Quest for Immortality Read online

  Quest for Immortality

  (A Shifter Romance Box Set)

  Celeste Raye

  Copyright ©2019 by Celeste Raye - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Contents

  Fated Mates

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Shifter’s Sacrifice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Shifter’s Acceptance

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Shifter’s Legacy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Popular Series by Celeste Raye

  About the Author

  Exclusive Offer

  Fated Mates

  (Quest for Immortality)

  BOOK I

  Prologue

  The baby shouldn’t have lived. That was the first thing that the police chief mentioned. The fire in the old Lexington house burned hot, and it burned all night long. The house was huge, old, and once it went up, no one was able to get inside to put it out. All tries to stop the blazing inferno were met with futility.

  No one should have lived through it.

  But when the house was mainly nothing but blackened rubble, the firemen and police heard a sound that pierced the air. A baby’s cries, from deep in the labyrinth.

  Davey Blane was police chief at the time, and he thought at first that he was just hearing things. He knew that the couple had just had a baby; maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him. Maybe the fire that consumed the family was messing with his head. When someone started to yell about the kid, he moved into action.

  He ran towards the sound that he thought was only in his head and stopped short when he saw the scene in front of him. The baby that he was sure was taken by the fire was sitting there, an untouched circle around him on the white tile floor. The baby didn’t have a mark on him, but now he was moving towards the soot, touching it with his fingers.

  “Someone get the damn baby out of there. How the hell is it alive?”

  Davey was standing next to the paramedics when they were checking the baby out. He knew from the announcement in the Ridgemont paper that his name was Justin Lexington. He was the sole survivor of his family, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t hurt in any way. There weren’t any indications of smoke inhalation, nothing. It was that day that Davey started to believe in miracles.

  The boy was cleared to go home, but he didn’t have a home. Davey took him to his place to find his family, someone to take Justin and raise him as their own. He needed to find someone, but after the first night, Davey was instructed to take the little baby to the orphanage. He didn’t want to, but he was young, unmarried, and had no idea what to do with a baby.

  When he drove down the winding dirt road that led to the broken-down house that held all the unwanted kids in the county, the baby started to cry. He was sure it was a sign that something was off, but he had instructions to drop little Justin off. Davey didn’t want to, somehow bonding with the boy, but he had to follow orders.

  An elderly woman with a suspicious smile answered the door, and her attention was immediately on the baby in his arms. She took him and smiled again before she closed the door without saying a word. Davey wanted to say more, something, but it was all over.

  He walked slowly to the police car, looking back once to see several eyes in the windows. There were many children there, and like everyone else in Ridgemont, he didn’t think about them. Davey knew that they were there, but what was he supposed to do about it?

  When he got back to the station, he was unsettled and told himself that it was his duty to get to the bottom of whatever it was he was feeling. As much as he liked to believe that, Davey had a feeling that he was going to be met with some resistance.

  The next weekend, Davey hadn’t been able to get ahold of the orphanage by phone. He had called every day, trying to get an update on Justin and how the baby was doing. The doctors had been sure that symptoms would develop later. They had to.

  So, he made his way out to the orphanage and Davey got to the door before he felt some vibration in the air. He could feel it in his body, and before he could figure out what it was, the door opened.

  It was a young woman standing there, beautiful enough that she took his breath away. He just stared into her eyes. They looked purple, but that couldn’t be possible. Her black hair was to her shoulders, and she had a kind smile on her face. It reminded him of the same deceptive smile that he had seen the week before, when he had dropped Justin off. Davey figured that it had to be the old woman’s granddaughter because of the resemblance.

  “Hi, I am sorry to bother you, but I am trying to get some information on a baby that I brought here last week.”

  “Have their parents come forward?”

  She had a smirk on her face, and Davey was confused by it. Didn’t she know that the parents were burned up in a fire?
They certainly weren’t coming back.

  “No, um, nothing like that. I was just concerned because I couldn’t get an answer to the number we have at the station.”

  “Yes, our phone has been on the fritz.”

  About that time, another young woman walked by with a baby, and he immediately noticed the blanket was the same. But the baby was different. It had only been a week, but it looked like it was almost nine months old. That couldn’t be the same baby, he thought to himself, but he noticed the dark green eyes. It was Justin. How was that possible?

  The young woman shook her head and let her mirage fall. The woman was now the same elderly one he had met before. He took a step back and almost tripped down the stairs. He got ahold of the side railing and steadied himself.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not. What happened to you? What happened to that baby? He was only a few days old a week ago. What happened?”

  Davey’s voice was getting louder as panic set in. He had seen a lot in his career, though it hadn’t been all that long. Never, though, had he seen a woman age fifty years in seconds.

  “Come in, officer. You have seen too much. I will explain it all, and then you will never come back.”

  “So, what happened to the baby?”

  “His people grow faster than humans.”

  “Than humans?”

  Davey was walking in the orphanage, but he didn’t want to. He was trying to stop the footfalls that brought him inside, but Davey was no longer in control of his body.

  “Yes, humans. He isn’t like you; he will be fully grown in a few years.”

  He was speechless and stopped when he saw all of the children that had been dropped off over the years. Some were doing menial jobs, while others were fanning the women that sat on the couch. There were at least a dozen of them.

  “Ladies, we have a visitor. He wants to know about baby Justin.”

  They tittered in laughter and invited him over. Again, Davey couldn’t stop his feet. He wanted to run, to get away, but there was no stopping it. He was pulled in closer.

  Chapter One

  Twenty years later

  “Justin, Aunt Linda asked for you. Have you been feeling okay? You didn’t say anything when we called for you.”

  Justin smiled and apologized. He was in his fantasy world again. It was hard for him to stop thinking that he was missing something, forgetting something, but Justin didn’t know what it was. He followed his Aunt Marl to the kitchen and asked what was needed.

  “I need you to take a message to the Rottenwires. They have not paid their tab, and it’s time that they realize how much we need them to be on time. You will show them how serious we are.”

  Justin had a blank look for a moment, and then the old woman told him that he was to teach them a lesson. He knew what that meant, and even though he didn’t like the thought of it, he knew that it hadn’t been necessary before. Maybe just this once, it would help the situation.

  He owed everything to the Aunts. It’s what all of the kids at the orphanage called them. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was an adult now and staying on to help the Aunts seemed like the thing to do. He wasn’t ready for the real world apparently, because he felt better staying put. This was what he was comfortable with.

  “I will do what is needed, Aunt Linda.”

  The gray-haired woman smiled back at him, and he saw the gleam in her purple eyes.

  “You have really come to be someone that we count on, Justin. You are always there when I need you.”

  He was confused because though he would do what she needed; she had never called on him before.

  “Anything for the Aunts.”

  They smiled at him, and he went upstairs to grab a few items. The warning that he was going to have to give did not require anything more than himself. Justin was well over six feet with brown hair and dark green eyes. He was trying his best to remember something to drink and anything else that he would need. His mind was moving a mile a minute.

  Linda was waiting for him when he got back and she asked him if he was okay.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine, Justin. Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?”

  He wasn’t sure about that at all, but he agreed that he was fine.

  “Yes, I don’t have any trouble sleeping. My head hits the pillow, and that is it until I wake up the next morning.”

  “And what about dreams?”

  “Not any that I remember. I don’t think I have ever remembered one.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, Justin. Sometimes it’s a blessing in disguise.”

  He agreed but didn’t know how it would be a blessing. He would have liked to have dreamt of something. Anything, really. Justin was too young to remember his parents; them dying when he was a baby, but he always wondered if it was possible to dream about them. He wanted a buried memory to come forward, to show him who they were, beyond the single picture that he had of them, which came out of a local paper.

  “You’re probably right. I was about to leave. Is there anything else?”

  “No, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Be careful, and if there is any danger, just let yourself get mad. It will make everything work out.”

  He didn’t know what that meant, but again, he just agreed to go with it. There was nothing that he wouldn’t agree to. The old women there had taken him in when none of his family did, and he was eternally grateful.

  “I will see you later.”

  Linda agreed. She watched him walk out the door and sighed to herself. Marl asked her what was wrong. The old woman transformed into her younger self and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we have wiped him too much. He is losing cognition. Maybe it’s time to retire the beast.”

  Marl wasn’t so sure. “You’re the one that talked us into taking him in, knowing what he was. Why are you concerned with a little loss of cognition?”

  Her sister was looking at her suspiciously, and Linda didn’t like it. She was the soft-hearted one, but she could make the big decisions too if she had to.

  “You’re right. We will wipe him clean until he isn’t useful, then get rid of him in the same way.”

  Marl smiled, and hers was cruel. “Good, because I found a gray hair this morning.”

  She was back to her beautiful self, and she had long-waist length black hair like her sister. Her eyes were more of a golden-brown color, but they flashed red more times than not. Marl was the one that had come up with the orphanage idea, but Linda was the one that wouldn’t let the sweet boy become another source of youth. She didn’t mind a few wrinkles here and there.

  Linda tried to keep her cool and avoid her sister’s gaze. She didn’t want Marl to know how much it bothered her. She was trying to convince the rest of the coven that she wasn’t the weak link, but it was proving hard. It was certainly easier said than done.

  The warning didn’t go as he wanted it to. Before he could get anything out, the targets knew that it was coming and were ready to attack. Justin was shot in the shoulder as he was getting out of his vehicle. He grunted in pain but kept going. It wasn’t anything new. Justin had been hurt many times before, but he healed quickly and was able to block out the pain.

  He made his way towards the house, and he remembered what Linda had told him. He had to remember the anger and to embrace it. That was the only way that he was going to get past it. He’d heard it so much that it was like an automatic voice that played in the back of his mind.

  The anger took over, and Justin started to change. To him, it was just pain, but for the people that he was coming after, it was more than they could handle. There was yelling, screaming even, and the word witches came up a lot. As did beast.

  Justin blocked all of it out, because he wasn’t worried about all of that. Instead, he was worried about getting to the men that had shot him. His anger had taken over.

  He tore into the men that owed his
Aunts money, and the spell that was cast over him helped him to get through it without the pesky worries of guilt that he should have been feeling. It wasn’t hard to see that Justin wasn’t himself, but he didn’t notice.

  Not until he looked into a piece of broken glass. He was a bear. He didn’t understand what he saw and realized he couldn’t get back in the car. Something had happened to him, and his first instinct was to run into the woods. There, he would be safe, and he would be able to hide. The need took over, but he didn’t make it very far before he was slowing down. He was sluggish. Justin had lost too much blood, and he passed out a few miles from the house where he had left everyone dead.