by R. E. Butler
Once she had dropped her suitcases in the spare bedroom of Lily’s apartment, she opened the bag that Cherie had packed and lifted out two plastic boxes. One contained a thick wedge of meatloaf along with an enormous pile of mashed potatoes slathered with gravy. The second box contained a large slice of pecan pie. The sweet buttery scent made Cris want to skip dinner and go right to dessert.
By the time Lily came home from class, Cris had eaten, retrieved her things from the cleaners, and unpacked. Lily plopped onto the couch next to Cris with a loud sigh, depositing a large cardboard box on her lap. Cris opened it and found a variety of desserts made with pie crust – everything from mini tarts to pies.
“Have a good class?” Cris asked as she drooled over the delicacies.
“Yep. My hands hurt from the rolling pin, though,” she said as she stretched and cracked her knuckles. “Are you ready for your interview?”
Cris set the box on the coffee table and went into the kitchen, returning with two forks. Lily took one as Cris sat down, and the two dug into a raspberry tart. The pastry was buttery and flaky, and the raspberry filling was just the right balance of tart and sweet.
“I think so. I have my resume printed out, and I did some research on Dr. Radcliff. He’s been a were-pediatrician for twenty years, but this is his first private practice. He used to work for a were-hospital.”
“I think he’s rogue,” Lily said. “He’s married to a human, and from the town grapevine, his pack was strictly wolf-only so he left.”
“That happens,” Cris said.
“Would your dad let you stay in the pride if you married a human?”
“Hell no. I’d like to believe that if I ever find my truemate, he will be accepting of him, but I don’t think that will happen. He has his own ideas about what my future should be, and they clash with my independent streak.”
“Did you call your mom?”
“Yes, when I was unpacking. She wished me luck tomorrow.”
“And asked you to come home again?” Lily asked knowingly.
“Of course,” Cris said with a sigh. “I swear that those times when I do go home, that I feel like my dad is making mating plans for me across the dinner table.”
“He’s never liked that you went to college.”
She shook her head. “No. He hasn’t approved of much since I graduated from high school.”
“I wish your dad was more supportive.”
“Me too. I love him, despite his antiquated ideas of how my future should go, but it’s hard to be around him, and my mom, when I know that they don’t agree with the choices I make. Unfortunately, disappointing them makes me feel crappy, even though I don’t want to go back home.”
“It’s hard to disappoint people we love. But I’m never disappointed in you, and I’m so glad you’re here.”
After they finished the tart, Cris helped Lily put away the desserts and then said good night as she headed into the small bedroom. After a long day, she was relieved when her head hit the pillow. She was looking forward to the morning, to see what her future held. It would be nice to get the job so she could focus on finding a place to live and explore Ashland. Maybe she’d run into some of the gorgeous men that Lily promised lived in town, and maybe…just maybe, one of them would be her truemate.
Chapter 2
Chase Hall pulled the rack of clean glasses from the dishwasher at Kickers, the local country bar, where he worked as a bartender. He carried them from the kitchen into the bar area. It was early Wednesday evening, and the nearly dead bar meant he had time to get the side work done before the rush later on. His two cousins also worked at the bar. Dylan was the kitchen manager, filling orders from the small, all-appetizer menu, and Hunter had a dual role of assistant manager and bouncer. They’d never all worked at the same place before, but it was nice to know that he could back up his cousins if something went wrong, and they would be there for him, too. Not that anything too exciting ever happened at Kickers, outside of the usual Friday and Saturday night drunks and occasional bar fights.
They’d been in Ashland for a little over a year and lived with their mountain lion pride at a boarding house in town. The pride was made up of adult and young mountain lions. Several of the mountain lions had found mates, and what surprised Chase was that many of them shared a mate between them. He and his cousins had never really thought about sharing a mate, but after living in Ashland and seeing the mate-sharing, they had come to the conclusion that it was possible the three cousins would, too. The idea had intrigued him, but he knew that for the moment, they were simply talking in abstract. Until they met the right female – human, shifter, or other supernatural creature – they wouldn’t know if they were meant to share her.
Mountain lions were unique in the were-world because the females of their kind were only interested in mating to continue the species and not in the least bit interested in being in a committed relationship or starting a family. It had been revealed through a clan of black panthers, who now shared Ashland with the mountain lions, that the goddess who created them had actually cursed the female mountain lions eons ago. The females were forced to use venom in their claws to slowly change the young females from loving to callous.
The female mountain lions were long gone now. They had settled in Canada and could stay the hell up there as far as Chase was concerned. Turning his attention back to the limes he was slicing, he looked up at Dylan, who was younger than him by a year, as he came through the double doors of the kitchen and leaned against the bar. Chase, Dylan, and Hunter were the only sons of three brothers who still lived in King. They shared the same dark brown hair, but that was where their similarities ended. However, they’d grown up in the same house, and as far as Chase was concerned, Dylan and Hunter were his brothers.
“I’m tired as hell,” Dylan said, sighing as he leaned on one elbow and rested his cheek against his palm. His jade-green eyes drifted shut as he yawned.
“Well, you shouldn’t have stayed up helping Ray and Wes paint their bedroom.”
“I like to help,” Dylan said, stifling another yawn.
Ray and Wes had mated with a woman named Scarlett, and she was four months pregnant. Scarlett was the daughter of an alpha wolf and a supernaturally gifted woman known as a Breeding Queen. Scarlett was basically genetically inclined to have a lot of babies, and Ray and Wes were looking forward to their first child with her.
Hunter stalked over from where he had been standing near the front door. “You can’t bitch about being tired if you volunteered to help instead of going to bed.”
“Don’t gang up on me,” Dylan protested, ducking the lazy swipe that Hunter aimed at the back of his head.
“The last time you didn’t get enough sleep, you burned three batches of hot wings because you were too out of it,” Chase reminded him.
“Oh, fine.” Dylan put his hands up in mock surrender. “I’ll be extra vigilant with the wings tonight.”
Chase shook his head at them. Hunter was the oldest at twenty-seven and built like a tank. Like all mountain lion males, he was in reality very kind and generous, but he looked like he could punch a hole through a brick wall. He also happened to have dimples when he smiled, but it was a death sentence to call him dimples. Which Chase and Dylan both took great delight in teasing him with. But only from a safe distance.
Chase was twenty-five. He hadn’t planned to become a bartender when he was filling out aptitude tests in high school, but it worked for him. He liked talking to people, and it was kind of fun to have the human females flirt with him, even though nothing serious had ever come from it. He’d been on a few dates since they’d been in Ashland. One of the dates had been with a human woman named Jenny, who was a few years younger than him and had hit on him while he served her a drink. He’d asked her out and she’d agreed. It had only taken an hour into the date for him to realize that she hadn’t really been interested in him as a person; she was interested in the fact he was a shifter. Now he made a point to
not go out with women he met in the bar.
A few regulars wandered in, and his cousins disappeared to do their jobs, and Chase busied himself filling drink orders and chatting up the customers. It wasn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but it was honest and steady, and that had to be worth something.
* * *
Dylan looked out into the bar to see how many people were left after last call and was glad that there were only a handful of regulars. He hadn’t gotten swamped, which happened on Fridays and Saturdays when they were always packed, so he’d been able to get his cleaning done early and close out the kitchen at one a.m. Now he was waiting for dirty dishes so he could load up the washer and call it a night.
A half an hour later, Dylan started the washer and turned off the lights in the kitchen. He took off the dark red apron and carried it into the owner’s office so he could put it in the laundry bag.
Perry Gillette, the owner of Kickers, was turning off his computer and rubbing at his eyes from under his wire-rimmed glasses. “Hey, kid. How’re things?” Perry asked as Dylan dropped the apron in the bag.
“Good, thanks. You?”
“Ah, I’m okay. I’ve got a new waitress starting tomorrow. Her name is Theresa. I’ll have her start running food orders for the first week or so, and when she’s learned the ins and outs of things, she can start working the bar.”
Dylan nodded. “Sounds good. I didn’t know you were looking to hire anyone.”
Perry leaned back in his chair. It creaked under the weight of his large frame, and Dylan wondered if it might actually be the night it would break. But it didn’t.
He shrugged. “Claire got in a car accident on Tuesday. It was just my luck that Theresa came in looking for a job right after I got the news.”
“Shit. Is Claire okay?”
Claire was a forty-something divorcee who had been waitressing at Kickers for twenty years. She was as sweet as they came, and Dylan hated to think of her being hurt.
“Broken leg, cracked ribs, busted wrist. She’s out for at least two months. She’s gone to live with her daughter in Virginia. I told her I’d hold the job for her, and that Theresa was only temporary, but I’d be surprised if Claire actually comes back.”
Dylan said good night to Perry, clocked out, and went to find his cousins. It was three a.m. by the time they got home to the boarding house, and Dylan couldn’t wait to get into his bedroom on the third floor.
The hundred-year-old boarding house had three stories and a ton of bedrooms. The kids – and most of the mated couples – stayed on the second floor with their dads, and Dylan and his cousins slept on the third floor. Dylan’s room was between his cousins’ rooms, and the three of them shared a large bathroom. After waiting his turn for a shower, so he didn’t go to bed smelling of french fries and hot wings, he fell onto the bed and closed his eyes, drifting swiftly off to sleep.
When he woke the next day, it was almost lunchtime, so he climbed out of bed, slipped on a pair of track pants, and hoofed it downstairs, hoping to score breakfast. It was a school day, so the kids were gone except for Domino, who was Rue’s son. Rue was the white panther shifter mate of James and John. Domino had white-blond hair and a great sense of humor. The teenager was sitting at the kitchen table sketching in an oversized notepad.
“Morning,” Dylan said as he looked in the oven and found a half-finished pan of breakfast casserole. Smiling in relief that he didn’t have to cook, he pulled it from the oven and plopped a big wedge onto a plate before putting it in the microwave.
“Hey,” Dom said, looking up from his paper. “How was work?”
“Work is work. What are you drawing?”
“I had a request for a howling wolf sculpture on my craft site, so I’m doing some sketches. Scarlett said I could call her brothers and have one of them shift for me, but I thought I’d see what I could do on my own first.”
Dylan pulled the plate from the microwave, grabbed a carton of orange juice from the fridge, and sat down. “Looks really good,” he said as he glanced over the drawings. “You’re very talented.”
“Thanks,” Dom said, smiling.
Dylan heard his cousins come downstairs, and after filling their plates, they joined him at the table and said hello to Dom.
Dom gathered his things. “I’ve gotta jam. Class starts in an hour, and I was supposed to be painting this morning and not drawing.”
“Good luck,” Chase said.
When Dylan and his cousins had finished their meal, Hunter leaned back in his chair. “I was thinking about what we scented yesterday.”
He didn’t have to explain – both Dylan and Chase knew exactly what Hunter was talking about. They’d gone to Cherie’s for lunch yesterday and had walked into the diner and stopped to say hello to Ray, Wes, and Scarlett. All three males had scented sunshine and tall grass. They’d puzzled over the alluring scent while they ate lunch, and when they’d said goodbye to Lily on their way out, Dylan had scented the same sunshine and tall grass scent on the human. Immediately, he’d known that it was a person they were scenting, someone Lily had been in contact with. As a human, her senses were not as sharp as theirs, and she had no idea about anyone she knew who smelled like sunshine and grass.
“What about it?” Chase asked.
Hunter’s lips pulled down and a crease formed between his eyes. “You don’t think the scent is significant?”
Chase blinked in surprise. “No, I do. I just don’t know what it means.”
Hunter said, “Look, the scent was the same for all of us – sunshine and tall grass – and the scent definitely came from a shifter. That all three of us liked the scent and were intrigued by it tells me that it’s important for a very serious reason.”
Dylan’s cat purred in agreement. “It belongs to our mate. Our shared mate.”
“We don’t know who she is, though,” Chase pointed out. “What if she were a female who happened to stop by Cherie’s on her way out of town?”
“What if that’s not the case?” Dylan countered. “I think we should talk to Lily again. We can ask her what females came into the diner yesterday. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? Aren’t you tired of being alone?”
“I am,” Chase said, “but what if we meet her, and she doesn’t want to be shared?”
A smile curved Hunter’s mouth, and he said, “We’ll just have to convince her that three are better than one.”
Dylan snorted. “I hope she doesn’t mind that you’re an ass sometimes.”
With a laugh, Hunter stood and picked up his plate. “I promise to not be an ass to our mate. You guys, though, are an entirely different story.”
“Wonderful,” Chase said, shaking his head.
When Hunter had left the room, Chase turned to Dylan. “Do you think he’s right?”
“I think it’s worth a shot. I’m tired of watching all of our friends find love and happiness and being on the sidelines.”
“Aside from Holden and Jackson, we’re the only single guys in the house.”
“Well, there’s Dom and Henry,” Dylan said. Henry was John Fallon’s son and Dom’s step-brother. The two had already figured out they would share a mate in the future, but Henry was only sixteen, so they had a while to go.
“You know what? If Hunter is right and the sunshine and tall grass scent is our mate and we’re meant to share her, then I’ll be the happiest mountain lion in the world.”
“Me too.”
* * *
Hunter stretched as he got out of Chase’s car in the parking lot of Cherie’s. He and his cousins were going to drill Lily for more information. The more he’d thought about it, the more he’d believed that whoever they’d scented was their shared mate. He’d never considered sharing a mate until they came to Ashland, but now it had become a part of life for their pride. All the other couples had only two males to one female, so his group would be a little larger, but he knew they could make it work. And what female wouldn’t want three males seeing to her every
need?
“Hey,” Lily called from behind the cash register as she swiped a customer’s credit card. “Find a seat, and I’ll be right with you.”
He and his cousins sat at the counter and waited for her to finish the transaction. She bounced over to them, her high ponytail swaying with the motion. “What would you guys like? Grandma has BLTs on special today.”
“We wanted to talk to you about the woman we smelled on you yesterday.”
Lily’s eyes widened, and the pen she had poised on top of her notepad slipped from her grasp and clattered to the counter. “What?”
Hunter grimaced. He was a big guy, and he knew that he could be intimidating, even when he didn’t mean to be. Smiling to soften what he said, he continued, “I mean, when we came in here yesterday, we scented a female who smelled like tall grass and sunshine.”
“I know. I said I don’t know anyone who smells like that, and P.S. I don’t go around smelling customers.”
“Of course you don’t, Lily, because you’re human. But we’re shifters, and scent is a big deal to us. We just want to know what females came into the diner yesterday before us. It’s important.”
Her gaze flicked to all of them, and she frowned. “Well, I remember Scarlett. The mayor’s wife had been in earlier for breakfast.” She hummed and then a look crossed her face, but it passed so quickly that Hunter almost doubted he’d seen it. “I can’t think of anyone, but if I do, I’ll be sure to send a message to the boarding house, okay? My order is up. I need to get to the kitchen.”
She scurried away, but Hunter was certain he hadn’t misread the secret smile on her face. Dylan opened his mouth to protest, and Hunter shook his head. “Let’s go.”
“Just like that?” Chase demanded.
Hunter nodded. When they were outside, Hunter zipped up his leather jacket and said, “Lily knows who we’re talking about. I saw it on her face.”