A Very Merry Alpha Solstice E-Book

Rose Renee

• Herausgeber: Midnight Romance
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It's December, and Declan, Parker and Laurie, a.k.a. The Shifter Stooges, aren't feeling very festive. But when a call comes from Lucius the Vampire King, they are sent on a merry adventure. They must:

• Complete the mission
• Fall in Love
• Find their holiday spirit
• Claim their mates
• Save the day!

And do it all in their own funky, weird way.

Leseprobe

A Very Merry Alpha Solstice

Renee Rose

Lee Savino

Midnight Romance Publishing

Copyright © December 2023 A Very Merry Alpha Solstice by Renee Rose and Lee Savino

All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published in the United States of America

Midnight Romance, LLC

This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book contains descriptions of many BDSM and sexual practices, but this is a work of fiction and, as such, should not be used in any way as a guide. The author and publisher will not be responsible for any loss, harm, injury, or death resulting from use of the information contained within. In other words, don’t try this at home, folks!

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

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ChapterOne

Parker

My day starts as all my days start. With violence.

“I’m gonna stuff ya and cook ya like a Christmas goose,” comes the shout from the kitchen. Whoever said an Irish brogue is soothing to the ear never met Declan.

I raise my hat and blink at the living room filled with bright Tucson light.

An explosion of white feathers precedes Laurie bursting through the door to the kitchen. The tall, lanky shifter crosses the room in two bounds, finding shelter behind the worn armchair I’ve been sleeping in every night.

“What now?” I groan.

Declan stalks out holding a frying pan filled with charred contents. “He burned the bacon. Again.”

The smell is enough to clue me in to what happened. Like the inside of a dumpster fire. I crane my head to look at Laurie, who’s doing a bad job of cowering behind my chair, seeing as he’s twice as tall as it. “Just cook it in the oven next time. Lay it out on a sheet pan and cook it at–”

“Sacrilege!” Declan shouts. “If my ma found out we were baking bacon like a bloody shortbread–”

“There’s t-t-t-urkey–” Laurie holds up a pack of turkey bacon, but Declan’s growl cuts him off. The frying pan Declan was holding hits the linoleum with a clunk, and then a big black dog sails over me to attack Laurie. There’s a scuffle behind me, complete with shouts and kicks to the back of my chair.

I'd join in, but I’m too tired. I let my head rest on the back of the worn upholstery while Laurie dashes in a circle around me with Declan the dog chasing him. Not unlike roadrunner and coyote, if roadrunner was an owl shifter shedding white feathers and coyote was an Irish wolfhound crossed with mangy mutt.

It ends when Declan the dog snatches the turkey bacon out of Laurie’s hands. He bounds back to the kitchen door, shifts into man form–still holding the plastic-wrapped turkey bacon in his teeth. Naked, he walks to the trash can and drops the package in. “I’ll nae let that abomination in me home. What do I look like, a vegetarian?”

“Eating turkey doesn’t make you a vegetarian.” I hold up my hat to block the sight of Declan’s naked body. “Now put some clothes on. You’ll give me indigestion.”

Declan grabs the frying pan and holds it over his bare dick. “Did you sleep out here?” he asks, his scowl deeper than usual. If it were anyone else, I’d read that as concern.

“Yes.” Mostly, I didn’t sleep. But it’s better than the alternative–thrashing around in the sheets, strangled by bad dreams.

“We need more bacon,” Declan says.

“We need money to buy it,” I shoot back. “And guess who bet all of ours on Caleb’s fight?”

Declan grins. “‘Twas a grand fight.”

“That was the fight to defend the shifter fight club. It wasn’t the actual fight. Caleb’s fight had to be rescheduled. And in the meantime, all our money’s tied up.” I settle my hat back on my head. The weight usually helps me think, but today it makes me want to go back to sleep.

A shadow falls over me as Laurie steps to my side, blocking out the sun. “W-w-we could get j-j-jobs.”

“We already tried that.” The stint with Declan and Laurie dressed as giant sandwiches, roaming the median and shouting at passersby to advertise a local restaurant gave me a three day migraine.

I can still feel an echo of the pain in the back of my head. Or maybe that’s the lack of sleep combined with the noise Declan’s making in the kitchen, banging pots and pans.

“M-m-may b-b-be…” Laurie tries to say and falls silent.

His stutter is getting worse. My dreams are getting worse. Declan’s mostly the same, which is to say he’s nuttier than a peanut butter factory.

“Ya know what we need?” Declan’s back, naked except for a frilly yellow apron. He holds a mixing bowl in the crook of one elbow and points a whisk dripping with yellow yolk at me. “Some Christmas cheer.”

“That’s the last thing we need. Do you even celebrate Christmas?” A lot of shifters don’t do Christian holidays on account of the early church hunting our ancestors as demons.

“Do I?” Declan does a double take that makes his apron flutter dangerously. He drops the whisk in the bowl and crosses himself. “Me ma’d kill me if she heard ya doubting her good Christian boy.”

“There’s s-s-solstice,” Laurie says helpfully. He’s found his glasses. The coke-bottle lenses make his big, round eyes even bigger.

“Or Hanukkah. Or Kwanza. Even Diwali. All holidays dedicated to joy and light. Whose idea was it to say, at this dark and depressing time of year, we should all be joyful?” Nothing’s worse than being depressed and surrounded by people faking happiness. “Just let us be depressed.”

“That’s it.” Declan tosses the bowl onto the counter, sending the contents slopping down the cabinets. “I’m getting a tree.” He turns and gives us a full moon. Laurie and I groan. I pull down the brim of my hat over my eyes.

“Laurie!” Declan shouts. “Come help me.”

My phone beeps. I dig in the chair cushions for it, finally unearthing it. The screen reads: missed call. He Who Shall Not Be Named. I get chills, and my wolf whines and tries to hide in a corner. That’s our call sign for Lucius, King of the Vampires.

It’s a bad idea to owe a vampire a favor. They're worse than the human mafia, except if you renege, instead of sleeping with the fishes you’ll be an involuntary blood donor. Either way you’re dead.

In Lucius’ case, he took pity on us and used us for odd jobs. And no job is odder than ones you do for a vampire king. That ended after he met his mate and discharged our debt.

But he still has us on speed dial. Because just like the mob, you can never escape a vampire.

I hit replay just in time for heavy metal music to come blasting through the speakers Declan insisted on installing.

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly–” Twisted Sister sings, interspersed with Declan’s cussing and howls.

“Shut up,” I shout, holding my cell to one ear and pressing my hat over the other. “I'm trying to listen to my voicemail.”

Declan returns. He’s still naked under the apron, now with a Santa hat on his head. Laurie has a tattered wreath around his neck.

“What are you doing?” I sigh.

“I can’t find the tree.”

“There is no tree. Not any more. The firecracker incident, remember?”

“We need to buy a tree.”

“No. No tree.”

“It’ll do ya good.”

“Declan–”

“Look at Laurie!” Declan waves, stirring the air until the room resembles an explosion in a pillow factory. “He’s so stressed he’s shedding feathers.”

Laurie pokes his head out of the feathery cloud, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “B-b-birds d-d-don’t shed feathers. We m-m-molt them.”

“Shut up.” Declan sneezes.

“We’re all a little on edge,” I say. “But I’ve got good news.” I hold up the phone. “A call from the King of Vampires.”

“Shite!”

“T-t-that’s g-g-good n-n-news?”

“He’s got a job for us.” I give Laurie a sour look. “Careful what you wish for.”

ChapterTwo

Parker

“W-w-what job?”

“We have to pick up a couple of packages.”

“Right.” Declan rushes away and returns wearing jeans and boots. He pulls on a shirt and rubs his hands together, his eyes flashing bright green. His animal is close to the surface. “Let’s do this.”

I’ll need to go slowly and spell things out carefully, like I’m talking to a toddler. “First we need a car or bus that will fit all of us–”

“Done.” Declan whirls around and leaps right out the window. There’s a pained yip.

“He forgot about the cacti,” I tell Laurie. “Again.” I lean out the window and shout to Declan’s retreating form. “Where are you going?”

“To see a man about a van!” he shouts over her shoulder.

“Is he going to walk there?” I ask Laurie. The owl shifter shrugs, and the movement sends more tiny, downy feathers wafting into the air.

I rub my face. It’s going to be a long December.

Two hours later, Declan pulls up in a VW bus with mismatching orange panels. There’s a huge evergreen tree lashed to the top of it, the tip of it bowing over the windshield.

Laurie and I head out of the house to meet him. “What’s this?”

“The van.”

“What’s with the tree?”

He shrugs. “It came with the bus.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Declan. Did you steal this bus?”

In reply, he lays on the horn. Laurie’s already slid the side door open to climb into the back seat. He looks back, catches my eye and shrugs.

“Fine.” I growl, settling my hat firmly on my head. “But I’m driving.”

Turns out Declan is rubbish at sitting still and riding shotgun, so I banish him to the backseat while I follow my GPS to the first location coordinates Lucius sent me. We pull off the highway onto a long dirt road. After a mile of kicking up red dust, we reach the drop.

“Is this it?” Declan squints at the squat building in the middle of nowhere. There are two gas pumps out front, but the sign says gas is eighty cents a gallon, so it hasn’t been in use in a while.

I double check my phone. “I guess so. I don’t really have service, but this is where he said to go for the first package.”

“Any idea what the package is? What it looks like?”

“None.”

“Right.” Declan rubs his hands together. “Let’s see what we got.”

We spill out of the van together and approach the building. I rub grime off the old windows and cup my hands around my eyes to see into the space. It’s an old convenience store, the racks cleared out long ago, and now covered in spider webs.

Laurie prods the door, and it sighs open with a creak that makes me shiver.

“Not creepy at all.”

“Oh come on,” Declan says. “Ya think the king of the vampires sent us out here on a wild goose chase, just to get us shanked in the middle of nowhere? If he wanted to kill us, he could just rip our heads off or drink us dry.”

“Not helping,” I grit out.

“This place smells abandoned.” Declan sniffs the air.

But there’s another scent, faintly floral. I follow it to the back, but there’s nothing but a brass cash register from the 1800s. “Dead end.”

The shadows move behind us, and there’s the unmistakable sound of a racked shotgun. We turn as one, shocked someone snuck up on us without us scenting them.

A slim figure stands in the door with the gun trained on us. “State your business.” The voice is female.

I raise my hands high into the air. “I’m Parker. This is Declan and Laurie. We were sent by–”

The shotgun lowers. “Lucius the Vampire King. Took you long enough.” She turns, settling the gun at ease onto her shoulder. “This way.”

We scramble after her. She’s already walking down the dusty road, but a few strides, and I’ve caught up. She’s a five foot nothing dark-haired woman with a pound and a half of black eyeliner edging her brown eyes. She looks familiar.

“Do I know ya?” Declan asks.

“You tell me, Whiskey Dick.” She glares at him.

“I knew it,” he snaps his fingers. “You’re one of the shifters rescued from the slavers.”

“Ding ding.” She wrinkles her nose. She used to have a nose ring, I remember. It’s gone now.

“Fiona, was it?” His voice turns soft and crooning. “A fine Irish name for a gorgeous lass such as yerself.” I don’t have to look to know he’s got a grin and that look in his eye. His scent has turned candy sweet.

The goth girl sniffs and scowls at the road. Up ahead, there are a few buildings with empty door frames. A ghost town.

“You live here?”

She shrugs.

I toss Laurie the VW bus keys. “Follow us, as best you can.” He nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and scurries back the way we came.

The place is overgrown, bushes and cacti crowding around the buildings. A roadrunner darts across our path. Then another. And another.

They’re flowing down the road in the direction we’re going: towards the floral scent that’s up ahead and growing stronger.

A palo verde bush shakes, and a coyote pokes its head out from behind it. Its eyes flash yellow. Declan gives it a wave and elbows me in the ribs. “Look, it’s one of ya brothers.”

“I’m not part coyote,” I mutter. “We’ve been over this.” Data X experimented on me. My animal’s a hybrid mishmash of all sorts of species.

“Then what are you?” Fiona asks straight up.

Declan raises his thick black brows. “Yeah, Parker, what are ya?”

There’s a flash of panic, and a heavy metallic scent fills my nostrils. My world narrows until I’m looking through silver-coated bars that burn and burn…

Overhead, an eagle screams, and I blink in the sunshine.

“Ya’d know if ya heard ‘im laugh,” Declan tells Fiona. “But he hasnae laughed in a long time.”

I blow out a breath. “He’s wrong.” I’m only part hyena. The rest is a big fat question mark. “You know what, it doesn’t matter what I am. What are you?” I shoot back at Fiona.

She shrugs and shifts the barrel of the shotgun on her shoulder “Fuck around and find out.”

The eagle swoops down and lands on the closest roof, glaring at us.

“What’s going on with this?” I wave a hand at the bird. “What’s with the menagerie?”

Our guide heaves a sigh. “Allison.”

“Allison?” I ask.

“I remember,” Declan says. “She was the other shifter with you. The one who attracted all the animals.”

“That’s Allison.” Fiona nods ahead. At our feet, a trio of jackrabbits hop out of the shade of a nearby saguaro. The coyote only watches them with a bemused expression. Even the eagle is stoically not looking at the fresh meat.

A flock of twittering red finches fly overhead.

A young woman steps out from a building and pushes back her dark brown curls. The birds land on her shoulders and arms, still chirping. With her lovely face and flowing skirt, she looks like the heroine in a movie, about to burst into song.

“Fecking A,” Declan says with awe.

“Hello. I’m Allison. Mr. F. said you’re going to escort me to Taos?”

There’s a choking sound from Declan. Probably a reaction to this sweet-faced young woman calling the King of the Vampires “Mr. F.”

“Taos?” I asked. “What’s in Taos?”

Fiona swings the shot gun down and checks the barrel. “A few things he ordered. As gifts. They got waylaid.”

“Go now,” Allison whispers to the birds. “Tell them we’re coming.”

As one, the birds take flight.

Allison turns to the eagle on the roof. “Watch over them. Please?”

The eagle screams and pumps its huge wings, lifting off and heading in the same direction as the flock but at a greater height. Not following to hunt, but to protect.

“Unbelievable.” Declan whistles. “Now that’s a sight.”

I turn to Fiona and Allison. “So we’re taking you to Taos, then. Both of you?”

Fiona racks the shotgun. “I’m her bodyguard.”

“She needs a bodyguard?” Declan asks. “She’s got all sorts of animals eating out of her hand. Like a fecking Disney princess.”

“I’m better with prey animals, actually,” Allison says. “I make them feel safe.” There’s a squeaking noise, and a mouse peeks out of her sundress pocket. She lifts it out and sets it carefully down on the ground, so it can disappear through a crack in the ground beside the empty house.

“And what happens when there’s a threat?” I eye Fiona. “You shoot them?”

She gives me an empty grin that shows all her teeth. “Fuck around and find out.”

Gravel crunches behind me. Laurie’s rolled the bus up to where we stand.

“Is that your bus? Looks like something out of Scooby Doo.” Allison sounds delighted.

Fiona’s expression is skeptical. “Why does it have a tree?”

“For Christmas,” Declan says.

“Ah,” Fiona says, as if this makes sense.

I give a weary nod. “All right. Come on, Snow White. Let’s get this freak show on the road.”

“Shotgun!” Fiona and Declan shout at the same time and scramble for the front side passenger door.