Curvy Forced Mate (Beaumont Lottery Mates #1)

Chapter 1 - Caitlynn

Caitlynn had learned this somewhere between foster home number three and foster home number seven.

Despite her life crashing down, the world kept spinning.

The sun kept rising. And as she learned as an adult…

bread still needed to be baked whether or not you’d slept more than four hours or cried in the shower or spent twenty minutes staring at the wall, wondering how you’d ended up twenty-four years old with a mattress on the floor and exactly zero people who would notice if you disappeared.

Caitlyn laughed gruffly and shook her head. Cheery thoughts for a Tuesday.

She punched the dough harder than necessary, feeling it yield under her knuckles. Take that, existential dread.

The bakery was small—in essence, it was really just a glorified kitchen with a display case bolted to the front.

Still… it was hers. Well, technically, it was Margaret’s.

But Margaret let her run the morning shift alone, which meant that she had four blissful hours of silence before she had to put on her Customer Service Face and pretend she gave a damn whether some hipster’s latte had enough foam.

She swallowed an angry groan and turned her attention to the table.

Three cups of flour. Proof the yeast. Don’t think about how empty your apartment is.

She’d gotten good at this. The not-thinking. The filling her hands with work so her brain couldn’t fill itself with everything else, and evidently veer towards how bad things had gotten.

The overhead lights flickered.

Caitlynn froze, her flour-dusted fingers hovering over the prep counter. She watched the fluorescent tubes stutter once, then twice.

Then steady.

“Old building,” she muttered. “Old wiring.”

She shook off the feeling that something was off. Something was wrong.

Coincidence. Stress. You imagined it.

She had to believe that it was nothing more.

The alternative was thinking she was broken in ways that couldn’t be fixed, and she’d already spent enough years in that mental street.

She went back to punching the dough, ignoring all else.

“You’re going to knead that into submission.”

She jumped when she heard Margaret’s voice. Was it seven already?

Indeed, Margaret was leaning against the wall with a thin smile.

“That’s the goal.” Caitlynn shaped the loaf and slid it into the oven. “I need to get this done.”

“I think you need to… get done. Preferably by someone who knows how to do you,” Margaret said, her grin widening.

“Margaret!” She pretended to be aghast, though she was used to Margaret’s particular brand of honesty.

“I’m just saying.” Margaret set down her purse—enormous, leather, probably older than Caitlynn—and fixed her with a look. “When’s the last time you went on a date? An actual date. With another human person.”

“I went to the movies last month.”

“Alone doesn’t count. When is the last time you got laid?”

“I prefer not to talk about it. Besides, I like being alone.” Caitlynn arranged croissants—more to avoid Margaret’s curious eyes than anything else. “Alone is peaceful. Alone doesn’t leave the toilet seat up or steal the covers or tell you that you’d be prettier if you smiled more.”

“Someone said that to you?”

“Several someones.” She smiled brightly. “Which is why I now live in blissful solitude with a mattress on the floor and a truly impressive collection of takeout menus.”

Margaret stared at her for a long moment. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s efficient.”

“It’s sad.”

The bell over the door chimed, and Caitlynn turned away quickly. “Can I help you?”

Margaret sighed deeply and disappeared to the back—leaving Caitlynn with the customers who wanted nothing more than a coffee, a pastry, and a fake customer-service smile.

The day passed quickly. It was a busy one, and as she left for home, Caitlynn was tired to the bone.

The problem with shutting people out, she thought as she opened the door, was that it worked. Too well sometimes.

Her apartment was quiet.

It was always quiet. She’d fantasized about being quiet as a kid, crammed into bedrooms with three other foster kids, never alone, never private, never able to cry without someone hearing.

Be careful what you wish for was apparently more than just a saying.

She dropped her bag, kicked off her shoes, and stood in the center of the room that served as bedroom, living room, and kitchen all at once.

The walls were bare. The boxes in the corner remained unpacked after four years.

The only personal touch was a single photograph on the windowsill—her mother, smiling, taken a month before she died.

Caitlynn had been seven. She remembered flashes: red hair like her own. A laugh that sounded like bells. Hands that smelled like lavender and something else, something earthy and strange.

She didn’t remember the accident. The doctors said that was normal. Trauma did funny things to memory.

Funny wasn’t the word she’d use.

The lightbulb in her bedside lamp buzzed—that weird electrical whine that usually preceded a burnout. She ignored it. Added buy lightbulbs to the mental list she’d never actually write down.

She crawled onto the mattress and closed her eyes. Soon, she knew, sleep would come—and tomorrow would be more of the same. That was her life, she supposed.

It happened three days later. One minute, she was talking to the rude customer who had snapped his fingers at her and had her remake his latte three times, the next… anger coursed through her, and every light in the bakery suddenly blew out.

She’d dealt with her fair share of rude customers before, but this one was something else. He’d barely sipped at his latte before pushing it back towards her. “It is too hot,” he complained loudly. Another remake, another sip. “It’s too cold.”

Behind him, the line grew uncomfortable and impatient.

“I’ll remake it again,” she offered with a frozen smile.

He leaned forward, elbows on the counter, close enough that she caught the sour tang of onions and mustard on his breath. “What I don’t get is why it’s so hard. It’s coffee. A child could do this.”

Her smile didn’t waver. It never wavered. She’d practiced this in bathroom mirrors at sixteen, teaching her face to lie even when her hands were shaking.

She turned to the espresso machine. Steam hissed. Milk frothed. Normal sounds. Grounding sounds.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Don’t react. Don’t engage. Just get through it.

“I asked you a question.” His voice pitched louder, playing to the audience now. “Hello? Are you stupid, or just—”

Something behind her sternum twisted.

Not anger. She knew anger—had learned to pack it down so deep it couldn’t reach her face. This was different. Hotter. A pressure building against her ribs like steam in a closed pipe, nowhere to go.

“—incompetent?”

Pop.

The fluorescent tube above the register blew first. Then the one over the pastry case. Then every bulb in the building, all at once, a cascade of sharp cracks and tinkling glass.

Someone screamed. The man lurched backward, stumbling into a display of packaged cookies, sending them scattering across the floor.

Caitlynn stood frozen in the dark.

Her hands were braced against the espresso machine. Her heart slammed against her ribs—once, twice, three times—so hard she could feel her pulse in her teeth.

That wasn’t me.

But she’d felt it. The exact second the pressure crested and broke. The release, like a fist unclenching somewhere behind her lungs.

“Everyone, stay calm!” Margaret’s voice cut through the chaos, flashlight already in hand. “Old wiring, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

The man was gone. Caitlynn heard the bell over the door jangle, his footsteps retreating fast.

She looked down at her hands.

They were shaking.

***

The woman stood in a ring of fire.

She had Caitlynn’s face. Caitlynn’s hair, auburn and wild, whipping in a wind that existed only inside the flames. Her mouth moved—words, urgent words—but the sound couldn’t break through. Just the roar of the fire and the pound of Caitlynn’s own heartbeat.

The woman reached for her. Fingers sparking. Palms glowing gold.

Caitlynn tried to step back and couldn’t. Tried to scream and couldn’t.

The flames closed in—

She woke with a gasp, sheets twisted around her legs, sweat cooling on her skin.

3:47 a.m. The red numbers of her alarm clock pulsed in the darkness.

Her throat was raw. Her mouth tasted like smoke.

Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a—

She pressed her palms against her eyes until colors bloomed in the black.

The bathroom light was too bright. She splashed cold water on her face, once, twice, watched it drip from her chin onto the porcelain. Her reflection looked like hell—dark circles carved under her eyes, freckles standing out against skin gone pale and waxy.

She reached for the glass on the edge of the sink. Cheap thing, from a dollar store pack. Her fingers closed around it.

Crack.

Shards exploded. She flinched back, and a sharp, sudden pain bloomed across her palm. Blood welled from a thin line below her thumb, dripping onto the white sink in fat red drops.

She hadn’t squeezed it.

She stared at the mess. The glass scattered across the counter. The blood sliding down her wrist. The faint tremor in her fingers that wouldn’t stop.

Coincidence. Old glass. It was probably cracked already.

The words felt thin. Tissue paper stretched over a hole she didn’t want to look through.

She didn’t want to think about it anymore. Instead, she cleaned everything up and crawled back onto her mattress.

This time, she didn’t close her eyes.

The symbol appeared on a Thursday.

It was a normal day. Mundane, even. She was in her kitchen, doing the dishes and thinking about nothing—grocery lists, the electric bill she kept forgetting to pay—when heat bloomed across the inside of her left wrist.

It wasn’t the heat from the water. It was deeper, felt like it was coming from the inside of her hand.

She looked down.

The mark was small—no bigger than a thumbprint. Lines curved and intersected, forming a pattern that looked almost like language, if language could be written in light. It pulsed, soft gold, in time with her heartbeat.

“What the fuck?”

She shoved her wrist under the running water. Scrubbed with dish soap. Hand soap.

The rough side of the sponge until her skin went red and raw.

The mark remained. Glowing. Patient.

“What the actual fuck?”

She jumped when a sound reverberated through the house. A knock.

Caitlynn went still and pressed a hand against her heart.

The faucet dripped. Once. Twice. The mark pulsed on her wrist.

Another knock sounded, harder this time, rattling the cheap chain lock.

She moved without thinking, grabbing the bread knife from the drying rack. Serrated. Ridiculous. But the weight of it in her hand was something.

She pressed her back to the wall beside the door. “Who is it?”

“Caitlynn Williams.” The voice was male, deep, flat as pavement. “You’ve been selected. Open the door, please.”

Her blood went cold and slow, syrup in her veins. “Selected for what?”

“The Alpha’s mate ritual. You have been chosen by the lottery, and the mark has been recorded. You’re required to attend.”

A laugh crawled up her throat—high and sharp. If this was a prank, it wasn’t a very good one. “I think you have the wrong apartment. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Your mark says otherwise.” A pause, heavy. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. I’d recommend the easy way.”

Her grip tightened on the handle of a knife she hadn’t realized she was holding. The mark pulsed warmth up her arm.

“And I’d recommend you get the hell away from my door before I call the cops.”

“The police can’t help you.” A woman’s voice now, lighter but threaded with the same certainty. “This is beyond their jurisdiction. Please, Miss Williams. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Make what harder than it needed to be?

She opened her mouth to ask something, anything… but before she could get a word out, the door exploded inward.

Wood splintered. The chain snapped like a thread. Caitlynn stumbled backward, knife raised, as two figures stepped through the wreckage.

The man was built like a wall—broad shoulders, a thick neck, and hands that looked like they could crush skulls without effort. The woman was tall with a sharp face. They moved wrong—too smooth, too fluid, joints bending like they were hinged differently than human bodies should be.

Their eyes caught the dim hallway light and threw it back, reflecting like that of an animal.

“We did ask nicely,” the woman said.

“Stay back.” Caitlynn’s arm was steady. Her voice was steady. Everything inside her was screaming, but she’d learned a long time ago that the outside didn’t have to match. “I will use this.”

The man smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. If anything, he looked exasperated at her bravery.

He was behind her before she processed the movement—one second at the door, the next at her back, his hand closing around the wrist with the glowing mark with an iron grip. At once, she felt the now-familiar pressure building behind her sternum.

“Don’t—” she gasped, but she didn’t know what she was asking for, didn’t know if she was begging them or warning them or—

Every light in the hallway exploded.

The woman tilted her head. In the new darkness, her eyes glowed amber, just for a

second.

“Interesting,” she murmured. “Very interesting.”

Caitlynn felt the needle slide into her neck a moment before the darkness swallowed her whole.