Candice King as Kelly Armstrong -- Halfblood Norse Demigoddess

Gregg Sulkin as Donovan (Donnie) Alfero  -- Halfblood Cait Sith

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to book four of the Haven High Series. This book will feature Kelly and Donnie. A very unlikely pair. But trust me when I say: you are going to love these two together. Even if they don't exactly feel the same way at first, but who's to say how they will feel in future. Enjoy!

Kelly Armstrong sat in the office of her rep at her prestigious California modeling agency while her shark of an agent berated her on her physique. She'd gained too much muscle over the last year and according to her it would hurt her career if she didn't 'scale it back some'.

"Kelly my dear," Penelope drawled, she was a fellow blonde bombshell that could affect southern airs like no other Southern bell Kelly knew.

It made her wonder if that was why the agency paired them, "You need to tone down your workout regimen."

She dragged out the word regimen in the typical southern way.

It's one thing for Selena Williams to look buff," she continued, "she's an athlete and a household name in the tennis world, but you my dear will not be booked walking into a showing with guns like that." She pointed at Kelly's arms and scoffed.

Kelly wanted to say: you try fighting maniacal fairies, magical beings, mythical creatures, and a mystical library and see if you don't put on a little muscle, but not only was the sentence ridiculously alliterating, it was also not allowed to be uttered to an un-enlightened in her super secret magical world.

As the offspring of a descendant of a Goddess and the daughter of a human alcoholic out of work construction worker, Kelly had the not so unique distinction of being a Halfblood Norse demigod, and in her fucked up magical world that meant being 'enlightened', when she came of age at twelve, about said world.

All the other lucky saps that have the distinct privilege of being utterly unaware of their existence were referred to as the wholly 'un-enlightened'.

And as the saying goes . . . 'nary the two shall meet'.

Kelly left the office of the agency and stepped out into the busy sunlight street of San Francisco. The late August sun was high in the sky and squinting would only lead to the chance of early wrinkles. So she placed her designer shades firmly on her nose as she strutted down the cement sidewalk to where she had parked her new 2017 Tesla model s.

Before she left the office she had assured her killer rep that she'd scale back the workouts and she just had to hope that she could oblige. School was starting back in a week and it would be back to training every day.

As a halfblood, training to prepare for mandatory conscription into the Magical Council's Guard after graduation was not optional -- discriminatory yes, but optional no. And she'd be back at it in less than a week. At least they still had their summers off.

She and Xander had spent a glorious summer in the South of France. Unfortunately, she had had to leave early for work; he however had the luxury to stay behind. As the halfblood son of Osweina the Slavic Goddess of echo, gossip, and fortune, working wasn't in his nature. Oh don't get her wrong, since developing his affinity, he'd made millions on his own, he had a successful youtube channel, but before that he'd had his mother's millions to play with.

Did that get her britches in a bunch -- sometimes? He just didn't understand the struggle.

Many people that encountered her and Xan looked at her as simply eye candy. His flavor of the month, the gold digging blonde pageant Queen who's only after him for his money, but nothing could be further from the truth.

You see she has a philosophy in life, "why be a gold digger, when you can own the mine?"

Kelly grew up in Atlanta Georgia with her single father. Never knowing that her mother was a direct descendent of Freyja the Norse Goddess of War and Death among other things.

Something she may have known if her mother had bothered to stick around. Instead she had abandoned her when she was two years old. Fortunately, Kelly was too young to remember her, unfortunately, for her father, he was not. In fact he couldn't forget. The man started drinking the day she left and never stopped.

Don't get her wrong, her father wasn't ever a violent drunk, he'd never hit her or anything, but that doesn't mean he hadn't hurt her. His violent outbursts had traumatized her deeply. He would often come home from one bar or another, stinking drunk and break everything in sight, including her young heart. After years of his behavior she learned to see the signs and avoid the pain by disappearing to her room. Each time she did she'd symbolically locked her emotions away as well.

By the time she was twelve, they had been kicked out of more rat and cockroach invested hovels than she could count. The only reason they were able to avoid the streets at all, was because, her father was a functioning alcoholic – a term she would learn later one.

That simply meant he was able to sober up long enough to land a job and work long enough to make a paycheck or two, but inevitably he would screw it up again, and burn another bridge, and then he was off to the races -- looking for another construction company to employ him regardless of his reputation.

The worst part was that she often thought that some of his bosses only took him back because of her, which was downright cringe-worthy. His behavior was so common place to her in her youth that at first she had thought all parents were like that, then only the single parents, and then only the single dads, until finally she realized that his behavior wasn't normal – far from it.

As she made her way down the street, men stopped and stared and catcalled when she walked on by. She smirked to herself and wondered would they be as quick to do that if they knew she could have their still beating heart in the palm of her hands in a matter of seconds.

Kelly was the halfblood descendant of the goddess of war and death – among other things – the other things being: love, sex, beauty, fertility, and gold. This led to a deadly combination of beauty and brawn.

From all accounts her mother had been a real stunner as they like to say in the south, but it was her daughter who possessed real beauty. She was striking beyond belief.

She had a head of hair the color of spun gold, crystal blue eyes, the statuesque physique of a pardon the pun goddess, the face of an angel, and the lips of the devil himself. Hell yeah you'd go to hell for them, and her long lean body reached astronomical heights. She was six feet tall if she was an inch. Good thing her boy toy was an acceptable six feet four inches tall; she wouldn't be caught dead in kitten heels.

When the wind picked up off the Bay and threatened to unravel her tight bun, she began to walk a little more briskly to her car, her stilettos beating out a steady staccato on the cement. In frustration she pushed an errant lock of hair back behind her ear just as another would appear.

"Why oh why is it always so hard to find parking in San Fran?" she crumbled under her breath. 

After what seemed like ages to her aching feet, Kelly purred with satisfaction, when she finally saw her sleek champagne colored Tesla in the distance. Digging in her Prada purse, she pulled out the shiny new key fob with eager fingers, and delighted in clicking the unlock button. She didn't need to use her preternatural hearing to thrill at the satisfying beep beep of the doors unlocking.

As she traversed the last block, she marveled at how far she'd come in life. When she opened the driver side door and slid into one of the sleek leather bucket seats, she let out a satisfied sigh, and wiggled her little derriere on its slick surface.

A self-satisfied smile formed on her lips when she pushed the start button and weaved into traffic with a car that was as silent as the grave. She had made it. Working hard had gotten her this car and everything she owned.

Lord knows she had had to; her father had never been up to the task.

No matter how hard she had tried to hide her circumstances from the teachers, kids, and neighbors in her life, she couldn't hide the abject poverty as every extra cent was spent on booze and damage deposits with little left for food and clothes.

So as she grew she learned to earn her own money by babysitting, mowing lawns with a push mower, delivering papers and flyers to hundreds of homes, and returning empties donated to her by her neighbors. She would lie to everyone and tell them she was collecting money for one charity or another.

Eventually she was able to replace her worn out Good Will clothes with designer jeans and shirts, buy food for the fridge, pay the bills on time, and go to the laundry mat to make sure she had clean clothes.

Each time they moved she would have a bolt lock installed on her bedroom door, she bought an iPod and blasted Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Kenny Chesney, and Tim McGraw so she could fall asleep imagining anyone of them was her real dad -- Only to wake up to find their ratty apartment looking like a demilitarized zone.

But instead of getting better, he had only gotten worse, not even able to keep a job long enough to earn a weekly pay, he began to hang out at the Home Depot to offer his construction skills to home renovators, only when he could sober up in time which was rarely.
It finally came to a head in the summer before her twelfth birthday.

Ultimately, he had ended up driving a home owner's pickup truck into the back of the Mayor's Mercedes, suddenly, his antics were not just considered a nuisance anymore. In the end the court was lenient on him because he was a single father and to put him away would be to put her directly into the foster care system. The judge had taken one look at his extraordinarily beautiful daughter and thought to incarcerate him would be to sentence her to the possible abuse that would ensue.

So he called a recess and made some calls, getting her father into an experimental rehab program in San Francisco. He would have to serve five years probation and attend AA meetings regularly, but that was the best he could do. The demigoddess had walked away from that court never knowing how close she had come to a truly tortured existence.

Kelly had been elated to leave Atlanta. She could start fresh in a new school. She could finally be the person she always wanted to be with no one the wiser. After all, no matter how hard she had tried back home she hadn't fooled anyone. Everyone knew she was just a pathetic kid with a drunkard for a father, but this move would give her a chance to prove them all wrong.

At twelve she was already 5'10" and looked like a rather flat chested Barbie doll. At least she had the anorexic part right. She walked right into an elite modeling agency in San Fran lied about her age and forged her father's signature. Now she was just biding her time until she could upgrade her modeling career from SF to the international stage.

Kelly pressed the button on the wheel to search for her favorite Sirius Satellite Country Music station, and started to sing along with Carrie Underwood's Dirty Laundry. This song had special significance for her last year. When Xan was still playing around with all the other girls, but they were in a much better place now, at least she thought so.

The time in club NYX when she had been roofied by Liam he had been too, sort of. He had been slipped a love potion while she was simply tricked into drinking a sleeping agent, but it hadn't been the first time he'd misbehaved with another girl.

They hadn't DTR'd their relationship status yet, but they'd been together for over a year now. That must count for something, right? Who cares if every time she'd tried to hammer it down he'd make up an excuse and ghost her? The important thing was that he always came back. He must have feelings for her, or else why wouldn't he be long gone?

Besides everybody knew that guys these days are slipperier than catfish. She just had to bide her time. Eventually he'd come around. He's eventually come to realize they belonged together.

She could easily have anyone she wanted at their High School . . . aaaaanyone, but magical teens don't draw the line in the sand over social status or popularity, they divided into cliques of various magical beings and wielders – like fae, shifter, and demis – that sort of thing. Everyone kniws it.

At Haven High, Xan's group of friends were different, they gravitated to each other regardless, maybe because they were the first class to experience a full manifestation in over one hundred years. Who knew? Or maybe it was just that they had spent nearly all of last year living in almost constant peril?

Kelly pulled into the apartment complex and drove into the underground parking lot to pull her Tesla in her designated spot. She'd had to request an additional spot for her baby as her father's old pick-up truck occupied the designated spot for their apartment. His license had been revoked with the mayoral incident, but he'd gotten it back a couple of years ago.

He'd gotten sober since, but that didn't mean she was ready to forgive him for stealing her childhood from her, and there was no doubt that he had. She'd never been allowed to just be a sweet little girl. Oh he'd come to her during treatment and reached out with his twelve steps thing and she'd been dragged to a meeting or two, so he could apologize, but she would never truly forgive him for what he'd put her through. 

Some bridges just aren't repairable.

As a child, she had worn her humiliation like a second skin. That wasn't easy to forgive or forget.  

Kelly sighed as she popped the trunk before getting out and stepped out into the much cooler underground parking garage.  Her meeting with Penelope had left her drained.  Why oh why did her visits to her agent always seemed to bring out the worst in her. All her self-doubts would come flooding back each and every time. It made her wonder if she would ever be able to let of her past. 

Walking around the vehicle, she pulled out her clothing bags and jostled them around in her hands while she closed the trunk. These bags represented only a portion of her new fall wardrobe. It was essential that Kelly be a fashion forward thinker. She wasn't going to get booked if she showed up with her prints looking like a country bumpkin. She was citified now. Looking good wasn't just a pastime it was her life. It was what she based her entire future on. She fully intended to transcend her modeling career to a bonafide business empire, but first she'd have to make a name for herself in the industry.

There was no doubt in her mind that someday she would be celebrated as a self-made billionaire. And Xan could keep his money, she would have her own. She took a quick look at her watch and calculated the time difference. If she hurried she could get him before he went to bed.

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