Le Beau Series
Book 4
V.A. Dold
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Date of Publication: April 10th 2015
Thomas James has his hands full as the shifter king's head of security. He certainly wasn’t looking for a girlfriend during the first annual shifter gathering. He had the king and queen to protect, not skirts to chase.
A childhood of emotional and physical abuse by his birth father has left Thomas emotionally unavailable and uninterested in romantic relationships. His father Tim’s cruelty to his mother and brother molded him into an extremely protective person. No one messes with his loved ones without answering to him.
Even though Julia and Thomas are destined to be mates, the obstacles standing between them and their happily-ever-after seem insurmountable.
Lucinda insists Julia stay away from the filthy human.
Tim is trying to kill every one Thomas loves. The mysterious Benevolent Sovereign, who is trying to overthrow the throne, has sent swampers to attack Thomas and destroy Julia’s livelihood.
With family like theirs, who needs enemies? Will Julia and Thomas’s happiness be snuffed out before it has a chance to begin or will they forge through - obstacles be damned.
Available at Amazon
Excerpt
“Hello?” Julia Le Beau yawned into the phone.
Her alarm never had the chance to go off, because her mother, Lucinda, beat it by a good thirty minutes. She was convinced the woman could hear her biological clock ticking, which was ridiculous since she had another six hundred years for children. No matter what Julia said, it didn’t seem to penetrate her mother’s ears, so, here she was, having the same conversation again.
“Julia, are you still in bed? Did you forget I’m bringing another family to your house this morning?”
“I thought I told you not to bring them. I’m finished with your parades, Mother.”
“For Goddess sake, get showered immediately. We’ll be at your door in one hour.”
“I’m not going to answer the door, so don’t bother.”
Her mother ignored her as usual and exactly one hour later was at her door.
Julia hung her head in frustration. She lost count years ago how many men her mother brought for the ‘sniff’ test. Each time it was the same: no mate. Like the Little Engine That Could©, Lucinda refused to give up.
The last time Julia locked the door and ignored her mother’s knocking, it resulted in a very ugly scene. Lucinda in the throws of an angry tirade was not a pretty sight. Her face turned a mottled shade of red, and she broke the door down, dragging the shocked men in behind her.
Since that day, she'd grudgingly opened the door. If not for her house’s sake, then for the sake of the men, she could at least spare them the humiliation of the tantrum sure to happen.
Two hours later, Julia’s stomach churned. She loathed the questions that came after each ‘visit’. Couldn’t her mother forget to ask, just once?
“Well?” her mother asked impatiently from the doorway.
“Nothing,” Julia mumbled, not bothering to look up from the romance novel she was reading. “I had no attraction. No, scent. No, telepathy.” She didn’t even bother to say she was sorry this time because she wasn’t.
Lucinda snarled in frustration as she came fully into the room.
“I met all the men you just paraded through my house and had none of the mating signs. I don’t know what more you expect from me.” She sighed wearily.
“I expect you to accept one.”
Julia’s chin fell to her chest as a heavy sigh escaped. “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m sure if you made the extra effort to at least date them, something would shake loose. How hard can it be? Just look at Cade and that human, Anna, they met in a bar in the French Quarter of all places. Not to mention, Simon and his mate Rose, yet another human to dilute the royal gene pool. Rose showed up at Cade’s house after she lost her job in Denver, and now the family is stuck with her. And I heard a rumor that Stefan has found his mate, and you guessed it, a human. He bought her at the auction Simon had a couple months ago. I can’t believe Isaac can still hold his head up in public with his sons mating lowlife humans. My daughters will mate pureblood shifters and maintain the integrity of the bloodline.”
Julia wanted to scream. A mating didn’t just ‘shake loose’, and there was nothing wrong with humans. Heck, most mates were human. There was no reasoning with her mother anymore. That ability had left the building along with Elvis years ago. She wasn’t sure if the animal part of her mother was taking over and acting erratic or if the human side was slipping into insanity.
Her mother leaned forward forcing Julia to sit back. “For years, you have rejected the males I bring to you. It’s time you made a—”
“Mother, I know you want your children mated, but no matter how badly you want it, you can’t force it.”
“Just watch me,” Lucinda spat. “We are in line to gain the throne. The lineage must be continued and ready at all times.”
It was true the family needed to continue, but mates and children came into a shifter’s life when the Goddess deemed it was the right time. The last thing you wanted to do was push the Goddess or try to circumvent her plan. Thinking that way was suicide.
Lucinda turned on her heel toward the door and then paused. “There will be a group of available males here Friday. This pack is out of Arizona. Pray one of them is acceptable to you.”
Once Lucinda was in her boat and headed out of her private bay, Julia finally breathed easy again. Krystal would be home in a few hours and available to talk. They needed a plan; somehow they needed to find a way to approach Father about Mother’s behavior. The problem was her father, Charles, was completely blind to her mother’s oddities.
Julia turned the page of her book and settled deeper into her favorite easy chair; there was nothing she could do until Krystal got home. Tonight she would suggest again they bring Logan and Quintin into the conversation. It was about time the boys knew what was going on behind the family’s back. Thinking it through, she shook her head. She wouldn’t bother the twins, Rémi, and René, just yet. They were too young to be drawn into this.
Once Lucinda got a notion in her head, she had a tendency to twist it until it fit her needs and desires. After that, she could never be swayed.
And her mother’s drive to force both Krystal and Julia to find mates had reached critical mass.
“What are we going to do?” Julia whispered to herself.
Two weeks later
Morning was Julia’s favorite time of day. The bar wasn’t open yet, and she had it all to herself as she wiped down tables and checked the bar stock.
The only problem was; it sometimes gave her too much time to think. Today was one of those times. She had her mother on her mind.
It wasn’t that her mother didn’t love her—she did. At least, she was pretty sure she did. But the woman had some pretty extreme ideas of late. She apparently believed shifters should only mate other born shifters, and humans were a scourge and diluted the bloodline.
In her disturbed mind, she believed if she dragged her daughters around to enough eligible shifter males, she could somehow force a pureblood mating.
Julia and Krystal were tired of being paraded before one shifter family after another. Tired of letting hundreds of males sniff them in the hopes of finding a mate. It was straight up embarrassing.
As much as she loved the bayou, she was seriously considering tagging along with Krystal to Lucas’s ranch in Texas. She heaved a sigh and took a good, long look at the bar. All right, she would do it. If her mother tried to drag her out ‘visiting’ one more time, she’d pack up and head for Texas.
Meet V.A. Dold
V.A. Dold Amazon best selling
author of the Award winning Le Beau Brothers series.
Prior to becoming a full time
writer, she was publicist to the authors, owning ARC Author & Reader
Conventions. Still is.
Her idea of absolute heaven is a
day in the French Quarter with her computer, her coffee mug and the Brothers,
of course.
A Midwest native with her heart
lost to Louisiana, she has a penchant for titillating tales featuring sexy men
and strong women. When she's not writing, she's probably taking in a movie,
reading, or traveling.
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