Crossing Hudson Read online

  Crossing Hudson

  Mandy M. Roth

  Raven Happy Hour LLC

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Series

  Blurb

  Mandy Online

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. About the Author

  Crossing Hudson (The Guardians Book Two)

  by

  Mandy M. Roth

  Crossing Hudson (The Guardians Book Two) © Copyright 2016, Mandy M. Roth

  First Electronic Printing Jan 2016, Raven Happy Hour LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  All books are copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Mandy M. Roth.

  This novel is a work of fiction and intended for mature audiences only. Any and all characters, events and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. This book is intended for adults only.

  Published by Raven Happy Hour LLC

  Oxford, Mississippi

  www.ravenhappyhour.com ~ www.theravenbooks.com

  Raven and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004–2016

  The Guardians Series

  The Guardians

  Crossing Hudson

  Ruling Jude

  and more to come…

  Crossing Hudson

  Book Two in The Guardians Series

  Maryann “Ryan” Mackenzie was raised to be the perfect mate to a powerful alpha male, with the sole purpose of helping him resist his dark side. What better way to fight darkness than to make her emulate all that is goodness and light? That was before everything she loved was taken away from her. Sweet Maryann is dead and Ryan has emerged from her ashes, a slayer with one final task to complete. The last thing she needs is a hunky new Guardian getting in her way.

  Alpha male shifter Hudson Carver is many things, but a glorified babysitter isn’t one of them. When he’s summoned to take on a new charge, he’s less than pleased. She may be a slayer, but there’s a reason he’s been assigned as her Guardian. She’s got a whole heap of evil on her trail and he isn’t about to let one hair on her head be harmed—especially when he realizes who she is to him. His mate.

  Mandy M. Roth, Online

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  1

  Chapter 1

  Nearly three years ago

  I sat on my sister’s bed as she lay at the other end, sprawled out, twirling a stake in one hand. The act mindless to her. As a natural-born slayer she tended to gravitate towards weapons even when relaxing. I think she found the feel of them therapeutic. I didn’t ask. I didn’t actually want to know. There were sides of her that seriously worried me.

  We’d been listening to a new CD I’d picked up from a band I liked. She wasn’t all that into it as it wasn’t the screeching death metal she preferred. Our taste in music was about as close as our taste in clothing. She liked to dress in clothes one would wear to a funeral, and I didn’t mind incorporating color into my wardrobe—a strict no-no in my sister’s world.

  Eliza and I were identical twins, but you wouldn’t know it to glance at us. She dyed her hair jet-black and wore it in two pigtails with blue streaks in it. My hair was a natural medium brown with blonde highlights. I often wore mine down or in what she liked to say was a rather boring ponytail. I also did not have a ‘face full of holes’ as our father called it. Eliza loved her piercings and wasn’t shy about getting them. I didn’t even have my ears pierced. I was the goody two-shoes version of her, to hear her tell the tale. She liked to joke that I was the last-known twenty-year-old virgin. At times, I felt she was right.

  “Did you finish studying for your Chem exam?” I asked, already knowing she hadn’t. I doubted she’d even opened a book for the class. School wasn’t really her thing. Unless the topic was medieval torture devices, she wasn’t generally that interested in it.

  Eliza groaned, casting me a pleading look as if the topic had already started to bore her. “Ryan, it’s all pointless.”

  “A degree is not pointless.” We had a week left of our junior year at university and then we’d get a break for summer. She was thrilled to be finishing up for a couple of months. I’d have taken summer courses had I been able to talk her into them.

  I wasn’t permitted to attend university without her. It was the price I paid for being a Blessed One—a woman born for a powerful male in the supernatural community, a mate who was considered the First to the head of the lycans here in the United States and a protector for the side of good. I was too valuable to the greater good to be left unprotected and Eliza was my chosen protector until I was married off.

  Yeah, supernaturals were not really in touch with modern times.

  So, until The Powers That Be caught up with the changing times, or my mate showed up to claim me, I was stuck with a babysitter who just happened to share a womb with me and sometimes wear a dog collar in place of a necklace. And while my future was totally planned out, no one really talked much about Eliza’s destiny, and that concerned me. When I asked, I was shut down, the topic left there, unresolved. Whoever she ended up with would have to be very comfortable with their mate’s obsession with all things shiny and pointy. Her sword collection was huge.

  To each his own.

  I just counted my lucky stars I hadn’t been clubbed over the head by an alpha male who was grunting and saying “mine”. At least not yet anyways.

  I stretched my arms over my head and winced slightly. Eliza sat up fast, her gaze filled with alarm as she reached out, putting her hand to my forehead. She liked to mother-hen me.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked a note of concern in her voice.

  I shrugged. “Fine.”

  “Did you place-jump to Cowboy today?” she asked, watching me closely.

  Cowboy was what I called my mate. While The Powers That Be decided I was important, I apparently wasn’t important enough to be allowed to fully meet him in person just yet. They had a preordained time this could happen and it wasn’t allowed to happen a moment sooner.

  They were old and stuck in their ways. Eliza liked to just say they were dicks. I was inclined to agree since my existence literally hinged on my mate. In a totally twisted logic kind of way, The Powers had made it so that I required his energy to stay alive. As if I was a rechargeable battery and he was the charging base. Though, without being allowed to meet him in the flesh just yet, I’d been forced to find creative ways to stay alive.

  My sister could charge me somewhat with direct skin contact. Sometimes she’d hold me and just rock in place if the pain got too intense. She couldn’t fix it fully for me—only
my mate could.

  Place-jumping was a gift I possessed. It involved tapping into my magik and basically soul walking. Some witches and mystics called it astral projection.

  Whatever flipped your trigger.

  I did it to be close to my mate, draw on his energy enough that I was still able to function. It wasn’t perfect, but it was all I had for now. My options were that or death so it wasn’t like I could stage a protest or anything.

  “Earth to Ryan, did you see Cowboy today?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I think he was with his girlfriend.”

  She frowned. “I know it hurts now that he’s dating someone, Ryan.”

  It more than hurt. I shrugged. “He doesn’t know I’m real. To him I’m a ghost who haunts his house.”

  It was a crude assessment, but an accurate one all the same. Cowboy couldn’t see me when I was near him. There were times I thought he might be able to hear me, but those times were few and far between. For the last few months he’d been seeing someone, and while I’d never gotten a good look at her, I knew things were getting serious between them. So much so that I didn’t like place-jumping to his house anymore. I was a little nervous I’d jump in on him getting jumped.

  No thanks. Some things could not be unseen.

  “The Powers are total douchebags,” said Eliza, shaking her head and pulling me into a hug, her energy seeping into me slowly.

  I lifted my head, meeting her gaze. “Liza, do you think maybe it’s all crap? That maybe I’m not really Cowboy’s mate at all?”

  “Hon, The Powers have gone so far as to blur the man’s face to you and make you hear a squelch in place of his real name to keep his identity shrouded from you. I think it’s safe to say he’s your mate. I mean The Powers are dicks, but that is like super dicky.”

  Oddly, I’d grown accustomed to never seeing Cowboy’s face. As for his name, I had nicknamed him Cowboy because he had a southern drawl and I knew he played guitar and sang country music songs when he was alone in his home. The nickname seemed to fit.

  “I don’t need someone to crack an egg in a frying pan to show me my brain on drugs—I only have to try to focus on Cowboy’s face.”

  “Ryan, you always tell me what he’s building, what he’s reading or doing, but you never tell me what you think of him.”

  I leaned back on the bed and my sister put her palm on my upper arm so that energy could continue to seep from her to me. “I don’t know. What, exactly, are you asking me?”

  “I know you can’t see his face, but does he have a sexy body?”

  I nearly laughed. My sister seemed to have a new boy toy weekly. She objectified men like a champ. I didn’t date. Ever. Also a total jerk move on the part of The Powers. My mate was much older than me but immortal so he wouldn’t look his true age. He could date as many women as he wanted until our union came to be. I wasn’t sure of the rules after the union and didn’t want to ask. I probably wouldn’t like the answer. The Powers were full of double-standards like that.

  Bet they were all male.

  I thought harder about her question. Did Cowboy have a sexy body? I thought it was pretty awesome, but I wasn’t sure I was a great judge. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “You’ve been going to Cowboy’s to linger around him for energy boosts for over a decade and you never noticed if he has a nice body?” Eliza asked, sounding shocked. Her heavily lined eyes aghast, she grabbed my face. “Oh gods, please tell me you don’t view him as a father figure, uncle, brother, cousin, second-cousin—”

  Yanking her hands off my face, I studied her acutely. “No. I don’t see him as any of the above.”

  She didn’t relax. “Then how do you see him?”

  Unsure where this line of questioning was going, I groaned and tipped my head back. “Liza, you’re giving me a headache. More so than usual.”

  “Answer my question. It’s important.”

  “If you make fun of me, I’ll zap your outfits to pink and break up that wonderfully monochromatic creepy-chick thing you’ve worked so hard on accomplishing.”

  Eliza smiled. “Have I ever made fun of you for talking about him?”

  I shook my head no. She liked to mock romantic movies and flowery poems, but she’d never made fun of me about Cowboy or the fact he was my mate. “Okay, he sort of feels like an extension of me. Like a friend so close that they need a new word to describe him, even though he’s never met me. There. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Shrugging, I put my hands out. Instantly, my power was around me. My hair pulled outward and twisted into a loose braid of its own accord. Blondish-brown wisps framed my face. “I don’t know.”

  Eliza took hold of my shoulders. “Ryan, who is the first person you go to when you’re happy?” She laughed as I looked away. “It’s okay. I know that it shifted from me to him in the last year. He used to be the one you went to when you were scared or sick. I also know he’s the first person you go to for everything else now too. I’m also very aware of how in touch you are with what he’s feeling even when you’re not with him. Tell me the truth. You shot upright out of your seat yesterday during our study break at the library and looked horrified. What happened?”

  Rubbing the back of my neck, I bit the corner of my lip and shook my head. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Ryan,” Eliza said with noticed reservation. “You always tell me everything.”

  Normally I did, but this was different. It felt as if it would be a betrayal of Cowboy’s trust. “Yes, but it’s private. I felt bad for being there. He called me and I couldn’t not be there for him.”

  Her brow creased. “He called you?”

  “Yeah, he did that thing where it feels like he’s yanking behind my belly button. He was so upset, Liza.” I blinked away tears and took an odd interest in my hand. “I don’t know exactly what happened. He locks himself down from me when he works. I can tell you that it was horrible. I got there and found blood all over his foyer, kitchen and bathroom. That’s the path he takes when he gets home from work. There’s a full bath off the kitchen that he uses instead of dragging everything upstairs. Anyway, I found him all cleaned up, sitting on his sofa, with his elbows on his knees and his head down.”

  I wiped the tears from my cheek. “I sat by him, and the minute I put my hand on…er…through his shoulder…” I shook my head and swallowed hard. Just thinking of it all tore at my heart. Such loneliness, such sadness had emanated from him. He’d been too late to save a young child from a horrible fate at the hands of bad men and while he’d made the men pay for their crime, he couldn’t forgive himself for not getting there sooner. “You know what. I love you, Liza, but there are some things that I won’t talk to you about. And this is one of them.”

  “Ryan?”

  “I’ll tell you that I cleaned up the mess with my power and made sure he was okay, but that’s it.”

  “Maryann Eliza Mackenzie, you are leaving a whole lot out. Tell me now.”

  “No.” I shook my head and squared my shoulders. “I go to him for everything. I mean it. There’s nothing that I don’t tell him about. The least I can do is be there for him and not blab to my sister about it. I’m sorry if you don’t like it. But I would die before I hurt or betray him in any way. I won’t do it, not even for you.”

  She threw her arms around my neck and squealed. I lost my balance and flipped off the bed, taking Eliza with me.

  “Freeze us!” she yelled.

  I did.

  Eliza rolled off me as we hovered in midair.

  “What did I almost get impaled with this time?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

  Sheepishly, she shrugged and moved a flail from the foot of her bed. “Sorry. I was training with it.”

  Rubbing my face, I groaned, still suspended in the air. “Are you positive we’re related?”

  Eliza laughed as we righted ourselves onto the bed once again. “So, tell me more about Cowboy. You already more t
han answered my question about if you love him. Now tell me more about him personally.”

  I squinted and pulled back from her a bit. “I don’t know. He’s nice. We’ve never had a whole conversation so I can’t be sure. He’s funny too even when he’s not trying to be, especially when I walk too close to him. He instantly becomes clumsy. I go to the other side of the room if he’s using power tools. I already told you about one of his hobbies being furniture making. I’m afraid he’ll chop a digit off while he’s making furniture.”

  “You can talk to him?”

  “Kind of.”

  She looked puzzled. “Explain.”

  In all the years she’d never taken this active of an interest in my time with Cowboy. It was different, off-putting and yet refreshing. “It’s always been that way. When I was four the dreams I’d have when I was in the dark, were way too bad for me to want to be alone. I didn’t like leaving your side, but had to go to Cowboy’s to get energy. Anyways, I’d been on the sofa, drifting off to sleep when he went to leave the room and flipped the light switch off. I burst into tears, terrified. He flipped it back on and apologized before going and sitting in a side chair while I rested.”

  Eliza gasped. “Did he see you?”

  “I was four. You’d think if a man found a crying four-year-old in their living room, they’d say a little more than sorry. I really believe he senses me around him, but he doesn’t understand what he’s picking up on.” I climbed off her bed and headed towards the door that joined our rooms. The stark difference was amazing to me still. While Eliza’s room was dark and a bit unkempt, mine was white with the lightest of baby blue in it. It was also spotless and missing weapons.

  Hers was a weapon depot.

  Eliza followed me. “Ryan, you’re leaving things out.”