wolf perked up in his presence. She called him that word, but I refused to recognize it yet.
Especially when I was torn between two men.
I’d known since I was a girl Samson was mine. Ever since he’d shared his peanut butter and honey sandwich with me even though everyone knew Samson ate like a starving bear.
My link to Samson hadn’t faltered.
But now, Tris was in the picture.
And Samson was ignoring me.
If only those two were speaking. If only they weren’t in some kind of decade-long feud.
If only they could both be mine. Wendi’s four men got along fine. But these two? Not a chance. I had to accept that.
One day I would have to choose. The impending choice formed a knot right under my sternum and threatened to drill right through into my spine.
I turned to get a better view. Tris exhaled, climbed into his truck, and drove down the road, not even lifting a hand to wave or dipping his chin like guys tended to do.
Something had happened between the last time I’d seen him and now. He had flirted with me before and nearly kissed me several times.
Maybe I was just dreaming.
Torn between two men was a shitty place to exist.
Frustrated, I went back in the house and wandered around for a while, upset and at a loss. Tris and Samson were not only the two men I loved, they were brothers. Twins. Identical twins who could not be more different in some ways and who hadn’t spoken to one another in a decade. At least to my knowledge. Ten years ago, Tris had been banished from the pack for reasons nobody seemed to be able to identify. It was all hush-hush with the exception of whispers and gossip. Some called him a traitor or claimed he’d tried to take the alpha position from his brother who’d been born five minutes earlier.
Not that birth order mattered in this case. From what I’d overheard in pack gossip, either of them could have been alpha, and their father had encouraged them to compete from the day they were born, so it was no wonder they weren’t besties.
Their own parent had made them enemies.
But I did burn with curiosity about what the heck happened between them later that sent Tris away for so long and also what brought him back. Banished, he was not allowed on pack lands—and to my knowledge had only been there one time. But no law prevented him from being my neighbor here in town even though technically he was in pack range.
Clearly he didn’t give a shit about pack range.
I’d tried to nudge for information a few times both from him and his brother the alpha, to no avail. Tris just shut me down, and Samson…well, since Samson hadn’t even known Tris was here until an incident just weeks before, I had tried to tiptoe even more. And… “Someone mentioned you have a brother besides Brandon,” had just gotten me a good view of the backside of Samson walking away.
Brandon had told me, shortly before he and the others wed my best friend Wendi, that he was not getting in the middle and didn’t want to discuss the matter.
Brandon was good and bad like that. He was excellent at keeping a secret but not good at giving out info when a girl needed it. I guessed they were one in the same.
I decided to take a shower and go visit Samson—I guessed because I liked being ignored. He’d done nothing but ignore me since the wedding, but before that, I’d really had the impression he returned my feelings. At least there was a huge charge in the air wheneve r we were together, and his support when I wanted to fight in the Rattlecreek war had shown me his respect.
As I drove toward the pack lands, I wondered if I’d lost them both and if I could stand being with one and not the other. I’d watched Wendi with her mates—Cashel, Escher, Brandon, and Moss—as their relationships grew. While my friend had been concerned about jealousy or other negative emotions between them, no jealousy or anger or anything had emerged. They’d been good friends whose bond only grew when they met and married Wendi.
The two who held my heart were so the opposite. Brothers who, aside from the scene at the wedding, did not even acknowledge one another. Brandon was fine with both, cordial, and seemed so happy to be around either. I thought it should be problematic that he’d kept Tris’s return from the alpha, but if so, they’d worked it out between them.
I turned off the highway and headed down the private road. Soon I could see both the alpha’s house and the one built by Wendi’s mates for her. They were very close in size, although the alpha’s was a more traditional home than the new cabin-style a short distance away. Just seeing the redwood logs rising three stories made my heart happy. My friend’s new husbands had built her a magnificent place to live. I wished them all many years of happiness.
Would it be all right to drop in unannounced? With their marriage so recent, they might want privacy, so I decided after I attempted to visit Samson—who would probably ignore me or send me away—I’d send a text to see if Wendi was in the mood for company. If I had the men of my dreams under my roof, I’d probably never come out.
Chapter Two
Tris wasn’t allowed to be there. He knew it. I knew it. If the pack’s attentions weren’t completely on the new harem in our pack, Wendi and her mates, and how they absolutely captivated the people around us, things wouldn’t be going so smoothly.
His hands wouldn’t be grazing the place where the zipper at the back of my dress ended. His eyes wouldn’t be fixed on mine, piercing me through and through. Our hips wouldn’t be touching. And I never would’ve seen him in this suit which, if possible, made him look ten times sexier.
“What are you thinking about?” Tris whispered. His sweet breath fanned over my face, making my wolf absolutely preen inside me. It was forbidden, all of this. He wasn’t supposed to be on pack lands, not even close. He wasn’t supposed to be here with me.
Why was it that forbidden felt so damned good?
I shrugged, but he hooked his finger under my chin and tipped it upward, forcing me to meet the gaze that seemed to cage me in place. “Answer me, Christie.”
Shivers spindled down my spine at his bass tone, penetrating me. “I’m wondering why no one is making you leave.”
He chuckled, the movement jostling us both. “Because it’s a celebration. He doesn’t want to stir the pot, for lack of a better word. He’s letting your friend Wendi and her mates have their night. But trust me, he is thinking it. It’s blazing in his eyes.” He winked at me. “Wanna see?”
I never got a chance to answer the question. Instead, he spun us on the dance floor so I could look over his shoulder at Samson. Everything inside me clenched and warmed at the same time.
Ironically, that vintage sound about easy Sunday mornings floated in my ears, but nothing about my situation was easy. Not even close.
“He’s upset. See the way his jaw moves back and forth? The way his ears get red? My brother has been an open book since the day he was born.”
Tris would know. He was the eldest. That’s what his trouble was and why he wasn’t supposed to be here.
All because of birth order.
Well, most of it.
“I don’t like making him upset,” I blurted, wanting to take it back and yet knew it was the truth all the same.
“I know, darlin’. I know you don’t. I don’t like it, either, but he’s choosing this.”
I blew out a breath and leaned my forehead against Tris’s chest. I couldn’t watch Samson be so upset at me or at all. I knew that what I was doing was practically killing him from the inside out. Or maybe I was hoping it was. Damn it. This was too much. I needed a drink. “You are choosing this, too. You could go to him. Ask him… I don’t know.”
“Yeah, because Samson is the most tender-hearted man in the world. You know that wouldn’t work, Christie. It would take a work of the gods to fix what has transpired between me and my brother. I know what you’re hoping for but I’m afraid we can’t—”
“We can. We’re here. Let’s just enjoy this night, please.”
“I can give you tonight. That’s all I can give you. But I will always be near.”
Those words that Tris spoke to me were the last I’d heard from him in days. Weeks maybe? I didn’t know. Everything seemed to run together lately.
“Hello?” Wendi answered on the first ring. She was a first-ring kind of friend, and I knew I could get some good advice from her.
“You have time for me and lunch?” I asked, hopefulness lacing my tone.
“Of course. Are you okay?”
Her question flipped a switch inside me, and a sob was my answer. I wasn’t a crying girl per se, but lately my emotions were a fucking hurricane that never stopped swirling and creating chaos.
“Christie, get over here now. Brandon…” I heard her put the phone away from her mouth and talk to her mate. “I think we have to go get Christie. Can you get the truck?”
“No.” I forced myself to speak the words. “No, I don’t need a ride.”
Wendi breathed hard. “Are you sure? I can be there in ten minutes. It’s no problem.”
“I know, but I’d rather come to you. There’s no ghosts at your house.”
“Ghosts?” she asked. “Get over here before I get more worried, okay?”
“I’m already on my way.” Not far at all.
I pulled up the bottom hem of my shirt and wiped my face, not giving a shit that it smeared my mascara and made me look like a feral raccoon. Something had to give or I was going to snap in half.
And I wasn’t the type of girl to sit around and wait for someone to decide my life.
Chapter Three
Having decided not to humiliate myself by trying to visit Samson after all, I parked close to Wendi’s home and took a moment to wipe away the mascara streaks because maybe I did give a shit. Or at least I didn’t want her and her mates to feel they needed to rescue me. I didn’t need rescuing, just someone to listen. And maybe a sandwich.
Their home was the biggest “log cabin” I’d ever seen. It stood three stories tall, with a wide wraparound porch and balconies on each bedroom upstairs. Her mates had built is specially for her, and together they’d all picked out every appliance and stick of furniture. I’d been present sometimes when they were making selections from websites or sending for fabric samples and things, and their laughter had warmed my heart. Even the occasional friendly squabble had never held the slightest rancor.
My friend had four dreamboat wolves who adored her and put her first in all things. All they wanted to do was make her happy. And, miracle of miracles, they got along with each other. I’d never seen the slightest bit of jealousy.
Why couldn’t the two my wolf insisted were my mates do the same? They were brothers, twins, but I hadn’t ever heard them so much as speak to one another. I stomped up the porch steps to where big antique urns spilling over with red and white geraniums bracketed the door. The porch light looked like a lantern from a nineteenth century carriage wired for the modern age. Hell, it probably was exactly that. The welcome mat said Happy Times Within. I paused there, hand lifted to knock on the gorgeous green-painted door with its stained-glass insert.
Another custom touch, the insert depicted my friends in their wolf form. All five frolicking in a field of flowers the same colors as the ones in the urns. Maybe I just wanted to go home and not have to witness how well other people’s lives were going when mine was falling apart.
But before I could go, the door opened, and Brandon stood there. “Christie, come on in. Wendi’s in the kitchen.”
