Bound to Forbidden Read online

  Bound to Forbidden

  Alphas & Alchemy: Fierce Mates Book Three

  Keira Blackwood

  Liza Street

  Contents

  Introduction

  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

  A Taste of Caught in Forbidden

  Also by Keira Blackwood and Liza Street

  About the Authors

  Copyright © 2020 Keira Blackwood & Liza Street

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is coincidental. All characters in this story are at least 18 years of age or older.

  The cover utilizes stock images licensed by the author. The model(s) depicted have no connection to this work or any other work by the author.

  Introduction

  Forbidden, Kentucky—where mates meet, and monsters make mayhem.

  Alphas & Alchemy: Fierce Mates combines the worlds of Keira’s Alphas & Alchemy and Liza’s Fierce Mates.

  Chapter 1

  Anna

  “It happened again.” Lenore sank into the sofa, tilted her head back, and stared up at the ceiling instead of meeting my gaze. Her tan sweater blended in with the fabric of the loveseat as she sat still, breathing slow, steady breaths. I could feel the anguish in her words, straight to my bones.

  I took a sip from my glass of water and waited for her to continue.

  “This time there were three of them.”

  “That’s the most so far,” I said.

  “Yes.” She sighed and looked at me. Her wrinkled face fell into a frown, and her kind, gray eyes dropped in defeat.

  Lenore was my oldest client. She’d just passed her ninety-second birthday. In looks, she reminded me of my Gram, whose birthday was coming soon. In personality, though, they were nothing alike.

  “Tell me about the dream,” I said.

  “Okay,” Lenore said. “I was walking through the store buying my groceries, when I happened upon the newsstand. All the magazines were the same. Big, muscular young men...” she trailed off and frowned.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “I want to tell you.”

  “Take your time.”

  She nodded and sighed. “They each wore a cowboy hat. They were shirtless, buff, with their pants hanging low on their hips. One was riding a horse, one was leaning on a tractor, and one—” She squinted her eyes shut. “He was naked, with his butt turned for the camera.”

  I made a noncommittal sound for her to continue.

  She started breathing heavier, and her words came out in a rush. “All three of those men that were on the magazines joined me in the store. They kissed me in turn, and I really liked it. Then the ones with pants...the pants magically disappeared...and...it’s escalating.”

  “And that bothers you.”

  “Of course it bothers me,” she said. “I tell myself that it doesn’t make me a bad person, like you told me. I even...I almost told Teddy.”

  I nodded.

  “He’d probably buy himself a cowboy hat if he knew. He’s so sweet, he always wants to give me everything.”

  “Would that be a bad thing?” I asked. “If he did buy a hat?”

  She closed her eyes, and the hint of a grin crossed her face. “I guess that part wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “It could be a good way to start the conversation,” I said. “Ask what he thinks about cowboy hats in general. No commitment to saying anything else.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Though there is no harm in not telling him, either. Everyone has fantasies. Teddy, too, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, I know all about what Teddy likes.” She shook her head. “But that’s different. He’s a man.”

  “Everyone—”

  “—has fantasies, I know.”

  “And that’s okay.”

  “Thank you for fitting me in today, Dr. Stone.”

  We’d discussed a few times before that I was a licensed therapist, not a doctor. Lenore still called me doctor every time, and it was easier to let it go. It was also my day off, but I hadn’t had anything scheduled except for a trip to the store. I could grab a birthday card for Gram after Lenore felt better, no problem.

  “Of course, Lenore. I’m always here for you,” I said.

  I rose from my chair as she stood from her place on the sofa. She threw her arms around me and squeezed.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, before quickly hurrying out the office door.

  I headed upstairs, to the residential part of my rental, and picked up my phone from the kitchen counter. There was a missed call, from Caleb.

  My half-brother never called. I hoped everything was okay back home.

  I hit send and the phone rang.

  “Too busy to answer your phone, huh?” he said.

  “Hey,” I said. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, peachy.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Great. What’s up?”

  “Gram’s birthday is coming.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s going to be a party. I know you aren’t going to come, but I promised Dad I’d call.”

  Dick. No, I didn’t want to go home to Forbidden. I hadn’t gone back since I’d left, but I hadn’t seen Gram in years, and it wasn’t like she had a lot of parties. Ninety was a big one.

  “When is it?” I asked.

  “Day after tomorrow. Three o’clock at Gram’s place.”

  “The day after tomorrow?”

  “You’ve got big plans in your fancy new life in Colorado, right?” Caleb said. “Don’t worry, I’ll just tell Gram you were too busy for her party.”

  I squeezed the counter and took a nice steady, slow breath.

  “You couldn’t give me more notice?” I asked.

  “Nope. Nice catching up with you, sis. Gotta go.” With that, he hung up.

  No, I did not want to drop everything and have to reschedule my appointments. No, I did not want to spend time with Caleb. But it wasn’t his birthday, it was Gram’s.

  I clicked open my browser and searched for hotels in Redemption, the next town over from Forbidden. No way could I stay in Forbidden. No way could I risk running into James O’Malley or any of his siblings.

  There was nothing available in Redemption. Figured.

  I looked for the farthest place that would still allow me to drive to the party, then slip out of town before I had to deal with anything I wasn’t prepared to deal with. There was one promising option—Forbidden Bed and Breakfast. It looked like someone had fixed up the old asylum outside of town.

  I booked a room and a flight for tomorrow, then pulled the bottle of white wine out of the fridge that I had been planning to nurse over the next week. Looked like I’d be drinking it all tonight.

  I was going home to Forbidden. The town I’d run away from ten years ago.

  My stomach clenched at the thought of going back, at the thought of seeing him.

  James O’Malley had moved on with his life a
long time ago. He was probably halfway around the world by now, working at an art gallery in Paris. Or maybe he was painting portraits for a living. Or painting graffiti on the sides of city buildings. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it with some other woman. I wasn’t going to run into him. Everything was going to be fine.

  The funny thing was that I was the one who’d left, but I was the one who couldn’t move on.

  I uncorked the bottle and took a big-ass swig.

  Chapter 2

  James

  The lights were still off in Daphne’s B&B, so I killed some time by sitting in my truck. She and Declan probably wouldn’t appreciate me banging around in the basement this early.

  I missed the mornings where I’d been sleeping in. Now it seemed I couldn’t sleep at all.

  I knew what the problem was, I just didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to think about it. They’d had to go and open up those photo albums when Finn and Sophie moved into their new apartment.

  Pandora’s fucking boxes, that’s what photo albums really were. They let out everything, and now I couldn’t stop thinking.

  Her photo was in my glove box. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to destroy it. Her dark hair had been curled into waves, and her golden-brown eyes had shone with happiness. The dress she’d worn to prom had been slinky and soft. I could still remember the way it felt against my palms when I’d held her and danced with her.

  I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the photo, but I sure as fuck wasn’t going to look at it.

  I didn’t need to, apparently. The image was etched into my brain. I could paint her, right now, and the likeness of her would be perfect.

  One of the lower floor lights clicked on in the B&B. They were up. I opened the truck door and took in the crisp fall air. September in Forbidden could either be chilly, or blistering hot. There wasn’t much in between. This morning was starting out chilly, but I could tell it would get warm later.

  I hoisted my toolbox out of the truck bed and started around the back of the building. I’d drawn the short straw—I was on basement duty. None of the brothers wanted to work on it, and Moira had pulled the “I run the business side of O’Malley Construction, so I get to delegate” card.

  The thing about the basement was it was creepy and it smelled bad. Declan was convinced the “Slug King,” as he called the monster, had originated somewhere in there. But I’d been down there dozens of times and saw no sign of slugs or where one could have come out.

  Then again, we’d just knocked down the rear wall, and I hadn’t investigated back there much. It made my inner wolf twitchy.

  A turkey vulture sat on top of the double doors that led to the basement. It eyed me with contempt.

  “The fuck are you looking at?” I asked it.

  Ugly as hell, it rotated its fleshy neck around as if considering me. Then, flapping its wings once, it settled back against the doors.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.” I charged toward it, and it gave a little jump and took flight.

  I hoisted open the doors, then weighed each one down with a brick. I didn’t want the wind to pick up, lift the doors, and close me down here. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but I liked to be able to see my exits.

  I flicked on the light switch. The single bulb in the center of this first room lit up, illuminating a few random boxes and abandoned pieces of broken furniture.

  The stairs creaked beneath my weight as I made my way into the bowels of the old asylum. We’d been down here before, all of us at one point, so I knew the stairs would hold my weight. Lumber was stacked alongside the opening in the wall that we’d demo’d, and against the new concrete supports that we’d built in case we were messing with crucial beams.

  It had turned out that the wall didn’t act as support to anything at all. It seemed it had been created to conceal something, hide it away. Whatever that something was, I was about to find out.

  When I reached the bottom, I could see another set of steep steps. They led up to another door that opened into the kitchen. Declan had coated the entire top step with salt. The pile was at least two inches high. I sniggered to myself and wondered if I should find some fake slugs to plant around the place.

  That would be something our youngest brother, Brody, would do. Maybe I would casually mention the idea in his hearing.

  See, I could fuckin’ delegate, too.

  Turning again, I faced the demo’d wall. The floor around it was littered with debris. Yesterday, we’d crashed through the wall just at the end of the work day. Then Daphne had told us we should quiet down because she had guests.

  I’d seen those guests. They looked like a bunch of assholes. From what little I’d seen of them, they acted the part, too. Day one, they’d thrown their luggage all over the front lawn. Day two, I’d heard one of them making some kind of bird sounds while another yelled over him asking ghosts to inspire their lyrics. No question they were here for the spook factor of staying in an old asylum, not for the charm Daphne was trying to give the place.

  They called themselves Scrotal Eclipse of the Heart. Willingly. That was enough to cement my opinion on the matter.

  I set down my toolbox and grabbed a flashlight from inside it, then stepped through the giant, ragged hole in the wall.

  The room beyond wasn’t very big, and there wasn’t much in it. I slowly turned, shining the light around. Big cardboard boxes sat stacked along one wall. The shadows and lines made an interesting composition and I mentally framed it before discarding it as a subject for the canvas. Let Andy Warhol do boxes—those were his thing.

  When I stepped forward, my boot caught on the edge of another box. It toppled over. I swore, expecting a shower of junk to fall out, but instead a single notebook skidded across the concrete floor. I picked it up and stuck it back in the box before continuing forward.

  There were two doors leading from this small room. Suddenly, I wasn’t very sure I wanted to see what was inside. But I wasn’t going to chicken out and face my older brother Declan afterward. I didn’t sense danger, just creepiness, so I’d be fine, if not a little rattled.

  I tried one door and it opened easily. I shined the flashlight inside. Dull metal reflected the light back at me. Momentarily blinded in the sudden brightness, I blinked. Then I looked again. A row of stainless-steel tables sat in front of me. Was this some kind of morgue? I’d thought this place had just been an asylum. Why would they need a place to store bodies?

  Quickly backing out, I paused in front of the other door.

  There was a loud crash upstairs, then another. A stampede of footsteps carried just above me. I looked up. The ceiling creaked and a cloud of dust fell down onto my face, with a particularly large chunk landing in my eye.

  It hurt like hell. I flinched and tried to blink it out.

  I guessed I wasn’t the only one awake in the B&B.

  “What the fuck is going on in here?” Declan’s voice boomed from the kitchen.

  There were some muffled sounds.

  Then another crash.

  Declan growled, half wolf. “I will rip your—”

  “I’ll clean it up.” Daphne’s voice was calm and even.

  “That is blood.” Declan’s voice grew louder. “It’s definitely from rodents, by scent. They splattered it everywhere. It’s on the ceiling.”

  Rat blood? Too bad Brody wasn’t here.

  “I’ll clean it up,” Daphne said again. “I can do hard things.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to,” Declan said. “These are the guests from hell. I’ll help you with it.”

  She mumbled something back to him, and then it was quiet once more.

  I opened the second door.

  This room was even worse. Three hospital beds squatted on the far side of the room, each with several wires leading to them from large, generator-looking machines. Electro-shock therapy?

  I thanked my lucky stars this was the twenty-first century and we didn’t do that kind of shit to people anymore. At least
, I didn’t think we did. And if we did, it wasn’t like this.

  One thing was for certain—if Daphne wanted to start using the basement for a laundry room or whatever else, we were going to need a giant dump truck to haul away all this crap. And when we took out the crap, hopefully we’d remove the bad vibes, as well.

  Chapter 3

  Anna

  There were only two radio stations that worked out here in what Caleb had always called the buttcrack of Kentucky. One played gospel music and sermons with a bunch of static that never seemed to clear up. The other played classic rock all day, then at eleven, Yelling Man took over, spouting his conspiracy theories. Or at least that’s how it used to be.

  I twisted the tuner knob on my rental, until I found 103.5. It was an hour too early to see if Yelling Man was still around. Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was mid-guitar solo, and it took me back. This was the song that had been playing when I lost my virginity, on prom night, in the back of James’s pickup.

  We’d ditched the dance about halfway through and driven out to the lake. He’d been so sure that we were going to be together forever, and in that moment, I was sure, too.

  I turned off the radio and turned down the little dirt and gravel road that led to the asylum, happy to avoid town altogether. The little Prius bumped and jostled over the rough road, headlights bouncing all around. I watched the dark forest outside the window, looking for the building that had been run down and abandoned since before I was born.

  When the treeline broke and I caught my first glimpse, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It really was just like the website. I couldn’t see everything since it was late and dark, but there was plenty of moonlight and porchlight for me to get the picture.