The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats (30 page)

His heart rate spiked. “Did you try
Lisa?”

Eryx gave him a hot glare. “No, I’m an idiot.
Of course I did. She’s out running errands and Rhett’s out of cell
range on the farm.”

“I’m heading home now; I’ll give you a call.
I’m sure she's just sleeping.”

Eryx glanced at the clock hanging on the wood
paneled wall, “All day?”

He swallowed and said, “I’ll call you,” and
tried not to run out the door. Speeding home, he couldn’t stop
himself from thinking the worst had happened, because he’d seen the
worst working in the police department and for the King EMT squad.
He jumped out of the truck as soon as he parked in front of the
house and jerked the front door open.

“Callie?” He called out, trying to calm his
racing pulse and the thudding heartbeat that was too loud for his
ears. He didn’t hear her response. He walked towards the stairs,
worried something had happened and she’d not been able to reach the
phone. She was still so very early pregnant, and a lot could happen
in the first trimester. He’d never forgive himself for leaving her
alone when he’d known something was bothering her this morning.
What if what he took as nerves was her hiding that she didn’t feel
well?

“Callie?” He called louder as he rounded the
top of the stairs. His hand turned the closed bedroom door and as
it swung open, he heard it: she was crying in the bathroom. He
smiled and let his pulse slow on its own. Her food aversions were
really driving her insane. One day she’d love something like ham
sandwiches and the next day they’d turn her green.

He opened the bathroom door, but something
was different about this scenario. She was leaning heavily against
the toilet, but she wasn’t crying because she was throwing up, she
was just weeping with her head in her hands, and a small piece of
paper was crushed in one fist. “Sweetheart, what’s the matter?” He
stepped towards her and the moment she looked at him he knew that
something was horribly, terribly wrong.

He knelt next to her and she actually
flinched away from him. Where he knelt, a manila envelope was
turned over and he picked it up. It was addressed to her and
postmarked from King. Something about the handwriting looked
familiar and when he reached into the envelope, Callie stopped his
hand, “Don’t, Ethan.” Her voice was a bare whisper, like she’d been
crying for a long time. Her pretty face was red and blotchy, and
her hair was drenched with sweat. She’d been worked up for a
while.

“Callie, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She handed him what turned out to be a
crumpled picture and said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me,
Ethan?”

He was going to say, ‘tell you what?’ but the
moment he stretched the photograph open his heart dropped out of
his chest and hit the floor. It was him and another man, naked,
kissing. And then it clicked. The handwriting on the envelope was
Melania’s; he recognized it from seeing it at the station.

“Callie, I,” he stuttered. All this time, he
and Eryx had only talked once about telling Callie about their past
with the female lions. He’d known at the time that eventually it
would come out and haunt them if they didn’t share their secrets
with her first, but they’d dropped it. He’d been glad for the
reprieve because they both wanted her to love them so much that she
wouldn’t walk away from them because of the things they’d done, and
allowed to be done to them, at the females’ demands.

She looked at him plaintively, broken and
sad, from where she was huddled on the cold tile. “This is from
before you came into our lives, sweetheart. You have to know
that.”

“I’m not an idiot.” She snarled suddenly and
shoved herself up from the floor. He was taken back by her abrupt
change in demeanor. “Tell me. Tell me everything fucking right now
Ethan. We’re not supposed to have secrets.” She flicked the
photograph in his hand, “This is a huge fucking secret!”

“I, I, we need to wait for Eryx.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He stared into
her eyes, hoping to see a glimmer of love in the depths, but all he
saw was hazel and amber swirling together in anger. She was livid.
When she spoke, however, her voice was suddenly devoid of emotion.
“Fine. Get out until he gets home, and take those fucking things
with you.” She kicked at the envelope on the floor and stalked past
him and back into the bedroom.

His hands were trembling when he gathered the
envelope from the floor and pushed the photo back inside. He felt
sick enough to vomit. She was turned away from him on the bed, arms
folded angrily and her whole posture said to stay away. His heart
sank. Eryx was going to be devastated by her reaction, at least as
much as he was at this moment.

In the kitchen, he called Eryx. “We have a
problem. How soon can you get home?”

“I can cut out in about 20, unless you need
me home right now. Is she okay?” He heard the worry in his
voice.

“Yes and no. She’s fine physically, but, just
come home, Eryx.”

“Will do.”

He didn’t have the courage to look into the
envelope. At least not alone. He was freaking out in every sense of
the word, and the one thing that would help him, the one person
that could comfort him better than any other person on earth was
furious with him.

Eryx was home in half an hour and sat down at
the table after taking off his jacket. He explained, “This was
delivered to Callie today. It’s Melania’s handwriting, Eryx.”

Eryx went pale. “What’s inside?”

“I think you and I both know what’s
inside.”

“Please tell me that Callie didn’t open it.”
Eryx’s voice was a bare plea.

He shook his head. “She’s so pissed Eryx. I
think she feels like we lied to her.” He told him how he’d found
her in the bathroom, and then how she had kicked him out. It would
figure that the picture she had in her hands was something that
would devastate her and change how she looked at him. If she’d
looked through everything, he knew exactly what she’d see and his
heart was cracking fast at the thought of losing his most precious
mate.

“Well… let’s see what she saw.” Eryx said
finally.

Ethan dumped the contents out and it was even
worse than he thought. Not only were there photos of them kissing
other male lions like the photo she had in her hand, but there were
also pictures of them having sex with different females in their
age group, and several of their orgies. Neither he nor Eryx were
gay or even bi-sexual, but several times the females bullied them
into kissing and touching other males, their friends, before they
would agree to sleep with one of them. When they were younger men,
even more desperate for affection, they hadn’t known any better. If
the pictures weren’t bad enough, there were two DVDs, titled
‘Ethan’s Greatest Hits’ and ‘Eryx’s Greatest Hits’.

Eryx shoved everything into the envelope and
stalked over to the fireplace. He opened the flue, lit the long
barreled lighter to catch the quick-starter log underneath the wood
they kept stacked in case she felt like a fire, and then bellowed,
“Callie, get your ass down here, NOW!” The silence in the house
after his roar was nearly as loud. Several minutes passed.

“Eryx, what are you doing?” He grabbed his
arm when Eryx stormed past him towards the stairs.

“She can’t hold us hostage for our past,
Ethan. We fucked up by not telling her before, but we can tell her
now. She wants to know our demons, then we’ll flay our souls open
right now.”

Eryx wrenched out of his grasp and stomped up
the stairs, opening the bedroom door with such force that it
cracked against the wall. He heard arguing, and was tempted to go
up there, but then Eryx appeared with Callie slung over his
shoulder. He gripped her legs tightly and although she didn’t kick
or hit, she struggled and shrieked, “Let me fucking go, Eryx!” Eryx
said nothing as he stomped down the stairs, his face dark and
furious.

He dumped her onto the couch and she bounced
once and tried to get to her feet. Eryx barked, “Sit!”

She pursed her lips tightly and glared at
Eryx before she eased back down.

Eryx paced angrily in front of her, back and
forth several times, and then he dropped to his knees, buried his
face in her lap, and wept. It was the first time that Ethan had
ever seen his brother really cry since they were children. The raw
emotion that Eryx showed their mate made his own heart break
further and he was on his knees next to him, hot tears streaming
down his face, begging Callie to forgive them for their past.

She didn’t move for several minutes as they
wet the material of her jeans with tears. He looked up at her with
blurry eyes, “Callie, don’t leave us, please.”

Her face softened suddenly and real sorrow
shown in her eyes and she stroked his face with her hand, “Oh,
Ethan, I would never leave you. Either of you.” And then tears
filled her eyes, and she said, “Why would they send those to me?
You said we’d be safe here from them.”

She hugged her arms around both of them and
they all cried together. She gathered them next to her on the couch
and stroked their backs and kissed the tears from their cheeks
until all three of them were quieted and comforted, at least as
much as possible, considering. She kissed both of their temples as
she rubbed their backs, “I was angry because of the secrets. If
you’d prepared me, if you’d trusted me to be able to handle your
past, no matter how ugly, then this wouldn’t have hit me like an
out of control eighteen-wheeler. I don’t care what happened before,
I care that you thought so little of me that you couldn’t be
completely honest about your past.”

Eryx sighed deeply, “Ethan wanted to tell
you, before we found out you were pregnant, but I was ashamed so I
discouraged him, and then we just kept burying it. I’m sorry.
Ethan, I’m sorry to you, too.”

“I was glad you didn’t want to at the time,
Eryx. It was as much my responsibility as yours.”

Callie kissed both of their foreheads. “Tell
me now, and then we’ll close this chapter forever.”

It pained him to have to tell her everything,
but they had no choice now.

Sitting back from her side, holding one of
her hands, and scrubbing at his wet cheeks with the back of his
free hand, he started their story.

When they were teenagers and sniffing around
the females, the females rebuffed them completely. Eventually, the
females suggested that they would be willing to have sex with them
if they were given gifts. They were disappointed that the females
didn’t want to date. Even though their dad and uncles all told them
it wouldn't happen, they had held hope that things would be
different with their generation. It was how the humans in the
movies they watched started out on the road to marriage, so why not
mountain lions? Although they were cautioned time and again by
their family that the females weren’t interested in marriage, the
lionesses gave them false hope by accepting gifts in exchange for
promises that were never fulfilled.

When the males started to ask for the
promises of sex to be fulfilled, the females played a different
game. They would bait them into situations with other males, and
then declare if they didn’t do things with their friends, such as
kiss, that the females would leave. And once the males did that
small thing, the females asked for more things. Not just kissing,
but undressing and touching, and they hadn’t known at the time that
they were being filmed.

And then when they finally agreed to have sex
with them, it wasn’t private but with the older females watching as
a group. Afterwards, he remembered how devastated Eryx had been.
The females hadn’t been kind at all as they watched and their
comments were destructive to their already poor self-esteem. It was
then that Eryx started to lose the softer side of himself and began
to withdraw.

They believed it was how things went with the
females. That it was that way even in human circles and the movies
they’d seen that were romantic and full of love were just fiction.
They believed that the females held all the cards and played them
however they cared to, human or lion. They were too ashamed of
their actions to ask anyone for the truth. And then the pictures
started to show up at their dad’s home and he sat them down and
told them they were being treated poorly. It wasn’t the first time
that he chastised them at home and then publicly stood up for them.
The pictures stopped. They thought they were given the originals to
destroy, but clearly they weren’t.

Eryx said something surprising, “I know I
told you I never wanted to be recorded having sex, Callie, and
that’s true. I have to assume that they videotaped us having sex
and that’s what is on the DVDs. I didn’t know. I knew about the
pictures, but not the videos. I swear.”

“Oh baby, I believe you.” Callie pulled him
into a tight hug. Ethan figured it for something they’d discussed
privately. Callie turned to him, “I’m sorry for what they did to
you. I’m sorry I lost it before and made you feel so bad and
worried. My emotions are just so nuts right now I couldn’t get a
handle on what I was feeling. There’s a part of me that wants to
think that you didn’t really exist until we met, and I know that’s
silly.”

Ethan shook his head and kissed her palm,
“It’s not silly, it’s how it feels to me. I didn’t exist until you
loved me.”

“Me, too, love. You’re the only woman I’ve
ever loved, and I never want to see you so angry and disappointed
ever again," Eryx promised.

That was the damn truth.

They stood together and went to the fireplace
and slid the envelope onto the hot coals and watched the flames
lick and destroy it slowly. Callie kissed each of them and pulled
them back to the couch.

She settled them against her and stroked
their hair and talked about everything except what they’d just
shared. She had effectively opened up a painful chapter of their
lives, wiped the slate clean, and shut the door, locked tight with
her love for them. He’d never felt more loved and cherished in his
life, and he thanked his lucky stars for the sweetheart that could
see past all his faults and love him anyway.