Mistletoe Magick: Fated Mates, #2.5

By Rexi Lake

Jake Bennett is an Omega, a shifter with the ability to heal emotional wounds. He's also a rare Delta, with the ability to pull on his brothers' energies to boost his own. For months, Jake has been using his Goddess-blessed gifts to help the clans. The grief and pain, the fear, that's been plaguing the shifter community has been overwhelming on a scale even he can't fully alleviate.  

 

Rachel Renee, a rising songstress in Boulder, travels to Serenity Springs to visit her grandparents for Christmas. She hasn't visited their home in the mountain town since they settled there a few years earlier. But with the tragedies the shifter community has faced, she can't stay away. Not when she's an Omega with the power to spread healing with her voice.

 

With the holidays approaching, there's a determination in the maternals to bring cheer to the clans and lift the spirits of their community at large with a gathering. Rachel is ready to step in and help, but she gets more than she bargained for when her first practice session turns into a mating! 

 

Sparks fly bright and fast when Jake and Rachel come together. There's more than the magick of finding each other at play though. Jake has a secret that could change everything. And Rachel's got a heritage that might be more than either of them can handle. Is their mating Goddess-blessed or Fates-cursed? 

 

Only time will tell.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rexi Lake
• Release date: Jan 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393160021

Rexi Lake

Rexi Lake has been writing stories in her head for as long as she can remember. Her goal was always to write in the genre she loved - romance. She has always believed in the reality of true love, and that the world could use more happily ever afters. She currently lives in southwest Pennsylvania. When she's not hard at work on the next book, she's busy being an accountant, learning guitar, making jewelry, and chauffeuring her socially active daughter to her various activities.

Book preview

Imagi

History erased them from human memory, but not all humans forgot. Fear of those whose differences are vast has never abated. Those who know the tales and the truth as they’ve been taught are no longer hiding in the shadows.

The Colorado shifter clans have been targeted and their people attacked and left for dead. As they mourn the loss of their children, they find strength in the new allies and friends they have made. Now they are preparing for a war they never wanted to happen.

In the midst of the approaching holidays, the snowy mountain town of Serenity Springs is growing darker. But perhaps, there’s a little more magick in the mountains to bring some holiday cheer to the town that desperately needs to be reminded of the beauty of life even in - especially in - the face of death.

The opposite of evil isn’t good; it’s love. And that is the gift the goddess gave to the shifters. A true and unyielding love that would surmount the insurmountable, breach the unbreachable, and save the unsaveable.

Imagi Creation Story

(As Recorded by Minerva Gale, Lion Clan Historian)

WHEN THE WORLD WAS newly formed, and the gods were at the peak of their power, there was a contest to create the best, most devoted, subjects. From Jupiter came the humans, a race of beings capable of free thought and made in the image of the god himself. With Juno as the sole judge, he was assured victory. The others were more creative, and their races were collectively called the Imagi for the imaginative use of magick and life that came together.

From Neptune came the merfolk, beings that crossed the divide between human and sea creature. They were carefree and enjoyed frolicking more than anything. From Pluto came the demons, creatures who lurked in the shadows of the night, obeying their master’s commands and driving their victims into the mouth of hell itself.

From Venus came the shifters, beings whose physical form reflected the duality of man and beast and whose hearts were divided. Only when the two halves found each other could they be made whole. The resulting love formed by the joining of their souls was greater than any other being could fathom.

Minerva was the smartest, and drew together the goddesses Ceres, Vesta, and Diana to assist her with creating the fae. These beings were wise, thoughtful, skilled, and filled with the magick of the elements. It would have been a battle between her team and Jupiter to claim victory. But then the final, most destructive beings were made and ended the contest before it could reach a conclusion.

From Mars came the vampires, creatures capable of great strength, cunning, and the perfect fighters. Vicious, with little thought but for victory, their thirst for blood was legendary as they cut swaths across continents. In retaliation for the massive destruction to other races, Jupiter cast down upon them a curse. They would forever remember their destruction and the cries of their helpless victims. They would require the lifeblood of a willing host to survive. And they would never again see the light of day. Their only hope of breaking the curse would come at a great price. A sacrifice that would forever change the world would be their saving grace.

With the vampires safely contained, the rest of the beings thrived and flourished on the world created for them. But the humans slowly became dissatisfied with their lack of magick. All the other races were gifted in ways that went beyond anything humans could accomplish. As the world grew and changed, and new religions and ways of living emerged, the resentment simmered beneath the surface. Small battles were waged and the world shook as the skirmishes became bloodier.

The demons disappeared into the underworld, recalled by their master to serve only in his domain. The merfolk dove into the deep, emerging rarely and only in the middle of the blue waves, never near land. But the rest of the Imagi tried to live peacefully in their own communities, minimizing their contact with humans whenever possible. But it was for naught. The fear and anger that had simmered in the humans require the smallest spark to ignite into a targeted genocide of their races.

In 284 CE, Diocletian became emperor of Rome. In response to his claim of the throne, a nobleman, seeking elevation in status, offered his daughter’s hand in marriage. Aurelia was considered blessed by Venus herself. Beautiful and ethereal, she was much sought after. The emperor accepted the offer, but before he could claim his bride, she mated a lion shifter.

Mates were held in higher status than any human agreement or relationship. Mating was dictated by the gods and goddesses, or so it was believed. Infuriated, Diocletian gathered his best armies and went on a five year campaign through the eastern half of his empire. He slaughtered thousands, claiming victories over barbarian tribes while seeking vengeance against the Imagi.

As the battles waged against the Imagi grew more turbulent and their numbers diminished, they sought a way to hide from the humans bent on annihilating their races. The fae, in their search for a solution, found one that required a level of magick that was nearly impossible given their dwindling numbers.

A young vampire stepped forward, offering the only thing she could think of to increase their power and allow the spell to take place. She offered her life. And with her sacrifice, the vampires’ curse was lifted. They could again walk in the sun just as they were condemned to hide in the shadows.

For more than eight hundred years, the spell cast to hide the Imagi held strong. They built their own towns in the spaces between human settlements, the strong wards hiding them from anyone who ventured too close. They grew to depend on each other and formed their own rules and hierarchies within the communities they established.

When the Black Plague washed across the lands, leaving pockets of mass chaos and death in its wake, the Imagi were not immune to the epidemic. The disease didn’t take their lives, it took something much worse - the glamour hiding them from human eyes died, leaving them once again visible and potentially at the mercy of humans still seeking their eradication.

With every caution possible, the Imagi rejoined their communities with the human ones. The disease that had decimated the land left behind a chaos that took decades to recover from and longer to rebuild. As the years passed and the need to hide faded into history, the Imagi became as integrated with the humans as possible. Keeping their magick a secret was harder as civilizations overtook the once open spaces and the fae were called on to create spaces for the shifters to allow their beasts free reign. Sanctuaries were set up on every continent, in most countries, where they could drop their human-ness and allow their true spirits to simply be. Vampires and fae used the spaces as well, finding solace in their time without worrying about human eyes.

As years turned to decades, and decades lengthened to a hundred years, then two hundred, and so forth, the spaces grew smaller. Vampires found their own ways in the human world, while the fae seemed to disappear completely. Shifters, or course, still thrive in the wilder areas that have not been overrun with manmade things. The sanctuaries - preservations and national parks - still allow shifters the freedom to shed their human skin and let the wildness inside them run free.

Chapter One

R achel Renee is here with me today to talk about her latest Christmas single that dropped just a few days ago. We’ve all heard the song before, but Rachel’s voice adds a sweet mountain twang to the classic ‘Jingle Bells’ that we all know and love.

Rachel smiled at the warm welcome of the on-air personality of Maverick Jones. The man was one of the top local station celebrities in Boulder who spoke to more famous singers than she. But, because of her own local-ness and sudden rise in popularity, she’d been invited to hop on air for a live interview.

Thank you, Maverick, for having me here with you. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here and to have my new single out for the holidays. Her soft voice had that mountain twang he talked about in it. She’d tried to lose it at one point, but it wasn’t going anywhere. She’d grown up in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and while she’d left that small town of Gracious behind her, she was still very much a country mountain girl.

"It’s