The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats (7 page)

James, a very handsome man who looked about
in his mid-40s, had the boys’ dark hair but had brown eyes. Alek
looked about her age, but she was a bad judge and not even sure how
old the twins are. Alek had light brown hair and different facial
features. She wondered if he looked like their mother. And she also
wondered where their mother was.

All police officers, James peppered her with
questions about her travels, never sounding like he was prying and
she found herself telling him, and the boys by extension, that
she’d been on the road for a week and was looking for a place to
settle when she’d gotten sidetracked by her accident. She felt
compelled to say, for all their sakes, that she wasn’t staying.

James smiled and patted her hand, “I’m sure
that you’ll be able to find something at the car lot tomorrow.
Gordy’s pride, he’ll take good care of you.”

She thought he meant it to be reassuring, but
he passed a look to Eryx and Ethan that said something more was
going on there. Once again she felt a little left out.

People started to drift into the house. She
was introduced to their uncles John, Aaron, and Grant, and Aaron’s
three sons, John’s son and daughter, and Grant’s two sons. The
girl, who was oldest at about 14, gave a superior once-over to her
and ignored her, walking away to sit in a chair by the window. How
odd. The boys, who except for one that looked pre-teen were all
around elementary school age, crowded around her and asked her a
hundred questions about being a wolf. She caught smiling, happy
looks from Ethan and Eryx.

Two female lions walked into the house and
all the boys went very quiet and then scattered. They looked just
like Farrah. Tall, leggy, blonde, and pissed off. James introduced
Callie as a friend of the family, and the two women didn’t just
look past her, they looked through her as if she didn’t exist. She
got a chill just being in their presence.

“Callie, want to make good on your offer to
help?” Eryx pulled her away from the unfriendly females by her
elbow. “You don’t have to take any bullshit from them.” He said in
a low voice as he steered her back into the kitchen.

“I’m not looking to make any enemies, Eryx,
and besides, I’ll be on my way soon enough. Getting into a fight
with two girls that could break my neck with a hard thought isn’t
exactly my idea of a good time.” She opened the bag of chips he had
gestured to and emptied it into the bowl.

“Why are you so determined to leave?” He
asked her suddenly.

“You already know why.” She looked up at him
and there was a desperation to his eyes that made her heart
clench.

“No, I don’t. You know that Ethan and I care
about you and we want to make you happy, but you don’t seem to want
to even get to know us. Why did you come out here tonight?”

“Because I didn’t want to be rude.”

He snorted and looked away, his jaw working.
“I didn't think it would be a chore to get to know us.”

Ouch.
“What do you want from me? I’m a
wolf, you’re lions. It was a fluke that I got stranded, and as soon
as I can get a car I’m out of here. I never promised anything.”

Somehow when he turned away without a word,
it felt worse than if he’d yelled at her. She took the bowl of
chips and put it in the family room on the coffee table. She was
planning to sit in the corner somewhere out of the way and
inconspicuous, but James patted an open spot on the couch. “Sit,
Callie. You like UFC, right?”

She didn't know. She never watched it. She
faked a smile and said, “You bet. Who doesn’t like to watch men
beat the hell out of each other for money?”

He laughed, all the men did, and to her
surprise, the male children all sat down in front of the couch on
the floor, as close to her as possible. How weird. “Are you
married, James?” She took a handful of popcorn from the bowl he
offered to her.

“No,” He sighed in a wistful way, “our kind
don’t live like wolves, Callie. I think you’d be very surprised by
how things are here, if you took the time to ask questions.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he
stopped her, “You want to leave because you’re on a mission of some
sort. I get that. But it’s not right to walk away from something
that might be great, just because you’re scared.” He took a long
drink from a beer and turned his attention to one of his brothers
sitting next to him. She stared at the back of his head and then
finished eating the popcorn in her hand as she mulled over what he
said.

When Eryx and Ethan came into the family
room, James got up and moved to another couch and she was suddenly
in the middle of a twin sandwich. Or was that manwich? Both of her
sides touched one of each of theirs, and her body warmed
considerably at the close proximity. Ethan put a plate in her lap
that contained a large piece of lasagna and she thanked him and he
gave her only the smallest of smiles, just a curve of the corner of
his lush mouth, and then he tucked into his own plate of
lasagna.

It was possibly the best lasagna she’d ever
had. The meat sauce was just the right combination of spicy and
sweet, and the melted cheese was gooey and plentiful. Except it
tasted like cardboard to her. She could feel how upset the twins
were. The hairs on the back of her neck had been at attention since
they sat down. Her fingers itched to hold their hands, her mouth
watered at the thought of kissing them, and her body refused to
ignore the heat and sex that wafted from them. They wanted her.
There was no mistaking that.

She put the half finished lasagna on the
coffee table and focused her attention on the two men on the screen
beating on each other and wondered if that is what would happen to
Ethan and Eryx if she decided to stay.

She thought, "I could just sleep with them
tonight. I could do the whole casual sex thing with the gods on
either side of me. I could pull them back into the bedroom and take
out all my aggression on their gorgeous bodies until I was just a
boneless mass of goo. Take off tomorrow anyway."
Sure,
sure.

No, she couldn’t. She didn’t do casual sex.
The fact that she’d gone for almost a year without having sex was a
testament to that. There were a lot of females that just had to
have sex on the full moon. Callie wasn’t one of them. Or, rather,
she forced herself not to give into the baser urges and went with
hunting. It was almost like sex, except without the hot bodies and
orgasms and screams of pleasure. Oh. It’s not like sex at all.

She needed to clamp her knees firmly
together. If she kissed them, she’d come undone, that much she
knew. Because it would turn into more and she was feeling needy and
twitchy enough as it was. She sat for about thirty minutes of the
two hour fighting tournament and couldn’t have said what happened
during that time if there was a gun to her head. She got up quietly
and went into the kitchen to get a drink.

A door was open and she heard kids laughing
and running around. She had wondered where the little ones had
gone. Except for the girl. She was sitting with the other two
females in the front room looking superior and bored to tears. She
wondered why they’d even come.

Callie walked down into the basement. The
boys were chasing each other and acting very much like rowdy little
boys. As she watched them playing chase, she wondered why the
females were so cold and distant. It wasn’t a bare minute that she
was down there when the atmosphere shifted and the three females
came downstairs and stood looking disapprovingly at the boys
playing, and her. She decided to be perfectly quiet and ignore
them. She had a good rule of thumb that if she didn’t open her
mouth and give someone a reason to pound her, then they probably
wouldn’t. She was hoping that would hold true with female
lions.

One of the little boys, a sweetheart with
sunshine bright blonde hair, tripped and fell, and he sat up with a
surprised gasp as his cousins gathered around him. He started to
cry, holding his arm. The other little boys all tried to comfort
him, but they were not much older than him, and he couldn’t have
been more than 7. She looked at the females and they watched the
whole thing dispassionately.

“Aren’t you going to help him?” Callie
demanded.

The one she’d been introduced to as Layla
sniffed. “Why would we help that cub?”

“Because he’s a child and he’s hurt. Are
either of you his mother?”

The other one, Tanya, looked at the boy like
she’d never seen him before. “I have no idea.”

In confusion, her mouth fell open. “How can
you not know if you’re his mother?”

“Because we don’t, dog.” Layla said with an
annoyed tone.

Callie sucked her teeth at the dig. She
didn’t particularly care for bitch cats calling her a dog. It was
derogatory. A wolf and a dog were no more alike than a housecat and
a puma.

She moved over to the throng of little boys
and the injured one looked up at her with big blue tear filled eyes
and the other boys separated for her as she knelt next to him.
“Hey, cutie. Did you fall?” She took his hand in hers as gently as
she could.

His lower lip quivered, “I got cut.”

On his forearm, through a rip in the fabric
of his shirt, was a narrow gash about an inch long. “Aw, it’s not
so bad.” She stood up and held her hand out to him. “Come on,
kiddo; let me clean it up for you.”

He took her hand with his uninjured one and
she pulled him gently to his feet and they moved like a little
throng with the other boys until they reached the stairwell where
the females were blocking their way.

“Excuse us.” Callie said, beating down the
fear licking at the back of her throat. She would not be afraid in
front of the kids. She could do this.

“All you’re going to accomplish, dog, is to
help make that boy like all the other males around here.
Whimpering, pathetic things that they are.” Tanya looked derisively
at the injured boy holding her hand and he shrank against her.

“There is nothing wrong with helping a child
that is hurt. What kind of people are you, anyway?” Callie growled,
her desire to protect the children from these uncaring women came
roaring to the surface. With amazing clarity, she realized that her
earlier thinking was true: she found she could be strong if she had
something to fight for. She could be strong and get the kids away
from the females. She would stand up to the females to protect the
boys. Even as she didn’t understand why they were afraid of the
females, why the females were so cold and callous towards them, she
instinctively drew herself up trying to stretch her 5’4” frame to
match their close to six foot ones.

“We could just end you, dog.” Layla sneered
down her nose at Callie.

Callie let a trickling growl seep from her
lips and let go of the little boy’s hand and folded her arms.
“Okay.”

All three females blinked at her in surprise.
Layla narrowed her icy eyes at her. “Okay, what?”

Callie drew on her inner bitch, drug her out
from hiding by the back of her neck so she sounded as dispassionate
as she wanted to appear. “I’ll take the beating now. But later,
when I’m healed and you’re asleep in your beds tonight, I’m going
to come into your rooms and bury something very sharp in the middle
of your bodies. So do your worst. But you won’t stop me from
helping this child.”

They glared at her for a very long minute.
Callie was close to losing it, their gazes were so intense, and
then they parted like water and left the stairs clear.

“Come on, boys. It’s awfully frosty down
here.” She picked up the injured boy’s hand and took the hand of
the boy next to her, and they walked up the stairs as a group.
Determined not to show her nerves by letting her knees go weak, she
walked with purpose to the bedroom and picked up the child and put
him on the marble counter in the bathroom.

The other boys gathered inside the bathroom
and watched her while she gently pulled the shirtsleeve up to
expose the cut and then used the medical kit under the counter to
tend it. He winced before she even put the antiseptic on it and she
said, “Watch this.” She kissed the tip of her finger and ran a slow
circle around the cut, not touching it, and then said, “Okay, let’s
count to three and my kiss will take the pain away, okay?”

He nodded, eyes bright and wide, and all the
boys counted to three with her and when she swiped the antiseptic
across the mark, he didn’t make a sound. With a band-aid in place,
she cleaned up and put him down on the floor. He said his name was
Brian.

The other boys followed with their names:
Kevin, Owen, Henry, Nathan, and Ben. Henry was the oldest at 12.
Brian was 6. She asked Henry, “Where are your mothers?”

He looked down. “Our birth mothers don’t care
for us.”

“What? I’m sure they do.”

He looked up with glittering eyes. “No,
Callie, only our fathers care for us, and our cousins and uncles.
Only the males raise the children. The females...they don’t care
about us at all.”

She was sure she looked shocked because he
looked embarrassed. How sad! They followed her out of the bathroom
when she couldn’t think of anything to say and she climbed up on
the bed and patted the comforter. “Up.”

They looked at each other in awe and then
scrambled up as she put some pillows against the headboard and
reclined back. Brian secured her right side and Nathan her left and
she put her arms over their small shoulders and the other four boys
crowded around them. They asked for a story, and her mind went
suddenly blank. Her mother used to tell her stories when she was
little, and she and Cadence had spent hours making up stories to
amuse themselves when they were young, but gun to her head, she
couldn’t think of anything that little boys would like. And then
she had an idea.

“Would you like to know one of our legends of
the first werewolf?”