Finding His Family: A Howls Romance (The Shifters of Sanctuary Book 6) Read online

  Finding His Family

  The Shifters of Sanctuary

  Book 6

  Kasey Belle

  Copyright © 2018

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  Finding His Family (A Howls Romance): The Shifters of Sanctuary, Book 6

  Text Copyright © 2018 Kasey Belle

  First E-book Publication: November 2018

  Cover and art copyright © 2018 Anna Josey/Sin City Book Art

  Digital Formatting by Kasey Belle

  ALL RIGHT 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.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Black River Pack Family Tree

  Alpha Thorne Stone & Alpha Mate Maggie Stone

  (Children Stephan & Dakoda)

  Greer (Alpha Stone’s brother) & Celia Stone

  (Children: Devon Stone)

  Stephan Stone (BRP Second-in-Command) & Deirdre Stone

  (Children: Matthew)

  Matthew & Calypso Stone

  (Children: Emmarie, Lula, & Sage)

  Sanctuary Family Tree

  Koda Stone & Ella Quinn Stone

  (Children: Stephani Ann & Liam)

  Nicolette “Nikki” Hendrix Halsey (SP Second-in-Command) & James “Jim” Halsey

  (Children: Casey & James Jr)

  Storm and Rainbow Brightman

  (Children: Stevie & one on the way)

  Racine and Danika Kingston

  (Children: Jack)

  Devon & Janelle Stone

  (Children: Heather, Maizy, & one on the way)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgement

  About The Author

  Please Stalk Me

  Other Works

  Family is not defined by our genes

  It is built and maintained

  through love

  Prologue

  “Hi, Mom.” Emmarie said as she slid open the side door of their mini-van. She tossed her backpack and gym bag onto the floorboard and climbed in.

  “Hi, baby. How was practice?”

  “Awesome!” Emmarie buckled herself into the end seat of the second row. “Coach told me I’m starting forward for the game on Saturday.”

  Her mother whooped with joy and held out her fist. Emmarie bumped it then turned around to say hello to her sister and brother. “How was your day at Ms. Annette’s, Lu?”

  “Good.” Lula nodded enthusiastically making her curls bounce. “Ms. Annette took us to the lie-berry for story time. Then, we played outside. Sage had a stinky diaper. It was gross.”

  Sage giggled and chewed on his thumb. “Sissy!”

  “Baby boy!” she responded. Sage cracked up laughing as he always did. She stuck out her hand, and he slapped her five.

  “How was work, Mom?”

  “Work.”

  Emmarie rolled her eyes at her mother’s canned response regarding her job as a receptionist at a local urgent care. “What does that mean today?”

  “Well,” her mother began as she pulled out of the loading zone and onto the road. “I didn’t tell anyone to ‘f’ off, the doctors behaved, and I actually got a lunch break. So, all in all, a good day.”

  “Yay! You still have a job. We get to eat and have electricity!” She teased making her mother laugh.

  “Yep.” She glanced into the rearview mirror meeting Emmarie’s eyes. They shared a grin. “at least until tomorrow.”

  “Are still going to your holiday office party tomorrow night?”

  “Uh-huh. You’re still babysitting.”

  Emmarie pumped her fist. She loved helping her mother out with Lula and Sage, but she coveted the one-on-one time she got with them while babysitting. It didn’t happen very often. Her mother put her blinker on and slowed to a stop waiting on a break in oncoming traffic, so they could turn left. The next to the last car swerved into their lane. Emmarie yelled “Mom!” at the same time her mother screamed.

  Her mother pressed on the gas and jerked the steering wheel trying to move them out of the way of the oncoming car but there was nowhere to go due to the cars parallel parked along curb.

  Emmarie grabbed the armrests on her seat and held on. Time seemed to slow down, but she knew only seconds passed before the impact.

  The sounds of Sage and Lula crying and screaming for their mother met Emmarie’s ears as she slowly regained her bearings. The front of their mini-van was crushed in. Her mother was slumped over the steering wheel and wasn’t moving. For some reason the airbag hadn’t deployed.

  A man leaned into the open space where the driver’s side window used to be. He reached his hand in then yelled to someone. “She has a pulse.”

  “I’m on the phone with 911,” another person Emmarie couldn’t see called out.

  The man leaned in again and looked at Emmarie. “How many of you are in here?”

  “Four. Me. My sister, brother, and my mom.”

  He nodded. “This door won’t budge. We’re going to try the others, but I doubt we’ll have any success. The frame is bent from the impact and another car rear-ended you.

  Emmarie release her seat belt and leaned to look at her mother.

  “You shouldn’t be moving around,” the man scolded Emmarie, but she ignored him.

  “Mom?�
�� She touched her mother’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

  Her mother slowly turned her head. Blood pour from a wound just above her right eye and trickled out the side of her mouth. “Okay?”

  Emmarie nodded and winced. “I think so. My head hurts.”

  “Lula?” she gasped. “Sage?”

  “I think they're okay too. They're crying up a storm. That’s good, right?” She offered her mother a smile.

  “I’m sorry baby,” her mother whispered.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Dying.” Her mother’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment.

  “No mom! You’ll be okay. Help is coming.” She turned to Lula and Gage who were strapped in their safety seats in the third row. “Calm down, guys. It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but she didn’t want to scare them.

  “Shift, Mom. Shift and you’ll heal.”

  “No. Too dangerous. Expose you.” Her mother coughed and gurgled. “I would have liked… Sanctuary.”

  “We’ll still go,” Emmarie lied. She knew in her heart her mother wouldn’t make it. However, she refused to acknowledge it aloud afraid it would speed up the process.

  Her mother shook her head. “Not me. You one day. I love you, Emmarie.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  “Take care of Lula and Sage.”

  “I will. Always.”

  “Tell them… tell them… I love them.” Her mothers eyes drooped then fluttered open. “Don’t let them forget.”

  Banging had Emmarie jerking her head around which caused pain to explode behind her eyes. The man from earlier and a few others were trying to get the sliding door open. “Please, Mom. Hold on. Okay.”

  Her mother’s eyes clouded and became unfocussed. She smiled. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Mom? See who?” Her mother was hallucinating. Did people do that before they died? No, no, no. This wasn’t happening.

  “You came for me.” Her mother’s whispered statement pulled Emmarie’s attention.

  “Who came?” She had to keep her mother talking. Sirens approached. The sounds getting louder with each passing second. But close as help was, Emmarie knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

  “I missed you, William.” A serene expression overtook Katie Bennett’s face.

  “Is Daddy here?” Emmarie asked even though she knew the answer.

  “Mmhmm. For me. I have to go with him.” Her mother’s voice was barely audible now.

  “No. Stay,” she pleaded knowing in her heart it wouldn’t do any good. But she didn’t want to let her mother go. She didn’t want to lose her mother the way she had her father. She didn’t want that for Lula and Sage either. “Please just hold on.”

  Firetrucks pulled up along with a few police cars. There was a flurry of activity outside. As uniformed men and women grabbed their equipment and rushed toward the accident. One fireman carried a large piece of machinery. Emmarie assumed they were the jaws of life. She’d seen a show on television where they used them.

  “They’re here, Mom.” She grasped her mother’s hand. Her skin was clammy and cold. “They’re going to get us out.

  “Too late. Have to go.” Her mother made a choking noise and more blood poured from her mouth. “Love you.”

  “I know. I love you, too.” Emmarie leaned in and kissed her mother’s forehead. “Goodbye. Go be with Daddy.”

  She didn’t need to hear her mother’s last breath. She didn’t need to feel for a pulse. Emmarie knew the moment Katie Bennett’s spirit left her body and reunited with her mate in the afterlife.

  Chapter 1

  “Father. Please.” Callie tilted her head back to relieve the tension in her neck. “They have nowhere else to go. If you won’t take them in, they’ll have to go into foster care. They will most likely be separated. Placing Emmarie will be hard. She’s thirteen. Help me keep them together.”

  “I will not have their spawn in my clowder.”

  “Are you kidding me with this? First of all, they’re children, not spawn. Second. That was fifteen years ago. Get over it already.”

  “She disrespected me. She disrespected her people. Those children are an abomination. Katie Noll made her choice when she mated a dog. Interspecies shifters have no place in our society.”

  “That’s archaic. Nobody thinks that way anymore.” That wasn’t completely true. A few assholes still did, which she had the pleasure of finding out earlier that morning

  “If that were true then why didn’t Bennett Pack take them in?”

  Callie blew out a breath. Her father was right. Bennett Pack had refused for the same reason. William had distanced himself from his father and pack shortly after he met Katie. “Emmarie, Lula, and Sage have been through enough. Don’t you think? They’ll go to the humans. They need to be with their kind.”

  “They don’t have a kind!” Her father shouted. “Have you not been listening? They are not welcome here. Stop this nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense. It’s my job to find a safe place for these children.”

  “If you found a real career that actually paid a salary and came with a respectable title you wouldn’t need to make this your problem. Like it isn’t mine. The answer is no, and that’s final. Dump them on the humans.”

  Callie’s father hung up without even bothering to say goodbye. She slammed the receiver down and threw her pen across the room. It hit the wall and dropped to the floor clattering against the industrial tile floor. Fuck her father. He may be her blood, but he was no better than every other bigot in the world. Selfish. Hateful. Not worth her time.

  Much like William and Katie Bennett, Callie followed her own path far from the one her parents’ had planned for her. She had no desire to be like them. Deimos and Penelope Caldwell were rich, snotty, bigoted, and lacked any empathy for their fellow man, human and shifter alike. Callie’s two older brothers had no problem towing the family line for a slice of the bigger pie. Her oldest brother Leander was a financial analyst. The youngest, Ajax, was a corporate attorney. Then there was her. Little Calypso Caldwell social worker, soup kitchen volunteer, and all-around do-gooder. The girl who sullied the Caldwell name.

  Callie laid her head back and stared at the ceiling. What they hell was she going to do? The thought of sending the three siblings into foster care made her ill. Truth was, she wanted to keep them with her. A hazard of the job, she’d been told. But, this was personal to her. It was not just an I feel sorry for them reaction. She felt it in her soul. She knew it was stupid to even think it. She was a social worker, a new one at that. At twenty-four nobody was going to hand over three children to her regardless of her degree. Plus, she’d lose her job if she even tried.

  Emmarie, Lula, and Sage had faced too much tragedy in their short lives. Their father, William, a Green Beret had died in a training accident shortly before Sage was born. Katie passed two days ago in an automobile accident. The children had sustained a few injuries. Callie talked the doctor―who happened to be a friend―into keeping them for observation over the weekend to give her time to find a foster family willing to take the siblings. Callie hadn’t wanted to place them in a group situation, even temporarily. She worked through the weekend and exhausted every resource. The siblings would be released from the hospital tomorrow and as of right now, Callie only had homes for Lula and Sage.

  “Homes,” she muttered to herself. Separate homes. “No,” she told herself. “You aren’t giving up. If nothing else, she’d keep Lula and Gage together. Emmarie had begged her to do at least that. She wouldn’t let them down. She wiggled the mouse and woke up her computer. She’d work through the night and pray that good fortune would smile upon her and three hybrids.

  The following morning Callie walked into the hospital and headed to the pediatric ward. Depression weighed her down, but she tried not to let it show. Good fortune chose not to show its pretty face. Callie had no choice but to separate the children. All three of them.

  ****


  Emmarie looked up when the door opened. Ms. Caldwell their social worker walked in. She noticed the woman’s lips were pulled into a tight smile that in no way reached her eyes and Emmarie’s heart sank. She knew Ms. Caldwell hadn’t been able to keep them together.

  “Good morning, Emmarie.” Ms. Caldwell placed her purse and briefcase at the foot of Emmarie’s bed.

  “Morning, Ms. Caldwell.”

  “I thought I asked you to call me Callie.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” She looked over at her little sister, Lula. “Can you say hi, Lu?”

  Lula glanced up from her coloring book. “Hi, Ms. Callie. Do you like my pony? I made her purple.”

  “Hi, sweetie. You did a wonderful job. All ponies should be purple.”

  Emmarie wanted to roll her eyes. Who did the lady think she was fooling with all that fake cheer?

  Callie turned her attention back to Emmarie. “Has the doctor been by yet?”

  “Not yet. The nurse said he’d be in soon, but that was a couple of hours ago.” Emmarie wanted to ask her what was going to happen to them, but she didn’t want to do it in front of Lula and Sage. Not that Sage would have noticed. He’d fallen asleep in the little hospital crib shortly after breakfast.

  “I’ll go see if I can’t hunt him down.” She smiled and gave Emmarie’s leg a pat.

  Emmarie stopped her before she pulled the door open. “You couldn’t do it could you?”

  Ms. Caldwell turned and gave Emmarie her full attention. “It’s only temporary. I’m not giving up.”

  “Sure. Okay.” She blinked back tears. Knowing the truth and hearing it were entirely two different things. Emmarie appreciated Ms. Caldwell’s conviction, but she doubted it would do any good.

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  When the door shut behind Ms. Caldwell, Emmarie glanced over at her brother and sister. She would not lose them to the system. She’d gone to school with a couple of foster kids. She’d heard stories about what went on in some of the homes. Granted all of them weren’t bad, probably not the majority of them, but Emmarie couldn’t take that kind of chance.