“We can both call her whatever we want,” said Kale.
“Good,” said Hudson. He yawned. “Then I’m going to call her our hot slutty tramp who digs cock.”
I elbowed him. “Don’t even think about it.” But, okay, actually, that was maybe kind of arousing. “I mean, don’t say anything like that in public, okay? But… maybe… if we were all in the heat of the moment…”
Hudson laughed.
Kale did too. His voice was low and deep. “Piper, you are a dirty girl, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.” I squirmed. “I like being with you guys. I feel… unleashed. Like I can give in and admit all the things I want deep down. With the two of you, I actually get to have them.”
“You’re amazing,” said Hudson, and there was that tinge of awe in his voice. “We want to do whatever you want.”
“Definitely,” Kale said.
It was quiet for a minute, and we all just snuggled close.
Hudson yawned again.
“You know what else?” Kale whispered. “I liked watching you and Hudson together. It’s like… I care so much about both of you, and watching the two of you make each other feel good—”
“Like it made you feel good?” murmured Hudson.
“Yeah.”
“I know what you mean.” Hudson yawned a third time. “Look, I love you guys. But I’m falling asleep. Can we talk tomorrow?”
I stiffened. Love? He wasn’t supposed to say that. We weren’t supposed to go there, because it made me feel confused and unsure and…
“Good night.” Kale rolled over, putting his back to me.
Now Hudson was spooning me, and I was spooning Kale.
The both of them were asleep in minutes.
But I lay awake for a while, anxiety rolling in my gut. I couldn’t be with them. I didn’t want to be a werewolf. I didn’t want to have werewolf babies. I could never accept the animal part of me.
Never.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We woke up a few hours later when the sun was up. The day was bright and sunny, coming in through the windows of the RV. We were all naked together, and the guys seemed in good spirits. They were both kissing me right away.
I had to admit that I liked that. I liked being with both of them. I was even tempted by the fact that they both seemed to have woken up with enormous hard-ons which I could see myself having a lot of fun playing with.
But when they started touching me, the anxiety rose up inside me.
Kale chuckled. “Hey, what’s up with our Piper this morning?”
I pushed the covers out of the way and flounced out of the bed. “I’m not ‘yours.’ I don’t belong to anyone.”
They both wrinkled their foreheads.
“You okay?” said Hudson.
“Fine,” I said. I locked myself in the bathroom and took a shower.
When I got out, wrapped in a towel, both of the guys were dressed and out of the bed. They weren’t looking at each other, and they weren’t looking at me. There was tension in the room.
Oh, goddamn it. It seemed like I really was the glue that held them together. If I wasn’t completely on board with everything, they weren’t close either. I felt like screaming. “Look,” I said. “I like fucking you guys. Of course I like it. What girl wouldn’t? But that’s all this can be. There’s no… relationship or something.”
Hudson’s jaw twitched. “Come on, Piper. I know you feel—”
“I don’t care what I feel,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s probably the cruel, evil beast inside me making me feel it. You know, the thing that likes to eat people? And excuse me if I don’t want to make that part of me happy.”
They both folded their arms over their chests.
The argument was just getting started, and it probably would have really got going in a second, but we were interrupted by a knock on the door.
The family that lived in the RV next door was inviting us to breakfast. They’d sent over their daughter, who couldn’t have been more than five, to ask us if we wanted to come over.
Kale knew them. Apparently, he’d met them when he was working here all those years ago. They hadn’t been a family then, just two people who were dating. Now, they were married with three little girls, the youngest of which was crawling all over the place.
Breakfast was set out in front of the RV on a big picnic table. There were scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, and it was delicious.
Kale seemed genuinely happy to see his old friends, and he was good with kids too, asking them lots of questions and listening intently to their answers. The couple teased Kale that he needed to get busy having kids of his own, and Kale got quiet.
Then, it seemed like his friends had heard about Lila, because they both got white in the face and apologized a lot.
Kale told them to forget about it, but I could see that it had hurt him. He’d lost his unborn child when Lila died. I hadn’t thought about what a loss that must have been for him.
Still, it was just another reason why none of this could ever work. I wasn’t having werewolf babies, and I certainly wasn’t going to try to have a family with two men. How could they possibly handle it? One would be a father of the child, not the other. I didn’t see how that wouldn’t make them even more jealous.
But after we’d said our goodbyes to the family and they went off to work at the carnival, Kale took me aside. “Would you call them monsters who like to eat people?” he demanded.
I just glared at him.
“Werewolves are just like everyone else, Piper. And you have to let go of this idea that what’s inside you is evil.”
But I didn’t want to hear about it.
Even though he made a point of it all day. Everywhere we went, he made sure to introduce me to people he knew doing jobs at the carnival. The guy running the Ferris wheel who told me that I had a pretty smile was a werewolf. The girl handing out basketballs for the ball toss was a werewolf. The teenage kid closing the gates on the bumper cars was a werewolf. And on and on he went.
I didn’t want to think about what he was saying, so I just tried to distract him from saying it. He, Hudson, and I did everything that the carnival offered. We rode all the rides, played all the games, tried all the food. When Kale wasn’t trying to convince me that werewolves were nice, it was actually a lot of fun. I enjoyed being with them. I liked sitting in the middle of the Ferris wheel, with one of them on either side of me. I liked the two of them jokingly competing over who could win me the most stuffed animals. And I liked stealing pieces of Hudson’s funnel cake when he wasn’t looking.
But being in a relationship with them? Well, it would be giving in.
And I had been controlling myself for so long. Whenever the full moon hit, I kept myself from changing. I locked the wolf up tight inside me and never let it out.
I couldn’t help remembering the dead bodies of the men in the warehouse, the dead bodies of my friends in college. The tearstained face of my boyfriend’s sister.
And I wanted what I always wanted. I wanted as far away from that part of me as possible.
Later that night, after the carnival had closed, there was a big company party, everyone outside of their RVs and hanging out. There was a lot of food and a lot of booze. Everyone was drinking and having fun. Some people were playing instruments, gathered around fire pits and singing. It was a comfortable, happy atmosphere. These people were one big family, and they all seemed to be having a blast.
I got tipsy pretty fast. Calla was making these amazing mixed drinks with pineapple juice, and I kept gulping them down.
I liked Calla. She and Ryder ran the carnival. Ryder’s family owned it, and they were in charge. They were one of those older couples that didn’t seem old at all. And it was obvious how in love they were, even after all these years. There was tenderness in the way they spoke to each other, heat in their casual touches.
I was sitting outside of Calla’s RV with one of the pineapple drinks in one
hand, drinking the atmosphere in. I didn’t know exactly where Hudson and Kale had gotten off too.
Calla sat down next to me. “Piper…” She leaned closer, sniffing me.
You’d think I’d get used to that, being around wolves so much lately, but I really hadn’t.
“You are a wolf,” she said. “I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.”
I made a face. I wished I wasn’t, and I was almost tipsy enough to say it out loud.
Calla took a deep breath. “You know, I’m not sure if I should say anything, but… you weren’t adopted, were you?”
I was taken aback. “Yeah… How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “It was just a guess. The thing is, I’m not sure, so maybe I shouldn’t say anything more. But you do look like him.”
“Like who?” I said.
“You know anything about your biological father at all?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t overstep my bounds, then. It’s only that in the wolf community, we all knew that, uh… how old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Yeah.” She furrowed her brow. “Well, that lines up. About twenty-six years ago, we all knew that Cole Randall was on the lookout for his two-year-old daughter, who’d been taken from him and given to adoptive parents. Her name was Piper.”
I felt stunned. “Cole Randall? The wolf serial killer?”
“Well, whatever he was, he was an interesting character,” she said. “He nearly killed an SF agent, and then ended up having a child with her—the little girl named Piper who was adopted. If a woman who’d almost been killed by him could run off with him, maybe there was more to him.”
I hadn’t heard that about him. I’d heard of Cole Randall before. I think I’d even watched some documentary about his crimes. He was one of the few werewolves who’d been taken in for deliberately killing as a wolf. I gulped at my drink. I was feeling a little stunned.
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She winced. “I’m sorry. I think I put my foot in my mouth.”
“You think I’m that Piper, don’t you?” I said, moving over to one of the couches and settling heavily on it.
“Could be,” she said. “I guess there’s one way to be sure. Did you have alpha problems, like the other kids?”
“What?” I said.
“Well, a lot of werewolf children were displaced after the attack on the SF twenty-six years ago, and they were all given to adoptive families, but they weren’t to be registered with the SF. To keep those children from turning, they were given surrogate alphas.”
This was sounding far too familiar to make me comfortable. I stared at Calla in horror, but I was also riveted. She understood my past.
Calla fidgeted with her own drink. “Listen, if you don’t want me to continue—”
“No, I want to know,” I said. “Please keep going.”
“Well, our kind have used surrogates before, of course,” she said. “But never from such far distances, apart for so many years. These children had contact once with the alpha, so that he could form a bond with them, and then never saw him again. Over time, the bond began to… wear thin. And then, one after another, the bonds all started breaking. The children, now all grown up, started shifting at the full moon. It was a real problem, because many of them hadn’t even been aware of the fact they were werewolves.”
I felt like crying. “Yes, that’s what happened to me.”
She nodded. “Then I guess that cinches it, then.”
I shook my head. “But… if they knew there was a problem with the alpha bonds, why didn’t they tell anyone?”
“They tried,” said Calla. “But by then, it was too late. Ryder and I never had a problem, of course, because we were in constant contact with our adopted child. So, our bonds were strong. That’s how I know about all of this, you see. We adopted one of those displaced werewolf children ourselves.”
I just breathed, trying to take it all in. In some ways, it was overwhelming, but in others, it was good to finally have the pieces all line up. Now I knew why my life had gone the way that it had. Now things made better sense.
“But Cole Randall?” I said. “How can I be the daughter of someone like that?”
“Well, we don’t pick our parents,” she said. “And besides, I think he cared about you. I know he and that SF agent were frantically looking for you. I would have thought they found you. When they came through the carnival, they seemed so determined.”
“You knew them? My biological parents?”
Calla shrugged. “I met them once. Ryder knew Cole better, I think.” She furrowed her brow. “They were determined, but they’d been in wolf form for a long time. There was something wild about them.”
And then… suddenly, somehow, it just clicked. I don’t know how I knew, but I did know, and I was certain of it. Certain with the wolf part of my brain. “They did find me.”
“What?” said Calla.
“When I was a little girl, there were these wolves that lived in the forest behind my house, and they used to come and play with me. I’ve been thinking about them lately, thinking about how strange it was that they were so gentle with me, that wild animals would play games with a little girl the way they did. But they weren’t wild wolves at all. They were my parents.” I bit down hard on my lip, and now tears did start to fill my eyes.
Calla nodded slowly. “Yes, I can see that. They found you, but they didn’t disturb you. They must have seen that you were happy and safe in your new home. They wanted what was best for you.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Suddenly, all the missing pieces of my life had come together. Now I knew where I came from and why the things that had happened to me had happened. Strangely, it made me feel more at peace, even though it made me feel even more like a werewolf. I hated the wolf part of me, but… well, I hated it less now that I understood it a little better. It truly hadn’t been my fault that I’d shifted that night in college. It had just been a problem with an alpha bond.
I took a drink of pineapple goodness, still feeling tipsy. “I’m glad they let me have my family.”
“Your adoptive family?”
“Yeah,” I said. “My parents were good to me. They loved me so much. My mother was desperate for a baby, you know?”
“I do,” said Calla. “I was desperate for a baby as well.”
“Oh, right, you said you adopted. Is your child here?”
“No, she’s off in the world on her own,” said Calla. “She’s grown up now. She visits, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
“When I first met Ryder,” said Calla, “I wasn’t a werewolf. I didn’t even like werewolves. But after we fell in love, and once I knew we were adopting a little girl together, I wanted us all to be the same, so I asked Ryder to bite me. It was important to me to be able to be close to both of them, you know? To be a family that way?”
“You chose to be a werewolf?” I could hardly believe it.
She nodded. “It was like being reborn. Suddenly, I was able to have these bonds with my husband and my child, bonds that I’d never thought were possible.”
“Weren’t you afraid that you’d… hurt someone? Being a wolf means being out of control.”
She laughed. “Oh sweetheart. We’re all out of control. All the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a werewolf or not.”
* * *
By the time I stumbled back to the RV, I was too drunk to do anything other than crawl into bed and pass out. Later on, I barely woke up when Hudson joined me in bed, and then when—even later—Kale crawled in with us as well.
We didn’t so much as kiss before falling asleep, but we all woke up the same way as the morning before, entwined in each other’s limbs, all sleeping close together.
My face was towards Hudson’s, and Kale was draped over the back of me. I woke to feeling his erection pressing into my backside, to seeing Hudson’s big, deep eyes gazing at me.
> Hudson tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Hey there. You in a better mood this morning, or are you just hung over?”
I had probably had too much to drink. But the closeness of the two men’s bodies made me feel safe and warm, and I was happy here. There were no nasty hangover side effects yet.
Kale’s hand snaked around my torso to cup my breast. “I think we could put you in a good mood.”
I smiled a little. Then my head started to pound. It came out of nowhere, sneaking up on me. I groaned. “Look, guys, it wouldn’t work.”
“Because you’re hung over?” Hudson propped himself on one elbow and tugged the sheet down, exposing my body. I’d apparently taken all my clothes off to go to sleep. I didn’t remember doing that. Not exactly.
“I mean us,” I said, rolling onto my back. “Even if I could accept being a werewolf, it wouldn’t work.”
They both peered down at me.
I pulled the sheets back up over my body. “Ouch. My head is killing me.”
“I knew you were hung over,” said Hudson.
“I don’t understand why it wouldn’t work,” said Kale.
“Oh come on, it’s ridiculous,” I said. “Three people in one relationship? You guys sharing me? No way.”
“We want to share you,” said Hudson.
“We like sharing you,” said Kale. “I know we didn’t talk to you about this, but Hudson and I had a conversation, and we’re not angry with each other anymore.”
“Yeah, we want this,” said Hudson.
I shut my eyes. My mouth was dry too. God, this was going to be a bad hangover. “You’d get sick of it. You’d each want me to yourself.”
“Well, I’m not opposed to letting Kale be with you alone sometimes,” said Hudson. “If he needs time with you alone, then you guys could go on one-on-one dates, you could have one-on-one sex. I can understand how he might need that sometimes.”
“And Hudson too,” said Kale. “I can let him do that.”
I glared at them. “You’ll get jealous.”
“I’d rather deal with a little bit of jealousy than lose both of you,” said Hudson.
Under a Raging Moon: Part Three Page 10