Make Out Like Bandits: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (This Is Bandit Territory Series Book 2) Read online

  Make Out Like Bandits

  Emma Dean

  MAKE OUT LIKE BANDITS

  THIS IS BANDIT TERRITORY SERIES

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2020 by Emma Dean

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, locations, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Emily

  2. Emily

  3. Emily

  4. Aiden

  5. Emily

  6. Emily

  7. Jace

  8. Emily

  9. Emily

  10. Emily

  11. Chance

  12. Emily

  13. Emily

  14. Emily

  15. Emily

  16. Ben

  17. Emily

  Want Free Stories?

  Other Books

  Other Books UK Links

  Other Books CA Links

  Other Books AU Links

  About the Author

  Fuck Nazis

  Author’s Note

  All of my paranormal books exist in the same universe. The more you read the more you see familiar faces. You don’t need to read them in any particular order, or to know any others before starting any of my series or standalones.

  Timeline note: This can be read even if you’ve never read anything else, but it takes place after The Chaos of Foxes series, and before the University of Morgana series, during the winter of 2018-2019.

  Specifically, right before Corbin leaves to shadow Mika in No Rest for the Wicked.

  Join my group for the spoiler thread of this book!

  Emma’s Enclave

 
  Contents

  1. Emily

  2. Emily

  3. Emily

  4. Aiden

  5. Emily

  6. Emily

  7. Jace

  8. Emily

  9. Emily

  10. Emily

  11. Chance

  12. Emily

  13. Emily

  14. Emily

  15. Emily

  16. Ben

  17. Emily

  Want Free Stories?

  Other Books

  Other Books UK Links

  Other Books CA Links

  Other Books AU Links

  About the Author

  1

  Emily

  It was raining. Of course, it was raining.

  Emily fucking hated this.

  Things had gone so smoothly for the first item. Well, smoothly compared to this shit-show.

  “Chance make it work,” she gritted out. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “None of us want to be here, princess,” Jace said wryly, rolling his eyes.

  Emily wanted to strangle him. Literally. Her fingers itched to wrap around his throat.

  “Explain to me again how the fuck this happened?” Emily asked, watching Chance fiddle with the portal device. “If this is because you stole illegal tech…”

  “Emily, please get the hell off my back,” Chance snapped.

  “We borrowed it, remember?” Aiden asked, pressing his shoulder against hers while they waited in the pouring rain on the rickety boat. “From Hunter’s mate…without asking.”

  For fuck’s sake.

  “Okay, you ‘borrowed’ it. Doesn’t mean it’s not illegal.”

  Emily sighed. The last person in the world they should have crossed was that psychotic fox.

  Of course, Ben didn’t say anything.

  After Wonderland, they’d walked through that portal to another universe – reality, whatever you wanted to call it, and into hell.

  Again.

  Ever since Wonderland the portal had been on the fritz. They’d double-checked the location before stepping through, and somehow when they got to the other side it was hell.

  Now every time they went through the portal, it was a risk. They didn’t know whether reality would skewer them or slice and dice them, or just dump them on the most unforgiving plane imaginable.

  Emily glared at Chance’s back while he worked. She was still covered in gore, and still hadn’t had a bath, and she was getting rained on. If she still had her magic, she’d at least be clean, but no. That had been destroyed thanks to Dead Man’s River.

  No doubt whatever was wrong with the portal was because of that fucking poison. Because even with a direct address the portal took them wherever it wanted them to go.

  The door would open, and they had no way of knowing what was on the other side.

  The second reality after hell had been fruitless. Literally. There had been zero humanity on that plane and nothing but murderous animals ten times their normal size.

  So much for making their stupid quest easy. All those books about their lives with a fucking cherry-picked list of exactly where almost every item was…and the fucking device wouldn’t follow simple directions.

  “The red-haired witch made this?” Emily asked, eyeing the portal device again.

  It wouldn’t even turn on here. Maybe it had something to do with the rain or the gravity of the planet. Who fucking knew? Definitely not her.

  “Two witches,” Jace explained, shifting slightly so he blocked some of the wind for her. “Kenzie doesn’t possess normal magic. She’s a void. But her sister is incredibly powerful. Managed to take out a fae all on her own. Well, Kenzie does the tech side and Selene does the magic. From what I gather, this was an accident. They discovered how to make doors by trying to do something else.”

  Emily gave Jace a sideways glare. “So, you decided that ‘borrowing’ an illegal piece of tech magic that was made on accident was a good idea to use?”

  Jace shrugged, rain completely soaking his clothes and hair. It ran in rivulets down his face and she tried not to stare. Emily reminded herself she was still pissed at him.

  “We wanted to save the world, and we only knew one way to do it. We aren’t adopted by a demon unlike some people.”

  Was there a hint of jealousy in his tone?

  Emily almost rolled her eyes. Demons were chaotic and annoying on the best of days. They were worse than magpies, always wanted to be a part of any drama, and if there wasn’t any, they made their own.

  This planet, this reality, this fucking plane of existence wasn’t the worst by far. But it certainly wasn’t pleasant. It rained and rained and rained and rained. Emily sighed as the boat creaked in time with another rolling wave.

  She supposed it could have been worse. They could still be drowning in the ocean instead of on the rocky freighter that had picked them up.

  Apparently, this plane didn’t have landmasses anymore. Well, based on what she could understand from the fae creature on the boat there were, but they moved around and were unpredictable. And there were only five small land masses, each the size of California.

  Or what California used to be.

  Every time they went somewhere new, Emily felt a strange relief that she lived in her version of reality.

  Some planes were right out of a fairy tale, literally. They’d been chased by the fucking evil witch in the forest once before Emily put an end to that. Then t
hey’d ended up in a place she might call Middle New Zealand with fucking halflings and wizards.

  That one had been difficult to pull Chance away from.

  Apparently, Chance was a secret nerd who got a hard-on for dragons and shit.

  She watched the raccoon fiddle with the device again, banging it against the railing before sighing. This wasn’t his fault. Not really, but it was easy to blame him, and it was easy to think he was adorable as fuck for his secret interests.

  “Here, let me try,” she offered, feeling her anger dissipate.

  Emily didn’t like getting rained on even in her best mood, but they were all tired. Raccoons weren’t used to not sleeping, unlike ravens. She’d been trained to hunt and kill. It was her duty as an assassin to complete a mission and until she did, she rarely slept.

  Chance handed it over without a fight, and that’s how she knew exactly how tired he was. They needed to find a place to hunker down for a few hours or these four were going to end up dead.

  Emily inspected the device. It looked pretty complex with special metal she knew only the Kavanagh witches knew how to make. They sold it for a fortune, because no one else knew the exact recipe.

  The magic looked new too, so whatever made this work had been invented recently. Whoever the hell Selene Kavanagh was, she never wanted to get on her bad side. Very few witches could simply…create new magic. The sisters had woven a masterpiece together.

  But like any piece of tech, sometimes it fritzed or glitched or shorted. Emily turned it over and found what she was looking for. A restart button.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” Chance muttered, slumping against the boat. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Knowing magic, Emily gritted her teeth and braced herself. Then she pressed that button and waited.

  “Fuck,” Ben hissed, gripping her arm as the world seemed to spin in the opposite direction than it was supposed to.

  The fae creature screeched and Emily waited. It felt like something was pulling on the inside of her navel, trying to yank her off balance as the entire universe seemed to reset.

  Entering the address they’d been trying to get to all fucking day, she held her breath and waited. Please don’t be lava, please don’t be lava.

  A door opened in front of them to the surprised shriek of the fae creature behind them, asking a million questions in his version of English – and French, if she were right.

  The land on the other side looked normal enough. Almost like home actually. But whether it was the right address, she had no idea.

  Before anything else happened, Emily shoved Jace through first.

  He almost stumbled when the rocking of the ocean ended abruptly, but nothing ate him, and nothing immediately set him on fire.

  Ben gave her a look like, was that really necessary?

  Emily glared at him. Yes, it was.

  She was still pissed he’d forced her to turn her emotions on in her sleep – that he struggled so much with what made her a raven, that she didn’t like the mate bond tying them all together, however tenuously until it was fully accepted.

  Chance went through the door with Aiden next, and Emily hefted her pack. She went after them with Ben bringing up the rear as always.

  Despite the shitshow that was this fucking quest, the five of them had fallen into a very easy pattern. They all had their own shit they took care of, and they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses better than she’d known any of her trio after Corbin.

  Still, Emily was having a hard time fully accepting this new faction thanks to their differences. She was their mate, but that meant nothing to her even if it meant something to them – what though, she didn’t think any of them really knew.

  Being a part of a faction was not the same thing as being mates, and while Emily didn’t want the mate bond, she did like being a part of this new group. But she’d betrayed them before she’d even fully committed to this faction.

  And now they knew her real intentions thanks to Mephisto, meddling demon.

  He had revealed the raccoons couldn’t really trust Emily once the items of power had been obtained. And she didn’t blame them, but it did create tension between the five of them that wasn’t healthy in a faction.

  Something like that could get one, or all, of them killed.

  Now they knew, the raccoons knew Emily would do whatever it took to get what she wanted.

  The only problem was, she didn’t know what it was she wanted anymore.

  No matter how badly she may want whatever this was, Emily was still a raven.

  When she shut off the device, the portal closed with a snap. Good riddance. That reality sounded like a special kind of hell.

  Emily looked around and considered the greenery around them, pretty and park-like, but wild enough she knew they weren’t in the middle of a city. Honestly, she doubted their ability to ever find their world again every time they stepped through a door.

  But that was a problem for another day.

  They needed two more items of power before they could even consider going home.

  “Do you think we got where we needed to go finally?” Aiden asked, keeping his voice low. “It looks like the right place.”

  “Anything that isn’t on fire currently looks like the right place,” Chance muttered.

  “Let’s find somewhere to get our bearings first and rest,” Jace ordered, that tiny hint of his alpha voice rippling under his words. “Then we can do our research and find the next item.”

  Emily wanted to resist. She wanted to shift and do recon immediately. It’s what she would have done with a raven pair or trio, but these weren’t ravens or assassins.

  They were raccoons. Thieves.

  Another reminder that no matter how well they got along, how well they worked together, ravens and raccoons were nothing alike.

  “Are you coming?” Jace asked, as if he sensed her hesitation.

  “I’ll take first and second watch,” Emily told him, jerking her chin to indicate he should take the lead. “Find us a safe place or we’re sleeping in trees.”

  At least it was dark wherever they were. It made it easier to keep their presence hidden and unobtrusive.

  “I hope to fuck they have electricity here,” Aiden whispered.

  Emily bit her lip to keep from smiling. One day in the middle of wherever had been more than Aiden could handle after he found out there wasn’t any toilet paper there either.

  There was a sound among the trees, even in the dark.

  She went still as death and put a finger to her lips.

  Part of her was surprised all four of them obeyed without hesitation and part of her had known they’d listen. Reconciling those two parts of her was proving just as difficult as she’d anticipated.

  Emily searched the trees.

  The forest was generic. Owls hooted and rustled the leaves. Emily searched, trying to find what it was that had set off her instincts.

  The moon was up and looked to be moving from east to west, same as their own reality. Vaguely she heard the lapping of water which meant they were close to a lake or a river. The trees were thick though and the moss was dense under her feet.

  Magic was in the air, thankfully. She could even hear the sound of jets and planes, so this place was some sort of alternate universe – close enough to their own that it might be difficult to figure out where exactly they were.

  There was something in this forest with them though, some kind of predator.

  Her eyes looked for auras next. Those were difficult to hide. Even if someone was in the shadow realm, she would see them, their aura would simply be muted.

  “Emily?” Jace whispered.

  She shook her head once, turning in a circle as she searched, knife in one hand and gun in the other. Emily was silent, quiet as Death, and the raccoons were utterly still. They were a good faction, and their ability to follow her commands at the drop of a hat was part of the reason they were all still alive.

&n
bsp; Emily signaled when she saw the auras. They weren’t colored with much emotion which meant they were probably just walking or hiking through the forest. But that didn’t explain why they were out here at night, or why she felt hunted.

  All five of them were still covered in gore from the monsters in Wonderland – wearing clean clothes, but it was difficult to get blood and guts out of your hair without a shower or a bath. It would be easy to scent them, and even more difficult to explain to normal humans.

  Emily shifted without warning, wings beating the air. The raccoons scattered and she filed away their locations as she flew above them, breaking through the tops of the trees.

  For a moment she just glided, taking it all in.

  New York, but…not the New York she knew.

  She could see Manhattan glittering against the night sky across the river, and the Empire State building spiking above it all.

  At first, she was confused because the Twin Towers were still a part of the skyline, but then…her eyes caught on the red banner that ran down the entire length of the Empire State Building, from the top to the bottom. Right in the center of that red banner was a black swastika.

  A chill ran through her and she glanced down, desperately trying to find those auras she didn’t know.