Home is Where the Heart Is (Cloverleah Pack Series Book 15)

by Lisa Oliver

  “We’re in hell?” His wolf shot to his feet. “What the hell? How on earth, no it’s fucking hell, how in the hell can someone, even the dark ones think to put kids down here. Living kids. Innocent kids. I mean, what the hell?”

  “No. No. Sit down. You look exhausted.” Castor crossed his legs and waited until Wesley sat down again, taking a long swig of beer. “You’re not in hell as such, you’re in the Underworld, in a weird bubble world the Dark Elves created for storage. You and the kids are the only ones here. I promise you, they’re safe out there playing and I gather from the way they almost trampled me, they haven’t done that in a while.”

  “No. They haven’t. Ha. They found me one day, not that long ago. I’d been kept in a cave, which was warded like crazy, and then one day the wards just weren’t there anymore, so I started walking, trying to find my way out.” The wolf paused. “I don’t even know your name.”

  The demon was pleased he was asked. “Castor. Cass. That works.”

  “Wesley, but I guess you know that. Wes for short.”

  “That’s a nice name, Wes.” Cass rolled it around his tongue. Yes, he could see himself moaning his mate’s name in moments of high passion, which demons were known for. “Do these need to be fed?” Cass gestured to the babies.

  “No.” Wesley shook his head. “I had just finished that when all Hades broke loose. Terry threw something, hit Tommy, which was a damn good throw for a toddler, and then Em started to cry. You walked into an everyday occurrence around here.” Wesley paused and as Cass looked over at him, he was struck with how beautiful his mate’s eyes were. “You know we have to take them with us, right? All of them. You said yourself there’s no one else here and those dark ones killed their parents.”

  Cass pursed his lips as he eyed the sleeping angels and then thought about the rough and tumble going on outside. “I’m not sure either of us is up to raising this many kids. But, yeah, I figured that we had to take them with us. Your pack seemed more than capable, and there’s a host of different paranormals there with all sorts of powers. I’m sure they can figure out what to do.”

  “They actually looked for me? The pack, I mean. They actually looked for me?” Wes smiled and it was a lovely look on his mate.

  “It took them a while, because they weren’t sure you were even missing at first, but as soon as they figured out what was going on, they tried everything to find and rescue you.”

  Castor was surprised when his mate didn’t question why it had taken so long. He wasn’t looking forward to recounting that particular story, although his mate had a right to know. But Wesley just gave him a sleepy smile. “They actually looked for me, all this time, and I have a mate.” The next thing out of Wesley’s mouth was a small snore.

  Shit. No wild abandoned sex for us tonight.

  Cass looked up as he heard a small noise outside the room. The little blond bear stood in the doorway. “Thank you for the picnic. I can’t remember the last time I had burgers and the others all ate till they were stuffed.” The bear looked over at Wesley and Cass would swear there was true affection in the boy’s eyes. “His bedroom has the king size bed in it. You might want to put him in his bed. The babies will sleep for a while. You’ll hear them when they wake up.” He added dourly, “We’ll all hear them.”

  “I can do that.” Cass stood and gathered up his sleeping mate in his arms. Wes fit perfectly in them. “Don’t drink his beer,” he added, thinking he had to say something parental.

  “As if,” the bear scoffed. “I’ll dump it in the trash because the triplets will be into it in a heartbeat.”

  “So, you’re the one in charge here?” They walked down the hall to the bedroom the kid indicated. “I’m Cass by the way.”

  “I guess I am. I’m Frankie.” Frankie paused by the door. “Wes took over for me, but I still help. If you can look after him, I’ll get the others their bath and into bed. Wesley needs to sleep. I don’t think he’s had more than two hours in a row since he got here.” Clearly not expecting any argument, even from a demon, Frankie closed the door behind Cass, leaving the two of them alone.

  Cass laid his mate on the bed and studied the tired lines of his face as he loosened his clothes, stripping him to bare skin. Without clothes it was obvious his mate had been held in captivity too long. You’re too thin, you poor thing. Definitely too thin.

  Stripping off his pants, Cass materialized sleep pants for both of them, because no self-respecting demon wore underwear. He hated having to cover up both of their bodies, but he wasn’t going to have his mate thinking he was coming on to him in his sleep.

  Taking care not to jostle the bed too much, Cass slid in beside Wesley, pulling him gently until Wes’s head was resting on his chest. “You’ve had it rough, haven’t you? But, I’m here now. You’ll never have it rough again.” Before he thought about getting his own rest, Cass made sure they would hear any baby stirring. He didn’t trust those small hellions not to bring the roof down on their heads with the screams, but he’d rather the adults heard them first, rather than the frazzled bear who also showed signs of sleep deprivation.

  A mate. A mate. I have my own mate. Stroking Wes’s hair, Cass closed his eyes. He definitely hadn’t expected to find his mate when he’d made the deal with his brother. Myka is going to be so jealous, which of course, made the situation all the better. Yep, he hadn’t expected Wesley to be his mate, but Castor was more than pleased. Someone of his very own to take care of. Yeah. He could do this. Cass smiled as he closed his eyes.

  /~/~/~/~/

  Wes snuggled closer to the body he was cuddled against. He was having one hell of a dream. He knew it was a dream because it ticked all his boxes. A warm bed, a warm body and he felt safe. Which is why it had to be a dream. The kids, the house, having his mate quite literally knock on the door. That was the stuff of fantasies. Wes scrunched his eyes tighter, hanging on to that a little bit longer. He knew if he opened his eyes he was going to be back in that cave, listening to that damn drip.

  Drip… wait, there was no drip. Wesley cautiously opened his eyes to see a chest. A broad well-formed chest. Wesley smiled as he traced the muscles, his wolf acknowledging through scent what he already knew. He hadn’t been forgotten by the Fates. He was laying on his mate. I actually have one. Wes’s smile got wider as he tilted his head and looked up.

  “Hey.” His mate smiled as he felt him move.

  “Hey back.”

  Cass opened his eyes. They were a brilliant deep green color that seemed to sparkle.

  “That’s not their real color is it?” Wes somehow knew his mate would know what he was talking about.

  “No.” Cass rocked his head slightly from side to side.

  Wesley bit the corner of his lip. “Can I see the real you? I’m not sure what the protocol is with demons. Is it rude to ask?”

  Cass didn’t look upset. If anything, he grinned. “This is the real me. The human me.”

  Leaning up on his elbow, Wesley looked down at his mate. “But this can’t be your original form, is it?”

  “No.” The grin was gone. “Not many people look favorably on a demon in their original form. We’ve just met and…”

  “Please?” Wes wasn’t above begging to get what he wanted. He wasn’t sure why it was so important to him, but he wanted to see the true side of his mate.

  Cass still looked uncertain, but after a moment’s hesitation a shimmer enveloped his whole body and he shifted.

  “You’re beautiful.” Wesley was stunned. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t the vision on the bed. Castor’s body was still the same rugged muscled shape, only bigger. But his skin had gone from a Mediterranean tan, to a deep red with black swirls through it like giant tattoos. Red eyes with swirls of yellow and amber gazed at him, framed in deliciously long eye lashes. Cass’s full lips were almost black, but they still retained the human shape Wes had noticed the day before and without second guessing himself, Wes leaned forward for his first kiss with
his stunningly strong demon.

  Cass was no shrinking violet. He kissed back, and Wes gasped as hands traced up and down his body as though mapping out his hot spots. Returning the favor, Wesley was thoroughly engrossed when he heard a whimper, and it wasn’t coming from his mate.

  Wes pulled away. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “The midget-demons are waking up.” Cass shifted back into his human form. “I put in a monitor, so I could get to them before they woke up the rest of the house. I was in there a couple times to feed them and change their diapers. No throwing up this time.” He grinned. “It appears you can get used to toxic waste.”

  Wes threw himself on his back and groaned and covered his eyes with his arm. “You have no idea how grateful I am you let me, and the others, sleep. I am so not cut out for kids.”

  “Then we don’t have to have any, but come on, let’s tend to them before they really start to scream and wake the household.”

  Wesley let out another groan, but when he removed his arm, he could see the hand held out for him, he took it gladly. Cass surprised him further, by holding him close once their bodies were flush.

  “I can’t wait to claim you, mate of mine,” Cass growled against his lips, making Wesley shiver. “But I know we have to wait. For the record, I’m showing a lot more patience than a demon is known for.”

  Wesley grinned. He recognized teasing when he heard it. “Well,” he drawled. “I’m not sure about your prowess. I mean, us wolves have been known to go for hours, but I suppose you could claim me in the roughly twenty-minute window we might have between feeding the babies and getting breakfast for the rest of the tribe.”

  “I’ll wait,” Cass grumbled, “but only because I plan on feasting on that body of yours for hours.” The whimper turned into a soft cry. “We’ll get this lot back to the pack, and then you and I mate, are going somewhere private.”

  Privacy. After spending so long alone in that cave, all Wes had dreamed about was getting back with the pack. Privacy with a new mate was something he hadn’t dared to dream about, and as he followed his mate’s sexy ass, still clad in sleep pants, down the hallway to the crying babies, Wes realized it was something he was really looking forward to.

  Chapter Six

  Castor had a dilemma. Actually, he had a few of them but he wasn’t sure which one to address first. The most pressing issue, in his opinion, was his aching cock that had become like a truly annoying toothache. The accompanying stress – keeping it hidden from so many kids - was setting his teeth and nerves on edge. As a demon he wasn’t used to hiding his basic instincts. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Wesley couldn’t help being so delectably sexy, or that his scent was enough to make Castor want to climb walls with his fingernails. It was just that demons were instantly possessive, and very ‘all about the claiming’ repeatedly, with their mates. The presence of a bunch of curious youngsters didn’t make that possible.

  And the young shifters brought up another issue Castor couldn’t ignore for much longer – they needed to be taken to Cloverleah. Which was fine – even though the pack weren’t prepared for them, he was sure Kane and Shawn would take them in – but Castor couldn’t transport them all at once. Which meant he couldn’t take Wesley, until the last one was gone; because, you know, the others were kids. They needed supervising, and while the little ones in the house were more resilient than most, Castor knew enough about his mate already to recognize that suggesting some of the littlies could be left for even five tiny minutes, was going to make his mate pout in a bad way.

  Then there was the little matter of not being able to talk to his mate about any of his concerns. Kids were time consuming, had no sense of personal space or the concept of privacy. They threw up, pooped, and were demanding every waking moment and half the night too, and yes, while they could be cute at times – he and Wesley never got a moment to themselves.

  One freaking kiss. That’s all I’ve had with my mate, and while Cass would admit to himself it was one hell of a kiss, he wanted so much more. Myka would piss himself laughing if he knew. Hmm, now that’s a point. Cass thought about his family. Myka was a lazy, no-good selfish ass who was trolling the world more often than he was at home, but his mother wasn’t. She was a force of nature, even in the Underworld. I could take them all there in one go. Cass’s powers were stronger in his home realm. It was only trying to move non-demons across realms that was a problem. He thought about the village where his mother ruled. There’s a lot of demon tykes there. Cass winced as he imagined some of his young nieces and nephews playing with the shifters. They’d think they were pets, and probably want to keep them or something equally upsetting to Wes.

  No, Cass decided, an Underworld village was no place for shifter children. Since when did I get so fucking responsible? Oh yeah, when my mate handed me a baby and said ‘Here, this is yours’. Cass shook his head. He’d offered to fold washing. There were mountains of it in the laundry. But Cass, because he was a demon, had simply closed the door, clicked his fingers to turn all the clothes from their heaps in baskets, into neat little piles, and then had parked his butt on the washing machine so he could have five minutes to himself.

  There was one more issue, one Cass didn’t want to dwell on too much but that had to be faced. One of the reasons Myka didn’t want to help the Cloverleah pack was because, in Myka’s words, the pack was made up of a “bunch of stuck up paranoid assholes who wouldn’t appreciate a demon if one bit them”. Admittedly, Cass had only been to Cloverleah once, to get the skinny on Wesley and to find out if anyone had a picture of the wolf he was meant to find. They didn’t have a picture, but one of the men, Thomas, Cass thought it was, had shown Cass to Wesley’s old room and he’d managed to pick up a trace of Wesley’s soul essence, even though the room itself still stank of the Wesley imposter.

  And I’ve still got to talk to my mate about that too. There’d been a half a dozen times, over the past two days, when he and Wesley had been changing babies together, or were sat sharing a coffee after the littlies were in bed, when Cass should have said something. But he kept remembering the wonder in Wesley’s eyes when he heard the pack had been looking for him. The hope, the joy; it was as if Wesley couldn’t believe it was true, and yet he desperately wanted it to be, Cass knew that. If I tell him, before we go, then he might not want to go back… Cass eyed the piles of washing… maybe we can take the kids to Cloverleah and then go somewhere else for the claiming.

  “Are you all right?” The door opened and Wesley’s head popped round it. His eyes widened at the neat piles of the clothing and he whistled as he stepped into the room. “I was beginning to think you’d got lost and was buried under an avalanche of clothing or something equally dire.”

  “I just clicked my fingers and they were done.” Cass shrugged, slightly embarrassed at being caught slacking. Wesley barely stopped running around after the kiddies, and if he wasn’t caring for them, he was doing chores. “I was just taking a few minutes, trying to work out how best to carry out this rescue operation.” At least that wasn’t a total lie.

  “Are the kids going to be a problem?” Picking his way through the piles of clothes, Wesley came to stand by the washing machine. Cass had noticed that, how Wes seemed to need to be near him, often touching him although all completely innocently. “Cass, as much as I… I can’t leave them… Can’t you just zap us out of here? All of us?”

  “Not in one go, no.” Cass held out his arm, and Wesley snuggled underneath it. “I can take you all in one go to anywhere on this realm but moving between realms is a lot harder unless I open a portal, and I’m not sure your friends at Cloverleah would appreciate that.”

  “Is it because of the wards they have up?” Wesley looked up, and Cass was struck again by the trust in his new mate’s eyes. “I know they have a shit ton of them. But it’s just to move us, right? The portal wouldn’t have to stay there permanently, would it?”

  “Mate,” it still gave Cass a thrill to use that word,
“the men at Cloverleah don’t appear to be overly fond of demons. I didn’t witness that myself specifically, but from what Myka told me, they’re really suspicious of any powers not their own.”

  “With the dark ones around, you can’t blame them, I suppose. The pack’s been on lockdown or using the buddy system for months because of those assholes.”

  Cass hit his forehead with his free hand. Of course, Wesley wouldn’t know. “Babe, I’m sorry, I should’ve told you. The dark ones are dead, or in stasis or whatever it is that happens to half-elves. But anyway, they aren’t a threat to anyone anymore. They’re gone.”

  “Gone? But how?” Oh, his mate was so cute when he was confused. He had this little line on his forehead and another one right between his eyes…

  Cass shrugged. “They attacked the Cloverleah pack, not long after - Thomas was it? Yeah, Thomas - found a dragon mate, and yep, it was a bit hairy for a while from what I heard, but did you know, it was the omega, and the little guys that actually saved everyone? They literally loved the dark ones to death. It was quite epic by all accounts. Everyone in the Underworld was talking about it.”

  “Thomas is mated too, now?” Wesley groaned. “Gods, how long was I gone for?”

  The conversation was moving into that dangerous territory Cass thought should be avoided. “About six to eight months, give or take a few weeks,” Cass offered.

  “You’ve been looking for me all that time? Wow, I’m impressed, but then the Underworld is probably a huge place and it’s not as though the dark ones posted any signs letting anyone know where we were.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. “Er, no, I haven’t been looking for you that long, not exactly.” Fuck. Cass knew he was just going to have to come out and say it. “You see, when you were first captured, the pack didn’t know you’d gone.”

  Those sexy furrows deepened. “That doesn’t make sense. I was out with Thomas the night I got taken, before he met his mate obviously, but he’d have noticed when he’d checked my room the next morning if I wasn’t there. Even if he didn’t bother to check, Adair would’ve come looking for me the moment I missed my patrol shift.”