Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) Read Free Page A

coyote - they had nothing to fear from girls who could See the future, someone’s thoughts, or whatever their particular power might be. But Charlie knew you didn’t have to grow fangs and claws to tear a person apart. As far as he was concerned, anyone who wasn’t aligned with the Alpha Pack was an enemy.
    Which unfortunately meant he had a lot of enemies.
    There was some commotion to Charlie’s right, and he turned to meet a pair of eyes the exact same shade of green as his own.
    “I see news of my beauty has traveled far and wide,” Jase Donovan, Charlie’s cousin and closet friend, said. “You think we might have to build onto the barn to accommodate my ever-expanding fan club?”
    The Alpha’s farm sat on 1800 acres, 800 of which were wooded. The main house had three floors and eight bedrooms. Four other small houses also sat on the property, which meant the majority of the American-based Alpha Pack could cohabitate without having to invest in bunk beds. And then there were the barns. Charlie grew up in western Kentucky where barns were small affairs that either housed a tractor and its various accessories and maybe some hay, or they were a place where you strung up tobacco leaves and smoked them before taking them to market. If western Kentucky barns were a pick-up truck, then central Kentucky barns were stretched limos. Their property housed twenty different barns. A handful of those were actually old tobacco barns, but most were either six or ten stall horse barns, and a few of them boasted places for humans as well as horses to sleep. But the biggest barn, the farm’s crowning glory, was a 2700 square foot building with a vaulted ceiling and hand-carved stone covering the exterior. It didn’t look so much like a barn as it did a cathedral, which is why it now served as the location of the Alpha Pack’s summer hustings, a time when any Shifter or Seer could seek audience with the Alphas.
    The barn currently held over two hundred people.
    “Surely to God we won’t have this many people every time,” Charlie said. This wasn’t even the first hustings they’d held since the new Alphas came into power over a year ago. The other two had attracted even larger audiences. “You can only gawk at Scout so many times before it either gets old or she stabs you in the eye.”
    Talley Matthews, who was sitting on the other side of Jase, looked up from her Tablet. “Who is stabbing what?”
    “You,” Jase said, grabbing her hand and placing it on his chest. “You’re stabbing my heart with tiny arrows from Cupid’s bow.”
    Talley’s blue eyes slid back to her device. “Nice try, but you’re still not forgiven.”
    Since Jase and Talley were disgustingly in love and Talley was generally acknowledged as overly kind and forgiving, Jase had to have done something rather remarkable.
    “You know, I got hit in the head during my workout yesterday. Hard. Hard enough to cause brain damage.”
    “You don’t have brain damage,” Talley said to her mate, flicking her finger across the screen of her device. “You just forgot.”
    “I didn’t forget. I just failed to remember.”
    Talley frowned, but even Charlie could tell it was just an attempt to keep from smiling. “That’s the same thing.”
    “Did you forget your mating ceremony anniversary?” Charlie guessed, knowing the two had completed the ritual that bound their lives together forever and always as mates last August.
    “I got a dozen roses, a two pound box of chocolates, and a necklace,” Talley said, fingering what appeared to be a ruby surrounded by a bunch of diamonds.
    “Pick that up at Wal-Mart, Jase?”
    “Tiffany’s, actually. The store. Not Tiffany, the crazy lady with all the cats who used to live next to Gramma. Did you know they actually put their stuff in little blue boxes? I thought that was just in the movies or something, but it’s true.”
    “Good to know you went for low-key and subtle.”
    “Well, it’s only the first