Fourteen
Cam
The house was quiet when i stepped in. i could hear the refrigerator, followed by the fan on the furnace. downstairs, the water heater was humming through a cycle.
Other than that, there wasn’t a sound. I cocked an ear, listening, wondering if I could pick up the soft sound of breathing over the other noise.
When I couldn’t, I tiptoed through the back door, whirling around to close it as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to have this confrontation with Cal, although I knew it was coming. I would only be able to avoid it for so long.
But the longer, the better in my expert opinion. He was already pissed that I’d revealed the existence of shifters to Wyatt. He was going to be even more pissed that I’d trotted off and spent the night with Wyatt, even after Cal had done everything in his power to remove Wyatt from my presence.
I knew why he’d done it. I’d been acting like a nutcase, spouting bullshit about Wyatt not being able to leave.
Cal was a good alpha, with a good head on his shoulders.
He knew alphas lost their heads in the presence of omegas—especially omegas in heat—and he knew that was when bad things happened to omegas.
So he’d just been trying to protect Wyatt.
I bristled at the thought that my mate needed to be protected from me.
Then I gritted my teeth and dug my nails into my palm.
That was precisely the problem. Wyatt wasn’t my mate.
He was some human who had just so happened to smell like an omega, and my lizard brain had sent my alpha instincts into overdrive as a result.
Cal had every right to be pissed at me. I clearly didn’t have a handle on myself—if the incident with Bobby Lam hadn’t proven that, then this certainly did.
The house was, thankfully, deserted. I exhaled deeply, then trotted upstairs to grab a shower and a change of clothes.
Despite showering this morning at Vern’s, I could still smell Wyatt on me.
I didn’t want to take the scent of him off me, but I knew it would be better if I didn’t stink like Wyatt when Cal finally gave me my dressing down.
I was just toweling off my hair when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. My heart leapt into my throat. Maybe Wyatt and Vern had finished up early. Maybe Wyatt was coming to check on me—my shoulder still wasn’t fully healed up, although I definitely didn’t need the sling now.
I pitched the towel back into the bathroom and headed downstairs again. As I drew closer, I could hear voices.
Multiple male voices and a couple of female voices, if I wasn’t mistaken. My heart sank, and I peered out the window, confirming my suspicions.
Cal rounded the truck, hauling two big suitcases with him.
My youngest brothers, Connor and Cody, were milling about on the driveway, and there was Aunt Caroline in her pretty dress, and her wife, Aunt Karla, who was as big and muscular as Caroline was dainty.
Karla was hefting suitcases out of a small sedan—likely a rental—and Caroline was watching appreciatively.
I’d never seen whatever Aunt Caroline saw in Karla, but then, Aunt Caroline was an omega. She probably saw the same thing a lot of omegas looked for in an alpha—big and strong, a good provider.
Karla was that—as far as I knew, Aunt Caroline had never had to work a day in her life.
Now, maybe that was because of the family money Aunt Caroline had brought to the marriage, or maybe Aunt Caroline’s “hobbies” brought in more money than I knew.
She had won the blue ribbon at the county fair’s pie baking contest nearly every year since I could remember.
At any rate, Aunt Caroline and Karla had been married for ages, and their union seemed to be both as strong and full of love as it had ever been as Karla nudged Aunt Caroline’s shoulder, and the two of them turned toward the house.
And both of them spotted me in the window, their eyes widening. I winced, then slunk to the door and opened it. “Howdy,” I called.
Connor and Cody both turned to look at me. Despite being twins, it was easy to tell the two of them apart—Cody had blue eyes, while Connor joined me in the majority with the amber-tinted irises so common to our wild brethren.
Cal nearly dropped the suitcases he was carrying. “About goddamn time you dragged your sorry butt home, Cameron,” he huffed, tightening his grip on the luggage, then stalking past me. “We’re gonna have a talk, you and me.”
Connor and Cody’s faces lit up with delight. Brats, the both of them. They thought it was funny Cal was gonna give me hell.
Karla and Caroline shared a look. Caroline cleared her throat. “About that,” she said, her gaze darting to me.
I lifted a brow, then flattened myself against the door as Cal stomped back outside. “About?”
“Calvin filled us in on what was going on,” Caroline said, and Karla grinned wolfishly.
“We might have an explanation,” Karla said, clapping me on the shoulder and nearly knocking me over.
Despite both of us being alphas, despite Karla being female and me male, she had a good three inches and probably fifty pounds on me.
I was pretty sure she could bench press me for a set of a hundred without breaking a sweat.
Cal stomped up to the stoop with more luggage. “You do?” he asked, arching a brow at our aunts.
“Sure,” Karla said.
“How come you didn’t mention this before?” Cal asked, dumping the suitcases he was carrying on the foyer floor.
“We talked it over during the drive over here,” Caroline replied.
Cal folded his arms and sauntered back to the door. “Well, let’s hear it then.”
Caroline and Karla exchanged another glance. “Let’s have tea,” Caroline said, giving Cal a reproving look.
Cal blushed. “Right. Of course. Where are my manners?”
Karla stepped over the threshold, grinning. “You’d think wolves raised you,” she almost cackled.
“Dear,” Caroline chided as she followed. It was a common bit of banter—that Caroline’s brother hadn’t been civilized like coyote-folk were supposed to be, that he was more like a wild wolf.
“You ladies make yourselves comfortable in the living room,” Cal said, then headed for the kitchen. He paused. “And tell those two not to get into any mischief while the grown-ups talk.”
I glanced back to the driveway, but Cody and Connor had already booked it for the barn. “Too late,” I muttered, then closed the door.
A short while later, we were seated around the coffee table, sipping hot tea. It was too cold for iced tea or even lemonade, so hot it was.
“So,” Cal said as he brought in a plate of sweets and set it in the middle of the table. “Let’s hear this theory of yours.”
Caroline set her teacup down and cleared her throat. “We think Cam found his fated mate.”
“What?” I nearly toppled out of the chair I was sitting in.
Cal frowned, folding his arms. “Now why do you think that?”
A look passed between the two women. Caroline turned her amber gaze on me. “Cam, you said this Wyatt fellow, he’s a human?”
“Far as we know, anyway.”
“But you said you smelled him, and he smells like an omega.”
“Uh-huh.” I bobbed my head in agreement.
Caroline looked at Karla again, who smiled. Caroline steepled her fingers. “It’s rare,” she said, “but not unheard of, when shifter mates find each other—it triggers a reaction.”
Cal’s frown deepened. “What kind of reaction?”
“The omega usually goes into heat,” Karla said easily, leaning back and stretching her arms across the back of the settee she was lounging on.
My eyes must have widened. Cal looked at me. “You said it smelled like he’d gone into heat,” he said.
“Yeah, but—”
Karla’s grin got wider. “And the only one who can smell it is the omega’s fated mate.”
I was pretty sure my heart was going to give out. “Get out.”
Cal shook his head. “But Wyatt’s human. Humans don’t have fated mates.”
I bit my lip to refrain from pointing out that neither did shifters—fated mates was fairy-tale bullshit made up by older generations.
“Sure they do,” Caroline said. “They just call them soulmates.”
I almost laughed. Human soulmates were fiction too, even more so than the idea of fated mates among shifters.
“But Wyatt’s human,” Cal was protesting, “and Cam’s a shifter. How would that even …”
“If a human and a shifter are fated, the human will …” Karla waved a hand. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know!” Cal said with a scowl.
Karla just shrugged.
“They change,” Caroline offered.
Cal lifted his brows and closed his eyes. Then he shook his head. “You trying to tell me that meeting your ‘fated mate’ changes your goddamn DNA? No disrespect, auntie, but that sounds like a load of crock if I ever did hear one.”
Caroline shrugged an elegant shoulder. “Suit yourself,” she said.
“But you gotta admit that it does explain what’s going on with Cam and this Wyatt fellow.”
Cal scowled, tapping his foot on the floor. They were right, but he didn’t like it.
It did explain it. It explained it a little too well, even down to the part where my brain kept insisting Wyatt was my mate. I took a deep a breath. “I’d buy it,” I told my aunts, “except that fated mates ain’t a thing.”
The two women exchanged a glance. “Isn’t it now?” Caroline asked, her brows rising.
Cal lifted a hand. “Everyone knows it only happens in the movies,” he said. “It’s not a real thing.”
Caroline offered us another elegant shrug. “Suit yourself,” she said again.
“I will,” I said, getting to my feet. “Now, can I help you ladies get settled in? How long you staying for?”
Another knowing look. Karla turned a smirk back to me. “I think we’ll be here for a little bit, at least.”