Loved by Wolves [Call of the Wolf 3] (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever)

by Diane Leyne

  Penelope felt her eyes tear up. “I wish so much that we were all Mated. Then I wouldn’t have this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I watch them leave. I would be strong enough to be with them every night of the week and not have to sleep alone some nights just because I can’t keep up with them. And I definitely wouldn’t find myself attracted to another man.”

  Ginger wrapped her arm around Penelope and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I should never have teased you about Oliver. I don’t think you are interested in him. I was just teasing.”

  “But that’s the problem. I am interested. I wanted him, Ginger. I wanted him the moment I laid eyes on him. How can that be? I love my men so much.”

  The tears started streaming down her face, and she couldn’t seem to stop them. “What’s wrong with me? First I couldn’t Mate with the men I love, and now I’m attracted to another man. What is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing, honey. You are a normal human woman. Whatever the hell went wrong with the Mating Ceremony wasn’t your fault. It just happened. And your attraction to Oliver? Maybe you just weren’t meant to be Mates with the guys. Maybe, maybe they really aren’t meant to be your Mates?”

  “They are. I know they are. And I won’t stop until I figure out how to make the ceremony work!” Penelope brushed back the tears. Anger, yes, anger would work.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not following,” Sam interjected. “I know I’m new here, but I thought that all you needed was an Alpha and a full moon…”

  “That’s what we were all brought up to believe.”

  “Damn. I’ve put my foot in it somehow, haven’t I?”

  Penelope smiled and reached out to pat Sam’s hand and reassure her. “You had no way of knowing. I haven’t talked about it.”

  “Please. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

  “No, Sam. You’re a friend, a very good friend. I should have told you before, but I thought you knew. I should have known that Ginger and Lena would keep my secret, and, well, no one outside our immediate families know the real story. Everyone else just thinks we haven’t bothered to have a ceremony.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “I know, but I want to, and, who knows, maybe a new perspective will help me think of something new to try. And, anyway, you should have grown up here in Harmony, and you would have if your grandfather hadn’t wanted to distance himself from all things wolf, but you’re back where you belong now, a part of the Harmony Pack. I want to tell you.”

  Penelope took a deep breath and told Samantha her story. “So, in conclusion, I have four wolves I know I am supposed to spend my life with, but none of them is the Alpha and we can’t figure out a solution. Hell, we’ve tried the ceremony so many times with each of them taking a turn as the Alpha and then various combinations. We even made a chart so we wouldn’t miss a combination, but nothing happened. None of them is the Alpha. So we gave up trying.

  “But I’ll never give up trying to figure out how to fix things. I even went down to New Harmony to meet with Elise McAllister on my own. I’d been down with the guys more than five years ago, but she was recovering from gallbladder surgery and not up to seeing us and no one else was any help. But I wanted to try again. Elise is almost ninety and Rory is approaching the century mark, but her mind was sharp, and due to her wolf blood, she was still as healthy as the average sixty-year-old.

  “But she couldn’t help. She’d never heard of such a thing. She’d lost most of her immediate family, including her parents, in the war. Her husband and his father before him had been wolf. Her husband had died not long after their marriage, and she’d gone to live with her father-in-law for the duration of the war.

  “He loved her like a daughter, but he was a man of few words, so she learned a little wolf lore from him, but not as much as someone who had grown up around shifters would know. By the end of the war, he, too, was gone, but not before knowing that she loved and was loved by Rory McAllister, who would take her to America where she would be safe from the deprivations that were sure to happen after the war.

  “Even though Elise couldn’t help directly, she did give me the names of people who she thought were worth talking to, including a woman down in Mexico who is apparently almost mystical in her knowledge of shifter lore.

  “And so, for the last four years I’ve tracked down every lead, every hint of a lead, but to no avail. And I never talk to the guys about it. They pretend they don’t know where I’m going when I head off on one of my research trips, and then they pretend not to notice how upset and depressed I am when I come back. But they care. I can see the hope in their eyes when I walk through the door die quicker and quicker. In fact, I wonder if one or two of them are even starting to resent it, the false hope and the new disappointments. I’m afraid that if I keep trying that eventually I’m going to drive them away, but I can’t stop. I have to fix this, or we’re going to break up anyway.

  “I may have wolf blood, but I’m a human woman, too. Without the Mating Ceremony, I can’t handle them much longer. Four insatiable men? We cut down so I get two nights to myself, but it’s like they are trying to make up for their missing night by fucking me harder and longer on the nights they have. I’m constantly exhausted and having trouble functioning.

  “And I want a family, too. I’m thirty. I can’t have a family with them unless we’re Mated, and I feel like time is running out. I don’t know what to do. If I can’t solve this mystery, I’m afraid that this will drive us apart no matter what I do, so finding the answer to our mating problem is our only hope.

  “But every time I get a new lead, a new piece of information or a new contact, I let myself hope again and go tearing off after it, because this time, this time this might be it.”

  Penelope sat back in her chair, aware that she’d been giving what verged on a speech, but it felt good to get it all out. Even Lena and Ginger hadn’t known it all. She’d carried the burden herself for five years, and it felt good now to be able to share the load.

  “Sorry, guys, but I’ve been holding that in for so long…”

  “Oh, Penelope. I wish you’d have told us sooner. We’re here for you. We’ll do whatever we can. Research, helping at the café. Whatever you need.” Ginger nodded emphatically at Lena’s words, as did Sam.

  “Well,” started Sam, clearly choosing her words carefully, “If it isn’t one of them, maybe someone else is the Alpha of their Pack.”

  Penelope shook her head in denial and then paused, thinking hard.

  “That’s what she said.” Penelope frowned.

  “She?”

  “Yes, Abuelita Marta. I’ve never met her, actually. We’ve just spoken by phone. She’s the elder from Mexico I mentioned. We spoke briefly. Elise McAllister put me in touch with her.”

  “The name actually sounds familiar. I think maybe I’ve heard stories about her. Isn’t she some shifter matriarch?”

  “Yeah, she’s the head of the Cabo Pack in southwestern Mexico. A number of people I spoke to said she’s the keeper of shifter history and she knows everything about everyone, but I could never get through to her until I talked to Elise.

  “She put me in touch with Marta’s nephew Jose. Over the years so many people told me to consult her, but at first I resisted. They talked about her mystical knowledge, which just sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo to me. I really didn’t see how someone like that could help. And she lives thousands of miles from here. What could she know about me and my men?

  “If it hadn’t been for Elise, I probably wouldn’t have even tried. How could some stranger in Mexico know about what was happening in Washington State? But eventually, when all other avenues ran dry, I decided to try to contact her. It took six months to get a meeting with her.”

  “And?” Sam’s voice was impatient.

  “And she made me wait for three days and I ended up getting only a few minutes on the phone with her. I don’t know what it was about her, but the moment s
he began to speak, I just had this feeling that she could be the one to help us. I asked to meet with her in person and offered to come down to Cabo San Lucas whenever was convenient to her, and she just laughed and said the time was not yet right.

  “Then she said something that caused me to kind of lose it. She said there was another and I hadn’t met him but I would soon, but I thought she was just trying to sound all mysterious and pry some money out of me. I accused her of quoting Star Wars at me. I was pretty rude, but I was just so disappointed that I’d convinced myself that she would solve everything and she just talked in cryptic sentences.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “She just laughed and said may the force be with me. And she said that she’d be ready to speak again only when I was ready to really listen, and hung up.” Penelope sighed. “I thought she was just trying to scam me.”

  “Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn’t,” offered Ginger. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point.”

  “I agree, Ginger.” Penelope nodded. But it’s like one of those mystery stories. Once you eliminate the impossible, then what remains, however improbable, must be the answer. Maybe there is another. But the question is, another what. Another wolf who is supposed to be our Alpha? Another man I’m supposed to be with instead of them?”

  “I agree, too.” Ginger turned to her friend. “Maybe we’ve been looking at this the wrong way all along. Ladies, I think we have ourselves a new avenue of inquiry. We can call it The Mystery of the Missing Alpha.”

  “That sounds good, but where do we start? My brain is fried. I spent so many years trying to figure out how to make one of them the Alpha, but could there really be another? Hell. I have to go to Los Cabos and talk to Abuelita Marta in person this time.” She looked at her friends. “Who’s up for a trip to Mexico?”

  “What about the café?”

  “What’s the point of having four boyfriends if you can’t take advantage of the free labor occasionally? I’ll do what I do every time I head out on a wild goose chase…I’ll put them in charge and hope I have a café and customers left to come back to.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to bring them with you? After all, it is their lives in the balance, too.”

  Penelope pushed back the tears as she shook her head. “We have an agreement. It’s been in place for almost five years now. I pretend that I’m not obsessed with searching for a solution to our mating problem, and they pretend that it doesn’t matter to them that we aren’t formally Mated.”

  Penelope headed to her own home from the café both energized and terrified. She e-mailed the brothers saying she’d be at their place around six. She e-mailed Abuelita’s nephew Jose, who e-mailed back promptly with the news his aunt was away visiting a newly born great-grandchild and would not be back for two weeks, so she made arrangements to visit the day after her return, and then she booked airline tickets to Los Cabos for herself, Sam, and Ginger. Lena would be away on her belated matingmoon, and she wouldn’t ask her to cancel it for something that might be a wild goose chase. Lena and her men had put it off for months, waiting for Alex to heal, and now that he was healthy, they needed this time together. She’d confided that they hoped to make some pups while they were away, and Penelope wouldn’t interrupt that for anything in the world.

  After the hotel was booked, Penelope thought of taking a nap, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Abuelita Marta. Did she really know something, or was this just another wild goose chase? She went online and started looking, for what, she didn’t know, but she knew that there was something she’d missed. But for the first time in years, it seemed possible. She wouldn’t let herself get her hopes too far up just in case it didn’t pan out, but something was telling her that they just might be close to a breakthrough.

  Chapter Five

  John looked down at the pot he was stirring.

  “Jack, is it supposed to look like this?”

  His brother walked over and looked at what was supposed to be tomato sauce simmering on the stove.

  “How the hell? How did you make it look like that? It’s purple, and what are those lumps?”

  “I don’t know how this happened.”

  Sighing heavily, he took the pot off the stove and put in the sink to cool. Then he pulled out another pot and proceeded to start peeling another pile of tomatoes. Looking over at his brother, he grinned. “I was prepared. How’s the soufflé going?”

  “About as well as your tomato sauce.”

  John and Jack looked at each other, sighing heavily, and then Jack pulled out his phone. “Le Corsaire, Don Corso’s, or Lupo’s?”

  “Don Corso’s for the entrée and Le Corsaire’s for dessert. Lupo’s for indigestion only. The place is a bar. They only have finger food.”

  “They have great burgers!”

  “And you want to serve that to Penelope?”

  “No, I want one myself.”

  “You can eat one tomorrow when we are back on duty at the fire house. Tonight is about Penelope. I want everything perfect.”

  “Is this about the doc? Because I gotta tell you, I didn’t see anything.”

  “No, but I did. The doctor wants our woman, John. And he’s not getting her just like you aren’t getting a hamburger tonight.”

  John laughed. His brother’s expression looked like something a mutinous two-year-old might wear. His lower lip was stuck out, and his hands were on his hips.

  “Seriously, John. The doc wanted our woman, and I saw something in her eyes as well, when she didn’t think I was watching. And, you know, when she came back to make the sandwiches, there was something wrong. Even a cretin such as yourself must have noticed that she wasn’t herself.”

  John thought for a moment. “You’re not wrong about that. She was, I don’t know, agitated? She looked upset and a bit flushed. At first I thought she might be feverish, but then she relaxed and smiled and I forgot all about it.” He frowned. “Do you really think he was the cause?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I am also not taking any chances. We are going to wine her and dine her and fuck her brains out. We will imprint on her so strongly that she won’t even look at another man. She’s ours, damn it. Even if we are not Mated, she’s ours. I don’t even like sharing her with Tucker and Kent, but they are family, they are our pack, and I accept that she’s Mate to all of us, but not him. Not that doctor. He’s…he’s a professional, an educated man. We’re just dumb firefighters. He’ll be able to connect with her on a different, more intellectual level. I’m afraid, John. I’m so afraid. It’s like I’ve been waiting for this day to come ever since we weren’t able to complete the Mating Ceremony. I’ve been waiting for the day that she met someone else.”

  “Damn it, Jack. Take a deep breath and calm down. A panic attack isn’t going to help.” John sat down heavily on the couch, leaning down and resting his head in his hands for a moment before looking up. He knew his eyes were shining with unshed tears.

  “I’ve had the same worries, brother. Only I’ve been waiting for the day that she decided that four men were too much to handle and instead of choosing one or two of us, she just walks away from us all and chooses a single man, a human, who will love her and protect her, but not overwhelm her like we do.”

  “But what do we do? A fancy meal isn’t going to help. And neither will more sex. We already overwhelm her. For five years she’d tried to keep up with us, but I don’t think she can manage much longer. She’s tired all the time. She tries not to show it, but she is. She has trouble getting aroused sometimes. She tries to pretend, like she’s afraid to let us down, but I know there are some nights she would rather just cuddle, but she wants to please us and our wolf-sized libidos.”

  “Are you suggesting that we just hold her tonight?”

  “No. Not that. She’d think we were rejecting her. I think we should make love to her. I think we should make love to her as lovingly and tenderly as we can and show her just how much we love her. We will worship her
body with ours and make sure that it is only about her. In fact, while we are waiting for the food, I’m going to the bathroom and jerk off as much as I can to try to take the edge off.”

  Jack sighed. “I’ll call for the food and ask them to deliver it around seven and then do the same in the other bathroom. We probably have forty minutes before Penelope gets home. I hope that’s long enough because every time I see her I get hard and all I can think about is her ass and her pussy and her mouth and her tits. I can’t think of anything else when I see her. It’s like my natural state is only experienced when our bodies are joined.

  “If only…”

  “I’m with you there, brother. If only…”

  * * * *

  Jack took the opportunity to have a quick shower and was just drying his hair when his keen wolf hearing heard the sound of Penelope’s key in the door.

  Taking a deep breath, he headed out to greet his woman. His cock reacted as if he hadn’t just been jerking off in the shower for the past half hour and was pushing so hard about his zipper that he thought he might end up with permanent teeth marks pressed into it. She was the most beautiful, sexy, wonderful woman he’d ever met, and he’d been in love with her since he’d first noticed her when he was eight and she was four. She’d fallen and skinned her knee in the playground and he’d been the closest, and when she’d smiled up at him, he’d lost his heart.

  He’d sensed his brother’s approach even before he’d seen him, and he held his breath. He knew about Mates and wolf-dog lore and he knew that it was important for John to like her, too.

  He needn’t have worried. John was as smitten as he was. The problem was Tucker and Kent. The cousins were both close and competitive, and it was no different with Penelope. They both vied for her attention, but she seemed to like all four of them equally. It wasn’t until much later in life that they realized that this was a good thing.

  And, of course, as they got older and recognized the attraction for what it was, they spent more and more time with her, but with the four-year age difference, they kept their distance as well. At eight, they felt protective of a four-year-old. At twelve, having an eight-year-old trailing after them was annoying, and at sixteen, spending too much time with a twelve-year-old could get a boy in big trouble. Once she entered her teens, they all kept their distance, not even dating her and never being alone with her, but once she turned eighteen, they started courting her properly. But they still took care. Starting a relationship with one man at eighteen was serious business. Starting a relationship with four, even the four men who they all knew were destined to be her Mates, was even more serious.