Shifter Mates for the Single Mom: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

1. Madelyne

“I want a sword,” Aidan said suddenly as we picked up the Legos from his latest building session. He’d made a respectable castle wall this time, gray and purple, with banners I’d drawn for him on some of my sketch paper.

“You want a sword?” I kept my voice warmly amused as I took another glance out the window at our walled garden. Nothing out there but leaves blowing in the breeze… and occasionally one of the security guys I’d hired, walking around in their dark camo and muttering to each other on their earpieces.

“Yeah. I want you to make me a sword. I’m old enough.” Aidan lifted his chin and pouted at me firmly, his pink cheeks and floppy blond hair making the expression less than intimidating.

“Aidan, you might be old enough for a wooden practice sword,” I started. But he folded his arms, stomping his foot, the fistful of Legos in his hand forgotten.

“No, I want a metal one like you make in the forge!”

He’s just as stubborn as Ben used to be. I rolled my eyes. “Aidan, we’ve had this talk. Most of the swords I make are bigger than you. You need to grow up enough to be able to handle them. They’re not toys.”

“Can I have a big knife then?”

I looked down at my seven-year-old and folded my arms. “Aidan. What do you want a knife for?”

Of course, he’d always thought the work I did at my forge–mostly weapons for collectors and SCA members–was cool. But he’d never asked for a weapon of his own before, and I could tell there was something more to it than wanting something neat and pointy to hang on his wall.

“I want to hurt the bad guys,” he said, and my heart clenched. “I want to make them go away so we don’t have to hide and live with guards.”

The bad guys. Matthias, my former lover, my stalker, and his crazy family. He had charmed his way into my life, into the lives of my friends at the Art Center in town… charmed his way into my bed, too. There had been a time when I’d thought he was my second chance after we’d lost Ben. I’d thought seriously of marrying him.

But then I’d found him out. The whole con game he had been running. Part of it had been playing the role of a romance scammer in person instead of over the Net. I had already been ten thousand dollars poorer and down a few friends by the time I’d discovered he had been playing us all. I’d warned them, dumped him, blocked him, and even gotten a protection order.

Matthias had not been amused. And as he’d informed me the first time he’d “run into me” at one of my art shows over in Taos, women didn’t get to dump him. He decided when the relationship was over. Not me. And he didn’t give a shit about any protection orders.

So now my home had armed guards, and I didn’t go out much. I had blocked an endless array of phone numbers, social media accounts, and email addresses to avoid his harassment and that of his crazy mother. I’d done my best to insulate Aidan from all of it, but… he’d noticed.

Of course, he had. He was smart like Ben, too.

I wiped my eyes and told him, “Don’t you worry about Matthias and his mom, honey. That’s the guards’ job. Now, let’s get this cleaned up, and I’ll go make us popcorn for movie time.”

“And lemonade?” he perked up.

“And lemonade. Now come on, scoot.”

I’d never missed Ben more keenly than I did now, with Aidan sprouting up so fast, wanting to be a hero. And us in trouble, though I prayed Aidan didn’t ever figure out just how much trouble we were in. If the team outside did their job, Matthias would either end up hospitalized and arrested, or plain dead on the spot.

After everything he’d done to us, I didn’t care anymore if he caught a bullet. His mother would wail and cry and probably sue us or something; she was as much of a greedy, dramatic crook as he was. After raising and endlessly defending that grade-A piece of crap, she deserved the loss just as much as Matthias deserved the bullet.

I don’t want to think about this anymore.“Hey, sweetie, what movie do you want to watch?”

“I want the one with the hot tubs and the dragon!” He was as bad with titles and names as I was.

“Uh… Spirited Away? Okay!”

Fifteen minutes later, we were all set with two iced glasses of lemonade, one giant bowl of popcorn, and the movie on our new entertainment system. One of the best things that had come of the mess with Matthias was the sound system, which I’d upgraded after he’d stolen the originals.

I can’t believe I let that guy and his mom around my kid. What was I thinking? But that was easy–I hadn’t been. Matthias had made me feel like a woman again, instead of just a soldier’s widow. I had been starved for that feeling; he had known it, and oh boy, had he taken advantage.

Only now did I realize just how little I actually knew about Matthias and his weird little family. They could have been into a lot of things, way beyond theft, fraud, or blackmail. They could also have connections with even more unsavory people. The prospect scared me even more than Matthias’ obsessive rage. But that was why I now had a security team patrolling the grounds.

Thank God I can afford them thanks to all the money Ben left us. With them around, I really don’t have to worry about––

I heard a sound beyond the dialog and music of the movie: a low, startled cry, quickly cut off. I stiffened, eyes going immediately to the glass patio door. What was that?

A few moments later, one of the guards hurried past, talking low into his earpiece. I stared after him, confused, worried, and a little hopeful. Had it finally happened? Had they caught Matthias?

I heard another of those low cries and set my lemonade glass down. Aidan looked up from his movie and saw my face. “What is it?”

“I don’t know yet. The guards are stirred up. They may have caught somebody.”

He jumped up off the couch and then blinked as I grabbed his arm. “We should go see! I want to make sure they got him!”

“No, sweetie, that’s not our job. Our job is to stay here and sit tight until the guards are finished doing their jobs. Just come sit with me right now.” I held myself as steady as I could and kept my face in a smile, but inside I was jumping out of my skin.

Something was wrong. There was way too much silence outside. Nobody was coming back to give the all-clear. I grabbed the radio the security team had left for me and switched it on to listen to their com chatter.

Silence.

“Hello?” I spoke into the mic.

Nothing. Just a little crackle that told me that the line was open, but no answer. Not even breathing.

My whole body had gone cold. What is happening out there?

Next to me, Aidan had gone quiet. He was watching me intently. I forced a smile, but his expression didn’t shift.

“Aidan,” I whispered, “I need you to go get into the panic room while I find out what’s going on with our guards.”

“Mommy, don’t go out there,” he pleaded, but I looked at him firmly.

“I have to, honey. We might have to leave for a while, and I have to make sure. Now, go on, go. Don’t open it up until I give you the code word.”

He nodded reluctantly and walked into the hall closet, which had the panic-room entrance inside of it. I heard the door in its rear open, close, and lock.

I should probably just call the Sheriff and hop in there with him, but he’s likely drunk by this time of night. Instead, all too aware of how dumb it would be to go out there unarmed, I took my broadsword down off its hooks above the hearth, limbered up my shoulders, and stepped outside, making sure I tucked my phone in my pocket.

It was way too quiet in my garden. My walled half-acre was supposed to be patrolled by a four-man team, plus their supervisor. Instead, I had dead comms and eerie silence. But I had heard no signs of a fight. Not one shot had been fired. It was like all five men had simply… vanished.

Then I went around the corner of the house and saw my side patio spattered with what looked like wet black paint in the moonlight. The whole area had a weird, metallic smell that grew stronger the further I walked onto the patio. The security lights were off. I looked over at them and saw the bulbs were missing. Oh crap.

I walked forward warily, eyeing the spatters, which were very long and thin–like someone riding in a fast car had dropped paint out of a window. Just streaks, really, leading off into the bushes. All except for the freshly painted letters right before the bushes started.

I can get to you whenever I want.

That was when the wind shifted and started blowing at me from the bushes. The coppery smell intensified… and with it came a foulness, like sewage.

I pulled out my flashlight and shone it around, everywhere I could think of, looking for Matthias, for the guards, for any sign of what the hell was going on. Then my light crossed the lettering and turned their blackness to redness.

It was written in blood. The whole patio was spattered with gore. Someone had been attacked by something moving very, very fast–and completely silently.

Then I shone my light into the bushes and immediately wished I hadn’t. A glazed blue eye stared back at me: one of the guards, or what was left of him. The others were there too, bodies mangled in ways I had never seen by something with claws.

I staggered backward, flicking off the light and readying my sword. My heart was pounding in my ears as I headed back toward the door, knowing I was hopelessly outmatched.

shifter,my brain yammered while I tried to look everywhere at once so that the thing that had done this couldn’t get the drop on me. Matthias is a shifter. He just killed five trained men with guns before they could get a shot off!

I had known shifters before, but I had never found out this last secret of Matthias’. Now, I knew what we were up against. And as I locked myself in and headed for the saferoom to hunker down with my son until dawn, I knew I couldn’t face this alone.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

* * *

“Thankyou for coming on such short notice.” I opened the door wider to let Nathan Stone in. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

I hadn’t let my son out of the panic room until the Sheriff had come and gone, his investigator had come and taken pictures, and the coroner carted away the bodies. I had been forced to call a hazmat specialist about the bloodstains. And all that time, Nathan had been driving over from his team’s new headquarters outside Sedona, because I had called him first.

“No, you definitely called the right guy, Maddie,” he rasped as he moved forward to fill the doorway. I had to back up to let him through. I had been compared to a Valkyrie many times by my SCA buddies, and Nate still towered over me. “Like I said on the phone, me and my guys are ready to give this our undivided attention for as long as you need it.”

“Well, believe me, that makes me feel a lot better.”

I’d taken one look at the carnage in my yard and known I couldn’t screw around with any more normal, human security guys. As soon as I had gotten into the panic room and hugged Aidan, I immediately thought of Nate.

My late husband’s best friend for life, Nate was also a wolf shifter and a former Marine. He was built like he could bench-press me, but still managed to look pretty damn good in a suit, though I noticed he still refused to wear a tie. He had thick brown hair swept back from a high forehead, and the most intense green eyes I had ever seen.

“How have you been?”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to hear running feet as Aidan pounded down the stairs to join us. “Nate!” he yelled happily.

“Aidan!” Nathan bent down and scooped my son up, balancing him on his hip. “Oof, you got big. How did that happen?”

“It just happened! I wish it would happen faster. I want to be big like you so I can protect Mom.”

I swallowed hard, my heart breaking for my brave little kid who just wanted to make sure I was safe.

“Well, don’t you worry about that now, little man,” Nathan reassured Aidan. “My team and I are all going to be living here with you now, to keep you and your mom safe. And maybe while I’m here, I can teach you a thing or two.”

Aidan beamed. He had clung to me like a baby koala all night, even though I’d sheltered him from the details of what exactly had happened outside the panic room. But there he was, all sun and smiles again, thanks to Nathan.

He’s so good with my son, I thought wistfully as I watched them together. But that was a lot of what I’d felt toward Nathan ever since meeting him: wistful. Full of desire that could go nowhere, because I had been married, and to his best friend.

But now I wasn’t. And even with a sleepless night full of horrors sapping my energy and my mind bracing for a hard chat about what had happened, that fact stood out to me like a beacon.

I still wanted him. I could feel it, deep and primal, nagging at me again, just as strong as it had been before he’d gone off for a last tour of duty. But it was no longer forbidden.

And he and his Pack would be living with Aidan and me until Matthias and his mother were caught or killed. Weeks. Months maybe.

How in the world was I going to resist him? And did I want to?