The Happily Ever After Mating Agency Presents Snövarg Island (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour ManLove)

by Jane Wallace-Knight

  Tyler smiled back at her. “Why would she assume she would be the one they asked?”

  “Because she’s old blood. Her family have been here as long as ours. Since like the time of Vikings, according to legend anyway,” Lisa said. “Just ignore her. Her and her friends will hate you no matter what you do, so don’t even worry about it.”

  “Why didn’t Eric ask her then?” Tyler wondered aloud. “I mean, I know he’s gay, but if it was just a case of sleeping with her once to mate her, then surely he could have managed it. And you don’t need to have sex nowadays to get knocked up.”

  Lisa screwed up her face at the mention of her brother having sex. “Deep down Eric is pretty old fashioned. He could never take a mate he didn’t think he could love.”

  Her words went through Tyler, making him feel a little dizzy suddenly. Maybe it was just the champagne finally hitting him. She had to be mistaken. There was no way Eric had chosen him because he thought the three of them could actually love each other. Tyler had never heard of a three-person mating to begin with, but then he hadn’t dealt with any shifters other than bunnies. All shifters were very possessive over their mates. It was just how they were. He found it hard to understand how three shifters could ever be in a real relationship with each other, but couldn’t deny the appeal of the idea. As he and Lisa made their way back into the kitchen, Tyler found himself wondering if the threesome in the old book had loved each other.

  * * * *

  It had gotten dark and Tyler’s arm was starting to feel a little tired from shaking so many hands. He managed to slip away a little after nine, once some of the people had started to leave, and went outside for some air. It was cold and crisp outside, and the branches of the aspens that were dotted around the house swayed gently in the breeze. It was truly a beautiful place and as he walked along the side of the house, getting away from all the people that were still standing under the gazebo talking, Tyler tried to picture what his life there would be like. He glanced over at the children who were playing some sort of game of chase around the poles that were holding the tent up. Some of the parents were yelling at them to stop before they brought the canopy down on top of them all. He smiled at the picture they made and tried to imagine his own children, some with dark, wavy hair, and some with straight blond hair, as they joined in and ran around with the others. The thought was at the same time too precious and too terrifying for him to dwell on. He walked right around to the back of the house and leaned against the brickwork, startling when he realized that he wasn’t alone.

  “Inga, what are you doing out here?” Tyler asked as he spotted the little girl standing outside by herself.

  Inga looked over at him with a sad face before looking back out to the cliff in front of them. Tyler followed her gaze to the wooden deck that sat on the edge of the cliff. It had an outdoor fireplace and an assortment of chairs and loungers. There was also a railing all the way around it. It looked like a good place to cookout once the weather was warmer. Looking past all of that Tyler saw what Inga was looking at. There was another little girl out there, standing on the decking, just staring out at the dark ocean.

  “Is that your sister?” he asked.

  Inga nodded. “She just goes and stands there. She cries sometimes.”

  Tyler felt his heart break for both the little girls. He put his hand on Inga’s back and felt how chilled she was. “Inga, I want you to go back inside now, okay? I’ll go talk to Katja and bring her back in.”

  Inga looked torn for a moment, but finally nodded her head before running back into the house. It wasn’t a long walk to the cliff but it was long enough for Tyler to start shivering.

  “Katja,” he called out to her, not wanting to startle her.

  The little girl spun around quickly, clearly surprised despite Tyler’s best efforts.

  Katja said something back to him in Swedish that Tyler didn’t understand.

  “Um, I’m sorry but I don’t speak Swedish,” he told her. “I do plan on learning though. It isn’t fair that everyone here has to keep talking to me in English.”

  Katja’s face softened a little and she wrapped her arms around herself before taking several steps closer to him.

  “You’re Tyler,” she said. “My uncle’s new mate.”

  Tyler smiled at her and nodded. “I see my reputation precedes me.”

  She smirked at him and shrugged a dainty shoulder. She was wearing a dress very similar to her little sister’s, only she had an emerald-green shrug on and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun. “We live on an island where hardly anything ever happens. If we had a local newspaper you would have probably been on the front page.”

  Tyler grinned at her. He liked her already. She was quite snarky for a nine-year-old. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

  Katja looked down at the wooden decking before turning to look back at the sea over her shoulder. The sky was a dark blue, dotted with stars. The sea looked like black tar beneath it.

  “It’s too noisy in there,” she finally said. “There’s too many people.”

  “Yeah, well if anyone can understand that it’s me,” Tyler assured her as he stepped onto the deck and stood beside her. “Usually when I get this much attention it’s because I’ve done something bad and everyone is mad at me.”

  She frowned and looked up at him. “What kind of bad thing?”

  He smiled to himself at how eager she sounded to hear about it. “Well my parents wanted me to mate with another bunny shifter, but I didn’t really get along with all the other bunnies in my warren.”

  “Are they angry that you’re mating with two wolves?” she asked as she turned to give him all of her attention.

  “They are, but I think they’re just glad I’m out of their hair to be honest. I played a few pranks on the men they wanted me to mate with. I figured that if they didn’t have a sense of humor then I didn’t want to be tied to them for the rest of my life.”

  Katja smiled at that and looked at him eagerly. “What kind of pranks did you play on them?”

  Tyler had always liked kids. They were unspoiled by the world, like no one had gotten around to breaking their spirits yet, or filling their heads with hate. They didn’t filter themselves or pretend to be someone they weren’t. The fact that he had managed to make Katja smile when before she had seemed so sad was a definite win as far as he was concerned.

  “Well, one time there was a guy who was kind of boring and a little stuck up, so I snuck into his bedroom and cut a hole in his mattress, stuck some dead fish in there, and sewed it back up. I turned it over so he wouldn’t see it and wouldn’t know where the bad smell was coming from. At least not for a while.”

  Katja laughed and leaned into him a little. “That’s awesome.”

  “Yeah? My family didn’t think so,” Tyler told her. The two of them stood there in silence for a while, both of them looking out to sea. Finally he noticed that Katja was looking sad again and he found himself reaching out to take her hand.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, though it was clear that she wasn’t okay. “People look at me different now. Like every time they see me they’re thinking about what happened to my papa and grandpa.”

  Tyler gave her hand a gentle squeeze and kneeled down beside her. “Katja, I learned the hard way that you can’t care about what other people are thinking. The truth is that they’re probably concerned about you because they care about you.”

  “It’s like they’re all wondering why I’m alive when their alpha isn’t,” she told him quietly.

  Tyler felt his throat close up as a swell of emotion threatened to choke him. “Oh, honey, no one is thinking that. Eric told me what happened.”

  “Did he tell you that my papa and grandpa died trying to save me?” she asked, her face no longer sad but angry. “They shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Look, I’m not a dad, not yet at least, but I’m sure that when I have kids that I’ll do anything in the world to keep them
safe, even if it means risking my own life,” Tyler told her. “They clearly loved you very much and the last thing they ever did in this world was an act of love for you.”

  Katja closed her eyes and screwed up her face in an attempt to stop the tears but it was futile. Tyler felt his own eyes get moist as he watched the little girl sob. He pulled her into a hug and stayed there holding her for what felt like a long time. After a while he began to feel as though someone was watching him and he looked behind him to see that Eric and Finn had come out of the house, no doubt in search of them.

  Katja, noticing their presence, too, pulled back and wiped at her eyes.

  “Kat,” Eric called to her before jogging over and picking the girl up as though she were still a toddler. Katja clung to him and buried her face in his neck as another wave of tears hit her. Feeling Finn’s hand rubbing soothing circles on his back, Tyler turned and leaned into him.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you but I would really like some more cake,” Tyler said after a few minutes of tense silence.

  It had the intended reaction and they all smiled, even Katja.

  “What do you think, huh?” Eric asked his niece. “You think you can manage a piece of cake before bed?”

  She nodded before wriggling to get down, no doubt not wanting everyone inside the party to see her being held like a child.

  Chapter Six

  While Eric and Lisa got the girls ready for bed and read them bedtime stories, Finn, Elsa, and Tyler started tidying up a little downstairs. Upon coming back inside Eric had very loudly thanked everyone for coming, his tone letting them all know that the party was over. It still surprised Finn how sexy he found it when Eric got all alpha on people.

  “I think that’s enough for tonight,” Elsa said after a while. They had put some dishes in the dishwasher and put the leftover food into containers. “I’m going up to bed. Good night, boys.”

  “Good night,” they said in unison. Finn watched his grandmother go and waited until he and Tyler were alone.

  “You were good with Kat tonight,” Finn told him. He smiled at the smaller man, a feeling of pride growing inside him. They hadn’t really known what to expect with Tyler, but already he had shown he was good with the children, something that was more important to Eric and Finn than anything else a future mate might possess.

  Tyler shrugged and continued putting away the clean glasses. “They’re both great kids. I feel so bad for Katja. All the guilt she has isn’t good for anyone, let alone someone her age.”

  Finn nodded sadly. It was something they had been dealing with for years now.

  “She didn’t talk for days after we found her. She was just sitting there in a life raft, shivering, practically catatonic,” Finn said as he leaned against the counter beside Tyler. Tyler stopped what he was doing and gave Finn all of his attention. “She only started talking again because Inga was crying. She got up, went over to her, picked her up, and started singing the lullaby their papa used to sing to them. Their mother shut herself away from them all for a month before she died. She hardly ate, hardly moved. I think maybe that’s a big part of why Kat feels so much guilt. It’s like she thinks her mother blamed her.”

  “It must have been hard on Eric,” Tyler said, his face full of concern. Finn found himself smiling a little at the compassion his mate-to-be clearly had. Tyler had only been there a few hours and already Finn felt certain he was a good choice for them.

  “Yeah, I mean, not only did he lose his father and brother, but he also became an alpha and a parent to two grieving little girls,” Finn said as he remembered the night it all went down. “We were on the boat that went out looking for them. We found their boat, well, what was left of it, and then Katja a few hours later.”

  “That’s awful,” Tyler said. “What about your parents? I mean, I’ve met your grandma, but not your mom or dad.”

  Finn sighed. It wasn’t something he talked about much but he guessed that as Tyler was going to be his mate he should open up to him. “My parents weren’t mated. My mother met my father on the mainland and after a one-night stand got pregnant. She was living with my grandma still at the time, she was pretty young, and then when I was a few months old she left. She kind of comes back now and then, or calls or sends a postcard, but she’s not really my mom. Elsa is the one who raised me.”

  “What about your dad?” Tyler asked, his eyes filled with sympathy. “Have you ever met him?”

  Finn looked down at the ground as he tried to picture the face of a near stranger. “A couple of times. He’s mated now to someone in his own pack. They’ve got a couple of kids last I heard. I haven’t seen him since I was twelve.”

  Finn looked up as he felt a hand stroke down his arm, clearly wanting to comfort him. He looked into Tyler’s eyes and smiled gently. “Your warren was filled with fools for not realizing how great you are.”

  Tyler’s pale cheeks flushed adorably at the compliment and the younger man quickly looked down at the floor uncomfortably. Finn had always been one to give into urges. He wasn’t one to deny himself when he really wanted something. It was a good thing, too, because sixteen-year-old Eric never would have made the first move.

  He took hold of Tyler’s chin and slowly lifted the man’s face before leaning in slowly and kissing him sweetly on his full lips. There was no heat in it, only the soft comfort of lips touching. When he pulled back he saw that Tyler’s eyes were still closed and that the younger man was practically swaying into him.

  With a pleased smirk on his face, Finn reached down and took Tyler’s hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Tyler simply nodded dumbly and allowed himself to be led upstairs.

  When they got to the bedroom it was to the always delightful sight of Eric undressing for bed. The alpha wolf had his shirt off, revealing his muscular, broad frame. His pants were undone and he was in the process of pushing them down over his thick legs when they walked in.

  Hearing Tyler’s breath hitch behind him, Finn turned and looked at the bunny with a knowing smirk. After all these years Eric still had the same effect on Finn.

  “Hi,” Eric said to them, seemingly unsure of what to do or say. He stood awkwardly in his underwear, having kicked his pants off. With a quick chuckle over the fact that his lover could be shy when he had a body that a Greek god would be jealous of, Finn started unbuttoning his own shirt, his eyes fixed on Eric’s.

  While Tyler hung back in the doorway, Finn stalked forward so that he was right between the two men. He undressed slowly, like he was putting on a show for them. His own body wasn’t quite as impressive as Eric’s but he was still pretty ripped.

  Eric seemed to be apprehensive about the three of them being together, and Finn was sure that Tyler was feeling much the same way. His partner tended to overthink things, whereas Finn was more of a jump-in-with-both-feet kind of guy.

  “Finn,” Eric said as he stepped forward and put his hand on Finn’s now bare shoulder. “Maybe we should talk before we go any further. I don’t want Tyler feeling pressured at all.”

  Finn looked back over at Tyler and saw that the young man’s pupils were dilated and that he seemed to have trouble taking his eyes off both of their bodies. His mouth was partially open and his breathing was heavier.

  Finn smirked and cocked his head. “I think he’s on board. Right, Tyler?”

  Being addressed seemed to shake Tyler out of his stupor and he quickly nodded his head. “Yep, very much on board. I am so completely on board. I would board the hell out of you both.”

  Finn snorted and Eric smiled at Tyler’s reaction. Finn held his hand out to the bunny shifter and waited until Tyler came over to join them in the middle of the room.

  “I’ve already kissed him,” Finn confessed to Eric. “I think you should have a turn.”

  Eric held Tyler’s heated gaze and put his hand out to tenderly stroke the side of Tyler’s face. Pulling him in closer, Eric leaned down and gently brushed their noses together before taking Tyl
er’s mouth in a kiss that Finn knew from experience would have Tyler feeling it right down to his toes. Finn watched them and waited for a feeling of jealousy to start creeping its way in. They had never so much as kissed anyone other than each other before. Finn heard Tyler moan into the kiss as Eric’s large arms went around him, Eric’s big hand sliding down his back to cup his ass. Finn didn’t feel anything other than turned the fuck on. He felt his dick swell at the picture they made before him and he hurried to take off the rest of his clothes. Once he was naked he was content to stand back and watch them kiss for a while as he lazily stroked his own dick. Eric was kissing Tyler with such a passion that the smaller man was practically mewling into Eric’s mouth. Finn had been on the receiving end of kisses like that many a time. He knew the effect they had on a man.

  When their kiss finally broke, Tyler kept his eyes closed, completely lost in the sensation. Coming up behind Tyler, Finn bent his head and kissed the side of his neck while reaching around to take Eric’s hand.

  “We should probably set some ground rules,” Finn said as he straightened up, his free arm going around to hug Tyler close to his body. “We never needed to use condoms before so we don’t have any, and it’s probably best we don’t risk getting you pregnant before the mating.”

  Eric whined low in his throat at the mention of getting Tyler pregnant. The noise seemed to surprise Tyler, who pushed himself further back into Finn’s embrace, making him chuckle. He knew how Eric had been lately at the thought of breeding his mate.

  Eric looked embarrassed by his reaction and looked down at the ground. “Sorry. The mating urge has been getting stronger lately, and the urge to breed someone even worse.”

  Finn felt Tyler shiver against him. The way they were stood had Finn’s hardened cock pushed up against the small of Tyler’s back. He decided it was beyond time Tyler was naked, too. He let go of Eric’s hand so that he could slide them both over the front of Tyler’s shirt before slowly opening it, revealing his smooth, lithe but toned, chest to Eric’s eager eyes. Tyler was very pale and his skin was silky to the touch.