by CJ Cooke
That comment was met with a round of laughs, but I was serious. Devious plots were being hatched in those little heads, and I had a horrible feeling I’d be the butt of all their pranks. That thought just had a grin coming to my face—this is what the pack had been missing, the laughter and fun of children. Only, that wasn’t right because Coby had always been in our pack. He’d just never been like this before. He’d always been the quiet kid sitting on the sidelines.
“Have you noticed how much Coby has come out of his shell?” I asked with a frown. It should’ve been a good thing, but something I couldn’t quite grasp ahold of yet was bothering me.
“Hmmmmm,” was all we got out of Calli as she took a sip of her tea.
Before I could ask her what she meant, there was a knock on the door, and all three of us guys froze. Calli looked surprised when she saw the looks of dread on our faces before she climbed to her feet, shaking her head at our antics. She could laugh all she wanted, but this was like meeting the father for the first time, and I, for one, was shitting myself.
I was just about to open my mouth and say something when a wave of alpha power flooded the room. It was foreign and yet still comforting, which wasn’t something that should be possible. My wolf shouldn’t respond to any alpha apart from Grey, but it was like I could feel his ears prick up and pay attention to our surroundings, curious about what it was that had entered our den.
Glancing across at Grey, I was surprised even he seemed to be relaxed. Another alpha, containing that much power, entering his den, should have him on edge. He looked just as confused as I did by this turn of events.
Before any of us could say anything, Jacob’s bedroom door flew open, and a kid-sized torpedo hurtled out the room, screaming, “Uncle Sean!”
Calli stepped back from the doorway just in time for Jacob to launch himself at the man standing there, a booming laugh suddenly filling the room. He came into the house with Jacob clinging to his front, arms and legs wrapped around him monkey-style. A small amount of jealousy flickered at the edges of my mind, but I reminded myself this man was family to Jacob, even if we hadn’t met him before. If anything, we were the new guys.
Once Calli peeled Jacob off Sean, we were able to see the man who had immediately gotten on a plane to rush to her when our family was in trouble. He looked at us just as curiously as we looked at him, a smirk of amusement on his face at our inspection.
Sean was one of those men you knew you could be friends with as soon as you looked at him, or maybe that was the sheer amount of alpha power that was rolling off him in waves. He wore jeans, a shirt and a suit jacket, but he made it look laid back enough that you wished you were like him. His dark hair was starting to grey around the edges and had been swept back away from his face, miraculously somehow staying in place. He held himself with so much confidence that I’m pretty sure every man wanted to be him, and every woman wanted to fuck him.
My eyes flicked to Calli in alarm at the thought, causing Sean’s booming laughter to fill the room once more. A flush of embarrassment filled my cheeks, he was her uncle, for god’s sake, and she’d grown up with him. Just because I was starting to wonder if I wanted to fuck him, didn’t mean she did.
“Don’t worry boys, it’s never worked with her like that,” he chuckled in amusement.
“You’re a shifter,” was Grey’s only response as he stared at Sean in confusion.
I knew the feeling. The alpha power this guy threw off pegged him as a shifter. No other supernatural we knew of could do the same thing. But the sheer amount coming off him was more than I’d ever felt in my life. It was almost an impossible amount. How had we never heard of this guy before?
“What are you?” Grey spoke again, the suspicion lacing his voice this time.
“Right to the personal stuff,” Sean started, clearly about to avoid the question.
Unfortunately for him, we were in a room with a five-year-old little boy who just blurted out things. “He’s a dragon! A big blue dragon!”
Sean squinted at him in annoyance, but a smile broke across his face as the little boy jumped at him again and clung to his leg. I don’t think anyone could be annoyed with Jacob for long.
“Uncle Sean! I got kidnapped by witches, and Calli saved me, and she kicked their butts!” he excitedly told him, his voice dropping to a near whisper as he said the word butt.
Sean’s signature laughter filled the room once more as he scooped Jacob up and held him tight. I saw the slight shake in his arms, he might be trying to hide it from Jacob, but I could see the worry that racked him at the thought of what had happened.
Pulling back, Sean looked Jacob in the eye, his eyes casting over his face, checking the happy little boy was as unharmed as he seemed.
“What doesn’t work on Calli?” Jacob suddenly asked, his head cocking to the side in question.
Calli’s eyes opened wide in alarm, and Sean got an amused smirk on his face. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, Calli scooped Jacob out of his arms and pulled him away, a chastising look on her face that just made Sean smirk wider.
“Ok, spud, it is way past your bedtime. There will be time for questions, other questions, in the morning.”
“But I want to tell Uncle Sean about our adventure, and he hasn’t got to meet Abby yet,” Jacob whined.
“Abby is fast asleep, just like you should be. This can all wait for the morning.”
“No, she’s not,” Jacob crowed in what he clearly assumed was a victory over bedtime.
As one, we all turned to look at the bedroom door and sure as day, there stood a sleepy little girl who shied away from our sudden attention. One side of her curls were slightly flatter from where she’d been asleep, which just seemed to have made them explode out the other side even more. She had one of Calli’s T-shirts on which fell past her knees, and she clung to one of Jacob’s soft toys like her life depended on it.
The shiver of fear in her was more than I could take. Jumping up from the couch, I strode over to the doorway. My heart nearly exploded when she didn’t shrink away from me but instead seemed to relax.
“Come on, cherry bomb, let’s go say hi.”
She stared at me like I was a bit crazy, but I’d take that over her being afraid any day of the week.
I plopped back down on the sofa, Abby on my knee, and Jacob quickly unpeeled himself from Sean to take the seat beside me.
Sean’s smirk turned into a soft smile, and he perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of us.
“Good evening, Miss Abby. My name’s Sean,” he said, introducing himself to the little girl. I felt his calming alpha power reach out towards us and almost wrap around us in a hug.
“Calli has told me about what happened. I know of a pride with a house on the beach where you could go and stay if you want to?” he asked her.
The puppy growl that exploded out of Jacob at the suggestion was equal parts adorable and shocking, considering it was aimed at the man he had attached himself to only seconds ago.
“Abby is going to live with us!” Jacob shouted, jumping to his feet in a challenge against the mysterious alpha in front of us.
“Now, now, little man, I was just checking with Abby,” Sean told him, leaning back and holding his hands up in amusement.
Jacob didn’t seem placated and cautiously sat on the edge of the couch, shuffling as close as possible to us.
“Pride?” Calli’s voice cut in, confused. As she said it, Sean’s words replayed through my head, and the implication of them hit me hard.
“Yes, you’re not a wolf, are you, wildcat?” Sean laughed, and Abby let out a kitten growl in agreement.
I could feel my wolf roll his eyes as I realised that our pup, wasn’t a pup, after all.
“Abby, what animal could your mummy or daddy shift into?” Calli asked her. That was Calli all over. She didn’t ask Sean the answer, even though it was clear he somehow knew. She asked the little girl instead. Calli wouldn’t talk about her like she wasn�
�t in the room, even if she was a child.
Abby shrank back into me, and that shiver of fear came back to her. Wrapping her tighter in my arms, I whispered in her ear, “What’s wrong, little cherry bomb?”
She looked cautiously at the others in the room with us, and then she whispered back to me, “I’m not a wolf.” I could hear the pure sadness laced through her voice and immediately knew what was wrong.
“You, little cherry bomb, are pack. It doesn’t matter what your animal is. You will always be pack.”
She wrapped her arms around me and clung to me tightly. She didn’t make a sound, but I felt the dampness of her tears as she silently cried with her face pressed tight against my neck. Anger rolled through me at the thought of what this little girl had been through to have learned how to cry so quietly, and I clung to her all the harder.
Jacob shuffled around and then clambered onto my lap from the other side and wrapped his little arms around her too, and I opened up one arm for him to wriggle underneath, cocooning our pups in safety. No one was ever going to take them for us.
Sean met my eyes, and I could see his regret and sadness at watching the little girl in front of him break apart so easily. His good intentions being the cause of so much hurt seemed to pain him enough to speak volumes about the type of man he was. But then I suppose you would have to be to organise some kind of underground for those in need.
His attention only pulled away from us when Calli placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded her head over to the kitchen table.
As everyone moved away, Grey came to sit beside me. “Are you okay here, Princess?” he asked Abby. She didn’t say anything and just nodded against my neck.
“I can stay if you want me to,” Grey told me. I could see the anguish on his face from the sadness radiating from our little girl.
“I’ve got this.” I pulled the blanket off the back of the sofa and wrapped it over the two kids who were snuggled in against me. With a bit of effort and wriggling, I grabbed the remote and turned on the television to cover up the sounds of the adults talking at the table.
Settled into the corner of the couch with two pups snuggled against me, my wolf brushed against the edges of my mind. He wanted to comfort them. He could feel their pain as clearly as if it had been his own but now wasn’t the time. I promised him I’d make time to shift tomorrow, and he receded into the back of my mind.
As the TV played some cartoon none of us were watching, the kids started to settle, their breathing evening out as they were lulled towards sleep. My thoughts turned back to the fact that Jacob had outed Sean as a dragon, and how none of us had even batted an eye. Had our life become so strange that it felt almost normal to find out dragons were actually real?
5
Calli
“Jacob has imprinted on Abby?” Sean asked in question as we sat down at the table, and River went into the kitchen and started to make drinks for everyone.
My eyes immediately went to the little girl crying herself to sleep on Tanner’s lap, and I shrugged because what else was there to say.
“They were held in the same cell when the witches took Jacob,” I filled in, almost like that should explain it, even though it really didn’t.
“One of the Prides in Texas was hit last year, so many were taken or died, the rest of them basically scattered. We were never able to establish who survived, who was taken. They all went to ground,” Sean filled us in, his voice haunted by the parts he was keeping from us.
“You think they could have held her for a year?” Grey muttered in shock.
“Who knows. One of her parents was a witch. They could have lived on the run like Calli’s family did. But the Prides are different from the other shifter clans. They’re more inclusive. It’s impossible to know.”
Grey nodded in thought.
“If she lived with her parents in the pride, then they must’ve known what she was. Wouldn’t that sort of information have made its way back to the Shifter Council?” I asked him.
“Not necessarily. The Prides don’t associate with the Shifter Council, they’ve separated themselves off, and essentially self regulate. Saying that, it’s likely the Council has spies in the Prides. They let them go far too easily to not have some way to at least gather information about them.” Sean sat back in his chair, the picture of calm. There was so much I didn’t really know about our society that I’d never thought to even ask. I suppose that’s what happened when you essentially grew up in a bubble as I had.
River passed drinks around the table and then sat down to join us, his hand squeezing my knee in reassurance as he did.
Sean’s eyes cast around the three of us at the table before he sighed and leant forward, propping his elbows on the tabletop. “I wish your parents had clued me in on whatever this plan was to bring you here, Cal. My first instinct is to tell you to run. Too many know about you now, about Jacob. But I feel like they knew something more, that they had a reason for sending you here, more than just to meet your mates.”
“Did you know about the library?” Grey asked.
Sean looked at him in question, clearly not knowing what he was talking about. With a nod of his head in the stairs direction, Grey led us up to the library. I trailed behind them, taking my tea with me. Checking on Tanner as we went by, I could tell the kids were nearly asleep. He gave me a cheeky wink and a smile before he nuzzled down against them again. He seemed happy enough where he was, so I joined everyone else upstairs in the library.
“I knew your mother was trying to gather information about our world, but this…” Sean looked around, running his fingers along the spines of the books as he took in the sheer volume of information my mother had collected here for us.
“And they didn’t leave you any instructions, any indication of what their intentions were?” Sean asked, turning towards me.
I found my mother’s book and pulled the letter out of the front where my father had originally hidden it, passing it across to Sean. I didn’t mind him reading it. He was family. The pain that flashed across his face as he read my father’s goodbye could never be faked.
“Have you looked at the letter for Jacob?” he asked.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to get into that with him. Those words were for Jacob when he was older. They had nothing to do with the situation now.
“I’m sorry, can we get back to the point where we discuss the fact that you’re a dragon?” River suddenly blurted out, and I could see from the way his eyes were starting to bug out of his face as he said it that he’d been stewing over the information since Jacob let the cat out of the bag.
Sean just chuckled and slumped down into one of the chairs, leaning back and crossing his legs. “You lasted longer than most people.”
“It’s just that dragons aren’t real,” River said, looking around the rest of us. “Shifters have some basis in nature. You’re shitting us, right?”
It seemed like something Tanner would say, and that was my excuse for why I found it as funny as I did. Laughter just burst out of me, and River looked at me like I might have finally snapped. Maybe I had. Sean had been around all my life. He was old friends with my parents. To me, stuff like this was just normal.
“You didn’t believe Calli was possible until you met her,” Sean pointed out.
“That’s different, though. Calli is a mixture of two things we know are real. You’re… well, you’re not supposed to exist.”
“The bigger question,” Grey sighed as he took one of the other chairs, “is what else don’t we know about.”
That sobered me up real quick because I didn’t think even I knew everything. I’d been brought up very much in a ‘don’t ask, and we won’t tell you’ type of situation. My parents were always honest with us, but they also knew we were only kids. If we weren’t old enough to understand, then it just wasn’t something we discussed.
Sean, though, just waved his hand around the room. “You have everything you need here, and there is not eno
ugh time in the day for me to sit here and explain it to you.”
My eyes were drawn back to the bookshelves, and I suddenly felt terrible for not looking at them properly. We’d been so drawn into the specific problems we had, a large amount of the library I hadn’t even opened yet. Specifically, the book that seemed saturated with my mothers magic. I knew what it was. It was a diary of sorts—a record of her magic. I just didn’t have it in me to look at it, yet.
“Anyway, you have a bigger problem than what goes bump in the night,” Sean sobered.
I cringed because I knew what he was talking about, and it wasn’t the witches or the shifter council.
“Have you met with him?” I asked, assuming that was where he’d gone when his plane landed.
Sean nodded, and the look on his face told me enough, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Davion refuses to release you from your bargain, and he won’t enlighten me as to what he’s going to ask of you. But I can tell you this. Something has him scared. Something has that entire clan absolutely petrified.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Grey mumbled.
Sean shook his head and took a drink from his coffee before looking down at it in disgust. I knew he’d hate it. If ever there was a coffee snob, it was Sean, although right about now, he probably wished that mug was filled with whiskey.
“He’s coming tomorrow night to talk to you about the details. I will be here,” Sean said, inviting no arguments on the subject.
I wouldn’t anyway. Sean had a relationship with Davion. He’d be able to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. Plus, I had a terrible feeling I might need Sean to hold Grey back from attacking Davion when we finally got the details out of him.
“But for tonight, I have a hotel booked and a bed that is calling my name. Perhaps I could have a word with you, Calli, while you walk me out?” Sean asked, standing from his chair and straightening his jacket around him.
Grey bristled at the comment but then leaned back against the bookshelf where he was standing. I knew he wouldn’t want his mate to go off and have a quiet word with this unknown shifter to him. I loved him even more for holding himself back from saying anything.