Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) (14 page)

“But he doesn’t love her,” she blurts
out.

“What do you know about their relationship?
Does he love
you
?” Margarete says meaningfully.

Lucien has never dropped the ‘L’ word with
her. Shannon can feel the blood draining away from her face. Is
that why he never gave her any hope regarding these matters? Is
that why he never brought it up?

“I can see you can’t answer these questions
yourself,” Margarete says. “So you know, as much as you don’t want
to admit it, that I’m right.”

She finishes her cigarette and drops her butt
on the ground. She stubs it out with her foot.

“I just did you a favor,” she says. “I hope
you will thank me one day.”

With that, she strides to her car, a silver
BMW, starts in and revs off without a second glance at Shannon.

CONFRONTATION

Shannon never realized how much she loves
Lucien until she feels her heart breaking and her entire world
crashing down.

He lied to me.

No, he didn’t really lie. He just never told
you the truth.

But how could he do this to her? Is
everything Margarete told her the absolute truth then? Was Lucien
simply using her for his sexual pleasures with no intention of
making their union permanent?

What a fool you are to hope for anything
more. He is exactly what you told yourself he would be when you
first met him – a wonderful sexual diversion. Nothing more.

But she had allowed herself to hope.

She had allowed herself – over the weeks they
had dated and he had no other in his sights – that she would be the
one to land him. She would be the one to tame him. She had even
thought that the secrets he shared with her about his family meant
that he trusted her enough to share his life with her. She had
allowed herself to subconsciously want him to be the one for
her.

Her tears are streaming down her cheeks fast
and furiously as she drives to the country club. She knows he will
be there this evening. Client meeting, he said. So much of her
wants him to tell her that everything is all right – that he has no
intention of marrying Flora Janssen. That he had been coerced into
getting engaged to a witch he hardly knew at the age of
sixteen.

Shannon drives up to the gates of the only
country club in Dolphin’s Bay. They are wrought iron and ornate.
The members of this club are moneyed, and to get in, you’d have to
have three recommendations from existing members and a fat bank
account. So it is not only what you have but who you know.

The sentry guard at the gates stops her.

“Are you a member, Miss?”

Lucien has never taken her to the club before
for obvious reasons. His father is a committee member there and
this is where his family conducts most of their business. He never
wanted her to comingle with his family members.

“No, but my boyfriend is in there and I have
something important to tell him.” She wants to do this face to
face, not over the cellphone.

“May I know his name, Miss?”

“Lucien Walker.”

“I can call the reception and he can meet you
in the lobby. But he will have to confirm he knows you first.”

“Oh, he knows who I am all right,” she says
grimly.

But still, the gates remain closed as the
guard makes his call. After about a few minutes, he returns to the
Toyota, which still has its driver window wound down.

“Mr. Walker will meet with you in the lobby,
Miss.”

He smiles and presses a button in the sentry
box console. The forbidding gates open.

The country clubhouse is a sprawling place
with several wings and a mixture of sloping and pointed green
roofs. The gardens are resplendent, as always. Shannon would not be
surprised if someone were to tell her that the Walkers had bought
this place, refurbished it and sold it to a conglomerate to fashion
a country club.

She parks the Toyota in an empty parking lot
next to a hyacinth plant. She gets out. Her legs are wobbly. Before
she can go to the entrance, Lucien is already at the door.

“Shannon? What’s wrong? Why didn’t you call
me on my cellphone?”

How is she going to do this? She has no plan,
really, other than to confront him.

“You didn’t tell me you were engaged to be
married.”

He stops short. His face turns pale. That is
when she knows, with her heart sinking, that everything Margarete
told her was the truth.

“Shannon – ”

“You didn’t deny it.”

An elderly couple carting golf clubs comes
out of the double doors. They regard Lucien and Shannon with
curiosity.

Lucien takes Shannon’s arm and walks her to a
more secluded spot behind a cluster of bushes.

“I was going to tell you,” he says.

“Really? When?”

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “It never
seemed like a good time.”

“Now would be a good time.”

“I had no choice in the matter,” he says in a
low voice. “It’s a family tradition.”

“To match witches of different lineages
together? I thought you said you weren’t a practicing witch!”

“Ssssh.” He tries to take her arm again but
she wrenches it off. “Please, Shannon. Let’s go to your car. We can
talk there more privately.”

She fumes as she follows him back to her
Toyota. They both get into their respective sides – she in the
driver’s seat and he in the front passenger one.

“I am not a practicing witch,” he says, “but
my family believes in maintaining tradition. Witches intermarry
between clans, and Flora Janssen is from a very old witch family
that hails from Salem. Every one of us is betrothed in our teens.
Our genealogies are mapped for us by matchmakers to determine which
lineages would make the best matches.”

Yes, she suspected that much.

“And you’re going to go through with it?” Her
voice is breaking, as is everything else inside her.

God, I never knew he would affect me this
much.

“It was not a love match, Shannon.”

“You’re not answering the question. Are you
going to go through with it?” Tears are in her eyes again. “What
did I mean to you, Lucien? Were you leading me on? Not so much in
words, but in actions.” A sob chokes her throat. “Was I just a
convenient fuck doll to you . . . to while away the time until your
arranged marriage took place?”

“You’re not a fuck doll.” He appears
genuinely distressed. “You mean so much more to me than I ever
thought possible. At first, I was attracted to your looks, yes. I
wanted to have you . . . possess you. But I found myself thinking
about you all the time when you weren’t with me. I found myself
wanting to see you again and again. That is the truth,
Shannon.”

“But you’re still engaged to be married. It
doesn’t change anything.” She turns away from him. It is too
painful to gaze at him. “Your sister told me everything.”

“My sister!” He is suddenly enraged. “What
the hell did she tell you?”

“She told me the truth, nothing more. A truth
I expected from you. She told me . . . that if you didn’t go
through with this marriage, you’d be cut off.”

He takes all this in. He doesn’t deny it.

“Is this true?” she demands.

After a long while, he nods.

“Then it’s clear what you’re going to do,”
she says. “You’re going to go through with your planned wedding and
your planned marriage and your planned consummation to produce a
family of super-witches.”

“I’d much rather be with you.” This comes out
uncertainly.

“Really, Lucien? It’s a lot of money to give
up, and I think you have already decided that I am not worth it.
Better to do what your father wants of you than to be destitute on
account of me.”

“That’s not true,” he says weakly.

“It is true. I can see it in your face. You
don’t think I’m worth giving up everything for. And you know what?
I don’t blame you. I’m just glad I got to know the truth before it
got too deep between us. Unless you never planned it to get deeper
than what we have now.”

She can see it all so clearly.

And yet, she can’t blame him. He had never
promised her anything.

“No, Shannon,” he says, aghast. “It isn’t
like that at all.” He pauses, not knowing what to say next. His
hesitation tells her everything she needs to know.

“Goodbye, Lucien,” she says simply. “Please
get out of my car.”

He blinks at her, uncomprehending.

“It’s OK. I understand,” she says. “It isn’t
as if you promised me anything more than what you gave me. It was I
who led myself into false hopes and expectations, something I
shouldn’t have done. I bear you no ill will, Lucien, but it is best
we end it right here. I deserve better than to be the mistress of a
man who must be married to his fate. So you have to get out of my
car now, because I need to go home and have a good cry over
you.”

He sits there, unmoving. She waits. Part of
her is still hoping he would say “I’m going to renounce my
inheritance for you” or “I won’t go through with this sham
marriage. I’ll tell my father that I want to be with you and to
hell with what the coven says”.

But he doesn’t.

After a long while, he opens the car door.
His limbs move with a heaviness that she has never seen before. His
shoulders droop and he suddenly looks ten years older.

Flashes of their happy times together run in
succession through her mind. Meeting him for the first time in the
rain. Him gazing at her throughout the arm-wrestling match with
Jared. Making love to him in his bedroom at the Chatterly for the
first time.

He shuts the passenger door of the Toyota
quietly.

“Goodbye, Lucien,” she says to herself.

FALLOUT

Shannon cries, of course.

She cries and cries on her bed. She is
miserable and listless, and life seems to have lost all meaning.
She can’t eat, and so she sleeps interminably. Her dreams are
intermingled with Lucien’s face, Lucien’s hands, Lucien’s wonderful
body merging with hers.

Jared tries to come in – to comfort her. He
sits by her bed and says words that she doesn’t understand and
can’t fully comprehend. Words like:

“It’s all right.”

“It’ll get better.”

“Want me to stay here with you?”

He does not say: “I told you so”.

Because he didn’t, really. He wasn’t exactly
Lucien’s rival, and he never pursued their competitiveness because
Lucien simply didn’t want to be competitive against Jared.

After a long period of her
non-responsiveness, Jared says:

“I’ve got to go in to work. Call me if you
need anything, OK? Will you be all right or should I take the day
off and stay?”

She thinks she shakes her head, though she
can’t be sure.

“It’s OK,” something with her voice says, “go
ahead. I’ll be all right.”

He worriedly leans down to kiss her on the
cheek. Her cheek, now dried of salt tears. And then he is gone.

She thinks he is not bad, really. They have
been through a lot together.

She doesn’t know how long she stays in her
bed, staring at the ceiling. Shadows flit across the windows and
the light from outside changes.

Then she hears a knocking at the door in the
lounge. The cottage isn’t that big and so sounds travel easily.

“Shannon? Shannon?” A male voice.

Not Lucien.

She can’t get up. Her limbs are leaden. She
has turned off her cellphone.

The knocking persists, and she hopes that
whoever it is will go away. Then after a while, it ceases. A pause.
Footsteps padding closer to her window outside.

“Shannon?”

The window is closed, but a man is there,
silhouetted by the light. She half-turns, her body like a
marionette jerked by someone else’s strings.

Her boss, Kirk Fitzpatrick, stands there, a
worried crease on his handsome forehead. He taps at the glass of
the window.

“Shannon. Are you all right?”

No, I’m not, she wants to say. Go away.
Please. I’m sorry I didn’t call in sick. It must be a workday.

“Shannon? Your brother called me to tell me
you weren’t coming to work. I just came here to make sure you’re
OK. Are you OK?”

Shifter.

Go away.

No, don’t go away.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t get up. All
the strength has left my body. I can’t breathe properly. I can’t
sleep. I can’t close my eyes. I don’t know why this feeling won’t
pass.

“Shannon, please let me in. Just open the
window. I’ll climb in.”

Something in his beautiful green eyes makes
her pause. Somehow, she finds the energy to render her
semi-paralyzed limbs mobile and go to the window. She is still
zombie-like. Glassy eyes. Wild-haired. Her hand unclasps the latch,
and he does the rest by shoving the window up and creating a
gap.

She stands back as his lithe body climbs in.
His sudden presence in the room makes it seem very small.

“Shannon?” He stands two feet away, not
wanting to scare her. She can tell he is trying to tread carefully
here. “I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t be alone. Are you
OK?”

When she doesn’t say anything, he comes
closer. A foot. Another. Then he gently touches her shoulder.

“Go back to bed. I’ll sit with you here.”

He shepherds her back to her mussed-up bed
and helps her lie down again. He gently draws the covers over her.
And then he pulls up the wicker chair by her dresser and sits
beside her.

He says, “I heard what happened. Jared told
me about the breakup.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

No, you’re not. You were the one who warned
me not to mess with Lucien in the first place. You were right. Go
ahead. Say it.

I TOLD YOU SO.

But like Jared, he doesn’t.

Instead, he says: “It hurts like a bitch
right now. But it will get better. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
But you’ll feel better on the third day. It’s different with
different people. Some people come out of it quicker, others take a
longer while. But it will get better.”