Shifter Wars: Supernatural Battle (Werewolf Dens Book 1) Read online

  SHIFTER WARS

  SUPERNATURAL BATTLE: WEREWOLF DENS

  Kelly St. Clare

  Shifter Wars

  by Kelly St. Clare

  Copyright © October, 2020

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, media, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Edited by Hot Tree Editing

  Cover design by Covers by Christian

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  MOON CLAIMED

  While You Wait

  Books By Kelly St. Clare

  Join the Book Barracks!

  About the Author

  When Kelly is not reading or writing, she is lost in her latest reverie.

  Books have always been magical and mysterious to her. One day she decided to unravel this mystery and began writing.

  Her works include The Tainted Accords, Last Battle for Earth, Pirates of Felicity, Supernatural Battle, and The Darkest Drae.

  Kelly resides in New Zealand with her ginger-haired husband, a great group of friends, and whatever animals she can add to her horde.

  Join her newsletter tribe for sneak peeks, release news, and disjointed musings at kellystclare.com/free-gifts/

  1

  Dressed in black, I watched the phone ring.

  It was the first sound in days—now my mother’s laboured breaths had stopped. Somehow, after returning from collecting her ashes, the silence was heavier.

  I leaned forward on the kitchen stool and answered.

  “Hello?” My whisper echoed in the empty house.

  A woman chirped, “Good morning, I’m calling from Eastway Bank. My name is Sarah. Miss Booker, I presume?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed in response. The kind of salesperson sigh people did when empathy was required but, really, the person was wondering about what to feed their kids for dinner.

  “My condolences on the recent passing of your mother.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Where did you say you’re from?”

  A pause. “Eastway Bank. There’s never a good time for these calls, so I won’t keep you long. It has to do with the debt your mother held with us.”

  That pierced the numbness. “My mother doesn’t have any debt. Her treatments were covered by insurance.” I’d know, seeing as I’d paid the outrageous bills since seventeen.

  The woman’s voice firmed. “This isn’t in regard to her treatments, Miss Booker.”

  “Well, we don’t have any credit cards.” I paid and closed them off long ago.

  “Your mother reopened a mortgage against her property. However, she stopped paying monthly payments on this some time ago. It appears the loaned funds went to a gambling app called WinEasy.”

  I stared at the half-filled cardboard boxes littering the benchtops.

  “Miss Booker?”

  “There must be some mistake. My mother hasn’t gambled in years.”

  “The transactions date back eighteen months. The last deduction was two weeks ago, the 7th of May at 2:00 p.m.”

  The 7th of May. I worked an afternoon shift that day. She opened the app as soon as I walked out the door. My chest tightened to painful levels. Closing my eyes, I listened to the silence on the other end. “How much?”

  The woman’s tone was genuinely empathetic this time. “Four hundred and ten thousand dollars.”

  My mouth dried. “That can’t be right. That’s—”

  That’s a fortune.

  “We’ll need to discuss repayment options with you at your earliest convenience, Miss Booker.”

  Eighteen months. She’d gambled for eighteen months as I broke my back caring for her around my full-time job and study.

  “I can’t pay,” Panic closed my throat.

  My savings were a speck on that. Saving just two thousand dollars took me four years. I already had three years’ worth of student loans from my business and communications degree to worry about.

  The bank woman typed in the background. “The property 373A Belgrave Close is listed against the mortgage of course. I understand you’re now the owner of that property?”

  The floor fell out from beneath me. “Y-Yes.”

  “If that property was sold at rateable value, it would cover the repayment,” she said brightly.

  Sell the house.

  I’d intended to anyway. So I could downsize and—for the first time in my life—not worry about an emergency pushing me to the brim of homelessness.

  Fresh tears stung my scratchy eyes. How could Mum keep this from me?

  Eighteen fucking months.

  My breath struggled past the lump in my throat. “I can’t talk about this right now.”

  “I understand you’re in mourning. How about we schedule a time for you to come into the branch next week and—”

  I hung up, feeling the phone tumble from my cold grip to the tiled floor.

  One dead mother.

  No family to invite to the funeral.

  And a four-hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar debt.

  Dragging another box of chipped picture frames closer, I sneezed through the dust in the attic for the umpteenth time. I rubbed my dripping nose on my sleeve. Gross, but the outfit was ruined by now and manners could get fucked today.

  Two years had passed since I had time to get up here to clean. Mum wasn’t so sick back then, and I’d even gone out with friends and acted like a nineteen-year-old sometimes.

  Those were the days.

  I worked the age-faded pictures free, placing them on one pile and the wooden frames in another. People paid good coin for those.

  Picking up the last frame, I studied the picture of my mother. She stood next to a man I didn’t recognise—he wasn’t the asshole who abandoned us when I was three. This man had dark auburn hair like my mother and me. A cousin of hers, perhaps? She didn’t have any siblings.

  In my life, I’d seen three pictures of my mother before my birth. Three, including this one.

  I traced my finger over the man. “Who are you?”

  Working the photo free, I placed it on the picture pile, then rolled my neck and shoulders to relieve the ache from days of packing and cleaning.

  This
was the last room to clear.

  Ugh, I really didn’t want to contemplate returning to my reception job at the accountancy firm next Tuesday.

  As I walked to the far end, my shin connected with a container. “Mothershitter.”

  I kicked the offending black piece of furniture and rubbed my leg. Crouching, I worked off the lid and rifled through the contents.

  Sales and Purchase Agreement.

  Loan Approval.

  Tax Return.

  I pulled out a crumbled document from the very bottom, working it flat.

  Mum’s birth certificate.

  Snorting, I shook my head. I’d spent days looking for this last year. So like Mum.

  I sat back on my heels, sighing.

  Death confused things. I should be pissed about the gambling debt. Except my mother was dead and gone, and sadness overwhelmed any anger I might have felt. Addiction didn’t discriminate, and terminal illness was a lot to handle without relapsing.

  I just wish she hadn’t lied to me.

  A heaviness settled on my heart as I read her name on the birth certificate. “Ragna Eloise Booker,” I read aloud.

  In other words, the only person to stay with me. Now she was gone, but at least that wasn’t by choice.

  I studied the box directly beneath her name.

  Previous name(s): Thana

  “Her maiden name was Booker though,” I murmured. My mother and Dropkick didn’t marry.

  Thana.

  The surname was printed as plain as day.

  She lied to you for eighteen months about gambling.

  Brushing back my long hair, I set the certificate aside, then riffled through the other envelopes and papers in the container, seemingly a collection of a decade’s worth of bills.

  Last Will & Testament

  Of

  Ragna Eloise Booker

  Age had faded the words.

  “Another will?” But she made such a fuss about having her first will drawn up when doctors gave her the cancer diagnosis. Even for my scatterbrained mother, this level of forgetfulness was extreme.

  The legal document was dated twenty-two years ago—before my birth.

  Skimming through the jargon on the first page, I wrinkled my nose at the paragraph naming Dropkick as the sole beneficiary.

  No wonder she’d changed it.

  I paused on the “last wish” section. Mum requested cremation in her recent will. I received her ashes two days ago. This will stated Mum wanted her ashes spread at Deception Valley.

  “Where’s that?” I asked the attic.

  It didn’t answer.

  My phone blared and I dropped the paper.

  Fumbling to answer, I sneezed my greeting.

  “Andie? That you? Roy here.”

  I wiped my nose on my sleeve again. So sexy. “Roy. Hey. What’s the verdict?”

  “Pretty good overall. The bank was right. If we hit rateable value with the sale, it will cover the amount owed.”

  I blew out a quiet breath. “That’s definitely good news. Interest is sky high, so I’ll need you to move on the sale ASAP.”

  “Can do. Where are you at with moving?”

  “I hired a truck for tomorrow to put everything in storage. The cleaner is in the day after.”

  I’d have to dip into my savings to pay those bills, but if I could focus my attention on the sorry-looking garden while others worked inside, I’d lose two or three days less money from the ridiculous interest.

  “I’ll schedule photos for Friday,” he said. “Then we’ll need three days to get it online. I’ll put out feelers now to see if we can get an early sale.”

  So much change. And so fast. My life hadn’t altered in the last three years.

  I peered around the dirty attic and steeled myself for how much things were about to overturn. “Perfect. Thanks for that, Roy.”

  “No problem. I’m just sorry this fell on you.”

  “What do you mean?” As far as he should know, we’d used our mortgage and a personal loan on cancer treatments.

  He answered in the same sombre tone. “I’m sorry Ragna’s addiction has impacted your life so much.”

  A telling heat crept up my neck. Mum always said I had the temper to match my dark auburn hair. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, Roy. You’ve been misinformed.”

  Over my dead body would people gossip about my mother.

  “Oh… the person must have their wires crossed.”

  “Must have,” I said coolly.

  He rushed to say, “I’ll make sure to set the matter straight.”

  Sure he would. Still, I needed him. “I’d appreciate that, Roy. See you on Friday for photos.”

  Disconnecting, I strangled my phone in place of Roy’s neck.

  Gossiping bastards. They had no idea. My mother was a lot more than her disease, either disease.

  I crouched over her old will, studying her last wish again. Deception Valley. If this place was once so important, how come she never mentioned it? Rummaging for her certificate, I squinted at the almost faded Place of Birth. I could make out cep in the first word.

  The second word was definitely Valley.

  She was born in this place, too, not in Queen’s Way Public Hospital as she’d always maintained.

  Opening Maps, I typed in Deception Valley.

  Jesus. “Nine hours away.”

  Zooming in, I squinted at the route, tracing it to the destination. The town was in the middle of nowhere, past Frankton Gorge.

  No wonder I’d never heard of it.

  Tapping on the bus, train, and flight icons yielded the same message.

  No options found.

  “What the hell, Mum?” I stared at the screen as if it could solve the mystery for me.

  Carefully folding the two documents, I hesitated and grabbed the photo of her with auburn cousin guy too.

  I slid all three into my back pocket.

  2

  I wiped sweat from my brow, probably smearing more dirt across my face.

  “Thanks for your help, Marie,” I said, ready for a shower and bed. The last ten days officially caught up this morning.

  At least the seasoned cleaner had put in a day as big as mine. The house was sparkling. Except now I regretted not doing the cleaning because aside from dropping a last load at the storage container, there was nothing more to do.

  That left me contemplating my future with mounting dread.

  Ten days ago, I didn’t mind my life.

  But ten days ago, my mother was here.

  “You’re welcome, dear. I enjoy cleaning when the house is empty.”

  I grabbed her vacuum. “Let me help you.”

  She took her mop and a toolbox filled with cleaning equipment, falling in beside me.

  “I’ve heard the house market is slow,” she said. “I hope you get the place sold quickly. Took my niece four months to sell hers. People just don’t move to Queen’s Way as much with that new bypass in.”

  I really hoped the house didn’t take four months to sell. Thinking of the interest I’d accrue made me feel sick. Mum grabbed at a personal loan with sky-high rates—with a bank, at least, and not a loan shark as she’d done in the past.

  Should I be thankful for that? Well, I was.

  Loan sharks were more likely to be the kicking in doors type.

  “Fingers crossed it’s quick,” I replied as she opened the boot of her small car.

  Handing over the vacuum, I stood back. A piece of paper with the words FOR SALE was plastered in the back window.

  “Selling your car?” I crossed my arms.

  She closed the boot. “Too small to fit my grandbabies in now. I need something bigger. A shame, because this one’s as economical as they come. I considered keeping it just for work, but I can’t justify paying two registrations.”

  “Understandable.”

  I’d always relied on my legs or trusty bike to get me around. A car was always out of the question, though Logan let me drive h
is sometimes and a neighbour let me borrow their car to practice for my license.

  “Why? You looking for something?”

  No. Buying a car wasn’t practical. It would be an additional cost. I didn’t need a car to get to work or to study. To see Logan. Or anything, really.

  Nothing at all…

  …except Deception Valley.

  Public transportation didn’t run anywhere near the tiny town. I could only get there by driving nine hours. Logan needed his car for work, so I couldn’t borrow that. And he’d want to come along.

  More than anything, I wanted to be alone to understand why Mum’s death had only uncovered a series of lies so far.

  “Maybe.” The word slid from my lips.

  Oh my god. I just said maybe.

  My heart raced.

  She joined me on the pavement. “The annual safety check and registration were just done. I’ve priced it at $1600, but there’s wiggle room if you can take it off my hands quick. You have my number if you’re interested.”

  My heart beat faster still.

  This was crazy. I’d lined up two viewings for rental properties tomorrow. To rent a place, I’d need a bond and a month’s rent upfront, around $1500. If I bought this car, I’d have $500 left in savings.

  I couldn’t afford a car.

  Entertaining this was… insane—a totally, totally rash thing to do. As the adult in our household since eleven, I understood rash decisions led to angry knocks on the front door.

  And yet.