by R. E. Butler
“I’m not really sure what you guys want from me.” And that was the truth, even if she was using it currently as an evasive tactic. She absolutely needed to see what was out on the porch.
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “Callie, we just want to talk.”
“Okay.” To prove she wanted to talk, when what she actually wanted to do was open the front door, she took a small step away from the door. They relaxed some, and Ethan said, “Let’s sit down on the couch where it’s more comfortable.”
Almost on cue, they turned together and she opened the door before they could react. There on the welcome mat was a big rawhide dog bone with a red bow on it.
Now that’s the kind of bullshit that would make a person go crazy.
“For fuck’s sake,” Eryx grabbed her around the waist and pulled her out of the doorway, slamming the door. “Do you feel better now?” She didn’t try to get out of his hold. For one, it was like a damn vise. And for another, it felt really good.
Ethan interjected. “We were trying to protect you. Why do you insist on bucking everything we try to do?”
“Because I don’t need your protection. I’ve spent my whole life being protected by other people, and I’m done with that. Eryx, let me go, please.” She struggled against his grip, but all it did was rub her ass against his crotch and she couldn’t miss that a part of him was quite hard. Oh hell.
His voice was low and laced with a dangerous bent when his mouth brushed her ear, “You make me so furious I want to put you over my knee, Callie.”
Damned betraying body. She did not just shiver at that insinuation! Hoping her face betrayed nothing, even if her body sure probably did, he released her and she straightened her clothes. Facing them, she said, “Why would you want me to stay in a place where I’m not welcome? It’s not as if they got to know me and think I’m a terrible person, I’m not even sure what they don’t like about me. But if it’s like this after me being here for two days then what will it be like in a month or a year?”
Ethan didn’t ask permission, he grabbed her elbow and pulled her into the family room and pointed to the couch. She sat because the look on his face said that she really should just do it. He rubbed his temple like he had a headache. Probably from her. She tended to make people insane after a while. “Why did you leave your pack?”
“It doesn’t matter.” It was her turn to fold her arms. Eryx and Ethan stood in front of her, looking down from their over six plus height and she felt even smaller than usual. But oddly it wasn’t from being afraid of them, it was just that they were both so imposing and that they actually believed that they were fated to be together. Why they’d want a short brunette like her over those leggy, vacuous lions was anyone’s guess.
“No. It does matter. The doc,” Ethan started and she put her hand up.
“If you mention that rogue to me again, I’m going to really flip out. I’m not kidding. We may be genetically the same, but he’s spoken to me like twice and he is not an authority on me.”
“Fair enough.” Eryx said, rubbing a finger across his jaw. Uh, she’d had her fingers on that jaw. She’d kissed it, too. Oh hell, did she just lick her lips? “If you don’t want us to talk to him, then you talk to us.”
She sucked her teeth in annoyance. “I left because my cousin, the alpha, insisted that his mate, my best friend, put all the females in their place for a little reminder of who’s in charge. She did, but she left me out, because she was just like that. She wouldn’t lift a hand against me if her life depended on it. Jason was furious, and when he told her to single me out or he would do it, she stood between us. So he put her down in my place, in front of the pack.” She laughed but it wasn't a nice sound. It was hard and grating.
“She’s a hybrid. Her mother was pregnant and attacked by a rival pack and somehow as her mother died, enough blood got into her that she’s about half and half. No shift, but some of the same power and speed and temper. So she was the mutt, the one that all the females picked on because she was different, and I was always weak, so she defended me to them even though she was worse off than I was. More than an outcast, one foot in both worlds. I let her stand in my place through my childhood, I let her take beatings for me because I was too scared to get hit, even though it never really mattered because I always got mine anyway. So I’m not all that interested in defending myself constantly to a bunch of Barbie dolls.
"My plan for my life from the moment I left the pack was to settle into an entirely human town, marry a human and have a bunch of human babies and be the only wolf around so no one would try to hierarchy my ass ever again. You think it’s fate I came here, I think it’s just a fucking fluke. I’m sorry I feel like that. I’m sorry I tried to make it to this town instead of staying put in the last place, and I’m just damn fucking tired of explaining myself to you both.”
There. That was a lot of harsh truth. They’d have to let her go now.
It was Ethan that snorted this time. “What a fucking load of bullshit.”
She bristled. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Sorry you had a sucky life before, Callie, but you’re in our world now and if you think that we were ever going to let you walk away from us, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Eryx’s eyes simmered with banked anger. “You think you can tuck your tail between your legs and run away from all this? You belong to us. There is nothing on earth that will change that.”
She felt her eye tick at their tone, but her heart thudded irregularly at what they’d just said. It wasn’t a dominating 'belong', it was heartfelt. Holy fucking crap. They…loved her?
She folded her arms again. It was either that or grab them and hold on for dear life. She turned her head to the side so she didn’t have to see their matching gorgeous bodies. “Doesn’t matter what you think. The minute I can get out of here, I will.”
“The hell you will. If you’re leaving, it’s only because we’re coming with you.” Ethan said with a conviction that said he expected her to just go along with it.
Before she could ask what he meant by them coming with her, Eryx sat on the couch with a heavy sigh and Ethan sat down on the coffee table. Eryx ran his hands through his hair and then turned his silver gray eyes to her. The anger was gone but the heat was there, and desire. “The females don’t want anything permanent. It’s the males who want children and family. Our father is the one that nurtured us, raised us entirely on his own. Our mother looks at us like she doesn’t know that we’re part of her, and the fact that she doesn’t care one way or the other is a knife in our chest all the time. You had a hard time growing up, well, so did we. All we ever wanted was to not be stuck in the same life as our father. Not to have children that we have to explain that their mother doesn’t love them, doesn’t want them, and that they have to be satisfied with only half a family.”
“Those boys, Callie, they don’t understand you but they want you around. They want that affection and attention from a female because it’s just in our nature to crave it. And we’re sorry that the females are reacting to you like this, but it’s not a surprise for us. They don’t want us, but they don’t want anything contaminating the gene pool, and they’ll get violent to prevent it from happening. Right now, they’re bullying you to get you to take off and it seems like its working.” Ethan said, his hands pressed together so tightly that his knuckles were white again.
She wasn't sure why she said what she did, but it popped out of her mouth before she could stop it. “So you just want me because I’m capable of love?”
Well, that had been the wrong thing to say. They both growled angrily and the sound went right down her back and lodged at the base of her spine.
Ethan stood up with a shaky breath, his voice completely void of emotion. “I’m going to take care of that thing on the porch. Eryx?”
His eyes were flat and he looked like he wanted to take out a building with his fists. “I’m going into the station to finish my shift.”
And
just like that, she was sitting alone in the family room. The front door opened and she heard Ethan say, “Well, I smell Melania and Lola. They must have talked to the other females.”
He must have reached for Eryx or said something she couldn’t hear, because Eryx’s normally calm voice was strained. “No, don’t Ethan. I don’t, I just don’t. Later.” Eryx’s boots crunched on the salt on the sidewalk and when the front door shut, Ethan moved quietly through the house and down into the basement. She heard the cruiser start up and the squeal of tires as they bit into the pavement before screeching forward. Wow, she’d totally insulted them, and her chest ached at the knowledge.
If this was how they felt when she walked away from them, then she had some serious apologizing to do.
Chapter 9
**Ethan**
In the basement, Ethan had hoped to get some space from Callie because he was torn in half. Part of him wanted to scream his head off at her callousness and part of him wanted to latch onto her and never let go no matter what. But no amount of space changed what he was feeling, and that was a whole lot of love for his mate and a whole lot of anger at their situation.
She wasn’t wrong. Why couldn’t the females leave her alone? Why did they have to fight against every good thing that the males tried to do for their kind? So what if a male wanted to mate with a human? So what if they’d both chosen a wolf for a mate? It didn’t make them any less lion and it didn’t make them care any less about their own, it just meant that they loved her more.
And help him, he loved her. It didn’t matter that it had only been a few days. It didn’t fucking matter at all. The instant that his fingers had touched her skin, she’d slid into his veins like a drug that he couldn’t get enough of and she was the only supplier. And no matter what she said, no matter the distance she tried to put between them, he knew that she loved them both, too, at least in a small way. She was fighting so hard, he wondered what would happen if she just let go and embraced them.
Jealousy streaked through him. Why had she kissed Eryx? He knew it wouldn’t be easy to share a mate, but he hadn’t expected to feel so betrayed by the whole thing. He wanted her to kiss him, too. He wanted her to like the way he smelled. He just wanted.
Looking around the basement, he wondered why he’d even walked down here. He should have just gone for a walk outside. The fresh air might have cleared his head. Oh, he knew why, and the little brunette reason was sitting up in the family room on the hooker-red couch right now. He hadn’t wanted to leave her alone in the house. Not with that little fucking present on the doorstep. It was like the females were toying with her as if she were meant to be their prey.
With the human females that had made their way into the hearts of one male or another over the years, the lion females simply started off with a verbal warning to both the human and the lion, and then if the human stuck around, they went straight to violence. It was almost like they knew they could push Callie’s buttons and were enjoying it. Enjoying driving a wedge between the three of them. Maybe they hadn’t been so impressed with her standing up to them with the children, maybe they stepped back because they were curious about her attachment to the cubs or were looking to see just how badly they could turn the knife for the males. If the kids were attached to Callie and the females drove her away, it would hurt not only the adults but the kids. It was like an evil two-for-one deal.
His roving eyes passed around the basement. It was carpeted with a sturdy dark berber so the kids could play as they liked and not ruin it. Their home was often a gathering place for their family, it had always been. Maybe it was the caretaking gene in both of them, because they liked seeing their uncles and their cousins happy and taken care of. Because no one took care of the males, like their father, except the other males. Unless he, Eryx or Alek helped their father if he got sick or injured, or cooked a meal for him, or took him out for a movie, then he just sat in his empty house and wished that their biological mother would return his affection. You could see the empty longing in his eyes.
Shuttering the dark thoughts of a future that Callie seemed so determined to give to them – one without her presence – he stripped off his sweatshirt and went to the far corner where their workout equipment waited. Sexual frustration was a norm in their house. Sure the female lions were willing to have a go whenever asked, but it was hollow and he always felt dirty afterwards. The older he got, the less he wanted to be with them, and he grieved in his heart for asking Melania to bear his cub. That had been a mistake of such vast proportions that it was nearly incomprehensible. And knowing the strength of his feelings for Callie now, he felt like he’d betrayed her on a level that was so deep he couldn’t ever hope for her forgiveness.
He hit the bench, warming up with 150 and then pounding on extra weight in slow increments until sweat poured from him and his brain was just a dull buzz in his skull and his skin threatened to melt right off his bones. And that’s when he smelled her. That sweet honey and floral scent, all heat and woman. Fuuuuuck.
He dropped the bar onto the rack and it clanged loudly. He hadn’t even been paying attention, but judging from the number of black weights on the bar, he was well over 400.
“I thought you might be hungry, Ethan?” She sounded very nervous and he rather liked that scent on her. It was about time she worried about them for a change. He sat up slowly, not for effect so much as his muscles were feeling raw and hot, and he was pleased to see her hazel eyes darken.
She was holding a tray and a few chilled bottles of water under one arm. He reached for one of the towels on the floor to wipe off the sweat and said, “Thanks.”
She stood frozen in place while he rubbed the sweat from his face and he wanted to say something, anything, but he really didn’t want to keep putting his foot in his mouth around her. It felt like every time he said something to her that she shut down in some way; ground her heels in even more when all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms.
Something ice cold touched the back of his neck and he hissed and opened his eyes to see her standing with a water bottle pressed to him, the tray on the floor and the other bottle in her free hand. Poised between his legs at the end of the bench, she stared at him, just slightly taller than him standing, which made him really think about how small she was. Petite and perfect. And then he was wildly ashamed. They were asking too much of her. Not just judging from her background, but because even in her shift, she was much smaller than them. Although more powerful than a human, she was no match for the females.
“You know what a male wolf would do if a female wolf disrespected his mate, the way the female lions did with that little present for me?” The cold bottle moved slowly in a rolling line from the back of his neck to the crux of his shoulder and she added the other bottle to the other side of his neck.
He shook his head. Mesmerized by her gentle attention to his needs, he didn’t want to do anything to make her stop.
She got a thoughtful half smile on her face, which took her from beautiful to stunning. He hadn’t seen her smile at all.
“He’d beat the shit out of her. And then he’d take his punishment from the alpha for the infraction.”
“Punishment?”
“Sure. Females are supposed to handle their own business. The female ranking is entirely separate from the male ranking.”
“So defending your mate deserves punishment?”
The water bottles rolled soothingly up and down his neck, all the way to his sweat drenched hair and back across his shoulders. She seemed lost to the movement. “Same sex to same sex in the wolf hierarchy, yes. It means she’s not capable of handling herself, even if she’s not. If a wolf ignores the disrespect, then her mate should ignore it too, or he weakens her even more. But males are funny like that. All brawn and pissed off righteousness when it comes to their mate.”
“We could tear the females apart, Callie, and it wouldn’t change the core of what we are as a were-group. The females will always resent anyone t
hat comes in to take one of the males away from them. They don’t want us, but they don’t want anyone else to have us either.” He wrapped his hands around her wrists, and they were so small that his fingers overlapped his thumbs. He was aware of how fragile she was and he hated himself for putting her through this. “I would let you go if I could, sweetheart.”
Shit he was going to burn alive being so close to her. She was like an oven, but not in a bad way, in a way that he wanted to curl around her and draw in her warmth forever.
“I don’t think I’m strong enough to be what you need me to be, Ethan.” She moved closer to him instead of pulling away and he looked up at her in surprise.
“I want you just the way you are.” Truth. Hard truth.
In a slow move, she straddled him and he was completely aware that her short skirt moved up her thighs with a delicious sound and her hands slid up his arms as they wound around his neck and she laid her mouth against his. It was so intimate, such a small thing, but he’d truly never felt something so gentle on his mouth and when he felt her tongue against his lips, he opened them and the intoxicating taste of her slid inside him and burrowed into his brain. If anything tasted better than Callie, he couldn’t imagine what it might be. She tasted better than even her delicious scent, and her hot tongue slid sensually against his and her cold hands, empty of the water bottles that dropped to the floor, drew him close.
Lifting off his mouth, she made a throaty purring sound and kissed across his jaw until she reached the place behind his ear where their scent lay heaviest. She fisted her hands in his hair and pulled his head to the side and he wouldn’t have stopped her for anything. She stroked her tongue up that place and sighed, her hot breath like a caress on his skin and the sound of satisfaction in his ear was like a blessing.