Protecting Their Mate [Wolf Packs of Fate 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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Wolf Packs of Fate 4
Protecting Their Mate
Big and beautiful Betsy Cramer has been put down because of her weight all her life. She moves to Fate to realize her dream of owning a clothing boutique that caters to all women, no matter what their size. Can she fake it until she makes it? Or will others, especially three sexy cowboys she’s got the hots for, see right through her?
Werewolves Scott Branton, Billy Johnson, and Foster Rittenhouse want to claim Betsy as their mate, but first they need to make her see herself as they do. She’s the perfect woman, both curvy and spunky. Yet just when they think they’ve convinced her that she’s theirs, an unseen danger threatens to take her away.
The men must protect their mate no matter how much she tries to run from them. But can they fight the danger lying within her?
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves, Western/Cowboys
Length: 42,836 words
PROTECTING THEIR MATE
Wolf Packs of Fate 4
Jane Jamison
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
PROTECTING THEIR MATE
Copyright © 2016 by Jane Jamison
E-book ISBN: 978-1-68295-072-2
First E-book Publication: March 2016
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2016 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
If you have purchased this copy of Protecting Their Mate by Jane Jamison from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
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This is Jane Jamison’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Jane Jamison’s right to earn a living from her work.
Amanda Hilton, Publisher
www.SirenPublishing.com
www.BookStrand.com
DEDICATION
Dear Reader,
The Wolf Packs of Fate series is one of my favorite series. Thanks to you, the first three books are all hits. I hope you enjoy book number four, Protecting Their Mate.
Until then, howl on,
Jane Jamison
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
PROTECTING THEIR MATE
Wolf Packs of Fate 4
JANE JAMISON
Copyright © 2016
Chapter One
Here we go again.
Betsy Cramer liked her new friends, but trying to convince Raven that the Hardwick men were interested in her was getting old. Why didn’t Raven just go for it? Hell, if she had three hot men lusting after her, showing up where she worked, and doing everything short of throwing her over a horse and taking off with her, she’d sure as hell say yes. But there was Raven, pretending she didn’t want the brothers as much as they wanted her. What was holding her back anyway?
Betsy and her new friends Raven Reynolds, Emeline Newsom, and Heather Dill had met again in the back room of The General Store where Raven worked. They’d share their brown bag lunches and talk about Fate and the nice people who lived there. Yet they never talked about their pasts.
She had her reasons for not wanting to discuss why she’d come to Fate and assumed her friends had their own reasons. Reasons they would share with her in their own good time.
“She wants us to coax it out of her. Like she’s pretending she doesn’t think about them night and day.” Just like Betsy had a tough time getting her mind off Billy Johnson, Scott Branton, and Foster Rittenhouse, even sexier men than the Hardwick brothers. They owned the Silent Running Ranch and looked as if they’d just stepped out of a Western movie. In her version of the movie, the three men would ride into town and save her from the evil villain. Then they’d haul her back to their ranch and have their way with her.
If only.
She fought to keep the irritation—jealousy?—out of her tone. “Spit it out, girl. You know damn well if Drake and his brothers walked in here right this minute you’d jump to your feet and ask them what they wanted. Hell, if they ordered you to hop on top of the table and spread ’em, you’d shove us out of here so fast we’d think a tornado had barreled through the store.”
“Can we talk about something else? Anything else? Does anyone know anything about Pearl Witten?”
Betsy rolled her eyes, knowing Heather and Emeline had their attention glued to Raven. Raven was doing her best to deflect the conversation away from herself.
“What about Pearl?” asked Heather. Pearl was a long-time resident of Fate and a good friend of Heather’s.
Score one for Raven. She just changed the subject.
Betsy wasn’t jealous. Not really. At least she didn’t want to be. But why was it that girls like Raven always had men falling all over themselves to be with them? In the meantime, there she was, the wallflower of the school dance, the best friend whose compassionate friends set up on blind dates. She knew how to play the role of the obligatory fat friend of any group she was in.
Stop it. These girls aren’t like that.
&nb
sp; She’d realized it from the first moment they’d met in The General Store where Raven worked and then later at Gobbel’s Market. She’d asked Emeline if she knew how to tell the difference between a good honeydew and a bad one. It had taken only that one question for the other two women to throw in their two cents.
They had so much in common. All four of them were relatively new to town. All four of them had never lived in a small town before. All four were striving to make a new life. And all four of them were tightlipped about their past. As though by unspoken agreement, they didn’t press each other for details about where they’d come from or even how they’d managed to find a town that wasn’t on most maps. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were running from their pasts. Or were they running toward their futures? Who could say?
She would’ve told them if they’d asked about her past, but she wasn’t going to volunteer information and have a nice little chat about LBF. Life Before Fate had been rough. Partly because of what she looked like and partly because of her family. Her earliest memories were drenched in the sting of pain, so why should she want to talk about it?
She’d had to deal with being a “big” girl all her life. Even her home hadn’t been a sanctuary from fat shaming. In fact, her father had been the worst. For as far back as she could remember, he’d berated her by calling her a variety of hurtful names.
“Miss Piggy.”
“Fatty Frumpy.”
“Lard Ass.”
“Beefy Betsy.”
“Big-Ass Bitch.”
“Worthless Whale.”
The list was too extensive to remember all the names. Why bother when she’d known from a very young age what he meant whenever he called her a name? To her, the name Betsy equaled the word “fat.”
She’d learned to do the translation fast enough. The awful names meant one simple thing from her father. “I don’t love you.”
It was as simple as that. If only her mother had survived the ovarian cancer that had savaged her body, denying her the strength to argue with Betsy’s father, maybe she could’ve helped her young daughter handle the verbal abuse.
Once Betsy had graduated from high school and then business school, she’d struggled to ignore what others thought and said. And she had. At least on the outside. Yet, although others might view her as the “big, beautiful, confident woman” she wanted them to see, the pain still lurked deep inside her, rearing its hideous head every time she let her guard down.
Why was she thinking this way? She had her new life, albeit a manless one, and a new clothing store to get up and running. If she’d been smart, she would’ve saved more money and opened a store in a large city. Even a pop-up store would’ve been a good first try. But she’d had enough of New York City and the fashionistas who commanded the fashion scene. Buyers for small boutiques and major department stores alike wouldn’t give fashions for big women a second look. Oh, they gave lip service to her idea, telling her that a store catering to women of all sizes was “just the thing the city needed,” and then they’d talk behind her back about the “poor fat girl and her ridiculous idea.”
New York City had sucked. Not only for her career but also for any chance of finding a man. Most of the men she’d met were called metrosexuals. They’d spent more time in front of a mirror than she ever had. She didn’t want a man whose hands were softer than hers. She craved a manly kind of man. The kind of man whose callused hands would grab hold of a big girl like her and make her feel safe and protected. Small, but in a good way. Seeking out men like that was part of the reason she’d headed south. Manly men with southern accents. What more could a girl ask for?
She took a sip of her drink as her gaze slipped toward the front of The General Store. Raven had dodged the questions, but she couldn’t dodge what had just walked into the store. “Don’t look now, but one of your lovers just walked in.”
To her credit, she hid her smirk. Not that anyone would’ve noticed. Drake Hardwick had all the girls’ full attention now. He was a handsome man, the perfect cowboy type, but he had one major flaw.
He wasn’t one of the men she longed to hold.
Foster Rittenhouse was her idea of a man’s man. He was tall with wide shoulders, a lean waist, and long legs that ate up the ground. He never acted as though he was in a hurry, yet there was an intensity about him that had her expecting him to jump on top of her. With his thick mocha-colored hair and deep rich eyes, Foster could do anything he wanted to her, including jumping on top of her. Being a girl who kept her eyes and ears open, she knew he was eight years older than her twenty-seven years and the oldest of the three hot men of Silent Running Ranch.
Billy Johnson was the next oldest at thirty-three, but he often didn’t act his age. Although he was never juvenile, Billy was always up for a good time. She fancied that she could hear his laughter from the other side of town. What would his laughter sound like if he lay next to her? She imagined tunneling her fingers through his shaggy blond hair, her ordinary brown gaze meeting his extraordinary gray eyes.
Then there was Scott Branton, the third friend of the mix. Although she’d never been fond of men who shaved their heads—after all, what was a woman supposed to dig her fingers into?—she had to admit that, on him, the bald look was as sexy as long hair. Like Billy, he had gray eyes, too, although his color was softer, more like brushed silver than the glittery metal of Billy’s eyes. He was slightly shorter than his friends, but he was still at least six feet with a build that left nothing to the imagination. Or was it that his build stirred her imagination? She’d fantasized about all three of them and had, more times than she could count, wondered if their cocks matched their bodies. Wide, long, and hard as steel.
Surely, their cocks had to be amazing. To have three strong men like that with small cocks would be a sin against Nature. Or the worst joke God had ever played.
She’d run into them around town, and each time she’d walked away with her mind reeling. Had she said anything stupid? Had she made a fool of herself? Something about them stole her ability to function correctly. She’d gone into her practiced mode of confidence, but she’d be damned if she could remember their conversations. Any time they talked to her, she felt wonderful, as though she was the most important woman in the world. Yet their small talk had always ended far too soon.
She watched as Raven waited on Drake, who was soon joined by his brothers, Dugan and Harrin. They were all great-looking guys, but not the guys she would’ve liked to see.
Give in to your feelings, Raven.
Yet, as she silently urged her friend to say yes to the Hardwick men, she realized the hypocrisy of her thoughts. She was a coward, through and through, for not telling Billy, Scott, and Foster that she was interested.
So much for being a confident, strong woman.
She finished her lunch, her mind wandering as Raven let the chance to be with the men pass yet again. The other girls hurriedly finished their lunches, eager to get back to their respective lives and jobs. She tossed her brown bag into the recycle trash and said her goodbyes. The others barely acknowledged her as she slipped out the back door and turned in the opposite direction of the one Heather took.
One of these days when her store, Classy Cat, was up and running smoothly, then she’d take the time to indulge in love. That is, if any man wanted her. She sighed and picked up her pace, keeping her gaze to the ground in front of her and letting her mind wander.
It wasn’t her fault she had a tough time meeting men. At least, not directly. Her father had given her so much grief that it would’ve put a sex addict off men. Then, when Robert had come along, he’d made things worse.
Robert Mossi, her one and only real boyfriend, had seemed like the complete opposite of her father. With his dark hair and eyes, he’d drawn her in and gotten her to let down her guard. By the time she’d realized he was like her father, it was too late. She’d already let him share her apartment and her life.
At least the life she’d had before
he’d come along. But Robert hadn’t wanted her to see her friends. Her father was the only person he “approved” of. And why shouldn’t he? Robert and her father had taken turns, egging each other on, to see which of them could find the cruelest names to call her.
She shook her head, fighting the growing darkness that thinking about her past always brought. Her father and Robert, not to mention all the other people who felt the need to tell her she was fat, had hurt her more than she could ever say. In the end, she’d finally put her foot down that terrible day after she and Robert had left her father’s home. Yet it hadn’t turned out as she’d hoped with him trying to make amends. Instead, Robert had finally escalated his abusive treatment, slapping her for the first time.
She’d found her voice and her strength when she’d finally stood up to her father and left his home. She’d found it again when Robert hit her. A month later, after she’d called the police to get Robert evicted from her apartment, she’d gathered her courage, sold most of her possessions, and rented a car. She hadn’t known where she was going, but she hadn’t cared.
Fate had brought her to Fate.
* * * *
“Why the hell did she have to name it after a cat?” Billy Johnson leaned against the post and tried to see past the butcher-block paper Betsy had put up on the windows of her new store, Classy Cat.
“Beats me. Maybe she likes cats better than dogs.”
Billy pivoted, along with his friend Scott Branton, toward Foster Rittenhouse. Although there wasn’t much difference in their ages, Foster could say some of the damnedest things.