Keeping Secret

By Sierra Dean

"Something old, something blue, something deadly what else is new?"

It's a nice day for a white wedding. At least that's what Secret McQueen is hoping for, with her poofy-princess-dress marriage to a werewolf king looming closer and closer by the day. But as ever, nothing can be that easy for a vampire/werewolf hybrid for whom someone still harbors a death wish.

Summoned to the south by her werewolf uncle, who makes no bones about the fact her mate bond with Lucas doesn't pass muster, Secret learns her furry heritage looks more like a tangled vine than a family tree. Getting her royal uncle's blessing hinges on finding one of the missing twigs. Even with vampire sentry Holden Chancery at her side, she manages to land up to her neck in a swamp of trouble.

As an assassin's scope zeroes in, family dramas boil up and a fast-collapsing love square threatens to bury her alive, making it to the church on time could be the least of Secret's problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094440538

Sierra Dean

Sierra Dean is the kind of adult who forgot she was supposed to grow up. She spends most of her days making up stories, and most of her evenings watching baseball or playing video games. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada with two temperamental cats and one sweet tempered dog. When not building new worlds, she can be found making cupcakes and checking Twitter.

Book preview

Chapter One

Vampires can’t fly, but a grown man can if you throw him hard enough.

That was the hard truth vampire hunter Shane Hewitt learned when I chucked him off the top of the bleachers of the empty high school gym we were in. He bounced when he landed and slid with a squeal. I couldn’t tell if the sound was from him yowling in pain or from his face grinding on the polished hardwood.

I winced. Not very fitting of a deadly former assassin, but I felt a little bad. Shane had put up a good fight, but he was outmatched. I should have gone easier on him, but the fact of the matter was I wasn’t here to coddle him, I was here to help keep him alive. He clambered to his feet with all the grace of a geriatric elephant, moaning and groaning the whole time. When he was standing tallish again, I leapt from the top of the bleachers to the bottom row, landing steadily in my knee-high black-heeled boots.

Do you know how I was able to do that?

Next to me on the bleachers my human ward, Nolan Tate, timidly raised his hand. Nolan was about six feet tall and built like a college linebacker. Seeing him ask for permission to speak as though I were really a teacher was so endearing my heart swelled. Too bad my question was meant for Shane. I touched Nolan’s shoulder, and he put his hand down.

Because you’re a freak of nature? Shane growled.

I had to laugh because he was more spot-on than he realized. Shane thought I was a freak because it was unheard of for a Tribunal leader, one of the three most powerful members of the vampire council, to be personally helping a disrespected, no-rank, human bounty hunter. In reality, my freakishness ran much deeper. I was a vampire, sure, but that was only half the story. The other half was werewolf, making me one hell of an unnatural disaster.

Seeing as a mere handful of people knew about what I was—and Shane wasn’t one of them—I replied with, Close, but not the answer I was looking for.

Once upon a time I had been in Shane’s place. Lowest on the totem pole, getting zero respect from the council while they expected me to kill their rogues and obey their every whim. Since then I had become one of them, and now my own whims were those to be obeyed. It was sort of surreal what could come from beheading one bitchy blonde vampire.

Shane wiped a dribble of blood off his chin. If he wanted to live to see his thirty-third birthday, he was going to have to start listening to me more and sass-talking me less. I had a whole new appreciation of what a hardship it had been for my mentor, Francis Keats, to put up with me when I was a rash sixteen-year-old.

When Shane didn’t reply right away, Nolan shifted nervously beside me. He knew I had a notoriously short fuse and was even shorter on patience. Nolan seemed to appreciate my lessons, whereas Shane often acted as if he felt they were beneath him.

I cleared my throat and kept my voice calm like I had to in Tribunal sessions. Shane. Tell me why I was able to throw you.

Because you’re stronger than me, he admitted, staring at his scuffed motorcycle boots.

While it took cojones for him to say it, I had been hoping for a different response. No, that’s not the reason. Why was I able to throw you?

Nolan went to raise his hand again but appeared to think better of it and scratched his head as a halfhearted cover-up. My less-obliging student tromped over and sat beside me on the bleachers, rubbing his tender jaw.

I didn’t see the second swing coming.

That’s the first part of it, yes. What else? I sat down between Shane and Nolan, waiting for the former’s reply while the latter watched us in rapt silence. Nolan had been an incredible find in a bar full of would-be vampire hunters. He wasn’t much with the killer edge, but he had a survival instinct that was more finely tuned than anyone I’d ever met. I also loved him like a younger brother, and it made me especially protective of him.

I don’t know.

"Then you’re dead. Think, Shane. I’m not doing this to be cruel, trust me. If I wanted to be cruel, you wouldn’t have gotten up at all."

He stopped touching his face and took off his leather jacket. One of the studs had bitten into my hand when I punched him in the gut. I used to think the jacket was a prop to bolster his bad-boy image, but I was starting to see a defensive logic to it. Personally, I wore mine because it looked cool. Though recently it had taken an unfortunate swim with me, and the leather would never be the same.

Shane sighed a little too dramatically and cracked his knuckles. The fighting man’s thinking posture.

Th—

Just give me a minute, he grumbled as I tried to goad him into answering. Then—like the proverbial light bulb going off—his eyes widened, and I knew he’d figured it out. When I went to counter the blow, I leaned back. You took advantage of my shifted balance and used it to throw me.

I grinned at him. Bang.

But if he didn’t see the second swing coming, how could he have prevented the counter? Nolan asked.

That’s simple. My smile was loose and easy as I got to my feet and stood facing them. My fist darted out, and I stopped it a hairsbreadth away from Nolan’s nose. His eyes bugged, and I could feel his hot, quick breaths on my knuckles. "You have to always expect the second swing."

When I pulled my hand away, he let out a small sigh. The squeaky-wheeled hum of the janitor’s cleaning cart echoed down the hall outside. I offered one of my hands to each of the men, and they both accepted, allowing me to pull them to their feet. We used to panic when we heard the janitor’s cart, until we realized he wore headphones and kept the volume on his Rod Stewart cassette cranked to insane levels. Since then we took our time leaving when we heard him approaching the gymnasium.

Let’s call it a night, I suggested. Sometimes when we left the gym, we’d go for practice hunts in the park, taking advantage of the warmer evenings associated with early spring. We were all glad to be rid of winter’s icy shackles, but tonight I didn’t feel like hunting with the boys. The other two members of the Tribunal were beginning to suspect something was amiss with my evening activities, and I didn’t want to push my luck. I still had my freedom, and they hadn’t put me back under the watchful eye of the council’s lowly wardens. I wanted to keep it that way.

You can only tempt fate so often before she turns around and bites you in the ass.

Getting out of the gym was significantly easier than getting in. To enter, we had to scale a chain-link fence and I—being the one with supernatural dexterity—had to shimmy up a drainpipe to a high window. Afterwards I could unlock the back door and let the boys in. It was a shame they kept locking it on us every time we came because it would save me a heck of a climb if they’d leave it open.

When we were back outside, Shane and Nolan made for the fence. They were quick and agile enough for humans, but they weren’t fighting humans in the wild. They were fighting monsters like me. I waited until they were over then drove my point home by grabbing the chain link one-handed and swinging myself up to the top beam of the fence. Then, without pausing to balance, I kicked off from the metal bar and landed deftly between them.

Show off, Shane muttered.

Awesome, was Nolan’s counter.

I didn’t get a chance to put in my two cents because my phone started to vibrate in my pocket, and a moment later Billy Idol’s voice was snarling the lyrics to White Wedding.

Shit. I bounced the phone from one palm to the other, trying to make the stupid touch screen do what I wanted. It was shiny and new and stupidly expensive, and it made me miss the hell out of my old, basic flip phone. I’m late for my meeting with the fucking wedding planner.

Chapter Two

I was in hell.

In my twenty-three years, I had hunted vampires, chased errant fae and even decapitated a demon. But none of them could hold a candle to the horror I had to face tonight.

Kimberly.

Or Miss Kimberly Kaitlyn Carlyle, as she introduced herself to me the first time. Her wrist was jangly with gold Tiffany bangles, and her nails were fake gel talons that gave me a shudder when they brushed against my skin.

"I simply adore your sweater," she drawled, putting too much emphasis on her vowels and too much friendliness in her voice. She was lying.

I was wearing a sweater I’d pulled out of the back of my closet that had once belonged to my ex-boyfriend Gabriel Holbrook. It had holes in the sleeves and the yarn was pulling loose across the chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Three months earlier I’d watched Gabriel die, and it made it difficult to discard the earthly remnants of him.

But in this situation it helped me divine what kind of person Kimberly was, because the sweater was a piece of crap. Unless she thought I was wearing it in an ironically messy way, there was no way she would compliment for any reason other than sucking up.

Which—considering she was one of the highest paid wedding planners in New York—was exactly what she was trying to do. She wanted to please me because she wanted to make nice with the money. Not my money, since I didn’t have any to speak of, but the money associated with the man I was engaged to marry.

Lucas Rain. Billionaire, corporate head honcho, and the reason I had a massive, flawless diamond ring on my finger. A ring Kimberly kept sneaking glances at while she dangled her bracelets in my face.

Kimberly was one of those New York City girls who talked a lot but never really said anything.

Secret, she said, leaning close to me. We were both seated on plush divans in her too-bright, too-big, too-airy office. Her breath smelled like cinnamon chewing gum, and her nearness made me nervous and defensive. Where the hell was Lucas? He was fifteen minutes late, and I was ready to throttle him for leaving me alone with this woman. She said my name again, making the first e sound like a mosquito’s buzzing.

She had my attention.

What?

I said do you have a preference? Monique Lhuillier or Vera Wang?

The only thing I knew about wedding dresses was that they were all white, tight and probably impossible to kill someone in.

Unless that someone was Kimberly, in which case I’d find a way.

I don’t know, I admitted.

Well, we’ll schedule a trial at Kleinfeld. You might want something totally different. She laughed as if this were the funniest idea in the world. And you’ll want to have your mother there, I assume.

My ears felt hot, and I had my hand balled into a fist without meaning to. My mother… I let my fist fall open and dazzled her with the gleaming rock. She was like a kitten looking at a laser pointer. My mother is dead. This was a lie, but since she’d pretended to like my hideous sweater I figured my lie made us even. The truth about my mother was too ugly for Kimberly and her taffeta-drenched world.

It was too ugly for my world, and my full-time job was to police the goings-on of the entire vampire population of the East Coast. So…that was saying something.

Oh…goodness. Kimberly’s hand flew to her mouth, then her other darted out and held mine, fingers fumbling against the ring. I fought to not wince. I’m so sorry.

I started to say, I’m not, but that was the moment Lucas chose to waltz through the office door in his perfect Armani suit trailing a cloud of apologies behind him. Lucas was the kind of man you wanted to forgive for anything the instant you laid eyes on him. Six foot two and well muscled, he had the blond hair and blue eyes of a corn-fed, all-American, football type. His smile showed off beautiful, even teeth and made a glimmer shine in his eyes brighter than the light off my diamond.

My breath hitched.

This was the man I was going to marry.

He stooped low and planted a kiss on the crown of my head, making tingles radiate down my spine and setting off a chain reaction of tremors that ended low in my pelvis. Kimberly practically fell over me to offer him her hand. Politely, he dusted a kiss over her knuckles and gave her a puckish, panty-melting grin.

So sorry I’m late, ladies. Business. He shrugged one shoulder then sat next to me on my divan.

Lucas was larger than life. His personality overwhelmed everyone around him—myself included—and suddenly the seat felt too small.

This was what it was like to be dwarfed by the werewolf king of the East. Even humans like Kimberly who knew nothing about our world respected the authority he threw off in waves. She probably assumed it was the power of wealth that made him so indomitable. It wasn’t. He was royalty.

And soon I would be too.

My mouth felt dry, like I’d swallowed a shot of sand.

Lucas sensed my unease and took one of my hands in his, squeezing gently. Once upon a time being this close to him would have filled my mouth with a burst of cinnamon. Now, with our mate bond sealed, the connection was deeper, but the comforting flavor was gone. The only cinnamon in the room was the strong waft of it coming from Kimberly’s mouth as she caught Lucas up on what he’d missed.

Well, Miss McQueen, she said, switching to an unnatural-sounding formal address, then she caught herself doing it and giggled. Oh goodness, I guess pretty soon you won’t be hearing that anymore.

I wrinkled my nose and stared at her as though she were a duck who had learned to knit. Why the hell not?

Her attention darted back and forth between me and Lucas, and I knew she wasn’t sure where she’d made the mistake. I just meant…with you getting married…well, your name would be—

I waved a hand at her, trying to erase the 1950s logic she was trying to weave into sensible reasoning. Sure, I’d wear a white dress. I’d force my scant collection of girlfriends to dress up in matching gowns and fawn over me while eyeing Lucas’s groomsmen for prospects. But I would be damned if she thought I’d be changing my last name.

Kimberly, I cut her off. "I appreciate that Lucas’s name has a lot of heft in the financial world and in…other arenas. However, my name is ridiculous enough as it is. If I changed it to Secret Rain, people would assume I was a stripper. Or a yacht."

I figured Lucas would chide me for my impropriety. He was a big fan of pointing out how I always chose the most inopportune times to be snarky. However, in this case, he attempted to fight off his laughter, and it ended up bubbling out as a loud snort.

Kimberly looked appalled, but her veneer restored quickly, and she was back in ass-kissing mode in no time. A true professional. The first rule of being a New York City wedding planner—do everything your client wants, and never ask them why they want it. Never ask. Never correct. Especially if your client is worth over a billion dollars and has insisted you spare no expense in planning his big day in less than a month.

The average bride spends over a year planning her wedding.

Well, let’s be honest, the average woman starts planning her wedding the day she learns what one is. The actual bridal planning, however, cannot begin until the ring is firmly on finger and the husband-to-be has made the big commitment.

I was not an average bride.

Lucas’s proposal, though it had been a grand and romantic public gesture, hadn’t been made because he was crazy in love with me. He could profess his love all he wanted, but we both knew the truth. The werewolf king had proposed because having a queen would solidify his throne. Bonus points if his new queen happened to be from royal werewolf lineage.

That’s where I came in. Southern werewolf princess, bonded soul mate, and the on-paper perfect queen. On-paper being the operative term. Lucas had come to realize over the last year I wasn’t at all the perfect-princess type, and it had started to wear on our relationship. It didn’t help that I was also soul-bonded to another werewolf, Lucas’s lieutenant Desmond Alvarez.

And it certainly didn’t help that I loved Desmond more than I loved Lucas.

Yet here we were. There was a massive diamond on my finger and a wedding planner with dollar signs in her eyes waiting to yield to my every wedding whim.

Lucas took my hand and kissed it, his lips lingering a few seconds too long as he looked up at me and winked, which sent another thrill down to my toes. Love was such a complicated bitch, more so when the supernatural got thrown into the mix. On a logical level, I knew Lucas was wrong for me. On a metaphysical level, though, a part of me needed him as much as I needed oxygen. Now that our mate bond was complete, we were connected on a level that defied explanation.

I knew he needed this from me, and I couldn’t deny him something as simple as a wedding.

Let’s talk about bridesmaid dresses, I said, giving Kimberly my most saccharine smile.

Chapter Three

Two hours later Lucas and I had selected our wedding colors—sunflower yellow and cobalt blue—we’d named our attendants, picked an invitation and the venue was finalized. In three weeks we would become Mr. and Mrs. in the ballroom of Lucas’s own Columbia hotel, with a dazzling reception to follow across the street in Bryant Park. Not since it had been the home of Fashion Week would the park see such a display.

My stomach hurt from spending so much time debating the difference between ivory tablecloths and snowflake white. I was eternally grateful for Lucas’s presence when the question of table runners and low versus high centerpieces came up. He’d grown up in a family who had money to burn and had watched these types of events take place his entire life. He knew what our wealthy guests would expect better than I did.

In the end there was only one point I stuck my ground on with Hurricane Kimberly. She was adamant about a white rose and lily bouquet being the way to go. I wanted yellow gerbera daisies. She claimed gerberas were out of the question. They were too pedestrian, too simple. I wouldn’t yield. It was gerberas or it was a different wedding planner.

I won that particular battle, and my pedestrian bouquet was granted.

It wasn’t until we reached the parking lot that I realized I was clutching a big Tiffany-blue binder with the words Bridal Bible embossed on the cover. Inside were swatches of fabrics, sketches of the way Kimberly envisioned the ceremony and reception sites, and brochures for photographers. I think she’d given us homework, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember anything she had said in the last twenty minutes.

Placing the binder on the hood of my yellow BMW Z4, I dug through my pockets in search of my keys, trying my best to not face Lucas.

Go ahead and say it, he said.

Say what?

Whatever it is that’s making you so quiet. I know you’ve got a whole speech stored up about Kimmy at the very least.

"Kimmy? I could no longer face away. I turned so he could get the full effect of my stunned expression. Since when are we on a nickname basis with Our Lady of Tulle and Buttercream?"

He smirked. I had to give him credit for that. In the year we’d known each other he had come a long way in accepting my little foibles. Specifically my penchant for sarcastic outbursts. He answered my question as if I’d asked it in a completely rational manner. The Carlyle family are old friends of my parents. Kimmy…Kimberly used to babysit Kellen from time to time. She’s a few years younger than Des and me. I hired her because I knew it’s what my parents would have wanted.

I suppressed the urge to make a face. His logic was sound, and since his parents were both dead, it was difficult for me to question what they would or wouldn’t have wanted.

Fine. I found my keys and unlocked the car, chucking the blue binder carelessly into the backseat. Why are we going through all this?

The big wedding, you mean?

Yeah. Wouldn’t eloping be easier?

"Most women can’t wait to hear the words spare no expense when it comes to planning their wedding, Secret."

"But I don’t care. I don’t care if we serve Moët or Cristal. I don’t care if the girls have Romona Keveza dresses or if I have a frigging diamond tiara. None of this is me."

He crossed the distance between us, and given his height advantage, I had to look up to see his eyes. With one hand on each of my shoulders, he bent down and gave me a gentle, sweet kiss on the lips. I licked the lower curve of his mouth, hoping for a lingering taste of cinnamon, but tasted nothing there other than the faint salt of his skin. I kissed him back anyway, wrapping my hands around his wrists and letting my tongue explore the bumpy ridges on the roof of his mouth before capturing his lip between my teeth and giving it a playful nip.

I know you don’t want the big show. He kissed my nose, then my forehead, and last but not least, each of my closed eyelids. I know you’re being incredibly patient about this. Or as patient as you can be. I didn’t miss his little jab. And if there was any other way to do this, I promise you we would be doing it, but there isn’t any other way.

No courthouse steps? A quickie trip to Vegas? I smiled hopefully.

It needs to be big. Nothing can be overlooked. News of it has to spread to all the other kingdoms, and they need to see that we are really, truly united. Once that happens, I think we can finally be at peace.

He was dreaming. For the past several months some of the Alphas of the smaller packs in Lucas’s territory were showing signs of unrest. There were rumors circulating of packs attempting to leave the protection of the East and seek the leadership of the South. My uncle, Callum McQueen, King of the Southern packs, swore he had no part in it, but it was hard to imagine small packs making such a

Reviews for Keeping Secret

[blodeuedd_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

awesome series

[bookaholiccat · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

WOW! Great book.