Claimed in Forbidden: A Wolf Shifter Romance (Alphas & Alchemy: Fierce Mates Book 1) Read online

  Claimed in Forbidden

  Alphas & Alchemy: Fierce Mates Book One

  Keira Blackwood

  Liza Street

  Contents

  Introduction

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  A Taste of Fated in Forbidden

  Also by Keira Blackwood and Liza Street

  About the Authors

  Copyright © 2020 Keira Blackwood & Liza Street

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is coincidental. All characters in this story are at least 18 years of age or older.

  The cover utilizes stock images licensed by the author. The model(s) depicted have no connection to this work or any other work by the author.

  Introduction

  Forbidden, Kentucky—where mates meet, and monsters make mayhem.

  Alphas & Alchemy: Fierce Mates combines the worlds for Keira’s Alphas & Alchemy and Liza’s Fierce Mates.

  Chapter 1

  Daphne

  I can do hard things. I squeezed the steering wheel, breathed in the warm spring air rushing through the car windows, and repeated my favorite mantra, this time out loud. “I can do hard things.”

  I’d said it, so I had to believe it.

  This wasn’t just hard, though. It was terrifying, and exciting. I was leaving everything and everyone I knew behind to start a new life in a tiny town I’d never heard of. It had taken zooming in a few times on Google Maps for the town to look like anything but forest.

  Forbidden, Kentucky. Even the name of the town struck me as scary and exciting, all at once. I liked it because it sounded like a challenge, and I was so up for a challenge.

  My phone buzzed in the cupholder. I glanced at the screen—Dad.

  I turned up the radio and ignored him. The last thing I needed was to talk to my parents right now. “The Sign” played, for the five hundredth time, and as I had each time it played, I sang along. The same CD had been stuck in my stereo for over a year. Out in the middle of nowhere, the only choice for radio was static, so Ace of Base it was.

  Fields of wildflowers streaked together out the side window, purples and blues and yellows against a backdrop of green. The sky was awash with orange and pink from the setting sun, just like the watercolor painting on the front of my scrapbook. Above the painting were raised letters spelling out Forbidden Delights B&B. Three years of magazine clippings and paint swatches, a life’s worth of dreams, and a roadmap to my success—the scrapbook was everything and more.

  Welcome to Forbidden read a wooden sign up ahead. Population 2204. I turned off before heading into town, following my GPS directions down a dirt path. The car bumped and jostled so hard, my CD skipped. I slowed down to a creeping pace and did what I could to avoid the worst potholes, wondering how anyone drove back and forth through here.

  If getting a few potholes filled in was the worst of the mansion’s problems, I was pretty well set. I’d been saving up for forever to pry my way out of my parents’ grasp and start somewhere new. I was about to be the proud owner of a bed and breakfast, and I’d already bought the building.

  The location was perfect, too—despite the potholes. The town of Forbidden was the closest town to Kentucky’s largest natural hot springs. There were also miles and miles of hiking trails all around, and visitors could make day-trips to a lake not far away. If you got there early enough in the season, there was even a waterfall.

  All of my planning and all of my saving was about to pay off.

  The road curved, trees blocking my view. The robot voice of my GPS said, “You have arrived at your destination.”

  Uh, no. There were only trees. I drove a little farther, and there was a building—a huge building. It was five stories tall, and built of brick. The paint on the trim was blistered, and the awning sagged over the front porch. Vines had grown over so much of the brick that it looked more a part of the woods than part of civilization. It had to have been abandoned a century ago, or at least neglected for that long. What I could see of the place had a fair number of windows, many broken, and a lot of them barred. It looked like some kind of condemned murder-house from a horror film.

  This had to be a mistake.

  I grabbed my scrapbook and flipped through to the picture of the mansion I’d purchased. The siding was brick, it was five stories tall, and that’s where the similarities ended. My mansion had to be a little farther down the road, a next-door neighbor to the murder house.

  I set my scrapbook on the passenger seat and drove past my new neighbors. Except the road didn’t go to another house. It ended.

  I checked the house number on my papers and on the mailbox at the front of the murder house. 307, 307—they were the same. This had to be a bad joke. The world’s worst prank. It was just a fake front, and as soon as I climbed out of the car, someone would roll away the ugly picture and my beautiful bed and breakfast would be revealed.

  Except I climbed out of the car, and I was alone. Crickets chirped. An owl hooted from somewhere in the woods, as if I needed a reminder that darkness was about to fall.

  I grabbed my things, most importantly my pink toolbox and my scrapbook, and I headed for the door. I can do hard things. Maybe the inside wouldn’t be so bad.

  The porch boards creaked when I stepped on them, but at least they all seemed solid. I put my key in the lock. The key fit, but the door knob didn’t turn. I tried jiggling and wiggling it. Nothing.

  I set my things on the porch and threw my weight into the door. The wood was probably swollen. A few good slams, and it’d open. I braced myself against the splintered wood of the porch and barreled into the door again. The wood made a loud thunk on impact. The door didn’t budge, and I rubbed my now-sore shoulder.

  Injuries were nothing in the pursuit of my dreams. I was determined. I was getting into my new house, and it was going to be amazing, dammit.

  I grabbed the tire iron from my trunk and wedged it between the door and the frame. I let out a deep breath and pulled with all of my might. The wood splintered, and the door opened, letting out a weird puff of sparkly smoke. With it came a strange musty odor. Okay, so there was going to be a dust problem. I could live with that.

  As I stepped inside, something crunched beneath my shoe. I looked down and found white crystals poured in a line. Maybe whoever had owned the place last had dealt with a rodent problem and had left a bunch of poison pellets. No biggie. That could be cleaned up, too.

  After picking up my things, I shut the door behind me as best as I could, given I’d broken it. Then I flipped on all the switches by the door. And there was light. Flickering, weak light from dusty old bulbs, but light nonetheless.

  I’d pre-paid to have the water and power turned on. Fortunately, the electricity was working. I crossed my fingers that there’d b
e water, too.

  Aside from the utilities, nothing was quite what I’d expected. On the first floor, there wasn’t a grand entry, sitting room, and kitchen welcoming me. Instead there was a desk, like a hotel or something, a dark room with a fireplace, and a long hall with a bunch of rooms with the doors shut. I tried one, but it seemed to be locked, with a different kind of key than I had.

  The walls were the kind of yellow that seemed like it used to be white. The floors were tile—black and white checkered—and a lot of them were broken. This place was weird, and if I was being honest with myself, hella creepy. There would be a kitchen somewhere, though, right? There had to be.

  There was a sound above me, a scratching, like there was something upstairs. Probably giant rats, given the white stuff on the floor by the door. I kept going, and found a set of stairs, and across from them, a door with a glass window that let me peek inside. I’d found the kitchen, yay. There was a refrigerator, and industrial oven, and a giant sink. Expansive counters. Everything looked dated, but the room was big—big enough to prep meals for a restaurant or cafeteria. Of course, I didn’t have the key to that door, either, but at least I knew which one I’d break next. That would have to wait for tomorrow, though. Tonight, I needed to figure out where I could get in with a door that shut, for me to sleep.

  Upstairs were more rooms, and the first one had the door open. Inside there was a small desk, ugly shag carpet, and some file cabinets. I set my things down on the desk, then went back into the hall and tried some more of the doors. Turned out one was a bathroom. It was normalish if I squinted and pretended it wasn’t covered in a three-inch blanket of grime. I tried the sink. The pipes groaned, and nothing came out at first. Then all at once a tsunami of cloudy white bubbles burst into the sink and splashed up over the sides. There was an earthy, sulfuric stench, too. I turned down the flow of water and let it run a bit. The cloudy milk color faded to clear, more water-ish water, and the smell faded. I turned off the sink and continued exploring.

  Everything else was locked, so I returned to the office. This was it. I could call home, and I was sure that my parents would be happy to have me return. I could explore town and hope that there was a motel with a room available. Or I could sleep in my car. All three of those options sounded like giving up. I refused to give up.

  I was going to sleep in my new B&B and it was going to be fine. Great, even.

  I shut the door, careful that it would definitely open again before I closed myself in, and then dug through my bag for my spare scrapbooking paper. I needed a place to sleep, and the desk was way too small, so I looked through my decorative pages and tried to pick which ones I loved the least.

  Choosing the first piece was the hardest. The second was a little easier. And by the time I had enough to cover the disgusting carpet in the corner, enough space to lie down, choosing the last piece wasn’t so bad.

  I lay the blanket and pillow I’d kept in my car on my new paper bed and curled up in the corner of the office, leaving the lights on.

  I can do hard things.

  Chapter 2

  Declan

  I woke up to a pillow knocking me in the face.

  “Get off the couch, asshole,” my brother Brody said. “Some of us want to sit down to eat our breakfast.”

  I sat up, too tired to come up with a retort, and moved my legs from the cushions so he could sit next to me.

  I had to get my own place. The sooner, the better.

  My siblings sat nearby—my sister, Moira, sat in one of the two chairs at the ping-pong table that doubled as our dining room table, and Finn, one of my other brothers, sat across from her. James was still sleeping. He’d rented this house, so he got the only bedroom. I’d drawn the long straw last night and got the couch. Moira’s, Finn’s, and Brody’s sleeping bags were neatly rolled up at the side of the room, their pillows on top of them.

  “I have news,” Finn said, a cereal bar in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

  Coffee. I needed coffee.

  I stood up, groaning at the crick in my neck, and slumped into the kitchen. A cockroach skittered into a gap where the linoleum had come loose from the floor trim. I held back a gasp, not wanting my siblings to laugh at me.

  But Moira had seen me twitch.

  “Big bad alpha wolf,” she teased. “Afraid of a cockroach.”

  I ignored her and poured my coffee. So, the flooring in the kitchen needed work—it could be our next project. I’d already done the counters, with Moira’s and Finn’s help, and the granite composite gleamed in the morning light. We were fucking good at what we did. We just needed more jobs to make ends meet.

  “So, that news nobody’s asking me about?” Finn said.

  “Yeah, what is it?” Brody asked around a bite of his cereal bar.

  “Someone bought the old asylum.”

  “Why the hell would anyone do that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Caleb was at The Watering Hole last night. He said the place sold, and when I was running in the forest last night, I heard a car on the drive. The new owners were probably there to check it out.”

  “Maybe we should go look at it,” Moira said.

  Frowning, I glared at her. “The last thing we need for a client is some weird-ass crazy person who thinks they can turn some kind of profit from that dump.”

  “Last I checked,” Moira said, “I’m the owner of our company, not you. You might be the alpha of our pack, but I’m the alpha of the business.”

  And to prove how professional she was, she stuck her tongue out at me.

  “If we go now,” Finn said, “we could check the place out, decide if it’s even worth putting in a bid.”

  “It won’t be,” I growled.

  “Now, Declan,” Brody said, “just because you haven’t gotten laid in a year doesn’t mean you need to be grumpy at us.”

  “Shut up,” I said, without any real energy.

  If nothing else, checking out the old asylum would give me something new to look at. We’d been struggling to find work for months. It could be difficult finding jobs in a town as small as Forbidden, even though we were the best. At times it felt like we’d fixed every damn broken board in the whole damned town. The only way James could afford this house was because we’d agreed to help fix it up as we lived here.

  “Then it’s settled,” Moira said. “Someone go wake up James. I’ll grab some doughnuts and meet you out at the asylum. I have a good feeling about this. We’ll scope it out, decide what needs done from the outside, then hunt down the buyer and show off how awesome we are.”

  I finished my coffee and washed out the mug. Moira was already grabbing her bag.

  “And for the love of all that’s good in this world,” Moira said, “all of you need to put on clean shirts. Don’t embarrass me.”

  I looked down at my t-shirt. I’d only worn it yesterday and slept in it. It wasn’t gross or anything.

  Moira left, the flimsy door creaking before slamming shut.

  Brody looked over at me. “I’m not fucking changing my shirt. Are you guys?”

  Finn laughed. “Hell no.”

  I walked to the door, opened it, and stepped onto the porch. Then I turned around to look at them. “One of you is going to have to wake up James.”

  The panic on their faces was priceless, and I walked out to my truck, whistling.

  Chapter 3

  Daphne

  There was a gentle sound, soft and fluttering. At first I thought it was just a part of my dream. Sunlight heated my face, but my eyes remained closed. My dreams muddled together, and as I stirred from my sleep, I couldn’t quite remember what I’d been dreaming about.

  The purr-like sound happened again, and I peeked through heavy eyelids expecting to find Mr. Pepperly, the neighbor’s tomcat, making himself at home on my bed. But this wasn’t my bed. This wasn’t my room. And that wasn’t my neighbor’s cat.

  My eyes shot open and I sat up, realizing exactly where I was. The murder ho
use—my murder house, which I was going to turn into a bed and breakfast if it killed me. I tossed my blanket aside, careful not to let the corner fall off the scrapbook paper bed I’d fashioned for myself the night before.

  And then I heard the fluttering sound again. It hadn’t been part of my dream. I stilled, my heart racing, not knowing what kind of monster was in the room with me, but wishing it was way the hell somewhere else. Or that I was. I turned my head, slowly searching for the source of the sound. Standing over me on the desk was the biggest bird I’d ever seen. It was hideous, with a pink neck and giant black eyes that seemed to be deciding whether I should be eaten now or later. It was either a turkey vulture or some kind of demon hell spawn, though both seemed just as likely.

  I glanced over to the door, then back to the bird, afraid to look away for more than a second. Apparently I’d forgotten to shut the door, and with the front door being busted, well, it was an invitation for nature to come on in and make itself at home.

  Think. I could call someone to come out and remove the bird. Or...I could at least try to deal with it myself.

  There was a window above me. I reached up slowly, keeping my eyes on the turkey demon, and lifted the window open. Yes. That would either give the bird a way out, or invite its friends to join in. I didn’t know what else I could do.

  The creature made a gross cawing sound, and its neck jiggled. Was that a threat or a turkey vulture’s way of wishing someone a good morning? I couldn’t tell. I needed out. Now.