The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats (31 page)

**Eryx**

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get over
manhandling her when she was pregnant. He’d gone up to the bedroom
in a rage of disgust for himself and found her as livid as Ethan
had described. He wanted her to go downstairs to talk but she
refused, and she got in his face and yelled at him for hiding their
past from her. He hadn’t intended to let his beast loose, but he
slung her over his shoulder and carried her downstairs. He wanted
to scream to the moon that she had it all wrong and punch his fists
through the walls in frustration. He wanted to berate her for the
rush to judgment and her unwillingness to talk, but in the end,
he’d been broken by the stark reality of the situation. Callie saw
firsthand what their sexual history was like. It was shoved down
her throat without warning and they had no one to blame but
themselves. And that was enough to make him insane with the thought
that she might leave them for this alone, and he’d lost it. Fallen
at her feet to beg for mercy.

He must have apologized a hundred times for
his behavior, but Callie dismissed his worries later that night by
promising that he hadn’t hurt her a bit and she was perfectly fine.
She even soothed his worries further by having Ethan drive her to
the station the next day with the portable fetal heart monitor. She
closed the office door and stretched out on his desk carefully to
avoid knocking over anything.

Ethan lifted her top and kissed the slight
swell of her belly, and then used the monitor to find their twins.
When the sound of the two heartbeats echoed around them, she
grinned, “See, our sweet little cubs are strong. Next time you want
to pull a caveman move like that, though, you better be heading
towards the bed.”

He kissed her belly and then her mouth and
they listened to the twins a little bit longer and then duty called
and Ethan took her home. He worked later than usual that night with
plans to take off Thursday as well as Friday. He needed to spend
some quality time with Callie, and with Ethan taking a last on-call
tomorrow, he would hopefully get that opportunity and he had just
the activity in mind to make up for his treatment before.

The next morning, when Ethan left them with a
last kiss goodbye and a look of longing to stay tucked around their
mate, Callie made motions to get up. Eryx held her with an arm
around her waist and refused to let her out of bed. Her wriggling
against him in all her naked warmth budged a very nice part of his
anatomy.

She groaned, “I just need to pee, Eryx. Come
on!”

“You have to come right back.”

“Promise.”

He let her go and she disappeared for a few
minutes and then stretched out on her back next to him and took his
hand and placed it very gently on the very slight swell of her
belly. He rubbed the taut skin, eager for the weeks to pass so that
their cubs could grow and he could feel them move. “I was thinking
about names, Eryx.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Wanna hear?” She shifted onto her side
and tucked her arm under her head.

“Of course, love.” He pulled the blanket over
her hip and laid his hand there to rest.

“I was thinking of Elliott and Evan.”

“Nice. They don’t have to start with the
letter ‘e’ though.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s neat, to have
traditions like that. And I thought that Elliott James would be
cool, and then Evan Roman.”

“James for our dad, and who is Roman?”

“My mom’s dad. He used to take me scouting in
the woods when I was little. He said that even though I had better
senses than humans, it didn’t mean that there wouldn’t come a day
when I maybe wouldn’t have all that extra hearing and scent and
sight, and if I could walk the land in confidence in my human form,
than I could be a wolf at ease.” Eryx liked that story about her
past. He wished she’d had a nicer upbringing. At least he could do
everything in his power to see that what went forward for them all
was full of love.

“What if they’re girls?” They were going to
be identical, so there were only the two options.

She made a face, “I hope they’re boys.”

“Sweetheart, even if they’re girls and
completely lion, they’ll love you. They won’t be like the pride
females.”

A fine tremble wove through her. “You don’t
know that, Eryx. I just don’t think I could bear it. To have my
children treat me like a stranger.”

He couldn’t bear it either. For himself or
her. “What we believe is that the females create the discord
themselves. The girls always start out the same, sweet and loving
kids like the boys are, but then the females come around and
everything changes. John said he wished that he’d taken Jilly away
as soon as she was born and hidden her from the females. I remember
when she was two and he’d managed to keep her away from them, and
she would run to us and jump in our arms and ask for kisses with
her little baby talk. And then she was a stranger suddenly and John
was heartbroken. Whatever the females said to her, whatever they
did, love, she was different after meeting them.”

“Well, if they’re lions I hope they’re boys
and if they’re wolves, then I hope they’re girls, because wolf boys
are really arrogant.” She smiled and chased the dark look from her
eyes. She did it for him, he knew that, but he didn’t press her. It
was out of their hands after all. But he did honestly believe that
Callie was going to be the lynchpin in all of their children’s
lives. No other lion children would be as loved and well cared for
as theirs that much he was certain of. And no other lion husbands,
either.

While they were alone together for much of
the morning, they made love and cuddled and talked, took a bath
together and went for a walk around the farm. When she was ready to
take a nap, he rubbed her back until she was fast asleep, and he
stretched out next to her to read.

That evening, he looked over the checklist
with Ethan for the next week. They were standing in the family room
while dinner was cooking and Callie had her head in the fridge and
her adorable ass sticking out from the door. Lisa had done an
amazing job of getting the wedding and reception together. Callie
had been thrilled that her dress still fit and hadn’t needed an
alteration. She looked very early pregnant, gorgeous and glowing,
and he couldn’t have cared less if she walked down the aisle with
jeans and a Nickelback t-shirt on. The most important thing
happening on Saturday was that she was going to be theirs legally
forever.

“Reservation’s solid, I called before I came
home. I have our bags packed and ready to go. The only thing left
to decide is who signs as husband and who signs as witness.” Ethan
said.

Eryx looked up from the paper. It was one of
those things that was both important and unimportant. She belonged
to both of them. But the human standards for marriages didn’t take
multiple were-animal matings into account when they wrote laws.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I wanted to toss this out to
you. Because I’m full-time with the city, I have full benefits and
you don’t. So if we don’t want to scrape together a few grand for
medical costs between her and any future cubs, then it makes sense
for me to be listed as husband. As an offset, I thought it would be
cool if you signed as the twins’ father on the birth
certificate.”

Ethan’s face brightened considerably.
“Yeah?”

He returned the smile. “Of course. Besides,
I’m not planning for these to be our only cubs, and you can sign as
the witness on the marriage license so both our names will be on
there. The placement won’t matter.” And Giselle was creating an
unofficial marriage license for them to display in their home that
would have them both listed as her spouse.

“That’s cool. Thank you for thinking it
through. I didn’t know what to do about it and it seems like a
stupid thing to think about, but I couldn’t stop.”

“I know, man.”

He looked over the list again, mentally
checking everything off, when Ethan snickered, “Holy crap.”

He looked towards the kitchen and Callie had
a gallon of milk upturned over her mouth and was shot-gunning it.
With amazing speed, the milk disappeared from the jug that had been
full when she got it out of the fridge.

She dropped the empty milk jug down to her
side with a hiccup and a small burp and then she did the cutest
thing he’d ever seen. She patted the small swell of her belly
through her thin cotton pajama top and said, “That better
babies?”

She must have felt their eyes on her because
she grinned at them and said, “They wanted milk.”

“Clearly,” he snorted with good humor.
Internally he thought,
I hope she doesn’t throw all that
up
.

Friday, she was a bundle of nerves because
the wolves were coming to the rehearsal dinner. He wasn’t sure he
agreed it was a good idea for them to be there, but he did agree it
was good for closure to that part of her life. She would always be
a wolf, but that was only a fraction of the wonderful woman they
had come to love so greatly.

When it was time for them to go to the winery
for their rehearsal dinner, all their vehicles drove in a long
caravan. The boys were staying with Gwen the were-bear and her
grandchildren. Alek, John and Henry were so happy to see everyone.
Eryx wished they’d been able to come in earlier.

At Callie’s request, they had bought a truck
like their father’s that had a long bench seat in the front. She
liked to sit between them. Ethan replaced his Cherokee with another
one, citing the need for two car seats soon enough and no back seat
in the truck. She still hadn’t asked to get a car for herself, and
he was perfectly fine with taking her wherever she wanted to go.
For the first time in their lives, they went grocery shopping with
their mate and did all the fun dating things that she’d done as a
teenager but they had missed out on.

They went to a drive-in and didn’t watch the
movie for more than ten minutes before the windows were steamed up.
They had a picnic under a tree when the weather was first starting
to get nice. They camped out and kept each other warm in the tent
all night. And she even convinced them to go to a club to dance and
although it had made them feel a little territorial with all the
men ogling her, it had been fun and she had really enjoyed herself.
The best thing they did, though, top of his charts, was when they
found a pool hall and spent the evening betting orgasms for games,
and although she was the loser, she won in the end anyway, because
they all did.

Chapter
22

**Cadence**

Cadence fiddled with the buttons on the front
of the dress she wore, looking at herself carefully in the mirror
of the hotel room she and Jason shared. They were getting ready to
meet Callie and her two men for dinner. The whole situation was
absurd, and maybe it was her pregnancy hormones all out of whack,
but she still couldn’t believe how things had changed for her best
friend.

It was only three months ago that she’d
gotten the call from Callie that she was pregnant, and she’d been
so thrilled, hopeful she would come back home to Allen and rejoin
the pack. Cadence missed Callie like a part of her body had been
cut off. Now it was the end of April and they were in some small
town in Indiana just outside the very tiny town of Ashland, where
Callie and her men lived. The town they’d chosen to settle in was
apparently even smaller than the one they had left in Pennsylvania
– fled, as far as she was concerned – and they’d ended up bringing
her two men’s father, two uncles and kids with them. The only ones
left back in King were apparently a brother and one uncle that had
a daughter who refused to leave, so they’d stayed behind until she
was of-age. Callie had explained about the female mountain lions
and their strange behavior, but Cadence still didn’t get it, and
she probably never would.

Four and a half months pregnant and feeling
big as a house even though she’d only put on a few pounds, Cadence
smiled at Jason’s reflection as he came up behind her and slid his
hands around to touch the small swell of her belly. “Why are you so
nervous? She’s still the same girl you used to ride bicycles with
when you were kids.”

“Because I don’t understand any of what she’s
doing, Jas.” She dropped her head back to let it rest on his
shoulder and he pulled her closer. “It’s like she turned her back
on everything that made her special.”

“It was her decision to leave, Cades, you
didn’t force her.” Cadence pressed her tongue into the back of her
incisor so she didn’t say what was resting on the tip there:
No,
I didn’t force her, but you did.

She could feel the shiver of tension that
stole through her husband every time Callie was mentioned. Along
with having residual guilty feelings about putting her down back in
January when she was early pregnant, he worried about her getting
all emotional, which she tended to do every time she talked to
Callie. It wasn’t just that she’d walked away from the pack, but
she had walked away from her, too, and that cut her deeply. As a
result, she found it hard to trust anyone else, even the women
she’d made friends with. Suddenly it seemed like everyone she loved
was showing her their backs. Except for Jason, of course. He wasn’t
going anywhere. He’d planted his flag in her like he was
Christopher Columbus and she was America, and he’d slaughter anyone
that tried to take her from him. But he sure wasn’t a woman and
other than occasional pillow talk after they made love, she didn’t
have anyone she could confide in.

Linus’ wife Karly was the closest thing to a
friend she had now that the position had been left vacant by
Callie, and it was probably fitting that she wasn’t really human,
but a supernaturally perfect mate for Linus. She’d already given
him a son, who promised to be a powerful wolf. So why did it bother
her so much that Callie was getting married tomorrow afternoon?