The Crane Curse Series Complete Boxed Set (Shape Shifter Romance) Read online

  With her heart pounding in her chest, she gasped for air as she calmed herself down. Slowly, it dawned on her that bears didn't usually come out during the middle of the day, especially not such large ones in that part of South Jersey.

  "What the fuck, Erich?" she yelled as she got out of the car. "You could've killed me!"

  Erich quickly shifted into his human form and she looked away, wondering if she would ever get used to seeing this gorgeous man naked. Secretly, she hoped she wouldn't.

  "Kill you? You're the one behind the wheel," he said with a grin. "You're a hazard to animals, Faith. No wonder there's so much roadkill around. I'm only here because Abel asked you to take me along with you."

  Exasperated, Faith got back into the car as Erich climbed into the passenger side. "You're kidding, right?" she said. "There's no way I'm taking you with me when you're naked."

  She looked at him like he was crazy, then quickly looked away, knowing her eyes wanted to wander over his body like a lion checking its prey. Or in this case, a cougar.

  As she laughed to herself, Erich repositioned himself on the old vinyl seat, which gave off a loud squeak. Faith suddenly burst into laughter. Erich looked at her, amused.

  "You really have a problem with nudity, don't you?" he asked with a smirk.

  She tried to answer but couldn't. All the stress from the past few weeks melted away as she let the laughter finally trump her sadness. Putting the car into gear, she continued driving with her naked protector seated beside her.

  "Where are we going?" he asked. "I need to get some clothes. Take me to Night Shift."

  Faith drove to the deserted industrial side of town. On the weekends, the entire area shut down except for the bar. As she pulled around to the back, Erich vanished into the building and reappeared a few minutes later wearing a pair of jeans with a white button shirt.

  As he exited the building, he rolled up the sleeves and Faith thought about how even the most mundane thing seemed more exciting when he did it. She shouldn't think like that about another man. Her stomach dropped and turned as guilt dripped like acid inside her. She had to remember, she was with Abel.

  "Slide over," Erich said as he opened the driver's side door. "I'm driving."

  Faith obediently moved to the passenger side of the bench seat. His voice was so commanding and authoritative she couldn't say no. She didn't want to anyway, despite her guilt.

  "Where are you headed?" he asked.

  Faith's brain spun. She couldn't tell him the truth. She needed to do that alone. There was no way she was going to finally meet her family with a man who was...what? Protecting her? Confusing her? Things were too complicated to bring Erich along.

  "To the grocery store?" she said.

  "Are you asking or telling me?"

  Nervously playing with the hem of her shirt, she realized there was no way to not tell Erich what was going on, but she didn't have to tell him right away.

  Several months ago, Faith learned the group home she lived in the longest was going to be torn down. She needed to see the place one last time but didn't want to go alone. In the past, this was something she relied on Abel to do with her, but now she wondered what it would be like to have Erich along with her instead.

  "Do you know where St. Elizabeth's Home is?" she asked.

  "Yeah, the old orphanage?"

  "That's it. I need to go there. Please don't ask any questions. I'll explain everything once we're there."

  He nodded and put the sedan into gear. They drove past the old mills and deserted factories before going over an old metal bridge that hummed as the car's wheels spun over the grooves. Once they were on the other side of the narrow river, the scenery changed.

  Trees lined the streets and old traffic lights swung from electrical wire stretched between two electric poles. In the distance, Faith recognized the faded red brick building as soon as it came into view and felt her heart jump into her throat.

  St. Elizabeth's was originally a hospital, then later a school, then a home for children. On the top of the wide building was a white, wooden widow's walk. The glass-paned windows were pitted and broken and their once-gleaming frames showed their age with every peel and crack of the paint. The oversized door was gone, making the sad building look surprised.

  "There it is, up there," she said as she pointed ahead.

  Despite being in the foster care system growing up, Faith considered herself lucky. Every family she was placed with had been kind to her. Unfortunately, the older she got, the less people wanted to take her in. That's where St. Elizabeth's came in.

  She was in high school when she first started living there. Even then, the building sagged into the ground beneath it. The only part that seemed to withstand the natural destruction of time was the widow's walk where a small brass bell had been installed when the building was used as a school.

  The car jostled and jerked as it drove over the broken pavement of the parking lot. Erich jumped out and came to Faith's door before she got out and held his hand out to her.

  "I don't need your help," she said as she pushed his hand away. That was all she needed, like she didn't have enough guilt from just looking at him.

  "You forget who you're talking to. I've seen how graceful you can be," he teased and took her hand anyway.

  Her hand felt so small in his that for a moment, she forgot about Abel and his now paw-hands. Following Erich into the abandoned building, she tried to keep Abel out of her mind, but it was useless. Everything reminded her of how he used to be.

  With the brick steps leading to the front entrance destroyed, Erich easily lifted her into the building before climbing in after her. Inhaling, she could still smell the mixture of ammonia and mildew that marked her time there.

  "My room was down this hall," she said as she walked along the dusty green Formica floor.

  "This place looks like a hospital," Erich said.

  "I think that was its first life. It's been through a lot of reincarnations. There's so much history here and it's sad they're tearing it down, but I'm sure it's too damaged to save."

  Pushing aside a broken door that blocked the path into a room at the end of the hall, they entered a large room with broken desks scattered about. An old blackboard on wheels sat in the corner and the little sunlight that streamed in through the windows was speckled with dust.

  "It was six to a room. They tried to keep us around the same age but it never really mattered. We were all so hopeful we'd have a real home, none of us became friends. If we got to know each other, that would be like admitting we knew we were going to be there for a while. I sometimes wonder what happened to everyone else. There were a few people who were left the same way I was."

  "What do you mean left?" Erich asked.

  Faith realized she said too much. She had never talked about this kind of stuff with anyone but Abel. It was too personal, too painful. She shook her head at him, hoping he'd drop it, then made a beeline to an old radiator in the corner.

  "My bed was right here, next to this radiator. It never worked and right next to it was a loose floorboard."

  Kneeling in the corner, she banged the floor with her fist and the tile wobbled. Erich stepped closer as she banged it again. She caught a corner of it and slid it over, exposing the wood underneath. Faith slipped her hand in and to the side then smiled as she pulled out a shoebox.

  "I can't believe it's still here," she said. "I had no choice but to leave this behind when I went to live with Abel. I didn't want anyone looking through it, and they watched me to make sure I didn't take anything that wasn't mine when I packed."

  As she sat cross-legged on the floor, she balanced the shoebox in her lap and removed the top. Slowly, she began removing folded pieces of paper, a sad smile on her face.

  "What's in there?" Erich asked as he crouched down beside her.

  "Old poems and stories, some drawings. I used to write all the time."

  "Why did you hide them?"

  "One of the nuns
found them when I was younger and said they were disgusting and that I should be punished for writing such filth. I was in the eighth grade then and wrote a story about a girl getting her first kiss. After that, I hid everything I wrote." She pulled out a drawing of a house and showed it to him. "I was doodling this when I first met Abel. It's one of the Victorians down in Cape May. When he saw my drawing, he said he'd buy it for me one day."

  "Did he?"

  She nodded. "It was a gift one year just before the coyote took over for good. He wanted to move in there, but I couldn't. I couldn't leave Leeds."

  "Why not? I'm sure you would've loved it there."

  She shook her head sadly. "It's messed up, but I kept hoping she'd come back for me. Even when I was in my twenties, I kept hoping to meet my mother, even now in my thirties..."

  She smiled softly at him, feeling like a fool. "What grown woman is attached to a mother she never knew?" she said as she put everything back in the box and carried it out into the hall.

  "I'm sorry," Erich said quietly as he followed her. "I can't imagine how that must have been for you."

  "Maybe I was better off. But deep down, all I ever really wanted was a family. Abel became my family, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't his fault, he did everything he could do, but I still missed that ideal I created in my head of what a family should be."

  "Have you ever looked for them?"

  "That's what's funny. In all these years, I tried to find some kind of record that showed who she was, but the hospital she left me in didn't have anything. The social workers had enough information to let her know when they were removing her rights, but they couldn't give that information to me. I never even knew her name. All I ever had from her was this stupid pendant." She showed him the crane and shrugged, then looked out a window. "Come with me. I just need to see one more thing."

  She climbed out the window and onto a nearby fire escape up to the roof and carefully made her way to the widow's walk. Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked out at the quiet town.

  "I used to hide out up here. It was the only place I could get some privacy."

  The wind blew her skirt around and she shivered from the cold. Erich wrapped his arms around her and she pushed him away.

  "You're cold," he said as he tightened his grip around her waist.

  She gave in and leaned against him as she thought about her past and how no matter how far she got from it, it was always right there in front of her. Sighing, she let the weight of her body rest against Erich's. He was such a large muscular man, yet whenever he touched her, he was gentle. Feeling his hulking frame pressed against her, keeping her warm, she let her mind wander.

  The wind whipped Erich's hair so it fell across his forehead. Reaching up, Faith pushed his hair back and felt his thick hair between her fingers. His face came down and nuzzled into her neck. His lips felt warm on her skin and sent goose bumps all over her body.

  Without realizing it her skirt slowly lifted, and a cool breeze against her legs reminded her of how much colder it got on the roof than below. Erich's fingers warmed her as they moved up her thigh. His hands were so large and strong yet tender that her body ached from his softest caress. It had been a long time since a man touched her and he felt so different, so much stronger than what she was used to.

  As his fingers slid up her inner thigh, she spread her legs, hoping for more. Her breath caught as he rubbed the edge of her panties and she silently begged him to push them aside. Slowly, she felt the air rush past the warmth of her womanhood as his fingers slipped into the silky fabric. She wanted more, needed it. She could no longer resist him.

  "Faith? Faith?" Erich said, bringing her back to reality, her skirt down and waving in the breeze. "Can I ask you something?"

  Blinking, she pushed away her thoughts of him. She'd have to come back to that another time, when she was alone.

  His question was loaded. She couldn't say yes and then not answer him, but what if he asked her something she didn't want to talk about? She had already said enough about herself and she was her least favorite topic. But looking up into his eyes, she felt something she hadn't felt in years and knew it had nothing to do with the human attraction to a shifter.

  "Sure, what is it?" she said.

  "You're a witch, why didn't you just cast a spell to find out who your family is? Couldn't you do that with the necklace?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. I really never thought about it. I'm an accidental witch I guess," she said then shrugged. "I might come from a family of witches but except for what Abel taught me, I know nothing."

  "What did he teach you?"

  She sighed. This wasn't something she wanted to talk about, but having Erich so close and feeling so safe, she told him everything.

  "He mostly concentrated on charming. He thought I could have something to do with the crane curse because of this stupid bird pendant. He got really angry when I could only charm Alphas. That's what those collars were for. You know, the ones the captured wolves had on. The collar not only kept them in a wolf state, but it also changed something to make them register as Alpha so I could charm and control them. It seems charming has more to do with biology than magic."

  "What happened though? We found so many that had gone insane."

  She looked down at the ground and shook her head. "I tried to stop him, I really did," she said, her voice tight. "He wouldn't listen. Abel created those collars but if a wolf wore it for too long, they lost their mind. There had even been several deaths. I was able to protect some people, but not all of them. I didn't even know how many he and his pack had captured. It was when I realized how completely out of control he was that I reached out to the Council. It was the only thing I thought would stop him.

  "He's not the man I knew anymore," she said as she turned around and buried her head in Erich's chest. "I don't know who he is now."

  "Then why do you stay?"

  "It’s not that easy, you know. I've spent so long with him and I..." still love him. She was going to say it but realized she wasn't sure it was true anymore. How could she love someone she didn't even recognize anymore? The man she loved as Abel was gone and had been gone for years.

  She pushed Erich away and climbed back down to the main floor, picked up her shoebox, and jumped out of the doorway onto the broken sidewalk. As they sat in the car, Erich turned the key.

  "Did Abel tell you the truth about the Crane curse?" he asked.

  "The truth?"

  "Crane is a last name, not just a bird. Remember the girl that night when the Council captured Abel's pack? The one with the red hair?"

  "And my eyes," she whispered as she realized what Erich was going to say.

  "Her name is Hannah Crane."

  Faith felt a chill pass through her and even though she knew the answer, she still had to ask. "What's her mother's name?"

  "Eliza, why?"

  "Can you take me somewhere? I think it’s time I met them."

  ***

  Weeks had passed since Erich first drove Faith past the small cottage at the end of the road where the Crane family lived. She just couldn't bring herself to knock on the door. What was she supposed to say? And why would they believe her anyway?

  Erich drove past the small cottage as he had been doing regularly since that day and turned around near the path that entered the forest. Faith rung her shaking hands together, her palms moist from nervousness. She had been carrying Miranda's ring with her for when she got the courage up to visit them, but each time she got close, she backed away.

  With his black Ford F-250 pickup truck idling, Erich turned off the headlights and sat in silence. Erich never made her feel bad for chickening out or for wanting to drive past the home another time. She didn't think Abel would've ever shown her that kind of support and patience, and it made her look at Erich differently. No longer was he just a gorgeous man, but he was kind and sensitive, too. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she felt herself falling for Erich and wanted
to believe he was falling for her, too.

  But he couldn't. She couldn't. She was still with Abel, no matter who or what Abel was anymore. Not only that, but Erich was an Alpha. How did she know he wasn't simply under her charm? She already knew it had less to do with witchcraft than anything. Maybe she charmed him and didn't even know it.

  Faith didn't know what to think anymore, but she knew it was time to stop being so chicken. With her hand on the handle, she pulled it and stepped out of the pickup truck. Just then, a motorcycle pulled up in front of the cottage. It was the werewolf Alpha she had injured with her arrow and Hannah.

  She couldn't go there now. They had every reason to hate her, and she didn't blame them. Hopping back into the truck, she looked at Erich, who simply nodded and drove away as Hannah and Caleb entered the house.

  They didn't talk the entire ride back to the shack she was hiding out in with Abel. Before turning onto the small dirt driveway, Erich pulled the truck over to the side of the road.

  With his hand at the back of her neck, he looked into Faith's eyes. "Whatever happens, I'll be here for you. If you want to meet them, I'll go with you. Whatever you want or need, I'm here."

  His lips closed upon hers and she slipped her arms around him, wishing he didn't have to leave her at the house she dreaded returning to more each day.

  Chapter Seven

  As he paced his office, Erich went over everything again in his head. Abel was definitely up to something but was keeping a tight lip about it. Even the structure on the front lawn wasn't obvious enough for Erich to do anything.

  He had to tell the Council something though. They gave him more than enough time. He just didn't want anything to happen to Faith. It wasn't anyone's fault but Erich's that he promised her nothing bad would happen to Abel. It was a promise he couldn't keep.

  A soft knock on his door made Erich's bear spirit react. No one ever surprised Erich. Whoever managed to enter Night Shift and made their way back to his office without sounding an alarm was definitely skilled.