Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (19 page)

Lucien watched the fight with his heart in his throat. Every instinct in him wanted to dive into that ring and tear Thomas to pieces, but he held himself in check. And in the moment when he almost gave in, almost stepped into the ring, Kat grabbed his arm to hold him back and that was enough to keep him still. He watched, eyes locked on the smaller, tawny-colored wolf he knew was Greta, as she danced and tore at the bigger gray wolf that was Thomas. As soon as the fight began, Max hurried around the outside of the ring. He arrived on Kat’s other side and she went into his arms, holding on tight to him, and buried her face in his shirt so she didn’t have to watch the fight.

But Lucien couldn’t look away. Every time the tide turned, he felt his heart constrict. Every time Greta got the upper hand, he felt his heart swell. He thought of all the years he’d wasted missing her and not trying to find her. All the ways he’d tried to forget her and how pointless they were. And then he thought instead of all the years they had ahead of them. All the love and the adventures they would have, the
grandchildren
and maybe a few more actual children. They were both too young to be grandparents, he’d always said. As these thoughts filled his head and his heart, he found himself smiling, and the fight took another turn.

In a matter of seconds, Greta had pinned Thomas to the ground with her fangs to his throat. The bigger gray wolf let out a wounded, miserable whine. A noise of submission. A roar of triumph went through the assembled wolves as soon as he made that sound. Greta released him, backing up, and in a gust of wind she was straightening, shifting from her wolf form back into her human form. Thomas stayed motionless at her feet, hurt and surrendered, but still alive. Lucien would have killed him, but he knew it was not in Greta’s nature to be so violent. He loved her for that nature.

All around them, the wolves were shifting and clapping and howling, running around barking and playing, celebrating. Max squeezed Kat, and she lifted her head to look into the ring, smiling in relief when she saw Greta, nude and covered in blood and grass, standing over Thomas. Greta held up her hands, however, and the pack calmed itself, the wolves coming to attention.

“You are banished from this pack,” she told Thomas. “If you ever come into our territory again, you will be put to death. Go.” Lucien was close enough to hear her add, “Who’s the orphan now?”

Thomas got to his feet and went slinking out of the ring, hurrying off into the tree line with a lingering whine. Some of the pack chased him out of the clearing, howling. Some stood at the tree line barking or shouting obscenities. It became plain, in those moments, that with the fear he’d used to rule them all, he had not earned their love as Greta had. Every member of the pack had been hoping in their hearts for her to lead them.

Lucien crossed into the ring then and went straight to Greta, grabbing her and lifting her feet right off the grass as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She melted against him as the pack cheered around them, chanting their new alpha’s name. Eventually, they stopped kissing, and Greta shifted back into her wolf skin and led the pack on a chase and a hunt through the forest.

Kat returned to the carnival with her father, elated. Later, that night, after the carnival had closed down and the crowds had all gone home, the pack came to the fairgrounds and they all celebrated together, bear beside wolf beside human beside lion. They ate and drank together, toasted Kat and Max and the baby, toasted Greta the undisputed alpha, toasted Greta and Lucien and two decades of frustrated, complicated love that had finally been realized.

In the months that followed, the wolf pack and the carnival struggled to accept each other in the long term, but eventually they did, thanks to the tireless efforts of their two alphas. A stranger family has never existed, comprised of wild beasts and human oddities, orphans and travelers alike. Bears and wolves, a lion, a serpent or two and the humans who’ve grown to love them. D’Orfeo’s carnival spent the first few years traveling in summer and settling with the pack during the winter. Kat gave birth to a beautiful baby girl that she named Lucia, and eventually she remembered Greta and the role she’d played in Kat’s childhood. Lucien got the family he’d so desperately wanted, Greta kept her strength and her freedom, and none of them could have been happier.

After a few years, when Lucia was beginning to miss her grandfather, the Ringmaster stopped traveling. Especially when his granddaughter began howling at the moon in protest. Greta announced that she was pregnant with a sibling for Kat. But the Ringmaster didn’t hang up his top hat or his tails, not for anything, not yet. Instead, he used the carnival’s substantial savings and purchased the fairgrounds on the wolf pack’s territory, establishing a permanent carnival there.

On Lucia’s third birthday, a crowd of new additions came to visit, led by their alpha Marcus Zane and his human wife Clara, and their two children. Having wandered for years in search of a new home, it was the Ringmaster and D’Orfeo’s carnival who welcomed them in. Lucien eventually turned over care of the carnival itself to Marcus, a kind of reconciliation for the damage he’d caused him and his family, an apology that Marcus accepted. Lucien joined the wolf pack and stood not as alpha but as Greta’s faithful mate, supporting her in every possible way. Marcus ran the carnival in the spirit of its origin, taking in lost and abandoned shifters, lost and abandoned humans, anyone who needed a home and could not find one.

The Carnival D’Orfeo is still there, of course, to this day. In the summer months, the crowds flock to its strange performances and sideshows, to its house of mirrors where people swear they see, out of the corner of their eye, wolf pups and bear cubs playing in dark corners. People say they’ve spotted the terrifying lion stalking through the shadow of the big top every so often. It is regarded as one of the last great carnivals still left in the country, with no roller coasters or dancing elephants or clowns. Just a few strange people putting on a positively wonderful show. A beautiful bearded lady and a slim tamer of beasts with an ornate silver-tipped whip that, many years ago, he put away forever. And like all carnivals, it has its mysteries and its mystique, its oddities and its marvels. And, of course, at its heart, its magic.

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