The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats (13 page)

They nodded again.

“Do you, I mean, these are people that you’ve
known your whole lives. You won’t be embarrassed to be seen with
me, together?” His heart melted a ton. She was worried they were
ashamed of her. Silly female.

“Never.” He swore. “It isn’t anyone’s
business what our life is like together, Callie.”

“Right. And if they’re idiotic enough to
question two possessive mountain lions about their mate, then they
get what they deserve.” Eryx grinned, but underneath the smile was
a sincere threat.

She narrowed her rich, hazel eyes at them
appraisingly. “I haven’t decided if we’re mates yet.”

Liar. Still, he liked her spunk. Loved it.
“No rush, sweetheart. We’ll be here.”

“I don’t have anything nice enough to wear to
a wedding.”

“We’ll go shopping, Friday night, maybe catch
a movie.” He suggested.

She smiled, biting her lip again, a habit
that was going to make his cock insane, and then said she’d love to
join them, and kissed them both goodnight. Although a large part of
him wanted to make love to her tonight, he knew the right thing was
to wait. They were getting to know each other. To care for each
other on an emotional level that was extremely new and unusual for
the two of them, and she was trying to reconcile her need to spread
her wings with her desire to stay with them. Waiting was a good
thing.

**Eryx**

Life is funny sometimes. You go your whole
life expecting things to be one way and suddenly, you’re on a
different path and you can’t even believe your own luck. That’s how
he felt with Callie. He’d expected the life of the single father,
raising his children alongside his brothers’ and being the all
encompassing dual parent. Now, it felt like he could have anything
he wanted because of the sweetheart asleep in the master
bedroom.

He said goodnight to Ethan and went to his
room. As he stretched out under the covers, he let his mind wander.
Most men probably fantasized about sex, and while his mind was
drifting often to the tantalizing curves of her body he'd felt
under his hands while they’d hugged and kissed throughout the day
and evening, his fantasies were almost all boring on the sex front.
He fantasized about cuddling on the couch with Callie, her head on
his bicep, his body draped over hers for warmth and comfort. He
thought about going swimming in the lake this summer and kissing
droplets of water from her skin, camping in the fall and holding
her in front of a bonfire and talking quietly, about doing all the
mundane stuff that humans took for granted. Hell, he’d be thrilled
to drink coffee and read the paper with her every day for the rest
of his natural life. She was truly something spectacular.

He woke up with a start from a very nice
dream about Callie, when the front storm door slammed shut.
Grabbing a pair of jeans from the floor, he tugged them on and met
Ethan in the hallway coming from Alek’s bedroom.

The master bedroom door was open and the bed
was empty. They both ran to the front door, worried that someone
had actually come into their house and kidnapped her.

Shoving their feet into boots and grabbing
their coats, they ran out of the house and then paused, scenting
the air for their mate. Without a word they took off behind the
house and into the woods. In the light from the half moon, he could
see only one set of bare footprints in the snow. She was out
without shoes? Did she still have those tiny pajamas on?

Less than ten minutes later as they raced
alongside her footprints, they heard her crying and they ran at
full speed towards the sound and then they stopped in their tracks.
Callie, wearing the same tank and shorts from the day before, with
no coat or shoes, was cradling what looked like a dog at first, but
when she lifted her tear-streaked face, it was clear that it was a
wolf.

It was so cold that the tears were freezing
on her cheeks and her whole body was wracked with tremors. He
jerked off his coat and threw it over her shoulders.

She sobbed, “I heard him, I heard him being
cut. Who would, who would hurt an innocent animal this way?” As she
leaned into him and Ethan knelt on the other side to look, he saw
that the inside of the wolf was hanging out like red ropes on the
white snow. It was still alive, though, somehow.

“I’ll take care of the wolf, Callie, you need
to go back into the house.” He tried to extract her from the wolf
but she started crying harder and shaking her head.

“Take her Eryx. Just…get her in a hot shower
and I’ll take care of him.” Ethan looked grim. Neither of them
wanted to say what was on their minds. That either this was a
direct warning to Callie or someone had thought the natural wolf
was her. Neither scenario was good.

It was clear that Ethan wanted him to
manhandle her and he didn’t want to do that, because they’d come so
far today, but she was in negative temperatures in what amounted to
underwear. “Hot water, Eryx, and then into bed and you go with her,
got it?”

“Yeah. Don’t take too long, brother.”

“I won’t.”

Eryx jerked her free of the bloody wolf and
pulled her against his chest, standing up in one smooth motion as
she shrieked at the loss of the wolf in her arms.

He turned towards the house with a jog,
unsure if Callie’s sudden quiet was a good or bad thing. She was
shaking, her teeth were chattering together, and her body felt
positively frozen. And she was covered in blood. He wasn’t sure how
he’d feel if he saw a natural mountain lion slaughtered like that,
but she clearly felt some camaraderie with the beast.

He took her straight to the master bathroom
and turned on the shower. Rocking her back and forth in his arms,
he talked to her quietly, wondering why it was taking so long for
the water to heat up. Finally it was almost too hot to stand and he
kicked off his boots and stepped inside with her. When he moved to
put her down she struggled and he wasn’t sure if she was trying to
get closer to him or away from the hot water, or both.

“Stop struggling, sweetheart, you’re frozen
to the bone.” He put her feet on the floor and held her tightly
against him so the water beat down on the front of her body. She
went rigid for a moment and then stopped struggling and relaxed
against him. After a few minutes, her bone cracking shudders eased
and she sighed with relief.

He moved one arm, sliding his hand past her
elbow and lifting her hand up so he could check her fingers and
then he did the same with the other hand and bent over enough to
reach her toes. “Well you aren’t frostbitten. You could have died
out there, Callie. What were you thinking?” The growl in the back
of his throat was one of frustration and a knot of fear. What if it
had been a trap?

“I’m sorry, Eryx,” she rested her head
against his bicep and hugged his arms around her. “I just, I
couldn’t stop myself. Thank you for coming for me.”

He hoped she could hear the truth in his
voice. “I will always come for you.”

Necessity called for action and not standing
in the shower holding onto her all night. “Alright, if we’re going
to save Ethan some hot water, we need to get you out of your
pajamas and cleaned up. Can you stand by yourself so I can get
out?”

“No, I don’t want you to go.”

This was potentially the worst idea in
history, but if she needed him, then he could control himself. And
thank goodness he was still wearing jeans. He reached for the hem
of her tank and drew it over her head, partly glad she was not
facing him and partly annoyed about that very fact. The first time
that he saw her naked, though, he really did want it to be because
she wanted it, not because the circumstances dictated the
necessity. He dropped it in the corner of the tub and tugged one
side of her tiny shorts down until they fell and she could step out
of them. She wasn’t wearing panties.

He gave her a washcloth that was hanging on
the bar and opened a bottle of what turned out to be vanilla body
wash and squeezed it onto the cloth she held. And then he closed
his eyes and tried not to be hyper aware of the movements against
him as she washed away any remaining evidence of the wolf’s blood.
A few achingly long minutes later, she dropped the cloth over the
bar and said she was done, and her voice had gone flat and
lifeless.

Please don’t let her go into shock.

Turning off the water, he stepped out with
her and wrapped her in a towel without daring to look down and
turned her away so he could wrangle the soaked denim from his body
and wrap a towel around himself. Securing it on his hips, he swept
her up into his arms and she burrowed her still cold body into his
and shivered. He jerked the covers back and laid her down, pulling
the blankets back up and turning to the closet for more of
blankets.

Something hit him and he glanced down and saw
her towel. “Eryx, I’m cold.”

He swallowed the suggestion she could have
kept the towel on, because frankly he was glad she hadn’t, and laid
two more blankets on top of her. He dropped his towel and carefully
slid into the bed, grateful for the darkness so she didn’t see his
erection. But seeing it didn’t matter, because the moment he
adjusted the blankets over himself she turned into him and slid one
of her legs right over his so his balls were cradled into her thigh
and his cock pressed into his stomach, wedged tightly by her bare
hip.

And then those cold arms wrapped around him
and she ducked her head against his chest and held onto him like
she was adrift at sea and he was a life preserver. Erection
notwithstanding, it wasn’t a very sexual thing because she needed
comfort and he should provide it for his mate.

“I’m scared, Eryx.” Her fingers dug into his
back slightly and a fine tremble shivered through her.

“We’ll keep you safe, Callie, I swear on my
own life.”

The front door opened and closed, and the
lock clicked. He turned his head when Ethan came into the room,
shivering. “Please tell me you saved me some hot water, I’m about
to bite my tongue off.” He dropped his jacket and made for the
bathroom.

“We tried.” He told him, curling Callie
closer against him. Ethan didn’t turn on the bathroom light and got
into the shower quickly. Less than five minutes later, he walked
out with a towel around his waist.

“You got things under control, brother?”
Ethan’s voice was quiet and very calm. That meant that he was
feeling emotional and trying to hide it. Neither of them were very
good at keeping secrets from the other. Part and par of being
twins.

Callie lifted her head from his chest and
reached a hand out from under the covers. “Come to bed, Ethan. I’m
still cold.”

She clearly wasn’t going to have to ask
twice. And as much as he would like to hold her alone all night, it
wasn’t something he would ask for of either of them. Not now, when
things were so new. Some night, though, he would want to have her
to himself, to touch and explore for hours until he knew every inch
of her smooth, warm skin. His cock throbbed and he groaned
inwardly.

Ethan dropped the towel and slid under the
covers and he clearly meant to just lay next to her, but she had
other plans, and pulled him with one arm until he was leaning
against her back and she was between them. This was as close as
he’d been to his brother with a woman. They’d never shared. The
female lions wouldn’t go for so much kink in the bedroom. Unless
they'd agreed to bear a cub, they were only interested in their own
pleasure and once they got off, they were inclined to just wriggle
out from under the male and get dressed. Whether he was done or
not.

“What did you do with him?” Her voice was
small and tired. His own hand was resting on her bare hip, and he
could feel Ethan’s hand just above his on the curve of her
waist.

“I…stopped his suffering and then I covered
him with brush. The ground is too hard to bury him. I’m sorry, it’s
not exactly decent.”

She shifted slightly, burrowing deeper
against his body and said nothing else. After several minutes, she
relaxed and began to breathe deeply, and he sighed in quiet relief.
“Did you catch a scent?” He asked quietly.

“Tanya and Farrah, but you know that Melania
was behind it. She was not happy about what dad did at the station.
Or seeing us together with her.”

“We need to leave. That was a definite
warning.”

“I had hoped that it wouldn’t be so bad for
her, but this is out of character for the females. It’s like
they’re playing with her.” Ethan growled and Eryx felt his hand
spasm against her waist in an unconscious movement.

“What bothers me most is that they keep
coming here, to our home. This should be a safe place for her, but
how the hell can we keep her safe when we’re asleep?”

“At the least one of us should be in bed with
her at night, so we can make sure that nothing like tonight happens
again. Until we have our plans made. And she needs to understand
she can’t go anywhere alone. If they’d been waiting for her with
that wolf, I shudder to think we’d have ever found her alive.”

Eryx caressed the smooth skin of her hip and
it made her leg jerk slightly between his and he had to suppress a
small groan. Very smart, idiot, he thought, as if he wasn’t already
about to combust.

“We could go stay at Dad’s.”

Ethan hummed in thought. “We should be able
to protect our mate or we don’t deserve her.”

He wasn’t wrong. “Then come morning, we’ll
call Uncle Rhett and start packing.”

As if sensing his unrest, Ethan said, “We’re
doing what’s best for her. There, Rhett’s got a human wife and the
whole town is human, and it’s half the size of King. We can protect
her so much better there.”

“I just don’t like the idea of leaving Dad,
but on the other hand I don’t want to risk her life. So we’ll go. I
never doubted that we would need to, I just didn't expect it to
have to happen so quickly.”