Challenging Love (Drekinn Book Five) (3 page)

“Hang on to your panties, missy,” Rissa grumbled and pulled a bottle out of the cabinet.

“Straight up,” Pilar grumbled and slammed her hand down on the makeshift bar.

“Well okay then, looks like we are going for the hard stuff today.” Calli smirked. “I wish I could join you.”

Cherri nodded and slid a glass over to Pilar. “Yeah, the big bad Alpha is clipping her wings.”

Calli’s eyes narrowed. “He may have called off our sparring match but I am more than willing to take you on, bitch.”

“Oh boy, made it just in time,” Kiki said from the doorway. He was standing with his small mate, a beauty named Sydney, she was a fairy, and an adorable one at that.

“Uh oh, who pissed off who?” Syd said as she followed Kiki into the room.

“Let’s see. Kade pissed off Calli by telling her that she was a delicate flower who needed to rest and Brooks pissed off Pilar because…” Rissa said.

“He is a fucking man,” Pilar grumbled.

“Yes, of course,” Rissa said. “Death to all arrogant assholes,” she yelled and took a shot of the whisky she had poured Pilar.

Everyone followed suit and soon they were situated around the table with a ton of junk food littering the surface and several full bottles of alcohol, and shot glasses all around except for Calli who was drinking milk.

“Damn this sucks,” Calli grumbled and looked down at her stomach. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifices being made for you.”

“I am sure he does,” Cherri said and patted her friend’s arm.

“No!” Calli yelled. “HER!”

“Of course,” Cherri laughed. “Sorry forgot, she appreciates the sacrifices.”

The women laughed. Since finding out she was pregnant, the two Alphas had an ongoing battle about the sex of the child. Kade insisted it was a boy, while Calli claimed to already know it was a girl. The two had been arguing since the first day.

“I explained this already,” Calli said slowly as if they were stupid. “My uterus would never betray me with a male until first having a female. We all know how this works. If I had a son first, he would be Kade’s and I refuse to have them plotting against me. This way, I will regain the upper hand and all will be right in the world. Besides, I have so much to show a daughter.”

“Yeah, like how to skin a squirrel.” Kiki laughed.

“We only did that once when we were starving,” Cherri argued.

“Yeah and I made sure it wasn’t a shifter before we killed it.” Rissa nodded solemnly.

“I refuse to ask how you did that.” Syd laughed and shook her head.

“Oh, I can tell you…” Rissa began and they all rolled their eyes and yelled.

“NO!”

“Fine,” Rissa grumbled and leaned back.

“So what did Brooks do now?” Calli asked innocently.

Since this whole thing began, Pilar knew the time would come that she would have to tell them part of the truth. She had wanted to do it when everyone was together, however, right now, she didn’t care.

“That asshole has been holding me off for years with the whole, ‘we have to find our third mate’ shit. You know, it wasn’t like I was asking him to fucking cut off an arm or anything, a little slap and a tickle and all would have been well. But no, Mr. I-am-gonna-make-sure-you-are-a-virgin-when-we-all-mate has made my life fucking hell. Still, when push came to shove I thought he would cave and we would be happy together until our third came, and we could explain together how our love would not be contained. NOOOOOOO, we found the stupid scroll and then it was like I was a fucking leper or something. All of a sudden it was ‘no don’t touch me’, ‘someone will see us’, ‘I have to go out of town’, ‘we can’t be seen together’, ‘I am a big ole asshole’. Blah blah blah,” Pilar mimicked and the women tried to cover their smiles.

It was hard though. If you had known Ms. Praton and then seen her transform into Pilar, the young and beautiful woman before them, anyone would have been shocked. Of course, she had explained all of that. Pilar had seen a need, and no one would take her seriously when she appeared so young. As a much older woman the humans had sat up and paid attention when she explained the need for the Drekinn Agency. Everyone had. At the time no one knew what the new world was bringing, but what the shifters saw was the humans once again becoming paranoid about the shifters.

They didn’t want them to take over, which was impossible, they had never had the numbers for that. Nor did any of the normal non-psycho magical community, they only wanted to live in peace. The psycho ones, you know the
Ulfer
,
well that was another story altogether,
Pilar thought.

“Okay then, back up, did you say virgin?” Calli said incredulously. All of them stared at her with their mouths open. Of course they did, who would have thought a dragon at least a hundred years old was a virgin. It wasn’t like Pilar was shocked by the situation either.

Pilar nodded slowly and looked around at her friends. “Exactly, you see what I am saying?”

“Like nothing?” Rissa pressed.

“Nothing,” Pilar said.

“What?” Kiki said and leaned forward. “Surly you have….”

Pilar turned red and then shook her head and looked down at the table. “Uh, yeah, no.”

“Well shit,” Calli said and they were all silent while they each tried to think of the best way to handle the situation.

“Hey, I could help, I actually have experience now.” Kiki smiled at Syd who blushed.

“Uh, thanks?” Pilar laughed and then shook her head. “No, I am not really worried about that portion of it. I mean it can’t be too hard right?”

“Oh, honey,” Cherri said in a sad voice. “If that is what you think, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get some more booze and lay it all out.”

*****

Kade stood in the doorway of the security room where all of his friends were already seated and yelled, “Women!”

Dec looked up and snorted. “Yeah!”

Brooks hid a smile as his Alpha walked into the room and glared at all of them. “You all need to get your women under control, they are feeding the flames with Calli, and God knows she doesn’t need any help there.”

“Yeah,” Phillip laughed. “We have so much control.”

Kade snorted and looked at Brooks who had not said anything. “What do we know?”

Brooks shook his head. “Not much, basically the same as before, other than we are getting more and more shifters and other beings coming in daily seeking sanctuary. What we really need is for someone to make a list of the people coming in. I am starting to get worried about the wards we have on the compound. With so many passing through, it could weaken them. Any of the
Ulfer
could sneak in and totally fuck things up.”

“I thought your warlock wards were stronger?” Dec asked.

“Normally they would be; however, with so many magical people being so close together, they also are like a freaking beacon to anyone who pays attention. My wards can’t hide all of this power.” Brooks sighed.

“So you and Pilar are mates with Calix?” Kade finally said, but when Brooks looked up, he saw the Alpha trying to hold in a smile.

“What?” Brooks said with a frown.

“Nothing, nothing,” Kade said and looked around the room at the men who were now holding their breath too.

“Really? What?” Brooks growled and finally Dec looked at him with a twinkle in his eye and said.

“It’s just, he is a wolf shifter.” Dec laughed.

Brooks frowned again and shrugged. “And?”

“Brooks, you realize that Calix means ‘cat’ in some languages, right?” Kade smiled.

It took a minute before Brooks shook his head. “Assholes.”

“Did his parents hate him or something? I mean, why the fuck would they call a dog a cat?” Simon laughed.

“Shut up,” Brooks said with a smile.

“Fine, but you know we are gonna ask, right?” Nik said slowly. “Maybe he is a cat/dog mix. Like I am a Gryphon, you know.”

“Hey, wouldn’t that be funny if he was a dog, with like cat ears and tail. It would be funny.” Dec laughed.

“Or a cat with dog legs or something.” Peter laughed.

Soon the men were making jokes and Brooks looked ready to beat the shit out of them. It would have been all fine until Thomas walked in the room with a paper in his hand. “We have Calix’s information.”

Everyone froze and Brooks swung his gaze to the Alpha. “What the fuck is he talking about?”

“Uh,” Kade stuttered.

Thomas paused and almost backed out of the room. “Kade wanted…”

“He is part vampire,” Kade yelled and Brooks turned quickly and stared at him open mouthed.

“How do you know that? He is a wolf, a strong one,” Brooks argued.

Declan actually had enough thought to look chagrined and said, “We tested his blood.”

Brooks turned and glared at his friends. “Why would you do that? We already knew that he is our mate.”

“Because we are testing everyone who comes in here. Something weird is going on, we needed to make sure that none of the people coming were a spy,” Kade said slowly.

“MY MATE? A SPY?” Brooks bellowed and the men looked at him with a shocked expression. Brooks never got angry and yelled. He was cool as a cucumber. Always had been, even when having to deal with Calli and the girls before they found their mates, and that said something. Those three were hell on wheels and usually found a way to piss off a saint on a daily basis, but not Brooks, he would calmly deal with whatever mess they got themselves into. But this time, his friends had actually crossed the line, they questioned his mate, and his wounded mate at that. It was fucked up. Did they question Simon, who they believed was ‘Mr. Twisted’ for so long, no, Brooks had been the one to smooth that over and assure everyone he was on the up and up.

“Now we didn’t say he was a spy, we said we were checking. Come on, man,” Kade said and looked at Brooks. “We said we were testing everyone, and that means everyone who crossed onto our land.”

Brooks turned and stared at the Alpha, and the guys in the room held their breath. He was a warlock, and a powerful one too; they could see the evidence as he struggled to keep his powers in check. The man's hand clenched and unclenched and they could see the blue collared spark flying out from his fingertips as he fought for control.

“I know,” Brooks said, finally after getting control of his emotions. “But damn it, he was hurt by those bastards.”

“And they could have seriously faked the whole thing in order to make us think he was harmless,” Kade reasoned.

There was silence as Brooks digested what Kade said, he knew he was being unreasonable, but damn it, it was his mate. And he would be damned if anyone was going to question him. They had waited too long to find him. Decades, Brooks had held back and his patience to finally mate with Pilar was growing thin. She was pissed and rightly so, but Brooks didn’t care, he had waited because it was the way it had to be.

Years ago, a Seer had told him that his mating would be hard. He would have to wait to claim Pilar until they had found their third because if he hadn’t, their third would never be able to truly mate with Pilar. He hadn’t understood it at the time, but if he was a vampire, Brooks did. It made sense. Different from other magical creatures, vampires needed to have unmingled blood to mate. If Pilar and Brooks had joined before, their blood would have changed when Pilar bit him. Of course, Brooks had never sat down long enough to explain that to her, it would have been a test of his patience to be that close to her for a long period of time, so he avoided and waited. Now he could see what a mistake that was. The damn stubborn woman was going to be a PITA to him.

“Let me see the tests,” Brooks said and held out his hand to Thomas who shrugged and gave him the paper.

“Had to be done,” Thomas said with a hard tone. “None of us are willing to tempt the fates when we finally found our mates. That is all we need, to have a spy in our midst when Calli is pregnant, and the others are probably going to be following soon.”

“What?” Simon said with a shocked tone. “No, I am pretty sure Rissa will not get pregnant. She has Billy B. She has no need for an infant.”

Phillip patted his mate’s arm and laughed. “Keep living the dream.”

“Not cool,” Declan huffed.

“Cherri is still in the ‘I am a princess’ phase so we are good.” Nik laughed.

“Hey, someone is getting pregnant because I cannot go through this alone. Calli is driving me crazy. I need backup, someone had better be throwing those condoms away,” Kade bellowed.

“Alpha, I love you like a brother and would take a bullet for you, but a baby. Nah, that seems to go a little too far,” Simon said.

If only they knew who was listening in, they would have thought twice before saying a word.

Chapter
Three

Calix tried to open his eyes yet again. He could hear the three women in the room laughing and arguing, he wanted to know where the fuck he was. None of this made sense, he had escaped.

“Viv, you know as well as I do that Cherri is going to be a pain in my ass about this. I am not waiting for years to get me a grandbaby,” one of the women said.

“Me either, Rissa wants me to dress up the damn dog and treat him like a grandchild. I mean really, it is just sad,” another woman said.

“Well, if we do this, and they find out, I swear I will kill you both,” a woman who had to be sitting next to him said.

Calix tried to move his hands but nothing. Damn it, he was going to have to lie there forever listening to these crazy women. So far, he had heard about menstrual cycles, condoms, and even more traumatizing old people sex with whips. Would this hell ever end?

“Hey, he moved,” one of the women said.

“Yeah, right,” another one said. “You have been drinking too much.”

“No seriously, his eyelids fluttered,” the first one said.

Calix forced himself to try again, but he didn’t think he was moving anything. Then someone must have lifted his eyelid because the bright light gave him a piercing pain in his head.

“See, his eyeball is moving,” one of them said.

Finally, Calix growled, the pain was too much. “Let me go you crazy bitch.”