~

 

“Hey!” Sarah called out after Fallon as the woman fled the scene of what Sarah regarded as her crime.

Fallon practically threw herself down the front stairs of the house. She had a need to put some distance between herself and her grandmother before she said how she really felt.

Obviously the woman had cheerleaders, but she had to wonder if they really knew her at all.

“I have to go…” Fallon tossed back over her shoulder.

Fallon knew that she’d made a bad decision when she’d decided to find the only kin that she had left in the world. But, stupid her, she’d gone ahead with it anyway.

Her grandmother had rejected her before she was even born. So why had she even thought that the woman was going to welcome her with open arms when she turned up out of the blue like a bad penny twenty two years later?

She’d wanted to know about her mother. She’d been so young when she’d died and her father had hardly ever spoken of her…

Finding some of her mother’s things had been the prompt that had set the ball rolling downhill.

Now she’d have to live with the consequences of her own stupidity for the rest of her life. Rejected twice…

“Come back inside and…”

“No – thanks. I think I more than got what I needed. What I came for.” Fallon called out behind her; reaching for the handle of her car, and not bothering to turn around.

Sarah didn’t like it. Everything was screwy, and she didn’t like screwy – not one little bit.

Dorothy was upset, but more than that; she knew that if things were left up in the air and the woman disappeared then neither one of them could make it better again. That’s how wounds festered…

Sarah reached out with her magic and zapped the front tyre. The loud pop of the rubber as it gave way to her magic made her grimace.

She might have felt a touch guilty, but she wasn’t sorry. Not by a long shot.

Sarah liked happy endings, and neither Dorothy nor her granddaughter was going to get one of those if she allowed the woman to just hop in her car and drive away.

“Real smart, witch…” Fallon rallied around to face Sarah. Her eyes were ablaze with anger and frustration as she faced off against her.

“I have a shifter that can fix that for you, and I’ll even pick up the tab for the new tyre. But in the meantime, it looks like you have time to kill, now doesn’t it…?” Sarah said with something approaching glee mixed with a little dollop of mischief on her face.

“Or maybe just a meddling witch to kill,” Fallon hissed back…

“That wouldn’t be a good idea to try it,” Nathan growled out as he stalked towards the front of the house with his brother, Samuel, in tow behind him.

“Says you…” Fallon sneered.

She could feel the ping of the supernatural against her shields and she only had to look at the two men to know what they were.

Shifters.

Wolves beneath the skin.

She wasn’t impressed or intimidated. She was used to dealing with the deadlier side of the supernatural world.

“Her mate – I could draw you a picture of what I’d do to protect her, but I don’t really think that you’d need one.” Nathan growled out with the warning that his wolf wasn’t best pleased.

Then Sarah cleared her throat and he almost sighed.

“And…?” Sarah said…

“That’s without what she could do to you with her magic.” He said almost on autopilot; like it had been drummed into him. Which it had, because his mate liked to remind him that she was awesome in her right and that she didn’t need his help in any way, shape, or form…

“Wonderful, another witch – just what we need around here…” Samuel muttered, and he eyed the woman with mistrust.

He didn’t want to get too close just in case that mate thing was catching or something…

“I’m guessing you don’t have to work that hard to be an idiot,” Fallon shot back at the beta.

Sarah choked out a chuckle as Samuel rallied against the woman’s words. Her pack brother’s eyes snapped towards her, and she had the good grace to cover her mouth with her hand, and she cleared the chuckle from her throat with a small cough.

“Good guess,” Nathan said, and noted that his brother’s eyes briefly snapped in his direction, and he shrugged. He liked to stir the pot with both of his brothers every chance that he got.

“Do you mind?” Samuel growled at his alpha. The man was miffed that his brother was taking the newcomers side of things.

“No, go ahead…” Nathan brushed off his brother’s annoyance and motioned with his hand towards the new witch. “I know you don’t need my help to put your paw in your mouth and afterwards eat crow.”

That time Sarah didn’t bother to hide or stifle her chuckle. The sound almost spat out of her lips.

“Ok, you know what?” Samuel drew himself up to his full height. He fisted his hands at his sides in annoyance, puffing out his broad chest to full effect, and shook his head. “Don’t try rallying me into fixing that damn tyre. Do it yourselves.” The beta growled, before he turned on his heels to leave them to it.

“I can change my own damn tyre,” Fallon bit out in disbelief. “You think every woman needs a big, strong, muscle bound, thought challenged beta to do things for them? Think again, Popeye.”

Samuel half rolled his head on his neck as he kept walking … and walking it had to be, because if he rallied to her baiting then he’d been there arguing with her all day. He had better things to do with his time than spend it with witches.

“Talk to the hand, better still, the backside, as it’s walking away from you…” Samuel called back over his shoulder. Happy in his own little world where witches didn’t even exist.

“Yeah, you give an accurate description of yourself – idiot,” Fallon muttered.

The sound of another growl from the beta that rumbled back towards her like rolling thunder was well worth the effort in her book as the shifter stalked off.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a friend of yours?” Nathan said to his mate as he eyed Fallon. “Although, the attitude is frightening similar.”

“Must be a witch thing,” Sarah offered him a teasing grin when he shot a look in her direction.

“Shocker,” Nathan grinned. His eyes shone with the good nature that he found in abundance every time he was around his mate.

There was also the look of hunger on his face that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the fact that he couldn’t seem to get enough of his new mate.

Fallon grunted in annoyance as she started for the back of the car. She really didn’t have time for mates, for alphas, for betas, or for bad mood shifters.

She didn’t have time for posturing and figuring out who had the bigger set of balls on them. Although, in a contest between her and the beta, she’d have to guess that she’d come out the winner.

Fallon wanted nothing more than to be gone from the Inn, from the mountain, and from anything to do with her grandmother. She wanted to be in her car; putting her mistake behind her in the rear-view mirror…

But first, and thanks to the meddling witch with the alpha mate, she needed to change her stupid tyre. She felt the need to zap Sarah, or the wolf shifter, or any damn one that walked into her path…

“Leave the tyre, and I’ll do it,” Nathan growled.

“I’ve got it,” Fallon bit back.

Nathan opened his mouth to speak, but his mate got in there first and silenced him…

“She’s got it,” Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows – a little manual labour might knock the chip off her shoulder.”

Fallon bit down on a myriad of words that wanted to escape her lips. None of them would have been welcomed in polite society, but she didn’t think that mattered much where she was and with the company that she was keeping.

The sooner that she fixed the car. The sooner they could kiss her backside goodbye.

 

~

~

~

 

Dorothy wished that she could stomp. She missed stomping when she was in a bad mood, because it felt like she was grounding all of her problems down into the dirt.

Right then; those problems felt heavy on her shoulders and they were weighing her down.

But stomping at her age led to jarring of the bones, and jarring of the bones led to throwing out a hip, and she didn’t want to end up hobbling a little in the same way that Angela used to do, before her friend had been given vampire blood.

Her granddaughter showing up like that had definitely thrown her. She’d never expected the girl to track her down after all of those years … and then there was the whole accusation thing…

She guessed that couldn’t be helped. She’d done what she could at the time. Hell, she’d done what she thought was right.  

Dorothy grumbled and muttered as she went, tossing things over in her mind. She didn’t like to relive the past – not that particular part of it at any rate…

She guessed that she should have known that one day it would come back to bite her on the backside. Life always managed to do that, no matter how long it took or how far you got in life – things always tended to catch up to you.

Why should life make her the exception to the rule?

No, Dorothy knew enough to have a bad feeling that one day there would be questions to answer, and in truth, she’d waited a long time for them. But just when she’d thought that she would never hear them … bam!

Blindsided.

Dorothy pulled up short the instant that Chloe, the resident newbie vampire and former owner of the Inn, and Sarah’s not-so-dead-Aunt, dropped down in front of her from the trees above.

Her heart got lodged in her throat at the unexpected sight of the blood hungry vampire, and she wondered for a moment, as it skipped a beat, if it would stop completely … at her age, anything was possible and some things were just likely to happen.

“Oh look, the breakfast of champions – wanna open a vein?” Chloe grinned with glee.

Chloe’s fangs were partly down. It was something that seemed to happen a lot to her every time that she scented Fae blood.

She didn’t consider it a failing on her part, or in fact, her fault. Being a newbie seemed to come with a few disadvantages … like craving blood, especially Fae blood, and controlling her urges.

All urges.

Everything seemed heightened. Things were magnified beyond belief to the point of being so damn frustrating…

Monty kept telling her that a little blood could go a long way – sadly it didn’t feel like that when she got the taste on her tongue…

Again – not her fault.

But those fangs were showing way too much for Dorothy’s liking.