Summoned (The Sundance Series Book 2) Read online

  Summoned

  The Sundance Series

  C. P. Rider

  VC Group, LLC

  Copyright © 2019 by C. P. Rider

  Cover design by Sylvia Frost/The Book Brander

  Developmental Editing Services by Sue Brown Moore

  Proofreading Services by Laurel Kriegler

  Translation Assistance by Julissa Tirado Martin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Jeff Martin. The best gift Mom and Dad ever gave me. Thanks for the support, little brother.

  Contents

  Preface

  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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Also by C. P. Rider

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Like your urban fantasy with a little romance?

  To find out how to sign up for new release notifications and bonus content not available anywhere else, follow the links at the back of this book.

  Chapter One

  Ever since the paranormals in town found out I could kill them with the power of my mind, business at La Buena Suerte Panaderia had been slow.

  If the residents of Sundance, California had been less reactionary, I could have told them I had rules. I didn't use either my telepathic or spiker abilities unless necessary, didn't read friends without permission, spiked no one unless there was no other option.

  Then again, people would only have my word that I followed my rules and, with my wolf shapeshifter uncle gone, there weren't many paranormals in the vicinity who trusted me.

  Two of the exceptions were standing at the counter ordering an obscene amount of pastries for a gathering later that evening. The Blacke shifters loved sweets—also fresh meat, but I didn't sell that.

  "Another two dozen conchas, I think." Chandra Smith, Blacke group alpha second, hyena shifter, and all-around badass, drummed her boot heel on the tile floor.

  "Four." Amir Gamal, Blacke group alpha fourth, eagle shifter, and male model—I didn't know that for sure, but I suspected—crossed his arms, tucking his hands beneath biceps the size of mangoes.

  "Maybe we should get six just to be sure," Chandra growled. "Damn Dan and his ridiculousness. He should be doing this."

  I said nothing, only scratched out the numbers two and four on my notepad and scribbled in 6.

  "Sorry, Neely." Chandra scrubbed at her black hair. The spiked cut coupled with her pale brown complexion reminded me of the singer Joan Jett, but I'd never tell Chandra that unless I was sure that was the look she was after. "I'm sure he'll get over it."

  "Yeah." My pencil lead broke, and I reached beneath the counter for an ink pen. "He seems to be a real open-minded sort of guy."

  "Normally he is." Amir shuffled his feet. "I believe you frightened him the day your uncle—uh, the day we found José."

  In fairness, I'd scared myself with the amount of power I'd manifested the day my uncle died. I guess I could understand why Dan Winters—a coyote shifter, and Lucas Blacke's third—would be nervous around me. Sadly, he wouldn't talk to me about it. Just took off in the other direction every time we crossed paths.

  "How are Lucas and his new shifters?"

  "Alpha hasn't called you?" Amir asked.

  I shook my head. The Blacke alpha and I had left things unsettled between us, and he didn't seem in any particular hurry to settle up.

  Chandra replied, "He says it's going well. This group is the last of the Vegas shifters to be pledged. They're aquatic animals, so he took them snorkeling in Baja. Should be back in a couple days."

  "Roso had aquatic shifters in his pack? In the desert?" Seemed unnecessarily cruel, but I shouldn't have been surprised. Saul Roso had been an unnecessarily cruel man.

  "Only three. Roso slaughtered their alpha and most of their school, and then forced them into his pack." The way Amir's jaw clenched told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about that. "The real question is why they'd want to stay here in our desert. Alpha suggested they meet with a friend of his, an aquatic alpha in San Diego, but they insist they want to be part of our group."

  "They trust him." It didn't surprise me. Lucas, the alpha leader of the only shifter group in our little desert truck stop town, was slowly becoming known for being a fair alpha leader—a rarity in the paranormal world.

  "And they don't trust anyone else," Chandra said.

  A few weeks ago, Lucas had helped me kill Saul Roso, a Las Vegas wolf alpha hellbent on turning me into his own personal paranormal weapon. While hunting me, he had gone on a murder spree in Sundance, and we weren't able to stop him until after he'd killed several people, including my beloved uncle.

  So, I carried that on my soul.

  Lately it seemed as if all the bad luck in town emanated from me, as if I were some kind of anti-four-leaf clover.

  I didn't realize I'd murmured the words out loud until Amir said, "What you did was brave. You didn't have to sacrifice yourself for us."

  Never mind Roso would never have come to our little corner of the southwestern desert if I hadn't lured him here. Being a spiker meant being feared by the weak and coveted by the despotic. In Roso's corrupt eyes, I had been a weapon, nothing more. I couldn't be happier that he was dead, but I regretted my inability to contain the fallout.

  The shifters left after that, and I took their order to the back of the bakery and handed it to my temporary baker, Diego Vargas. He scanned the receipt.

  "Pity order, do you think?" I asked.

  Diego nodded, the hair net keeping his longish dark brown hair from moving. "Yes. But we'll take it. Pity money spends the same."

  "True. So, when do you start the new job?"

  After months of looking, Diego had finally found work at a sugar beet processing plant in the town an hour away. Dan Winters, the coyote shifter who hated me, had gotten him the job. It wasn't personal. Diego needed retirement benefits and better pay, and his job at the bakery could offer him neither.

  "Two weeks. I'm sorry, Neely. I said I'd help you and—"

  I held up a hand. "Stop apologizing. I'm happy for you. I really am." I was. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have told him so. Diego was an empath and can sometimes sense when a person is lying.

  "I'll come in and help after work until you find another baker to take over."

  Diego really was a sweet man. "Thank you, but I haven't decided if I'm going to keep the bakery going. This was Tío José's dream, not mine."

  "What is your dream?" He shook flour over the freshly scrubbed worktable and dumped out the concha dough I'd made early this morning. A cloud of white danced on the surface of
the table.

  "No idea. I always assumed I'd know it when I saw it."

  He smiled. "Maybe you will."

  The bell on the front door hit the glass with a sharp crack.

  "Did you hear that? Someone wants an iced coffee badly enough to brave the presence of the evil spiker." I widened my eyes and made a woo-woo noise.

  "Don't be so dramática."

  My stomach clenched, because it sounded exactly like something my uncle would have said and it had only been two months since I lost him. I missed him so much my entire body ached whenever I thought about him not being here.

  Diego stopped what he was doing. "I'm sorry it hurts you so much."

  The challenge of working with an empath.

  "Thanks. I just … miss him. I'll be okay."

  I plastered a fake smile on my face and went back into the café.

  Chapter Two

  It was past nine and I'd showered, thrown on my pajamas, and was lying in bed with a book. A romantic suspense with a serial killer I wanted the couple to hurry up and kill so I could concentrate on the juicy romance. Not that I could concentrate on much. I kept thinking about what Diego had asked me in the bakery this morning.

  What is your dream?

  If he had asked me the same question a year and a half ago, I'd have said my dream was to co-own a bakery with my uncle, and marry and make cute babies with Julio Roso, my fiancé.

  Of course, that was all before Julio told his maniacal brother Saul that I was a spiker, and before Saul told Julio that it would be in the best interests of all involved if I let him make me into a crossbreed.

  The crossbreed ceremony would have turned me from a telepathic spiker into a shapeshifting telepathic spiker. It would have sent my abilities into the stratosphere, at the same time making me emotionally unstable and a danger to everyone around me. It would also have tied me to Saul Roso for the rest of my life.

  There was the chance Julio didn't know I'd be practically married to his brother. I was almost willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because there was a stupid part of me that held out hope that he'd really loved me and hadn't been using me all along.

  "Why can't I get you out of my head, Julio Roso?"

  "Who are you talking to?"

  I leapt out of bed with my pillow held in front of me as a shield, my chest pumping like an accordion playing Cajun-zydeco music. "What the hell?"

  A tall, dark blond, and very handsome man leaned against the wall beside the stairs. "Good evening to you, too."

  Lucas Blacke had sauntered into my apartment the way he always did, quiet as a whisper and with blatant disregard for my privacy. It was late, but he was dressed as if on his way to a business meeting. Charcoal suit tailored to fit his slim, muscular body, hair smoothed back, tie precisely knotted. It was a look he'd shown me only once before, and it was completely un-Lucas-like.

  He glanced at the stainless steel Tag Heuer watch on his tanned wrist. "Not too late, is it?"

  "Yes, it's too freaking late. I have to be up at four."

  "Please. It's not as if you have a long commute. You live where you work."

  True, my apartment was on the second floor of the bakery, which was convenient. But there were both pros and cons to living where you worked. Con: some people assumed I was always open and had no problem knocking on my door after-hours for a pastry. Pro: I never needed air freshener because my apartment always smelled like fresh baked cookies.

  And the commute, of course. Lucas was right about that.

  "I'm going to figure out what hole you're using to sneak in here and I'm going to board it up." I set my jaw, glared at him.

  "Lie. If you were really worried about me sneaking in, you'd have found it by now." He pulled away from the wall, hips first, and strolled past my bathroom and into my small kitchen. Opened the fridge and frowned into it.

  My place was compact, but it had everything I needed. Bathroom with a tub, kitchen with a full-sized oven, living area with a modular sofa, and a full-sized bed on a pine platform, sectioned off by strategically placed glass walls and bookcases. Tonight was one of the times I wished I'd paid the extra to put in a bedroom wall instead of leaving my bed visible to anyone who walked in.

  "What are you doing here and why are you dressed like that?" I climbed back onto my bed, crossed my legs tailor-style, and arranged the pillow on my lap.

  "Like what?"

  "Fancy pants."

  I'd expected him to smile at that. He didn't. He closed the fridge without taking out anything and crossed the room to me. "I had a last-minute meeting in San Diego today."

  "With whom?"

  Lucas perched on the edge of my bed, leaned over me to read the title of the book on my nightstand. "Romance?"

  I crossed my arms. "With whom, Lucas?"

  "You're nosy." He picked up my book, flipped through it.

  "I'm nosy?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "You know what? I don't even care. Why are you here?"

  "Why is the binding on this book broken?"

  Talking to Lucas was an exercise in patience. "I'll tell you if you tell me why you're here."

  He snapped the book closed and fixed his amber eyes on me. Probably silently judging my white flannel nightgown. When it was boiling out, I liked to run the air conditioner at just under "hang meat" temperature and pretend I was somewhere wintery. I would not apologize to anyone for sleeping in comfort.

  "I was summoned to San Diego by my old alpha."

  My heart stuttered. "Xavier Malcolm."

  "The one and only."

  Lucas didn't talk about his old pack alpha much, but when he did it wasn't complimentary. "Can he do that if you aren't a member of his pack anymore?"

  "No, but he can ask really nicely with the power of a thousand-strong wolf pack behind him."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah. Oh." He looked down at the romance book in his hand.

  "So, what did he want?"

  "He wants to meet you." Lucas tossed the book on the bed. "I told him you aren't part of my group, so I couldn't force you. He asked me to extend an invitation."

  Fear drenched me. My breath started coming in shallow pants. "No." I'd never met an alpha besides Lucas who didn't want to use me for my ability and, if I was being completely honest, I still wasn't a hundred percent on Lucas. "No."

  "You can say no. But he'll keep asking. It may get … messy." His shoulders slumped and he raked his fingers through his hair, leaving it mussed and much more Lucas-like. "I'm sorry. I didn't tell him what you were, but someone here did. He has his spies."

  Shit, shit, shit. "Do you think I should see him?" I wrapped my arms around my knees, rested my forehead on my kneecaps.

  "You probably should."

  "I'm afraid."

  I raised my head, caught him twirling a lock of my spiral-curled hair around his finger. He did that often, touched my hair. Anyone else tried it and I would have backhanded them, but Lucas was … well, Lucas.

  "Afraid? You?" He let my dark chestnut curl spin out, stroked his fingers over my jaw. "You're the warrior who took down Saul Roso. What do you have to be afraid of?" He said the words as if he meant them, but his lashes lowered over his eyes and I knew he was worried.

  Sure, I took down Saul Roso. But without Lucas's help, I would have died doing it, and that was the absolute truth whether he wanted to admit it or not.

  "I'm not a warrior. I'm just a baker's niece." And now I wasn't even that.

  "I'll go with you."

  He played with another strand of my hair. This time I did slap his hand away.

  "Will he think we're together if you go with me? Like a couple?"

  Lucas lifted one shoulder. "He might."

  "Would that be best? For him to believe that we're lovers?"

  "Yes. He should also believe that you're considering joining my group." Lucas reached for my hair again but stopped short of touching it. "And this will all be easier if we stick close to the truth."

  "The trut
h? Are you saying I really have to be your lover and potential group member?" If this was his way of sneaking into my bed, I was going to junk-kick him.

  "No sex necessary, but I'm game if you are."

  I was losing patience with his flippant answers. "Lucas, talk to me."

  "I am talking. Listen, it's all semantics with alpha leaders like Malcolm. If I said we're sleeping together, he wouldn't think we were having pillow fights and painting each other's nails. This is me we're talking about." He shrugged out of his jacket, dress shirt, and undershirt, kicked off his shoes, and climbed into bed with me, wearing only a pair of trousers that sat low on his hips.

  I tried hard not to stare at the two shallow grooves on either side of his abdominal muscles leading into his waistband. What was the term for it? Apollo belt? Penis cleavage? Whatever it was called, it was really nice to look at. I bet it would be nice to touch, too.

  "Is this my side of the bed?"

  I came to my senses. "You don't have a side of my bed—Lucas, that's my pillow, you can have this—wait, what am I doing?" I scooted to the other side of the bed as he made himself comfortable. "What are you doing?"

  "Read my mind and find out." His tone was teasing, but those aged-whiskey eyes were serious.

  "No." I'd stopped reading the people who came into my bakery once I had taken down my uncle's murderer. I was back to my rules, which included respecting my fellow humans and paranormals and keeping myself out of their heads. After all, I owed these people at least that. If it weren't for me, Roso never would have come to Sundance.