by R. E. Butler
Embracing Ehrin
Ashland Pride Eight
By R. E. Butler
Copyright R.E. Butler 2018
Embracing Ehrin (Ashland Pride Eight)
By R. E. Butler
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Cover by Valerie Tibbs
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
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Editing by Hot Tree Editing
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Thanks to Joyce and Shelley for beta reading.
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Thanks to Bryce Evans for sharing her knowledge and being such a great friend.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Coming Next from RE Butler
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Coming Next in the Wilde Creek Series
Embracing Ehrin (Ashland Pride Eight)
By R. E. Butler
Stepbrothers Domino and Henry Fallon have known for years that they’re meant to share a mate. Domino, a rare albino panther, and Henry, a mountain lion, are ready to start the next chapter of their lives and find their mate.
Ehrin Knox knows why the alpha of her hawk nest called her to his home on a chilly spring morning – it’s not for a cup of tea, but to tell her she’s banned from the nest. Because she was never able to shift, Ehrin couldn’t secure a mate, and once she reached twenty-one and was still unmated, it was the end of the line for her. Only mated males and females could stay in the nest after age twenty-one, an archaic and unfair rule as far as she was concerned. Saying goodbye to her family, she leaves for her friend’s home in Ashland, Indiana, until she can find work and a place to live.
When Domino hosts an art exhibit at the school’s open house, a beautiful redheaded female immediately goes into distress when she sees him. Domino knows the moment he sees her that she’s their shared mate, and he calls Henry. Once the three are together, Ehrin shifts into a stunning red-tailed hawk.
Ehrin’s surprised when her parents show up in Ashland, with her former alpha bringing along a hawk male to mate with her. They want her to choose the hawk and come home. When she can’t have both, will Ehrin choose the pride or her family?
Contains m/f/m interaction, a brokenhearted hawk shifter, and the two males who would do anything to make her happy.
Chapter 1
Henry Fallon parked the police car outside the building and turned off the engine. Grabbing his things, he exited and walked inside, where he hung the keys on the hook and greeted the receptionist.
“Quiet night?” Mrs. Grandy asked, looking up from her e-book reader. Mrs. Grandy was a bear shifter, and a member of a bear den that their mountain lion pride was friends with. She’d been working at the Ashland police station since Henry’s cousin Eryx became sheriff after they moved to town several years earlier.
“Yeah. I followed up on the call from Jed about his fence being broken every night, and after watching it for a while, I saw one of his cows rub on it and knock it loose.”
She snorted. “Would think Jed could have figured that out for himself.”
“Yeah, well, he’s got a big farm, and it was happening on a different section of fence every night. At least there’s not some rogue fence-breaking element out there causing trouble.”
“We’ll all sleep a lot better.”
Henry filled out the report for his shift and left it on Eryx’s desk. Henry’s dad, John, and his stepdad, James, were both police officers, and so was his uncle Aaron. It was a family business, and he was thankful to be able to keep that legacy going.
After clocking out, he said goodbye to Mrs. Grandy.
“Doing anything fun tonight?” she asked.
“Nothing too exciting.”
“Go out and have fun while you’re young,” she said. “You and that stepbrother of yours are sure to find your mate soon, and she’ll be a lucky female. I’ve never seen a pair of more handsome males in my life than you two. But don’t tell the mister.”
She winked at him and Henry chuckled.
“I promise. Have a good night.”
“You, too, Henry.”
Henry walked out of the building and zipped his jacket up against the evening chill. He knew Mrs. Grandy was right. Someday, he and Domino would have a mate to share, and he hoped to hell that their someday happened soon. He couldn’t wait to find their mate and start a family.
“How was your shift?” John asked as he got out of his car.
“Quiet.”
“Well that’s how we like them. Rue left dinner for you in the oven. She and James are going on a date.”
Henry looked at his father. “Do you ever get jealous?”
He hummed. “A little. I think it’s natural, though. I want to be with Rue all the time. When I’m working, and James is with her, there’s a part of me that wishes James were working instead. But it’s part of the type of relationship we have together. I know Rue loves us both equally. Are you thinking about finding your mate?”
“Yeah. I hope it happens soon.”
“You probably don’t want me to point out that I was in my forties before I met Rue.”
He made a face. “Heck no.”
John laughed. “It’s different for you than it was for us. You weren’t sitting around waiting for the females to have a change of heart.”
“Good point.”
Henry and the other pride members had grown up in King, Pennsylvania. They’d belonged to a large pride, with both male and female mountain lions. The females were cold toward males, they never wanted to form relationships or families, and they only agreed to have children with males if they were taken care of financially. The males raised the children, and the females left home at sixteen and stayed with the females. What they hadn’t known was that the females used venom in their claws to poison the little girls, slowly morphing them into the cold and calculating females who wanted nothing to do with the males. His own sister, Jilly, had been one of those females, but when she’d stumbled upon her panther mates, Wyked and Fate, they’d shared blood with her and she’d changed. The truth of their natures – that their kind had been cursed by a goddess eons ago – had come out. The Fallon family and several other males had joined Henry’s Uncle Rhett and his human mate, Lisa, in Ashland. It was a nice, mostly human town, and most of the pride members shared a boarding house. Rhett and Lisa lived in a farmhouse in town with their adopted daughter, Treasure. Eryx, Ethan, their shared mate Callie, and their children lived on Rhett’s farm, and
so did cousins Chase, Dylan, Hunter, their shared mate Cris, and their children.
“You better hurry home or someone will think you don’t want dinner and steal your plate,” John said.
“Right. That happened last night. It’s what I get for taking a shower first instead of eating.”
“Have a good night, son.”
“Thanks, Dad. You too.”
Henry headed home to the boarding house. It was nestled in the woods, sitting on a dozen acres of land. He’d moved to Ashland with his father when he was fourteen. His room was on the third floor, next to Domino’s, and they shared a bathroom. The boarding house was a hive of activity. Everyone pitched in to help with meals and cleaning. The pride enjoyed eating together when they could, and although many of the pride members worked at different times, there was always a full table for dinner.
He parked at the side of the boarding house and walked inside. He could hear a hum of voices in the family room and figured it was his cousins, either watching TV or playing video games, and maybe a few adults as well.
“Hey, how was work?” Domino asked when Henry walked into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table with a laptop computer, using a stylus to draw on the screen.
“Super exciting.”
Henry picked up a hot pad and opened the oven, removing the covered plate. He set it on the counter and lifted the lid, his stomach growling as he inhaled the scents of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. He grabbed a bottle of iced tea from the refrigerator and sat down at the table with his plate.
“Are you being sarcastic?” Dom asked without looking up from the sketch of a bird.
“Yes. It was boring. I watched a fence for two hours, until a cow rubbed its ass on it.”
Dom lifted his head. “That’s in your job description? Watching cows’ asses?”
He snorted. “Farmer Jed said some punks were knocking his fence over, so Eryx had me stake it out. But it wasn’t a punk, it was a cow. So, you know, time well spent.”
“Man, I thought I had it tough trying to teach first graders about color theory.” Domino was the art teacher at the elementary school. He was a talented artist, making money on the side with sculpting. His specialty was animals, but he could use wood, metal, and stone and come up with something amazing. Henry couldn’t even draw stick figures well.
He told Domino about his conversation with his father.
“I guess we might be jealous of each other from time to time,” Dom said. “But I think if we’re smart and don’t try to monopolize our mate, it’ll be good. Besides, at this point I just want to find her. Then we can work the details out.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “Me, too. The sooner the better.”
“I’m convinced that the timing will be perfect, whenever we meet her.”
“I love your optimism.”
“It’s one of my many talents.”
Henry snorted and turned his attention back to his plate as Dom talked about the bird that a customer of his online store had commissioned. He was going to carve it from wood, working out the sketch first.
When Henry was finished eating, he cleaned up the dishes and headed to take a shower. Exhaustion pulled at him, and he was thankful he didn’t have to work the next day so he could sleep in and get some errands run.
As he fell asleep a short time later, his mind drifted once more to finding a mate. He wondered if his thoughts were always on her because they were going to meet her soon. He sure as hell hoped that was the case.
Chapter 2
The phone rang, waking Ehrin from a deep sleep. It took her two rings to realize it was the phone, and not her alarm clock, and then she knocked the phone off the nightstand and fell out of bed trying to get to it.
“Hello?” she said before she looked at the screen.
A male voice cleared his throat. “Good morning, Miss Knox.”
She climbed back onto the bed and brushed the hair from her face. “Good morning, Alpha Addison.”
“You’re to come to my home in an hour.”
He hadn’t asked her if she’d like to, only told her to, and she wasn’t in the habit of arguing with the alpha of her hawk nest.
“Of course.”
He ended the call without another word.
She set her phone down and flopped back on the bed. She wasn’t really a morning person, but more than that, she absolutely didn’t like being woken up by a ringing phone. There was just something about it that always made her panic.
She stared at the ceiling and twirled a lock of her long red hair around her finger. It wasn’t a surprise that the alpha was calling. She’d expected a call every day since she turned twenty-one at the beginning of March. The nest had unwritten rules when it came to their people. Many of the matings were arranged by the parents and alpha, beginning at age eighteen. There were several hawk nests in the tri-state area, and she’d expected to be matched up to a male from one of them.
But that had never happened. It wasn’t for a lack of trying on her parents’ and alpha’s part – it was simply because she couldn’t shift. A strange quirk of her DNA gave her the fiery red hair and emerald eyes of her people, but had halted her ability to shift. Because it was so unusual, no male would agree to mate her, even when the alpha put pressure on several to accept her. In January, she’d met with a male – a total slimeball from a nest in Ohio – who had agreed to mate her, but only if she got her tubes tied so they didn’t accidentally have children who were flawed like her. She’d been furious and humiliated, and she turned him down. Her parents had warned her to take the offer from the male, but she’d refused to go into a mating with a male who considered her flawed, and to agree to never have children.
She wanted to be a mother someday. No one would take that right from her.
Now that she was twenty-one and unmated, she was going to be banned from the nest. It was the oddest rule she’d ever heard of, but it was one that her people adhered to without fail. She was the only female in the nest between the age of eighteen and twenty-one who wasn’t mated. She was not only flawed in her shifting abilities, but she was single.
Alpha Addison wasn’t inviting her over for breakfast to see how her life was going, she was positive of that. He was going to lower the hammer, and she would have to come home and pack.
She picked up her phone and sat up, opening the text app. Ehrin had been homeschooled because that’s what the nest approved of, but she’d gotten to know some of the local humans and had become good friends with Zelda, who was a few years older than Ehrin and worked at a used bookstore in town. Zelda had gotten married and moved to a small town in Indiana several years back, and had said that if Ehrin ever needed a place to stay to give her a call.
Ehrin sent her a text.
Hey, Z! I think the alpha might be kicking me out of the nest today. Is the offer to crash on your couch still open?
She saw the typing bubble pop up and then Zelda replied, You bet! Sorry this happened, but you’ll have a great life outside the nest I’m sure. Do you need me to come get you?
No, I’ve got my car.
Okay, drive safe. See you later today!
Zelda included her address, which Ehrin put into her contact list. Looking around the room, she contemplated packing but decided to first take a shower. When she’d cleaned up, she dressed in her favorite pair of jeans that she’d decorated with tiny embroidered roses down the legs, and a gold tank with lace trim, paired with a black jean jacket. She found her favorite ankle boots in the closet, pulling out a suitcase while she was in there. She didn’t travel a lot, but she had gone to Florida to visit relatives the summer before and her mother had let her borrow her only suitcase.
Opening the case, she began to fill it with her undergarments, and then she turned to the closet. She loved clothing, and had learned how to sew as a child. She would dig through the bargain bin at the local fabric store and find an amazing fabric to make something out of, selling her creations in an online store. Half the money went
into her business, and half went into savings. When she’d been unable to shift as a teenager, she’d instinctively known that she’d have trouble finding a mate. It had been disheartening to get turned down by males based on her lack of shifting, but when all the males cared about was the next generation of hawks, it was understandable.
Not that she ever really understood. It wasn’t her fault that her body didn’t cooperate, and in a perfect world she wouldn’t be held accountable for something out of her control. But the nest was far from perfect, and although she was sad to leave, she’d also been mentally preparing for the day for years.
Her parents had always held out hope that she’d suddenly change into a bird. Every time the alpha called the nest to shift and take flight, Ehrin faced their disappointment. Well, she’d been equally disappointed in them, too, although she’d never shared that with anyone. She’d long dreamed that they would tell her they’d leave with her and start a new nest as a family, where shifting didn’t matter at all. As much as she loved her parents, they were all in when it came to the nest, and she was the oddball for not being able to conform to their standards.
Glancing at the clock, she saw that time was dwindling, so she headed down to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. Her parents were sitting at the table, looking like a picture of an old-fashioned family breakfast – her father with his cup of coffee and newspaper, her mother fussing over the platters of food and wearing a ruffled apron. The only thing missing was Ehrin, but somehow she’d never really fit in with that picture. She wanted to be a mother, but she didn’t see herself as a housewife. She wanted to find a guy to marry who didn’t mind sharing the housework and child-rearing duties so she could keep making clothing.
She’d never met a guy like that, though. Hawks, in general, were uber-traditional when it came to male and female roles. Males worked outside the house, females handled the house and children. Period.
