Chasing Cristabel (Ashland Pride Six) (15 page)

“You’ve been pacing for ten minutes. You
don’t have to call your parents right now. It’s been a stressful
weekend. We won’t fault you for putting it off.”

“No, I want to do this now. I need to. My cat
is,” she tapped her temple with two fingers, “banging around in
here about marking you. If I don’t talk to them first and at least
try to get their blessing, then they may hate me even more for not
telling them about you. It would be like a human couple eloping.
Their parents would be upset to not be given the choice to be part
of things. Whether they are happy for us or not, I need to do
this.”

He crooked his finger at her, and she moved
to him. He pulled her onto his lap, and she melted against him with
a sigh, burying her face in his neck. He stroked her back in
silence for several minutes and then kissed the top of her head.
“We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere, approving parents or
not. You’re a gorgeous, amazing lioness, and we’re lucky as fuck to
have you in our lives. If your parents don’t want to be part of
our
family, then they’re the ones missing out.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said as she lifted her
head.

“I have my moments.”

She slipped from his lap and said, “Okay. I’m
really doing this. Now.” She didn’t move a muscle for so long that
Hunter thought she might have changed her mind, and then her thumb
moved, and he could hear the ringing of the call as she turned on
the speaker.

A woman answered. “Hi, honey.”

Cris’s mouth opened, but only a squeak came
out. She grimaced and cleared her throat. “Hi, Mom. Is Dad around?
I need to talk to you both.”

“Sure, he’s in his study. I’ll go to him. Is
everything okay?”

He could hear the soft swish-swish of fabric
as she moved. He had no idea what their home looked like, but Cris
said it was quite large and at the center of the pride’s land.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Cris said, and
then she chewed on her bottom lip.

There was a soft knock, and then a door
creaked as it opened. “Cris wants to speak to us, Gustav.”

A short growl was followed by a sigh and the
creak of a chair. “Yes, daughter of mine?”

Cris grimaced so hard that Hunter thought her
face might crack. She looked at him and his cousins, and his heart
could have burst at the love he saw reflected in her eyes. He’d
hoped his whole fucking life to someday have a female who loved
him. That he’d found a female who loved him
and
his cousins
with a ferocity that rivaled the sun – he was a lucky
son-of-a-bitch.

“Mom and Dad, I’m calling because there’s
been a big change in my life recently, and I wanted you to know.
I’ve found my mates. They’re mountain lions, and they’re–”

Her words were cut off as an unholy roar
sounded over the phone. She gasped, and the phone slipped from her
hand. Chase snatched it from the air before it hit the floor and
held it out to her. Her hand trembled; hell, her whole body
shivered as if she’d been caught butt naked in a January snowstorm.
Wordlessly, they surrounded her, with Chase holding the phone for
her.

“You’re not mated by my definition.” Her
father’s voice, although tinny through the speaker, was as dark and
dangerous a voice as Hunter had ever heard in his life. The male
was a force to be reckoned with, that much was clear, but Hunter
didn’t particularly care. He’d planned to be cordial, genial even,
but now he was pissed.

He opened his mouth to tell her dad to shove
it good and hard when Cris snarled loudly. “It’s not your
definition that matters, Dad. It’s mine and my cat’s. I left the
pride to explore life outside of the confinement. I have no
regrets.”

“I will
not
recognize your
mating.”

Her gaze hardened as she stared at the phone.
“I didn’t ask you to. My three mates are amazing, and if you don’t
want to meet them, to be part of our lives, then that’s your loss.
I was calling as a courtesy because you’re my parents.”

“You need to come home,” her father said, his
words slow and measured.

“I
am
home.”

Something crashed, and Cris jumped as a roar
seemed to shake the phone. The sound cut off abruptly as the call
ended. Cris stared in silence at the phone, and then she lifted her
head. The tears pooled in her eyes made his heart crack. No one
should look so despondent after talking to her parents. Chase
tossed her phone onto the bed, and as Hunter wrapped his arms
around her, Chase and Dylan pressed close to her side and back. She
was so silent and still that Hunter wondered if she’d gone into
shock, but then she shuddered and the saltwater scent of fresh
tears let him know just how brokenhearted she was.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured.

He wasn’t sure how long they stood there
comforting her while she wept, but he would have stood for hours,
days even, if it meant he could help to heal the gaping wound in
her heart. His dad and uncles had been the best family a kid could
hope for. They’d loved him, supported him, been there in every way
for him, Dylan, and Chase. But he’d never had a mother’s love.

Once, when he was eight, he’d gone on what
he’d come to find out was a mountain lion tradition, when the males
took their young to meet their birth mothers in the hopes that they
might be swayed to join their family. Hunter’s mother was beautiful
– that was the first thing he thought when he met her. Like some
Greek statue in a museum, so lovely and delicate, with pale blue
eyes and hair the color of corn silk. He’d wanted to hug her, to
climb in her lap and tell her about himself. To call her mom. To
tell her he loved her. Even though he’d never met her before, deep
down he’d loved her from the beginning because she was his mom, and
little boys were supposed to love their moms. Then she’d flashed
sharp fangs at his dad, dismissing the two of them as if they were
of no value.

“I gave you the cub. What more do you want
from me, Anthony?” she had demanded with a hiss.

“I want you to come live with us. Let me take
care of you,” his dad said, his tone earnest, his hand tightening
slightly where he held onto Hunter’s shoulder.

“Never. I have no idea who
that
is,
and I want nothing to do with either of you. If you don’t leave
immediately, I’ll call the police and have you escorted off the
property.”

There had been a tense moment when his dad
had stared at his mother, and then his dad had said quietly, “I
won’t bother you again.”

That had been the whole sum of his experience
with his mother. He’d occasionally seen her around King when he was
growing up, but although he knew who she was, she’d never seemed to
recognize him at all. Now, of course, they’d come to find out that
was part of the curse too – not only were the females poisoned by
their own to become soulless robots, but they didn’t recognize
their own young.

Shaking himself from the depths of his
thoughts, he rubbed his cheek against the top of Cris’s head and
sighed deeply. His wounded sweetheart needed time to get over her
hurt heart. He understood exactly how it felt to be betrayed by
family, to be tossed aside for no good reason.

“We’ve got you, Cris,” he said.

She shuddered hard in his arms, grasping for
his cousins and pulling them even closer to her. “Don’t let me go,”
she said, her voice raw with emotion, a flayed-soul sound that
pierced him straight through.

“Never,” the three of them said
simultaneously.

* * *

Chase sat on the edge of the bed and watched
as Cris slept, snuggled up against Hunter like he was a life
preserver and she was adrift at sea. It ate him up to see her so
upset, even in sleep – her brows drawn and her mouth pulled down at
the corners. He suspected that she had known deep down that her
father wouldn’t approve of her mating with them, but if she’d held
on to any little sliver of hope, her father’s response had
certainly dashed it.

Dylan was stretched out next to Hunter, his
hand resting on Cris’s back. Hunter stared at nothing, but Chase
could see he was deep in thought.

“I want to call my dad. Do you want me to ask
him to keep it quiet so you can tell your dads on your own?” Chase
whispered.

Hunter snapped out of his stare down with the
wall and whispered, “You can tell all of them. Set up a time for
them to Skype with us in a few days so Cris can meet them.”

Dylan nodded. “Tell my dad I’ll call him
later.”

Chase looked one last time at Cris and left
the room, closing the door silently. He went into his old bedroom
and dialed his dad’s number. He made it a point to call his dad
every week. As it was Sunday afternoon, his dad would be out in the
garage working on his car. He was a diesel mechanic by trade and
worked for a trucking company outside of King. Chase had many fond
memories of weekends spent helping his dad in the garage.

“Hey, kid,” his dad said.

“How’s it going?”

He heard the familiar sound of a wrench
turning. “Good. Can’t wait for spring so I can put the top down.”
His father’s vehicular pride and joy was a BMW convertible.

“I bet.”

“When are you coming to visit?”

“Soon. Actually, are my uncles around? I want
to tell you guys something.”

“Nothing bad, I hope?”

“Not remotely.”

Chase heard the creak of the door as it
opened, and the squeak of that one loose floorboard. He’d wondered
over the years why it had never been fixed, and his dad had told
him that it helped them ensure no kids ever snuck out of the house
through the garage. Chase had never actually snuck out of the
house. Some of his human friends in high school had done that sort
of thing, sneaking away in the middle of the night to go to a party
or meet friends somewhere, but it had never appealed to Chase.
Maybe because his dad trusted him, and Chase never wanted to do
anything to lose that trust. Or maybe because he hadn’t had any
reason to rebel.

“Chase wants to talk to us,” his dad said

“What’s up, Chase?” Uncle Tony said.

“Everything okay?” Uncle Steven said.

“You bet. I’m calling because Dylan, Hunter,
and I have found our shared mate. We met her a week ago, and we
knew the moment we all laid eyes on her that she was ours.”

A moment of silence passed, and then all
three males cheered. Chase chuckled and rubbed at his eyes as happy
tears stung them. He hadn’t realized how much he’d valued their
approval. Whether they were happy or not with their mating wouldn’t
have changed his feelings about Cris, but it sure did make him a
hell of a lot happier knowing that they approved.

“What’s her name? Is she a shifter? Where’s
her family?” his dad asked.

“Cristabel, but we call her Cris. She’s an
African lion, and her dad is the leader of their pride. Her
family’s in Kentucky, but she moved to Ashland for a job.”

“I didn’t think that lions liked to mate
outside of their kind,” Uncle Tony said.

“Normally, they don’t. Cris’s family believes
in arranged matings and not in waiting for their truemates. She
just told her parents about us, and to say her dad was unhappy
would be an understatement of great proportions.”

“That sucks,” Uncle Steven said. “I’m sorry
to hear it. But you’ve got our approval in spades. We’d like to
meet her.”

“We can come out to King, or you guys could
come here.”

“Are you going to marry her too?” his dad
asked.

Ever since Rue had mentioned that Lisa was
the pride’s wedding planner, the idea had taken root in his brain.
He and his cousins had discussed mating their sweetheart in the
traditions of her people and then proposing, too. Knowing she would
go into heat soon after their mating made him want to marry her
quickly. He didn’t want her to have a cub before she had their last
name.

“Yes. We’re still working out the details.
We’ve only been together for a week, so everything is moving fast,
but it still feels right.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Uncle Tony said. “You
guys deserve to find love and be happy. Tell Hunter that I expect
him to call me and tell me himself, anyway.”

Chase smiled. “I will.”

After Dylan’s dad insisted on a call from
him, too, Chase said goodbye to his uncles and then talked to his
dad privately for a few minutes more. “Is Cris upset about her
parents?” his dad asked.

“Of course. I’ve never heard such an angry
roar before. I think if we’d had the conversation with them in
person, he’d have clawed our faces off in his rage.”

“I don’t understand a parent who would put
traditions over his kid’s happiness, but there are some odd ducks
out in the world.”

He was sorry that Cris had gotten the short
end of the stick when it came to parental understanding, but he was
thankful she’d found him and his cousins. If she’d never left home,
they would never have known her. To think he might have spent his
whole life without her made his cat snarl.

“So you’re going to do a ceremony for her
this weekend?”

“I think that’s the plan. Before she talked
to her parents, we weren’t sure if they’d be supportive or not. If
they’d been supportive, we might have been heading to Kentucky to
her home territory to perform her traditional ceremony there. After
we mate her, then we’ll ask her to marry us and plan a wedding for
whenever she’d like.”

“We’ll definitely come for the wedding, and
help out with the cost, but if it’s going to be too far in the
future, then we’ll come for a visit after your mating ceremony. I
haven’t been out to Ashland yet.”

“You could always move out here, you know.
The boarding house has empty rooms.”

“My home’s in King. I don’t think I’ll ever
leave.”

He paused for a moment, and then asked the
question that was on the tip of his tongue. “Do you think my mother
was your truemate?”