by R. E. Butler
He and Fate walked into the boarding house. The scent of grilled steak hit Wyked’s nose, and his stomach growled.
“You guys can stick around for dinner,” John said as they followed him into the spacious kitchen. “James is grilling.”
Rue, an albino panther who was a cousin to Wyked and Fate, turned from the sink and dried off her hands with a smile. Then she joined them and kissed the brothers on the cheek. “You look very nice. Where are you going for dinner?”
“Sabrina’s,” Fate answered.
“Oh, I love Sabrina’s,” Jilly said as she walked into the kitchen. She wore a jean skirt that hit mid-thigh and a V-neck top that was a perfect shade of dark green that he liked to think she’d worn because it was the same color as his eyes.
Wyked slid his arm over her shoulders and kissed her swiftly. “You look amazing.”
She smiled. “Thanks. I’m starving.”
“Us too,” Fate said.
Jilly kissed her dad, uncle, and step-mom goodbye, and grabbed a backpack. “See you tomorrow,” Jilly said.
Fate took her backpack from her, and they left the boarding house to a chorus of goodbyes. Wyked opened the truck door, and she stepped up into the cab and scooted to the middle of the bench seat. He got behind the wheel, and Fate sat down on her other side.
“Ready for date night?” Wyked asked as he turned on the engine and backed away from the boarding house.
“Very much. Then we can go hunting for flowers tonight. I’m so excited about that.”
“I’m glad we can share it with you,” Fate said.
Wyked expected their flower picking to be fun, but he was mostly looking forward to when they could crawl into bed together when they were done, smelling of night and the woods. He’d take every chance he could to be with Jilly, even if it was a bit of torturous heaven right now.
* * *
Fate stifled a yawn as he changed into hiking boots and switched out his dress shirt for a T-shirt. The dinner at Sabrina’s had been fun, even though they’d gotten some side-eye from patrons who had noticed that both he and Wyked were showering Jilly with affection. The restaurant was outside of Ashland, and he knew humans weren’t used to seeing a ménage relationship on display. In town, the residents were used to seeing group relationships thanks to the pride, and although there were always people who thought it was unnatural, most didn’t seem to care. Fate hadn’t really given much thought to whether he and Wyked would share a mate, but once they’d met Jilly, it was entirely natural. He occasionally felt jealous of his brother and mate, but after talking to the males in the boarding house, he knew his reactions were natural and something that they all struggled with from time to time. The key to successfully sharing a mate was not to let the jealousy fester.
Fate walked out of the bedroom and found Jilly and Wyked talking quietly. She smiled at Fate and held out her hand, which he took as he joined them.
“We were just talking about my birthday,” she said.
Wyked wiggled his brows at Jilly. “Two weeks, little kitten. Then you’re all ours.”
A surge of arousal heated the air, the sweet scent coming from their mate. Fate couldn’t stop his gaze from darting to the bedroom. It was so tempting to take her there. Strip her. Take her. Over and over. He knew he’d never be sated. One taste wouldn’t be enough.
Pushing those sexy thoughts aside, he said, “Anything in particular you’re thinking about?”
“Getting married on my birthday.”
He blinked in surprise. Was she not happy that they were combining their mating and marriage ceremonies with her birthday celebration? He glanced at Wyked.
“Are you upset?” Fate asked.
Her brow lifted. “What? No, of course not.”
Wyked released a soft growl. “I think we assumed, so we never asked. Is that it?”
Fate knew his brother was right. When they’d met Jilly, they’d asked her to be their shared mate, and then they’d just known they would be waiting for her to turn twenty-one so they could mate her and make her theirs.
Jilly exhaled slowly, and her blue eyes looked luminous, the way they did when she was emotional. Because the female mountain lions had dampened her emotions when she was a child, she still struggled with her feelings. “I hate that we’re forced to wait.”
Fate squeezed her hand. “And?”
She chewed on her bottom lip, and Wyked gently pulled it from her teeth. “What else, kitten?”
“We’re leaving Ashland after we’re mated. It’s not just that my birthday means we’re going to be mated and married, but it also means that my time here, with my family, is coming to an end. I think Dad still hopes I’ll change my mind and want to stay.”
“You can,” Wyked said. “We said we’d stay if you wanted to.”
She shook her head and dashed her fingertips under her eyes to catch stray tears. “No. I don’t want to, because I want to be with the clan, but it’s just hard to know that my decision is going to make my dad and the pride sad.”
Fate pulled her into his arms, and Wyked pressed against her back, caging her between them. She relaxed with a nearly inaudible purr.
“Whatever comes,” Wyked murmured, “we’ve got your back.”
“I know,” she said, rubbing her cheek on Fate’s chest. “I need you both so much and I just…hate the delay.”
Fate hated it, too. He’d never disliked his age before, but he sure did now. He wished they’d all been twenty-one when they met so they could have joined with her right away. Then they wouldn’t be playing let’s-take-a-cold-shower all the time to cool their libidos. Knowing that she wanted them as much as they wanted her was a torture all its own.
He opened his mouth to reassure her that the wait would be worth it when there was a cry of alarm and a bellow of pain. Jilly grabbed her medical bag off the counter, and they ran out of the RV as a group, rushing to find the source of trouble. They followed the calls for help to where the clan had made a pit for bonfires. Chairs and logs circled the big, stone-lined pit where a fire crackled. Jilly rushed to a group of panthers, and Fate and Wyked followed her to where Sahns lay on the ground cradling his arm which was covered with burned, blistered skin. His mate, Betsy, held his head on her lap and cried. “It was my fault! I tripped on a log and nearly fell into the fire, but Sahns pushed me out of the way and had to catch himself on his arm right in the pit. Can you help him, Jilly?”
Jilly opened her bag, and her brow furrowed. “It’ll heal faster if you shift.”
Sahns gritted his teeth, and Fate could see the fangs. Betsy shook her head. “He’s in too much pain. Help him, please.”
Jilly lifted a tube of clear gel. She opened the lid and squeezed the gel onto the wound.
Time seemed frozen while they watched his burned arm for some sort of improvement.
“That didn’t work!” Betsy said. “Do something else.”
Jilly looked at Fate, her face a picture of helplessness. “I don’t know what to do!”
Hanai pushed through the panthers and knelt next to Jilly. He opened his satchel as he inspected Sahns’s wound. He worked quickly, making a paste with a handful of different ingredients that Fate couldn’t identify. Then he spread the paste on Sahns’s arm and wrapped it with gauze and then a linen bandage. Sahns inhaled sharply and then relaxed with a sigh.
Betsy smiled tentatively at Hanai. “Is he going to be okay?”
Hanai nodded. “The poultice will help start the healing process and also dampen the pain so he can shift in about an hour. He should stay in his shift for the rest of the night. I’ll check on him in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Betsy said.
“Thanks,” Sahns mumbled, as panthers lifted him and carried him toward their RV. The crowd left, and the four of them sat in awkward silence as Jilly stared mutely into the fire. Her fingers clenched around the strap of her bag.
Hanai put his supplies into his bag and closed the cover. He cleared his throat. “The alo
e gel was a good idea.”
She shook her head. “It didn’t help him at all.”
“It didn’t help with the pain, but it would have helped promote healing. It was an appropriate choice.”
Fate dropped to his knees next to her, and Wyked mimicked him on her other side. Fate rested a hand on her shoulder. He could practically taste her emotions right then – anger, worry, fear.
“I don’t know enough. I’ll never be as good a healer as you.”
“You’re more accomplished than I was at your age, Jilly,” Hanai said. “I know more than you because I’m twice your age. You’ll get there. You have a natural healing talent that is blooming. You can’t rush experience.”
She snorted and ground her molars.
Hanai looked at Fate and then Wyked. Then met Jilly’s gaze. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and said, “Have you ever met a fae?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, they have their own realm, so there aren’t a lot of them around, but I learned a lot about healing from one, and I could reach out and see if she can help you.”
Wyked asked, “Why can’t you just teach Jilly what the fae taught you?”
“Because it’s not as if I have a textbook on fae healing to hand over, or a curriculum for teaching it.” Hanai tapped his temple. “I have all the knowledge in here, and when the need for it arises, it’s just something I know. If Jilly can spend some time learning from Georgette, then she’ll have the knowledge at her disposal.”
Jilly’s shoulders straightened. “I want to meet her.”
Hanai nodded. “I’ll contact her and see if she can meet with us.”
Wyked said, “We’re going with you, obviously.”
“I expected no less,” Hanai said. He glanced at his watch and said, “Do you want to pick jasmine or do you want to just be finished for the night?”
She stood and brushed off her pants. Fate knew before she spoke that she would go. He could read her body language, and every inch of her body said she wanted to go. Wyked ran back to their RV and returned with the supplies for harvesting the flowers, and they headed into the woods to find the white flowers. Jilly didn’t talk much, although Hanai talked throughout their time in the woods. Fate worried about Jilly, and he said as much when they parted ways with Hanai after they finished picking the flowers.
Once inside their RV, Jilly sighed deeply as she looked around the family room. “Do you guys think I’m overreacting to what happened?”
Wyked folded his arms. “How could we when you’ve basically been mute since it happened?”
Her face scrunched up, and she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’m just tired.”
“Yeah,” Fate said. He placed his hands on her waist, tunneling his fingers under her shirt to touch her soft skin. “If you’re worried about Betsy’s reaction – don’t. She was panicked about Sahns, and anything she said would be colored by her emotions at the time. She wanted you to be like Hanai, when you haven’t been training for long. Wyked and I know that you did your best with the knowledge you have. No one is mad or unhappy with you, sweetheart. I promise.”
“Can we go to bed?” she said, abruptly changing the subject.
Fate caught Wyked’s unhappy look and shook his head in response. If she didn’t want to talk, pushing wasn’t the answer.
“You bet,” Fate said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
By the time she climbed into bed between him and Wyked, he was bone-deep tired and stifling his yawns. She rolled to her side away from him, scooting until her back was flush against his chest and he could curl around her, which he loved. The scent of jasmine flowers still clung to their skin, perfuming the air.
“One day down, kitten,” Wyke said, yawning. “Thirteen more to go.”
“Yay,” she said.
“Can’t wait,” Fate said, kissing her neck. He closed his eyes and relaxed, his thoughts shifting to their coming mating day.
It would be here before they knew it, and then she’d be theirs in truth, and they’d be hers.
Forever.
Chapter 3
Honor Parkins listened to the members of her all-female pride as they sat around the dining room table. There were two factions of females within her pride – those who wanted to leave the past in the past and move on, and those who wanted revenge. Honor was among those who wanted to move the hell on. She’d left King, Pennsylvania, years ago to start a new life with the females who felt the same as her. The male mountain lions wanted to have relationships and families, and Honor and the other females weren’t wired that way. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t actually care. She only cared about herself and the females. The males could do whatever the hell they wanted down in the states, as long as they stayed down there.
A small group of them, led by Tanya and Hannah, had stayed in Pennsylvania and spied on the males, attempting to disrupt their plans to mate with humans and other types of shifters. A female named Melody had come to stay with Honor and her pride after the falling-out with the males. She was different. Even though she was a full mountain lion, she wasn’t like Honor and the pride. Melody wanted a family and a mate. She’d eventually run away from the pride, which had made Honor furious, but she’d opted not to pursue the issue. Melody appeared to be an anomaly. If she wanted to enter into a relationship with one or two males, or a baker’s dozen, it didn’t affect Honor.
But what did affect Honor and her pride mates was Tanya and Hannah and their never ceasing plotting and planning to get revenge on a female named Jilly. Jilly had stayed in Pennsylvania with Tanya’s pride, and according to all the reports, she’d been the perfect female – hating the males, never wanting any sort of permanent relationship. Something had changed in Jilly’s life, however, and she went from just-like-the-others to just-like-Melody, taking up with a black panther clan and claiming twin panthers as mates.
“I just have to ask,” Honor said, looking at Tanya and Hannah who sat at the other end of the table. “Why are we still talking about Jilly? It’s been three years. Let it the hell go.”
“I agree,” Gretchen, one of Honor’s pride members, said. “Who the hell cares that she’s living with the males? They’re hundreds of miles away, in a freaking different country.”
Tanya snarled. “Because of her, Layla’s dead.”
Honor ignored the urge to roll her eyes. “Melody killed Layla, because you guys were trying to fuck her mate and were planning to kill her. If you were smart, you would have left the female alone, then Layla would still be alive.”
And you’d still be down in the states, not up here bugging the hell out of me, she added mentally.
“Melody didn’t betray us. Jilly did.”
“That makes zero sense,” Honor said.
Tanya slammed her fist into the table, making several of the females jump. “I want to destroy Jilly. I want to take what she loves so she’ll know that leaving the females was wrong. I want her to suffer, the way we’ve suffered without our leader.”
It occurred to Honor just then that arguing with Tanya was futile. She’d never shut up about Jilly until she got her revenge.
“What are you planning to do?” Honor asked.
Tanya leaned back in her chair, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. “The pride hunts on the full moon because of that wolf bitch. We’ll hide in the pride’s hunting grounds and lie in wait for the betrayer and the males she’s mated. We just have to get close enough to dose the males with the poison I’ve procured, and then they’ll die. But not before they’re in so much pain that they’ll beg for death. Jilly’s last memories of her mates will be their tortured end.”
Hannah laughed. “If we’re lucky, Jilly will kill herself when they die. But if not, we’ll stick around and finish the job ourselves.”
“You do realize that what you’re planning is murder?” Honor felt compelled to ask.
Tanya shrugged. “In the old days, people killed those who betrayed them.”
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“What history books are you reading?” Gretchen asked. “She’s down there, and we’re up here. Why can’t you just move on? I don’t care what the males are doing anymore. And we sat down tonight to discuss who among us would procreate to begin the next generation of our pride and where we’d find the males we need.”
“I want my revenge,” Tanya said, folding her arms across her chest. “Then I’ll be the first to carry a cub. Give me what I want, and I’ll be the first to produce our next generation.”
Gretchen glanced at Honor and then at Tanya. “Where will you get a male?”
“There are humans in other towns. I’ll find one at a bar. And there’s a wolf pack, too. It would be good to mix the aggressive nature of the wolf males with our female DNA.”
At one time, the females had only cared about the purebred children, born of mountain lion males and females. But with the splitting of the pride, the females now knew that the only way to continue their species was to have sex with other shifter types or humans and hope for the best. The worst-case scenario was that they’d give up any non-shifter children for adoption.
“Fine, fine,” Honor said. “We’ll accompany you to Ashland to get your revenge on Jilly, but I’m taking the lead on this. If I say it’s too risky, we walk away and this is the last time you bring that name up.”
Although Tanya agreed, Honor knew that she was just paying lip service. Tanya didn’t have enough females on her side to pull off a coup, but there was something very dangerous about her nonetheless. She wanted to punish Jilly for betraying her, and Honor didn’t think she’d ever let it go.
When the room was empty save for Gretchen, Honor said with a low voice, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Tanya and Hannah will die while we’re down there, and we can go back to our plans for the future.”
“That would be nice,” Gretchen said. “But I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”
“Probably not.”
“We could just let them do it on their own. We don’t have to go with them,” Gretchen pointed out.