Fated For The Wolf: A Fertile Shapeshifter Romance (Werewolf's Harem Series Book 6) (9 page)

The second he was in the door of his condo, he heard his phone ringing. The landline phone, the one he really only had for two reasons: in case of tornadoes, when cell phone towers might be in peril, and for his mother, who liked to leave long messages on his outdated answering machine. She hated the advent of cell phones, bemoaning caller ID and the fact that none of her six sons ever answered their devices, no matter how mobile. So on, so forth.

Gavin heard the garbled tone of his own recorded voice followed by a long beep, and as he hit the kitchen he listened for his mother’s message.

“Gavin,” came a deep voice. Gavin started; it was not his mother, but his father. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had called him, if ever.

“Gavin, I expect you to return my call within the hour,” his father snapped. Then the line disconnected.

Brows rising, Gavin walked over to the phone. Picking it up, he dialed his parents’ number.

“Berans’,” his father growled.

“It’s Gavin.”

His father paused for a long moment, a kind of hesitation that Gavin had perhaps never witnessed from the man.

“We need a family meeting. Get everyone here this weekend,” his father said.

“Is everything okay? Is Ma okay?”

“Just do what I say, son.”

“Is this about that mating thing you were explaining a few weeks ago?” Gavin asked, unable to keep his curiosity in check.

“I didn’t call you for a bunch of bullshit and questions.”

“That’s only four days of notice, sir,” Gavin said, choosing his words with care. His father’s bear was always close to the surface, ready to rise and shred anyone who didn’t immediately comply to his every demand. Berserker Alphas were all that way, and even in that company Josiah Beran was exceptionally ill-tempered.

“Anyone who doesn’t come is cut from the clan,” his father said.

Gavin paused. Their Berserker clan, several thousand werebears all living within a few hundred miles of Montana, owned one of only six remaining Berserker Refuges. Fifty square miles of rolling Montana hills and valleys, run by Berserkers, protected by wilderness preserve laws, and hidden from human knowledge and interference. It was one of the few places where Berserkers could truly be free and open about their nature and existence.

Being cut from the clan meant never seeing the Montana Refuge again, something even the wildest of his brothers would take seriously.

“Alright,” Gavin agreed at last. “I was already planning to come home and help Ma in the barn.”

“You’re the only one I wasn’t worried about,” Josiah grumbled. “Goodbye.”

With a click, his father hung up. Gavin stared at the phone in his hand for a long moment, anger flaring inside him. Of course his father expected his compliance. Gavin was the dutiful son, the one who came home every other weekend, the one who kept the peace between his father and… well, everyone else in the world.

Putting the phone back in its cradle, Gavin sighed. He’d shower first, maybe have some dinner before he tackled the duty of calling one of his brothers. The Berans did everything by making a phone tree, passing a message along one by one so that no one had the burden of giving out all the news.

Dragging his tired legs toward the shower, Gavin tried to decide which brother he should call first. The answer came to him immediately, though he didn’t much like it. Better to get it over with, he supposed.

Wyatt

Wyatt Beran bit his lip to hold back a groan as the blonde kneeling before him finally parted her lips and let his thick cock slide into the warmth of her mouth. She sucked him deep, bringing the throbbing head of his cock into the tightness of her throat.

He leaned back in the black leather booth, spreading his knees wider as the music pounded a persistent beat. When a few gawkers wandered into the semi-private back room, probably looking for their own hookup spot, Wyatt merely ignored them at first. He thrust a hand into the long blonde tresses of the petite woman who was servicing him, gripping her hair and guiding her to move just the way he liked.

The three bystanders, two girls and a guy, gaped at him as he stared right back at them. He pressed the girl’s head down, shivering when she moaned around his cock. The girl’s hands fluttered up to grip the tops of his thighs and she sucked him harder, making his hips buck. She’d teased him for half an hour before finally getting to the good stuff, and now Wyatt was balancing on the high wire, holding back his load.

He eyed the two girls, liking the look of the bigger one. A brunette with a little flesh on her bones, the typeof woman he liked. She kept licking her lips, and Wyatt could think of several things he’d like those lips to be doing.

“You gonna join, or leave? It ain’t a free show!” Wyatt shouted to his audience, making himself heard over the music. Club Tonique wasn’t one of Chicago’s secret sex clubs, though he knew those plenty well. He’d taken pains to secure this room for an hour, so these strangers were basically intruding on his privacy.

“Sorry!” squeaked the smaller girl, a scrawny dishwater blonde.

The whole group turned tail and ran, reminding Wyatt of a bunch of terrified does. When the swinging door closed behind them, Wyatt finally relaxed into the blonde’s attentions.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he coached, thrusting up into her mouth, enjoying every second of it now.

Then his phone started to buzz. He sighed and tilted to one side, sliding his phone out of his pocket.
Gavin
, the screen read. The blonde paused and looked up, confused.

“Don’t stop,” he told her, pushing her head back down. She acquiesced as he swiped the
Accept
button on his phone and put it to his ear.

“Yeah?” he said, shifting to hold the phone between his ear and shoulder.

“Jesus, where the fuck are you?” came Gavin’s voice.

“What do you want, Gav?” Wyatt asked. To the blonde, he said, “I told you not to stop.”

“What?” Gavin asked.

“I wasn’t talking to you. What do you want?” Wyatt asked again.

“Family meeting this weekend.”

“Don’t give a fuck,” Wyatt said, already tiring of the conversation.

“No-show means no clan,” Gavin said.

“What?” Wyatt asked, reaching out and stopping the blonde. “Hold on.”

Pushing the girl away, he rose and zipped up his jeans. Talking to Gavin had already killed his erection anyway. He moved into the next room, a private bathroom that afforded a little more quiet.

“Did you say what I think you just said?” Wyatt demanded.

“Yeah. Pa called me today. He was about as sweet as you when he told me, then he hung up.”

“You must have misheard,” Wyatt accused.

“Nope. And it is this weekend, four days from now. Be at the Lodge on Friday night, or don’t come back.”

“What in the fucking fuck?” Wyatt wondered aloud.

“If it’s about what I think it’s about, we’re all in deep shit.”

“It’s not Ma, is it?” Wyatt said, his stone-cold heart fluttering to life for a brief moment.

“Guess you’d better come find out for yourself. Or, you know, never run with Berserkers again. Stay in your human form all but a few weekends a year when you can get away to Canada. Whatever,” Gavin said, the taunting in his voice unmistakable.

“Son of a bitch!” Wyatt said.

“Yeah. Anyway, I gotta go,” Gavin finished.

“Wait, who am I supposed to call?” Wyatt asked.

“What?”

“In the phone tree,” he clarified.

“Oh. Uh, nobody. I got this,” Gavin said. “Later.”

Gavin hung up, leaving Wyatt in complete confusion. There was a family meeting in a handful of days, attendance mandatory, and he wasn’t even part of the fucking phone tree. Something weird was happening, and it killed Wyatt’s mood.

Leaving the bathroom, he saw that the blonde was still in the booth waiting, chatting to the curvy waitress that Wyatt preferred when he came to Tonique.

“Wyatt!” they both chirped, turning their attention wholly to him.

“Yeah, look… Annie?” he guessed, frowning as he tried to remember the blonde’s name.

“It’s Amy,” she said, her smile faltering.

“Yeah, I just got a call. Family emergency. I gotta go.”

“Oh. Maybe next time?” she said, looking hopeful.

“Uhhh, sure,” he said, turning to the waitress and handing her a fifty for a tip. “Megan, see you next time.”

He didn’t miss the jealous glare that Abby shot the waitress, but he didn’t care enough to stick around and see the outcome. If he was going to Montana in half a week, and it appeared that he was, he had a lot of work and social commitments to finish, reschedule, or cancel.

Foul expression on his face, Wyatt pushed out the back door of the club and into the waiting night.

Luke

Luke Beran stepped out of Three Muses, Portland’s swankiest cocktail bar, sucking in a deep gulp of cool evening air. He loosened his tie as he headed toward the L, using all his willpower to keep himself from sprinting toward the train. He’d only been in Portland for a few weeks, but the city overwhelmed him on every level. Especially at night, with all the noise and flashing lights and people darting here and there.

Where everyone else would see the normal goings-on of any city, Luke saw danger around every corner. Every man in a hoodie was an unknown combatant, every car backfiring was an IED blowing, every flashing light a signal between two T-men.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Luke muttered to himself.

He’d been so awkward in the job interview he’d just left. Though he was a perfect candidate for the position of Operations Security Analyst, having served sixteen years in the Army and rising to the rank of First Sergeant, he’d spent the entire meeting eyeing every movement and watching all the exits like some kind of crazy person.

It wasn’t fair, damn it. When he was at home, in his own space and with the security alarms armed, he wasn’t so tightly wound. He never relaxed, not really, but at least at home he didn’t feel like he was on patrol in a kinetic zone.

Luke stopped at the steps of the L, bracing against a cool metal as he got himself under control.

You’ve only been back from Iraq for five weeks,
he reminded himself.
Give yourself time to acclimate. Once you’ve got a traveling job, you can move out of the city, somewhere quieter.

His heartbeat slowed, his breathing returned to normal.

“Better…” he whispered. The first week he’d been in Portland, he’d had three full-on panic attacks. Last week, one. This week he’d mastered the art of talking himself down off the ledge, so to speak. Maybe eventually he’d stop gaping at every clean bathroom, every blissfully ignorant woman in short shorts, every place he entered that was filled with a sea of white faces.

Yeah, Portland was radically different from Diyala. He needed to get the hell over it, and soon. He’d spent the last few years dreaming of hot meals, sand-free beds, and an unlimited supply of toilet paper. Now he had it, and he needed to quit being such a bitch about it. Better to think about his disastrous interview than to mull over what a freak he’d become after so much time in the Army.

Maybe if he’d ordered a drink, the whole thing would have gone better. He’d stopped drinking on his third tour in Afghanistan. He’d done it partly because he wanted to understand the people there better, understand their religion and culture. Partly, though, he’d done it because alcohol brought his Berserker to the surface, and that absolutely could not happen.

If his Berserker came out and killed a bunch of T-men, word would spread. If anyone in his unit saw him in bear form, he was toast. If the Army caught a whiff of what he was, he’d be tied down, vivisected, and studied as a way to make better soldiers or some shit like that. The medicos absolutely could not be trusted, so Luke had developed a lot of habits to help hide his true nature from everyone.

“Fuck, no wonder I’m nuts,” he said, turning and trudging up the stairs to the L train.

He listened hard for a moment and determined that a train going North was departing. Just his luck. When he got to the platform he took a seat on the farthest bench, hoping that no one would bother to come sit by him. He wrestled his suit jacket off, neatly folding it and placing it on the bench next to him. Wrinkles had no place in the life of a soldier, and at this point Luke was more soldier than anything else.

His phone rang in his pocket, the Top Gun theme song blaring. He jumped at the sound before he caught himself again, clamping down his ridiculous panic at the sound of his own phone.

“Christ on a fucking cracker!” he snarled, pulling the vibrating phone from his pocket. He checked the screen, trying not to marvel at the fact that when people called him now, he had the choice of simply refusing to answer. Not that he was getting a lot of phone calls these days. Score one for civilian life, there.

When the screen flashed
Gavin
, Luke decided to pick up.