"Would you rather I throw you on the bed
and pleasure you so much that you don't know your own name?
Or would you rather I love you tortuously, drawing out every single wave of ecstasy
until my name is the only thing you know?"
My Brother's Keeper
Alanea Alder
Bewitched and Bewildered, book five
Kindle Edition, 237 pages
Published: November 17th 2015 by Sacred Forest Publishing
ASIN B0147DJPN8
Two hundred years ago Kendrick Ashwood had a premonition that showed him the gruesome image of his baby brother being killed in the line of duty while serving with the Alpha Unit. When centuries go by and Keelan is still alive and well, he begins to relax. He believes that his prayers sent to the Gods to make him wrong this one time have been answered.
As Kendrick feels his godsdaughter’s magic flare out of control he immediately merges with her in an attempt to rein it in. That is when he learns of the tragedy that has taken his only family away from him.
Using every resource at his disposal he immediately heads for Lycaonia to find out for himself who would be suicidal enough to harm his brother. What he finds shocks him to his core.
Anne Bennett gets a phone call that changes her life. Her new best friend Keelan has been hurt and his commander is asking her to move in to help take care of him. Her heart breaks when she hears from his family that the dreams she has been having of them together were shared by Keelan and that he was meant to be her mate.
Upon meeting Kendrick, her entire world is shaken. His more mature appearance and perpetual frown makes him look more like the man from her dreams than Keelan ever did. When she can no longer fight her attraction for him she confesses her feelings only to have them rebuffed. Kendrick is adamant that he would never steal his brother’s mate. But Anne is almost positive that she was never Keelan’s mate to begin with.
As the Alpha Unit races to find the enemies who have stolen Keelan’s soul and covered Lycaonia in black magic, Kendrick begins to uncover dreadful truth behind the necklaces. When turning to Anne feels more natural than it should, Kendrick faces the fact that Anne truly is his mate.
As the paranormal world teeters on the brink of chaos, he finds himself protecting not his brother’s mate, but his own.
Back in book three, Keelan began dreaming of the woman he believed was his mate, as one by one the others of the Alpha Unit have begun to do. And he found the girl he dreamed of, working at one of the local markets. The problem, subsequently confessed in book four? He's not attracted to her. Finally, in book five, we discover why.
: SPOILERS :
Keelan is a witch, and has mistakenly confused mate dreaming with dream state premonitions enabling him to protect not his mate, but his brother, Kendrick's.
All of the women of B&B, have had their own quirky obsessions: computer coding and video games, clothing and the office-stealing closet to hoard it, make-up galore... and now, Anne brings us anime! Without the Dr. Who fanatic angle. Double yays!
Hands down, Kendrick is my favorite of all the guys so far. The guy carries a full library in his pocket (er, pouch) and is all but a hermit as he doesn't play well with others. Open-minded. Open-hearted. As Meryn said, the guy is fucking awesome! And sums up my view of the world as is quite nicely:
With the tension of Kendrick expecting to gain himself a sister and finding his mate instead, my mind was all over the place with the many ways this story could have played out. And Alder does not disappoint in the least.
As Kendrick and Anne bond over their relationships with Keelan, a love of Japanese culture, and a progressing addiction to anime, currently focused on the boy love premise, the two begin their mating as friends with the cloud of their erotic dream sharing and ever distracting attraction to one another only mildly agitating the natural fall into love.
They comfort one another. They protect one another. And they don't shy away from their feelings. Eventually they confess their feelings and confirm that Anne is definitely not Keelan's mate.
Then, ohhhhh then...
Then everything gets all convoluted when it comes out that Kendrick is actually Julian, the long lost son of a once hunted king, and is the elder sibling to twin brothers, Keelan and Kendrick. The latter of which died as a babe. He's fucking awesome, and a prince! It comes out that Amelia's parents, in truth, weren't off gallivanting across the maps as hippies but on a secret quest in search of their lost king. Whom is now dead, his body lying in a grave dug by his own son, and resting beside his wife and deceased child.
The ferals' plot is unmasked further in this installment as it becomes divulged that Kendrick's parents were the first victims of this evil crusade. After three hundred years, you'd think that whoever is behind this would have achieved his goal by now, right?
4 out of 5 stars.
Book six, My Guardian, is due out sometime next year.
Previously in the series:
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