In My Christmas Stocking Read online

  Did life have any more challenges it wanted to throw at him today?

  “And now it’s snowing again!” Shauna growled.

  “And I suppose that’s my fault as well,” Mark growled, turning on his heels and starting back down the mountain.

  “Where are you going?” Shauna called.

  “To eat a feast,” he called back over his shoulder. “Your mother is expecting us…”

  “I’m not leaving without Jacob,” she called back, and he was tempted, but he bit down on that temptation because his mate would kill him.

  “It’s Christmas, he can sleep in the damn manger,” he tossed back. “Just so long as wolf boy doesn’t go around chomping on any more cows.

  “That’s rude,” Shauna muttered.

  “And yet accurate,” he threw back.

  ~

  “You have always been so irresponsible,” Kaylee snapped, and Chloe snorted a chuckle of disbelief.

  “You have no idea,” she snapped back.

  “I think I do,” Kaylee bit out. Jackson was living proof of that.

  “Lucas, what is going on?” Tanya demanded, and her son rolled his eyes.

  “It’s not complicated…”

  “When it comes to you that’s no surprise,” Max growled at his brother.

  “Can I finish my sentence or would you like to talk for everybody?” Lucas snapped at his brother, and Jackson looked up at the grown-ups and shook his head.

  “Well, I have to do everything else around here for you,” Max snapped back.

  “Like what?” Lucas growled.

  “Can you two please stop,” Tanya growled.

  Kaylee huffed. “Just tell me what the hell is going on and why did you lead a vampire here?”

  “I didn’t lead him here, he got loose and tracked me down,” Chloe snapped back.

  “Why?” Kaylee hissed.

  “Because,” Chloe said and left it there.

  “That’s not an answer,” Kaylee snapped back.

  “You want an answer?” Chloe asked, raising her eyebrows and slapping her hands on her hips.

  “It would be a first,” Kaylee snapped.

  Lucas threw up his hands and huffed at his brother. “She’s my damn mate!” he snapped, and the room fell silent.

  Kaylee snapped a sideways look at the shifter. “Huh?”

  “Cool!” Jackson exclaimed like all his Christmases had come at once.

  “No wonder she tried to kill you,” Tanya said, feeling slightly exhausted by her family.

  “That was his stupid fault, he ran out in front of my car,” Chloe said.

  “Sounds like my son,” Tanya acknowledged.

  “A mate?” Kaylee said with disbelief.

  “What, you have to be the only one?” Chloe tossed back, and Kaylee zapped her. “Hey!”

  “Do not test my patience when you brought a vampire to that door,” she said, pointing at the front door just as it opened and Mark stalked in carrying a shotgun, and looking somewhat surprised by the gathering.

  “I’m guessing I missed something,” he said, looking equal parts confused and surprised. “Maybe I should just leave again…”

  “Don’t you dare!” Tanya said, shooting a glare at him, and he winced.

  “If you’re flustered now, you really don’t want to know what I found in the woods,” he warned her.

  Then he stepped inside and in came Shauna and Jacob, and Tanya’s eyebrows travelled up to her hairline. “What am I seeing here?” she asked, but the scent of wolf had already hit her nose.

  “Apparently, we get to keep him,” Mark said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Tanya’s breath squeaked out as she deflated a little. “Merry Christmas,” she said frowning. “I need a drink.”

  “I’m ahead of you on that one,” Mark said, following his mate into the kitchen and tossing a sideways look at Chloe. “I don’t want to know, right?”

  “Well,” Lucas said, and his father groaned.

  “Two drinks,” Mark said and shook his head before disappearing into the kitchen with his mate.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ~

  “What vampire?” Mark’s voice boomed out into the living room, silencing the bickering once again.

  “You must have been out of range,” Tanya said, tapping her temple as she stared into the glass of wine and wished she had an endless supply. It felt like one of those family Christmases where she was going to need it. “Cameron took off after him.”

  “Well, it’s good to know the vampire is good for something,” Mark growled, but now he was itching to get back out there again and kill the threat to his rapidly expanding family. “So, where’d this vamp come from?”

  “We were getting to that when you showed up,” she informed him. “I think it’s something to do with Lucas’s mate…”

  Mark choked on the swig of beer he’d been attempting to swallow. He coughed and snorted, and coughed again, then he swallowed. “Mate?”

  “Did I miss that bit?” Tanya asked, looking at the window as if she was far away in a daydream.

  “Yeah,” Mark spat out. “Two witches and a wolf, damn, all we need is a vampire for a set.”

  “Thankfully, we seem to have run out of children,” Tanya said. “But who knows what or who our grandkids will bring home when it’s their turn.”

  “Speaking of which, I guess you really are Jackson’s Granny now,” he said and snorted a chuckle.

  Tanya shot him a glare. “I knew it was you,” she growled.

  Mark snapped to attention. “Me who what?” he asked, trying to look innocent.

  “Who told Jackson to call me Granny Tanya,” she tossed back, eyeing him some more. There was the tell-tale sign of his guilt, a little twitch of the lips as he tried to hide his smile.

  “I would never…”

  “I thought it was our secret?” Jackson said from the doorway, and Mark grimaced.

  “It was, until now,” he said, shooting a look back at the boy.

  “Does that mean your bear is going to eat me now?” Jackson asked, and Tanya drew a harsh breath.

  “You blackmailed him with your bear?” she bit out.

  “That was another little secret,” Mark said, rolling his eyes. “You know there are days when a person just shouldn’t get out of bed. I feel like today is one of those days.”

  “Your bed will be in the doghouse tonight,” Tanya growled.

  “We don’t have a doghouse,” Mark said, grinning like he’d won something.

  “I never said where the doghouse was,” Tanya shot back. “Come here, Jackson,” she said, urging him over to her, and the boy did as he was told. “Our bears will never hurt you – you’re family, do you understand?”

  Jackson took a long moment to think on it, and then he nodded. Then he slowly leaned in towards the alpha. “So, I don’t have to keep you secrets anymore,” he said and grinned.

  Tanya couldn’t help but chuckle. “He’s got your number,” she said, snorting a giggle as Mark rolled his eyes.

  It was definitely a duvet day.

  ~

  Chloe covered her ears with her hands and hummed to herself. Kaylee was just firing one question after another, and she couldn’t get them to stop lining up like buses in her mind. “Stop talking,” she bit out. “Just stop – stop talking,” she said, turning away.

  “Stop running away from me, Chloe, it feels like you’ve been doing that your whole adult life,” Kaylee said, reaching out for one of her sister’s wrists and she yanked her hand away from her ear.

  “I can’t deal with you when you’re like this,” Chloe said and headed for the front door.

  Kaylee started after her, but Lucas stepped in the way. With his hands up in mock surrender at his chest, he tried to calm things down. “Let’s just all take a minute…”

  “A minute?” Kaylee drew her head back on her neck and snorted in disbelief. “You might be six foot odd of muscle and her mate, but don’t even think about getting between sisters, especially when those sisters are witches,” she informed him.

  Lucas shot a look over her head to where Max was standing just behind her, and one brother to another, Max just shook his head. “She’s my mate,” Lucas protested.

  “And I assume you’re going to want Rod and the boys hanging between your legs to mate with?” Kaylee asked, sidestepping him as his jaw slacked open and he watched her go.

  “Did she really just say that?” he asked Max.

  “The question you need to be asking yourself, brother, is did she really just mean that,” Max informed him. “The answer is yes.”

  Shauna looked at Jacob and grimaced. “There has been a few changes around here lately, it’s usually quieter with an air of ignoring each other as much as possible,” she informed him.

  “Hey, it’s just another Christmas Eve to me,” Jacob said, shrugging his broad shoulders.

  ~

  “Chloe!” Kaylee snapped as she followed hard on her heels, but Chloe didn’t slow down, she kept walking. “There’s a vampire out here, and I want answers.”

  Chloe bit down on the annoyance within her. She stopped, took a breath, but didn’t turn around. “You know what, I don’t think you’re going to like the answers you get because then you won’t be Saint Kaylee anymore.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kaylee asked, stepping around her and blocking the walkway that led around the outside of the house.

  Chloe reached up and ran a hand through her hair. “So many times, I have come close to telling you the truth…”

  “Then tell me now,” Kaylee demanded.

  “It’s complicated and not pretty,” Chloe said.

  “Well, you know what, that sounds like life to me,” Kaylee tossed back.

  Chloe couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t know what a messy life is. You’ve had it easy…”

  “Easy? Giving up everything for you…”

  “You gave up a lot, but not everything. When you have a child and have to walk away, then talk to me about giving up everything,” Chloe said, and the bitterness was like a slap in the face to Kaylee. She’d never heard that before.

  “Talk to me,” she begged. “Tell me what the hell is going on and let me help you.”

  “You have helped me, and I thank you for it, I really do, but there’s a whole other side to my life…”

  “The vampires…”

  “Yes, but it’s not what you think,” Chloe assured her.

  Kaylee sighed. “Then let me in, tell me what’s going on. Is that guy here to kill you or…”

  “Jeff?” Chloe’s chuckle sounded hollow as she rolled her eyes and didn’t bring them back to her sister. Instead, she stared off into the distance. “You know, sometimes I really wished he would have.”

  “Don’t say that…”

  “Because it’s messy?”

  “Because I’m your sister and I love you,” Kaylee said. “And because Jackson loves you and wants you to come home.”

  “I don’t have a home. I haven’t had a home in seven years,” Chloe said.

  “That’s not true; you’ve always had a home with us; you just needed to come back to it.”

  “Yeah, well that’s the complicated part,” Chloe said, turning and parking her backside against the wooden railing.

  “Who’s the vampire, and why is he here?”

  “He’s here for Jackson,” Chloe said and noted the way that the blood drained out of her sister’s face.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ~

  “What did you do?” Kaylee demanded.

  “Not like that,” Chloe muttered, looking down and away. “He’s Jackson’s father…”

  “What? How?” Kaylee demanded.

  “Usual way, two people have sex and hey presto, nature takes her course,” Chloe said with a big dollop of sarcasm. Then she shook her head. “Obviously, he wasn’t a vampire then. He was turned just after I found out I was pregnant and…”

  “Have you been tracking him for seven years?” Kaylee demanded.

  “No,” Chloe said. “How lame would that be? I’m a witch. I found him almost straight away.”

  “Then why isn’t he ashes?”

  “Because he wasn’t a bad guy,” Chloe said.

  “He’s was a newbie vampire…”

  “Ok, point taken, but he wasn’t a bad guy before he was dead,” she said. “And he was Jackson’s father – what was I supposed to say – I killed your dad happy sixteenth birthday?”

  “I really don’t understand,” Kaylee said.

  “It was sort of my fault that he was turned,” Chloe grimaced.

  “What did you do?”

  “You keep saying that…”

  “And with good reason. I know you.”

  Chloe went to challenge that remark, but then she thought about it, and it made sense. “Fine. You win that one. I was working with some bad guys for some good money, and things went wrong, and they took it out on Jeff.”

  “Oooo.” It was Kaylee’s turn to grimace. “But still…”

  “Kill him?” Chloe said, and Kaylee shrugged. “You would have, would you?”

  “I would probably have,” Kaylee lied. She didn’t know what she would have done.

  “Liar,” Chloe bit back. “Anyway, a friend and I…”

  “Friend?”

  “Mercy,” Chloe said and grimaced again.

  “The vampire?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing…”

  “Usually is.”

  “Well, Mercy’s different,” Chloe said. “And we’ve been trying to train the rookie out of him…”

  “To what end?” Kaylee asked, unsure what she was hearing.

  Chloe looked at her sister in disbelief. “So that he’s not a bloodsucking killing machine going around draining people.”

  “When it would just have been easier to – you know?” She drew her hand across her throat, and Chloe screwed her face up.

  “Again – Jackson’s father,” Chloe bit out in disbelief. “What part of that aren’t you getting?”

  “What part of seven years without his mother aren’t you getting?”

  “That’s fair,” Chloe said and scowled. “But, who knew it would take this long?”

  “Oh, trust me, if I could have changed someone’s personality overnight, I would have done it to you…”

  “Seven years ago?” Chloe challenged her.

  Kaylee bit back the annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t trust you not to come find us and kill him as a perceived threat to Jackson,” Chloe tossed back, and when Kaylee didn’t say anything, Chloe stared at her, and she looked away. “You can not go find him and kill him. We’ve worked too long…”

  “Look, is he a bloodsucking leech or not?” Kaylee asked.

  “Yes, but he’s learning to use his brain instead of his bloodlust.”

  “How’s that working out?” Kaylee folded her arms. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “He’s here to see his son, not suck him dry of his blood,” Chloe snapped.

  “And you’re willing to stake Jackson’s life on that?”

  Chloe opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “Then you know what needs to be done,” Kaylee said.

  “He got away from us this time,” she said. “Mainly because you decided to keep me against my will at the cabin and I didn’t get back in time…”

  “Don’t you lay your bloodsucking boyfriend’s passive-aggressive tendencies on me.”

  “Fine, but I’m not going to kill him, and he’s not my boyfriend,” Chloe said.

  “What, the fangs not a turn on?” Kaylee said, and Chloe zapped her for her trouble. “You have a mate.”

  “I have a small problem that needs to be dealt with…”

  “Oh, really? Which one?” Kaylee bit out, before turning on her heels to find Lucas and Max standing by the open front door. “Umm, about that problem…” Kaylee tossed back over her shoulder, and Chloe shot a look by her and groaned.

  “Oh, that’s just some kind of wonderful you just dropped me into,” Chloe hissed.

  “Hey, don’t do the crime if you can’t spend the time explaining yourself,” Kaylee tossed back.

  Chloe hated to admit it, but her sister was right. She needed to have that conversation with Lucas, but she also needed to have a conversation with Mercy and Jeff.

  All of a sudden, life had gone from sucking to suffocating. She’d spent seven years living with her mistakes, how much longer was she going to have to pay for her sins?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ~

  “But, Daddy,” Shauna whined, and Mark turned to his mate and noted the amusement in her eyes.

  “I’d know I’d miss those words if she wasn’t here, but does she have to whine when she puts them together?” he grumbled.

  “Now, honey,” Tanya said, and he felt the need to wince even though she hadn’t really said anything yet. It was twenty-six years of being mates and knowing the tone of voice and the look in her eyes. “I’ve got you, who is growly, Lucas who thinks he’s a comedian, Max who is brooding, and Daddy’s little Princess; you are not getting any sympathy from me.”

  “Well, that’s just selfish,” he teased her. “And at Christmas time as well.”

  Tanya chuckled, but she did pop the top off a fresh beer with her thumbnail and slide it across the countertop, so it stopped right in front of him. He grunted and wrapped a large hand around it. “You always know how to make me feel better,” he chuckled.

  “Daddy!” Shauna protested, and he groaned.

  Then he turned on the stool to face her. “Don’t you have a mate to whine at?”

  “That’s not…”

  “Oh, but it is,” Mark said and shooed her away.

  Shauna stomped a foot and placed her hands on her hips as she frowned back at him. “I can’t work with you when you’re like this.”

  “This?” he asked, curious when he knew he should have patted her on the head and sent her away.