Fangs for Sharing (Supernatural in Seattle #1) Read online

  Fangs For Sharing

  Bella Jacobs

  Copyright Fangs For Sharing© 2019 by Bella Jacobs

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, fast-paced urban fantasy reads. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Edited by Help Me Edit. Cover Design by Julie Nicholls.

  Created with Vellum

  To the Tin Man. For reminding me how much fun playing pretend can be.

  Contents

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  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

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Bella Jacobs

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  One innocent shifter in mortal danger, two dark and domineering vampire princes determined to protect her—but not before they claim her as their own…

  The only thing worse than dating a mad scientist who cheated like it was his job? Discovering he secretly revenge-altered my DNA.

  Now, I’m a lab-made shapeshifter, the kind hunted by a vicious militant group like it’s their job. And what The Kin Born catch? The Kin Born kill.

  Enter two stupidly hot vampires who say they can give me what I need.

  All night long…

  Okay, so they don’t say the second part flat-out, but we all know what they mean when they say they’ve been looking for a girl like me. A girl who can handle two bossy alpha vamps in her life. In her business.

  In her bed…

  But soon our red-hot chemistry becomes so much more. I’m ready to risk it all for these incredible men, but The Kin Born will stop at nothing to capture their prey, and my princes have just moved to the top of their hit list.

  FANGS FOR SHARING is a red hot stand alone urban fantasy romance set in the world of Bella Jacob's Dark Moon Shifters series. Each of these steamy standalone tales end with a happily ever after and can be enjoyed alone or as part of the larger Dark Moon universe. No Cliffhanger.

  Chapter 1

  They say love hurts. That it wounds and scars and sucks and bites and is by far the dirtiest trick ever played on humankind—even if it does ensure the continuation of the species.

  And right now? Well, I’m totally on board the Love Blows train.

  Still, I have to wonder if any of these love-scorning people ever had their ex-boyfriend turn them into a snorting, snuffling, rampaging, shrub-eating, park-pooping, part-time rhinoceros…

  Thumbs flying, I jab at my phone like it’s a voodoo doll and each letter is a needle stabbed deep in Eugene’s lying, cheating, DNA-scrambling face: This has gone on long enough, Eugene. You’ve got to change me back. Tonight! Right now! Five minutes ago, even! Put on some pants, I’m coming over.

  Bubbles fill the screen, signaling that my evil ex has finally decided to respond to my texts after a week of radio silence. I stare at my cell, breathless, as—I’m already wearing pants—pops up below my rant.

  That. That’s the part of my message he decides to respond to.

  Jaw clenched, I warn, I’m serious, Eugene, and we both know you’re NOT wearing pants. You have that thing about taking off your pants as soon as you get home from work. Which is weird, by the way! Totally weird. And if you’re not wearing pants by the time I get there, I’m taking back my Sex Pistols T-shirt, because clearly you aren’t cool enough to wear it, anyway.

  More bubbles and then: Sorry you feel that way, but you’re forgetting something, Piglet—you don’t know where I live anymore.

  Cheeks heating at the hated nickname—I’m messy, not dirty, there’s a difference—I dance my thumbs faster. Ha, that’s where you’re wrong! Your secretary told me you moved into the faculty housing complex on campus. And believe you me when I say I intend to knock on every door in that building until I find you, and that I won’t be shy about telling your colleagues the shitty, no-good, dirty thing you did to me while I’m at it.

  I cross my fingers, praying the threat will be enough to force Eugene to play nice, but his next text lets the air out of my hope balloon pretty quick—Go ahead. They’ll just think you’re crazy and call security to have you hauled away, the same way I will if you’re unlucky enough to arrive at my door before someone else gets rid of you. And I’ll be sure to record every second of your harassment, Pigs. It’ll be great evidence for when I file a restraining order against your crazy little ass.

  Huffing hard and eye-rolling even harder, I hurry across the quiet street, forcing myself to wait to start texting again until I’m back on the sidewalk. The east side of the Ballard neighborhood is pretty abandoned this time of night, but with my luck lately, it’s best not to take any chances.

  Getting run over while I’m texting him would make Eugene happy, and I never want to make Eugene happy. Ever. Again.

  Oh please, I tap as soon as my booted heel clomps down on the curb, be reasonable. I’m not harassing you! I just want to be normal again. The pageant is in two weeks. How am I supposed to break in my new toes shoes and nail my fouetté turn with feet the size of manhole covers? I need my normal body back!

  A smug looking emoji pops up on the screen followed by Guess you need to work on those anger issues, after all…

  Willing my blood not to boil, I insist, I don’t have anger issues. Or at least I didn’t before my boyfriend cheated on me and lied to me and turned me into a rhinoceros as some sort of sick joke.

  An eye-rolling emoji emerges from the bubbles. Don’t be so melodramatic.

  I crushed my car, I shoot back, steps quickening along the damp sidewalk. I exploded through the windows and burst the doors off and crushed it beneath the weight of my massive rhino body! And insurance doesn’t cover destruction by rhino-explosion. Not that I have the kind of insurance that replaces things, anyway, just the kind that fixes things, and there’s nothing left of Old Betty to fix. She’s gone. Forever. And just FYI, anger isn’t the only trigger. I shift when I’m scared, too. A dog ran up behind me in the park the other day, barking his head off, a
nd boom. Full rhino. Right by the side of the jogging path. I shifted so fast I almost crushed the poor thing while I was ripping through my last pair of running shoes and favorite yoga pants.

  Bummer, Eugene replies, with typical lack of empathy.

  How on earth did I manage to date this man for six months without realizing he has the emotional depth of a sea slug? A spiteful, vindictive sea slug?

  But doesn’t sound like it would have been much of a loss mutt-wise, he continues.

  My jaw drops. It was an innocent animal, Eugene!

  With aggression issues.

  Stifling the growl gathering in my chest, I type faster. I’m going to have aggression issues if you don’t fix this. Seriously, I could strangle you right now! Or sit on you! With my giant rhino butt!

  Ah-ah-ah…calm down, Pigs, he says, the smug so thick it oozes from the screen. Wouldn’t want you to burst out of that cute little ice-cream scooper uniform of yours. You’re still wearing it, aren’t you? The pink-and-white pinstripe thing with the itty-bitty skirt and combat boots…

  I swallow the sour taste rising in my throat as memories of me, Eugene, and my skirt—together in sunnier days—rise inside me. There was a time when I thought the three of us might live happily ever after, but that was before I realized how many other women—and skirts—Eugene was involved with. You don’t get to talk about my skirt anymore, I tap. My skirt doesn’t like you. She thinks you’re a douchebag who should put on some pants.

  Aw, come on, now. Don’t be like that. Your skirt and I have chemistry, baby. And I think both you and your skirt should relax. You’re starting to sound like that man-hating roommate of yours.

  I hesitate at the end of the block, looking both ways on Market Street, ensuring I’m still alone before I turn right toward home. I usually wouldn’t text and walk so late at night—I’ve been living in a sketchy part of town long enough to know better than to let my guard down—but I have my last session with my dance coach tomorrow.

  I need to be 100 percent human before I head into Jacque’s studio. I’ve been working with my ballet guru since I was a kid just getting started on the pageant circuit after my mother shuttled me off to fat camp to be starved into competition-ready shape. I love Jacque and can’t risk causing catastrophic damage to his dance school right before he puts it up for sale this summer.

  Without my sweetheart of a coach, and the granola bars he slipped into my dance bag in my teen years, I would have gone to bed hungry even more often than I did already. My mother was a firm believer that beauty and suffering went hand in hand, and that no misery was too great if it meant her daughter went home with a first-place ribbon draped across her heavily padded push-up bra.

  I didn’t get boobs until I was almost nineteen, a good year after I’d quit the pageant game, moved out of my mother’s house, and started eating enough to give fat a chance to settle onto my body again. From there, my new boobs and I forged ahead with college and career—getting a degree in fashion design while selling funky, handmade aprons in my online craft shop and dating boys who enjoyed my new curves as much as I did.

  We would have been happy never to set foot, nor boob, on the beauty queen circuit again.

  And then I met Leerie in Advanced Draping 201 and became best friends and, eventually, roommates with a fairy—a real live fairy because they do exist, just like shifters and vampires and all the other supernatural creatures people still insist are imaginary, no matter how much evidence piles up to the contrary—and started believing in the power of my dreams. Leerie never cast a spell on me, but living with a friend who supports you, believes in you, and loves you just the way you are has a magic all its own.

  Leerie is the sister I never had, and after two years as her partner in spreading sparkle, I’m no longer a dream doubter. I believe in magic and destiny and the power of my two hands to change the world.

  But in order to make the kind of difference I want to make—in order to fund my start-up crafting play clothes and costumes for adults in desperate need of fun in their dreary, grown-up lives—I need money, the kind I’m not going to amass working at an ice-cream parlor and selling aprons.

  The Miss U.S. Pageant title comes with a fifty-thousand-dollar prize. Last year, as second runner-up, I came within spitting distance of making my dream a reality. Since then, I’ve killed myself fine-tuning my dance routine, pageant walk, interview questions, and personal essay.

  I’ve been so busy, so focused, that I, admittedly, started phoning it in with some of my nonessential relationships.

  I haven’t called my mother in months, I barely made it to my aunt’s house for the tail end of Easter dinner, and I continued to date Eugene long after I knew deep down we were never going to be more than friends who banged on Friday nights—when I wasn’t too tired from dance practice and work, and Eugene wasn’t stuck late at the lab.

  Now I know “working late at the lab” was code for “out with other women,” but for a long time I felt guilty that I wasn’t as into Eugene as he seemed to be into me.

  Leerie, of course, knew he was bad news from the start.

  If only I’d listened to her.

  If only I’d kicked Eugene to the curb before I let him into my room that last night, before we had break-up sex, before he decided to stick an IV needle in me while I was sleeping and rhino-fy my DNA.

  Note to self—always listen to Leerie.

  Leerie doesn’t hate men, I reply, resisting the urge to add “just assholes like you.” I’ve been a part of the pageant world long enough to know the power of a little sweet talk and a call for World Peace. And I don’t hate you. I’m actually hoping we can be friends after this mess is cleaned up. We had fun together, Eugene, and I know we can again. Just fix this, and we’ll put it in the past with no hard feelings.

  My reward for this attempt to let bygones be bygones is a laughing emoji with tears streaming out of its closed eyes.

  This time I do growl out loud. Listen, mister, I’M the wronged party, here. YOU cheated on ME. If anyone should be rolling in the mud, binge-eating shrubs, and running from creepy guys with scary neck tattoos, it’s YOU.

  My phone rings a second later. I jump.

  I can’t remember the last time Eugene and I talked on the phone—have we ever talked on the phone?—but that’s his number, no doubt about it.

  And hopefully a call means I’ve finally gotten through to him.

  Fingers double-crossed this time, I hit the green button.

  Chapter 2

  Stomach fluttering, I lift my cell to my ear. “Hey. Can we fix this now? Please? I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  “What did the tattoos look like?” Eugene asks, actually sounding concerned for my welfare, though his question isn’t what I was expecting.

  I shrug. “I’m not sure. It was dark, and I was running, but it looked like barbed wire or teeth or something, inked in a circle around their necks. Until they turned into wolves, of course. Then I couldn’t see the tattoos under all the fur.”

  He curses beneath his breath. “You have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met. You know that?”

  Before I can say something unwise about it being not luck, but my choice in men that sucks, Eugene presses on.

  “You’ve got to stay away from those guys, Pigs. They’re not kidding around. If they catch you, they’ll hurt you.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out when one of them stabbed me in the shoulder last night.” My pulse stutters as I cross another quiet street, moving farther away from the well-lit commercial area, closer to my shady neighborhood with the chronically malfunctioning streetlights. “If I hadn’t had inch-thick rhino skin at the time, it would have really hurt. What kind of gang carries spears, anyway?”

  “The kind where they’re so strong they don’t have any trouble taking people out with a sharp stick,” he says, adding in a softer voice, “They could have killed you, Eliza. Seriously. And they’ll be better prepared next time. You need to watch your back.”
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  “Next time?” I squeak, fighting to swallow past the lump forming in my throat. “What do you mean next time? Who are those people, Eugene? And why do they want to hurt me? I’m nobody.”

  “Not to them. And they’re not people; you saw that for yourself. They’re shifters, the kind that aren’t cooked up in a lab. They call themselves the Kin Born. It’s their mission in life to take out every shifter who wasn’t made the old-fashioned way, and they have enough crooked politicians and policemen in their corner to get away with it. Now that they know you’re out there, you’ll be on their hit list. They didn’t see you shift, did they?”

  I gulp. “I don’t know. Maybe? These two street kids were torturing a cat, and I got so mad I shifted not far from the ice-cream shop. The tattoo-spear guys came after me a few minutes later. Chased me all the way down Fifty-Fifth, but I managed to lose them in the park.”

  “Good for you. But you might not be as lucky next time. You should quit your job, change up your routine, maybe move to another neighborhood. Better yet, another state.”

  Sweat beads on my lip despite the cool spring night, and I beg in a thin voice, “Or you could just change me back. If I’m not a shifter, they won’t want to kill me anymore, right? Please fix this? I can meet you at the lab right now. I’ll bring coffee, donuts, whatever you want. Whatever you need to power through an early morning DNA unscrambling session.”