Read The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats Online
Authors: R.E. Butler
The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats
The Wolf’s Mate
Book 3: Callie & The Cats
by R.E. Butler
Copyright 2012 R.E. Butler
Smashwords Edition
The Wolf’s Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats
Copyright © 2012 by R.E. Butler
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook 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
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purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.
**Cover Design by Kameko Gay. Photographers:
Stocktrek (image “The Moon”) and Photo 24 (image “Snowy
Road”)**
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 over the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
Because sometimes starting over turns out to be the
best thing you could do for your life...Callie is for those of you
that have left and found happiness. For K.G., my incredibly
talented and faithful reader, friend, and designer. For B.L., my
personal cheerleader and email addiction enabler. For my husband,
because I love him dearly. For my new author pals, especially
Karen, thanks for the inspiration and advice. And for my fans that
have asked about Callie, I hope you like the wolf she became.
Table of Contents
From the Author and Other
Works
Sneak Peak of The Wolf's Mate Book
4: Michael & Shyne
Chapter 1
**Ethan**
“I’ll have a cub with you Ethan, but that’s
as far as things will go,” Melania sniffed at him. She was lovely,
like any other mountain lion female; all sharp angles and thin,
willowy frame like a supermodel. But she was also cold and detached
like any other mountain lion female. In their culture, it was the
males that craved affection, that wanted marriage and children and
a home, not the females. The females would bear a cub with a male
whether they liked him or not, drop the baby off on the doorstep
and not look at it again. It was an oddly upside down world
compared to what he knew of human relationships, where the females
were often the ones that wanted for love and affection and the
males didn’t have the desire for it. But lions couldn’t be with
human females, it was too risky. The lion females, while they
didn’t want to be in relationships with the males, held their kind
in esteem and would drive any human females far away through fear
and intimidation, and violence if necessary.
“I don’t just want to have a child with you,
Melania.” He sighed, running his hand through his hair. He needed a
haircut. It was starting to dust the collar of his shirt and his
father frowned on that on the force.
Her golden eyes showed no emotion at all as
she looked at him once more, “It is what it is, Ethan. You ask too
much. You want to fuck, that’s fine. You want a cub, that’s fine,
too. But a relationship, a marriage? It’s impossible. You’re worse
than your father. You and that brother of yours.”
With a rustle of the pages, Melania Travers
turned back to her magazine at the desk in the police station,
where he, his two brothers, two uncles, and his father made up the
entire police force of King, Pennsylvania. The tiny town, barely on
any map, was nestled in the mountains in the northern part of the
state, and currently covered in snow that wouldn’t disappear until
April. It was the perfect place in his mind, except for the one
glaring missing piece of his life: a wife.
He turned and walked out of the station into
the blistering wind of the beginning of January. Today he’d woken
up with an itch he couldn’t scratch, an aching in his bones as if
he were on the verge of something big. Over breakfast this morning,
in the small home he shared with his twin Eryx and their younger
brother Alek, Eryx had shared that he too was feeling strange, as
if a change were coming.
“Weather,” snorted Alek. Younger than his
brothers by only two years, 24 year old Alek wasn’t the romantic
that his older brothers were, but he still wanted more than what
they’d been relegated to with the mountain lion females. Even if he
refused to admit it.
Eryx leaned over the table and stuck his
finger in his brother’s bowl of Fruit Loops and Alek growled and
jerked his bowl away. “Don’t dismiss our feelings, little
brother.”
“Fine, fine. You guys sit around and pant
after the females and try to get them to see the light for a
relationship. I’m sure it will work as well for you as it did for
Dad.”
Before they could make him sorry for bringing
up their father’s situation, he scooted out of the kitchen with his
bowl of cereal. “He’s not wrong.” Ethan scrubbed his fingers along
his unshaven jaw. “Why were our kind made like this? Why do we
yearn for relationships and enduring love and our females want
nothing of the sort?”
“I ask myself that question at least as much
as you do. We are made as we are, brother. I don’t relish leading
the life our father does, but we seem to have no choice.”
“There is a choice.” Ethan leaned on the back
two legs of the kitchen chair and drummed his fingers on the
table.
Eryx stood up and refilled his travel mug. As
usual, his twin was ready to go well before their 8 a.m. start
time. “Push the thought from your mind, brother. Would you really
try to seduce a human woman and watch her be driven away by the
females? No human woman can stand up to the females and they know
it. Cody had that human for a while and she nearly lost her eye
because of it. I wish it could be different.” He walked out of the
kitchen and left Ethan to brood, “So do I.”
** Eryx **
Eryx didn’t doubt that Ethan wanted a wife
and family as much as he did, but it wouldn’t ever happen. Their
own mother didn’t treat them any differently than a stranger on the
street. There were times when he would sit in the cruiser in the
park during the summer and watch the human mothers with their
children, and wish he’d had something like that for a childhood.
His father had given them everything he could in the way of nurture
and affection, but it was one-sided. A true family, he was certain,
had two parents. One picking up the slack for the other, one strong
where the other lacked. A partnership. But more than his own
wanting for female affection as a child, was that he wished he
wasn’t dooming any of his future children to the same motherless
fate.
When he walked into the station, his face
must have been a picture because his father asked him immediately
what was wrong. The strong hand on his shoulder was as reassuring
as anything else he’d ever known and it was enough to make his eyes
sting. Of the two, Ethan was the most tenderhearted, but Eryx was
not without his emotions. He just needed an outlet. He needed a
woman that would let him show her love and affection, a woman that
would
want
his attention and comfort.
“You look for all the world like someone
tried to poke your eye out. What’s wrong, son?”
He steeled himself thoroughly before meeting
his father’s intense gaze. “I just, I just wish it were different,
Dad.”
The soft smile, the gentle crinkle at the
corner of his eyes, nearly undid him, but it was the words that cut
deeply and, unfortunately, gave him hope. “Maybe it will be
different for the two of you. I feel a change coming, deep down in
the marrow of my bones.”
Fantastic. Now all three of them were feeling
twitchy, but as far as the eye could see, there were only human
females that were too fragile and weak to be with them or to stand
up to the mountain lion females, and the mountain lion females
themselves who were unwilling to be more than incubators and booty
calls.
As quickly as he could, he clocked in and
went out on foot patrol. He needed the icy wind in his lungs to
chase away the sorrow that had lodged there. The dull ache in his
chest refused to go away, however, and eventually he made two
circuits around their small downtown before heading to the cruiser
to make the rounds.
It would be a long, cruel winter.
Chapter 2
**Callie**
“I have to go, Cades, I can’t be the reason
things are so strained between you and Jason.” Callie looked over
the two large suitcases open on her bed and then went into the
closet to make sure she had gotten everything. Her best friend,
alpha werewolf of their pack, strike that – her old pack – sat on
her bed with tears in her eyes and pouted.
Last week, her husband Jason, alpha male of
the Tressel pack, thought that Cadence was being too lax with the
females of the pack and demanded that she put them all in their
place with some pack discipline. The long and short of it was that
she harangued the females within an inch of their lives until they
were all but pissing themselves in fear, but kept Callie out of it,
and Jason said that made Cadence weak.
He wanted her to include Callie in the
discipline, bring her under her thumb of guidance and rule, and she
didn’t want to. Cadence was the most fiercely protective friend a
gal could hope for. She was a ruthless alpha female even though she
was only a half wolf and couldn’t shift. When Jason insisted she
bring Callie to heel, she refused. And for the first time, Jason
made her submit to him in public and it had broken Callie's heart.
And strained Cadence and Jason's relationship severely.
Callie knew he felt bad. She knew that he
hated that he’d had to do that, but he couldn’t appear weak to his
own people by letting his mate get away with disobeying a direct
order. What he didn’t know, but Callie did, was that Cadence was
pregnant, very early, just two weeks, but still...it would hurt him
to know he’d potentially put her and the baby in harm’s way by
putting her down. You didn’t bring a wolf to heel with a gentle
nudge, you did it by force and she had growled and fought him the
whole time. Callie wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy, let alone
her best friend.
“I’ve already cut ties with the pack. Jason
gave me his blessing. It has to be this way, Cades. You can’t defy
your husband for my sake and I have to, damn it, I have to stand on
my own two feet for a change.” Her whole life she never stood
alone. As a child, Cadence was her defender and stood up for Callie
at every turn. Even when Callie joined the pack at 16 when she came
into her abilities, then she was under the leadership of the alpha,
which at the time had been Jason’s father Peter until he was
injured in a hunting accident and Jason took over. From that point
on, Jason had abused his position of power in the pack to get her
to spy on her best friend for him, because he had a wicked case of
unrequited love for her. And whenever she tried to go against him,
he asserted his power over her and brought her to her knees. Now
was as good a time as any to start fresh. Callie left in honor; she
was rogue but she could join another pack if she wanted to. At the
moment, all she wanted to do was get to know herself all over again
and find the bitchy werewolf that she believed was hovering
somewhere under the surface. She was secretly terrified to walk
away from everything, but this wasn’t home for her anymore.
She put on her brave face as she finished
zipping up the two suitcases and rechecked the bathroom to make
sure she had everything. Her whole life was in two suitcases and a
box in her car. Her apartment was a studio and came furnished. The
only things that were hers were her clothes and toiletries and a
handful of DVDs, books, and knickknacks. Everything was paid for
and turned off. All her mail was stopped. She quit her job as a
teller at the credit union. Calliope Marie Hunter, low ranked
werewolf of the Tressel Pack, was no more. Callie Hunter, rogue
wolf, was ready for anything.