Crystal Lake Pack: The Complete Series: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance Read online

  Aliens, magic, the paranormal and the supernatural. I was fully in the thought process that if it was real, there’d be evidence by now. Hard, concrete evidence no one could deny. Possessions, hauntings. Those were all faked and disputed. If things like magic existed, society would be all up on it like flies on a dirty pig in the heat of the summer.

  I went into the living room, giving my mom peace and quiet after pouring milk into the cereal. The room was narrow, but it served its purpose. One couch, one recliner, a thin coffee table between the seating and the television set on the opposite wall. Half a dozen pictures of Mom and I graced the wall behind the TV, all various stages of my life. Sarah had me so young, half the time we were more like friends than mother and daughter.

  Sighing, I ate my cereal in silence. Two bites, and just as I reached for the remote to turn on the television—and turn the volume as quiet as I could, of course—Sarah rounded the corner from the kitchen, no longer on the phone. Today her blonde hair was pulled back by a gypsy-looking bandana, all purple and tie-dyed.

  I hesitated, my finger hovering over the power button, a huge bite of cereal in my mouth, having stopped chewing the moment Sarah came into view.

  “When you’re done eating, I want this house clean,” Sarah ordered, sounding very mother-like. I knew it was well-deserved, considering what happened, but still. I didn’t like it. “Spick and span. I will white glove this whole place, and if it fails the test, you’ll do it all again tomorrow. And we will continue to play this game until you’re ready to tell me the truth about what happened.”

  I set the bowl on the coffee table, finishing chewing and swallowing. “I attacked my professor,” I whispered, not meeting her stare, which was far too knowing. Sarah had no idea what had happened.

  Maybe I should just tell her and get it over with. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to clean the entire house—that just seemed like a lot of work, and right now all I wanted to do was be depressed.

  Sarah sat beside me, wordlessly commanding me to look at her. I bit the inside of my cheek as I met her gaze. “Addie,” she spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully, calmly, not at all the same upset mother who’d driven two hours to pick me up from my dorm room on a Friday afternoon. “You aren’t the type to attack anyone, even if they deserve it. I didn’t raise you like that. None of your friends were like that. What really happened?”

  I froze at the emphasis my mom put on the question, almost as if…well, it was stupid. I would’ve sworn then it was like my mom already knew the truth. But she couldn’t. No way. It just wasn’t possible. When something crazy happened, no one’s first guess was magic.

  “Mom,” I whispered, trying to sound as serious as I could and not like I was attempting to pull a fast one on her, “I don’t know what happened.” The truth, without exactly saying it. For someone so rooted in reality, lately I’d been kind of out there.

  Magic wasn’t real.

  The disappointment on Sarah’s face was almost palpable. “Well,” she spoke after a heavy sigh, “when you want to talk about it, I’m ready. And I hope you know that, no matter what happens, no matter what you…what you did, I’ll always love you.” She stood and wandered to the front vestibule, where her fortune telling table sat, adorned with skulls and gauzy fabrics of purples and blacks. “I have a reading at ten this morning, so I’ll give you a break from cleaning for thirty minutes, as long as you make yourself scarce.”

  I knew what that meant, because I’d heard it so many times while growing up. Not the cleaning bit, but the making myself scarce part.

  During my mom’s working hours, when guests were in our house, I had a ritual of wandering to the pond in the middle of the forest in the back, taking a quick walk around it, enjoying nature and all that. By the time I returned to the house, my mom was always about done with her readings. It’d been a few months since I had to do it, since I’d been away at college, but it was something I would have to get used to again.

  I couldn’t complain, and neither could Sarah. Sarah didn’t want me in the house because she was probably afraid I would barge in and say something along the lines of what kind of idiot would believe in this stuff? And then her clients would get mad and leave, most likely without paying. I was a little old now to do something so rude and foolish, but a habit was a habit. I’d work on cleaning the darn house from top to bottom for an hour or two and then take a hike.

  Literally.

  I hurried to finish my cereal, doing my best to ignore the sounds Sarah made and the looks I was given as I went around and dusted and vacuumed and swept.

  The only area of the house I was not allowed to touch was Sarah’s workspace. Sarah was obsessive when it came to her work area and its vibe. One little thing out of place, one spooky drapery hanging slightly off and everything was ruined, in Sarah’s view at least.

  Who the heck even used the word vibe now, besides my mom? I wondered. Sarah had always been a little weird compared to my friends’ mothers, but I’d learned not to question it much, because beneath all the hoodoo and the mystical posturing, I loved my mom more than anything. I’d take Sarah over any other ‘normal’ mother any day.

  Once nine forty-five hit, I found Sarah was still straightening her work area, even though it needed absolutely nothing.

  “I’m out, in case they show up early,” I told Sarah, to which my mom just looked at me and nodded once. When it came to her work, she was always serious. So freaking serious. It was our only source of money, so I supposed it was good she was so serious about it.

  Would I become that serious about whatever job I happened to stumble into? I found it difficult to believe.

  I left through the backdoor in the kitchen, skipping down the porch until my shoes hit the grass. Bright and green, the grass only gave way to layers and layers of dead leaves the moment I ventured into the forest in the far back of the yard. I reached into my back pocket, pulling out my phone to check for any missed messages.

  Nothing. No texts. No missed calls or voicemails. Not like I really expected anything.

  Depressing, but the truth.

  I stopped walking as my eyes practically stared holes through the screen of my phone. Silly as it was, I felt abandoned by the very friends who had sworn to me they’d never forget about me just because they were going to school a few states away.

  It was silly because I should’ve known what would happen. Long distances put strain on any type of relationship, and friends were always easier to maintain when they were nearby, when you could see them anytime you wanted to.

  I may have my mom, but beyond that, I was alone. No extended family to speak of, and now no friends. Maybe, in the near future, whatever job I would get—because, like Sarah had said, I couldn’t freeload off her forever—would beget me friends. Or at the very least acquaintances who could become friends in time.

  I slipped my phone back into my butt pocket, breathing in deeply once. Around me, the forest was oddly quiet. No birds chirping, no dried-up leaves rustling. Not a bit of wind touched my skin or blew through my brown and pink hair, whose lengths were down and free, cascading down past my shoulders. It needed a trim, but a haircut was the last of my worries right now.

  The air that filled my lungs was clean. Not like the air had been on my college campus. Big buildings and artificial landscape could only do so much. Nothing could replace the smell of nature. Pure, unbridled wildlife. Nature knew no boss, no laws. Nature did as it wanted, when it wanted; I was jealous. I wanted to be as free as nature was.

  Right now, I could be.

  I took off running, wild and fast, as quick as my legs would take me. My arms pumped beside me, my lungs working hard to keep up with the pace. What should’ve been a fifteen-minute hike turned into a two-minute, high-speed sprint as I leaped over dead, fallen trees and pounded over mounds of decaying, crunchy leaves. Energy I didn’t know I had burst through my system, and when I arrived at the pond, I was barely out of breath.

  I hardly felt like I�
�d sprinted at all, let alone made the distance so freaking fast. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said it was magic.

  I rolled my eyes as I thought, magic.

  How ridiculous.

  Chapter Three – Addie

  It wasn’t magic. Just adrenaline. I knew it. Still, though—after what had happened with my professor, it was sort of fun to imagine being magical. The things I could do. My mom’s jaw would drop to the floor and…

  No, best not to entertain those thoughts, because magic wasn’t real. The closest thing to it was mother nature and the beautiful view laying before me.

  My pond, tucked away, hidden from the neighborhood by the dense forest. The tree line broke, moss lining the stones around the pond that was no wider than my house. A small body of water, but it was my favorite place. The water was clear, little fish and tadpoles swimming along, frogs resting near the edge, only hopping in and disturbing the serene water when I moved too close to them.

  My thoughts cleared when I was here. Maybe it was being so secluded, so tucked away from the rest of the world, though I couldn’t say for sure. All I knew was I loved it, and while I would never willingly camp in the forest, I would be happy spending all my time near the pond, painting or drawing or reading.

  If I was creative. But I wasn’t. I was more logical than creative. Writing, drawing, imagining things in my head. The closest I came to doing that was my dreams, and I wasn’t sure those counted for much of anything.

  Exhaling loudly, I knelt to slip off my shoes and peel off my socks. I went to the water’s edge and plopped down on the moss, putting my feet into the water. The water’s temperature was far colder than the air, and it gave me an instant chill, one I could not shake, even after I withdrew my feet from its three-inch depths.

  The air was still warm, not crisp and cold, so why the heck was the water so chilly? Seemed very out of season…

  I moved my feet before me, tucking my legs beneath me as I leaned over the edge and stared into the water. I hoped to clear my mind and figure out what I was going to do, but unfortunately no miraculous answers came.

  The sun warmed my head and the back of my neck, time passing by. I was unaware, caught in a daydream, lost in my own mind.

  What was I supposed to do? What would happen to me if anything ever happened to Sarah? I had no experience, and even if I tried to take over my mom’s business, I knew nothing about tarot cards and seances.

  Or taxes.

  I’d be screwed. I’d never make enough to pay for the house and all the bills that came along with owning a house.

  I closed my eyes, turning my head up to the sun. The sky today was free of clouds, all bright and warm. It totally went against the mood I was stuck in, but it wasn’t like I could change the weather.

  Books might have a strange habit of floating around me, but weather was definitely something I could not change.

  Not that I thought I was telepathic, or whatever that power was called. Telekinetic?

  After a while, I pulled out my phone to both check the time and see if any of my so-called friends had finally responded to my sent messages the last few days. It was a minute after ten, and there was nothing but nothing where messages were concerned. I was a little obsessed, I guess, unable to stop checking my stupid phone.

  Ugh.

  At least Sarah’s appointment should be there now. I could lollygag around the pond for a few more minutes and take a slow hike back. No more running.

  Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what had gotten into me when I ran all that way—

  A strange noise rang in the distance, immediately causing the small, white hairs on the back of my neck to stand straight up. It was a sound I knew well, because I’d been to the zoo dozens of times and had watched many animal specials on the Discovery Channel. It was a noise everyone who could hear knew, even if they’d never heard it before.

  A howl.

  A wolf’s howl.

  And it sounded like it came from the direction of the house.

  My heart pounded in my chest, and I had nothing else on my mind other than Sarah.

  Could an animal have gotten loose from one of the neighbors? I didn’t think any of our neighbors had any dog-wolf hybrids, but you never knew. This was America. People were weird.

  A coyote was more logical around these parts, but the howl was strong, so I knew: it had to be a wolf.

  I hopped up, and after I pulled my socks and shoes back on, I instantly darted into a sprint, even faster than I was before. If there was a wolf loose in the area, being out in the open was not where I should be.

  I would get inside, make sure Sarah and her client were all right, and call the cops or animal control or somebody, provided Sarah hadn’t already called by the time I got back. There were kids in this neighborhood. It was a Saturday and the weather was warm; there were bound to be children out and about playing. I would not let anything happen to the kids around here.

  This wasn’t to say I had some kind of hero complex.

  I didn’t.

  But I was as protective of my mom as Sarah was of me, and as for the kids in the neighborhood, well. I’d watched them grow up from afar as I went to the nearby public school. They weren’t my friends or my family, but they were my community. Like…like a makeshift pack.

  Ironic, considering the wolf’s howl.

  I retraced my steps as fast as I could, running like the Devil himself, sprinting as quickly as my legs could take me without being the Flash. As I ran, I heard not another howl, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not, because it could mean the wolf had found a victim, prey that couldn’t defend themselves against it.

  What was a man or a woman—or a child, for that matter—supposed to do when a wolf came out of nowhere and attacked?

  I leaped up the few steps to the back porch, about to fling myself through the screen door when I heard my mom’s voice drifting out from the open kitchen window, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  My legs stopped. That…was definitely not how she talked to any of her clients. Did Sarah know them?

  “What the hell am I doing here?” It was a man’s voice. Older, by the sound of the scratchiness, the lowness of the timbre. “You know why I’m here, Sarah.” A pause before the old man added, “What did you do to him?”

  “A little something Arthur taught me. Don’t worry, your pup will turn back soon enough. Now, that’s all the civility I have in me, so get the hell out of my house.”

  I recoiled at the strength behind Sarah’s voice. Even after what happened with my professor, I’d never heard Sarah sound quite like that. Utterly enraged, blood boiling in her veins. She hardly sounded like my mom.

  Who the heck was this guy, and what were they talking about?

  I lingered by the screen door, glancing once at the kitchen window, which sat ten feet away. I was unsure whether or not I should go in, but with that howl, not to mention the strange stuff they were saying, I didn’t really have a choice. I had to.

  “You and the girl don’t belong here, Sarah,” the old man said. His haughty tone made my decision easier.

  I’d go in and tell that guy who’s boss. Hint: it wasn’t him.

  I barged through the back door, the screen swinging shut behind me as I headed into the kitchen—a room of the house no client was ever invited into.

  Who the heck was…my thoughts trailed off when every set of eyes in the kitchen turned to look at me.

  My mom’s cheeks were red with fury, her eyes narrowed. The old man had made himself at home, sitting easily at the head of the kitchen table. His skin was wrinkled and peppered with sunspots, his eyes a light hazel, nearly identical to Sarah’s. Grey hair, grey goatee. He had to be nearly seventy years old.

  The old man appraised me as I did him, but it was hard to focus on either him or Sarah when there was a third set of eyes staring at me.

  They sat much lower than the other pairs, and they were much rounder, a bit larger…an almost reflective br
own hue with a sheen of gold over it. Set in a big, furry head behind a snout that housed sharp teeth, beneath a pair of ears that were intent and focused on me.

  A wolf. The big eyes belonged to a wolf.

  There was a freaking wolf in our kitchen, and my mom and the old stranger were acting as if it were no more than a dog.

  Did everyone lose their mind when I wasn’t looking?

  “Mom,” I whispered, reaching down to grab…well, there was nothing in arm’s reach, so I took off my right shoe and held onto it like it was a dangerous knife. Or a rock. Or something. The drawer with the knives was on the other side of the kitchen, so I had to improvise. “I’m going to distract it. When I do, run over here.”

  Sarah said nothing, her eyes widening as if she finally, finally realized what mess she was in. Not only was a strange old man in our kitchen, but also a wolf.

  I threw my shoe before Sarah had the chance to reply—and it was a good throw, too. Hard and fast and…

  The freaking wolf caught my shoe, snapping its jaws around my tennis shoe and definitely popping a hole or two through the side fabric.

  I watched, mouth hanging open, as the wolf slowly trotted across the kitchen floor, the nails on its paws clicking with each step on the tile. I couldn’t move, out of fear—or maybe it was something else. I could only watch as the wolf walked up to me, carefully setting the shoe down on the floor before me.

  “Uh,” was my brilliant response as I stared down at the wolf.

  The frigging thing stood higher than my hips, its head so…well, thick and hairy. Its color was mainly white, a dull, light yellow with a few black strands, as if its coat couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be.

  Was this thing the old guy’s pet? Did it think I was trying to play fetch with my shoe?