Blessed with an Angel [Grey River 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Grey River 5

  Blessed with an Angel

  Angel Navarez came to Grey River looking for a better life for her and her son, but she hadn’t counted on having to fight a man looking for revenge to live it.

  Noah and Chris Carson both recognized Angel as their Fated mate the moment they met. But Noah firmly believed that his past actions made it impossible for him to have a future, so he left, fully expecting his brother to find happiness with their mate without him.

  But that changes when Angel is threatened and Noah drops everything to be there to protect her. Chris convinces Noah that he’s worthy of their dream, but he can’t fight for their future if he continues to fight his past. They must work together to earn back Angel's trust and convince her that they can be the mates she deserves.

  Just when their dream is within their grasp, the past catches up with them and the threat becomes very, very real.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 53,533 words

  BLESSED WITH AN ANGEL

  Grey River 5

  Maia Dylan

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  BLESSED WITH AN ANGEL

  Copyright © 2015 by Maia Dylan

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-644-4

  First E-book Publication: September 2015

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Blessed with an Angel by Maia Dylan from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Maia Dylan’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Maia Dylan’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my angels—my son and daughter.

  And also to my hubby, who helped make our little pieces of heaven… with just a dash of stubborn!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  BLESSED WITH AN ANGEL

  Grey River 5

  MAIA DYLAN

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter 1

  Live or die. He needed to come up with an answer to that question in the next few minutes or the choice was no longer going to be his to make. Groaning, Noah fought against the darkness that surrounded him and reached for consciousness. He had no idea how long he had been out of it but judging by the fact that he wasn’t being beaten and he couldn’t hear the mad ramblings of that bastard Baxter it must have been a while.

  Breathing deeply through his nose to fight off a wave of nausea, he took the coppery tang of his own blood into his lungs. Judging by the intensity of it, he had spilled quite a bit. Nearing the surface of consciousness he cracked open an eyelid and managed not to groan out loud at the pain. Even though Baxter wasn’t physically beating on him right then, Noah figured he could be sitting in the room, watching and waiting for an opportunity to do just that!

  Fighting to remain still, he cast a narrowed glance around the room, noticing that the decrepit hunting cabin Baxter had been using as his own private torture chamber was empty. Noah listened a little longer just to make sure he was actually alone. He used the time to take stock of his aches and pains and to gather the strength he was going to need to push past the pain and get to his feet. He felt the telling white-hot shards of pain that reminded him he had been shot and still had some bullets in him. They were scattered down his left side and back.

  There was a knife wound the bastard had given him low on his right abdomen. That had been the first wound he received. Baxter had waited for him in an area that should have screamed out as the perfect ambush location to a man like him, but he had been so lost in his own thoughts he had basically walked straight into the damn blade.

  His training and preternatural shifter speed were the only reasons the knife hadn’t entered his gut. Jesus, if Baxter had been given any type of training on how to actually kill a man with a knife, Noah would have bled out in minutes, shifter healing abilities or not. But he jabbed once, and Noah had managed to deflect it away and into his side. It still hurt like a mother, but it wasn’t deadly. Then Baxter had felt the need to gloat.

  “That must have hurt, Enforcer,” Baxter sneered at him. Noah had been cursing himself internally for being a stupid prick and getting nailed by an amateur in his own backyard, but as soon as Baxter used the title Enforcer, Noah paused.

  What the hell? He had managed to hide his occupation from his own brother for the past year and a half since he’d been honorably discharged from the Marines, but this asshole knew. Noah could count the people who knew he was an Enforcer on one hand, so that meant this fucker knew someone pretty high up.

  “That’s not a bad little toy blade you’ve got there, but you gotta know, Baxter, and I’m guessing you’ve heard this before, but I have
definitely had bigger.” Despite the pain, Noah grinned at him as if it were nothing.

  Baxter’s eyes narrowed and hatred fired within them. “You might be cracking jokes now, asshole, but you’ll be feeling the burn soon enough.” Then he got this whole I-know-something-you-don’t-know smug-as-shit look on his face. Noah was just about to call bullshit on that and start the dance that would see Baxter joining him in the bleeding department, but he swayed on his feet and had to catch himself from falling. Baxter’s grin got bigger. What the ever-loving hell?

  “Feeling a little dizzy there, Enforcer?” Baxter started to laugh and Noah wanted to refute it and then launch into a physical attack of his own, but the problem was, he did feel the burn and he felt as dizzy as shit. His legs took that very moment to turn to water and he dropped to his knees on the ground. He teetered there for a moment before he plunged face-first onto the ground.

  He tried to get back up. Being on the ground in a fight like this had only one outcome. He ordered his body to stand, tried to command his arms to push him up to start the process, but his body refused to obey. The burning that had started around the knife wound now radiated up his torso and down into his legs.

  He wanted to yell in rage, to scream in fury that this was not how someone like him was supposed to go out. Lying on the fucking ground with nothing more than a single knife wound to the side, while the evil bastard stood there laughing was just fucking wrong! He wanted to curse the bastard out and scream that his pack would avenge his death but he couldn’t. Whatever the shithead Baxter had put on that blade paralyzed and inhibited him from shifting. It had to be Jax.

  He had heard about this shit. Two members of another Enforcer team had been hit with this same drug before, and lived to tell the tale. The fact that he had been stabbed by the same bastard that got Hunter and Dane made Noah even more of a dumb ass because he should have been expecting it. He feared that they had underestimated what this was going to do in the war to keep order between opposing shifter factions. It was certainly going to make bringing in the guilty a lot harder especially if the tracker was stupid enough to get knifed with a blade dripping with the stuff. Like he had been.

  “You are one stubborn son of a bitch, Enforcer,” Baxter continued to gloat from somewhere behind him. Noah heard the rustling of clothing against bark and assumed he was sitting on one of the fallen logs that lay beside the path he was lying on. “You are one of the best damn trackers I have ever had the pleasure to evade. I had to use all my tricks to keep ahead of you and all that did was get you to slow the fuck down, but you just kept right on coming.

  “I had contemplated just killing you outright, and to be fair it wouldn’t be all that hard to do. But there are two Enforcers in particular I am looking to have a—well, let’s just say a conversation with and leave it at that, hmm?” Noah knew he must be talking about Hunter and Dane. They had been the ones to bring the fucker in the first time. He had originally served with them both in the corps, and when he returned it had been at their request that he join the Enforcers as a tracker.

  “I think it might be best for me to keep you hidden.” Baxter leaned over and injected him in the neck with something that might well have been acid. It sure as fuck burned like it was when every cell in his body seemed to just burst into flame. He would have shouted at the pain, but all he could manage was a moan. Fuck, he had never felt a pain like it.

  “Noah!” He heard his brother calling his name down their link, and just the sound of his voice calmed him. “Brother, I can sense your pain! Where are you? I will come to you!”

  Three sudden explosions of white-hot pain ripped through his left side. This time he actually got a pained sound out rather than just a moan.

  “Ah, ah, ah! You can stop with the telepathy shit you wolves like to use. I get a buzzing in my head when you bastards start that shit and I don’t like it. I get it again, and I’ll shoot you again and again till you get the idea that I really don’t fucking like it.” Baxter moved and the ground vibrated as he moved around Noah’s prone body. Noah placed a block over the link to his brother because, well, he didn’t want to get shot again!

  “Now, because of my little present on that blade and the top up I’ve just given you, you’re a little more relaxed and easier for me to get you to where we’re going to sit comfy like for a while. I have another little present from my father’s lab that inhibits your telepathic abilities for a short time, too. You’ll be glad to hear that one’s not nearly as painful. So hang tight, puppy, this might be a bumpy ride.” Baxter then dropped to all fours and shifted into a black bear, shredding his clothes as he went.

  Hunter had told Noah that he suspected Baxter was a bear shifter, but Noah had never encountered one before. If he wasn’t wracked in pain, hovering on the edge of consciousness and convinced that he was going to die this very day, he might have actually been quite impressed by the speed of Baxter’s change and the size of the beast he shifted into. Baxter then gripped Noah’s lower leg within his jaws and dragged him as he loped through the forest. Noah had passed out, and the two times he had regained consciousness since then, Baxter was right there smacking or kicking the shit out of him.

  And now here he was, alone and making the choice to get up and out of this damn cabin and go get the fucker, or continue to lie there feeling sorry for himself and wallowing in self-pity. Well, when he put it that way. Noah gritted his teeth, and rolled onto his right side, groaning as the move caused him to pull against the three bullet wounds, no doubt opening them back up. With a few curses, groans, and gasps, surprisingly he made it to his feet.

  Casting a quick look around the cabin, he saw no sign of Baxter, and when his eyes spotted a pair of board shorts on one of the chairs he figured his luck was improving. It meant he wouldn’t have to stomp through the bush naked. Pulling the shorts on, he turned and stumbled through the door that led out into the forest.

  He knew exactly where he was. Baxter had actually done him a favor and dragged him closer to home and onto pack lands, and from where he stood he had five less miles to have to walk. He was in the northeastern corner of their lands, and this cabin belonged to the pack alphas Ty and Trent. Their grandfathers and his had often come up here hunting. He and Chris had even spent a lot of time camping up here as kids.

  He judged the time to be around four or five in the afternoon, and was fairly confident that it was the day after Baxter had stabbed him. He knew that Hunter and Dane were coming in behind him with their team of Enforcers. They had sent Noah ahead because of his knowledge of the area. Baxter hadn’t brought Noah’s backpack with them so he had no way of contacting the rest of the Enforcers.

  With no other choice, he choked down on the pain as much as possible, looked for Baxter’s trail, which was easier to spot given he was no longer going for stealth but speed. And then he began to jog in the direction of town. At full strength and running he could be back in town in less than twenty minutes. In his present condition it would take him at least three times that, so he was looking at about an hour.

  Calling on every bit of strength he had as a shifter and every bit of training he had received in special ops and as an Enforcer, Noah concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and getting into town. He hoped he got the chance to meet up with Baxter again and reap a little vengeance of his own before either Hunter or Dane or the Grey River pack got to him. Noah figured if he got there second, there might not be much left!

  * * * *

  Angel hurried back across the drive from Xanthe’s shop as fast as she could. Which, given the fact that she was the size of a small country and at that very moment a bowling ball was currently trying to work its way down her fucking birthing canal, wasn’t very fast at all. She paused at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the house and business she shared with her friend Rowena as another contraction ripped through her. Groaning and falling against the handrail fighting to stay upright, she breathed through the pain, trying to do the panting exercis
es Chris had taught her.

  Oh, God, how she wished he was here. Not just to be her doctor and help her to bring her baby boy into the world, but to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay, because Angel was scared. Shitless. Chris made her feel safe and a whole range of other things a pregnant woman on the run had no business feeling. Sighing in relief when the pain released her from its clutches, she went to step up onto the stair when she felt something pop inside her, down low, and then fluid gushed from her, soaking her panties and leggings in seconds.

  Shit! Her water had just broken! Please, mijo, just give me a little more time! Angel walked slowly up the stairs, making it through the shop and kitchen and out on the back porch. It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. She often stood out here at this time of the night, loving the shadows and movements of the trees in the forest.

  She stopped as another contraction gripped her and although she gritted her teeth and clamped her lips together to keep from screaming, the pain drove a pained sound out from deep within her. Her legs began to shake and Angel felt the very real and strong urge to go number two, which was not a good thing considering all the parenting and birthing books she had read had told her that this particular urge signaled the final stages of labor and the urge to push would become too strong to ignore.

  This time when the contraction ended, Angel couldn’t stop shivering. She needed to get to Kyle and Grant quickly to tell them that Rowena and Xanthe were in trouble. Rowena had given her their danger code word quarterback and she was meant to bring in the cavalry. Of course in every fucking scenario they had devised, none of them had involved her actually deep in the throes of labor!