by Diane Leyne
After the horrible confrontation with Rose and Joseph, they’d waited for their daughter to apologize and come crawling back asking for forgiveness, but she didn’t. And then they got the call from the hospital telling them that she’d died in childbirth. They were devastated. They were more devastated when they realized that although she’d died in childbirth, the child, Oliver, had survived. They cried for the lost years with their grandson, for the price he’d paid for their harsh, unthinking words to their daughter so many years ago, and they cried for the price they and their family had paid, not knowing Oliver and not being there when Rose had died.
Genie and Jody cried for their sister and her son. Everyone cried. It didn’t make up for the last thirty-nine years, but they were healing tears.
There was a certain awkwardness and discomfort, but the first steps were made toward becoming a family again.
The last stop had been to visit Oliver’s parents. No matter why or how his original family had been divided, the fact was that the McKays were his parents and he was not going to hurt them, no matter what.
They welcomed Penelope into their home, and she met his sister Sue and her husband and two kids. They showed their class by being truly happy for Oliver having found his real family. They had fear in their eyes. They didn’t want to lose their son, but there was happiness, too. He deserved to know where he came from and to know that he hadn’t been abandoned.
Over dinner, they delicately probed Penelope and Oliver’s arrangement and were thrilled to find out that they were involved and even happier to find that she came from a shape-shifting clan. They’d always respected Oliver’s desire not to become wolf, and they always would, but the fact that she knew about such things made life easier. After all, how does one stop a rambunctious four-year-old from shifting and chasing his little sister?
In return, Penelope told them how she found Jose. She told them everything, including John and Jack, Kent and Tucker, and how they’d always been destined to be Mates but that the ceremony had always failed. They’d tried everything, followed every bit of advice, but they’d tried constantly for a year. The men had stopped trying, but she, Penelope, had tracked down every lead.
After dinner, Kelly McKay asked her to sit on the veranda and chat while Oliver spent some time with his father after Sue and her husband and young children headed home.
“So you solved Oliver’s mystery but not your own,” Kelly McKay observed as she sipped a cup of hot tea.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the Alpha is always the oldest of the clan. We thought that meant Kent, but what if it means Oliver?”
“But he’s just a cousin.”
“And my Mates are cousins, two sets of twins. But I’ve known since I was old enough to understand such things that they were my Mates. We all belonged together. We just couldn’t figure out how to make it happen, and that’s been driving us apart. Without the mating ceremony, I can’t handle the needs of four wolves. And then there’s your son, who I also love. He makes five. Thank goodness you are part of the wolf community or I don’t know how I’d ever explain to a mother that I’m involved with four men besides her son.”
“Not four men, dear. Four wolves.”
“We were missing one vital piece of information and so was everyone who tried to help us, and that was your son.”
‘“He’s not even a wolf-dog shifter. He’s just our Oliver. We asked him when he turned eighteen, but he said that he wasn’t born to be a wolf and being human was good enough for him”
“That’s because he didn’t know that maybe he was born to be a wolf. His biological mother was born into a shifter community and both her sisters married shifters. His biological father was born into a shifter community. He chose not to become wolf, but all of his family are shifters.
“And even Oliver’s adopted family are shifters. I’d say that not only was he born to be a shifter, but he now has the choice of which Pack he chooses to be a part of. He’s got three that love him. I’d say he has a very hard choice in front of him, but a wonderful one, too. He has three families who love him and want to give him everything to choose from, if he decides he wants this gift.”
“And he has you.”
“That’s a harder question to answer. I love you son with all my heart, but I also love his cousins, and I can’t be with them all unless we are Mated. It’s killing me. I’m exhausted all the time. I could be with your son and we’d be happy, but there would always be the specter of his cousins hanging over us.
“I don’t know what to do. I think that if Oliver becomes Wolf, he would be the Alpha, but maybe not. And he had a chance to make that decision before and turned it down, and I don’t want to force him into doing something like that, which is such a huge decision and cannot be undone. And what if he did the change and then he ended up not being the Alpha after all?”
“Penelope, stop overthinking this. You have done all you can do. You reunited Oliver with his birth father and healed the rift with his birth mother’s family. Now it is up to him.
“Now, tell me about your four young men back home. You say they are all firefighters?”
* * * *
Oliver watched as Penelope disappeared through airport security, waiting and waving until she’d disappeared from sight. Then he’d turned to the couple he’d called mom and dad all of his life and smiled. Together they walked out of the terminal building to go back to the home he’d grown up in.
The past week had been overwhelming. Hell, the past months. He’d met the woman of his dreams, but she was practically Mated to four wolves. He’d almost died in a fire. He’d found his long lost father and reconciled with him and his family. And he’d found his mother’s family, including four cousins with whom he shared the same love.
And he’d found that all three of his families were wolf-dog-shifters. Other than his birth father and himself, all the men in his family were wolves.
In the end, it hadn’t been a hard decision to become wolf. He’d said no at eighteen because as an adoptee, he had associated the wolf-dog pack with his adoptive parents and deep down didn’t think he had a right to be a wolf, but now that he knew that he had wolf-shifter on both sides, his qualms about making the change were gone.
He had spent almost forty years of his life as a human amongst wolves, and now he was ready to spend the rest of his life as a wolf amongst humans.
There were only two questions that he had to answer, and he hoped his parents could help him sort things out. His primary concern was Penelope. She was meant to be his Mate. He knew it in his bones. And he knew that she loved his cousins and wanted to Mate with them. She also loved him, and he loved her too much to make her choose between him and his cousins. They were wolf, so after the Mating, she would more than be able to handle the five of them.
However, there was another wrinkle. Which Pack Alpha should he let make him wolf? And would that impact his ability to Mate Penelope? If he chose the Harmony Pack, clearly, he would be able to Mate with her. But if he chose the Harmony Pack, would he hurt his parents? Since women generally joined their Alpha’s Pack, if he joined the Oregon Pack to please his folks, he probably wouldn’t be able to Mate with a woman of the Harmony Pack. However, where would that leave his cousins and Penelope’s other prospective mates? And then there was the Cabo Pack.
As his father drove back to their place, he still had no idea what he was going to do. He looked over at his mother, who smiled and gave him a quick hug. Pulling out his phone, he opened a very handy app. Oliver realized that the full moon was only seven days away. If he didn’t make up his mind and set things in motion quickly, then they would all have to wait another month. He couldn’t do that to Penelope and his cousins. He would give himself a deadline and stick with it.
He began to text.
Chapter Thirteen
Penelope stepped into the clearing. Jack, John, Kent, and Tucker knelt in a circle. Four sets of eyes
turned to her in enquiry.
Penelope shook her head and took her place in the circle. “He texted me and told me the time and date to be here but nothing else.”
“Us, too,” said Tucker.
Penelope nodded as she looked around the circle at the men she’d loved for so long. It felt strange to be here clothed, but she didn’t feel right being naked while they waited. There would be time enough for that later, regardless of what happened. Obviously the men felt the same as they were all wearing shorts as they waited silently.
Either tonight would be the happiest night of her life or the saddest. She hadn’t seen Oliver since she’d left him in Oregon, and she hadn’t heard from him except for that one e-mail, and that was a week ago. It had been hell for her not to be able to discuss what might or might not happen with her men, but she also understood Oliver’s request and honored it.
However, he didn’t say she couldn’t discuss it with her girlfriends, and she was sure the men had discussed it with each other. She sighed heavily, looking at her men and wishing they were in bed now, making love. By the bulges in the crotches of their pants, they felt the same, but none of them said anything. They just waited.
Penelope took the opportunity to drink in the sight. The men were all shirtless. Their bulging muscles, honed from years of firefighting and staying fit for the job, gleamed in the moonlight.
Tonight might be bittersweet. If Oliver chose not to become wolf, then she and her men knew that this would probably be their last night together. It was the site of their first attempted mating, and it would be the site of their last time together. They couldn’t go on without being Mated. It was just too hard on Penelope physically and on all of them emotionally.
They’d discussed it many times. They all so desperately wanted to be together, needed to be together, as a Mated Pack. They’d tried to make it work without that happening, but every time they saw a pack of Mated shifters, something died a bit inside each of them. And every time someone asked them why they hadn’t Mated yet and gotten on with the business of making pups, Penelope found herself fighting back tears.
Maybe if Oliver chose not to make the change, she’d leave Harmony. She didn’t know if she could stay here and see the men every day and be reminded of what almost was. It would be too painful.
She reached out and clasped hands with Tucker on her right and John on her left. The men then also joined hands, completing the circle. She could almost think she felt their hearts beating in synch. She looked around the circle and saw identical expressions on their faces, one she was sure her own mirrored. Hope. Fear. Despair. Desire.
And then she saw her four men turn and look to her left. She was of wolf blood, so she had better hearing than the average person, but nowhere near as sensitive as her men’s. But a few seconds later, she could hear something coming, too. Someone or something was coming toward them, quickly through the brush, and then standing on the raised stone at the west end of the clearing was the biggest wolf-dog she’d ever seen.
It was tall and lean with a light reddish-brown fur, and one they’d never met before.
“Oliver!” Penelope gasped out his name. It was him. It was him, and he was Wolf!
He climbed down gracefully and then circled Penelope and the men, still in his wolf form. Once, twice, three times, and then with a graceful leap, he entered the circle. And then in a flash, he was Oliver again, standing proudly in the center, surveying his pack, every inch the Alpha come to claim his own, his right.
Penelope looked up in awe. It was the tall, lean, and redheaded Oliver they knew before, but more as well. He strode up to them, stopping in front of her. He was magnificently and unashamedly naked and erect. Penelope could feel it right down to her pussy. He was an Alpha. Her Alpha! And if they tried the Mating Ceremony again, this time with Oliver, she knew in her bones that it would work.
Now she understood what Sam and Lena had tried to tell her. You couldn’t force these things. They’d tried all combinations and orders and positions and nothing happened. But kneeling here, looking at Oliver, all of her anxiety was gone.
But then she had a sudden thought. What about her men? Could they accept Oliver as their Alpha?
Penelope looked to her left and to her right, but in the dim light of the moon, she couldn’t read their expressions.
Oliver turned to Penelope. He leaned down and took her hand, urging her to her feet. He stood so close that his erect cock brushed against her bare stomach. Leaning down, he kissed her slowly and thoroughly. And then he stepped back. Penelope waited with bated breath. They’d talked about the possibility of Oliver being their Alpha, but now that he was, would they accept him?
She watched as he turned toward his cousins, and one by one they removed their shorts, folding them neatly and placing them to the side before shifting to their wolf-dog forms. Then they walked over and lay at his feet, baring their soft underbellies to Oliver to show they accepted him as their Alpha. As each lay in turn, Oliver crouched and laid his hand on their heads, accepting their submission.
Penelope let out the breath she wasn’t even aware she was holding. They’d offered Oliver their submission. He just had to accept it and they could do the ceremony.
Anxiously she turned to him. He nodded, and then the cousins were men again and they were surrounding him, clapping him on the back and shaking his hand. Penelope stood to one side. It was a touching moment, if a little strange because they were all naked and aroused.
And then they turned to her, and it changed from strange to arousing. These five men horny men were looking at her as if they were starving and she was a five-course dinner. She could feel her clit pulse with need as the cream started flowing freely, soaking her panties. If she’d been naked, it would have been running down her legs, there was so much of it.
Suddenly a shiver ran down her back. She looked over at her men. Judging by their expressions, their wolf-sharp sense of smell had picked up her arousal. They were all so still that it unnerved her as they stared at her, the only thing moving a single hand as they all stroked their erections and waited for their Alpha to speak.
* * * *
Oliver smiled with relief as the others clapped him on the back, welcoming him as a part of their pack after having acknowledged him as their Alpha. He’d been assured that they’d accept him and that he would be their Alpha, but he had his doubts. They weren’t brothers. Even if their mothers were identical triplets, which made them closer than cousins, it didn’t mean that they shared a pack. Maybe he was destined to be a solo wolf? His sister had married and Mated with a single wolf.
And if he wanted to permanently Mate with Penelope, he knew he had to accept these other men, his cousins, as his pack. From the Mating forward, they would be under his protection and they would forever share Penelope.
He looked to Penelope and took her hand. Then he turned to the men and smiled and waited. It was Kent, the next eldest after Oliver, who picked up the subtle scent first.
“Harmony! You joined the Harmony Pack!”
Oliver smiled and nodded, hugging Penelope tight. “I did.”
“Does that mean you’ve forgiven your grandparents for what they did to your mother?” she asked tentatively.
“Fair question, and the answer is that I’m on my way to doing it, but that’s not why I joined the Harmony Pack. The Cabo pack is my father’s family. I already have strong feelings for him and Abuelita Marta, and I will love getting to know my sisters, but they aren’t my future. Even my parents and the Oregon pack. They are also my past. Only the Harmony Pack represents my future, and it’s not because of my mother’s relatives.
“It is because of the five people here with me. If I had become Wolf with another pack, maybe I still could have been an Alpha and Mated with Penelope if she still wanted me, but that would mean leaving behind my four brothers, because I realized that in my heart, that’s what you are becoming. We are closer blood kin than cousins, but there’s not a real word for it. But w
hat really ties us together as brothers is our love for this woman. I would only be half a man or half a wolf without her, but how could I even think of trying to take her away from others who felt the same way and whom she also loved?
“I joined the Harmony Pack so we could have a future together. That is, if you all wish it, too.”
Oliver looked from Kent to Tucker to Jack to John. As a man, or wolf, they met his gaze and nodded. Oliver felt a surge of happiness pour through him, and he had to follow his newfound wolf instincts.
Shifting to his wolf form, he howled his happiness. And soon he heard the sounds of his brother-wolves joining in. Looking around, they’d shifted, too, and the five of them lifted their faces to the moon and howled with joy.
It stopped abruptly when Oliver realized that there was another sound, the sound of weeping. Abruptly he shifted back and moved to Penelope, who was now sitting on the raised rock, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed as if her heart was breaking.
“What’s wrong, Penelope? Did I make a mistake? You don’t want us all? You don’t want me. Please, don’t. I’ll leave. Tell Lena for me. Tell her I won’t be opening the clinic after all. I’ll go now, and you won’t ever have to see me again.”
He watched anxiously as she wiped her tears and waited for her to speak and send him away. But what she said truly floored him.
“Oh my god. You are such a dumbass! These are tears of joy!”
“They are?”
“Pen, how can you speak to our Alpha like that? He ought to spank your bottom until it’s red!” John declared.
“And I’ll hold you down and watch!” offered Jack.
“What’s up with you guys all of a sudden? You were never this, uh, assertive before.”
“Maybe it’s because we really, truly have our Alpha.” Kent’s tone was calm. “I never felt right in the role, but I was the oldest, or so we thought, and I did my best. I’m more than happy to relinquish the mantle to Oliver here.
