Free Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance by Scarlett Rhone Page B

kids, spent years having barbecues on the beach and weekends on the boat and living relatively quiet, uneventful lives. Eventually Marcus met Clara’s parents and helped her begin to rebuild her relationship with them, one holiday at a time.
    Three years after escaping the carnival, Clara emerged from the bathroom one morning with a little plastic stick in her hands and a wide-eyed, astonished look on her face.
    Marcus was standing at the kitchen counter, flipping through the newspaper as he drank his morning cup of coffee. He looked up when she walked into the kitchen, saw her face, and saw the stick in her hands.
    “Clara?” He almost dropped the cup of coffee.
    “I’m pregnant,” she blurted, staring at him. “Marcus, I’m pregnant.”
    Marcus grinned, abandoned the coffee and the newspaper, and went to her. He hauled her right up into his arms and spun her in circles in their little kitchen, laughing.
    “This is the best news ever, Mrs. Zane,” he told her, brushing his nose to hers.
    “Yes,” she agreed, smiling hugely. “Oh my god, yes. It is. We’re having a baby.”
    Marcus kissed her, and she kissed him, and they stood there entwined in each other’s arms in the kitchen, kissing, for maybe minutes or hours, they didn’t care.
    When Marcus finally set her feet on the floor again, he cradled her face in his hands and stood there just looking at her for a while.
    “I love you so much,” he murmured.
    “I love you too,” she said, smile helpless and delighted. Then it flickered. “Marcus, do you want to…go home?”
    He faltered, his own smile fading. “What?”
    “To your home,” Clara said softly. “To your home where your people are, where you’re from. Our baby…should know his or her father’s home. Don’t you think?”
    Marcus hesitated. “You would do that? You would go back there with me?”
    “I would go anywhere with you,” Clara promised him. “And if our baby is like you, I want it to have a den. To have family like you, like yours.”
    “I could rebuild the den,” Marcus said, nodding. “I could try to.”
    “ We would build it,” Clara said, smile resurfacing. “Together.”
    Marcus grinned fiercely at her again and bent down, catching the backs of her knees and scooping her right up into his arms. “Yes, ma’am.”
    “You’re not the only alpha in this house.” Clara laughed.
    Marcus laughed too. “No, ma’am, I am clearly not.”
    He turned, carrying her into the bedroom, and spilled her right down onto their bed, kissing her into the pillows. They both called in sick that day and spent the hours together in bed, making love and laughing and planning the future of their family.
    The Carnival D’Orfeo still travels the same circuit. It passes through the same towns, or near enough, every two or three years. It is famous in some parts for its spectacular big top show, in which a notably slender tamer performs incredible tricks with a fierce, powerful lion. It is famous in other parts, to other people, for the diverse number of individuals who travel with it, who live in the shadow of the big top. Like all carnivals, it has its mysteries and its mystique. Its oddities and its marvels. And its dangers.

Carnival of Hearts: Part 2
    By Scarlett Rhone

Chapter 17
    Several hours after the carnival closed for the night, after the crowds had dispersed and the lights of the big top had flickered out, Kat liked to climb to the top of the Ferris wheel. It had been two months and three small towns since she’d helped Marcus Zane escape her adopted father and his carnival, and her punishment had been six weeks of being confined to her trailer each night. Now, at last, her punishment was ended and she found herself atop the Ferris wheel against at last, looking out at a West Virginian landscape of forest and, in the distance, mountain. She breathed easier up here than she had in weeks. The tension in the carnival since Marcus had left was nearly unbearable, thick and