Hunted Read online

  Samantha Stone Hunted

  Crescent City Creatures, Book 2

  Samantha Stone

  Published: 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-306-5

  Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2016, Samantha Stone.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the USA

  Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.

  Blurb

  Heath Frasier knew he made no friends the day he broke werewolf law—but he’s not prepared for the creature lying in wait for him.

  Sophia Anderson has an enemy in a particularly powerful faery, one who will stop at nothing to ensure her death.

  Only Heath and Sophia can keep each other safe, but their pairing could bring a fate worse than death. If they escape those hunting them, will they risk staying together, or go their separate ways?

  Hunted continues the story of a delinquent werewolf pack in New Orleans, where the Fey control more than meets the eye, a witch can change a life, and one female werewolf’s powers are put to the ultimate test.

  Dedication

  For Charles. I’ll always love you more every day.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Ansley, Victoria, and everyone at Liquid Silver who’ve believed in the Crescent City Creatures and strove to help me make them better.

  Thank you, Mom, for always reading what I write.

  A big thanks to my sister, Shelley, for always encouraging me. (Congratulations on college!)

  I’m grateful to my Communicative Disorders department…you know who you are.

  Finally, thank you, Johnny.

  Chapter 1

  HEATH Frazier wanted to gut his best friend.

  Raphael was his Alpha, the new lupus dux for their pack of criminal werewolves, and their only hope for freedom. Like his predecessor, he could also call for their execution, but Heath knew Raphael lacked the stomach to consider the notion.

  If they pissed him off, he’d just replace their pillows with some of the poisonous cacti he’d been growing lately. A week ago, Alexandre dared to touch one, and his right arm hadn’t worked for the next three days.

  After Raphael found Mary, his mate, he discovered he had four of the weres’ elemental powers, including earth. Unfortunately, he could only pull grotesque plants from the earth. In the six months since they mated, Mary harnessed the shared gift better than most weres: she could create a bouquet from pure soil in under an hour.

  Raphael still had to buy the flowers he gave her.

  Now, he was puzzling over the pages of a worn book the werewolf Elders had sent him. Heath tried his best not to leap over Raphael’s wooden desk and shake the man.

  After five hundred and sixty-two years, he could taste his freedom. Out of all the convicts in his pack, Heath had been exiled the longest. For roughly two hundred and fifty of those years, he’d lived in New Orleans, unable to leave just as he had been banished to a small village in Bretagne, France before their relocation to the United States.

  Finally, he would be able escape this city. He could venture to Metairie…or Fiji. He could explore Brazil, or surf in Bali; his wanderlust had no bounds, excepting New Orleans.

  The Crescent City was his home, but after being bound there for so long, Heath needed a break—it would be better for both parties involved. He would never get his break if Raphael couldn’t learn how to read.

  For half an hour, Raphael had been muttering in Latin and Greek, apparently becoming increasingly frustrated when nothing happened.

  “What’s taking so long?” Heath demanded, flexing his fingers. The eye tattooed on the back of his hand stared at him sardonically, blinking before it resumed watching nothing.

  It was charmed by a witch to look in the direction of the biggest threat near him. Apparently he was his own threat, a concept Heath had accepted years ago but would never admit. It was why he told no one about the eye, or the rest of the tattoos covering the right side of his body.

  “It’s not working,” Raphael murmured, flipping a page. Strain lined his mouth, thinning his lips. He wanted freedom for Heath, and eventually the rest of the pack, he remembered. His temper cooled slightly.

  Something was wrong.

  That morning a smiling Raphael had woken him up, banging on his door with a letter in his hand. Since the Elders were the only ones Heath could think of who still used snail mail, he automatically assumed it was from them.

  He was right—they’d approved Raphael’s decision to free Heath from the clan prohibitum, lifting his exile in New Orleans and allowing him to regain his elemental power over water.

  Heath tried to stretch out his bound powers and lift the water in his cup. Nothing happened, as he expected.

  Slamming the fragile-looking book onto his antique desk so hard its wood cracked, Raphael picked up his phone. He didn’t bother to put it on speaker, aware Heath would be able to hear every word.

  Even powerless werewolves had keen hearing.

  “Nathaniel,” he said, obviously making an effort to keep his voice level. “We have a problem; not only is the spell not breaking in Heath, but the method you sent me to bind a new convict into the clan prohibitum is not what Jeremiah did with me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Jeremiah did to bind you. How did he bind Heath?” Nathaniel’s voice was sharp with anger at the mention of their previous lupus dux, who’d illegally executed Mary and helped dolphin shapeshifters kidnap women across the city.

  He literally killed himself by telling lies about their pack, the men he was meant to be an advocate for.

  Raphael looked at Heath expectantly.

  “He mixed my blood with water,” Heath said, the memory of his binding fresh despite the time passed. “A witch was there with him—I assume whatever she said created the barrier that blocked me in New Orleans.”

  Nathaniel cursed over the phone. Notable, considering seven months ago the man wouldn’t have believed a word Heath or Raphael said. It was no coincidence that with justice came Heath’s release to freedom—it was about damn time.

  Raphael nodded. “A witch was there with me too,” he said pensively. He pointed to the text in front of him. “Here, there is no third party, no witch. The spell was done over a thousand years ago, has been updated since then, but it was made for weres to use.

  “Jeremiah didn’t bind us in the correct way—that’s why the spell to free you isn’t working.”

  The eye looked at him less than a second before Heath kicked the door of the office into the art studio where Mary painted.

  A feminine yelp instantly doused his anger with guilt; if Raphael hadn’t used his air abilities to fly the door and its pieces around Mary, they would have slammed straight into her.

  Steam literally came off of Raphael’s skin, a display of his power over fire. If looks could kill, Heath would be in pieces.

  “I’m sorry!” he called to a scowling Mary, her paintbrush raised mid-stroke. Spots of color splattered her formless smock, but Heath could see some of the beauty Raphael found in her. Even annoyed, she still appeared kind, her green eyes bright, but soft in a way that reminded Heath of his mother.

  Once freed, he’d venture to Inverness to see her.

  “It’s okay, since my paintings we
ren’t damaged.” Mary smiled and turned back to her work. She’d painted all five men in their pack, both in wolf form and human form. A werewolf inspired by Cael, another packmate, appeared to be growling in a painting that would soon become a beer label. Sebastian, the business guru for the pack, hired Mary as the artist for Full Moon Brewery. About half of the paintings around the studio would become boxes for six-packs, posters and stickers, their colors bright against dark, starlit backgrounds.

  Sebastian was thrilled with his investment.

  “You need to find the witch who conducted the spell,” Nathaniel was saying to Raphael. “I’ll send Vale to Jeremiah’s apartment. Mercedes is there right now, conducting an investigation of his actions.”

  “What’s the point?” Heath asked, bemused. “He’s dead.”

  A heavy sigh. “That may be true, but we doubt he convinced us of your guilt simply because he wanted to—there’s a reason why, and we intend to find it.”

  Raphael nodded, seeming to bring himself down to his regular temperature. “You’re right. Send someone in to see if he has any notes regarding witch contacts.”

  “I will. And Raphael?” Nathaniel hesitated. Raphael grunted in answer, his eyes lingering on his mate. “Don’t speak to your clan about the investigation. They don’t need to convince themselves of their freedom before they’ve earned it.”

  Heath knew his eye was looking at him without glancing at it. Their friends had every right to know the details behind Jeremiah’s treachery. Even Raphael would admit each of them had earned their lives back; it was only formalities and the Elders keeping them exiled.

  Well, the Elders and Jeremiah, who was acting from beyond the grave. Heath hated that asshole.

  “I’m the Alpha here, not you.” It was a warning, uttered on treacherous grounds. Out of self-preservation, most weres aspired to live their immortal lives without speaking to the Elders. Their Alpha just challenged one as if he were a punk-ass human.

  It was why Heath, Cael, Sebastian, and Alexandre had agreed to Raphael leading their clan—he’d earned their respect, which wasn’t an easy feat.

  “I overstepped; I apologize.” Nathaniel sounded genuinely contrite, shocking Heath. Across the desk, Raphael’s brows shot up. “Remember, they may not have earned their freedom yet.”

  With that, the other man clicked off, leaving Raphael scowling and Heath wishing he could travel to upstate New York to kick his ass. He had served his time…and he was still stuck.

  “That kid who works with Sebastian is a witch, right?”

  Mary answered. “He is—he’s the sweetheart who spells the beer to prevent drunk driving accidents.”

  Neither Heath nor Raphael reminded her that the move was out of self-preservation on Sebastian’s part. The biggest rule for those in the clan prohibitum made killing a human punishable by death. It was hardly an issue, unless one of them was mugged and had to hold back his strength to prevent killing their attacker.

  It used to happen at least once a decade, but the city was getting slightly safer as the years passed.

  Sebastian had his beers spelled so Jeremiah wouldn’t be able to accuse him of being responsible for human death. I guess he doesn’t have to do it anymore. Raphael would never blame the brewery for alcohol abuse. Still, Heath was almost positive the witch still worked for Sebastian, and still spelled the brews.

  Maybe Mary had it right.

  “I’m going to go see him,” Heath said. It was decided—the twenty-something witch was their closest contact to the city’s covens. It was a start, and he had to do something.

  He wouldn’t twiddle his thumbs idly, waiting for his brother to save the day. Vale was a favorite among the Elders, mainly because he had the rare air ability to move up to thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. He also didn’t make waves like Heath always had—Vale preferred the straight-and-narrow, following the rules without deviation.

  Heath had always found that way of life boring, but his abhorrence for rules had landed him here. Maybe Vale has it right.

  Heath shook his head. He’d rather be powerless, on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras Tuesday, than live the cookie-cutter life Vale had. It said a lot—while he liked the Quarter, Bourbon was its own circle of hell around Mardi Gras each year.

  He said his goodbyes to Raphael and Mary, trying not to cringe when he saw Raphael wrapping his mate in his arms through the studio’s wall-to-wall windows. Unlike Raphael, Heath had always thought about becoming mated.

  Until he’d seen the changes Mary caused in his friend, the thought of being stuck with someone else, sharing his powers with her, was terrifying. Now he knew it could be good for a were, considering it turned Raphael from a guilt-ridden shell of a man to an Omni Alpha, their term for a were with four elements.

  But Heath knew mating wasn’t always beneficial to both parties. Some combinations of powers weakened rather than strengthen, forcing couples to choose life together but vulnerable, or apart with the knowledge that their other halves were out there, trying their best to find someone to fill the gaps clawed from their souls.

  His mother suffered for a different reason entirely. She’d had the same power Vale inherited, and was valued just as her son would be. She wasn’t a soldier, but higher in rank, and had the ear of the Elders any time she wished.

  Like Raphael, she’d had no fear.

  When Heath and Vale were in their twenties, she mated Ranulf, the Alpha of their clan. He had weak earth powers, but seemed fair enough not to make waves among their pack in the highlands of Scotland. Heath hadn’t minded the man until he forbid his mother from using her gifts.

  They were mated, Ranulf would argue—they should carry over to him, allowing him to travel anywhere he wished. They never did, and eventually the powers his mother allowed to sit dormant vanished, weakening herself and her mate. The thought made Heath grind his teeth. He’d challenged Ranulf because he wanted to prove the man wasn’t meant to lead. If he couldn’t encourage his own mate to be her best, to use her strengths, how could he do the same for their pack?

  Heath beat Ranulf easily, but he didn’t deliver the killing blow. As Ranulf’s mate, his mother’s life was tied to the man—to kill him would mean her death. So he left Ranulf alive without considering the consequences: violence against the Alpha without taking his place, which Heath would have had to kill to achieve, meant exile.

  He’d dishonored himself by refusing to follow the rules of the weres. In his case, death would have been more honorable. He was meant to be ashamed by his placement in New Orleans, but Heath never had been.

  He’d accomplished exactly what he intended to. Instead of shame he was pissed, because the rules that put him here had no purpose.

  In his mind, blue eyes watched him, taunting him. Red lips tipped in a sardonic smile.

  I don’t want a mate, Heath reminded himself sharply before he let himself consider how beautiful the woman was. He was glad for Raphael’s happiness, but he was a completely different man. He couldn’t handle waking up with a woman once, much less every single morning. And if she tried to drain his powers—if he ever got them back—he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

  Never again would he be weak, and a woman leeching from him was the very definition of weakness.

  Closer to the firehouse, he picked up his helmet from where he’d stashed it in the bushes, and swung a leg over the Ducati he kept on the street.

  He had a witch to hunt down.

  * * * *

  The second Sophia Anderson turned the shower off she knew something was wrong.

  Someone was in her apartment.

  Heated tiles warmed her feet, but her heart turned to ice with fear. Don’t let it be Kiril, she thought desperately. She hadn’t seen the man in over one hundred years, since before her twin brother Sebastian had been sentenced to exile in New Orleans.

  She’d deserved the sentence, not Sebastian. Yet there he was, stuck thousands of miles
south of their home in Halifax.

  No human could have heard the footsteps padding across her carpet. Sophia was a were, and she barely heard the almost soundless movements. There was more than one person, their steps light, indicating either a female or a small man.

  Sophia had a choice: she could hole herself up in her bathroom, or she could use the element of surprise and attack them. She chose the latter, despite her lack of flame source, her greatest defense mechanism.

  In the future, she’d stash a lighter in her bathroom.

  With her clothes in her bedroom, she had only a towel to wrap around herself. She pulled her hair back and tightened the white terrycloth before she swung the door open to find three women, each towering over her five-foot-two frame. They’d been setting up what looked like a bomb, but Sophia had never seen anything like it before. Cursive was etched into the metal sphere, which vibrated with energy.

  The women whipped around, their long hair flying back to reveal pointed ears. The Fey were in her home. Sophia didn’t back away. This is going to hurt.

  The brunette’s eyes were furious slits, her mouth twisted in a snarl that made Sophia wonder what in the hell she’d done to make this woman come after her. Since her pack had no recent dealings with the Fey, she drew a blank.

  She ground her teeth; no candles were lit and the lights were off, giving her no way to access her power over fire. The closest light switch was across the room, behind the strange women.

  The light from the bathroom was too far away to illuminate the space. If it weren’t for the sunlight sneaking around the edges of her curtain, Sophia would’ve been completely blind.

  One of the women howled, her long nails sharpening into points as she leapt at Sophia. A swift roundhouse kick took care of her, sending her slamming into the wall, taking down three heavy picture frames with her.

  Sophia lunged for the broken glass, palming it and deciding to take out the second blonde next. She slashed the woman’s arm before the faery caught her in the jaw, her nails drawing blood. Sophia could hear the brunette approaching her from behind, had to jump forward to avoid her kick to the backs of her knees. She slammed into the blonde, releasing her claws and using the glass to cut her any place she could reach.