Fated Truth (The True Witch Saga)

Fated

Trut
h

Book O
ne of the True Witch Saga

By
:

Tasha
Gwartney

Published by
Hot Ink Press

An Imprint of

Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing

This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

©Text Copyright 2013
Tasha Gwartney

Cover By Melodi Simmons

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated first and foremost to GOD who always picks me up when I fall, and to my wonderful husband and gorgeous little man, who have always supported me in any crazy scheme that I have wanted to get into. I also want to dedicate this book to the readers that will take this long journey down an uncertain path with me. I have created this world, picked it out of my imagination and brought it to life on paper for you to enjoy, but with each page you turn, you are the breath that keeps this world alive. That keeps this journey everlasting. So thank you. Without readers, stories lay stagnant collecting dust.

Chapter One

An Introduction. I Think?

I was sitting in the back of our tiny white church, in a pew all to myself, as usual. Being the preacher’s kid didn’t exactly make you Miss Popularity. I had listened to my father go on and on about the sins of the flesh so many times that it all sounded like static white noise anymore, but then smack in the middle of the climax of his sermon, the back doors of the chapel swung open with a huge bang. The noise fairly vibrated throughout the whole congregation. The look on my father’s face was comical. I bet he wished he could catch everyone’s attention that well. Everyone swiveled in their seats to get an eye full of the late comer. I wasn’t the only one with my chin hitting my knees. He was beauty, the purest form of male beauty that I had ever looked upon. I’ve nicknamed him the
Nordic god
for posterity’s sake.

Ther
e he stood with the sun shining behind him, looking around our gloomy existence. I was sure I could picture what he was seeing. Sardines. Mediocre Sardines. That’s what our congregation reminded me of, so why not him? He continued to look from right to left as if he were searching someone out. Then his eyes met mine. I swear I was struck by lightning. Hair standing on end. Electro shock. That’s what that first glance felt like.

When his eyes met mine
, his facial features didn’t change. He just simply stopped looking for anyone else. He just paused, lifted a brow, in that really annoying way that only hot people can pull off, and he actually smirked at me. Like there was something on my face. I lifted my hand searching for whatever it was about my face that he found so amusing. I found nothing. So I guess it was just me.
Yay! So my luck
.

So I did
what every self-respecting eighteen year old girl should (notice I didn’t say would) do. I flipped him the bird, smirked right back at him, and turned my apparently humorous ass around in my pew. Yup, I was quite proud of myself at that moment. Apparently everyone else in our sardine can was still gaping like the dead fish we were.

My reaction elicit
ed a booming belly laugh from the Nordic god. It sounded kind of rusty, so he probably wasn’t used to laughing. Or maybe he just wasn’t used to a member of the female race not simpering. I gave myself an inner shrug and struggled not to turn around and watch what he might do next. Like I said, nothing interesting
ever
happened here. So it was painful to make myself refrain.

About two minutes into my staring at my father
’s flabbergasted face, I heard another slam. One I assumed was due to the doors closing. I wondered what would make someone want to announce their arrival in such a way. Interrupting a conversation was one thing, but a closed assembly? The boy had stiff biscuits, I’d give him that. It took my father all of three seconds after the interloper’s departure to call the attention, once again, upon himself.
Pffffft.
And he called me an attention whore. And I’d wondered where I got it from.

My mother moved to my pew and hissed something in my ear that I wasn’
t quite paying attention to. “Why can’t you just pay attention for once Ella? It shouldn’t be that hard. You have been listening to your father lead his flock, since you were in diapers.”

I turn
ed to her and stared blankly, thinking that maybe if I wasn’t subjected to the same wonk, wonk, wonk of my dad’s voice day in and out, I wouldn’t have a problem hearing or at least pretending to be interested in what he had to say.

“Mom, I wasn’t the only one distracted by the commotion. I think you might have a bit of drool on your chin.” I point
ed. “Just there.”

She gave
an offended huff, straightened in her seat, and pretended, just like the rest of us, that my father was God’s gift to seminary.

Once the droning on and on was finished, w
e all filed out of our seats and down the aisle like the good little Chiclets that we were. We shook hands at the front doors and half heartily invited various other sardines over for Sunday brunch. In a small town like ours, you
always
attend church on Sundays. It didn’t matter if you were a true believer or if you were pretending to believe. You showed up. If you didn’t, you got blackballed. No one wanted to be the person that got sneered at for actually being honest about what they believed. I wished I was that brave.

The next morning I wo
ke up to my hand lodged in my soaking wet panties. I thought back to the very vivid dream my mother’s screeching had just interrupted. This was the first time that I had ever had a
literal
wet dream.

Just the thought of his ice blue eyes trained upon my naked body made me shudder intimately. I knew that if I didn’t finish and make myself come, I would be left feeling frustrated for the rest of the morning. And that was the
last
thing I wanted on the first day of my senior year.

I lay back on my feather soft pillows and closed my eyes, trying to recapture the visualizations I’d experienced during my very intense swoon worthy dream.
His work roughened hands sliding gently upon my naked skin, moved slowly,
I thought as I worked the hand that was still inside my panties. I imagined how he would work his, and enjoyed the feelings it stirred in me. I imagined that it was
his
hand touching my clit, touching and stroking. Sliding gently, but firmly through my gathering juices. I moaned silently, getting more and more excited as the minutes passed.

“Ella!”

My thoughts were pulled quickly out of the gutter as I was interrupted once again by a loud screeching noise. I removed my hand with much regret and a lot of lividly silent muttering under my breath.  Unfortunately, it was my mom yelling for me to get my lazy bum out of bed and not my alarm making the annoying sounds. The alarm clock didn’t give me headaches in the mornings.
She
did. I turned over and tried and squeeze fifteen more minutes out of my sleepy time, or at least wait for my alarm to go off at the time I set it for. Nope, wasn’t going to happen that morning.

“Ella!
Get out of bed before I get the ice water!” she screeched. Yes, she really would dump ice water on me. What a loving maternal figure.

I roll
ed my ‘lazy’ ass out of bed and stumbled for my shower, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t bang my toe onto something on the way. This was the first day of my senior year. I wished I could be more excited, but I was just expecting the same bullshit, the same clichés, the same who was wearing what and what great stupendous things they played off they’d done over break.
There was one bright spot,
I thought.
Maybe the Nordic god will be attending, or maybe I need to stop with the wishful thinking already.
I laughed at myself and rolled my eyes. I just didn’t get that lucky.

I stay
ed in the shower until the water started to run cold, then jumped out and toweled off wondering what I was going to throw on to wear that would actually pass muster. My parentals wouldn’t let me leave the house unless I looked like something from an Amish settlement. Well they could try at least. I was technically an adult, being eighteen, so they couldn’t say much as of my last birthday. They could hem and haw about whatever they wanted, but I could also move out of this hell hole that had everyone fooled into thinking was the perfect fifties sitcom family. We had to keep up appearances after all.

I stoo
d in front of my mirror and really looked at myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that I didn’t look anything like my parents, who were both short, with mousey brown hair and simply boring features. I, on the other hand, topped off at 5’11 last year, had long stick straight black hair that fell to the middle of my back, and a slender body with curves in the right places, but the feature that stood out the most were my eyes. They looked green, even from a distance, but up close, they were a startling jade, and when I was angry, they fairly glowed.

When I was three and
decided to throw a fit because my mother wouldn’t let me go out and play with the other kids at the playground outside the church, she shrieked as if Satan had just poked her in the ass with his giant fork. My eyes had glowed like I was possessed by a demon; at least, that was Mother’s account of what had happened. She and my father tried to have a Catholic Priest perform an exorcism on me. That didn’t quite work out like they had hoped, considering the priest had laughed until he was crying after he met me. Such loving parents I got saddled with. I had always wondered if I was adopted. Hoped really, but they always clammed up and denied it.

What really drew attention, aside from my eyes, was my face, although I did
n’t really see what the big deal was. To me it was just a normal face, just simply
me
, but my best friend, Jessa, said otherwise. “Wench, you have a face that could launch a thousand hard ons. And you don’t even
see
it. It just makes the masses of jock-strap swinging boys at our school want you even more,” she always said.

Speaking of Jessa, I hear
d her blaring the horn from the front drive of our two story craftsman style home. She refused to step foot in my home. Not that I blamed her. Not in the least.

I stop
ped scrutinizing myself, ran for my closet and pulled out the first thing I found. I threw on a short, light-washed denim skirt that was frayed around the edges and a gray fitted tee. I started searching the mound of shoes in the bottom of my closet for my red chucks, and once I put them on I slapped on some deodorant, grabbed my Coach Messenger bag, sprayed on some Tommy Girl, and ran out the door. I’d just have to braid my hair and spackle on some make-up in Jessa’s car. I hoped she drove decently, or I was going to lose an eye trying to apply my eyeliner. I always loved Mondays and this was the perfect start to one.