ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories) (353 page)

              “I thought that wolves were what all dogs evolved from?” Sam said. The weed was wearing off and she could feel her wits returning to her.

              “Oh yes,” Dave said. “Without wolves there wouldn't be any dogs at all. Wolves were the vector from which our canine friends came.”

              Bob shifted on the couch beside Sam, sitting up a little straighter, and in the process pulling away from her just enough so they weren't touching anymore. Sam did the same, straightening on the couch so that her body no longer was the little spoon for Bob's big spoon.

              “Anyone need a beer?” Bob asked as he got up. “I'm headed to the bathroom and I'm going to swing by the fridge on my way back. Do either of you need anything?”
              “Naw, I'm good,” Dave said. “Thanks though.”

              Sam shook her head that she didn't need a beverage and Bob left the room.

              “So, you two got to know each other a little bit better?” Dave asked with a raised eyebrow.

              “You aren't mad are you?” Sam said. “I mean, we didn't mean for it to happen, and it didn't mean anything. Well, it did, but not like that. Not like you might think. It was special.”

              Dave gave her a big grin and for a moment Sam worried that he might be about to mock her, but then the smile changed to one of understanding.

              “It's fine,” Dave said. “Really, it is! And I know exactly what you mean, that you didn't plan it and it didn't mean anything while still meaning something. That's how life goes sometimes, things happen and they can mean something, maybe even a great deal, without meaning anything at all.”

              Sam thought about what Dave said and wondered how many beers he'd had while he was out of the room. Or maybe he really meant what he said and he didn't care at all that her and Bob had fooled around. The two boys were very close, some people even thought they were actual brothers, so maybe something like this wouldn't come between all of them. Sam thought that maybe it was a lot to ask for from college aged boys to have the kind of understanding that went beyond realizing their own personal needs to knowing that other peoples' feelings were just as valid as their own, and that other people could to what they wanted without justification.

              Sam wanted to be sure though.

              “So you don't care?” Sam asked again.

              “No,” Dave said firmly. “In fact I'm not really sure what you are referring to since I wasn't in the room to be privy to what happened, and you haven't exactly told me, and I didn't jump to any conclusions. So, no I don't have a secret problem. And even if I knew everything, I still wouldn't have a problem with what happened because it's not a big deal.”

              Sam opened her mouth to ask another question but Dave cut her off.

              “And no, this doesn't change anything between us,” Dave said. “If we decided to get to know each other better in the future what just happened won't even for a moment enter my mind. It's completely all right. There is nothing to be worried about, whatsoever.”

              Sam smiled at Dave and Dave returned the grin. Without saying anything else they turned their attention to the screen. The pack of wolves was being observed closely by a woman who would periodically put the camera on a tripod and take video of herself with the pack of wolves frolicking in the background. The wolves roamed the hills of some far off state, their territory, the woman on the screen explained, came to the foothills of a mountain range and then ended. The mountains proved too jagged for the paws of the wolves to get a solid footing, so the goats that were the only food source that far above the timber line made easy escapes, scaling rock walls that seemed almost vertical at first glance.

              The wolves range covered from the base of the mountains where the foothills were, to the sloping, rolling hills that eventually petered out into farmers’ fields. A farmer’s face came on screen, an old man speaking adamantly about how the wolves all needed to be wiped out, that they were a scourge on his pets and on the few cows that he had been able to keep throughout the year. Footage flashed to the woman that had been following the wolves and had explained their territory becoming angry and telling the farmer that he was wrong to shoot the wolves, and that the pack had been around long before civilization had come. The farmer's face filled the screen.

              “And those wolves ain’t the only thing around here with fangs. Somethin' been coming round the last few years with big claws, longer and shaped different than a bear. It leaves tracks that look half wolf half human!”

              The woman laughed at the farmer and he began to speak angrily, waiving his hands as he tried to emphasize that he wasn't lying, that he was telling the truth and that the woman was wrong and didn't know what she was talking about. The woman was a new comer to the area, the old farmer said, and she didn't know a God damn thing about nature, the mountains, or the pains where his fields were except by reading books. Books had never helped the farmer, he pointed out, yet he knew so much more than the young woman.

              “I've forgotten more than you'll ever know!” he said before he turned and stormed off camera, leaving the woman on the screen looking sheepish that she had blown the interview.

              “Whoa,” Bob said.

              Sam and Dave both jumped at the sound of Bob's voice. He'd come back from getting a beer to find them so entranced in what the old farmer was saying that neither of them noticed him. Bob let out a nervous laugh.

              “I wonder what could be doing that,” Sam said.

              “Doing what?” Dave said, suddenly indignant.

              “Well, that farmer said that something that was leaving some kind of hybrid foot prints and had long claws that were bigger and different from a bear,” Sam said. “It just makes you think if some of the old fairy tales are true.”

              Dave and Bob looked at each other uncomfortably for a second.

              “What?” Sam said. “Both of you think I'm stupid, don't you?”
              The boys looked at each other again, and then looked at her.

              “There is something we've been meaning to tell you,” Bob said.

              “Yea,” Dave chimed in. “We've just been looking for the right time to let you in on the secret.”

              “What secret,” Sam asked. “You guys have been keeping secrets from me?”

              During her friendship with the boys she had told them almost everything that there was to know about her. When she thought about something she hadn't told them she had a hard time thinking of something. Maybe it ridiculous to expect everyone else to keep the same level of openness that she did in her relationships with friends, but it made Sam feel a little bit lonely to know that both of the boys had left her in the dark about something. Whatever it was it was obviously important to both of them, she could tell by the pensive looks on their faces.

              “Not all secrets are fun,” Dave said. “You know how the world is, they don't understand anything. You know how you were afraid that I wouldn't understand of what happened between you and Bob? Well we are both double afraid, no, even more than that.”
              “We are terrified,” Bob said. “That when you know our secret that you won't talk to us anymore. Some secrets are a burden, great secrets to be bore by the knowers, never to be shared with anyone on the outside of knowing who might use the knowledge against us.”

              Bob stopped talking suddenly as if he'd said too much, gone too far. Sam looked back and forth from boy to boy.

              “What haven't you told me?” Sam asked. “Are you two brothers?”

              Sam's mind spun with the possibility that the Bradley “brothers” might actually be brothers.

              The boys looked at each other again.

              “Well, not exactly anything like that,” Bob said. “It's hard to understand but we'll show you now and I guess see how you handle it. If we tell you, you won't believe us. You'll think that we're drunk or high or playing some kind of trick on you. Hell, when we show you, you might decide that you are going crazy. That has happened to both of us before when we've told people the secret. We never really know how people are going to take it. It's one of those things that people either take really well, or they take really poorly, and most people take it pretty damn poorly.

              “Well, not everyone,” Dave said. “And I think that Sam here will take it well. I think she likes both of us for who we are, you know that. Well, at least I like to think that she likes us for us, and not the image in her head that she has of us. That really seems to be what the problem always is, that people come to understand what they thought was actually wrong. They feel tricked and cheated somehow, which is the opposite of how they should feel since they just found out the truth but you know how people can be sometimes, emotions don't have to make sense, like we talked about.”

              Suddenly the room filled with light. Headlights had pulled into the front drive. Sam panicked jumped up to run and smashed right into Dave. Instead of cracking her head against the back of his turned head it felt like she'd run face first into some kind of bristle pad used for cleaning. She wondered how his hair smelled so much like horse hair, with some kind of musk that made her think of the wild.

              “We've got to get out of here!” Bob said. “It's my parents!”
              Dave picked everything up in a hurry, which wasn't hard because they hadn't really been partying. On the way out Bob was sure to grab the joint and eat it to be sure that there was no left over evidence that could be brought up at some future juncture to ground him.

              “Fuck,” Bob said. “We should have just partied in my dorm room, at least then we wouldn't have to run.”

              “We can't smoke weed in your dorm and you don't have a television,” Dave said. “Now quit gabbing we've got to go.

              So they all ran, ducking out the back door that led to the porch, heading down the back steps and sprinting across the yard into the blackness of night. Sam ran with all her might, not wanting Bob's parents to see her and call the head cheer coach. Her coach would lose her mind if she found out she was smoking weed and giving blow jobs. The cheer squad meant so much to Sam she wondered if she would be able to stay friends with the boys if she lost the squad because of them, and then realized that her friendship with the “brothers” was far more important than any lose allegiance she had with the squad. Besides, she thought, I'm not going to get caught because we are going to run as fast as we can.

              So they ran, and as they weaved through yards down the block Sam watched in wonder as Dave and Bob were able to vault themselves over tall fences in a single bound, swing through trees with ease, and sprint faster than she had ever seen any human move in her life.

              “How do you two do it?” Sam asked, panting. “How can you do all the super human things you just did.”

              The boys had slowed down at the end of the block and looked back at the house to see what was happening. The alarm had been sounded when they left and Bob's father was now running around the house checking to see if anyone had broken out a window in order to gain access to the premises.

              “Do you think they'll be mad?” Sam asked?
              “Probably,” Bob said. “But not at us. Our house has been broken into before without anything being taken, so it won't seem completely out of the question that maybe that could have happened again.”

              Sam wondered how Bob seemed so all right with everything. It was like he didn't even care that his parents had come home. Aside from the initial astonishment he hadn't shown much emotion at all.

              “Well,” Bob said. “If we wait for a little bit they will eventually settle down and go back to sleep. They will probably think that it's just a false alarm. We can walk in when they are asleep and say we just got there.”

              “But what about our cars in the drive?” Sam asked.

              “They'll think we got picked up by friends to go out drinking or something,” Dave said. “Bob's parents never ask any questions.”

              Slowly the three walked back to the house and by the time they got there the lights were out in every room save for Bob's parents master bedroom. They waited around the driveway until about fifteen minutes after that light went out and then let themselves in the front. Dave and Bob looked around for a note of any kind that might bare a reprimand from the parents if they had suspicion that the two boys had been doing anything sordid but found nothing of the sort.

              “Well,” Sam said quietly. “What should we do now?”

              Bob looked tired and Dave didn't seem to have any ideas of what they could do now. They all agreed that they would see how the next week of school went and then make plans next weekend based off of how much homework each had and if Sam would be busy with cheer leading or not. With that Sam headed home.

              Sam tossed and turned in her sleep that night. She dreamed that she stood on a great mountain range watching a herd of goats move across the crags and scaled the sheer walls seemingly effortlessly. She wondered what the goats were thinking, and then wondered at her own thought. Why would she think that goats would have anything on their minds other than running around the mountains and bleating? At the base of the mountains she saw a pack of wolves circling in on itself like a knot and wondered what they planned on doing. It seemed like the pack thought they could get to the goats if they wanted to, but the herd of goats didn't appear like they were afraid of the wolves. Sam remembered from somewhere far away that someone had just told her much about wolves that day, but couldn't really seem to place exactly where she had got the thought. Sam realized she was dreaming and that's why she was having such a hard time organizing her thoughts. It wasn't like it had been when she was high earlier in the day though. There seemed to be a kind of clarity in her dream that was crystal sharp, but of course there were parts of her mind that seemed off limits, as if her memory could only have so much drawn from it while she was in a dream state.