An Alpha in a Pear Tree Read online

  An Alpha in a Pear Tree

  Copyright © 2019 Casey Morgan; All Rights Reserved.

  12 Shifters of Christmas Book 1

  I write super steamy shifter paranormal romance and urban fantasy reverse harem romance. My goal is to fulfill all your fantasies at once!

  Click here to see the rest of my books! Love, Casey.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Marilyn

  Chapter Two

  Marilyn

  Chapter Three

  Marilyn

  Chapter Four

  Melchior

  Chapter Five

  Melchior

  Chapter Six

  Melchior

  Chapter Seven

  Marilyn

  Chapter Eight

  Marilyn

  Chapter Nine

  Marilyn

  Chapter Ten

  Marilyn

  Chapter Eleven

  Melchior

  Chapter Twelve

  Marilyn

  Chapter Thirteen

  Melchior

  Chapter Fourteen

  Marilyn

  Sneak Peek of The Spell of Three

  Chapter One

  Marilyn

  I won’t ever forget the day I found out my aunt died. Because it was also the day I thought I was finally going to lose my virginity.

  For a long time, I envisioned giving my virginity to someone special, someone who would know exactly what he was doing and treat me nice and all that other crap most girls dream of having for their very first time. But after a while, I decided to settle on giving it to whoever wanted it, because it almost felt like an anchor I was dragging along with me.

  My friends at school had long lost their virginity and teased me about still having mine. I had managed to keep it all throughout high school and now that I had started college, I was sick of it.

  Or maybe I was just sick of everything about college life in general.

  I’d never had the best social skills, especially when it came to guys. That was rather an understatement- I was an awkward mess when it came to guys.

  So, when Charles Stubb asked me out, I’d said yes. He was known for being a player, so I figured he’d know what he was doing, at least.

  He was also known for being a douchey jerk, but I didn’t really care. In fact, I kind of thought of it as a benefit. Because I figured it would help decrease my chances of getting emotionally attached to the guy who took my virginity. I was looking for more of a “one and done” type situation, ideally, but in practice, I didn’t trust my heart to stay out of it.

  I tended to get overly attached to the few people in my life I let myself get close to. So, this was going to be one of those “Operation: Do Not Get Close to This Person” type of missions.

  You know, the kind that everyone aims for.

  Or maybe it’s just me.

  It turned out that by asking me out, Charles had meant inviting himself over to my dorm room to fuck. It wasn’t exactly the romantic date I used to envision happening before having sex for my very first time, but by that point, in case I haven’t been clear, I wasn’t being incredibly picky, to say the least.

  I heard a knock on my door at the time that Charles had told me he was going to drop by to “hook up,” as he had put it. I was rather surprised, and a little impressed, although I told myself not to be, that he was on time.

  Taking a deep breath and ignoring my inner voice that told me that this was all a horrible idea and that there was still time to back out while I could, I opened the door, with a big, fake smile on my face, although I was thinking, let’s skip the formalities and get down to what we both know you came here for, and I’m pretty sure that Charles was thinking that, too.

  I was wearing the sexiest get-up I could think of: a mini skirt and an Oxford shirt, partially unbuttoned on top, in what I hoped looked to be a purposefully accidental way, like, “Oops, I forgot to button a few buttons and now my big boobs happen to be showing some of their cleavage.”

  I’d dealt with some extra pounds ever since I hit puberty, and let’s just say that the freshman fifteen that everyone says you’ll put on in college had fulfilled every inch — or should I say pound — of their promise when it came to me. The one benefit I seemed to get out of being a bigger girl was having big boobs, so I decided to flaunt them.

  I’d tried to get myself ready in more ways than just in the whole fashion arena. I’d taken a long bath, rubbing my clit while thinking about a strong, handsome alpha male who would carry me upstairs, lay me down on the bed, and ravage me.

  He’d take special care to play with my pussy and then lick my clit, his tongue circling all around, his lips sucking on it until I came, begging him for his big cock.

  Then he’d be gentle and sweet as he took me for my first time. He’d press the head of his cock on my pussy while he played with my nipple and kissed my neck.

  When he pressed it in, he’d hold me tightly and ask me how it felt. I’d tell him it felt good, and he’d keep going in, until he was filling me full of him and I was having sex for my very first time.

  I’d reach my hips up higher, letting him get completely inside me, moaning a bit and thanking him for making me feel so good. He’d tell me it was his pleasure and that he knew it would feel good, but he hadn’t been expecting it to feel this good.

  Then, we’d cum together, calling out each other’s names as he filled me up with the cum that was shooting out of his cock as it pulsed and throbbed inside me. (This being fantasy, I needn’t worry about things like unintended pregnancies or STDs and all the other stuff my over-protective father had always warned me about.)

  I knew that real life wasn’t going to be anything like that — and not just due to the need to use a condom. But at least I’d made myself cum, something I had gotten quite used to during all these years without having sex, but that still could take me a while sometimes, and I was feeling ready for Charles to have his way with me.

  It was Charles at the door, alright, there was also someone right behind him. Peering around behind his head, I was able to see that it was Shelly, the nosy Resident Assistant for my dorm’s floor.

  Great.

  “Hi, Marilyn,” she said, sticking her nose through the door after I’d pulled Charles in through it, but before I’d had time to close it on her. “We’re not going to break any dorm room rules today, are we?”

  I knew she was talking about not having guys in the room with the door closed. It was an old-fashioned rule that the college maintained in theory — enough to put on the website and make my dad happy about, anyway — but rarely in practice, with all of my friends having had plenty of sex in their dorms, with the door tightly closed.

  Of course, though, I had to get stuck with Miss Rule Enforcer Shelly as my RA, and she was acting like she was training for some sort of elite police force.

  “No, we’re not,” I told her, as if she was a parent of mine, instead of an overly zealous peer who was trying to fulfill all of her RA duties to collect whatever kind of work study paycheck I assumed came with that role, or else I had no idea who would voluntarily want to do it. “Charles and I just need to study for our Physics final.”

  “That’s good,” she said, with a pert smile on her face. “Oh, and this came in the mail for you.”

  She handed me an envelope that was red and embossed with gold letters. Just like the ones my aunt always sent me.

  Shelly seemed to be peering at it as closely as I was, and she was starting to say, “It looks like it says it’s from a Miss
Marla Bitting-”

  “I’ve got it,” I said, before she could finish, taking it from her hands just as quickly.

  I was annoyed that she always checked my mail and brought it to me. There was a community mailbox at the end of our floor, and she was supposed to let us get our mail out of it ourselves. But she had a key to everyone’s box, in order to check for contraband like drugs or porn magazines our friends from more liberal colleges might send us, and she abused the privilege quite heavily, because she was a nosy busybody.

  “Okay, just trying to help,” she said, and I almost felt sorry for her – almost.

  Maybe she was a nosy RA because she didn’t have any friends. But that still didn’t give her the right to check my mail, I reminded myself. (I have the tendency to be too nice sometimes, so I have to remind myself of things like this or else I become a doormat.)

  She walked back down the hallway and I quickly shut the door.

  Now I wasn’t even very interested in the quest to lose my virginity with which I had been formerly obsessed. And I certainly didn’t care about losing it to this douchebag standing in my dorm room.

  A letter from the aunt I had never met – or, at least, couldn’t remember ever meeting – but with whom I secretly corresponded since I was a young girl always took priority over everything else.

  Chapter Two

  Marilyn

  “What a narc,” Charles said about Shelly, as I was staring at the envelope that had come from my aunt.

  Or, maybe not from my aunt.

  Something was wrong.

  I could just feel it.

  My address was not written in my Aunt Marla’s normal handwriting.

  It was true that the envelope was the same shape and size and color as the ones she always sent. It even had the same stamp she always used, which featured a pear tree, and which I always thought was fitting since she lived in a forest far away.

  Her actual address was Bethel Forest, believe it or not.

  And, of course, it was addressed to me, and it had had her name— Marla Bittinger, as Shelly had so proudly started to pronounce— and address in the return address portion of the envelope.

  But she always handwrote my address in her gorgeous penmanship. I had once complimented her on it in one of my letters to her, and she had written me back saying that she had taken calligraphy courses in high school and prided herself on her perfect handwriting. She said it was one of her best memories from her youth.

  I guess my aunt acted older than she was, because that seemed like something a grandma would say, not an aunt. I had always wondered why such a silly thing like penmanship meant so much to her, but apparently it did, for some strange reason.

  And the handwriting on this envelope was not gorgeous at all. It looked choppy and scribbled, and way more masculine than feminine. As if a man had written it.

  Or almost as if a man had clawed the words on the envelope with his nails.

  But I guess guys rarely had good handwriting, compared to girls.

  I was running my hand over the envelope, trying to figure out why it could be so different than normal, when Charles made a sound of disgust, his impatience causing him to nearly growl.

  “Are we fucking or what?” he asked me, grabbing me by placing his hand around my waist and bringing me in to him.

  “Hold on a sec,” I told him, shooing his arm off of me.

  “Excuse me, Miss High and Mighty,” he said, heading over to the mini fridge in the corner of my dorm room and then pulling its door open.

  My dad had insisted I go to a school with only female dorm rooms – and RAs like Sally who were supposed to make sure they stayed that way – rather than one with co-ed dorms. The only benefit to this lame drawback was that the tuition at this school was higher and the rooms were therefore a bit bigger.

  Charles looked at the meager contents in the fridge before removing one of my few beer bottles and opening it without asking.

  I had a fake ID, so it wouldn’t be hard to get more, technically speaking, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of money, my dad seeing to that when I left home without his blessing. Yes, he had been happy I’d chosen to go to this rather conservative college — not out of choice so much as necessity, as it was the only one he would pay for — but, still, we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, to say the very least.

  “But I thought I was doing you a favor here,” Charles continued, after he’d taken a big swig of my beer. “Deflowering the campus virgin and all.”

  My cheeks flushed but I didn’t have time to worry about how he’d found out I was a virgin. I certainly hadn’t told him, but I guess word spread like wildfire, so one of the few “friends” I’d managed to make here so far, to whom I’d confided my secret after one too many wine coolers during freshman orientation, must have told someone who told someone else who told Charles.

  No wonder he’d asked me out.

  Or, should I say, no wonder he’d invited himself over to hook up.

  I tore open the envelope, although usually I save them. I had a box of them in my room, and I always folded up all the letters or cards after I read them and put them back in the envelope before placing them in the box. They had never been disturbed, other than that one time by my dad, which had nearly ended in disaster.

  Now, though, I knew this envelope wasn’t even worth saving because it hadn’t been sent by my aunt. I was sure of this, not only from seeing the different handwriting with my own eyes, but also due to some kind of premonition I felt in my gut.

  I refused to believe any logical explanations my mind came up with — someone had been running errands for my aunt and she’d asked them to address it on their way to the post office; her hand was sore from knitting too many baby gowns and she’d asked a friend to help her out — even though they were all very plausible, since she was very pregnant.

  My instincts — or something even stronger than instinct; more like something overpowering that overtook me in a way I’d never felt before — told me that the letter wasn’t from her and that I’d never see another letter from her again.

  There were butterflies doing summersaults that tied them in knots and caused them to land like rocks in my stomach as I started reading the letter.

  Dear Marilyn,

  I know that your Aunt Marla wrote you frequently. I thought you deserved to know that she passed away during childbirth.

  She had a baby girl, your cousin, who is alive but needs your help. As we all do. Therefore, my reasons for writing you aren’t entirely altruistic, but rather at least a bit self-serving.

  Please forgive me for the intrusion and for the inconvenience this will cause on your life — or even the entire upheaval of it that it may cause — but it’s imperative that I ask you to please come home.

  Follow the North Star and if you get lost, look for the partridges. You’ll find me in a pear tree, and I’ll do my best to be your guide from there, but you’re the only one who can save us.

  Love Melchior

  I stared at the strange writing, clearly sent by a stranger. I had never heard of anyone named Melchior and I was sure I would remember that odd name if I had met someone who had it.

  I had no idea what was going on, other than the fact that the aunt I had met when I was too little to remember, with whom I had exchanged correspondence with ever since then, but with whom I had never been able to reunite, was dead.

  And that she had had her baby and that baby needed me. Apparently so did a bunch of other people in Bethel Forest, but my focus was on the baby.

  Therefore, I had to go.

  The force that had been taking over me was making me feel like running to the forest as fast as I could. I knew it was a crazy idea, but I couldn’t ignore it. Plus, it beat letting this asshole steal my cherry on top of stealing my beer.

  Chapter Three

  Marilyn

  “Who the fuck is Melchior?” Charles demanded, having sauntered back over to me, his beer in his hand, and without bothe
ring to have asked if I wanted one. “What kind of weird-ass name is that?”

  “I have no idea,” I told him, honestly, although I was annoyed at his questions, which were starting to sound as intrusive as Shelly’s had.

  At least Shelly had had a job to do and was trying to do it in her own overly eager and nosy way. Charles was just an asshole with no excuse for his boorishness.

  “He says your aunt died,” he remarked.

  I thought No shit, sherlock.

  But I just said “Yep.”

  Then I went over to the fridge and helped myself to a beer, to try to calm myself down. I still felt that same feeling of an overwhelming power or energy coming over me, driving me to hurry up and go help Aunt Marla’s baby like this Melchior guy said I should.

  I still couldn’t believe I was supposed to help all of them.

  Whatever that meant.

  I should just ignore the letter but I couldn’t. I knew it made no sense. I didn’t even know this crazy Melchior guy. He could be making all of this stuff up. It could be some kind of trap.

  I knew that that whole side of my family was shrouded in mystery and danger and that I was supposed to stay away from them. But I couldn’t help it. I had never been able to help it or to stop myself.

  I had always been curious about it but had never been directly invited to explore that world, even from my aunt, who had always said she wanted to meet me but that it wasn’t safe for me to come visit her. She often talked about coming to visit me, after she had the baby, so that I could meet not just her but also my cousin, but she hadn’t had the baby yet so it hadn’t happened, and apparently, now, it never would.

  So, I felt very drawn to following the instructions in the strange letter from the stranger with the strange name.

  If I couldn’t meet my aunt, then at least I could meet my baby cousin. I knew she would have been happy to have that happen, even if she couldn’t be there to see it.