by R. E. Butler
Every Sunset Forever
Hyena Heat Three
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2014 R. E. Butler
Every Sunset Forever (Hyena Heat Three)
By R. E .Butler
License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
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.
* * * * *
I’d like to thank Alexis Arendt at Word Vagabond for editing the story.
Many thanks to Mandy Pederick at The Picky Bitch for her editing help and her many, many amazing brain-storming emails that helped shape the story.
Much love and hugs to my sisterfriend, Joyce. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dedication to my stories. You’re the best.
To my Aunt B. L. and my husband, B. B., I love you both.
Wild Shifter Babes Street Team — rock on ladies! You’re awesome!!
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Contact the Author
Also From R. E. Butler
Coming Soon
Prologue
*Twenty-three years earlier*
Crown, Tennessee
“What do you mean I can’t have her?” Davion Mercer asked. He snarled angrily at the man who stood before him.
“She wants more money,” he said with a shrug.
Davion took a threatening step towards him. At first, the man’s eyes widened, but then he smirked. “If you kill me, you’ll never find her or the kid. She’s already left the state, and she’s waiting for me to call.”
Davion swore under his breath. “Damn greedy whore! Why can’t she just be happy with what I gave her?” He paced back and forth in the park between two benches, his mind racing. “I need that child; you must get her back for me. Whatever it takes. I. Need. Her.”
The man shrank back as fury filled Davion’s words. “Can’t I get you another kid? What’s so special about this one, anyway?”
Davion growled low in his throat and forced himself not to wring his neck. “She is the mate I have chosen for my sons. There is no other for them.” Davion was all his sons had left. His own mate and two brothers had been killed in an accident, leaving him with three young boys who needed a family. Finding a mate for them, and allowing them to grow up nurturing each other, was just what they needed to get over their loss. The little girl was perfect. Just two years old; young enough to forget her real family eventually and take on Davion’s family as her own. She had caramel-colored eyes and a birthmark in the shape of a heart on her hip. He had decided to name her Dawn, because she was the start of a new life for them.
Davion had seen her with her hyena family when he’d taken his sons to Ocean City, Maryland, to get away from the bad memories at home. They’d seen the little girl with her hyena family, and he’d known that she was meant to belong to his sons. It hadn’t taken much to find someone willing to kidnap the child; the man before him had made the arrangements, and after the little girl was taken from her bed, she’d been given to a prostitute to watch until final payment arrangements were made.
Davion’s mistake, he realized, was hiring someone and not doing the job himself.
“She likes the kid,” the man said. They’d never exchanged names, only burner cell phone numbers. “She wants more money to give her back because she likes her.”
Davion’s vision hazed red, and he squeezed his hands together. “Get her back! I don’t care what it takes or how much she wants, get me the girl!”
“Of course, of course,” the man answered. “I’ll be in touch.”
He clutched the blanket his son had given him for her, a yellow one with an elephant embroidered on it. “This is for her. Be sure to give it to her so she can have it when she meets my sons. Don’t delay; I need her.”
Davion watched him slink off into the shadows with the blanket, blending into the darkness like it was part of him. That little girl was his sons’ mate, and he’d do anything to get her back for them. Instead of going home to meet her mates, she was in the arms of a prostitute. He’d get her back and raise her in the memory of his own mate. His sons would be her greatest protectors, and together they would carry on the memory of the ones they had lost. Only when his sons were fully mated to the girl would he know that he had done what his brothers and mate wanted: provided a happy future for the boys, when their own happiness had been stolen that one night.
* * * * *
Two years later
Beyton, New Jersey
The knock on the front door startled Mack Callahan from his current hobby of sitting in the dark and brooding over everything that had gone wrong in his life. As pack alpha, he was used to people visiting frequently, but most pack members knocked and then opened the door. Whoever had knocked this time hadn’t opened the door but kept knocking impatiently.
Easing himself from the recliner, he trudged to the door and opened it, flipping on the front porch light to illuminate whoever had decided to knock on the door after ten p.m. To his surprise, two police officers stood on the porch, their hands clasped in front of them. Just behind them stood a middle-aged woman wearing a business suit, with a small child next to her.
One of the police officers said, “Are you Mack Callahan?”
“Yes,” Mack answered, wariness settling on him like a wet blanket.
“Sir, this child is a shifter. She was found abandoned in a crack house in Atlantic City.”
The officers separated further, and the woman pushed the little girl forward, keeping a grip on her shoulder as if she might bolt. She did look a bit like a doe caught in headlights, looking for the fastest way out.
“I see. And why did you bring her here?”
The woman said, “I’m Nan Fitzgibbons, from the Department of Children and Family Services, Shifter Division. As the nearest alpha, this child falls under your responsibility.”
Mack’s mouth fell open. “You’re not serious? I lost my mate, and I have no other children. There’s no way in hell that I would take a stray just because she happens to be a shifter and I happen to be the closest alpha. That’s a human rule, not my rule.”
Fitzgibbons narrowed her eyes. “I don’t give a damn what you think about the rules. She needs to be around other shifters, and there’s no one else. So suck it up. We have no place to keep her while we find a couple willing to adopt a shifter. Surely you have some females in your pack who would be willing to take the child in. Whoever she comes to stay with, have them call me at this number, and I’ll enter them in the database.” She shoved a business card into Mack�
��s hand and then nudged the girl towards him.
Mack looked down at the girl, and she lifted her head very slowly and met his gaze. Her eyes were caramel-colored, her long, dark hair a tangled mess, her skin dirty and bruised. She’d clearly been mistreated. He knew that if his mate, Elise, were still alive, she would have snatched the girl off the porch the moment the door opened without any question. Even though he worried he was making a mistake, he would try to find the girl a home. For Elise.
“Fine. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know. She won’t speak. She’s been in DCFS care for three days now. She was found in a known crack house, sitting next to the body of a dead woman. The woman was a prostitute who died of an overdose. Police canvassed the area, and no one had seen the girl before or knew where she came from or how she ended up in the building with the woman. When the police found her, we picked her up and took her to an emergency shelter. They tried to bathe her, but she became difficult. So we’ve done the best we could to clean her up. We’ve put the girl’s picture up on the national database. The doctor who checked her out at the hospital estimated her age to be about two, and the initial blood test revealed her to be a shifter but didn’t specify which type. If someone comes forward to claim the girl, we’ll be in contact.”
The girl stared at him steadily but said nothing. She wore an adult sized t-shirt that said DCFS on the front and fell past her knees. In her arms was a small, filthy yellow blanket with an elephant embroidered on it.
“Are we good here, Mr. Callahan?” the first policeman asked.
“Yeah,” he answered gruffly, wishing — not for the first time — that Elise was still alive.
The group turned from the porch, and Mack held his hand out to the little girl. “Come on inside, Sweetling. It’s late.”
She reached up for his hand and clasped it with her tiny one, following him inside the house that he had built for his mate. Before she was killed in a hunting accident two years earlier, they’d had plans to start a family. He had been alpha of the pack in Beyton, New Jersey, for two years when he met Elise at a gathering of packs in Pennsylvania. He’d known the moment he met her that she was his truemate — the one woman meant for him and his beast. She took her place as his alpha mate, and for three years, they’d worked together at the bar that he owned. Then one full moon, they were running together, chasing squirrels and rabbits, when a gunshot echoed in the night and Elise slumped to the ground, dead. Even two years later the anguish was still as fresh as the night it had happened. He wasn’t supposed to lose her like that, so soon.
Lifting the little girl up onto the stool at the counter, he opened the refrigerator and banished his dark thoughts. Pulling out a gallon of milk, he poured a glass and slid it across the marble counter to her. After a thorough search of the fridge and cabinets, he found some cheese crackers and filled a bowl with them.
She ate silently as he told her his name, that he was the alpha wolf of the pack, and that she would be safe there with him until he figured out where she could live. She never spoke; she simply stared at him with those big caramel eyes and ate. When she was done, he put the dishes in the sink and lifted her off the stool. He moved to walk to the stairs and lead the way, but her small hand slipped inside his and gripped it tightly. He looked at the tiny hand engulfed by his and then looked at her eyes. She gazed up at him like he was the most important male in the universe. Elise had made him feel that way, as if he could do anything — not only for her but because of her. This little girl looked at him the same way. He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. They walked up the stairs together, and he took her to the bathroom. Flipping on the light, he said, “You can go to the bathroom by yourself?”
She looked up to him, blinked a few times, and then nodded. He left her to her business, waiting outside while she used the toilet. He heard a struggling sound and opened the door, finding her standing on her toes and trying to turn on the faucet. There wasn’t anything for her to stand on so she could reach, so he went down on one knee and lifted her up so she could stand on his bent knee. She turned on the water, washed her hands, and got a drink. She filled the cup a second time and handed it to him, and he stared down at the paper cup and then looked up at her expectant face. He swallowed the damn lump in his throat that kept appearing and downed the water.
“Thank you, Sweetling.”
She gave him a smile as he lifted her to the floor, and then he took her to the spare bedroom that Elise had wanted to make into a nursery. It had been a guest bedroom when she was alive, and it stood as she’d set it up with a white wooden bedroom suite and the blue star quilt her mother had made for their mating.
He placed the little girl on the bed and tucked her in, turning on a small lamp on the dresser so she wasn’t in the dark. Standing a few feet from the door, he said, “If you need me, I’m right down the hall. Do you want to tell me your name, Sweetling?”
She tilted her head to the side, looking at him curiously, but said nothing. He left the door open and walked to his own room, where he made several phone calls and then settled in for the night.
In the morning, two females from his pack who were widowed with grown children came over to get the girl cleaned up. He was worried that she would be terrified, since the case worker said she didn’t want to be bathed, but the females had no trouble with her. They dressed her in clothing they’d saved from their own children, brushing the tangles from her hair and tying it back into a braid. As she sat at the kitchen table and ate a breakfast of toast and jelly, Doreen, one of the females, said, “I think she’s closer to four than two. She doesn’t have a baby face. I can see why they’d think she was so young because she’s a tiny thing and doesn’t talk, but I’d say that she’s older than the doctor said.”
“I agree.” Wilma said. “I’d hazard a guess that the doctor didn’t really look her over all that hard or he would have noticed she was older than two. And I think she doesn’t talk because she wasn’t allowed to. I’ve read the stories about kids that grow up in horrible places like whore houses, where they have no freedom and aren’t allowed to play. I think in a safe environment, shown love, that she’ll speak when she’s ready.”
Mack had spent most of the night thinking about the little girl. He’d been hell-bent on giving her away to another pack member at the first opportunity, but he couldn’t deny that he was already growing fond of her and liked the idea of having a child in the house. It made it less lonely.
“Do you want one of us to take her, Mack?” Wilma asked.
“Not right now. Elise would want me to take care of her. As alpha, she does fall under my responsibility.”
Doreen smiled. “We’ll take turns watching her while you work at the bar. We brought over plenty of clothes for her. I put them away in the dresser. Tonight when one of us comes over, we’ll bring groceries with some things she’ll probably like. If you need anything, just call.”
“Thank you, ladies.” He walked them to the door.
The days and weeks went much the same. Every night Mack would ask her if she wanted to tell him her name, and she would only look at him and never answer. He called DCFS regularly to see if anyone had called about her, but no one ever had. He’d contacted every wolf pack on the eastern seaboard, leaving word about her. DCFS believed that because she had been found in the company of a prostitute, her real mother was most likely a prostitute as well and either dead herself or long gone. Wilma and Doreen wondered if she had been kidnapped or if her family had been killed and she’d been taken in or found by the prostitute. Mack didn’t know what to believe, and after a while, it didn’t matter. However the little girl had come into his life, he was going to care for her as long as he was able to.
It took a year, but eventually she spoke, telling him one night in the barest hint of a whispered voice that she didn’t know what her name was. His pack had easily adopted her, the women fawning over her as she thrived in a safe environment, the
men all behaving like overprotective fathers. Mack was constantly touched by their support.
The pack came together to suggest names for her. She sat on the floor of his family room while the pack called out suggestions. Eventually, she stood and walked over to him and whispered in his ear that she was hungry. Hannah, mate of his beta, Luther, said, “She always whispers. That’s what you should call her. Whisper.”
Mack liked it. The name seemed to fit the quiet little girl. “Would you like that to be your name, Sweetling? Can we call you Whisper?”
“Yes,” she whispered. The pack cheered, and several women took her into the kitchen for a snack.
He continued to work with DCFS and local law enforcement to try to find out where she came from. Secretly he wished she would stay with him forever, that she would let him adopt her and become her father, but he never spoke those words to her. It wasn’t until she was almost ten that she asked if he would be her dad, and he adopted her legally. He adopted two more young shifters who had nowhere else to go, and Whisper became the center of their lives as well.
The only snag in things came when she shifted into a hyena at age sixteen. They’d been right in believing her to be older than the two years that the DCFS claimed her to be, because it was only twelve years later that she shifted and most shifters took their beast forms sometime in their sixteenth year. While they’d used the date she was brought to him as her birthday, they now knew approximately how old she was. Being a hyena, it opened up the possibility of her finally finding where she came from.
To his surprise, she wasn’t interested in finding out about hyenas. She claimed to be a wolf at heart, even if she didn’t look like one when she shifted, and he didn’t push her. When she became an adult, he offered to help her find and contact were-hyena groups, but she refused. He was glad she felt at home in the pack and that she considered him and her adopted brothers her real family, but a part of him wondered if she’d missed out not growing up around other hyenas. As she liked to remind him, it was her life, and she could damn well never talk to another hyena if she didn’t want to. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that she’d inherited Elise’s stubbornness.
