A Fang in the Sass: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (Sassy Ever After Book 6) Read online

  A FANG IN THE SASS

  SASSY EVER AFTER

  NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  MILLY TAIDEN

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  Aria Valderi is a day walker, a vampire that can walk in the sun. Being a descendant of the original queen of the vampires has its perks, but finding out her mate is a wolf shifter isn't one of them. He's insufferable, bossy, and too damn sexy for his own good.

  Trevan Stone knows Aria is his. Unfortunately, his tough little vamp has been wreaking all kinds of havoc and now too many people want her dead. It's going to take more than Trevan can do as a shifter to protect his woman.

  Trevan has a secret. One that could put an end to their future together, but it’s not nearly as big as the one her people have, which could end the future of the entire clan. If he can save her from the vampire council that wants her destroyed, there might be a chance for them to work through their issues. But saving her means giving up the reason for his existence, the drive that has pushed him for the last eighty years.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published By

  Latin Goddess Press

  Winter Springs, FL 32708

  http://millytaiden.com

  A Fang in the Sass

  Copyright © 2016 by Milly Taiden

  Cover by Willsin Rowe

  Edited by: Tina Winograd

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Property of Milly Taiden

  August 2016

  —For my readers

  You wanted Aria and Trevan’s story. Here it is! I love you!

  Contents

  A FANG IN THE SASS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  ONE

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  http://eepurl.com/pt9q1

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.” Aria stomped her leather spiked-heel boot on the marble floor in her study. “I didn’t kill Filip for the fun of it.” She grinned. It really was enjoyable, though. Ripping his disgusting head from his body.

  She couldn’t believe Zane, one of her powerhouse trio of elders, wanted to keep the damn thing, eyeballs and all. Aria shivered from the total ick factor. She was never into anatomy or body parts. Leaving the mad scientist role to Zane suited her fine.

  Penelope’s voice sounded scratchy on the long distance call from Spain. “Aria, we know you had a purpose for killing Filip. But the Spanish High Council are a bunch of old asses who don’t have a clue about the modern age.”

  Aria growled. “Did you explain that he broke the rules?”

  “Of course, we did, sweetie. That’s what your entire defense is based on: his wrong doing. It’s just…” The line went silent. Aria leaned her head back on the leather executive chair behind the study’s desk.

  Her actions should’ve never been in question. She shouldn’t need a “defense” for enforcing the rules. This was fucking ignorant. Hell, she lost more than everyone else. Her nightclub burned to ashes. The fact it took out most of the bad vamps with it was beside the point.

  Aria wiped a hand over her brow when her good friend and person trying to keep her from the fucking inquisition paused. “Just what, Penelope?”

  The elder sighed. “Don’t worry, my dear. Julian, Zane, and I will clear your name and stop the harassment from this three-ring circus they call an investigation.”

  “Thank you, Penelope. Tell the guys I really appreciate how much time they’re putting into this.” She frowned, wishing the whole damn thing would just disappear.

  “Of course, dear child. It’s what family does for each other,” Penelope said in that soothing voice she had.

  A thought occurred and Aria sat up straight again. “Speaking of family, have you seen or heard from Claude?”

  “No.” Aria imagined her elder mentor with her brows pinched together. That was Penelope’s trademark expression when it came to thinking about something. For a while, she mimicked the facial squint, until when looking in a mirror, she noticed the nasty wrinkles it created. That ended that quickly.

  Even though her body looked equivalent to a twenty-five-year-old, she didn’t want to get into a bad habit. Her skin, after all, was still skin. She had a long wait before nature took its path to change her flesh into highly resistant leather-like material like her three mentors.

  Fortunately, being a born blood, she could walk in the sunlight without any problems. Her powerhouse trio achieved that privilege only after their skin transformation was complete, which took about a thousand years, with no sucking of human blood.

  Fucking human blood. This whole mess was due to that. If the others would just follow the rules of no human blood consumption then life would be peachy. But what would she do with all her time then?

  A gorgeous, tall, buff, scruffy-faced wolf came to mind. She shouldn’t even think about him. Nor the fact she’d love to spend her time doing him all day. Over and over, she played in her mind that night behind the nightclub. She’d lost her balance on a narrow ledge, and he took special effort to catch her. She would’ve landed fine on her feet, but being in his powerful arms felt so good. And she wasn’t a petite bag-of-bones thing, either.

  But then the fact he was a dog intruded, as always. She hated that. What was special about him to call to her? Something deep and strong linked her to a wolf. A fucking hot and delicious wolf she couldn’t have. Her life sucked sometimes.

  “Claude isn’t at the house with you?” Penelope asked, reminding her she was still on the phone call.

  “No. I haven’t seen him since the night I killed Chantal. That was months ago. Marxius put a tail on him but Claude was able to lose them. Penelope, I don’t want Claude to be in on the human trafficking scheme Filip had going. He’s my cousin. I don’t want to kill family.” She hated that shit had hit the fan so epically lately.

  A sigh came across the line. “I’m sorry, child. I know how important family is to you since you have so little remaining. But I have to say, his extended absence doesn’t do any favors toward his innocence.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She pinched the upper bridge of her nose—didn’t cause wrinkles. “But I don’t have proof he’s guilty, either. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt
, until he shows me differently.”

  “Good decision, Aria,” Penelope praised her. “You’re a born leader…whose blood line ends with you.” Oh god, not this again. “You need to find a bloodmate and have children.”

  “I know, I know.” Boy did she. With Karla Wolfe’s triplets doing some crazy adorable things every time they had a girls’ night, Aria could do nothing more than listen to her biological clock remind her she wanted children. His babies. Ah, fuck.

  “You keep reminding me. Right now, there’s too much going on to even think about mating. With Filip out of the picture, I have no inkling where to start looking for a mate.” That was a lie, but Penelope wasn’t there to smell it, so she could get away with it.

  “I agree.” Thank goodness! “Right now is not the time. There’s too much dissention in the clans. Have you spoken to the South clan yet?”

  Shit. One more thing on her didn’t-want-to-do list. “No, but I need to. I’ll call Damon next and set up to get started tomorrow. Get it over with.”

  “Good, girl,” Penelope said. “I’ll keep you updated with the goings-on here. Bye, darling.” With that, the line went dead. She pushed the red end call icon then set her phone on the desk.

  Pushing off with her black leather, knee-high boots, she rotated the chair to face the large picture window behind her. The view was absolutely stunning. She understood why her father chose to have a window facing this direction when he built the house so long ago. The sun rising was breathtaking with blood reds and oranges. The beauty alone calmed her agitated nerves.

  What she would do to not be clan leader. She enjoyed the leading, teaching, and community aspects of being top dog, but shit like breaking the rules drove her crazy. It wasn’t like she was a vicious dictator, ordering executions whenever it struck her fancy or ruling with an iron fist. They had a handful of rules. That was it.

  And they fucking couldn’t follow them!

  She rose from her chair and paced in front of the desk. Everyone who joined the clan knew taking blood directly from humans was forbidden. Fuck, she was enforcing this for their own good. Thousands of years ago, Julian, one of her three mentors, discovered human blood aged a vampire quicker and kept their skin from becoming sun resistant.

  If the damn vamps didn’t consume blood from the source, they could live forever. She wondered why that fact wasn’t told to all the clan members. Why was it a secret “secret”? If everyone knew what could happen to their bodies if they didn’t take human blood, maybe there would be less problems. Sounded logical as hell to her.

  She sighed and reached across the desk for her phone. Finding the South clan’s second-in-charge’s number, she pushed the green button to dial. Tonight was as good a time as any to meet with them and get things back on track. There were nine hours before the sun set. Plenty of time to get everyone together.

  She hoped the group wasn’t in cahoots with Filip. She’d hate to kill an entire clan.

  TWO

  She’d killed his pack. His family. All of them. Not Aria directly, but her predecessors. Her people. Trevan kept that thought in his head as he met with his vampire contact. This hole-in-the-wall bar was almost a second home to him the last couple months.

  Didn’t seem that long ago when he and his two long-time friends, Roen and Alain, first walked in. They stopped at the shack to drink the dust from their dry throats. All day, they’d been traveling hard, getting closer to the prey they had stalked almost eighty years.

  Then when meeting the prey the first time, holding her in his arms when catching her after she fell from a ledge, his thirst for revenge instantly morphed into a desirous passion to have her. Own her. She was his damn mate. Fucking hell. His life sucked sometimes.

  Alain bumped him with his elbow. “That’s him over there.” He gave a head nod toward a corner of the bar. Roen, the third of the trio, stayed out with the truck to make sure nobody decided to take out a grudge on their only means of transportation. They learned that the hard way.

  The two casually made their way to the vampire with a mug of beer, which he knew the creature couldn’t consume. What an idiot. In a room full of shifters, the fool wasn’t fooling anyone. The men each took a chair to fill the table.

  Trevan cleared his throat, but he still felt the growl in his chest. “She’s mine and I want her. She will get what’s coming to her for murdering my pack.”

  The vamp smiled. “Of course, my friend. We don’t plan on denying you that. We want you to take care of her.”

  He smirked. “I definitely plan on taking care of her no matter what she thinks.” He almost laughed at the play on words between them. He hated lying, so this worked well. “What’s the plan?”

  “She’s flying to the South clan tonight. You need to get your asses there and be ready to take her down when the opportunity arises. You know where the South clan is?”

  He knew how to get there with his eyes fucking closed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Good. Your contact will meet you there.”

  Alain drew his brows down. “How will he know us?”

  The no-name vamp snorted. “You’ll be the only fucking dogs in the area.”

  ***

  After packing their clothes and other stuff from the cabin they had been staying in, the three piled into the pickup truck and headed south. Leaving now, they would be there before the sun set. That’d give him time to figure out what in the hell he was going to do.

  “You gotta plan yet, Trev?” Alain asked. Roen sat in the truck’s full backseat, playing on his new iPhone. The man had been oblivious of the world since he bought it yesterday. Trevan didn’t expect any input from him.

  “Been thinking about it. She’s damn strong—”

  Alain grunted. “It takes two of us to take down one normal vamp. We’ll be hard pressed to get her with the three of us.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. I believe it’s time to bring out the big guns.”

  Alain was quiet for a minute. “We don’t have any guns, Trev.”

  “I don’t mean bullet guns,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I mean the tranqs.”

  “Oh, those,” Alain said. He nodded. “That’s a good idea. How long do you think they’ll keep her down?”

  “Couple hours, hopefully. Which means we need to find somewhere under two hours’ drive to hold her.”

  “Siri,” Roen said from the back seat, “how long does it take to get from the South vampire clan to the Central Wolfe pack?”

  Trevan glanced in his rearview mirror. “Who the hell are you talking to?”

  “My phone,” came from the back.

  “You’re talking to your damn phone—”

  “Shhh,” Roen said. Next came a female’s voice. “The Central Wolfe pack is approximately one hour from the South clan.”

  “Did you just shush me?” He wanted to reach back and slap his friend. Don’t make him stop this car.

  Alain reached over the seat and snatched Roen’s phone. “No fucking way. How can a phone know about the supernatural?”

  Roen said calmly, “It’s Siri, man. She knows everything.”

  Alain lifted a brow at him. “You know she’s not a real person, right?” Roen grabbed his phone back.

  “Of course, I know that.” Since the guy’s cheeks were slightly red, Trevan wondered if Roen really did know. Trevan sure as hell didn’t know phones responded to questions. When did all that come about? He was seriously out of touch with that stuff. All his phone did was allow him to call people. Imagine that.

  “Great idea, Roen,” he said. “Mason Wolfe is the perfect person to help with this. His mate and Aria are good friends.” Now the question became how to get her there and the three of them remain alive.

  THREE

  Aria stared out the SUV’s side rear window while Marxius drove—a second guard, Wynther, sat shotgun—from the private airport to the South clan’s house. It had been around eighty years since she’d visited last. Her grandparents and parents were aliv
e then. She remembered how excited she was when getting to see her grandpa.

  Her dad’s dad was an old man. Aged enough to where he looked old. With vampires, that’s saying something. But he drank human blood from the source for several hundred years when he was younger, so it was as nature intended with him.

  The part of town most the clan inhabited had grown quite a bit. Every metropolitan area either grew, or became a ghost town. And there were probably several ghosts still hanging around this side, pissed that their lives were suddenly ended long ago.

  The South clan had been around longer than the North clan by a couple centuries. The southern group was started by her grandfather after he came to America from Europe to escape persecution in the early 1700s. America at that time was nothing but a few settlers along the East Coast and a shit load of natives.

  By this time, he had a diet strictly of animal blood. He didn’t want to believe in the theory that human blood made vampires age and stay susceptible to the sun. But upon meeting Julian, he had to believe. And he wanted this for his people, too. Granting the sun to a vampire was beyond the ultimate gift. As well as immortality.

  Again, she didn’t know why her grandfather never shared that knowledge with anyone. He simply had the rule of no drinking from humans.

  Back in those early years, every night a ship came in he would stand off the pier and watch as each person disembarked, hoping to find another of his kind had made it. Crossing the sea as a vampire was very difficult. Unless considered cargo, everything onboard was subjected to sunlight periodically.

  Hiding away in a wooden crate, feeding off rats for the duration of the two-month cruise, was debilitating for even an old vampire. But he kept hope others would arrive.

  Many supernaturals did make it over. Most were shifters, witches, and warlocks also escaping persecution from the Catholics. He saw and smelled different types of creatures, but had no experience with their kind. He was surprised how little he knew of other beings.