by Helena Ray
While Phil’s lion relished the bimonthly hunting ritual, Sam always made the day quite difficult for the fully sentient, human Phil. He knew how hard it was for his brother. Earlier, Sam had left Phil in charge of the diner while he made his pilgrimage out to the Yeatses’ cabin. The whole family knew of Sam’s patronage of the covenant killers, just as they knew of Mel’s only discernible source of income.
Sam finally exited the car and joined Phil on the short walk to the abandoned stillhouse. Because of the recent satiation of his appetite, it was too risky for Sam to shift on his own before the hunt. If he shifted back into lion form now, after he had shifted earlier to feast on the mule deer he purchased clandestinely from the Yeats brothers, he may have stayed in his lion form. Without the rest of the pride compelling him to shift to perform his duties as tracker, the taste of blood from his lion’s earlier feast may have forced him to stay in his lion form, unable to become human again, until the end of the hunt. If he appeared at the pride hunt in lion form, everyone would know he had patronized the covs.
He stood in front of the heavy sliding door, hesitant to throw it open. Opening the door meant seeing Mel, something neither of the older Popes was too thrilled about. Luckily, Sam took the initiative, and the sound of metal creaking echoed against the Mukuas.
Covering his nerves with bravado, as he always did, Sam marched into the dark, cavernous space and greeted the rest of the pride.
“Sorry we’re late, boys. The cruel mistress of payroll strikes again.”
“I’m with you, man.” Clayton Abbott stepped forward out of the group, and thanks to his shifter eyesight, Phil could see his long, blond hair obscuring his expression in the dark room. “I only got Jack for it, but with NormCorp and the IRS breathing down my back, I can’t afford to be a penny off.”
“What? NormCorp?” Sam turned to Clay, and Phil was thankful to see his brother’s eyes glow with interest in anything but avoiding the hunt.
“Yeah, fucking NormCorp. You know Ulysses had the gall to come into the Ninth Time last week and try to sell me on signing over the deed to him?”
“No offense,” Phil chimed in, “but what would Ulysses want with a secondhand store?”
“Real estate,” Jack Abbott, Clay’s brother, answered. “Plain and simple. I told him he couldn’t have it and that we provided a real service for the town, and the bastard just laughed in my face.”
“And then had the gall to come round to the back of the store and sell me on the idea.” Clay shook his head and stared at the ground. “Problem is he’s got connections at the government, and I’ve heard more than a few tales of him using those connections to financially ruin businesses.”
Phil took that opportunity to give Sam a pointed look, silently expressing his disapproval for Sam’s handling of Savage Hunger. They each owned one half of that business, and Sam had no right trying to sell it without Phil’s consent.
“But why do we have to fight it?” All eyes were on Sam. “I mean, we don’t have to give in completely, but what would it hurt to make a few little concessions?”
“Sam Pope, have you lost your ever-loving mind?” Oliver Cash, the pride alpha, stepped into the middle of the group of men. “I damn near lost my mate to that bastard’s ambition.”
Before Sam could respond, the metal of the door scraped again, and in walked Mel, flanked by Cleve and Ezra Yeats.
“We’re here. The festivities may begin now.” Mel stopped before reaching the rest of the men. “Oh, wait. It’s you guys again. Never mind about that festivity part.”
Maybe it was the fact that the hunt was only minutes away, but Phil felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as his inner mountain lion clawed at his control.
“Hey, man, wait just a little longer before you shift,” Phil’s best friend, Roarke Cash, said quietly beside him. “It’s Mel, isn’t it?”
Phil only nodded in response.
“Get through tonight, and we can talk about it in the morning, okay?”
Phil was about to respond when Oliver’s voice echoed throughout the room.
“11:59 p.m., guys. Circle up!”
All of the men began removing their clothes, stripping to only boxer shorts as they formed a ring around the alpha. Phil performed the movements mechanically, the curse and muscle memory already starting to take over for higher-level thinking. Phil had never particularly relished the ritual since the curse compelled him to return to Savage Valley for the bimonthly hunt, but tonight, he hungered for the release.
The room grew silent as Oliver closed his eyes, and the softly spoken ancient Shoshoni words pierced the chilly fall air.
“Deegai-doyadukubichi’, mukua.”
Phil couldn’t even register the others shifting before fur sprouted from his skin and claws from his fingernail. The colors, smells, and tastes that dominated his leonine consciousness once more grasped Phil’s brain. Only one sensation from his human mind remained, and it permeated every aspect of his cognizance.
Possession. The drive to possess every inch of Marta Verner’s being.
* * * *
He blinked his eyes open and saw his brothers lying strewn across the barren ground. Wait. It had to be two o’clock in the morning, long before dawn. Without light, Sam shouldn’t have been able to make out every feature—the dirt streaked across Mel’s face, Phil’s mouth dangling open in his stupor. The enhanced night vision in human form that many of the pride experienced had always eluded Sam. But he couldn’t deny what he saw.
The cold ground outside his cabin burned Sam’s flesh as he came to, human thoughts ruling his mind once more. After scrambling into a pair of boxers he had stashed for his transformations, he braced himself for the wave of nausea that hit him after a pride hunt. In his experience, running with everyone after he had satiated his appetite earlier in the afternoon left him with a cold, clammy feeling that refused to leave for days, diametrically to the sense of relief his pridemates felt. Any minute now. But the nausea never came.
His insides started roiling—a sure sign the nausea was seconds away—but another sensation took hold of him. Adrenaline. It wrapped around his heart and squeezed, thrilling him from the inside out. With the adrenaline came a wave of memory, another sensation experienced by other lions but never Sam. Images from the hunt suddenly flashed into his mind.
He had run with Phil to meet Mel near the Yeatses’ cabin. All three of them needed to be together for their control of the Popes’ sector. He could sense Phil’s discomfort as they ran and knew that Phil felt his reluctance. Mel had joined them, begrudging even in shifted form, and they started toward the Popes’ sector.
Sam had led the way, his duty as eldest, and his lion had not registered Marta’s rejection. No, he wanted to see his mate, smell her, touch her, and bask in the glow of her beauty. The pull had been too great to resist, and Sam led them out of their way to Marta’s apartment.
It happened at once. All three sensed her presence at the same time. Every inch of their beings ached for her, and they had collectively known that they must mate her and soon. Sam, Phil, and Mel all felt the pull to Marta, all knew she was the Popes’ mate.
Mel. Mel had experienced the exact same thing as Sam and Phil! The blood coursing through his veins heated, and he suddenly knew the source of the snake of pure exhilaration that entwined around his chest. Holy shit, had they really been that lucky?
His brothers both came to, and Sam watched with cautious optimism as the same epiphany played across their faces as they scrambled to clothe themselves. He stood, feeling stronger than he had ever felt after a hunt, not depleted but energized by his shift.
“It was her.”
Mel looked up, and Sam realized it had been years since his brother looked him straight in the eye.
“You found Marta, too.” Phil joined Sam looking down at the youngest.
“She’s our mate.” Mel shrugged, as nonchalant as ever. “I told you guys I’d met someone.”
The excitem
ent bled into anger, and Mel was the nearest target.
“Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you give us a name, a hint, anything to let us know who you’d found?” Visions of his brother with Marta played in his mind, tinged not with jealousy, but with a deep regret that the three of them had been too wrapped up in his their inner turmoil to see what was right in front of him. “We could have avoided this whole mess, but as always, you were only thinking about yourself.” Sam’s voice had become a roar.
“What the fuck?” Mel bellowed back to his brother as he sprung to his feet. “How do you know that I wasn’t thinking about you? And excuse me, it’s not like you ever furnished me with the name of your mate. All you did was call and demand I take the woman you selected. Hopefully you’ve learned over the past two years that you aren’t infallible, golden boy.”
“Not like you’ve given me any—”
“Stop it!” Phil pushed his way between his brothers. “Why are you two fighting? We just got the best news we could have possibly received.” He turned to Mel. “You probably don’t know this, but our idiot of a brother was just about to sell Savage Hunger to NormCorp and invoke the infertility clause. And now that doesn’t have to—”
“The infertility clause? You were going to do that to Marta?”
Fury pulled at his chest, and only thoughts of his mate kept him calm.
“It was the only thing we could do,” Sam said. “When you walked out, you left us with no other option. There would never be any way to continue the line, so—”
“So you thought you’d let that douchebag Ulysses Norman buy the diner and then take away Marta’s ability to reproduce?”
“It wasn’t the best plan,” Sam admitted. “But, Mel, we were desperate.”
A tense silence hung between the brothers.
“You know what we need to do,” Phil said, breaking the silence. Mel quirked an eyebrow and smirked. “Not that, not right away at least.”
“We need to go to her, and we need to tell her,” Sam said. “It’s time for her to make a choice.
Chapter 7
“Marta! Marta, open up!”
Sleep still tugged at the edges of her consciousness as she blinked her eyes open.
“Marta, we need to talk to you. Please, let us in.”
Her senses went alert when she realized that she recognized the voice pleading with her. Phil. She glanced over at her clock to see it was three o’clock in the morning. Shouldn’t he have been starting the honey almond muffins over at Savage Hunger?
“Baby, come on. I need my jacket.”
Everything inside Marta froze. Mel is here, too? Her brain raced, and when it dawned on her what must be happening, her conscience sagged under the weight of her guilt. Mel was here with Phil. They had found out about her trysts. The only thing that could make it worse would be—
“Marta! Open up!”
Sam, too? Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Her three liaisons, the ones she had imagined while rubbing herself to orgasm mere hours ago, all stood at her door. Entirely awake now, she tried to think of a way out of the situation. Damn it, why did the only window leading out of her apartment have a broken lock? Blind in the dark, she scurried around, looking for something, anything to aid her escape. An air vent, maybe?
“Marta, we just want to talk. Let us in, honey.”
Phil’s always-calming voice rang from the other side of her door. Banging into the counter and hissing a few select curses, she halted her frenzied searching in the kitchen and took a deep breath. They didn’t claim to be angry, but Marta knew that she would be if the situation were reversed, if she had found out that one of them was out cavorting with not one, but two other women.
Mustering every ounce of her courage, she took the few steps to her front door and opened it. What she saw at least put a smile on her face. Sam, Phil, and Mel all looked like they’d been rode hard and put up wet. Sam and Phil’s chins were dotted with stubble, and Mel’s stubble was thicker than she’d seen it before. Their hair was matted, dirt was streaked across their faces, and all three sported dark circles under their eyes. But something else burned in their eyes. Not anger, she thought. No, the look in their eyes was entirely unfamiliar.
Despite their shouts for Marta to open the door, now the three men now didn’t make a sound. She searched their expressions, hoping for some clue as to their purpose since they all three appeared to be trying the strong-and-silent tactic. Much as she hated to admit, it was working. Each man held such alluring sex appeal, all three of them with tall, lean, muscular bodies that—
Holy shit. Marta felt her jaw drop. Mel had the exact same figure as Sam and Phil and the same clear, bright blue eyes that pierced straight through to her soul. Despite the contrast of Sam’s blond locks and Phil’s wavy chestnut hair to Mel’s jet-black tresses, the family resemblance shone through. How had she not seen it before? The high cheekbones, the chiseled jaw, the full, luscious lips—Mel shared so many traits with his brothers that Marta felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.
“You’re brothers,” she whispered.
Sam and Mel each quirked an eyebrow—god, how had she not seen that?—as smug grins crossed their faces.
“It would have been much more convenient for you to figure that out earlier,” Sam drawled. “But we got it in the end.”
“Why would it have been more convenient? Because then you all would have known that I—” They hadn’t yet mentioned any knowledge of Marta’s dalliances with each. She knew Sam was well aware of what went on between her and Phil, but other than that, she had no proof that anyone had kissed and told.
“I’m afraid it’s a very, very long story.” The warmth in Phil’s smile helped to ease the tension. “And that’s why we’re here in the middle of the night. You’re working breakfast, after all.”
Dumbstruck by the revelation, Marta found herself completely unable to respond.
“Are you going to invite us in?” Mel asked, breaking the silence. Backing away from the door, Marta switched on the lights and headed to the kitchen. She would be needing coffee for this, she was certain. The Popes, as she now knew all three were, entered her small efficiency apartment. Sam’s head appeared to nearly scrape the ceiling with his extreme height, and neither of his brothers was too far behind.
Just as she closed the lid on her coffeemaker, warm stubble scraped across her shoulder. Without thinking, she leaned into the sensation, pleased when an arm wrapped around her waist. Then a second stubble-covered chin scraped across her cheek.
Marta jumped and turned around to see Sam and Phil both standing directly behind her. Even more disturbing, Mel stood right behind Phil, his arm extended as if reaching to touch Marta.
“What…How…Do you…” Marta trailed off, not capable of finding the words to even inquire as to what, exactly, was happening to her.
“We all know, baby.” Mel stepped around Phil and offered his hand to Marta. She stared at it for a moment then looked into his eyes. He nodded, a barely visible gesture, and she hesitantly placed her hand in his. He squeezed it, reassuring Marta a bit. “They know about what went on between the two of us.”
Marta attempted to steal her hand back, but Mel held it tightly.
“And I know what happened between you and Sam in his car,” Phil added.
“And the kitchen? That’s hot.” Mel’s eyebrow shot up.
“You’re not…” Marta took a deep breath then found the words to speak. “You’re not angry? I mean, I feel terrible, really terrible, about what I did and how I—”
The deep rumble of Sam’s laughter interrupted her.
“We are as far from angry as possible.” He closed the small space between himself and Marta, and Mel dropped her hand. As from the first moment she saw him, her body responded to Sam’s nearness. As his face lowered to hers and his eyes drifted shut, she involuntarily rose to her tiptoes and met his lips in a light but passionate kiss. He broke the kiss ever so slightly and whispered against Marta’s lips. �
��We’re happier than we knew we could be.”
“We are,” Phil chimed in. “I know it’ll be a while before you really believe us, but you falling for Mel is more than we could have ever hoped for.”
“Hey.” Mel’s arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close to him, and Sam released her with a sigh. “I resent that. It can’t be too hard to fall for me.” Mel landed a playful punch on Phil’s shoulder, and Phil responded with a brotherly shove.
“Let’s just say, all three of us couldn’t be happier.” Phil paused, and his expression nearly imperceptibly darkened. “But we need to have a talk, and I promise you will think we’re completely nuts in a few minutes.”
“What? I would never think that.” Marta then looked up at Mel. “Well, at least not about all three of you.”
Mel took her upturned face as an opportunity to place a peck on her nose. “We can talk about that remark later.” His raised eyebrows told Marta it’d be quite a pleasant conversation.
“Phil and Marta need to get to the diner by six thirty,” Sam called from where he now sat on Marta’s bed. “It’s time to get this show on the road.”
Mel guided her out of the small kitchen area to the bed. Sam sat on the edge of the bed, his long legs extended in front of him. “C’mere.” He reached for Marta, and Mel released her, allowing her to tumble onto Sam’s lap. His strong arms encircled her, cradling her to his chest. The way the three men had worked together when they handled her amazed her. Even though each had their own distinct style of interacting with her physically, tonight they moved as one, passing her from embrace to embrace.
The bed dipped on either side of them, and Mel and Phil each sat on either side of her and her protector. Marta nuzzled her nose against the soft tuft of blond chest hair that escaped from the top of Sam’s shirt. That same spicy scent, the one that had enveloped her when she and Mel made love, oozed from Sam’s core. Given the absolute improbability of everything that had happened in the past fifteen minutes, this time, Marta didn’t question its source, just let the woodsy musk filter through her awareness.