Valentine's Day Tigers (The Holiday Shifter Mates Book 3)

by Kestra Pingree

  “That’s what you don’t get! I can’t do it!” Lance screamed. “I’m not good at sex like you are. No one’s ever going to want me.”

  Yuri stared down at his brother, perplexed. “Good at it? It’s not hard. And what does sex have to do with somebody wanting you? I want you. You’re my brother.”

  “It’s not the same. Look at Austin and Mateo. I want something like that with Ash. And sex is hard when you don’t particularly like it.”

  And then more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “You love Ash,” Yuri said. “All this time you’ve been accusing Mateo and Austin of being gross. You hypocrite.” Lance’s gaze flickered, but Yuri grabbed his chin. “Look at me.”

  “You never knew,” Lance said. His lips quivered and he pressed them together for a moment to make it stop. “We were sixteen, and you were experimenting, and we spent so much time out in Fairbanks. We were always going out. You thought I was doing the same thing as you, right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I wasn’t. I found someone I latched onto, someone I liked a lot, and I never told you because of our promise. I loved him. I met up with him every time you and I split up. He was always there, and then one day he wanted to experiment, have sex, because he was attracted to me. I went along with it, but I wasn’t attracted to him. I’m not sexually attracted to anybody, and I hurt him that night because of that. I never saw him again.”

  Yuri’s grip on Lance’s chin tightened. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Lance growled. “You could have anybody you want, but you don’t want to stay with anyone. Why?”

  So, Lance wanted a heart-to-heart talk. It wasn’t Yuri’s favorite thing, but he’d do it for his brother, no questions asked. “I tried dating back then too. I didn’t like it. Most of the girls I met were too boring, and I especially hated dinner dates where they’d stare into your eyes like they were waiting for some sort of magic to happen, or like they felt some sort of magic. You know, that sparkle, that lingering look that Mateo and Austin share. Weston and Cary. Gale and Cedar… I could go on, but I don’t get it. And I don’t like it. Especially holding hands, casual kissing, and cuddling. It’s not my thing.”

  Lance laughed again, but it was interrupted by a hiccup. He closed his eyes shut tight. “We’re opposites on everything, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe, but I guess that’s why we work so well together.”

  Lance sighed. At last, all the fire left his system.

  “We should get up and get washed off,” Yuri said. “Also, our cabin looks like the aftermath of a shitstorm.”

  Lance frowned. “This sucks.” He craned his neck and looked at the demolished TV. Then he winced. “Super sucks.”

  Yuri got up, unpinning his brother, and held out his hand. Lance took it, allowing him to tug Lance to his feet. The two of them went to the bathroom first, where Yuri took care of his wounds in front of the mirror as Lance hopped into the shower. Once Lance was out, Yuri was comfortably dressed, and his wounds were taken care of as well as they needed to be. Yuri took out some peroxide and put it on a cotton ball and pressed it against the deep cuts on Lance’s cheek.

  Lance hissed. “Fuck. Stop it. I can take care of it myself.”

  Yuri smirked. “I know. I’m just vindictive.”

  He left Lance to it and assessed the damage in the living room. Lance’s precious TV was seriously done for. The screen was cracked. The couch was in tatters too. It had somehow gotten broken in half during that whole fiasco. The curtains had to go. The coffee table and Lance’s computer looked intact, though. Any fragile odds and ends either made it or didn’t. At least they didn’t have much in the room these days, or in the rest of the cabin for that matter. Yuri started breaking down the things that needed to go and went from there.

  Lance joined him eventually. “Sorry for freaking out.”

  “Whatever.” Yuri playfully punched his brother in the arm. “And get those stupid thoughts out of your head. I’m not going to up and leave you one day. I don’t want a mate anyway.”

  Yuri was no dummy. He knew that most people and shifters longed for a mate, but he also knew that he didn’t, and he accepted that. It didn’t bother him. In fact, he was quite content.

  Or he had been.

  “But you do,” Yuri said. “Hell, and if you really don’t like sex, Ash must be something special for you to want them so badly that you’d go and do it.”

  Yuri absentmindedly fingered a burn that he had gotten on his little romp with Lance’s lover. He liked Ash too. Ash was interesting, someone he wouldn’t mind sticking around. Also, he wouldn’t mind fucking them again. “I’m sorry, though,” Yuri said. “I wouldn’t have taken Ash out if I had known how you feel.”

  “I’m not mad about the sex,” Lance said. “It doesn’t bother me at all, actually.” He paused. Then his eyes lit up. “I have a crazy idea. What if we brought Ash in, sort of like we did Mateo.”

  “You mean tried to,” Yuri corrected. “He did that whole leaving thing you were talking about.”

  “He didn’t really, though. I know we keep saying that, but he’d still come running if we needed him.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Mateo isn’t close anymore, but he’s our brother. Things change, but that doesn’t. That won’t. Bringing Ash in would change things too, but it would be good.”

  “Change,” Yuri repeated. It never bothered him before, but he had also never thought that Lance would be at the forefront of it.

  “You like Ash, right?” Lance asked.

  Yuri shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “You even talked about seeing them again.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Like a date?”

  “No. Didn’t I just tell you that I don’t like dates? I wanted to hear them sing, and I wanted to take them out for trouble again.”

  “Ash likes dates,” Lance said. “Ash… Ash is perfect.”

  Yuri waited for Lance to say something else. But he started staring off into space. He got the same dumb look on his face that Mateo and Austin did when they stared at each other. Gale and Cedar. Weston and Cary. Mates, mates, mates, mates.

  “And?” Yuri coaxed.

  Lance’s eyes widened, and then he shook his head like he just realized he had frozen up. “We can all have what we want.”

  “Which is?”

  “To stay together.”

  “Lance.”

  “I don’t want to let Ash go, but I don’t want to let you go either. You’re my brother, Yuri, and you always will be. It’s always been the two of us. We’ll always have each other’s backs, and I have no intention of leaving you alone. I wouldn’t do that to you. I… I’m sorry I thought you’d do that to me.”

  “I’m not going to die if you leave with Ash,” Yuri said. But he also didn’t say how much it would hurt. Lance was his closest person in this world, and it would hurt like hell if he left.

  “That’s what I was trying to say. Ash and I like dates, and romance, and cuddling, and staring into each other’s eyes. I don’t like sex, but Ash likes sex. You like sex.”

  “Hell no. You’re not bringing me into your love life. If you and Ash are going to be a thing, if they’re going to be your mate, it has to be because of you.”

  “Wrong. We’re a package deal. And you like Ash. You said so.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?”

  “If Ash loves you, they’ll accept you, all of you, or else they don’t deserve you. Okay? Besides, you’re not broken, Lance, no matter what you’ve been telling yourself all these years.”

  Lance frowned. “Does that mean you don’t want Ash again? Is it weird now?”

  Yuri rolled his eyes. “Sure, I’d fuck Ash again if you two don’t give a fuck. Weird or not, what we do with our lives has nothing to do with anybody else.”

  “Exactly.” Lance’s face seemed to brighten up, adding a depth of color he didn’t usually have in his pigmentless skin.
Oddly enough, Yuri wasn’t sure he had ever seen Lance so happy in his life.

  “Stop. You have to promise,” Yuri said. “I’m not part of the deal. Ash has to love you for you. Besides, you’re forgetting something important. Just because this little setup would work for you doesn’t mean it’d work for Ash.”

  Lance’s gaze drifted to the ground. Yuri had cleaned up the blood, so it didn’t look horrible now, but they needed to throw out the clutter. “All right, Yuri. Fine. So, are you going to tell me what really happened? How did your shoulder get fucked-up?”

  A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Lance sighed and answered it. It was Cedar.

  “I told you we should have come here first,” she said. She looked over her shoulder at Gale, who popped his head into the doorway as well. “After we lost Yuri’s scent and everybody scattered, I figured he’d be here.” She folded her arms. “It’s time for retribution, tiger.”

  “What the hell happened?” Gale said, taking in the state of the twins and the cabin.

  Lance looked back at Yuri. “What’s Cedar talking about? What did you do?”

  Yuri shrugged. “Ruined romance?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LANCE HAD CHOCOLATE ALL over his face and fingers. It all tasted good, though, and his cuts were scabbed over and healing, so he didn’t care much. He never complained when it came to Cedar and food. No one did. The polar bear knew food. However, it sucked having to do all this work. He was helping to replace the chocolates that Yuri had ruined yesterday. At least making the chocolates was better than cleaning up the kitchen. Cedar had insisted they clean it top to bottom, beyond the mess Yuri had made, before getting started.

  Thankfully, Cedar waited until morning so they could get some sleep last night. And it wasn’t just Lance and Yuri doing all this work. Most of the shifters currently staying in Eurio were here helping. Lance had a sneaking suspicion that Cedar planned all of this out just so Yuri would be a part of everything, not really as a punishment at all.

  “Are you going to tell us what happened to your face yet?” Mateo asked as he worked alongside Lance.

  “You know what happened,” Lance said.

  “Yeah, I just want to know why.”

  Lance glanced over at his brother, who was working on the other side of the prep table. They had beat each other up pretty good last night, but the marks were beginning to fade already, thanks to their tiger-shifter healing. Yuri paid Lance no mind, content to focus on what he was doing. He was making some very… interesting chocolates, like abstract crystal shards or pieces of flat coral. He wanted to see what would happen if he didn’t use the heart-shaped molds, so he was drizzling hot liquid chocolate over wax paper. It was mostly a disaster, but some of the shapes turned out cool. Control-freak Cedar hadn’t made any comments on it—which was probably just as well.

  Lance wondered what Ash was up to.

  He hadn’t had a chance to call with all the chaos going on. Not even in the morning. Cedar woke them up bright and early and didn’t give them a chance to do anything for themselves.

  Besides, he was doubting himself.

  He realized he was being crazy about this whole thing. He tried to give Ash everything last night. He laid it all out on the table, and all of it was true. Maybe the craziest thing of all was how Ash seemed to accept him anyway. They said they’d wait for him at a hotel they hadn’t planned on staying in so long. Lance could fix that and give Ash a home. Eurio was more open-minded at this point. They probably wouldn’t care too much if he brought a human here in need of refuge. They had Austin, and it was Ash he was talking about. Everyone would fall in love with them.

  “Why are you still here?” Yuri said as he let another strange piece of chocolate dry on some wax paper. “Cedar didn’t make you come. She didn’t have anything to use as leverage against you.”

  Lance ignored him and worked on mixing one of the raspberry fillings. Yuri asked a stupid question. Of course Lance was going to come here with him. It was like he said: they were a package deal. They did everything together. Mostly.

  “Go to Ash already. That’s what you want, right?” Yuri said. He pointed a chocolate-covered spoon at Lance, accusing. “If you’re that serious about them, maybe consider telling them you’re a tiger too.”

  Lance gritted his teeth because there were eyes. Yuri wasn’t being quiet, and everybody else, Mateo at the very least, was well within listening range.

  Lance let go of his spoon and signed for Yuri to knock it off unless he wanted to take this conversation private, but Gale saw it too. It was hard to have a private conversation out in the open when ASL was a bit of a common thing in Eurio. That was what happened with Alphas like Gale and Weston and even Weston’s mate, Cary. They always tried to support him and Yuri in whatever way they could.

  Yuri didn’t bother signing back. “Well?”

  “It’s probably too soon for that,” Lance muttered. If Yuri was going to talk, he was going to talk and there was nothing Lance could do about it—unless he went over there and physically shut his brother’s trap.

  “What are you talking about?” Mateo asked like Lance knew he would. “Who’s Ash?” Austin leaned forward to look past Mateo, just as curious.

  “Lance’s lover,” Yuri said nonchalantly. “Oh, his ‘secret lover.’”

  Lance gritted his teeth harder. His jaw clenched to an almost painful degree.

  “Lance has a lover?” Mateo said loudly, drawing way more eyes and ears then Lance would’ve liked. Heat crawled up his neck, and he fidgeted with the collar of his shirt.

  “Girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Mateo continued.

  “Ash is non-binary,” Lance said.

  Mateo stared at him for a moment in disbelief. His eyes even flickered yellow and he bared his teeth. “You have a lover? How did I not know this?”

  Lance cleared his throat. “It was kind of something I was keeping under wraps.” He shot his brother a death glare. Yuri met that with a broad smirk.

  “Why?”

  “Do tell,” Cedar said, probably the last shifter here who had any business demanding these kinds of answers from Lance. She had only been here a couple months.

  “I think we’d all like to hear the story, Lance,” Weston joined in.

  Lance felt like he was suffocating. “It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. He tried to find that detachment he used to deal with things, but it wasn’t coming. He was flustered.

  “Human or shifter?” Gale asked.

  “Human,” Lance said. He was under verbal fire. He didn’t know why he was answering these questions. In the past, he wouldn’t have said a word. It was because of that breakthrough last night. It was because of what happened with Ash. Ash still wanted him.

  “It doesn’t matter if they’re shifter or human. Look at Mateo and Austin,” Lance added.

  “It does matter,” Gale said. “Bring them here. I’d like to talk to them.”

  Lance would’ve refused that just a couple days ago, but he wanted to bring Ash here. He thought Ash might like it. Minus the shifter part. He had no idea how they would deal with that, or how soon that little piece of information should be revealed. Would the tiger revelation be the thing to make Ash leave him after all this?

  Hell, the room was getting really hot. Lance dealt with plenty of anxiety, but he was usually able to keep it under the surface. Others probably didn’t realize it, and that was how he liked it. He didn’t like drawing attention to himself, but he was currently falling apart at the seams.

  “This is stupid, right?” he said. “I’m not going to bring Ash here.”

  Lance stared at the raspberry concoction he had mixed more than enough. When no one said anything, he forced himself to look around him. All eyes were on him. Some were new. Many of them were old and familiar. It was always Lance and Yuri, but they had spent years here, and a handful of the shifters who were permanent residents had come to mean something to them, even beyond Mateo, who was brought into their
innermost circle.

  This was Lance’s family. If he was serious about Ash, he supposed he did have to bring them here. He’d also have to reveal his tiger. It was easier to get everything out in the open sooner rather than later after last night, right? He’d have more anxiety if he prolonged it.

  “Bring them to the Valentine’s Day dance,” Cedar said. “You don’t have to bring them any sooner if you’re worried, Lance. That’s a perfect date opportunity, and then we’ll all get to meet them without making a big deal out of it. Or you can bring Ash earlier. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

  Lance returned to his usual quiet when he had nothing snarky to say in return. He glanced at Yuri, who was focused once again on his chocolate creations. Monstrosities, more like.

  Lance wondered why Cedar was determined to be so motherly to him, to everyone. He wondered why everyone here put up with him and Yuri and their antics, their almost innate need to be difficult in some way shape or form.

  “Sappy,” Lance said on impulse, drawing on that need for a front. “The Valentine’s Day dance is sappy as hell.”

  “It’s romantic,” Cedar said. “Just think about it.”

  Lance rolled his eyes. He brought the head of the spoon he was holding to his lips and tasted the raspberry filling. Goddammit, it tasted good.

  Mateo kept trying to catch his eye, but Lance wouldn’t look. He was done with this. He was done with the vulnerability he had just displayed. He needed to rein it back in or else he’d fall to pieces right then and there.

  But he did like Cedar’s idea. Ash liked to dance. Maybe they’d like to be his Valentine, too.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ASH TOOK ANOTHER SIP of their drink. They never drank alcohol before a show, so it was warm honey-lemon water to get the voice ready to go. They usually got lost in their head, reciting the music they’d be playing for the upcoming session. This evening, however, Ash was thinking about Lance. It wasn’t an unusual thing these days. They had started thinking about him more and more as they got to know him. And after last night, it was kind of inevitable that Lance would take up so much space in Ash’s musical mind. Ash thought they could probably write a hundred songs for Lance easy.