Southern Shifters: Purred Promises (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

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  Southern Shifters: Purred Promises

  By R. E. Butler

  Southern Shifters: Purred Promises

  By: R. E. Butler

  License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Cover by CT Cover Designs

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.

  * * *

  Editing by Word Vagabond

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  Many thanks to Eliza Gayle for her amazing Southern Shifters world.

  Much love to my sisterfriend Joyce B and Aunt B.L. for their continued support.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Contact the Author

  Other Works by R. E. Butler

  Southern Shifters: Purred Promises

  By R. E. Butler

  When the male arranged to be lynx Princess Genesis Roark’s mate dies during a hunt, her father gives her two choices – mate the male’s father, or be banished from the clan. Opting not to spend the rest of her life with a male she’s not attracted to, she chooses banishment and strikes out on her own. She’s told of a town where shifters, hybrids, and humans all live and work together in what’s known as the neutral zone – Deals Gap, North Carolina.

  Tiger-wolf hybrid Jair Venture settled in Deals Gap a year ago. As a hybrid, his blue-and-black striped wolf fur and mismatched eyes relegated him to the bottom tier in the tiger pride. In Deals Gap, he finds a place to call home.

  When Jair meets Genesis, he knows he’s in the presence of his true mate. The gorgeous female is ready and willing to be his mate, and loves his blue and green eyes. In the midst of their budding relationship, Jair will have to come to terms with the cause of his messed-up genetics, and the fact that Genesis’s exile from her home comes with its own baggage in the form of the disgruntled male she left behind.

  This book includes one hybrid shifter with a chip on his shoulder, one exiled lynx princess, inappropriate pool hall bets, and gratuitous use of the word ‘mine.’

  Chapter 1

  Genesis looked at the mating gown on the hanger her aunt was holding up. It had been created in the traditional style of her people, an ivory-and-lilac colored affair with a low-cut bodice that was intended to display her bits like ripe melons at the produce stand.

  “Why do you always make that face when you look at the dress?” Geraldine asked, her brow cocked.

  “It’s so revealing,” she said with a shrug.

  “Probably because the males were the ones who decided what the mating night requirements should be. When you put men in charge of women’s clothing, it tends to get pretty…”

  “Slutty?” Genesis offered when Geraldine didn’t finish her thought.

  She sniffed. “I would never say that about anything you wore, Gen. You’re a princess. This gown is exactly like the one your mother wore, rest her soul, and you’ll look lovely for your mate.”

  The mention of her mother always made Genesis sad. Her mother had died when she was four. Her memories of her were fuzzy around the edges, but warm nonetheless – lots of hugs, being sung to sleep every night, and the tastiest chocolate chip cookies ever.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to bring you down.” Geraldine turned and hung the gown up in the spare bedroom of the home where Genesis had spent the last twenty-five years of her life.

  “It’s okay. I just miss her. Especially for the important stuff like this. Tomorrow night I’m going to be mated to a complete stranger.”

  Geraldine hummed. “It’s our way.”

  Making a face, Genesis waved her hand. “I wasn’t saying that it was a bad thing. I just wonder about the true matings that other shifter groups have. Our people never find their mates naturally; the matings are always arranged by the families. What would happen if Dad just let me be to find someone of my own?”

  “Well, I only really know about lynxes, but I know a cougar female who said that her people waited for the mating call.”

  “What’s the mating call?”

  Genesis followed Geraldine out of the bedroom and down the hall.

  “It’s…I don’t know. Like lightning, I think,” she said as her hand gripped the railing of the curved staircase that led to the first floor.

  “Lightning?”

  “I mean,” she glanced over her shoulder with a smile, “that it’s like getting struck by lightning. Mona told me that she’d visited a friend who was a wolf shifter, and when she walked into the house, she saw her friend’s older brother and knew without hesitation that he was her true mate. The one perfect male for her.”

  Genesis mulled that over as she followed Geraldine into the large kitchen. Sitting on a stool at the island, she watched her aunt pull ingredients from the refrigerator and assemble them into two sandwiches.

  “Why would her nature allow her to have a true mate who wasn’t of her kind? That ensures that both of them, as well as their offspring, would be exiled to the neutral zone.”

  Pushing a plate across the granite countertop, Geraldine said, “If you leave your future up to your beast, you don’t know what might happen. Because our people are fiercely pro-species, we never, never mate with other kinds of shifters or supernatural creatures. Having fathers choose mates for their children, before the heat takes them, is the only way to ensure that the right choice is made.”

  The right choice for their species, but not necessarily for her.

  “What do you know about my future mate?” Genesis asked before taking a bite of the turkey and swiss sandwich. The male her father had chosen for her was from a lynx chain a few hours east of them. Like her own chain, her future mate’s was small, made up of a few family groups with a king as the leader.

  “Marco is a prince, of course,” Geraldine said, nodding knowingly.

  “I don’t really care about that,” she said.

  “Well, you’re the only one who doesn’t.”

  “I don’t think you care that you’re the sister-in-law of the king, do you?” Genesis arched a brow.

  “My only concern is your welfare, little princess.”

  “Oh barf, don’t call me that,” she said, setting her sandwich dow
n and rolling her eyes. She’d spent the better part of her life being referred to as ‘the little princess,’ but now, at twenty-five, she was hardly little and she didn’t feel much like a princess.

  “When you mate with Marco, you’ll be princess by marriage in his clan, and then when he becomes king, you’ll be queen.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Do you think Mom loved Dad?”

  “Of course. Duty was always first for my sister, but eventually she came to love your father. When you were born, it was the happiest day of her life.” She moved around the island and hugged Genesis. “Your father chose well. Marco is handsome and comes from a well-respected family.”

  After pondering that for a few moments while she finished her sandwich, she asked, “Do you think you can fall in love with someone who isn’t heart-chosen?”

  When Genesis didn’t get an answer from her aunt, she looked up from her plate and realized that Geraldine was frowning.

  “What?” She was surprised by the severe expression on her aunt’s face.

  “You need to get this romantic nonsense out of your head right now, young lady. Our people do not get to choose their own mates. If we waited around for our heat cycle or our heart to choose, our people could end up with mates from other species. Then there would be heartbreak and banishments. Do you want to live in the neutral zone? With hybrids mucking around with the gene pool?”

  Genesis couldn’t recall her aunt saying much of a cross word before, so she was surprised to hear such venomous words coming from her.

  Reaching across the cool marble, Genesis clasped her aunt’s hand. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. It wasn’t my intention. I’m just thinking about my future, and maybe I read too many romance novels.”

  Geraldine snorted and unlinked their fingers, patting the top of Genesis’s hand. “You’re nervous and that’s understandable, but you need to lock down these wayward thoughts. You don’t want your new mate to think you’re unhappy before things even get started.”

  Genesis nodded, unsure what to say. It was true that she didn’t want to make anyone mad, especially the male who held her future happiness in his hands. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that getting a chance to pick a mate based on mutual attraction and affection was a far, far better choice than having a family member pick someone based on criteria that she hadn’t even been able to agree to.

  If she’d been asked, she would have told her dad that she wanted a mate who was sexy and funny, who would occasionally do romantic things for her like bringing her flowers or making dinner, and who could turn her on with a glance. But no one had asked. Her dad’s criteria for the male who would mate his only daughter were the strength of his genetic line, his family name, and his ability to be a kickass king. In a few years, when Marco’s father stepped down from his kingship, Genesis would become the queen.

  I’d rather be loved than be queen.

  The thought rose so quickly in her mind that she didn’t have a chance to stop it. She felt the sting of tears at the unfairness of the situation. She needed to get away from Geraldine before her aunt realized that she was still thinking romantic thoughts. And why the hell shouldn’t she? It was her mating night – what the human couples in her romance novels called a wedding night.

  Slipping from the stool, she mumbled that she was heading up to take a bath and relax for a while before it was time to get ready, and fled to the second floor. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she shut her bedroom door. The sight of the nearly empty room and the packing boxes stacked high against one wall made her feel overwhelmingly sad. In a few hours her life would be changed forever. She’d take the time now to wallow in her sorrow, because she had a feeling her arranged mate wouldn’t care to know she secretly longed for a mate who was chosen by her heart.

  Chapter 2

  Jair looked up at the blazing August sun and wiped his brow with a bandana. Stuffing the rag into his back pocket, he set his sunglasses back on his nose and returned his attention to the pile of decorative pavers. Hefting the dark-red and gray squares into a nearby wheelbarrow, he filled it up and then pushed it around the back of the house where two other employees of O’Reilly Landscaping were laying them out in a pattern.

  “Over here, Jair,” Felix, the owner, called, gesturing to his side of the marked-off area that would eventually become a large patio with a low wall and an outdoor kitchen.

  Dumping the stones by Felix, Jair said, “The pile up front is getting smaller.”

  Felix looked up and grinned. “Thank the goddess for that. Remind me not to take jobs like this when it’s hot as fuck out.”

  Jair pushed the empty wheelbarrow back to the front of the house, set it down next to the pile, and began to toss the pavers into it. He’d been working for Felix ever since he came to Deals Gap a year earlier, when he’d been officially and irrevocably kicked out of his tiger pride. He tried not to think much about his family, who had watched him leave without protest, but every time he glanced at the underside of his wrist and saw the witch’s symbol marking him as an exile, he couldn’t help but consider how fucked up his life was.

  The tiger pride he’d grown up in had been a haven. With only his mom and his brother Jenner, he’d had a small but loving family. He hadn’t been exactly like his older brother; there had always been something a little different about Jair that no one seemed to be interested in telling him about. His mother had told him that after Jenner’s father died in a pride battle when Jenner was a toddler, she’d had an affair with a male from another pride. Their mother’s fur was navy blue striped with black, so she was a sought-after female, and it hadn’t surprised Jair to know that males had been after her once she was single. It wasn’t until he was old enough to shift that he learned the truth. Jair’s father was no tiger, but instead a shifter of an entirely different breed – a wolf.

  The moment he shifted, he’d known something was wrong with him. He was a huge wolf, with blue-and-black striped fur – a horrible medley of the two creatures that fought for dominance inside him. The tiger longed for family and pride, and the wolf wanted to run with a pack. Jenner had taken over the pride by the time Jair was old enough to shift, and hadn’t exiled him. Instead, he’d moved Jair to a home on the outskirts of pride lands and allowed him to be an observer. He’d been part of the pride but also not part of the pride, which was a strange and unsatisfying position to be in.

  It wasn’t until Jenner mated with a female from another pride, who brought along her hybrid-hating family, that things got difficult. After a year of pushing from his in-laws, Jenner gave in and exiled Jair.

  “I’m fucking sorry,” Jenner said as the witch prepared to etch his skin with the magical symbol.

  Jair hadn’t known what to say. He’d wanted to rail against his brother, to tell him to stand up for family, but instead he’d just stared at him in stoic silence. When he’d been marked in exile, he hadn’t even winced. His beasts raged within him, but he’d kept tight control over their desire to tear Jenner to pieces.

  Ignoring the urge to punch Jenner in the mouth and knock a few teeth loose for good measure, Jair had grabbed his two bags and headed for his truck. He didn’t give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how despondent the whole damn thing made him. It wasn’t his fault that he was a hybrid. Although it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, he blamed the male who had impregnated his mother, for abandoning her all those years ago, for getting her pregnant and then disappearing so she had to lie to everyone about who she’d been with. Up until he’d shifted, he had been a normal tiger as far as anyone knew. Once he shifted and his multi-hued fur appeared on the wrong beast, his eyes in his human form had changed as well, marking him even more fully as something that shouldn’t exist.

  His mother stopped him from getting in his truck by putting her small hand on his arm. “Baby, I’m sorry.”

  Jair tossed his things onto the seat and turned to hug her. “It’s just ancient pride bullshit. I’m still your so
n, exile or not.”

  She sniffled. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “Jenner made his choice. He’s king and he’s allowed to do that.”

  In reality, Jair didn’t fault his brother. If Jair was lucky enough to ever find a mate, he didn’t think there was anything he wouldn’t do to make her happy, although betraying blood was kind of over the top.

  She pressed a piece of paper into his palm and said, “I never told you about him because I had hoped you might be enough like me to fool the pride. I have no regrets about my time with him, because he was there for me when I needed a shoulder to cry on.” She wiped at her wet cheeks. “His name is Veron Smythe. He’ll know you by scent, and he’ll help you.”

  He said goodbye to her, knowing that he would likely never see her again. He would be killed if he returned to pride lands, and unless she chose exile herself, they wouldn’t cross paths.

  Shaking himself from his dark thoughts, he put the memories of his mother out of his mind and turned his attention back to filling the wheelbarrow with pavers. His own house was on the other side of Deals Gap, bordered by thick woods on all sides. That gave him plenty of privacy, which he appreciated. Even though Deals Gap was neutral, a haven for exiled hybrids and purebloods, he still didn’t like shifting in front of others. His entire adult life he’d had to stand on the outside, shifting and hunting alone because the core of what he was disgusted the purebreds.

  Hefting the load of pavers, he headed back around to the others. Felix looked up at him. “Your dad called, asked if you’d stop by.”

  Jair stifled his grumbled sigh. Felix and Veron were friends and had lived in Deals Gap for years. When Jair arrived in town, he hadn’t intended to meet his biological father or have anything to do with him, but his mother had somehow gotten word to Veron that Jair was on his way.