by Mary Calmes
“Right. Right.” He bobbed his head rapidly. “I know. Right.” He darted his gaze around the room. “We should, uh…. We should—”
My parents would sleep in their RV. We didn’t need to do anything to the bedroom. “How about a shower?” I suggested.
“Yes. A shower would be good.” He stepped in the opposite direction from the bathroom.
Chuckling, I got out of bed, walked over to Vy, grasped his shoulders, and pointed him the right way. “Shower,” I reminded him.
With another nod, he walked forward.
I admired his ass for a few seconds and then followed him. Surely we had time for a joint shower and a little fun before my parents got there. And if we were late, well, at least we’d be loose-limbed and relaxed.
“DID YOU know that Vy’s parents have lived in this town their entire lives?” my mother asked as she scooped up the carrots and celery she’d just sliced and dropped them into the Crock-Pot.
“Uh-huh.” I handed her the barley.
“Both of them,” she clarified and added mushrooms and onions. “His mother and his father. That’s what his mother told me at lunch.”
“I know. How much garlic do you want me to mince?”
“Three cloves.”
“Okay.” I started peeling the garlic.
“And his grandparents were born here and lived here their whole lives too.” She glanced around. “Where are the beans?”
“I rinsed them, drained them, and left them in the colander.” I pointed to the sink as I spoke. “This was his grandparents’ house.” I waved my hand around the space. “I mean, Vy made it his own, and he added on that cozy bedroom, but originally it was theirs.”
“It is a lovely home,” she conceded, pouring the beans into the pot, followed by stewed tomatoes. “But I can’t imagine living in one place all the time. Never seeing new areas or meeting new people.” She shook her head and wiped her hands on a towel. “It’d be so constricting. After you’ve seen everything and met everyone, what would you do? How would you continue to grow?”
“Here’s the garlic.” I handed her the cutting board. “I’ll get the vegetable stock. And I think this—”
I’d turned around, heading for the pantry cabinet, when I saw Vy in the doorway, looking nervous. My poor bird hadn’t been able to relax completely around my parents. It was sweet how important it was to him to make a good impression, but I hated seeming him uptight.
“Hey.” I walked over, pulled him into a hug, and kissed the mark I kept refreshing on his neck. “Did you have fun showing my dad your jobsite?” I grinned. “Did he try to talk you into letting him operate heavy equipment?”
“I drove the forklift,” my father said proudly as he walked in. “Vy taught me how to lift a pallet.”
“A pallet of what?”
He furrowed his brow. “It was a pallet.”
“Just a pallet,” Vy said, and then he whispered to me, “my crew unloaded the bricks yesterday.”
I chuckled. “Sounds like fun, Dad. Mom and I are finishing up dinner, and then we can go for a walk.” I put my arm around Vy’s shoulders and looked back and forth between my parents. “Wait until you guys see the trees out here. Some of them are almost as tall as the redwoods in California. And after dinner, we can go outside and look at the stars. The sky is so clear.”
“We can head out now,” my mom said. “I put in the seasoning, and it’ll take a few hours to cook.”
My father agreed, so I took Vy’s hand in mine, and we went for a walk in the neighborhood with my parents. It was nice being with them again, catching up, and especially having them get to know Vy. Even if he was being uncharacteristically quiet.
Fifteen
Vy
WYATT MCCARRON was scowling at me, and I knew why: because he thought I was a crazy person. There we were, supposedly peers of a sort—him an alpha, me a kuar. He led wolves, I led hawks, but technically we were the same. The only difference at that point was that I had bigger problems than he did. How I had lived through the past week was completely beyond me. I was coming apart at the seams, and apparently it showed.
“So let me see if I understand,” he said, his voice exuding a smoky quality I would have found sexy before I had met Robert Cimino on the street two months ago. “Your mate is leaving, and you don’t know whether you should go or stay.”
Hearing it out loud made it so much worse.
I wanted to talk to Lou or Carlo or my parents, but none of my friends or family would have an unbiased point of view. They would all want me to stay, and holding everything Robert’s parents had said bottled up for over a week had finally taken its toll. I was supposed to have gone to work, like normal, like nothing was wrong, like my entire world wasn’t falling apart but instead, I had driven out to White Springs. The plan had been for me to meet Wyatt McCarron that evening, with Robert and Lou, to iron out a new agreement between the ket and the pack, but I showed up alone eight hours early.
Wyatt McCarron was in my debt for saving his son, so he invited me into the sprawling log cabin he called home. The man lived there with only his two children, and I didn’t pry as to why that was. It was not my place to delve, and, really, I had other things on my mind, as no doubt became obvious to him when I lost it and yelled for a full five minutes without breathing.
“Aleknos?”
Odd to be called by my last name, but apparently surnames were big with the wolves. “It’s just Vy,” I reminded him, since I’d asked him to use it during our last meeting.
He slid a tumbler of whiskey over to me, and I threw back the shot he’d poured.
“I don’t approve of drinking before lunch in normal situations, but I thought you were going to hyperventilate a bit ago.”
“I still might,” I mumbled, feeling light-headed all of a sudden.
“You’d best lie down,” he suggested, trying to make it not sound like an order but failing. He was very much an alpha, and so even niceties came out as directives.
I was going to pass out, so I dropped to his floor, spread-eagle.
He cleared his throat as he hovered over me, my eyes level with the worn cowboy boots he wore.
“Please tell your pack again,” I said, after taking a shuddering breath, “that I’m sorry blood was spil—”
“Every member of my pack understands about the law,” Wyatt said, cutting me off. “And just like in yours, the first is to follow without question the word of your alpha. What your mate was forced to do to protect you and his pack is regrettable but absolutely understandable in the eyes of the law.”
“Ket,” I corrected automatically, without even thinking.
“Pack, ket, whatever,” he said, dismissing my need for proper wording. “The point is, if someone had ever tried to attack my mate, I would have done the same. He’s welcome on my land and in my home—”
“He’s a bear, you know.”
His smile made the laugh lines around his eyes crinkle. “I heard that from my son. My daughter would love to meet him.”
“Really?” I asked, because I found that surprising, seeing as how my ket had been in an uproar when Robert first came to town.
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“Thirteen,” he said with a smile. “She takes after her mama, fortunately for her.”
I was close to asking for details, but restrained myself. “Maybe at some point soon we could have the ket and the pack meet?”
He nodded. “I would like that. We’ve all been too insular for far too long.”
I agreed, and as I drove home an hour later, I felt good about that part of my day, if nothing else. But it also cemented one thing in my mind: I would need to be the one leading the ket, so I could continue working with Wyatt McCarron for peace. I couldn’t leave my ket, no matter what Robert wanted, and I hoped he would still want to have a long-distance relationship with me as much as I wanted one with him.
But what if he didn’t?
After l
iving with Robert for a month, I was accustomed to his appetites in all things, and imagining him going without sex was not even possible. Of course, if I had to go without him, I’d die, considering how often I attacked my mate, but there was no way he could go for a month without being in bed with someone. On the other hand, Robert, up until the time he’d met me, had had absolute control over his beast, which was a lot harder to control than a rampant sex drive, so—
My phone ringing scared the hell out of me, and I almost ran off the road. Coming to a stop on the side of the highway, I gripped the steering wheel tight and leaned my forehead against it, trying to breathe around the lump in my throat.
Moments later, when my phone rang a second time, I picked it up to look at the display.
“Yes?” I asked Carlo, who was on the other end.
“Where are you? I came by to bring you lunch and tell you some news, but you’re not here.”
I coughed. “I had to talk to Wyatt McCarron today.”
“Well, yeah. You, me, Robert, and Lou are going at—”
“No, I’m on my way back,” I said quickly. “It’s done. This way we don’t have to move the union from tonight.”
“Why couldn’t we have our ket meeting tomorrow, like you planned?”
“Because it was supposed to be tonight. We always have them the first Monday of every new month, and I don’t want everything to start changing!”
“Vy, are you—”
“Why does anything have to change? I like things how they are. I like tradition. I like seeing the same people all the time. Why does that make me unadventurous and boring? Just because I don’t want to go traipsing all over the country?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s wrong with having a home and staying there?” I yelled. “And why, just because you’re only in one place, would that give you a narrow worldview? Why would you have to expand your mind constantly if you have everything you could possibly need right in front of you?”
“I don’t know?” he offered, like he wasn’t sure what I needed to hear.
“There’s nothing wrong with roots.”
“True,” he agreed, coughing. “So I’ll tell Lou you want the ket assembled tonight.”
“Yeah,” I barked irritably. “That’s what I just said.”
“Okay,” he placated me.
“What was your news?”
“It’ll keep; I think your mental breakdown is more urgent.”
“No. Tell me now.”
“Well, I wanted to tell you in person but—” Deep breath. “Lou and I are expecting.”
The words sank into my heart. “Oh,” I huffed out, tears welling in my eyes. “Carlo… I’m so happy for you guys.”
“You know we’ve been trying for a couple of years, but it was never the right time with her job and mine and with her role as ahir and—”
“But I’ve finally got my act together so you guys can stop babysitting me and be parents.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“I couldn’t be happier for you,” I assured him. “Truly.”
“Someday it will be you and Robert, Vy. You guys could have a surrogate or an adoption, and that would be so—”
“Sure,” I said simply, not wanting to talk about the future when my present was in ruins.
“Vy?”
“I’m thrilled for you guys, Carlo.”
“We both want to see you, so can you hurry up and get back?”
“Yeah,” I said, sniffling, my voice clogged. “I’ll be there soon.”
I really needed to get back on the road, but I was shaking too hard to drive.
IT WAS still early when I got back, and the first place I went was the sheriff’s station to see Lou. She wasn’t there, and Zach told me she was out on a domestic call.
“Where?”
After hearing she was at the Derby residence, I drove there next. I was reaching for the gate of the white picket fence when a very large, muscular man, easily as tall as Robert, was hurled out the front door. He lay sprawled, facedown on the front lawn, and Lou dropped down on top of him with zip ties for securing his wrists and ankles. She was fast, and even though the obscenities flowed, Lou would not be prodded to violence.
I watched her walk back from the front yard, up the steps, and move to stand at the door with a woman holding a hand to her cheek, a little girl clutching at her leg. This was obviously the husband, and he was headed to jail. It would have never happened in my ket; it was the kuar’s place to deal with any form of abuse between spouses, but I was not at the home of one of my birds. Lou nodded, patted the woman’s shoulder, and then turned toward me as the door closed behind her. The guy was trying to roll over, but when Lou reached him and he was looking at her shiny black boots, he stopped moving.
“Vy?” She was surprised.
“Hi,” I called out, smiling as I opened the front gate and crossed the yard to her. “Carlo told me the good news.”
“Well, shit,” she groused, as I reached her. “I wanted to be the one.”
I tackle-hugged her, and she laughed as I squeezed her before suddenly easing me out to arm’s length.
“What?”
Her nose scrunched up. “You smell like… something… not Robert, and definitely not you. What is that?”
“I smell bad?”
“No, not bad,” she said thoughtfully. “But like—Oh.”
I made a noise of disgust as I bent toward the man on the ground.
“You smell like a—”
“Do you need help with your prisoner, Deputy?”
She growled at me, leaning down as well.
“You two ain’t moving me.” Mr. Derby belched as we both took hold of his shoulder and ankle. “You’re both too… ow!”
“Shut up,” Lou snapped as we easily lifted him and carried him to the side of her cruiser.
We dropped him harder than necessary after Lou got the door open. Once he was tossed into the backseat, yelling about police brutality and whoever the fuck I was, Lou slammed the door and rounded on me.
“What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me,” she barked. “Why the hell do you smell like wolf?”
“Probably ’cause I hugged Wyatt McCarron when I left his house.”
“Robert allowed that?”
I bristled. “Robert doesn’t say what I can and cannot do,” I said sternly. “I’m not some little simpering mate that he—”
“He’s your mate. Period,” she said, voice rising. “And as such, it’s his right to step between you and anyone else, and I seriously doubt you hugging that gorgeous wolf would be—”
“I’m sorry?”
“What?”
I snorted out a laugh, feeling better than I had all day. “Gorgeous wolf?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You certainly did say that.”
“No. He was very nice the night he came and picked up his son, and how he was with Chris and his parents was really kind. He didn’t give a crap that his son was gay, and I was very touched by all of that.”
“Yeah. Apparently you were very touched in your lady parts.”
“Vy! I’m a mated hawk.”
“Which apparently doesn’t mean rugged-looking older men don’t turn your key,” I teased. “I would remind you that you’re going to be a mother.”
“Because of you,” she said suddenly, tears welling up fast as she lunged at me.
“God,” I grumbled as she squeezed me. “Nine months of you all hormonal?”
She didn’t take the bait, instead continuing to hug me. “I have to take this asshole to jail; I finally got his wife to press charges.”
“Good,” I said as we unclenched. “How were you planning to get him in the car if I hadn’t shown up?”
“Normally I have to wait for Zach,” she answered, “so it’s good you were here.”
“Did Carlo tell you to convene the ket for our regular meeting?”
; “He did, but we could have skipped it. Everyone thought you were going out to a meeting with me and Carlo and Robert to see the alpha.”
“I’d rather have things be as normal as possible,” I said. I leaned in to kiss her cheek, which I never did, and then I turned to walk to my truck.
“Wait.” She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you at work, and why did you take a trip to see the alpha alone?”
I shrugged.
“Tell me.”
I cleared my throat. “Robert’s mother told me how much I’m going to love being on the road with him because new experiences are the spice of life. She said she hopes I keep a journal.”
“Uh-huh.” Lou scowled at me.
Robert’s mother had been gushing about the stars in my backyard and saying how stunning it was, but that it wasn’t any more beautiful than the next town we would find ourselves in. “There’s always a new adventure,” she told me, and she was certain Robert and I would make a fine home together on the road.
“I see,” Lou said softly. “So you’re worried about leaving the ket and your folks and me and Carlo and everyone.”
I nodded.
She shook her head. “Any kind of leader doesn’t go on the road, Vy. Everyone knows that.”
“She didn’t.”
“She’s not a shifter, so she has no idea. Cut her some slack.”
“Cut her slack? She’s the one who practically told me I could either go on the road with Robert or say good-bye to my mate.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“Lou!”
“Oh, for the love of God, Vy, we both know Robert wouldn’t stay away forever, and I’m not convinced he would even go away in the first place.”
“Lou––”
“But if he does, if he has to for work, he’ll come back no matter how many times he has to leave. He’d just be going on trips.”
“But how often?”
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “That’s something for you guys to discuss, but it’s certainly not something to freak out about. He’s your mate. He’ll never run away.”
