Their Controlled Chaos Read online

  THEIR CONTROLLED CHAOS

  WINTERVALE PACKS

  MILLY TAIDEN

  CONTENTS

  Their Controlled Chaos

  About the Book

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Milly Taiden

  THEIR CONTROLLED CHAOS

  WINTERVALE PACKS

  NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  MILLY TAIDEN

  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

  Their Controlled Chaos

  Copyright © 2020 by Milly Taiden

  Edited by: Tina Winograd

  Cover: Willsin Rowe

  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

  July 2020

  Created with Vellum

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Jinelle Sutton has known from a young age that she is more than human. Chaos is a big part of her life and she's learned to ball it up and hide it away from the world. Which isn’t too hard because she's always been a bit weird. A high IQ and social awkwardness means she's got very few friends. She longs for the day she doesn’t have to hide who she is. When she hears about a surrogate program with an alien shifter planet she jumps at the chance. After all, who better to understand her than alien shifters?

  * * *

  Daeria is much more than she expects. Her new friends are also surrogates and have special abilities of their own. She feels like she belongs for the first time in her life. Then there are the four wolf shifters who each claim to be her mate.

  * * *

  The war that took so much from the Dearia shifters may have ended, but they're still dealing with the aftermath. The evil that wants complete control over the planet seeks out a powerful relic that gives him anything he desires. It’s up to Jinelle, Harland, Turk, Seff, and Merric to find the relic before Xaxhin does. All the while, Jinelle’s powers grow stronger and more uncontrollable. Then again, when has chaos ever been controlled?

  —For my readers

  * * *

  Enjoy the final installment of the Wintervale Packs and a last visit into the Daeria world. Thank you!

  PROLOGUE

  Earth, one year ago

  * * *

  Jinelle Sutton wasn’t ready for this. Yet, it’d been over a month since she’d said her final goodbyes to her grandmother—her last living relative. One would think having all of her grandparent’s things scattered about the house would only make her heart hurt more. It didn’t. Jinelle felt if she packed away their things away, she’d forget about them.

  So, why was she doing it? Closure? Or what?

  “Here, drink this.”

  Jinelle glanced up at her best friend, Mora, as she handed her a hot cup of herbal tea. Taking the cup, and cradling it in her hands, she forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  Mora sat on the sofa, tucking her feet underneath her. “You know, you don’t have to put any of it away.”

  Jinelle shrugged. She didn’t want to. Not yet, at least. She loved the little reminders of her childhood. Her grandparents raised her after parents were murdered during a home invasion when she was eight. That night changed her life. Not just because she lost her parents.

  That was the night she discovered she wasn’t a normal human.

  “I know.” And that settled it. She’d leave the house just as it was. “I’m not ready, so I’ll leave it.”

  A weight seemed to be lifted off her shoulders, and the slight pressure in her mind eased. It appeared that whatever fueled her chaotic magic didn’t like the idea of boxing up her grandparent’s things any more than she did.

  Just one more issue to face. Turning sideways on the sofa to face Mora, Jinelle studied her friend. Pitch black hair fell over her shoulders in a cascade of soft curls. Midnight blue eyes locked onto Jinelle’s, before a dark brow lifted. “Do I have something on my face?”

  A sigh slipped out. Normally Jinelle would have laughed, but her mood was too dark at the moment to find the humor in Mora’s words. “I got laid off yesterday.”

  “Fuck, Jin. Why?”

  Taking a sip of her tea, Jinelle shrugged again. “They are closing the office, cutting back. But I got a month's severance pay.”

  Jinelle rolled her eyes, then turned to survey the room. Her grandma’s room. “You know, I’ll leave everything right where it is. It makes me feel close to her.”

  “I think that’s a great idea.” Mora moved to the door and waited.

  After a few more minutes, Jinelle motioned her best friend out of the room. When they reached the living room, Mora asked, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

  She hadn’t had time. Not with the funeral, and then the bombshell her boss dropped in her a few days ago. “I have the inheritance I could live off of for the next year or so. I could use it to start my business.”

  “You could start sculpting again.” Mora sat on the sofa, tucking her feet under her.

  Jinelle shrugged as she sat beside her friend. “I guess.”

  “What else is wrong?”

  Was there something else? Jinelle had just been going through the day to day numbness since she lost both her grandparents within the same year. “I feel lost. And like I should have done something with my life. I’m twenty-seven and nothing great to look forward to. I’m still afraid of the dark for crying out loud.”

  Mora laughed, and nudged Jinelle with her foot. “You are not afraid of the dark. It’s the unknown you are leery of. Have you had any chaotic disasters lately?”

  “No. I think that’s because I’m numb emotionally. And tired.” Sadness filled her tone as she said the words.

  Jinelle and Mora sat in silence for a little while. Mora was on her phone, texting someone, then suddenly said, “I heard of a government program that is seeking unattached, human females to go to another planet and be surrogate mates for the shifters that live there.”

  Jinelle raised a brow. “Are you suggesting I move to another planet and mate with an alien shifter?”

  “Why not?”

  Studying her friend for a long time, Jinelle couldn’t tell if she was being serious. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. If I was human, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Shifters are hot, and they are devoted mates.” She grinned at Jinelle before speaking again. “You would have to agree to have their kids. The purpose of the program is to rebuild the planet after a war that killed off their females.”

  An ache formed in Jinelle’s chest. That was awful. “All of them?”

  “Yeah, it’s sad.”

  Yes, it was. “Well, I’m not really f
ully human.”

  Mora glared at Jinelle. “What are you talking about? You're more human than I am. Your parents were human. Just because someone in your family tree somewhere had magic that you now have, doesn’t make you any less human.”

  “I guess.” Jinelle thought about it for a little while. “What’s the catch?” Nothing, as far as I know. If they don’t have surrogates to help them repopulate the planet, then their race will go extinct, eventually. This is their way to ensure they have a future.” Mora set her phone down and grinned at Jinelle. “So. Are you going to check it out? Go to another planet and have alien shifter babies?”

  Jinelle laughed. “Well, when you put it that way.”

  “It’s worth looking into. What else are you going to do with your life? At least this will give you a way to pay it forward.” Mora watched with anticipation of her answer.

  Jinelle studied her friend. “How do you know about this?”

  She shrugged. “I hear stuff. The paranormal communities have all the best gossip.”

  “But I’ll be leaving you.”

  Picking up one of the square pillows from behind her, Mora threw it at Jinelle. “Don’t use me as an excuse to stay here. I feel that this is right for you.”

  Mora, like most witches, had a strong intuition. Not like a seer, but they had “feelings” about things that were very rarely wrong. And if she had a feeling that Jinelle should check out the surrogate program, then she’d do it.

  What would it hurt to see if she was a candidate or not?

  CHAPTER ONE

  DEARIA, PRESENT DAY

  “You got a package from Earth.”

  Jinelle whirled around, her heart rate picked up with excitement from receiving gifts from her BFF on Earth. Of course, getting things from Earth, to where she now lived on Dearia—another planet, in another galaxy—gave snail mail a totally new meaning. It sometimes took a month or longer to get packages and letters. However, the shifters who lived on the beautiful alien planet had the technology to speed up space travel from planet to planet.

  She held her hand out for the package, but Harland—one of her hottie wolf mates—stepped back and shook the box. “I wonder what this one has in it.”

  “Hey! Don’t shake it.” She lunged for him.

  When he turned playfully, like he wasn’t going to give her the box, she poked him on the ribs. He grunted and jerked to the side. “Don’t start shit. I’ll have you bent over the couch.”

  Desire flared deep inside her at his words. She’d been bent over things by him before. It always ended with her having a mind-blowing orgasm, or four. She took the box from him and rushed to sit on the couch.

  Mora sent little pieces of home. Over the last several months, she’d been going through Jinelle’s house, and her grandparent’s things. She and Mora agreed that it was best to sell the house. Jinelle told her to split the money from the sale between the coven and a charity of Mora’s choosing. Jinelle didn’t need the money, the surrogate program paid for her housing, food, and anything else she needed on Daeria.

  Then there were her guys—Turk and Harland, two of the Wintervale Pack enforcers. They pampered her and were constantly buying her things. It didn’t matter that she reminded them several times a day that she didn’t need pampering.

  Harland sat next to her and watched her open the box. “Who’s sending you gifts? You don’t have a human mate on Earth, do you?”

  She laughed out loud and pushed him playfully. “I’m too weird for human men.”

  He leaned in and nipped her ear. “You are not weird. Who’s sending you gifts?”

  Glancing up at him, she narrowed her eyes, while her lips curved into a smile. He was jealous. Not in a negative way, but a curious kind of way. “My best friend, Mora. She’s a witch and is cleaning out my family home.”

  An ache formed in her chest. It’d been months since she’d thought about her life on Earth. Her lonely pathetic life. Well it hadn't always been lonely. She had her grandparents until they passed away a little over a year ago. And there was Mora.

  Harland cupped her chin and lifted it, forcing her to meet his stare. “What is it?”

  She kissed his lips softly, then went back to opening the box. “A little more than a year before arriving here, I lost my grandmother. A few months before that my grandfather passed away. Mora was my glue for a while. Her family and the coven also helped me with controlling my chaos.”

  “How long have you had your powers?”

  She shrugged. “Since I was eight.” As soon as the images of that horrible night entered her mind, she pushed them out. She wouldn’t think of the night everything changed. The night she lost her parents and discovered she had the power to kill and create chaos with nothing more than a thought.

  Opening the box, she pulled out the air pillows Mora stuffed on top of some framed photos and a few knick-knacks that belonged to Grandma. At the bottom of the box were several small items surrounded by bubble wrap. Her heartbeat increased, and she picked up the first one and unwrapped it, revealing a three-inch glass wolf howling. There were four more pieces that she took out and handed to Harland.

  “Unwrap them,” she said as she pulled a letter from Mora out and read it.

  * * *

  Hi Jin!

  Gods, I miss the fuck out of you. We have to video chat more often. Anyway, I found the wolves buried in your grandma’s attic. I’ve always wondered where they went. I remember seeing them out on her mantle when we were kids, then they just disappeared. The wolves always seemed otherworldly to me. Like they weren’t normal wolves. Maybe it was my witch intuition or an overactive imagination. Who knows? I thought you’d want to have them.

  I’ll talk to you on our call next week.

  Love you, sis!

  Mora

  * * *

  Tears stung her eyes by the time she finished reading. Harland cupped her chin again, and she laughed at him. He hated it when she got emotional. “I’m fine.” Then she indicated to the five glass wolves in various poses. “Those were my great grandmother’s. I had always loved them and felt drawn to them for some reason.”

  “Do you know where she got them?” He stood and placed the wolves on a bookshelf above the TV. He positioned four of them around the one that she had always imagined was the female, while the others were males. It was odd, but that was what she felt was right.

  “No. My grandma said that Granny got them as a gift from her mother-in-law. I’ve never met any of grand-papa’s family.” She watched as Harland studied the wolves.

  “Something about them is familiar.” He shook his head and turned to face her. “I came by to see if you wanted to come to Wintervale with me. I’m helping Turk train some of the teens today. We shouldn’t be long. Afterward, we thought you could stay over and have wild passionate sex.”

  Laughing at his words, she picked up the photos and knick-knacks and placed them back inside the box. “A kinky sleepover.”

  “I like the sound of that.” Harland’s heated stare made her body tingle, while her core filled with liquid desire. She thought about it for a few. Well, not the sex part. She was always willing and ready. Turk and Harland were hot, and they made her feel amazing and loved. The latter made her hesitate.

  She wasn’t sure why, really. It was like she was waiting for something or someone. But Turk and Harland didn’t push, which made it harder to resist the urge to bond with them. One of her hang-ups was the fear of losing them. After she lost her parents, then her grandparents, she didn’t want to get close to others out of the silly fear they’d just leave her too.

  But the surrogate program was her way of getting past all her insecurities. She couldn’t be rejected by the shifters on Daeria. However, they could die. She was, after all, chaos.

  Studying Harland, she said, “I could hang out with Blake and see the new baby, while you and Turk are training.”

  Blake was one of the five surrogates who traveled from Earth with Jinelle. Blake was also
the demi-goddess of the sun, and mated to the Wintervale Alpha, Jericho; his sentry Mace; the Pack Beta, Serge; and the Healer, Castien. And they welcomed a beautiful, sweet little girl about a week after the last battle with Xaxhin, which was less than five weeks ago. The princess of Wintervale was just what everyone in the pack needed to take their minds off the negative shit going on around them.

  What worried Jinelle was how silent Xaxhin had been. She’d done research on Desire’s Horn, but didn’t find anything she didn’t already know. The horn belonged to Ageos, god of desire, but it wasn’t just a magical horn that granted whoever blew into what they desired most. It was from a dragon—Ageos’s son.

  If Xaxhin got the horn, all he had to do was blow into it and make a wish. Then his desires to enslave the Daerian shifters and the Graxecon people would come true, then he could take over the planet. At least that was what Jinelle, the other women, and their mates believed.

  It didn’t make sense to her. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more he wanted. Something else, rather.

  Harland picked up the box from her lap, bringing her out of her thoughts. When she looked up at him, he lifted his brow. “I lost you for a minute.”