Another rare mating was called a triad. They were so rare that Ken had never seen one in his sixty-nine years. He thought back on his and Ryan’s conversation after they had both mated for the first time. They both had been scared to admit it at first, not wanting the other to think they were being rejected. When he and Ryan had finally opened up to each other, they both had confessed they didn’t feel their mating was complete. They knew they were tied together for the rest of their lives. They were in each other’s hearts, but he and Ryan had agreed there was an empty spot there still waiting to be filled. They weren’t sure, but they believed their mating was meant to be a triad. It was wishful thinking, but they hoped it was a woman to complete them.
“What do you think she’ll look like?” Ryan asked, as if he was reading Ken’s mind.
“I don’t know, mate. No matter what, she’ll be ours.”
Chapter 2
Talia Westin cursed for what seemed like the hundredth time as she peered into the dark. She was already starting to regret her rash decision to agree to go to a perfect stranger’s home and stay for at least a month. The only reason she was doing it was because she knew Enforcer Ericson was a good man. Her mate had talked about him all the time with what seemed like hero worship to her. According to her mate, the man was trustworthy and honorable.
Talia dashed the tears welling up in her eyes and took a breath. It had been three years since she had lost her mate, and thinking about him still brought her to tears. There were days when she couldn’t even be bothered to get out of bed because she missed him so much. That was why she’d agreed to take the job. She was human, but because Talia had mated a shifter, her body had been changed to match that of her mate. She had been ecstatic to know that she would be able to spend as many lifetimes with Xander as she wanted, but fate was cruel. Now, Talia knew she faced an eternity without her mate, and if she didn’t do something about the crushing loneliness she felt, she was going to do something stupid.
She slowed her car to a crawl and squinted at what looked like a turnoff into the woods. It was dark out, and considering she was in the middle of nowhere with no streetlights, it was hard to see anything beyond her headlights even with her enhanced vision. Talia took the turn and prayed she had finally found the house. She was already three hours late and hoped Mitch would understand.
Bumping along the unpaved road, she reached over and pressed the lock button several times. Talia knew she was being silly, but the woods were scary, and since being introduced to a world she’d never known existed until five years ago, she knew there were truly things that went bump in the night. She saw a glow up ahead as her headlights reflected off something, and she slammed on her brakes. She knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t bring herself to close it. Sitting in the middle of the road was a giant grizzly bear. It was staring at her with intelligence in its glowing amber eyes, but she had no idea if it was a shifter or a real animal, and she wasn’t about to get out of the car to ask.
The bear was huge. It was easily bigger than her small car, and its claws looked as though they could easily sink into the metal like butter. Talia hesitated before tapping on her horn. She didn’t want to scare the beast, but she needed it to move. Finally, the bear gave her one last look before turning and slowly making its way back into the trees.
Talia sighed as she stared into the rearview mirror. Her own dull blue eyes stared back at her. They seemed to have lost their glow three years ago and she had no idea how to even begin getting it back. She was normally pale, but her pasty skin was almost sickly looking. Add that to her frizzy red hair she couldn’t be bothered with, her sunken cheekbones, and the dark circles under her eyes, and she looked like something drug out of a third-world country. She had the protruding ribs and hip bones to prove it. The sad thing was, Talia knew she had let herself go over the years, but she didn’t care. To her, her looks didn’t matter. Nothing had mattered from the moment she felt her bond to her mate break.
At times, Talia wished she had never met Xander and learned that there were more things out there besides humans. She wondered what her life would have been like if she had never heard of shifters and mates. When the pain got to be too much, she thought her life would have been better off. Then right at that moment between sleep and waking, she would think of Xander and that beautiful grin of his and Talia would fall in love with him all over again. The crushing weight on her chest would ease just a little until she became fully awake and realized that her mate was gone and she would never see Xander’s smile again. Her falling into a pit of despair would start all over again. It was a vicious cycle and the reason that she had forced herself out of the house and into her car.
Talia sighed and stepped on the gas pedal, getting out of there before either the bear decided to change its mind and come back or she broke down crying on the side of the road. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the trees thinning out and lights up ahead. The house was sitting in the middle of the clearing, and she saw a tall, lean man leaning against the railing of the porch.
She parked and looked around her to make sure the bear hadn’t followed her before getting out of the car. The blond man who had been standing on the porch when she arrived was suddenly at her door when she opened it, and Talia gasped at how fast he had moved. As she sucked in a breath, his scent surrounded her and nearly brought her to her knees. It was a mixture of crisp green apples and something else. In her mind, she pictured a warm spring day just before it rained. If it was possible, then that’s what the man standing in front of her smelled like. Talia found herself leaning toward him before she even realized what she was doing.
“I’m Ryan Dent—” The man cut himself off then snarled and sniffed the air. “Mate!”
Talia felt her blood run cold. Coming here had been a mistake because there was no way she could go through that again. Her heart still hurt from losing one mate. There was no way she could open it up to another, only to lose him as well.
She knew this wasn’t the man who had hired her based on the name he’d been about to say, and she wondered if he knew who she was. She was tempted to close her car door and leave, but she had made a commitment to Enforcer Ericson. As much as she wanted to get back in her car and run until she was safely back in her bed, she couldn’t. Squaring her shoulders, she looked at the man who was claiming she was his. “I already had a mate, and I certainly don’t want another.”
With that, she turned and practically ran up the steps to the house, regretting having ever gotten out of bed that morning. She forced herself not to look behind her to make sure the man wasn’t following her as she climbed the stairs to the house. Talia couldn’t deny she was running, but she had a good reason. She didn’t want or need another mate so she needed to stay as far away from Ryan as possible. She hoped the man was just visiting and didn’t live there. If so, then she was in a lot of trouble.
Talia cursed herself again. If she had known there was going to be this much drama when she agreed to take the midwife job, and she hadn’t even started the job yet, then her and Tiny would have still been curled up in bed together. She thought of Tiny, still in his carrier in the back of the car, but the thought of the man behind her stopped her from turning back to get him. She would have rather faced the huge bear, than the man behind her claiming she was his mate.
Her nerves were so frazzled that Talia didn’t think to knock before stepping into the house. If truth be told, she still wasn’t even sure she was in the right place. Damn, you, she cursed Ryan. Why did the man have to say anything? He could have kept things to himself, at least for a little while. Now, not only did Talia have to worry about being in a new place and out of her element, she had to worry about avoiding him as well.
“You must be Talia.”
The large golden man standing in front of her snapped her out of her thoughts only to cause her to take a step back at the scowl on his face. “Y–yes. I’m Talia Weston.” She held her hand out to him and prayed he didn�
��t notice it shaking. Her bed was sounding better and better with each passing moment.
* * * *
Ryan couldn’t keep the grin off his face as Ken strolled from the woods covering his massive chest with a T-shirt. “We found her!” he shouted as he jumped into his mate’s arms. “I knew it. I knew there was a third out there for us and we finally found her!”
“I ran into her down the drive. She’s definitely our mate. I could smell her even through the car.” He eased Ryan down before continuing. “She may be our mate, but something tells me it won’t be easy to convince her. She’s a skittish little thing from what I saw of her.”
Ryan agreed. Not only did their mate look like she was ready to bolt at any moment, she also looked like she could have used quite a few meals. “Did you hear what she said?”
Ken only sighed and nodded. His mate was a man of few words, but when he did speak, everyone stopped and listened. Ryan wondered what had happened to her previous mate. He knew they had their work cut out for them, but he didn’t care. He would do whatever it took to make the redhead theirs. He knew Ken would, too.
Not wanting to be away from his mate any longer, Ryan moved toward her car. “Come on, let’s get her car unloaded. The faster we do that, the faster we get to see our mate again.” A grin from Ken was all he got as he opened the back door. Ryan jumped back, slamming into Ken’s massive chest, which was the only thing keeping him from running, and hissed. “Jesus, what the hell is that?” Ryan inspected the thing in the cage. It looked like some kind of science experiment gone wrong.
“Maybe we need to get Jacqueline out here to figure it out,” Ken grumbled as if he was reading Ryan’s mind.
Jacqueline was Ben’s mate and the daughter of Edmund Percival. She was also the closest they had to a scientist. If anyone knew what was currently staring back at them from the backseat of their newly found mate’s car, it would be her.
“I’ve faced down rabid shifters with no fear, but I can honestly say, I’m scared to even touch the cage that thing is in. What if it’s contagious?” Surely their mate wouldn’t expose them to something like that, but Ryan couldn’t be sure.
Ken moved him out of the way and reached into the car to pull the cage out. Ryan wanted to shout for him to drop it, but he held his tongue and shifted from foot to foot. When the cage was free of the car, Ken sat it on the hood and they both stared.
“Is that…” He had to swallow just to even get the rest of the words out. “Is that a cat?” Ryan shuddered at the thought. His lion hissed in agreement. Being part feline, he didn’t know whether to feel pity or disgust. The cat, and he used the term loosely, was grossly obese. Ryan couldn’t even see the thing’s legs. All he saw were paws sticking out from the large rolls of fat. It had more bald spots than actual fur, but the fur it did have, was all different lengths. In some spots the orange fur was long and stringy and in others, it looked as if someone had started to shave it and then changed their minds. That wasn’t the worse thing about the cat. The worst was the mangled ear dangling by what looked like a small piece of skin and the large scar going down one side of its face. The scare was broken up by an empty eye socket.
“What are you doing to Tiny?”
Ryan was so focused on the abomination in front of him that he hadn’t even heard his mate approach. He wanted to pull her behind him to protect her when she went for the latch on the cage. Instead, he stood rooted in the spot and grimaced as she pulled the cat out of the cage and cradled it in her arms. Without even looking back at them, his mate turned and walked back toward the house while whispering low to the cat.
Ryan looked at Ken for about two seconds before he grinned. “Oh, this ought to be good.”
Ken laughed low before they were both off, bumping into each other and racing to see who could get to the house first. The show they were about to see when Mitch laid eyes on the cat was definitely going to be a good one. They caught up with their mate just as she walked through the front door, and Ryan couldn’t suppress his grin when he heard Mitch coming down the hallway toward them.
“Jesus,” Mitch gasped as he came around the corner. “What the hell is that thing?”
“It’s a cat.” Ryan tried to hold back his laugh, not wanting to offend his mate any further, but a few snickers slipped through.
“Is it dead? Why is it still moving?” The look of horror on Mitch’s face was priceless as he backed away with his hands held out in front of him and disappeared in his office.
“He isn’t going to make Tiny leave, is he? I can’t stay if Tiny has to go.”
There was no way Ryan was allowing his mate to leave even if that meant the creature in her arms currently glaring at him with one eye was going to stay as well. He could swear the empty eye socket was glaring at him, too. Ryan shuddered as he stared at the thing. Before he could answer, Mitch came out of his office with a gun in his hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ryan shouted as he stood in front of his mate. He always knew Mitch was a little crazy, but this was extreme even for him.
“I’m shooting it in the head.” Mitch stated as if it was obvious. “In all the books and movies, that’s what you have to do to zombies. If not, they just keep coming back. From the looks of that thing, it has been dead a long time.”
“You aren’t shooting Tiny.”
Ryan sighed as his Talia yelled over his shoulder. He wanted to agree with Mitch, the zombie cat needed to be put out of its misery, but there was no way he was saying that out loud. A deep growl from behind him had Ryan closing his eyes. If he wasn’t already hard from his new mate’s scent, Ryan would have been instantly hard at the sound Ken was making.
“Do you want to explain why you’re holding a gun on my mates?”
Ken’s deadly tone let Ryan know the situation had gotten out of hand. “You can’t shoot her cat, Mitch,” Ryan said as if he was talking to Nico instead of a grown man. He wondered if he was in The Twilight Zone at the moment. The cat chose to confirm his suspicions by leaping from Talia’s arms and racing down the hall toward Mitch. The large lion hissed before he took off running in the opposite direction, yelling for his mate. It hadn’t slipped his notice that Ken had thrown himself against the wall out of the zombie cat’s way either. Ryan would tease him mate about it later, but right now all he wanted to do was comfort Talia, who looked like she was ready to burst into tears.
Ryan pulled Talia into his arms and was shocked when she actually went without fighting him. She tucked her face into his neck and let out a deep breath. Her scent flooded his nose with her being so close and Ryan had to shift his hips back, not wanting to scare Talia away with his hard-on. Between her scent of fresh lilacs and ripe berries, and Ken’s clean citrus and hint of dark forest, Ryan’s mouth watered to taste them both right then and there. His hormones were on overdrive and he knew if he didn’t get Talia into a room and away from him, he was going to do something she wasn’t ready for.
Releasing her from his hold was the hardest thing Ryan had to do, but he forced himself to let her go and took a step back. “Come on, we’ll show you where you will be sleeping.”
“Yeah, with us.”
“Don’t I wish?” Ryan told his lion. “Something tells me we’re going to have to take things very slow with our mate. There’s something going on with her that we need to figure out before we can pursue her.”
His lion scoffed. “What more do we need to know? She’s our mate, no matter what she says. You and Ken should have no problem convincing her. If not, then let me and the bear loose. We’ll have her ready to mate us in no time.”
Ryan ignored his arrogant lion. His animal was tame when it came to Mitch’s, but Ryan believed it was ingrained in lions’ DNA to be arrogant. “Since it’s so late,” he told Talia as he began leading her upstairs, “you can get settled and get a good night’s sleep. You can meet everyone else in the morning.”
His mate didn’t say anything when he led her into the room next to theirs. It h
ad a connecting door to theirs through the bathroom. If he couldn’t share the same bed with her, then Ryan made sure she was as close to them as possible. “Ken and I will be right next door if you need anything during the night.” Ryan waited for Talia to respond as Ken sat her belongings on the bed, but she just nodded and stood there. She looked as if she was about to collapse at any moment and Ryan wondered what had caused the tired, weary look on her face.
Ryan awkwardly stood there, not wanting to leave, but not wanting to bother Talia either. Evidently, Ken didn’t have that problem. He didn’t hesitate to pull Talia into his arms. Ryan grinned when Talia’s eyes widened before they slowly lowered and a look of bliss covered her face. He knew the feeling. Being swallowed in Ken’s large arms and surrounded by the man was one of the best feelings in the world.
“Get some sleep, mate.” Ken kissed the top of her head. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
With that, Ken let her go and walked over to Ryan. He put his hand on the small of Ryan’s back, and Ryan had no choice but to turn and head out of the room. He just about climbed Ken’s side when Tiny came sauntering through the door like he owned the place. The zombie cat didn’t even glance at them as he walked past and headed straight to their mate.
“There you are, Tiny,” Talia said as she bent down and scooped the cat up. “I was so worried about you. Don’t run off like that again.”
Ryan had seen enough when Talia kissed Tiny on the head. He pulled the door closed before he lost his dinner right there on the floor. He had a feeling that wouldn’t win him any points with his mate.
“Oh my god. How can she kiss that thing?” He didn’t know whether to be jealous of the beast or to offer his mate some soap and a washcloth to scrub her lips clean.
Ken chuckled. “It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad? Did you see the same thing? I swear that empty eye socket has an invisible eye in it. I can still feel the thing watching me.” Ryan shuddered as he followed Ken down the stairs. He didn’t have to even ask where they were headed. They had questions and aside from Talia, only one man could answer them. That was, if Mitch wasn’t ready to kill them.
Until the End of Time [Council Enforcers 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 2