Marking Melody

by R. E. Butler

  Micah opened his mouth, and Tristan put a restraining hand on him, shaking his head. “I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass, Melody. The truth is that we have no idea what it will be like for you in King. I want to believe that you will be welcomed because you’re so clearly different, but you have to understand that our people have lived with females who behave nothing like you, and it will be hard to gain their trust.”

  “I wish,” she said, and then she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together.

  “Wish what?” he prompted when she didn’t speak for a long moment.

  She smiled sadly. “I was going to say that I wish I’d never been drugged and kidnapped by the females and had just been able to go straight to King, but then I realized that if that had happened, I might never have met you.”

  Tristan felt his heart swell. “That would be bad?”

  She nodded, sniffling, and leaned into him. “I feel safe with you guys. Besides my dad, no one has ever made me feel safe before.”

  Tristan placed his hands on her hips, and Micah stepped close to her back, rubbing his hand up and down her spine. She turned her head and looked at Micah who smiled. “We’ve always cared that our family was safe and happy, Melody, but we never cared so much about one person in particular, the way that we do about you.”

  She inhaled and exhaled softly, cuddling closer to Tristan. He looked at Micah and although he smiled, Tristan could see the worry in his whiskey-colored eyes. No matter what they thought they knew about the caring, forgiving nature of the lions, they hadn’t been back to King in many months, and he had no idea what things were like there. They talked to their dad and uncle every week, so they had some idea of how life was, but their dad had a habit of protecting them from unpleasant information, and it was possible that everything wasn’t as rosy in King as their dad had assured them it was.

  Tristan knew that they needed more than a few days to figure everything out. He kissed the top of Melody’s hand and pulled his cell from his pocket. Flipping through the contact list, he called his boss, Rita, who he knew was already at the store for the six a.m. opening.

  “Hello, Tristan,” Rita said. She and her husband, Gino, had opened the hardware store twenty-three years ago. She was a sweet, friendly woman and very understanding about were-animals, since Gino, who had since passed away, had been a werewolf.

  “Good morning, Rita. Micah and I are going to be out of town for the next two weeks. I’m sorry for the short notice, but it’s a family emergency. I understand if you want to let us go and hire replacements.”

  There was a short pause, and then she said, “Of course I’m not firing you two. You’re the best workers I’ve ever had. I hope that your father and uncle are well?”

  “They’re okay, but it’s complicated.”

  “Oh, sure, I understand. Family can be complicated. You both have vacation time coming to you, so don’t worry about your jobs. They will be here when you get back. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”

  He ended the call. He felt Melody looking up at him, and he smiled down at her. “Family?” she asked.

  His breath caught in his throat for a moment, but staring into the beautiful blue eyes of his mate made everything inside him feel right. “You’re our family, Melody. Not because you’re part of the pride, not because you’re a lion, but because we feel connected to you.”

  Her mouth opened and she pulled in a trembling breath. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, but they weren’t tears of anger or grief or worry; they were happy. “I feel like you’re my family, too.”

  He growled lightly in his chest and she smiled. He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. It was a soft, tentative kiss, but it made his ears buzz and his cat yowl in his mind. He’d never had a better kiss.

  Releasing his hold on her, he opened the truck door and said, “We should get going. We’ll be in King this afternoon, and we’ll go straight to the gas station to see your uncles.”

  “I’m still nervous about it,” she admitted.

  He was a bit nervous, too, but he had a feeling that her uncles had been waiting to hear from her and would welcome her with open arms.

  Micah got into the truck and shut the door. As Tristan walked around to the driver’s side, he dialed his own number and changed his outgoing message in case anyone in the pride called him.

  “If this is the pride calling, we’ve taken Melody because she’s innocent and she’s ours. If that means that you never want us to come back to the boarding house, then we’ll abide by your wishes. Micah and I are disappointed that it had to come to this. We thought we were members of the pride and equal to the other adults, but we were reduced to behaving like thieves in order to free a female who did nothing to deserve your contempt.”

  He wanted to believe that once the Ashland Pride realized that she had been telling the truth and was not like the females in any way, they would welcome them home with open arms, but he wasn’t sure that would happen. He climbed into the truck and turned on the engine, smiling when Melody leaned against him and rubbed her cheek on his shoulder.

  They hadn’t been on the road a half hour when Micah’s phone buzzed and he glanced at the screen and answered it. Chase, one of the pride members and a male close in age to him and Micah, was calling. Micah told Chase that they were taking Melody to her uncles in King and would be gone for two weeks. Mountain lions had excellent hearing abilities, so although Tristan wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, he heard the entire conversation. Chase wasn’t calling to talk them out of their decision, but checking up on them because he cared.

  Micah ended the call after thanking Chase for being their friend and tossed his cell into the glove box.

  “Are you giving up your pride because of me?” Melody asked.

  Tristan didn’t like the worry in her voice, but he refused to lie to her. He reached for her hand and squeezed it, glancing at her. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth.”

  She squeezed his hand in return. “When I escaped from the females, I wanted to make my own pride, one where the females stay with their mates and make families.”

  “Do you think there are other females like you?” Micah asked. Tristan had been wondering the same thing.

  “Some of the females didn’t seem so intent on destroying things in Ashland, but they were all pretty serious about wanting the males back with them. They all definitely hate Callie, because she was the one who made the males realize that they could have truemates.”

  Callie was a werewolf, and she had met and mated Ethan and Eryx who were part of the pride in King. When Ethan and Eryx left King to move to Ashland, the pride in King basically fell apart. Their family joined them in Ashland, and the females in King became very hostile. Two of the females were killed when they attacked the human girlfriend of one of the males, who happened to be a federal marshal. When the females died, the rest of the females scattered. Although the males believed that they were all in Canada, no one knew for sure where or if they had all entirely left or not. Although there were none in King, that didn’t mean they had gone far.

  Tristan said, “I find it hard to believe that your uncles won’t want to see you, Melody. But the rest of the pride in King? I have no idea. And it really doesn’t matter anyway. You’re ours and that means that where you go, we go, and vice versa. If we have to start our own pride with just us, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’m yours?” There was wonder in her voice, but also a little bit of humor.

  Tristan’s eyes widened and he realized he’d said what had been on the tip of his tongue since he tried to protect her from James and John back at the boarding house.

  He looked down at her for a moment and saw she was smiling. “Mine and Micah’s.”

  Micah said, “We won’t rush you. We know what our cats are feeling and what we feel in our hearts. We believe that mountain lions were meant to have truemates and it doesn’t really matter to us what you shift into, just that you’re our
s.”

  “A girl likes to be asked, you know.” She laughed lightly.

  Tristan grinned, and the tight squeezing sensation around his heart at the thought of her rejection, eased quickly. “We promise to ask you properly when I’m not barreling down the highway at seventy miles an hour.”

  By the time they stopped at the next rest area several hours later, Tristan felt as though he had known Melody his entire life. She’d been extremely candid about her life with her dad and her year of captivity with the females. The rest area was not a travelers’ plaza like the previous one, containing only a large building with bathrooms and a small covered patio with vending machines. They purchased sodas and snacks and sat at a picnic table.

  As she chewed on a piece of beef jerky, Melody opened her pack and pulled out an expensive-looking camera. She fiddled with it, explaining that she’d always loved photography and her dad had bought the camera for her sixteenth birthday. She had taken photography courses at a community college while she was in high school and had gone on to major in it after she graduated.

  She smiled so broadly that Tristan was captivated. “I used to drive my friends nuts. Wherever we went, I was always lugging my camera along and posing them. I was elected the class historian as a freshman, and the teachers said it was the best, most detailed slideshow they’d ever seen. My dad was so proud of me. The house was filled with photographs that I’d taken. I was just starting to get my photography business off the ground thanks to a wedding and two births in the wolf pack in town, and then my dad died.” She turned the camera around and showed them the screen. Tristan had never met her father, but he could tell that her uncles Jackson and Holden looked just like him.

  Tristan and Micah looked at the small screen together. Tristan pressed the button to advance the images stored on the camera and found picture after picture of her dad, people she said were her friends, and scenery from Bent Creek.

  She gasped and picked up her pack, digging around inside.

  “What’s wrong?” Tristan asked.

  “I just realized I totally forgot to call Scarlett and let her know what happened. I got so caught up in everything that I blanked on calling her.” She pulled a cell from her pack and then said, “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Gee Melody, if you have a phone why didn’t you call for help so you could escape from the females?’”

  Tristan chuckled. She did a pretty good imitation of him.

  “I wasn’t going to ask that.”

  She rolled her eyes with a smile. “It’s okay. We’re still getting to know each other. Hell, we haven’t even been together twenty-four hours yet, so it’s okay to ask me questions. I won’t get mad because it’s you guys. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.”

  The open line of communication between them really pleased Tristan.

  She pulled a receipt from the pack. Tristan knew before he looked at the date on the receipt that she had bought the phone very recently. He appreciated her desire to show them that she was being honest. She said, “When I woke up after the females drugged me, I discovered that they’d destroyed my cell. I tried to escape, but they disabled my car. The computers in the house that had Internet access were password protected, and there were no landline phones. I would have called for help if I could have. I would have left before now if I could have. Just before I got to Ashland, I bought a pre-paid, no contract cell phone. I used the map and white pages app to figure out where the boarding house was so I could warn the pride.

  “All my stuff is in storage in Bent Creek, where I’m from. I was lucky that the females never saw my camera as a threat and let me keep it.”

  She told them that she kept her bag packed in the closet of the room where she was locked in each night, and when she finally saw an opportunity to leave while everyone was distracted, she ran as fast and as far as she could.

  Micah put a hand on her shoulder. “It freaks me out that you were running in your shifted form for so long. You could have been trapped or killed or hit by a car.”

  Tristan nodded. “I’m glad you made it safely.”

  “You guys protected me from that bear who kicked me. It was the last thing I remember before I passed out. Did I say thank you?”

  Tristan nodded. “You did. I wish we could have stopped him from hurting you.”

  Micah looked at his watch and said, “We should get on the road. We’ve still got a few hours before we reach King.”

  She agreed to call her friend in the truck, and then stopped Micah as he stood. “Wait. Before we get back in the truck, I wanted to ask you both about…us.”

  Tristan’s heart actually jumped into his throat. He and Micah both turned to face her at the same time.

  She opened her mouth and then closed it, her brows furrowing.

  Micah took her hand and said, “This is new to us, too, Melody. Before we saw you, we didn’t believe that male and female lions could even be mates, because it’s never happened before.”

  Tristan nodded and took her hand, feeling his cat prance in his mind at the jolt of electricity that raced through him whenever he touched her.

  “I like when you touch me,” she said softly, and then she blushed scarlet and laughed. “Wow, my mouth needs a time delay.”

  He and Micah laughed. Tristan brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed the top. “We want you to be our mate, Melody. Micah and I want to share you, marry you, make a family and a home with you. You’ve been through a lot recently, and we don’t want to rush you into anything, so we’ll take our time. And you’re right, that we haven’t known each other for very long, but I can’t deny what I feel when I look at you and touch you. I never dreamed I would find my mate with a lioness or share her with my brother, but there is no doubt in my mind that you’re mine and I’m yours.”

  Micah nodded. “I feel the same way, Melody. And whatever happens in King or Ashland, the only thing that really matters to us is that we’re your mates and we want you to be safe and happy.” Micah told her about the males in the pride who had found shared mates, and their belief that all males were meant to share a female.

  She squeezed their hands. “It never even occurred to me that it might be strange to be mated to both of you, but it just feels so right.”

  Tristan agreed. Every moment since they had freed her from the storage room felt right.

  Micah said, “We’ll take things slowly and get to know each other.”

  “Will we tell people we’re mates?”

  “It would be our honor,” Tristan said and Micah echoed the sentiment.

  They stood, tossed their trash, and got into the truck. When Tristan reached for the gearshift, Melody said, “Wait!”

  “What’s wrong?” Micah asked.

  “Nothing, I just forgot to kiss you guys.” She smiled broadly and reached for Micah. She kissed him and then turned to Tristan, cupped his face, and kissed him. It was a simple kiss, even better than the first one they had shared. And that made sense, because the woman kissing him was his mate.

  Chapter 3

  Melody kissed Tristan and Micah, grinning at their sweet, silly faces as they looked both addled and turned on. As they left the rest area, she dug her phone out of her pack. It had been a year, but she still remembered Scarlett’s number and dialed it.

  While the phone rang, she gave Micah her camera again so he could look at the pictures. She was glad that the females hadn’t destroyed her camera.

  “Hello?” Scarlett answered on the third ring.

  Just the sound of her voice made tears well up in Melody’s eyes. She could hardly speak, but she managed to squeak out, “It’s me.”

  There was a long pause and then Scarlett shouted, “Me?! Are you fucking kidding me? Where the hell have you been? Do you know how long I’ve been worrying about you?” She inhaled a deep breath. “Wait, are you okay?”

  Melody laughed and wiped a few tears from her cheeks. “Yeah, I am now.”

  “Good. Then I’m going to kick your ass u
p and down the state.”

  “I’m not in Ohio. I’m on my way to my uncles’ house in Pennsylvania.”

  She gave her best friend a quick overview of the past year of her life, from the females drugging her to her escape to meeting her mates.

  Scarlett, who was a chatterbox of the highest order, went quiet again. When she spoke after a long moment, her voice was filled with anger. “Your own people tied you up after you helped them? What the hell?”

  Melody appreciated her friend’s fierceness. She could picture her, eyes flashing to the amber color of her wolf and her lips peeled back in an angry snarl. “Scarlett, calm down. I’m okay now. You remember what my dad told us about how the female lions usually act? How I’m unique because I was never around them?”

  “Yeah.” Some of the anger was leaking away from Scarlett’s voice.

  “The lions in Ashland assumed I was like the females and were just protecting their family and pride. I don’t hold it against them. Besides, if I hadn’t shown up, I wouldn’t have found my mates, so I’m not upset anymore.”

  “You said mates. Do you mean two?”

  “Yep.” Melody peeked at Micah who was looking at pictures on her camera but smiling.

  “Lucky bitch,” Scarlett chuckled. She sighed deeply. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “Me, too.”

  Scarlett asked when Melody would be coming to get her things, and she told her that she didn’t know. Before she left for King, she had listed her father’s home for sale and packed the majority of her possessions into a storage unit. It had occurred to her at the time that showing up with a truckload of belongings like she expected to be taken in by her uncles was probably not a good idea, so she’d packed only a few things in her travel bags, expecting to come back to Bent Creek for her stuff.

  Her father’s home had sold three months after she left, and because Melody had disappeared, the estate lawyer handled the transaction and put the money from the sale into an account for Melody.

  She promised to come to Bent Creek with her mates as soon as possible and ended the call with her best friend.