Rogue Mate, The Moltiare Collection: Bk1 (Sample)(Available on Amazon/SW)

Chapter 7 (Jessica)

I had been so prepared for him to hit me that I jumped when he slammed the door shut behind him. Suddenly the room was empty, and the only sounds that came were the sounds of my own crying.

Feelings of helplessness and agony swarmed my heart as the hand that rested on the keys of the piano suddenly became heavy. A disembodied chord screamed into the room and I was suddenly thankful that I was alone. They would be looking down on me with sympathy and attempt to console me because that’s just the way that humans were, but I knew that it wouldn’t help.

There was no explaining to a human what it was like when a Shifter truly turned their back on their own kind. When they dabbled in the practice of vampirism and eventually became one themselves. When they gained abilities that allowed them to toy with your mind and make you see things that had yet to happen or things that weren’t even there. How could I explain to them or Ethan that Vlamir had placed an image in my head that I was to birth his child and forever be tied to him in blood? I wondered if he had succeeded yet, or if he would have to do it again?

Would you let him have it if he did? My wolf asked lightly.

“I’m too weak to fight him off.” I cried to myself.

You’re only weak if you let it happen.

“I couldn’t stop him.”

But you got back up. A weaker woman would have laid still.

Daddy, I remembered myself saying once; Daddy I scraped my knee, and my wrist hurts!

Well let’s see peanut. Where does it hurt? He had asked, and I remembered being half the size as I sat myself on my behind and held up both my arm and my leg, That is a problem then. We’ll get your mom to put a Band-Aid on it and we’ll try again.

I don’t want to try again. I had pouted; I’m done riding my bike.

He had just finished taking the training wheels off my bike. He had taken the weekend off of work, just as he promised, to teach my sister and I how to ride our bikes. My little sister, Allison, was already circling around us happily by the time he had begun to take the screws off of mine. I was jittery with excitement, eager to join my sister in the long gravel driveway that led to our house.

You’ll never learn if you just give up, peanut. He had said.

But Daddy! I whined, Daddy, it hurt, and I don’t want to be hurt. I want to ride around like Allie. I don’t want to try; I just want it to happen.

He had chuckled at me as he wiped the small amount of blood from my knee, Not everything is that easy, Jessica. Sometimes you just have to keep on trying until you get it, your sister just got lucky. As for the hurt, some of the best things in life are going to hurt the most, but if you really want it, you have be strong and keep pushing until you get it.

I don’t know how to be strong. Teach me to be strong Daddy.

He merely smiled and straightened the bike out again; I can’t teach you that, peanut. You have to learn that on your own, and besides, you’re already one tough cookie.

How do you know that?

His smile turned to a grin; You got back up didn’t you?

So I tried again, and by the end of the summer, my sister and I were chasing each other around the yard and racing down the driveway on two wheels. I remember looking back with a grin as our mother and father rested on the porch swing and kept watch over us. He had been right. I had to try and try, and I ended up with a few bumps and scrapes that back then hurt like hell, but god how I wanted to ride. So I got up and I started pushing. I pushed until my body felt as light as a feather, riding on that first sensation of being able to do it myself, and it felt great.