Mob Mom's Christmas (7 page)

“Oh shit,” Calli muttered when she walked into the main room where they told her mother to decorate.

“Uh, there are no words, I mean literally, no words for what I'm seeing,” Kade said with an awestruck voice.

The room was transformed. The walls were draped with red fabric, and they had gold bows at the top and the bottom, apparently to hold them up. The tables had gold and red tablecloths. A huge tree that looks possibly fresh was crazy decorated. And the presents, shit there had to be more than a hundred under there, all different sizes and wrapped prettily. Truly, her mother had outdone herself.

“Where is my coffee?” Cherri grumbled and then paused. “Whoa.”

Her mates laughed and wrapped their arms around her and kissed her. Apparently, they were standing under mistletoe.

Then there was Rissa, with a loud ‘whoop’ she ran into the room and looked excitedly around. “Just like home!”

Her friends laughed, when they were growing up, Rissa was the child who refused to snoop, she loved surprises. Nothing had changed over the years.

The Pack began to arrive and everyone gasped at the room. Vivi and her friends finally arrived, dressed to the nines in sparkly red dresses, and Santa hats. They looked like prostitute elves. At least that is what Calli and Cherri were calling them.

They ate breakfast and talked, played the games Vivi and the others had arranged. Then they opened gifts, which completely blew everyone away with how Vivi and her friends got things that everyone wanted. It was weird. Vivi kept smiling and saying Santa.

Then Calli yelled in surprise when she opened her gift, it was the gun she wanted, Vivi rolled her eyes and glared at Kade who was ginning. Cherri received several new pairs of stilettos, which she laughed about, they were in bright pink and purple, colors she had not had. Vivi was astonished when she opened her gift to find it was the same pair she had borrowed from Cherri but in red.

All of the men received suitable riding crops from their mates. None got the joke but them. And Rissa received a knife from her friends. She was excited and wanted to have a throwing contest, which Vivi quickly nixed. All in all it was a wonderful morning.

Lunch was a boisterous affair with all of them yelling and laughing, and of course, having a sip of wine. The food was amazing, turkey, ham, potatoes, all the staples of a normal Christmas meal. It was amazingly overboard, and completely fun.

Calli and Kade refused to admit to her mom, the party was a success. However, she knew and she knew something else, too. Calli leaned back in the chair and patted her stomach, and Vivi grinned. But then, she saw Shelly and Brenda making motions for her to come into the hallway.

Vivi excused herself and walked out into the corridor. Her friends stood next to one of the most beautiful men Vivi had ever seen. Seriously, her husband was handsome, Kade was ruggedly handsome, and Cherri’s men gorgeous. But this man, he was truly beautiful. His hair was a strange color, the only thing she could think of was caramel, and it hung down his back in a shimmering blanket. His face was smooth, and it held a hint of humor as she stared at him. Grey eyes, strong, thin nose, and chiseled cheeks, with a wide full mouth most women would drool over. He was tall, well over six feet and broad, oh yeah, he had the muscles, too.

“Who the hell is this?” Vivi said and then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly when the man laughed.

“No problem,” he said and Vivi almost swooned, even his voice was perfect, it was deep, smooth, and flowed over her like the most perfectly tuned piano.

Brenda was blushing, she held up a hand and whispered loudly, as if he couldn’t hear, “This is Simon.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vivi said, opened, and closed her mouth. This was Rissa's serial killer mate. “He's the serial killer?”

Once again, the man laughed and said, “Not the last time I looked, but I get why you are saying that. I promise, no slaughtering of the innocent today. I am just here to spend time with the Alpha and the Pack. Why?”

“Just come with me!” Vivi said and pulled the tall, large man in back of her.

They entered the room and Vivi paused looking for her target. Rissa sat on the floor with her dog, Billy B, making him do tricks for pieces of turkey and laughing. Calli and Cherri were sitting with her with their pups that refused to move out of their owner's laps, instead sleeping. Perfect.

Kade stood up and looked around with concern when he saw who was here. Vivi grinned when she saw the look of panic come over him. He knew exactly what was coming.

Rissa’s head snapped up, her eyes narrowed and she sniffed before letting out a blood-curdling scream. “HIDE THE CHILDREN! ARM THE MEN! THERE IS A MURDERER ON THE LOOSE! HURRY, HE'S GONNA KILL US ALL!”

Vivi put her hand back up to her mouth as she watched Rissa running around the room, shoving the confused children out of the room with their parents.

“DAMMIT, KADE, WHY AREN’T YOU BLOWING THE HORN, SOUND THE SIREN, WE HAVE TO KILL HIM BEFORE HE KILLS US. WEEIIOOO, WEEIIOO! THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS A REAL LIFE KILLER.”

Calli put her head in her hands and Vivi could see her shoulders shaking as her best friend lost it completely in front of her new mate.

“WEEIIOO, WEEIIOO, BILLY B, ATTACK, ATTACK.” And the small little ball of fur ran for the beautiful man and grabbed his pant leg.

“Uh, Merry Christmas?” the man said and Rissa stopped in front of him and put her hands on her hips.

“Oh really? So that’s how we are gonna play this, huh? Innocent, hot man walks into a room. Lull us all into a false sense of reality and then WHAM! Off with our heads, right?” Rissa yelled.

“Does she need medication?” the man whispered to Vivi, who laughed and shook her head.

“No this is Rissa, and Rissa this is…” Vivi started.

“I know who the hell this is, and I won't do it, you can't make me. DADDY!! I refuse the mating. I refuse to be alone with him,” Rissa yelled and then got into his face. “I know every pressure point in the body. I can kill you with two fingers.”

“OOOOOKKKKAAAYY?!” the man said.

“Shit, Calli, get her under control,” Kade demanded and pulled Rissa back as she started wind milling her arms and legs as if like she was going to fight the large, stunned, handsome man.

“Can’t do it, you heard her. WEEIIOO! WEEIIOO,” Calli laughed then she and Cherri grabbed Rissa and hugged her, so she couldn’t go anywhere.

“What's going on?” the man said as Kade pinched his nose in frustration.

“I need a drink!” Kade muttered.

“I won’t go quietly,” Rissa continued to yell. “You can't make me be the Butcher of 5
^th
Ave’s mate, I won't do it. He could force me to kill with him and be an accomplice. I can't handle prison, all those women in one room. NO...NO...NO...NO!”

“Well, I guess that is a no!” Calli laughed.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” the man yelled loudly, making everyone in the room stop and stare.

“See, told you he was a killer, his temper is out of control,” Rissa said smugly and stuck her tongue out at him.

“I'm assuming you are doing a good thing by getting the crazy wolf out for a day, but seriously man, you have to think of what kind of attention you are drawing here. When you take her back, you could have problems,” the man said, Rissa paused and frowned.

“You fucker, are you actually calling me crazy?” Rissa demanded.

“Uh, yeah!” the man frowned.

“Well then, sucks to be you, ‘cause we're mates,” Rissa said proudly.

Books Available by Jana Leigh

Denver Pack

Alpha's Mate

Tey's White Wolf

Devon: The Beta's Double Trouble

Cloe: Two for the Bite of One

Reggie: A Wolf's Changing Heart

Blaine: A Wolf's Second Sight

Lacy: Seeing Double

Jordan's Misunderstanding

Trinity: Heart of the Shifters

Argus: Accepting the Challenge

Trace: Following His Destiny

Shea: The Last Hope

Chosen Wars

Cat’s Choice

Dante’s Dream’s

Taming of a White Wolf – Coming soon

Other books include:

Dangerous Series

Dangerous Trio

Dangerous Two

Dangerous Finale

Dangerous: Working Against the Clock

Dangerous: Off Limits

Dangerous Christmas

Dangerous: All Bark and No Bite

Cassidy Family Series

Playing With Zack

Killing Jared

Holiday Surprise

Drekinn Series

The Mating Call

Healing Cherri

Mob Moms’ Christmas

Reaching Rissa

New Series Coming in 2013

Cowboy Seal’s Elite

Co-Authoring Two New Series Coming in 2013

Meridian Warriors with Zach Collins

Shifter Justice with Bryce Evans

I would love to hear from you!

Website:
www.janaleighauthor.com

Excerpt from The Mating Call

The Drekinn Series Book One

by Jana Leigh

Chapter One

Calli knew she was going to die before her time, but still, when the time came, she was surprised. Having lived for more than one hundred and thirty years, Calli had seen and done a lot. Her wolf was clawing at her to fight, defend herself, but whatever they had given her knocked her out and made her weak. If she had even an ounce of her normal power, she would shift and kick these guys' asses. At least, she assumed they were men, because she could smell the stench of body odor and no respecting female shifter would not have put on her deodorant if she were going to plan an abduction.

She looked around trying to figure out where her friends had been taken. Rissa and Cherri were not going to be any happier than she was. They were down at the square when whoever it was took them. She could only hope the tracking system they put in her when she was hired all those years ago still worked. Calli shook her head; she knew it didn't work. The new tracking chip sat on her bathroom counter in the syringe that Rissa had given her. She was in charge of the program and finally convinced the higher-ups the first employees had the old version of the tracking chip. It only had a short-range and life span; the new one could reach anywhere in the world at any given time. It also would tell the computer operator if the agent was in distress,
like she was right now
.

The Drekinn Agency, where they all worked, was the only regulating agency in the world, and in the year 2554, it was important to keep up with technology. If she got out of here, Calli was going to have to inject the updated version of the tracker so the geeks who watched this shit on the computer could find them.

Things were changing fast. The shifters and magical people came out of the closet over thirty years ago, and still there were people who wanted to kill them. Calli had been kidnapped more times than she could count by radical humans, dumb ass mutant shifters, and your basic crazy assholes. The humans thought the shifters were trying to take over the world. Hell, if they wanted to they could. But as it was, they had more to worry about than the economy. The mutants, called the
Ulfer
, wanted free reign to do what they wanted. And the crazy assholes are just that. They thought if they could capture a shifter, they could get changed into a shifter. Not true.

The Drekinn Agency was founded in order to regulate the magical community. The misunderstandings from the humans had been huge. They thought they could just put garlic on their doors to keep them away, as well as the sale of silver and crosses had been enormous. At first, the Drekinn Agency promoted understanding and knowledge about the magical world. Now they were a governing entity among the world community. If someone in the magical community screwed up, had a grievance or generally needed help, they turned to Drekinn.

There were all different divisions of the Agency. Calli and her friends worked in the Enforcement section. They were high-ranking officials and were known throughout the community as serious badasses. But her childhood was what shaped her into what she was today.

As a child, she wanted desperately to show her friends her wolf, but she was told by her parents that it was a secret. Then as she grew she understood. Humans did not live as long as they did, they were scared of the paranormal, and the television shows she watched had shown werewolves and vampires as monsters. They could be cruel and vicious to things that were not the norm for them.

So she had to make it work for her. As she grew, she found that humans could be frightened easily. So although she couldn't act like she had superior strength or speed because she had to hide her true nature, she could still stand up for herself. She longed to join the teams that were made on the playground, but she couldn't, and because she acted like she was clumsy and awkward, she was teased. She loved to shift and howl at the moon outside of her nemesis, Judy Ann Baker's house. It freaked her out. She remembered the girl coming to school and telling anyone who would listen that she had a wolf in her back yard. Since they lived in New York City, that got her labeled a freak. Calli loved it.

That was where she met Cherri and Rissa, they had been best friends since childhood, through college three times, and then they joined the agency together. Of course to help the shifter community, but also they thought they could find some hot men working for the Enforcers. They had been right, but they were all assholes. For some reason, all the men thought she needed to be sitting by the phone waiting for their phone call after she screwed them.
In what world did they live in
? If Calli needed an itch scratched, that's what she did. Who gave a shit if they called her afterward? She'd already moved on.

They all lived in their posh penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Calli had three degrees, with one in biochemistry that seemed to help their bank accounts. Granted, Calli used her degree to create explosives to use in her job, but who was watching? Rissa had a degree in computer design; she made all their cool toys. And Cherri was the doctor, which came in handy in these situations. If they were together, her friend would have had the shot to flush whatever the hell they gave her out of her system.

Their families would be pissed right about now. Tonight was supposed to be her little brother's concert in the park. That's where they were going when someone snatched them off the street. She could almost feel her mother's disapproving look when she said she missed another family event because she had been kidnapped. Maybe if she did get killed, Calli would at least get a reprieve from her mother's disapproving stare. She hated her job and all that it entailed. In fact, all of their mothers hated their jobs; it was the daily phone call telling them that they were too smart to be in this line of work that clued them in.

Their mothers had become good friends just like the girls had, sometimes she didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse that she could call any of the older women and find out the gossip on the street. That was one thing they all agreed on, all of their parents had not moved at all since the magical community came out. Thank goodness they already lived in New York at the time in a small suburb called Bay Ridge.

It was a largely middle-class neighborhood. With its strong family presence, it wasn’t uncommon to see third or fourth-generation families living in the region. Until the early 1990s, Bay Ridge was a primarily Irish, Italian, and Norwegian neighborhood; the dragons usually were from this area. Today, Bay Ridge maintains a sizable Irish, Italian, and Greek population with many different shifters moving in. But like other areas in South/Southwest Brooklyn, late in the 20th century it saw an influx of Russians: the Bears and the Vampires. Bay Ridge had many international restaurants and bars, especially along 3rd and 5th Avenue, its main commercial strips. Many refer to the community as "Brooklyn's Gold Coast." This was where they grew up, and their families still resided. Only the girls had actually moved from the borough; their mothers were pissed. Now they tried to visit often enough to keep face. Also, their information was always good—the place was a beehive of gossip.

Now they had a system to hide from their mothers; they had them figured out. They tried to switch things up and call at different times to try to catch them, so they could get the daily lecture in about not having grandkids. But no matter how hard they tried, it was all still a pattern, and it surrounded when their fathers left the house. None of their fathers would dare tell them he was not proud of them. Hell, they were Enforcers for the largest agency for shifter regulation, and all of them had risen through the ranks to hold the title of Commander. What father wouldn't be a little proud of their daughters being able to kick men's asses on a regular basis? Cherri's father said it made him feel safer because his daughter could handle herself if a man got too fresh. After that comment, they were all sure their dads thought they were still virgins and began to act sweet when they were around so they didn't spoil the assumption. But their mothers knew and glared at them every opportunity they got for lying to their fathers.

But none of their siblings went into the agency. Just the three girls, so their mothers cut them a little slack. Calli thought it was because they secretly took credit for their jobs, telling their friends they taught them everything they knew. This was part true, because their mothers could be some mean bitches.

Calli strained her neck trying to see exactly where they were. No one was in the room with her; she had been half awake the last time someone had come into the room. But she had been too out of it to scent what they were. If she had to guess, she would say hyena. They were the only ones low enough to actually steal the three of them together. It had never been done before. They were proud of that record. Now she was going to have to suck it up and take the razzing she was going to get. Wait, she could be killed, and then they would all feel sorry for her.

"Hello?" Calli yelled as sweetly as she could, waiting to see if her friends were close, or if the assholes that kidnapped her were intelligent enough to see she was awake, come in here, and tell her what the hell was going on.

In the distance, she could hear her friends cussing. Cherri's voice came out the clearest as she screamed, "Muther fucking assholes, come back in here and show me what kind of men you really are. PUSSIES!"

Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the drug-induced coma. Calli wanted to laugh hysterically. If any of them got free, they were going to kill their captors, or seriously disfigure them.

"Cherri, shut the fuck up. Where the hell are we?" Calli yelled and waited while her friends, who were obviously together, argued.

"Cherri, seriously, answer her, you have got to stop the screeching," Rissa said calmly. Calli wanted to laugh, because out of all of them, Cherri was the most levelheaded, unless she was given drugs, it pissed her off since she was a doctor. She lectured them constantly on putting foreign chemicals in their bodies. Like caffeine, Calli had to have at least three cups of coffee in the morning as well as a shot of caffeine in the afternoon.
They didn't make it like they used to,
she thought. Coffee had been deemed bad for you; so therefore, the days where you could get a double shot of espresso were gone. Now when you ordered a cup of coffee, you were lucky if you got a slight nervous buzz from it.

So many things had changed over the years. When the
Breyting,
or magical community, came out of the closet, suddenly everything changed. Besides the fact that Central Park was overran with shifters running in the open, the humans thought they could control things. They just didn't realize that they had been around for a lot longer than humans. So they did what any normal race would do, they tried to fight them. That lasted for only a few years until the Drekinn Agency stepped forward and compromised. The damage was done though. Caffeine was labeled bad for shifters just because one stupid dragon had gone crazy on a caffeine buzz. Really, if anyone drank twelve cups of coffee to stay awake for a midterm, they would have reacted the same. But the college had not appreciated their classroom being torched just because the guy was jittery and misinterpreted the guy next to him handing him a test for an attack.

It was the little things that pissed off the humans. Calli heard a door open and swung towards the door. They may have her chained to the wall with silver, a big misconception by the way, but if she could get free, it wouldn't even leave a mark. Silver only drained the shifter's powers for a little while, it wouldn't kill them. No, the only way to kill a shifter was the normal way, a bullet through the head. And that was only if you were a good shot. Most shifters were too fast and could react, but they couldn't heal from a bullet to the brain. In other words, whoever took them had a purpose. One Calli didn't think she was going to like.

The door opened to the cell she was in and her heart sank a little. Yep, she was going to die. Calli hung her head and shook it in resignation. She could hear the murmur of voices outside the door.
Great
, when she was done with this asshole, she had to kill the others. The man was strangely proportioned with a large body and small arms, though his hands were huge. His long, greasy, unwashed hair added to his disgusting appearance. She totally would not fuck him, even if she was paid. His face was the ugliest thing she had seen in a long while, with brown, dirty teeth and a thin mouth.

"Seriously, you fuckers are gonna pay for this," Calli growled and then pulled against the chains. They had her chained against a wall, spread eagled, with her hands and feet bound and then chains crisscrossing her chest. Her feet weren’t even touching the ground, so she couldn't get any momentum to move.

The
Ulfer
were the red-headed step children of the shifter world. They had a following, yes, but most of them were bat-shit crazy shifters that needed to be put down. That was what Calli and her friends did, but in a nice way. They had never tortured and killed one of the
Ulfer
, no, they simply killed them quick. And in the new world, that wasn’t a crime.

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that, bitch. The
Bondi King
wants your head on a silver platter, and I'm the one who's gonna give it to him," the large hyena grinned.

The
Bondi King
was the leader of the
Ulfer
, and no one actually knew who he was; many had guesses, but as of yet, no one could pin it down. It was driving everyone in the agency crazy. The
Ulfer
had recently had a surge in membership. It made her boss wonder if the
Bondi King
had been replaced by a stronger shifter. One that was not afraid to be so bold and attack the humans and attempt to build their power.

A little-known fact the humans could not grasp, the
Breyting
were born. Anyone with even a small amount of magical blood in them could have a child who was
Breyting
. About ten years ago, some strange and crazy human doctor said he found the antidote to stop the
Breyting
from changing humans. All of them rushed to the doctors to get their shots, and all it did was give them a headache. The
Breyting
could not change a human, and rumors about biting and all that shit were just that, rumor. Calli and her friends always laughed when the subject of changing was brought up.