Overcoming Stereotypes (Miracle Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  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

  EPILOGUE

  Overcoming Stereotypes

  Miracle Book 4

  Shea Balik

  BLURB

  In a world where everyone was against them, they needed a Miracle. What no one had expected was to find their salvation in an abandoned town that was ready to collapse. Yet, that is exactly what happened when they moved to the town of Miracle, Oregon.

  Kellach Alder hadn’t been given a chance in life to be the man he knew he could be. It never occurred to him that if he wanted others to see him differently, he would have to stand up and be the person he wanted to be.

  Trygg Snow was sent to kill Kellach and his friends. Already conflicted about his mission, Trygg knew he wouldn’t be able to complete his assignment when he came face to face with his mate. If only Kellach, a mountain lion shifter, would look past the fact that Trygg was a wolf shifter.

  Against all odds, and an army headed their way to destroy them all, Trygg and Kellach must find a way past their differences if they are to survive. The only way to achieve that is by Overcoming Stereotypes.

  Copyright ©2017 by Shea Balik

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2017

  Cover by: Harris Channing

  Edited by: Avril Stepowski

  www.aveseditservice.com

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  Table of Contents

  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

  EPILOGUE

  DEDICATON

  To my fans.

  CHAPTER 1

  “It isn’t fair,” Kellach Alder griped to Harper and Jari as he sat at the counter of Mousetrap, the diner his friend had recently opened.

  “What’s wrong?” Harper asked as he placed several freshly made pies in the glass cooler behind the counter.

  Kellach’s stomach growled seeing one of those pies was his favorite, chocolate cream with a thick layer of whipped cream and chocolate chips on the top. When his mouth started watering, he said, “I’ll take a piece of that chocolate cream pie.”

  Harper grinned as he pulled the pie back out of the case and cut him a piece. The moment Harper placed his plate on the counter in front of him, Kellach dug in. He moaned as the creamy chocolate and whipped cream hit his tongue. “Amazing, as always, Harper,” Kellach said when he’d swallowed his first bite. He was going to end up fat if he didn’t learn to stop eating his frustrations like this.

  “Now, you going to tell us what isn’t fair, or do we have to sit here and guess?” Jari asked.

  Kellach hadn’t meant to complain and had hoped his friends would forget he’d said anything, but, as usual, luck wasn’t on Kellach’s side. His father had always drilled into him that “real men” didn’t complain. He still wasn’t sure what that meant exactly but he was pretty sure it was a dig at his effeminate appearance.

  Why it was his fault that he had long thick lashes, rich dark chestnut hair, high cheekbones and lush lips, Kellach wasn’t sure but the disgust on his father’s face every time the man looked at him was enough to let him know he was somehow at fault.

  Since he couldn’t do much about his looks, Kellach had taken everything else his father had told him about being a “real man” to heart. That included not complaining, even when his father had nearly beaten him to death for kissing another man.

  Kellach shook his head to dispel those morbid thoughts and answered Jari. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I guess I’m just at a loss as to what to do with my time.”

  “I thought you were helping to build the grocery store next door.” Harper asked.

  He tried not to groan with dismay but he couldn’t help it. Kellach hated construction. There was only one job he’d despised more and that was cooking. Most likely because he’d been forced to do it most of his life when the Alpha of his old pack thought with his effeminate looks, Kellach belonged in the kitchen doing “women’s work.” The Alpha’s words, not his.

  Kellach wasn’t sure why the Alpha thought it a woman’s job when it was hard as hell to prepare meals for a pack of shifters. He had to give Jari props for being able to lift those heavy pots filled to the brim in order to feed so many men with bottomless stomachs.

  Jari chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think hammering nails is Kellach’s thing.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t mind getting hammered,” he mumbled. Harper chocked on the water he was drinking, alerting Kellach that he’d said that out loud.

  Damn, what was wrong that I can’t keep my thoughts to myself?

  “Maybe it’s because you keep everything bottled up all the time,” Jari said.

  “Fuck.” This time Kellach didn’t even bother trying to keep his thoughts to himself. There wasn’t much point since he seemed to have diarrhea of the mouth anyway. “Just ignore me,” he told them. “I’m having an off day.”

  It was a lame excuse but he didn’t have any other reason to give for what he was saying. Then again, maybe Jari was right. Kellach had lived his entire life having to watch every word and every action for fear of reprisal from his father. Now that he was relatively safe and away from his father, the words he’d been forced to keep inside for so long refused to be kept quiet any longer.

  Harper and Jari chuckled. “Okay, so you don’t like construction and, for some unknown reason, the men here are either b
lind or too stupid to want to sleep with you.”

  It wasn’t that many of the men hadn’t tried but Kellach was a little gun shy. Then again, who could blame him when the last time he’d kissed a guy, Kellach’s father nearly beat him to death for it?

  Kellach and his five best friends were gay, which, in the shifter world, was the ultimate crime. No one could explain why, since, at times, their fated mates were the same sex, but it was something that was absolute in their world. To come out meant certain death.

  “But I know I heard Crash ask you out just the other day,” Harper said.

  Both men gave Kellach a quizzical look. He knew he should have kept his mouth shut. When was he ever going to learn?

  “Learn what?” Iniko asked as he waltzed in from the kitchen. When Kellach just shook his head refusing to think another thought in case it once more came pouring out, Iniko turned to Jari and Harper. “Okay. Well, I’ve made a list of what you need for the guys who are making a trip into town tomorrow. Is there anything either of you want to add?”

  Harper nodded. “One of the guys mentioned wanting pumpkin pie. I know it’s getting late in the season but I was hoping to get at least twenty baking pumpkins.”

  Iniko wrote down what Harper requested and a few things that Jari added. “According to Chadwick, my store should be open for business in a week or so. I will need to get with both of you to figure out some of the items you’d like for me to keep in stock.”

  Kellach tried not to be jealous that another one of his friends had figured out what he was good at. Iniko was a master at organization. He was currently helping Jari and Harper keep the diner stocked and was about to open his own grocery store. As much as getting laid sounded good, he really would prefer to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

  “Um,” Iniko said, turning to Kellach. “First of all, there is a town full of hot, mostly available men and with someone as smoking as you, getting laid shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Kellach sighed and dropped his head to the counter just barely missing his mostly eaten pie when he realized he’d spoken his thoughts out loud again.

  Jari laughed. “Stop being so dramatic. If nothing else, you are keeping us entertained with what comes out of your mouth.”

  “Great,” Kellach muttered. “Just what I wanted, to entertain.”

  Then again, he had no idea what he wanted to do, so entertainment was always a possibility, except he hated being the center of attention. Being afraid most of your life that someone in the pack would find out he was gay and be killed for it tended to make one want to hide as much as possible.

  The bell over the door rang but Kellach didn’t bother to see who was coming through the door. No point in knowing who else he was about to embarrass himself in front of when he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  He could feel Jari move away to greet the newcomer, but he couldn’t make out what was being said because Harper started telling Iniko the other part of Kellach’s issue. “Kellach is having trouble because he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. Apparently he hates construction about as much as cooking, so both of those are out.”

  “Well, that should be easy enough,” Iniko said as if it were obvious. “What do you like to do?”

  Kellach lifted his head and opened his mouth, prepared to answer, but nothing came out. His mouth closed as he thought about Iniko’s question. The sad fact was he had no idea. Kellach had never been allowed to do something for the fun of it. If it didn’t have to do with cooking for the pack, Kellach hadn’t exactly had time for anything else.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The main reason he had little to no time was that every spare moment he had went into training with his friends to fight. Edrick, Lucca, Chadwick, Hudson and Kellach had been friends since they were in diapers.

  At the age of five when Chadwick had talked about finding his male mate and his mother warned them all to never breathe a word of that to anyone, they had learned the harsh realities of being a shifter. It soon became apparent, even if not all of them admitted it right away, all five of them were gay.

  Knowing they would one day have to most likely fight for their lives if they had any hope of surviving, Kellach and his friends not only started training to defend themselves, but also started planning for having to run. Several years ago, Edrick found Miracle, Oregon, an abandoned town, for sale.

  Using shell corporations Edrick, a computer genius, who was paid to hack into some of the most secure government databases in the world, bought the town. They knew they’d never be able to hide forever, not in a world made smaller with the advent of computers, but it would give them time to build a town they could make their own. Open to anyone, no matter their lifestyle.

  “I don’t know,” he cried out, as he let his forehead hit the counter one more time. He was hopeless.

  “You aren’t hopeless,” Harper insisted.

  Great. He still couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “Okay, let’s approach this another way,” Iniko suggested. “So far Miracle has a diner and is about to open a grocery store. What else does a town need?”

  “A movie theater,” Jari suggested as he went back into the kitchen.

  “A dance club,” Harper said as moved his hips back and forth to an imaginary beat.

  Iniko sighed and rolled his eyes. “Seriously? How are we going to open up a movie theater? There are maybe fifty guys who live here. Same goes for a dance club,” he told Harper who stuck his lip out in a pout.

  “How about a bowling alley?” Jari called from the window of the kitchen. “We need something in this town that would fun to do.”

  “And you think bowling is fun?” Iniko asked sarcastically. “Even if that were true, which I assure you it isn’t, don’t forget most of the shifters in this town are strong. They’d most likely destroy the pins, breaking them into little pieces.”

  Jari nodded. “You’re right. They are nothing but animals. Still, we need something to do in this town besides eating and building things.”

  “Oh,” Harper said excitedly. “What about a roller rink?”

  Kellach couldn’t help it, he laughed. “I can see it now,” he said. “Kirill on roller skates flailing around.” Kirill was Harper’s mate and a polar bear shifter.

  Iniko was also laughing, his hand hitting the counter. “I can just imagine the entire rink would shutter each time he fell.” Kirill was seven feet tall and had to weigh over three hundred pounds. The man was massive and it was all muscle. He looked like he could eat an entire whale all by himself.

  “That’s not funny,” Harper said, his arms folded across his chest.

  Instantly, Kellach felt bad for making fun of Harper’s mate. Well, not for Kirill, the man would have probably laughed himself, but Harper hadn’t had it easy as his own brother, who had been the alpha of his mouse colony, had whored him out to his guards just because Harper was gay. That the alpha was also gay hadn’t made a difference.

  “What about a tavern with a pool table?” a husky voice from a few tables away said.

  Kellach felt himself shiver as the sexy sound wrapped around his body and settled into his balls. Except, after his father had nearly killed him for kissing another man, Kellach had refused to let himself get close to another man. He didn’t care how sexy the man’s voice was, he wasn’t about to fall for any man.

  “I’m glad you think my voice is sexy,” that sinful man said with a chuckle.

  Kellach closed his eyes in dismay. This time he didn’t bother to keep his thoughts to himself. “Just kill me now.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Just kill me now,” Kellach said, making Trygg Snow laugh even harder.

  He had come to Miracle on a mission, one that would most likely lead to his death, but it would be worth it for just a few minutes with this sexy man. It had been as if his entire life Trygg had been searching for Kellach and now that he’d found him, nothing else mattered. Not the fact that he worked for the Council. Not t
he fact that he’d done things he wasn’t proud of. Not even the fact that he was sent here to kill the one person he would never harm.

  His mate.

  A little more puffed up than he probably should have been when his mate said his voice was sexy, Trygg joked, “Don’t worry, my pretty kitty, we won’t tell anyone how much you like my voice.”

  He saw Kellach’s entire body stiffen. Then his mate turned in his chair to face Trygg and it was as if the heavens had opened up to shine down as the world turned brighter when he got his first glimpse at the beautiful man. Although he’d already seen Kellach’s picture, nothing could compare to seeing him in the flesh.

  Dark hair shaved on the sides but long on top, flopped down one side as if Kellach had been running his fingers through it too many times for the hairspray to hold it in place any longer. Perfectly shaped eyebrows curved over lavender eyes that mesmerized Trygg the instant they captured his.

  High cheekbones, lush lips, and the longest eyelashes Trygg could ever remembered seeing on anyone gave Kellach an effeminate appearance. But everything else about him was all man. Sure he was on the smaller side. From the file he had on Kellach, his mate was only about five-feet-seven and about a hundred and twenty pounds. What the file didn’t mention was every inch of that delectable body was chiseled muscle with an air of someone who knew how to take care of himself in a fight.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, dog,” Kellach bit out even as those lavender eyes opened a bit wider when he got a look at Trygg.

  Trygg grinned at the way his mate was standing up to him. Sure, he may wish Kellach would walk over to him and offer himself up on a silver platter, but that would be boring. Sexually satisfying, but boring. He much preferred a mate who didn’t take shit from anyone, even him.

  “Not to worry, my pretty little kitty, with you around to boost my ego, I promise not to let it go to my head,” he teased.