by R. E. Butler
“I wasn’t really let out of the house much. He would lock me up when he worked. If he had people over, they were his friends and I wasn’t allowed to talk to them, just serve them and stay out of the way.”
He almost said he was sorry for what happened to her, but he stopped himself. Repeating the same phrase again and again wouldn’t change anything about what had happened to her. He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to the top. “That’s in the past, Sydney. You can talk to who you want, go where you want, do whatever you want and no one will stop you. It’s your life.”
She stopped just outside the back door and looked up at him. “It is, isn’t it?”
He nodded. Sterling and Orion stood with them, all of them looking down at her in the darkness, the light from inside the house the only illumination.
Smiling, she went up on her toes and kissed each of them on the cheek before saying goodnight and walking into the house.
Normally they drove separately into work, but Monday, Sydney’s first day at work with them, they all decided to drive together in Crux’s SUV. She sat in the front seat while he drove, his brothers in the back. He could tell she was excited.
Orion asked, “Would you like to start off in the office with me, Syd?”
She looked back. “If that’s what you’d like me to do.”
Crux said, “Baby, you can do anything you want.”
She glanced at Crux. “I only had one part-time job in high school, waiting tables at a diner.” She paused, and he could tell she wanted to say something.
They were still operating in a mostly hands-off mode with her, but he reached over and took her hand in his. “What, baby?”
“I had plans to go to college, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought I had time to figure it all out.”
“You’re still young. You can go to college if you want, or work somewhere. Coming along with us to work is just a way for us to make sure you’re safe and for you to earn some money of your own.” Orion said.
Her head snapped back and she released his hand. “Do you think I’m not safe?”
Sterling growled and Orion shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean that at all. Of course you’re safe. It’s just that,” he looked at Crux in the rearview, but Crux didn’t know how to say that they wanted to make sure she was safe because she was their mate and it was in their nature to want to protect her, without pushing things with her.
“Why?” she asked, and the raw openness of the word was so heavy that it hung in the air between them.
A few painfully quiet moments passed as Orion struggled with what to say. Crux looked over at Sydney and saw that she now wore a deep frown. He reached for her hand again, surprised when she pulled it away from him and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What’s wrong?” Crux asked, pulling into the parking lot of the gym.
“Nothing. I understand. You want me to be safe because you gave your word.”
Judging from her flat voice and tense posture, Crux knew that she’d been hurt by Orion’s lack of response. But what could he have said?
“It’s not that at all,” Orion started but Sydney put her hand up.
“It’s fine, guys, really. Can we go in now? I’m curious about the gym and don’t want to be late on my first day. Even if the job is temporary.”
She opened the passenger door and stepped down, closing it with a little more force than necessary.
“Fuck me,” Orion said. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”
Sterling opened his door without a word, but he was glaring at both of them. Crux reached for the door handle and stopped. “Do you think that she was hoping that you would say we wanted her safe because we care about her?”
“If she did then I just fucked us all. I don’t like how she emphasized that the job was temporary.”
Crux didn’t like it either, but there really wasn’t anything they could do except try to convince her with time that she meant more to them than a favor to the relo group.
Chapter 9
The next few weeks passed quickly for Sydney as she navigated a world that was both familiar and unfamiliar. She’d grown up relatively unencumbered by rules. Her mother hadn’t cared much about her, so Sydney had been able to come and go as she pleased. Where others might fall into the trap of becoming a troubled teenager, she had buckled down and worked hard in school. All of her hard work had been for nothing in the end, though. The books she read in school hadn’t prepared her for the hard life that awaited her once her mother sold her. And that burned like acid. It had been bad enough when Sydney had thought her mom had given her to the alpha because she couldn’t stand her. But to know that her mom had accepted money…it just made her feel worse. It was no wonder that her former mate had treated her like property. She’d been purchased for him. For all intents and purposes, she was his toy to use and abuse at his whim.
But escape had brought her to Kentucky and into the home of the three kindest men she’d ever known. She knew that they looked at her as an obligation to fulfill to the relo group and her cousin, but in the darkness in the bedroom they had given her, she liked to pretend that they cared about her. Truly cared about her. Ever since the revelation that hyenas shared a mate, she hadn’t been able to get her mind out of thinking about them that way. The three of them. Touching her. At the same time. During the daylight hours, she forced those lurid thoughts away. They were sweet and generous by nature and would treat any female they’d rescued from a nightmare of abuse with the same kid gloves that they handled her with. But at night, she could dream all she wanted about giving herself to them. She already knew that they would never be anything but tender to her.
She spoke to Jan every few days. Jan was anxious for Sydney to join her in Alaska, and Sydney wished that she’d been able to go there immediately. The longer she lived with Orion, Crux, and Sterling, the harder it was becoming to keep her nighttime thoughts out of the daylight.
The gym had been a welcome reprieve from staying in the house. Although she knew that she could come and go as she pleased, and they’d even given her the keys to Orion’s Mustang after she had gotten her driver’s license, she still felt like she was trapped in the house. Not in the way she’d felt trapped before, with locked doors and nailed-shut windows. But trapped with her emotions. Every kindness they showed to her made her long for them as more than whatever they were now. Not really friends but more than acquaintances. Every time Sterling called her ‘Little One’, her heart thudded irregularly in her chest. When Crux walked with her for hours through the woods, sometimes never saying a word, her mind would picture walking with him and holding the hand of a small child, with her blue eyes and his dark blond hair. And Orion’s sensible leadership over his clan, including her in everything that they did, made her feel as if she did fit right in with them. But she knew she didn’t. Not once in the last three weeks had they done more than hug her or hold her hand. There had been no stolen kisses. No snuggling on the couch. No whispered invitations to the bedroom. They held her at arms’ length and she wasn’t sure if it was because they believed she was fragile or if they just didn’t want her, but the demons from her past whispered in her ear that she was as unwanted in their home as she’d been in the other homes she’d lived in.
On Wednesday, the day of the full moon, she opted to stay home and not go into work. She was feeling restless and horny, her wolf itching to run free and her body aching for pleasure. She’d asked them to touch her before, when the drugs had made her lose control of her own body’s reactions. She couldn’t bear to ask them again, not when they’d never given her any hint over the past weeks that there could be anything between them. She’d known with utter certainty that she wasn’t going to be sticking around the day Orion couldn’t explain why they wanted her to be safe. If they’d just said that they cared about her safety because they cared about her, it might have changed everything. She’d spent the earlier part of her life being ignored. Then six yea
rs of torturous hell. And now, she was free, the world apparently for her taking, and all she could think about was staying with Orion and his brothers.
Shaking the thoughts from her head, she grabbed a quick breakfast before they were up, and went for a walk in the woods alone. She knew one of them would stay behind while the others went to work, and she’d been told that the gym was closing early and everyone would be there for the full moon. Hyenas were not compelled to shift on the full moon they way that wolves were, but they’d grown accustomed to shifting on the full moon because of Alyssa. Even though she was pregnant and no longer shifting, the hyenas all shifted and hunted after gathering at the large fire pit in the woods and wishing each other a good hunt.
She’d walked through the woods so frequently that she knew exactly where the boundaries were that separated the baro’s one hundred acres from the other properties around them. She walked leisurely, picking up a twig and twirling it, as the morning sun warmed the world around her. Trying to keep her mind off of the hyenas and on the upcoming hunt, where she would have a chance to actually be free in her wolf form and run where she pleased, turned out to be difficult.
She reached the western edge of the property and stopped, leaning her back against a smooth-barked tree. Her eyes drifted shut and she opened her senses to the world around her. Birds chirped on the branches above her head. Something small scurried between rustling bushes. The sunlight didn’t filter completely through the thick canopy of trees, but she could still feel its presence on her skin.
A breeze kicked up, rustling the leaves overhead, and a scent tickled her nose. She went still and willed her heart not to pound as she inhaled silently, slowly, and filtered out the natural scents around her. The tickle in her nose was from something familiar, a cologne that her former mate liked to douse himself in.
It was a faint scent, almost invisible, and she opened her eyes and straightened, inhaling deeply. The scent was gone. There one moment and then…not. She shook her head, moving forward slightly into the breeze, but not catching any more of the scent. Which made her wonder if she’d imagined it.
She explored a little further, scenting along the way, but she couldn’t pick up the scent again and decided that maybe her overactive imagination had come up with that scent because she was feeling a bit low. That the males in the house hadn’t shown an interest in being anything but friends with her was starting to sting what little bit of self esteem she’d gathered since she was set free.
She cracked her knuckles because her hands were aching from the need to shift, and turned to walk back towards the house. She had never been a girl that needed love to survive. Hell, her whole entire life was built on lack-of-love, thank you very much, and she was here now, set free of the chains of her past, and she didn’t need anyone, or three anyones, to make her feel good about herself. She hadn’t shared much about her past with them, just the basics, but she knew that they had inferred a great deal about what her life had been like. The bruises on her body that first night were a screaming billboard that said she’d not been treated well.
But in spite of how she yearned to be that independent woman that didn’t need anyone, she couldn’t help but wish that they saw her as someone worthy of noticing. Someone worthy of being more than a friend and an obligation.
She found the fire pit, which had been laid with wood at some point, and sat down in front of it, picturing the high flames that would try to lick the sky once night fell and the moon shone bright. Stretching out on the thick grass nearby, she looked up at the brilliant blue sky. Here, the trees opened over top of the fire pit as if the woods wanted the moon to see the beautiful flames that would be there each full moon.
When she finally rose from the ground, feeling a bit more centered and less ‘poor-me’, she wasn’t sure how much time had passed but figured by the way the sun was high in the sky that it was about lunchtime.
Walking in through the back door, she found Orion making sandwiches. He looked up. “Hey, sweetheart. How was your walk?”
“Nice,” she answered, sitting when he gestured to the table.
“Good. Hungry?” He asked as he set a plate in front of her with two roast beef sandwiches. Her stomach growled in answer and he chuckled, pulling sodas from the fridge.
While they ate, they talked about hunting, and he shared stories about his earliest hunting experiences when he had first shifted.
“Where did you and your brothers get your names from?”
He chewed thoughtfully. “Well, in our mom’s family, all the males are named after constellations. I’m lucky not to be named Pisces. Our fathers said that they weren’t going to have all their kids have star names, so it was just my luck to be born first. I like Orion, though. He was a hunter in mythology. And Crux and Sterling are both family names on our fathers’ side.”
“I like your names. They’re all unique.”
“Which is fine when you’re an adult, but it’s hard as hell when you’re a kid.”
She could understand that. Her name was spelled in a unique way and she’d never been able to find any personalized things when she was young.
After lunch, when Orion chased her out of the kitchen, she opted to do laundry. The laundry room was in the basement in the den. She’d only been down there when they first brought her to their home, and Crux had managed to do her laundry the last few times without her knowing. Clutching the wicker basket under one arm, she walked down the steps into the den. Sterling and Crux were at work, so she flipped on the switch at the bottom of the steps and illuminated the main area.
The family room area was to her left, with a large L-shaped couch and television, the kitchen was in the back left corner, and the bed was on the right. The king-sized mattress sat on a platform that was a few inches off the ground. It was covered with a plain blanket, but next to it in a clothes basket were furs, and she wondered if they had been used to cover the bed at one time.
Sterling slept in that bed. And in the wintertime, when they would den down here for the winter, they would all sleep in the same bed. And if they were mated by then, their woman would be held safely in all of their arms. She shivered and closed her eyes, allowing herself a moment to picture herself in that bed, once more the focus of all that pleasure. Her body warmed and tightened, and her wolf prowled in her mind, wanting her to make them her mates. She laughed at herself, opening her eyes and shaking her head. No matter what she thought she’d felt when she first met them, they were not her mates or they wouldn’t be able to stay so politely out of reach. A wolf with his mate was a force of nature, and she imagined that when Orion, Crux, and Sterling found their mate, they wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of mating with her. And if their mate happened to be a formerly tortured female, they would let her know that she was theirs forever and safe in their arms, and hold and love her. That they hadn’t done anything remotely close to that was like a cold shower to her. Their kindness had an expiration date.
* * * * *
She wore a tee and shorts with flip-flops in preparation for the full moon, leaving her bra and panties in her bedroom so she had less to take off and put back on after her hunt. Excitement skittered through her, making her muscles twitch and her skin prickle with energy.
The guys met her at the back door, and they walked through the woods and stopped at the fire pit as the sun set. Alyssa greeted Sydney with a hug. “Oh, I envy you! I haven’t been hunting since my second month of pregnancy and I’m anxious for it. I don’t think you realize how much you’re used to doing something until you can’t do it anymore.”
Cairo slipped his arm around Alyssa’s shoulder and kissed her temple. “Just a few more months and you’ll be hunting again, love.”
Sydney thought it was strange that Alyssa envied her. Her life was nothing to be envied.
Cairo and Alyssa were staying at the fire pit while everyone else hunted. The other hyena clan was there. Sydney hadn’t seen much of them except occasionally at work and the Sund
ay dinners. Dante pulled a lighter from his pocket and held the flame to several pieces of kindling, pushing the burning ends into the center of the logs in the pit. The logs blazed to life quickly as Dante stood and wished everyone a safe hunt. Cairo and Alyssa walked over to a blanket that had been laid near the fire and sat down, his big, bulky body holding her petite but very pregnant one tenderly. Her mates kissed her before starting to remove their clothing to shift, and Sydney turned away from the sight. Not only to give them privacy, but because it was almost too hard to watch. That much love and concern. Alyssa was a very lucky woman.
Orion said, “Sweetheart, you know where the territory is, so just stay within the borders. We’d like to stick by you if that’s alright, but we won’t get in your way.”
She was glad they were going to hunt with her. “Thanks,” she said, pulling her top off and stepping out of her flip-flops and shorts. Her wolf was so anxious to be free that she had barely stepped free from her clothes before the need to shift overwhelmed her and she let herself go. Too fast for human eyes to track, her human body began to change, but a light pain in her stomach caused her to stop and hunch over. She almost felt as if she shouldn’t shift. As if there was something that was stopping her from changing. As quickly as the pain had come, it disappeared and she continued to change and reform into her wolf body. Shaking herself out, she flexed her claws into the earth and lifted her muzzle, drinking in the warm night air.
The other hyenas disappeared, but three stood nearby, watching her intently. She began to move away from the fire and into the surrounding woods. Old fears rose up and she stopped, lowering her head and waiting for the all-too-familiar weight of a choke chain to be slipped around her neck. Almost immediately, she willed her eyes open and swept her gaze around her. There were no other wolves here. She wasn’t in the place she’d been forced to live, and would never be back there again.