by Tia Fielding
They’d had dinner and then Mikael had gone to his office to check his emails like he did every night. Suddenly he rushed back into the room, his eyes shining with excitement.
“The girls are coming back next week!” he exclaimed, and everyone who knew what he was talking about whooped and then it was smiles all around until Mikael, Maxim, Noah, Dallas, and Anton realized Derek, Cal, and Kit had very little clue about what was going on.
“Sorry guys!” Mikael chuckled, then plopped down next to Maxim on the couch, still smiling widely. “Lark and Shani are coming back. They’ve been away for most of the year in Africa, visiting Shani’s family.”
“Oh, right,” Derek said, nodding. “Lark is like a sister to you, right, and Shani is her mate?”
“Yes, and we’ve all missed them a lot,” Noah said, beaming with happiness.
Derek smiled back at him. “Well I’m glad they’re heading back. What kind of shifters are they?”
“Lark is a lynx and Shani is a cheetah,” Anton piped up. “They’re great, you’ll like them.”
“It’ll be nice to have them home. It’s been a bit… testosterone-y here lately,” Mikael mused, grinning.
“It will be nice to have females around for the wolf pups, too. Losing their mother like they did… The little girls need women around,” Maxim said, sounding less grunty as usual.
“Yeah. We all miss Zoya. Always will. Losing her was such a blow for everyone, but the pack especially,” Noah murmured, sighing as he leaned to Dallas’s side.
They all startled when the front door banged open and Nico ran in.
“Cal!” he called out, holding a phone in his hand.
Cal got up and off the couch, following the boy to the porch.
Everyone else sat there, waiting to see what the call was about.
Cal
“It’s my mom,” Nico said and thrust the phone at him.
Frowning, Cal took it and went to lean on the wall by the door.
“This is Ewan Calder.”
“Hi, Cal, right?”
“Yes.” Cal smiled, he liked her already.
“I’m Anna, Nico’s mom. You know all about me by now. Anyway, so here’s the thing, I’m the person who has been looking into the situation you and Derek have,” she said, in a calm, quiet voice which told him that she didn’t want to be overheard.
“Uh-huh.” The mate thing. He hadn’t known she was the inside person, but with how little people trusted those working for the Council, it made sense Anna was their contact for everything.
“I may have a solution, but I need to do some traveling to check it out.”
“Okay…?”
She lowered her voice even more. “They will not let you go as easily as you’d like. I’m sick and tired of their cloak and dagger shit and the horrible things they’ve made everyone do. Secrecy is needed, I admit that, but the way they’ve been doing it for centuries is….”
“Barbaric,” Cal said, because it was the only way to describe it.
“Yes. So I’m going to leave. I’ll have your release papers with me if I can get them. You know they’re particular about documents. I don’t know how long it will take me to get there, but I’m coming, Cal.”
“What’s the catch?”
“For me, it means leaving Italy for good. They’ll see this as betrayal, especially with who my father is. For you… well, they’ll try to call you back. Stall them somehow. I don’t care how, just don’t move from Finland before I get there.”
“Okay, I can do that.” He hoped. “Stay safe.”
“I need to talk to Derek, is he there?”
“Yeah, give me a moment.” He called out his mate’s name quietly, enough of the shifters to hear him and tell Derek he was wanted. “Anna wants to talk to you,” he explained as he gave Derek the phone.
“Hi, yeah,” Derek said and sat down on the ratty couch taking most of the porch space. Cal sat next to him so he could hear what she was saying, too.
Anna explained the situation to Derek and then got to what she needed from him especially.
“What was your original name?”
“Uh, Derek Martin Bower, why?”
“It took me a while to figure out another approach, but I’m tracking your family tree. Where did you get Lamont?” Anna asked.
“It’s my grandma’s maiden name. My mom said her family was French Canadian, but I don’t think I ever met anyone of her family. She said they were estranged.”
“Okay, because here’s a thing, it’s probably not French, let alone Canadian. It’s probably Scottish,” Anna sounded careful. “I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to check. Cal will fill you in. I got to go!” The call disconnected, and Derek sat there with Nico’s phone, looking confused.
“Why would Mom have lied?”
“I don’t know, but she’s right. Lamont is a Scottish surname,” Cal said, feeling a bit stunned. “I don’t get it? How did I never think of it before?”
“Because last names don’t matter much to shifters?” Derek raised a brow thoughtfully.
“That could be it.”
“But what does it matter if my grandma was Scottish? I’m still human? Not even half-human like Mikael, but fully human?”
“I have no clue, but I hope she gets here soon to explain it all, whatever it is.” Cal sighed, and then relayed him the information Anna had given him.
Nico wandered back out of the house and Derek gave him the phone back. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“Well it was her burner phone I think, she has one for emergencies. She rarely calls me from it and I bet that if I try to call it right now, it won’t connect.” Nico shrugged. “She’s crafty.”
“Yeah, and she’s coming here,” Cal told him.
“I guessed as much. She said she’d be traveling, and knowing my grandpa and the rest of those old guys, if she leaves, she’s not welcome back.” Then he grinned. “At least she’ll finally get rid of her horrible boyfriend in the process.”
“Oh, she had one of those?” Derek smiled slightly. Then they just sat there, listening to Nico’s explanation of the situation that had resulted into him coming to live in Finland with his dad.
The waiting became something that put them all on the edge. Every day, from early morning to the moment they fell asleep were spent with tension grinding them down, little by little.
They went through the motions each day, but every time Cal checked his email and there was nothing there or one of them jumped at a text or call, it all got worse and worse.
Several days after Anna’s call, they’d been summoned to Mikael’s house for a late lunch. Cal thought it was Kit’s doing. Dallas had been experimenting with something fancy, potentially for Christmas, and there was plenty to go around.
It was some sort of a bone marrow dish with extra steak and all sorts of other things, and it was delicious.
“I may have binged MasterChef Australia again,” Dallas confessed, flushing a little when he got the praise from everyone around the table.
“Well you can use us as guinea pigs anytime, honey,” Noah said and kissed his mate’s cheek.
Derek and Kit wanted to help with cleaning up and Noah, Dallas, Maxim, and Cal were pushed into the living room so they were out of the way while Mikael and Anton helped Cal’s family.
They chatted for a while, until Cal needed the bathroom and he excused himself.
He washed his hands after and decided that he’d made a mistake wearing one of Derek’s thick sweaters. The house was warm and while the nights were getting chilly, it still didn’t warrant anything like Derek’s Henley for sure.
Cal walked through the house and out to the porch to cool off.
As he looked over the yard and toward the lake, he wondered how much longer his happiness would last. He hadn’t felt happiness like this before. Sure, he’d dated in his early twenties when he’d yet to be made an enforcer. It was just… he loved Derek. Derek was his mate, no matter what someone might sa
y.
He was done killing and almost being killed to keep shifters safe. He’d done his part and then some, he’d done horrible things in the name of the Council because they’d taken him in when his family hadn’t wanted him anymore.
Fuck the Council, like Kit would say. Fuck them.
He’d heard something from the kitchen and then Noah talking a bit louder, but nothing seemed alarming, so he stayed outside for a while longer.
Something about the calm quiet of these woods was making him feel like he’d never really felt before: he was home. Of course, he suspected that with Derek by his side, he’d always feel that way.
There would come a time when Kit would have to make decisions on what to do about his future. Maybe he’d find a mate of his own. Hell, the life where all the teens and kids of this little community were growing up was so much different from the one Cal and Derek had grown up in.
Maybe, eventually, when the oldest shifters of the Council would bow out and be replaced, some more progressive people would step in and change things. Find new ways.
Maybe someday, nobody else had to watch children be murdered in the name of—Cal opened the door to go back inside.
When he turned to make sure the door closed, he noticed that the large cabinet in the front hall of the house was open.
Medical supplies of all sorts, both human and animal, were neatly stored. There were all sorts of meds there, including… morphine.
He looked at the vials and for a few horrible moments, his brain went there.
If he had to go back, then morphine would help him deal with it. It would numb him enough that he could keep his cat at bay. If he reached out and took a couple of vials and some syringes, nobody would notice, right? Just in case? It would help so much and—
“You don’t need it.”
When Cal jerked with surprise, he saw Dallas standing there, his pale eyes kind as ever.
“What?”
“You don’t need it, Cal. You have everything you could hope for and somehow things will work out. You don’t need morphine to deal with life anymore.” Dallas stepped next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
When he first got there, he’d been intimidated by Dallas because of the size of his cat. The man was as gentle as they came, but Cal’s cat was about the size of half of Dallas’s cat’s head.
Cal forced his body to relax, drawing warmth from Dallas’s kindness.
“Why is it open?” he nodded at the cabinet.
“Kitchen mishap, Mikael dropped a glass and Kit cut his finger.” Before Cal could freak out and storm into the kitchen, Dallas grabbed his arm. “It’s okay, just a nick. We’re just super careful about that stuff, because infections are a pain.”
Cal glared at Dallas until the tiglon let go of him. Then he walked calmly into the kitchen.
Noah was cleaning up after tending to Kit’s hand.
“Let me see,” Cal said, his tone snapping more than he wanted it to.
“It’s fine, Dad.” Kit’s tone was hundred percent sullen teenager who thought their parent was being over the top protective, and somehow that made Cal feel instantly better.
His perfect, too-old-for-his-years son was being a proper teenager. Cal swallowed hard and caught Derek’s small smile from behind Kit.
Kit showed his hand with two band aids on different fingers. Because he could, Cal did what he’d done to every scrape and cut Kit had gotten as a kid, and blew gently on the fingers.
“Dad….”
Smirking at his son, Cal let go. “Okay, okay… go on then.”
Since the kitchen stuff was done, Kit escaped with Anton to Anton’s room. The adults were left downstairs and they watched TV for a while, until Derek yawned and rubbed his eye.
“Should we get moving?” Cal asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Cal went and collected Kit from upstairs, and they walked as a family through the now dark woods. They all had cell phones with flashlights, and they used them to stay on the path.
Kit, who was walking ahead of them, turned off his light.
“Don’t trip,” Derek told him.
“I won’t!”
“Watch him trip in three, two….” Cal murmured.
“I heard that!” Kit laughed. After a few seconds, he yelped and just managed to balance himself again.
Derek and Cal started to laugh, and grumbling, Kit turned his light back on.
The next day, Kit and the boys had gone riding the horses again.
Cal and Derek had taken a nap, and were lazily making out on their bed post-nap.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while,” Derek said when they went from kissing into cuddling mode again.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I… it’s something that I think we need still.” Something about Derek’s expression was troubled.
“All right. What is it?” Cal had no idea what this was about, but he’d go with anything Derek wanted.
“Could you shift for me? Just… it’s something that requires you to shift.”
“Okay. Right now?”
“Yes, please.”
Cal got off the bed and stripped out of his clothes, then called the cat forth and jumped back onto the bed.
The feeling was completely different now. He was an equal to his cat, not trapped, not holding onto the reins with shaking fingers. His cat appreciated him as much as he did the cat. They were one again, as much as they could be.
Derek didn’t sit up, but instead, patted the pillow next to his.
“Come here, sweetheart.” His tone belied his nerves, and the cat didn’t quite know how to feel about it.
It walked up to the pillow and sat down. Derek reached a hand to scratch it under the chin and it let out a long, happy purr.
Even if Cal hadn’t known it in his bones, his cat’s behavior proved that they were mates. The contentment the cat felt at Derek’s touch couldn’t be denied. The only other person it had liked to be close to before had been Kit, and even then, it had been more of a parent wanting to keep a child safe kind of a situation.
With Derek, the cat let go of everything but the feeling of having its mate so close.
“So here’s what I want to do,” Derek said quietly as he withdrew his hand. “Stay still. There’s something you need to see.”
Cal wondered what he could be talking about, and then cat felt curious to him.
Derek reached a hand up and—pulled off his eye patch.
Cal felt it in his soul, and the cat tried to back away while unable to take its eyes off Derek’s face. Cal did everything he could to keep the cat still, to stop it from escaping.
“No, stay,” Derek said firmly, even though his voice shook just a little. “Don’t go. Come back here.” He patted the pillow.
The cat felt the itch to flee under its skin. The proof of its mate, what it had done to its mate, was right there.
Mate was forcing it to look, to take responsibility, and it didn’t want to!
“Come here.” Mate patted the pillow again, and stared at the cat with his one eye, like he always would. Except this time, there was no cover over the one the cat had taken.
The man inside the cat nudged it forward, made it take those steps needed to get to the pillow. The cat felt the way its body jerkily moved until it was right next to Mate’s head.
A sorrowful sound escaped it then, but it couldn’t look away.
“It’s okay. I want you to look and to get used to it.”
With the hair of its back rising a little, the cat took the plunge. It moved even closer as Mate settled down on the pillows.
“There’s nothing in the socket. My reflexes were too slow to close my eyes, so my lid is intact as you can see. But they couldn’t save the eye.” Mate spoke as the cat peered ever so close, sniffing the area carefully. This was how the cat would know, how it would learn. “I’ve been wondering if I should get one of those prosthetic eyes. Maybe I’ll figure it out one day, when I
’m ready. But right now, the patch is fine.”
The cat sniffed the air and the closed eyelid, and Mate chuckled. “You’re tickling me with your whiskers.” To its surprise, the cat felt amusement and happiness from the man inside. Ever so gently, the cat headbutted Mate’s cheek.
“I forgave you a long time ago. You need to forgive yourself.” Mate kissed the cat’s forehead.
The cat let go of the shift and let the man come back. For this, they needed human words.
Cal moved to lie against Derek’s chest and kissed his jaw.
“Thank you. For making us see that. The cat… it needed it even more than I did.”
“I thought so. It’s… I know it doesn’t have human emotions, those are your job. But it also hadn’t seen and… I’m kind of tired to be hiding it.” Derek smiled.
Until now, he’d always worn the eye patch, even during the nights most of the time. Cal had averted his gaze each and every time out of… he wasn’t sure what—the cat’s shame, probably.
“So don’t. When it’s just us and Kit, don’t hide. You can whenever you want, of course, but not for our sake.” Cal lifted his head and looked at Derek’s face, committing every inch of it into his memory.
“This is what I wanted you to do,” Derek whispered. “If you have to leave, I wanted you to have seen everything.”
Cal wanted to say he wouldn’t be leaving, but he couldn’t promise that. As messed up as the situation had become, as much hope as Anna’s confusing call had given them, nothing was certain until Cal had signed those release papers.
Instead of talking, Cal moved off the bed and went to close the bedroom door. When he turned back to the bed, Derek was pulling his own clothes off.
Cal grinned. At least they were on the same wavelength.
This time, it was Cal sinking into his mate, making love to him like it could be the last time for a long time, all the while refusing to think about that potential truth.
Right here and now was perfect. He couldn’t have asked for more.
Derek
Somehow, when the email with Cal’s tickets finally came, it managed to surprise them all. They were for the next Wednesday, giving them only a few days’ warning.
