The Secret Lies In The Shade – The Order of the Bear Series (Book 2)

I used to be a normal girl, but all that changed when a vampire tried to eat me because I’m apparently supposed to be a freakishly powerful witch…so much for being normal!

Steel says that the wards aren’t holding like they used to. More and more vampires are slipping through the cracks, like the one that tried to kill me in the woods! He fears there will come a point when even the nightly patrols of his shifter order won’t be enough to keep the bloodsuckers imprisoned where they belong.

The stakes are high, but I never asked for any of this. If you look up “hero” in the dictionary, I guarantee you won’t find my picture there. I’m just smart enough to be terrified of my ineptitude being responsible for the end of the human race. Do I really have it in me to be all Merliny? And what does it mean for the world if I don’t?

I don’t want to do this, but it doesn’t look like I’ll have much of a choice. 

***Trigger Warning***

My heart goes out to anyone who has ever experienced, or been close to a victim of rape. As such, I wanted to give advance warning that there is a rape scene in this story and that it might understandably be too much for some to handle. I’d advise against reading this if the subject matter is too difficult to stomach.

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This is book 2 in the Order of the Bear Series, and the books need to be read in order for optimal enjoyment. You can get book 1 here for free: https://joquenalomelino.com/something-shifter-this-way-comes-the-order-of-the-bear-series-book-1/

CHAPTER ONE

CRYSTAL

My name is Crystal Banks, and I used to comfort myself with the hard-earned knowledge of an advanced education. I could spew grammar rules with the best of them, and if the book was considered a classic, I’d probably read it at least once. Sure, there had been a few reading assignments that had been so awful that I’d been forced to whip out the SparkNotes for those life-saving summaries. Don’t judge me. After all, I’m only human . . . well, at least mostly human. There’s also some witch running through my bloodline.

My once simple grasp on reality had been radically altered since I’d moved into Eric Steel’s creepy mansion. If only someone would offer me a magic pill to erase the past. How I longed to return to a reality where my biggest problems were centered around money! I would have swallowed down my anti-magic medication with a heaping glass of water. Heck, I probably would have doubled up on the dose just to be certain that it worked. Sadly, no one seemed willing or able to prescribe me such a wonder-drug.

Monsters weren’t supposed to be real; they were just creatures in stories, fictitious elements designed for entertainment value, and nothing more. Or so I’d thought. Now I appeared to be living in a fairytale, but not the nice kind where the worst thing to happen to the princess was being forced to spend the night on a lumpy mattress. My life was more like a cautionary tale than a dream come true.

Naive me had believed that vampires were nothing more than pale, leading men in movies for teenagers. Those weren’t the types of films that I typically watched. Funny, huh? Maybe I would’ve been better off if I hadn’t spent my whole life trying to be so darned “realistic.” Maybe if I’d been more into make-believe, I would have caught on faster to what was actually transpiring all around me!

Point of fact, I hated the thought of the supernatural so much that I cut all ties with my family years ago because I was sick to death of hearing about frogs’ brains, magical fairy dust, and how it was my destiny to be a great witch. Trust me, nothing gets a kid bullied faster than living with people who act and dress like members of the Addams Family. Turns out my relatives were right all along, though, and I was going to have to learn to eat my words.

But just because I was going to have to suck it up and eat crow eventually didn’t mean I was quite ready to do it yet. I was going to need more time before I was willing to reach out to my family and admit that they were right. I was distinctly uncomfortable when I considered that I might just owe my mother an apology. It just so happens that irony is a merciless jerk.

All I wanted was a job in publishing, but somehow, I wound up working odd hours with a billionaire bear shifter who basically kept vampires from taking over the world every night. He was domineering, rude, and sexy as all get out. It was a good thing he owned the company because HR would not have approved of the recent shift in our relationship from professional to personal.

Steel and I had never blocked out time to have a conversation about our future. Without having had the quintessential girlfriend-boyfriend talk, I wasn’t really certain how to quantify or label our relationship. I didn’t really care . . . or at least that was the current lie I was telling myself. Everything was new, so I was focusing on being spontaneous and enjoying myself. I had enough other drama in my life with the whole witch-versus-vampire situation.

Of course, labels or no, exclusivity was a pretty hard line for me, as in, Mr. Eric Steel had better keep his hands off other women if he wanted to retain bedroom privileges. Yup, I was pretty big on the whole faithfulness thing. If he cheated on me like my last boyfriend, I was going to learn how to put a hex on him! Sure, I may not have had the first clue about how to use my powers, but only an idiot messed with a witch.

I was lying in bed, and I rolled to my side, preparing to burrow deeper into the delicious warmth that Steel’s bear shifter body never failed to deliver. But I encountered nothing but a big empty space. Well, that was disappointing. I opened my eyes, blinking as I waited for my pupils to adjust to the dark gloom of my bedroom.

Not only had the man departed from the king-sized mattress, but he seemed to have disappeared from the room entirely. I couldn’t simply return to sleep because my Curious George brain had decided to go into full-on detective mode. So maybe I should clarify that it was a very lazy Curious George mode because all of my sleuthing was done from a supine position.

I squinted at the light-up numbers on the digital clock, noting that it was scarcely four a.m. My sleep-addled mind wondered briefly where he could have gone, and then I experienced a face-smacking “Duh” moment because I’d already solved the mystery. I knew exactly where he’d snuck off to in the middle of the night.

A few months ago, when I’d taken a job as the man’s personal assistant, I’d felt as though I was taking a giant step back in life. After all, I’d spent years slaving over stinky old textbooks to obtain a master’s degree in English. I’d wanted to work in a prestigious publishing house, not in the middle of nowhere, where I was currently residing.

I’d learned to write thirty-page research essays devoid of any biased opinions or emotions. That hadn’t been easy for me, since I have strong feelings on more topics than I could possibly list. I’d sought my degree with laser focus, eschewing more than one personal relationship in the process. I’d been driven with a capital D. Only recently had I begun to speculate about the supposed wisdom of my actions.

I’m one of those people who loves words, grammar rules, and all the idiosyncrasies of the English language. Don’t judge me. We all have our little quirks. I was supposed to be the one who helped edit and publish what would inevitably become the timeless classics of untold future generations.

And if I couldn’t do that, well, then I was going to help publish all those fun bestsellers people actually wanted to read. Either way, I was going to be a literary rock star. But whoever was guiding the course of my destiny had other plans in store for me.

All of my awesome schemes had been dashed to bits right after I graduated. I’d walked in on my boyfriend, Bryce, desecrating our sheets with a busty blonde, and that had been the end of that relationship. Talk about icky. All those lovely high thread counts had been contaminated forever.

As if he somehow hadn’t betrayed me enough, the slimeball had used his illustrious family’s connections to blacklist me with all the major publishing houses. I was a well-educated pariah. No one would hire me, and I was desperate for employment. So, when I’d seen a bunch of people standing around waiting to be interviewed at Steel Corp, I’d hopped in line.

The personal assistant position may have been beneath me in title, but the salary certainly hadn’t been anything to complain about. Wonder of wonders, Steel had hired me even after I pulled the crazy stunt of forcing my way into his office. His frazzled receptionist had heatedly insisted that I leave the building because the big cheese was no longer conducting interviews, but I hadn’t taken no for an answer. She’d been forced to scurry after me while hollering for security.

Steel himself hadn’t seemed all that keen on me until Lauren, the smoking hot blonde sitting behind his desk, had informed him that I was “the one.” For reasons that I wouldn’t understand until later, Steel had listened to the blonde and offered me a job with the stipulation that if I failed to return before his chopper left the roof, I was out of luck.

Like a bull being flashed a tempting red cape, I’d eagerly accepted his challenge. I’d even managed to fleece a hundred bucks out of the billionaire to pay for my cab fare. I’d desperately needed the cash because I was flat, stinking broke.

I’d left most of my worldly possessions behind me—including my shoes—at the bottom of the world’s steepest staircase. Then I’d jumped into a helicopter with my mysterious new employer. And that, my friends, was when things had started to get weird.

The man lived in a museum-quality mansion that looked like it belonged in Europe, not America, yet there it stood in all its radiant, historically accurate beauty. How the thing wasn’t plagued by constant tour groups was an enigma to me. Sales to tour the Biltmore Estate would have literally plummeted overnight if the existence of the Steel residence had become common knowledge.

I’d walked into a spacious and grand foyer that would have been breathtakingly beautiful . . .  had it not been for the occult-inspired mural on the ceiling depicting beautiful vampires feasting on innocent humans. The painting also contained warrior shifter animals and witches working together to tear those same vampires into pieces and burn them into ash with magic fire. The painting had given me nightmares long before the point that I’d realized there was something seriously off about Steel’s house, and I’m not talking about the fact that it had over a hundred bedrooms, which would certainly have been intimidating enough for me.

My relationship with Steel got off to a rough start. Lots of insults, loads of teasing, an intimate moment where we were rudely interrupted whilst kissing, with loads of misunderstanding on both sides. The man was bossy and domineering, which should have been a complete turnoff, and yet, somehow, it had had the opposite effect on me.

At one point during my stay, I was attacked by a bat while taking a bubble bath. Not wanting to contract rabies and die, I ran outside wearing nothing but the skin God gave me. That’s when things between Steel and me had reached a new low.

He had shown up immediately after I’d triggered the alarms, and honestly, if anyone was more embarrassed about me being caught in my birthday suit, it was him. He’d bravely entered the danger zone to kill said bat in my honor, but when he’d been unable to find any trace of the creature, he’d instantly leaped to the conclusion that I’d made the whole thing up in an attempt to seduce him. As if!

That had been the last straw for me, because he’d done the unthinkable and gravely wounded my pride. I’d quit on the spot—a ballsy move considering that I had nowhere to go and no other prospects of employment at the time. At least I’d been there long enough to receive my first paycheck. I’d hoped that would keep the financial wolves at bay long enough for me to find gainful employment elsewhere.

He’d implored me to at least wait until morning, and I’d pretended to acquiesce. But there was no way I was staying in a confined space with “Franken Wingy.” No longer attempting to rein in my defiant nature, I’d packed a bag and headed out. Initially, I’d planned to crash in one of the hundred or so vacant rooms.

But even knowing that curiosity had a penchant for killing cats, I had been unable to quash my obsessive thirst for knowledge. I’d been reining in my meddlesome ways since the moment I had first arrived, but because I wanted to keep my crappy job, I’d managed to resist the urge to snoop. Since I no longer had to worry about getting fired, I knew it was the perfect time to investigate . . . the time to find out exactly what Steel was hiding in the west wing. When I’d discovered a bunch of dried herbs, spellbooks, and other magical implements, I’d become immediately convinced that the man was an evil warlock set on turning me into a mindless zombie slave. Then I’d experienced a major freak-out moment.

That’s when I’d decided to steal my favorite antique car from his garage and burn rubber down the driveway. My grand-theft-auto-escape-plan might have worked perfectly had it not been for two pesky details. Number one: Steel, that infuriating man, had chained and padlocked the gate so I couldn’t leave the estate. And number two: the little bat had suddenly become human-sized and wanted nothing more than to poke a straw in me and slurp out all the red punch inside my veins.

Completely out of options, I’d fled on foot into the spooky woods that pulsed incessantly with an eerie blue light. I’d learned pretty fast that in addition to being able to fly, vampires could run a heck of a lot faster than mere humans. I would have been toast if Steel hadn’t crashed into the clearing. Only it wasn’t Steel in the human form I recognized. No, this was Steel in his shifter form, which was a majestically powerful brown bear, covered in intricate metal armor exactly like the set in the painting of his ancestors. I may or may not have panicked, fearing that I was going to be mauled to death by the bear and sucked dry by the vampire.

It had come as a total surprise when the big, scary bear started attacking the vampire instead of trying to eat me. What’s that saying? The enemy of my enemy . . . is a freaking bear shifter! Okay, so we all know that’s not the exact quote, but it’s close enough. The warrior bear had fought valiantly, and eventually, the vampire had grown tired of their battle. He’d opted out of the fight altogether and decided to use his superior speed to gobble up the prize, as in yours truly.

As it turned out, dumb luck was my saving grace. I’d brought my crudely snapped tree branch up just in time to stake the vampire and keep the red Kool-Aid inside of me where it belonged. The supernaturally seductive bloodsucker had exploded into ashy fireworks all around me, and believe me when I say that filth is really hard to clean off.

Steel had hurried me back to the mansion where he spent the pre-dawn hours informing me of the real history of Steel Corp, as well as the actual reason he’d agreed to hire me on as his personal assistant. Here’s the five-peso version. I’m descended from a long line of powerful witches, the very same witches featured on the ceiling mural in the entryway.

About three hundred years ago, witches and shifters united in order to imprison the deadly vampires in a realm beyond the reach of our own human world. Basically, the witch (i.e., “me”) acted like a giant battery to keep the magical gateway locked and the mean, thirsty vampires trapped where they belonged.

There had been other witches before me, but according to Lauren, the blonde witch who’d sensed my abilities and told Steel to hire me, there hadn’t been any as powerful as me in a long, long time. No one really understood why, but as generations had passed, the witch’s descendants had grown progressively weaker. There were few left who could do more than read palms or tarot cards.

Basically, I was the Energizer Freaking Bunny, and if I left the house for more than a few hours at a time, I was dooming humanity to a gruesome future with lots and lots of innocent bloodshed. Talk about a lot of pressure, sheesh! As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, I didn’t get out of the house much.

So yeah, I was alone in bed. And although my sleep-groggy brain had wondered where Steel had gone, I knew he had an important job too. Sometimes a vampire or two managed to wriggle through a weak spot in the enchanted forest, which is how the bat that attacked me had gotten out. The spells around the magical prison weren’t perfect, but they kept most of the vampires locked up where they belonged.

Jailbreaks didn’t happen all the time, but it was a definite flaw in the system, which necessitated nightly patrols by Steel and his band of merry men, a.k.a. The Order of the Bear. So, Steel and his pack of shifters patrolled the grounds after dark, and they killed anything undead. I know, I know, it all seems a little redundant, but there really are dead things that need to be made deader . . . I mean more dead . . . you know, I really don’t think that the English language has a word that encompasses this. Maybe I should coin a new phrase, something like how “hanged” had an entirely different meaning than “hung.” Maybe dead also needed different levels like dead, deader, and deadest?

I appear to have digressed, so I’ll try to focus back in on the essentials here. Like I said, Steel worked with a whole pack of shifters who stayed in nearby cabins and helped patrol the hundreds of acres that comprised the grounds surrounding the mansion. I’d yet to meet any of the other shifters except for Bryan, but it was certainly a relief to know that they were out there. Knowing that they were working to keep us all safe helped me sleep at night, although, sadly, I was still suffering from nightmares on a regular basis.

The best thing about my near-death experience was the fact that I no longer had my ridiculous ten-to-eight curfew. Now that I knew all about the boogeyman, I’d renegotiated the terms of our relationship. I was Steel’s personal assistant in name only, and as a sort of generous signing bonus, I’d made him pay off all of my school loans and credit card debt.

Before you start thinking that I was selling myself out, let me go ahead and put a stop to that nonsense. The “friends with benefits” portion of our relationship was simply an unexpected bonus to our unusual working arrangement, and it had absolutely nothing to do with my salary. Everything was still new and shiny, and I suspected that he was still keeping some secrets from me, but in spite of my usually pessimistic nature, I was actually looking forward to seeing where the future might take us.

I sensed him before I heard anything that would have clued me in to his return. I didn’t know if it was a witch thing or something special just between us, but somehow, I could feel whenever the man was near, unless I was too upset or distracted to notice him, anyway. It wasn’t exactly a superpower, but I was willing to take whatever added help I could snag.

“You’re awake,” he stated softly as he pulled back the covers and spooned up against me.

“I was lonely.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” he replied.

I squealed when he threw back the covers and rolled me over to face him. Our lips met in a kiss that felt like “hello,” and I wasn’t even remotely ready to say goodbye. His hand dropped to my side, my fingers wove into his hair, and one touch led to another. I don’t know how much time passed.

All I knew was that afterwards, I felt drowsy and contented, like a cat in a warm ray of sun. Steel wasn’t one of those men who ran off the moment they got what they wanted. He was surprisingly big on cuddling. He shifted me carefully and cradled me in his arms as he curled up onto his side, throwing an arm and a leg across me. Who needs a blanket when you have your very own bearskin rug? I drifted off to sleep again contentedly in his arms.

We hadn’t spoken of love yet, and honestly, it was way too soon to have that talk, but I felt the emotion swelling within my breast all the same. Steel may have been reserved in speech and manner, but when it came to our physical union, he held nothing back. He was a consummate lover.

Maybe that’s why I hated getting out of bed so much. When he held me in his arms, I had no doubt of his strong feelings for me. When we were fully clothed and talking like grown-ups, I wasn’t sure of anything.

I was still asleep, secure in the cocoon of my bear’s arms, when a knock sounded on the door, jarring us both from the warm embrace of the deepest of slumbers. Steel quickly jerked on his pants and strode angrily over to see who’d dared to wake us. I barely had time to pull the sheet up to my neck before Steel threw open the door to bellow at our intruder.

“Someone had better be dying!” he barked loudly.

CHAPTER TWO

CRYSTAL

Lauren waited serenely before him, completely unfazed by his anger. As always, she was dressed to the nines, and everything from her nails to her hair was camera-ready, not that she was a movie star or anything. Although with her perky boobs and all that long blonde hair, she certainly looked like she belonged on a magazine cover somewhere.

“Eric, darling, I know how busy you are, what with all the ‘work’ you and your assistant have been studiously laboring to perform . . .”

I gasped indignantly, and when Steel turned to look at me, Lauren used the brief window of opportunity to breeze past him into the room. Then she began doggedly opening the blinds one at a time. I blushed and sank lower into the covers, wishing the bed would just swallow me whole and end my mortification once and for all. Whatever happened to respecting people’s privacy? I wanted nothing more than to vanish from sight and escape this whole conversation. Lauren may have been turning on the charm, but I could spot a brewing confrontation from a mile away.

No such luck on the escape front. After she finished flooding the room with daylight, Lauren hunkered down on the edge of the bed, effectively trapping the corner of my modesty sheet. Essentially, I wasn’t going anywhere unless I chose to flee naked.

“You’re overstepping yourself!” Steel roared loudly, the violent tenor of his voice hinting at just how close his animal was to the surface.

“Actually, I don’t believe I am,” Lauren argued, removing an invisible piece of lint from her blouse. “Everyone else agrees that the girl needs to be trained, and I can’t do that with you keeping her chained to this bed all day, every day.”

If I had known how to use my powers, that would have been the point where I’d have disappeared, poofing dramatically into a swirling vortex of smoke. Was there some sort of witch’s guide or sorcerer’s handbook that taught such useful skills? If so, the art of vanishing gracefully was probably in there somewhere, which meant I needed to get one as soon as possible. It was probably listed directly after the passage where Mickey Mouse had learned to enchant the mops and brooms to do his dirty work for him.

I’d thought that Lauren and I had at least been on our way to becoming friends before that morning. She’d even told me to call her Lauri once, not that I ever did. We weren’t exactly into painting each other’s nails while we gossiped about boys. After this, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to look her in the face again. Yup, our being BFFs was definitely off the table now.

“The girl is sitting right here . . . and she has a name,” I muttered tersely.

I tried to tug on the edge of the sheet once more, but to no avail. The thing might as well have been nailed to the bed frame, for all the give it had. The universe was out to get me, and her name was Lauren. Maybe if I pulled a pillow over my head, it would muffle the noise enough for me to be able to go back to sleep.

“She needs time to recover from her attack!” Steel ground back heatedly.

They probably would have continued to argue back and forth indefinitely if it hadn’t been for the next intrusion. Just when I thought the morning couldn’t possibly get any worse, Mrs. Turner walked straight out of the 1960s in a vintage green Chanel dress suit. She poised in the doorway and patted her hair to make sure every strand of her Jackie O hairdo was still perfectly in place. She looked far too good for her age, and although she claimed it was all due to her healthy diet, I strongly suspected she’d been under the knife at least once. Whoever her surgeon was, I only hoped he was still practicing when I got old enough to require his services.

“I didn’t spend two hours slaving over a hot stove so that my scones could be ignored. We will continue this discussion in the dining room over breakfast.” She pivoted and leveled a gaze at Steel first and then at me before adding, “And clothing is mandatory.”

Is it possible to die from embarrassment? I guess not because that would have been the moment I croaked, if ever there was one.

***

Mrs. Turner’s culinary abilities were legendary, and if Lauren hadn’t risen speedily from the bed, I probably would have streaked past her to the bathroom anyway. No one stands between me and my breakfast! Ideally, I would have showered first, but I decided that wasn’t worth the risk of missing breakfast. Besides, Steel had explained to me once that he loved smelling his scent on me. Instead of being horrified at his revelation, I actually kind of liked it. I couldn’t decide who was weirder, me or the bear. Nothing beats the nose of a bear shifter, or so I’d been told.

I hurriedly pulled on my clothes without even looking to see if they matched. My stomach started rumbling vociferously, which led to my decision to forgo first makeup and then shoes as I hotfooted it towards the formal dining room. We ate most meals in the kitchen with Mrs. Turner, but apparently, a business meeting warranted a more formal setting.

Somehow, Steel had managed to pull on a three-piece suit, and yet, he’d still beaten me to the table. He and Lauren were still verbally sparring, but Mrs. Turner and Steel’s business partner, Bryan, were also tag-teaming in and out of the heated debate. I hummed under my breath sarcastically as I tried to ignore the lot of them, which wasn’t hard because they were all talking about me as though I wasn’t present.

I snagged a plate from the side table and filled it generously with scrambled eggs, bacon, and, of course, the promised scones. I’d never been a huge fan of breakfast before moving to the mansion, but thanks to the supernatural energy-pull zapping me from the magical wards, I was always hungry these days. I didn’t mind the constant need to eat, though, not so long as I got to gorge myself on Mrs. Turner’s decadent fare—and provided my pants continued to buckle each morning.

“This is my house,” Steel growled.

“The importance of ownership pales when one considers that this property and its wards also happen to be the only thing protecting the human race from the vampires,” Bryan interjected as he reached for yet more butter. With a body as trim as his, one would assume that fat never passed through his lips, but no one turned down one of the old cook’s culinary creations. He moaned around a mouthful of scone and turned to Mrs. Turner. “Say you’ve changed your mind and decided to work for me instead of Sir Scowls-A-Lot. You can remodel my kitchen however you want.”

“Not likely,” the older woman replied saucily, obviously enjoying the attention of the attractive younger male. I suppose that only goes to show that it doesn’t matter how old you get, because us women never cease to enjoy the attention of cute, flirtatious boys.

Steel politely pulled out a chair for me, and I couldn’t help but appreciate his old-fashioned manners. Too bad he had to go and sour the beautiful gesture because the moment my butt hit the upholstered seat, he went right back to ignoring me as he and everyone else returned to discussing what I would or wouldn’t be doing with my time. I might as well have been tap dancing and belting out the “Mr. Cellophane” song from the musical Chicago. I really did feel like they could “look right through me, walk right by me, and never know” I was there.

Instead of squandering important energy reserves on righteous indignation, I opted to dive in and enjoy the veritable feast Mrs. Turner had slaved over. I bit into the fluffy scone and moaned contentedly as the flaky pastry melted in my mouth like butter. How the woman didn’t have her own celebrity cooking show was a complete mystery, so far as I was concerned. She could spend half the episode giving horticulture tips in her secret garden, and then the rest of the show would be all about turning those organic ingredients into gourmet food.

“I am the head of the ORDER!” Steel actually shouted the last word at Lauren, shoving the plate Mrs. Turner had tried to offer him off to the side and out of his way. Technically, this was infringing on my personal space, but it was a big table, so I just nudged my plate a little further to the left and kept on eating.

At least he’d already divulged the existence of The Order of the Bear, or I would have totally been lost. The Order was an ancient group of shifters that had banded together in order to protect humanity from extinction three centuries ago. Not all of the shifters were bears, but Steel’s ancestor had been the biggest, baddest beast in the lot, so they’d all agreed on bear because The Order of the Random Shapeshifting Collection of Beasts just didn’t sound as impressive. I liked to call it TOOTB, pronounced like toot-buh. I did this partly because the title was too long, but mainly because it had annoyed Steel so much the first time he heard me say it that I found I couldn’t stop.

“Shifters have the worst tempers,” Lauren muttered disdainfully.

“Ummm, you may be the head of the Order, but we all risk our lives every night, and that means we get a say too,” Bryan interjected.

Did I mention that Bryan is a shifter too? Originally, he’d been introduced as one of Steel’s business partners, which he was, but he did a whole lot more than push pencils at Steel Corp. I hadn’t asked him what animal he shifted into yet because it seemed rude, almost like asking someone how much they weighed or their age. If I’d had to wager a guess, I would have gone out on a limb and proposed that he was most likely a bear shifter too, being as he was Steel’s right-hand man.

“This isn’t just a real estate issue here. It doesn’t matter that the house is yours. The real problem is the fact that the wards are weakening,” Lauren added.

“More bloodsuckers have escaped their prison in the past year than in the previous two decades,” Bryan added. “It takes several of us working in tandem to take down one of them, even in their devitalized states. If so much as a single vampire manages to sneak past our patrols and feed, the damage will be extensive. Especially if they manage to turn someone before they can be put down.”

“She must learn to use her powers. She is the next layer of defense,” Lauren added. “I simply have too many other duties to remain here indefinitely.”

“Still right here,” I groused, not that anyone bothered to acknowledge my presence or anything. Mrs. Turner had yet to speak, but I had a feeling that if and when she chose to use her words, she would be accorded not only attention but respect. It was probably because no one wanted to be cut off from her cooking.

I happily masticated a buttery mouthful of scone. I’ve always loved that word; something about it seemed delightfully pretentious, even if it was just a fancy way of saying ‘chewed’. Everyone needed to stop yelling so I could enjoy my meal. I bet Mrs. Turner knew some boringly fascinating facts about stress and indigestion. I was afraid to ask because it would inevitably morph into a lecture on my shameful dietary habits, and we’d had that conversation too many times already.

I didn’t know what she’d done to the eggs, but they shouldn’t even be called eggs anymore because they tasted so much better. I never would have thought to add kale and sun-dried tomatoes to breakfast food. Heck, a few months ago, I’d never even suspected that kale was edible. I’d seen it once before on a salad bar, but it hadn’t been on the menu; they’d been using it as a decoration.

“It seems to me like you don’t care if anything happens to her,” Lauren accused, pointing a finger at Steel. She paused to take an appreciative sip of her coffee while she waited for his response. Hadn’t she learned yet that it wasn’t wise to bait the bear?

“I WILL KEEP HER SAFE AT ALL COSTS!” Steel roared.

He shot to his feet, kicking the chair out from behind him as he stared the blonde down savagely. I flinched reflexively, realizing how easy it would be for him to injure me if he ever lost control. That was not a mental path I wanted to travel down. He’d never hurt me intentionally, would he?

I’d only seen Eric shift a couple of times, but even I could tell that he was on the verge of an uncontrolled metamorphosis. His entire body appeared to be growing in stature, and the fabric of his shirt strained tightly against his ever-increasing bulk.

“You’re forgetting that the bat not only made it inside the house, but went straight for her bathroom where it knew her guard would be down,” Bryan interjected.

“They can sense her power,” Lauren added sagely.

“If Crystal hadn’t set off the alarm and run outside, you never would have made it back in time,” Bryan said.

“Even if you never left her side for a second, there’s no way you could guarantee her safety,” Lauren stated unapologetically.

“You’re only one man,” Bryan added.

“She has to be able to defend herself, or else she’s no better than a blood bag with legs,” Lauren hissed.

I so did not like the feelings that that visual evoked in my horrified noggin. Even I was starting to wonder if Lauren might be right, as much as it pained me to admit it after her earlier invasion of my privacy. Yet, even knowing I was in danger, I was still reluctant to go poking around into my paranormal abilities. Wasn’t it enough that I was willing to camp out in the freaking mansion twenty-four seven?

Why did it have to be me? I’d never asked for any of this. I’d been told repeatedly that witches weren’t strong anymore, that I was freakishly powerful, blah blah blah. Apparently, I was way more potent than even Lauren, whose body could no longer sustain the constant drain of the mansion’s magical wards. I lacked training, but the raw material was there inside me, just waiting to be plumbed.

Even knowing all of this, the thought of plunging deeper still into my new identity rankled. If you’re the only person who can do something about a problem, does that automatically mean it’s your duty to fix it? Stupid vampires. They had robbed me of far more than a peaceful breakfast experience; they were literally ruining my life.

Steel’s fist came down with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil, splitting the table right down the middle and sending a mass of china into the air, where it proceeded to plummet downwards before shattering on the unrelenting floorboards. I lunged sharply, and my uncharacteristically quick reflexes managed to save both my plate and Steel’s from an untimely end.

He was covered in fur from head to toe, and he was visibly quivering with unbridled rage. Although his bear had been the destructive force behind the “Hulk” table smash, somehow, he still stood upright on human legs. It was pretty much a miracle that he’d managed to refrain from completely shifting into his bear form.