Every Blissful Moment (Hyena Heat Book 4) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Memphis was glad to be taking Bliss to Beyton to visit her parents.  He didn’t think anything good would come from it, but she needed to be able to move forward no matter the outcome.  She’d called them after Whisper visited several weeks earlier, and told them about finding her mates.  In the last three weeks, they’d made no move to contact her to apologize for their initial reaction, which hadn’t been good.

He didn’t understand them at all.  As supernatural creatures, they should’ve been thrilled that she’d found her true mates, regardless of the fact that they were hyenas and not wolves.  They’d been anything
but
thrilled.  Maybe they would’ve been happy if she only had one mate, but hyenas didn’t mate that way; there were always three males for one female, forming a clan.  A number of clans, usually extended families, gathered together in one area and called themselves a
baro
.  Memphis and his brothers belonged to their parents’
baro
, but he didn’t know what the future held for them.  Bliss liked their parents, but she was distracted by the thoughts of her own parents’ disapproval, and he wasn’t sure if she’d want to move to Ocean City.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Bliss was asleep, her head in Rome’s lap.  It was her twenty-fifth birthday tomorrow, and the pack was having a party for her.  Whisper and her biological brothers were going to sing, and the pack would be gathered for the party at the bar owned by Whisper’s adopted father, Mack.  Along with that party, Whisper’s mates were throwing her a surprise wedding on Saturday, and Bliss needed to help.

In a low voice, he said to Link, who was sitting in the passenger seat, “I think we should go straight to her parents’ house.  Waiting is only going to make her anxious, and she’s already worried enough.”

Link cracked his knuckles.  “They better be careful what they say to her.”

Memphis rolled his eyes.  “No matter how much you might want to, you absolutely can’t punch her dad.”

Link snorted.  “It depends on what he says.  I make no promises.  He already hurt her over the phone.  You saw what she looked like when they called her a whore and a disgrace.  If he’d said those things to her face, in front of me, he would’ve had trouble talking for a long time, I’d make sure of it.”

Memphis knew that things were dicey with her family, but he didn’t know how to fix it, if he even could.  If her parents wanted nothing to do with them, then there was little they could do about it.  If they’d changed their minds though, then he’d make an effort to be nice and try to forget how they’d made her cry.  He didn’t think that their mate should ever cry like that again.  It had broken his heart to see her fall apart.  His little sweetheart should only ever cry tears of joy, never the hot tears of rejection and pain.

She didn’t talk a lot about her parents, but what she had shared told him that her parents were very narrow-minded and unwilling to change.  Her strict upbringing had made her rebel some in high school – sneaking out of the house, dating humans who her parents found distasteful as mates – and she’d spent a lot of time being punished for just being herself.  It was no wonder she wasn’t close to her parents, and that she dreaded seeing them after they’d rejected her so easily for following her heart with him and his brothers.

Bliss had grown up in the small town of Beyton; she and their estranged sister Whisper were best friends.  Until the
gathering
, Memphis and his family hadn’t seen Whisper, whose real name was Savannah, since she was a toddler.  He’d been seven when she was kidnapped, and he remembered vividly the pain his parents had experienced as each day passed and there was no word of her.  She’d been taken in by the Beyton wolf pack and had two adopted wolf brothers, who Memphis had liked immediately.

Whisper had made sure that everyone knew she wasn’t walking away from her adopted family just because she’d been reunited with her biological one.  Kross and Kayne were her brothers, so Memphis and his brothers decided to think of them as their own brothers too, and they’d been happy to agree to it.  They hadn’t met Mack yet, but he knew he’d like the male judging from what Bliss had shared about him.  Any male who took in a child he believed was an orphaned shifter and raised her as his own was golden in his book.

He parked on the street in front of her parents’ home.  It was a modest ranch, with a few shrubs in the flower beds.  Bliss sat up and stretched.  She glanced at him in the mirror, but then looked out the window to the house and made a soft sound of surprise.

“What, sweetheart?  Did you change your mind?  We don’t have to do this right now.  We can ask Mack to intervene, to set up a meeting and mediate.”

She reached for the door with a trembling hand.  “That’s my stuff on the front porch.”  Her voice was shaky.  He glanced at his brothers, and then looked past Link to the porch where a pile of black trash bags lay.  He’d assumed it was actual trash.

They got out, following her up to the porch where she stopped in front of the bags.  A stuffed teddy bear sat on top of them.  It had rained recently, and the bear’s pale brown fur was matted and dark in places.  She picked up the bear, and a steady stream of water poured from it.

“How could they do this?” she whispered, her hand tightening on the bear and squeezing more water out.

Link put his hand on her shoulder.  “We don’t have to do this now.”

She shrugged him off and banged her palm on the front door.  “No, it’s not right!  They can’t just ignore me because I found my true mates.  I’m still a member of this family and I have a right to be heard!”  She pounded on the door, clutching the soaked bear to her side, calling for her parents to open the door and talk to her.  As the minutes ticked by, her voice grew weaker and her hand turned bright red from hitting the door.  He knew her parents wouldn’t be answering it.

“Rome, get her in the SUV.  Link, help me grab her things.”

Bliss started to cry when Rome picked her up and turned, striding away from the front porch.  “What are we going to do?” Link asked as he picked up three of the overstuffed bags.  Memphis grabbed the remaining two and followed him to the SUV.  He put the bags in the back and looked toward the house.  There was no sign of life, but he believed her parents were home and just ignoring them.  Part of him wanted to break down the front door and force them to deal with Bliss, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

“Let’s go talk to Mack.  I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I’m sure as hell not going to stand around while they make a fool out of our mate.”

Nodding, Link shut the lift gate and he and Memphis got into the SUV.  Memphis turned around and looked at Bliss, who was tucked into Rome’s lap, her face buried in his neck.  Rome shrugged slightly, hugging her a little tighter, and Memphis stifled a growl and turned his attention back to the road.  Link pulled up the address to the bar where Whisper lived and worked, which was on the same property as Mack’s home.  Memphis hoped like hell that Mack could give them some advice.  He hated to see Bliss so torn up.

“I’m sorry that we’re meeting you for the first time under such sad circumstances,” Memphis said as he shook Mack’s hand a few minutes later.

Mack scrubbed a hand through his hair.  “I’m damn sorry, too.  I can’t force them to accept her and I really don’t understand why they’re fighting so hard.  I thought that seeing how happy Whisper is with her mates might help them come to terms with whatever they dislike so much about the multiple mating, but it hasn’t changed their minds one bit.”

Memphis glanced at his mate, who stared blankly out a window while his brothers hovered around her.  “I thought she might like to stay in Beyton, but I don’t want to subject her to their behavior.”

Mack exhaled.  “I’d hate for her to leave the pack.  Whisper will be upset, but you need to do what’s right for your mate.  I’ll speak to her parents, but I’m not going to hold my breath.  In the meantime, there’s a bed and breakfast just outside of Beyton; you can bunk there.”

Memphis nodded.  “Thanks, Mack.”

He shook Memphis’s hand.  “She’s like a daughter to me; I want her to be happy.”

“Sweetheart?”  She turned slowly, and the depths of sadness in her eyes took his breath away.

“Let’s go check into the bed and breakfast so you can meet up with Angel and do whatever wedding stuff you need to do.”

She smiled, but he could tell she was forcing it.  He didn’t want her to pretend to be happy, but he wasn’t going to call her out on it.  They left Beyton and got a room at the bed and breakfast that Mack had recommended.  After dropping off their things, they took Bliss to Angel’s apartment and went to meet Kross and Kayne to see how they could help.  He left Rome with the girls to act as chauffer and keep an eye on their sweetheart.  As he and Link kissed her goodbye, he stared down into her dark brown eyes and wished like hell he knew how to help her.  It was tempting to distract her with sex, but there were some emotional wounds that were too deep for that to work.

* * * * *

Link spent a good portion of Whisper’s wedding thinking about marrying Bliss.  Marriage for hyenas wasn’t a requirement, because the mating ceremony ensured that the clan was tightly bonded together, but he wanted her to have their last name as soon as possible.  Partly because she was theirs, but mostly because he wanted to remove her parents’ name from hers since they were being such bastards.

They hadn’t bothered to show up for Bliss’s birthday party the night before, and they’d skipped Whisper’s wedding.  Kross said that for them to avoid going to the wedding of the alpha’s daughter was a serious breach of etiquette.  Mack wouldn’t punish them, but the alpha wasn’t happy about their behavior.

When the vows had been spoken and their baby sister walked down the aisle while the pack cheered, he watched Bliss come down the aisle with Kross.  He didn’t particularly like an unmated male’s hands on her, but he reminded his beast that Kross wasn’t a threat because he considered her a sister.  When he caught up to his sweetheart, he scooped her up in his arms and she settled against him easily.

“Whatcha up to?” she asked.

“You look exhausted.  And cute.  I wanted to carry you.”

She kissed his neck with a smile.  “Thanks.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

He carried her from the house, to the bar where the reception was being held.  He and his brothers waited while she stood in the receiving line.  He watched her face as each pack member walked by, and it was easy to see that by the time the last pack member had entered the bar she was devastated.  She was doing a good job of appearing to be happy, but he knew her well enough to be able to pick up on her emotional cues:  When she was turned on, she bit her bottom lip.  When she was anxious she drummed her fingers on any surface.  And when she was upset, she rubbed her thumb on the inside of her wrist.  Right now, he could see that her wrist was pink with the friction.

His brothers were just as aware of her cues as he was, but he was the first to reach her.  With a glance at his sister, who nodded in understanding, he pulled Bliss away from the newly married group and wrapped his arms around her.  As she always did, she melted against him, which normally his body found very interesting, but when the gesture was accompanied by a barely controlled full-body shiver, he wanted to hunt her parents down.

“Do you want to go back to the B&B?”  Rome asked softly, joining them in a dark corner of the bar’s entryway.

“It’s Whisper’s reception, I can’t leave.”

Memphis grunted.  “She’d understand, sweetheart.”

Bliss shook her head and pushed away from him.  He didn’t let her get far, and she gave him a half-smile for his effort to keep her close.  She wiped the tears from her cheeks and smoothed her hair back.  The long, silky tresses were tied back at the nape of her neck in a sleek ponytail.

“I’m not going to be selfish.  She’s my best friend.”  She lifted her chin and took a deep breath.  “This is supposed to be a good day.  I’m being a self-absorbed bitch.”

He wanted to protest, and he could tell his brothers also wanted to, but she put her hand up and went on her tiptoes, kissing all their cheeks.  Without a word, she hooked her hands around his elbow and Memphis’s, and gave them a light tug toward the party.