Triple Dog Dare [Triple Trouble 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (10 page)

She nodded. Unlike her daughter, she’d only had less than twenty-four hours to come to grips with the fact that shape-shifters truly existed and it wasn’t some figment of her imagination after years of denial.

“Do ye hate me?” he asked.

She harshly laughed. “Honestly? I spent a lot of time hating you over the years. And now I feel pretty guilty about that, considering the truth.” She sighed. “You need to give me some time to get used to all of this, Liam.”

“I know. I’m sorry ye didn’t get a say in the matter.”

“No, I had a say. I could have turned you two away when you showed up.”

He reached over and touched her knee. “I always liked ye, Carla,” he softly said, his voice sounding serious. “Maureen was the love of my life, my mate. Had I met ye first…” He sat back. “I don’t want that to sound childish. I knew from the moment Maureen introduced us that ye were a special woman.” His voice choked up. “She loved ye, Carla. Ye were the closest thing to family she had who she could confide in. I cannot tell ye how thankful I am she had ye in her final days.”

Carla choked back tears. She’d sworn she’d hold it together, at least in front of the others, for Elain’s sake. “I still don’t understand why she died,” she quietly said. “It’s like she gave up.”

He wouldn’t look at her. With his gaze on the ground, and in a voice she could barely hear, he said, “She had soul sickness. It sometimes happens when a woman loses a mate, especially if she’s with child. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it can. I don’t know why it happens.”

Carla stifled a flash of anger. “So if you had come back, she wouldn’t have died?”

He shrugged, still not looking at her. “I dunno. Maybe. Don’t think there isn’t a day gone by I haven’t cursed myself for leaving. At the time, I thought it was the only way to keep Elain safe and keep those bastards from forcing her into a life no one would ever want for their child.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. “Maureen asked me to tell you she loved you,” Carla finally said. “That if I ever saw you again to tell you that.” She took a deep breath. “She also made me promise to tell you that it was her decision, too. That she didn’t blame you.”

Liam’s shoulders began to tremble as he silently wept. First hesitating, Carla put down her mug, stood, and walked over to him. If she couldn’t release the anger and resentment she’d held all those years, she knew it would eat her alive and only serve to drive a wedge between her and Elain. Her daughter deserved to have her father in her life.

She stood in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face against her stomach as he cried.

Carla closed her eyes and tried to ignore the other old feelings still swirling around inside her.

* * * *

After lunch, which overflowed their kitchen and tested the seating capacity of their already large dining room table, Brodey made an announcement. “Elain, we’re going to take you out to the pasture and show you some things.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Wouldn’t the bedroom be more convenient?”

“I—” He groaned as he caught her meaning. “No, babe. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“For once,” Cail added before taking a sip of iced tea.

Brodey shot him a glare. Ain didn’t intercede. He sat there with an amused smile and watched his brothers go at it.

“We’re going to give you a ‘Shifters 101’ class this afternoon,” Brodey said.

Elain wasn’t sure she was ready for more surprises. “Don’t you have to wait thirty minutes after eating before shifting?” she snarked.

Lina, sitting next to her, hooted with laughter and gave her a high five.

Brodey rolled his eyes, but trudged onward. “After lunch, you’re going to learn how to shift.”

“We don’t know for sure if I can shift.”

“True, but all the evidence points to the fact that you can. So humor me, okay? I’m going to take you out and teach you.”

“Yay,” Elain blandly said with more than a pinch of sarcasm behind it as she pointed her index finger up and twirled it around.

* * * *

Elain didn’t bother fighting Brodey when it was obvious Ain supported the plan. Liam and Carla stayed behind at the house to do some more talking of their own. Ain and Cail returned to work at the barns because the business had to be tended to regardless of their crazy personal life. Micah and Jim were most likely boinking each other’s brains out in their bedroom. So Elain headed out with the others after lunch.

They took a couple of work trucks. When they reached one of the most remote pastures, where they stood no chance of being accidentally spotted, they parked the vehicles and piled out.

“So,” Brodey said with a twinkle in his eye. “What do you want to learn first, babe?”

Elain looked at Lina’s guys. “You three are shifters, too?” she asked as she pointed at Kael, Rick, and Jan.

The three men nodded.

“Can I see you guys shift first?” Elain asked.

They shrugged. “Sure,” Rick said. “We like it here, because we can shift to our largest form.”

Elain fought the rising heat in her face as all three men immediately began nonchalantly shucking their clothes.

She’d seen her men shift into wolves. But when the air appeared to shimmer around the three men, Elain let out a terrified squeak as she realized she was now staring at three large dragons.

Her jaw gaped as she stumbled backward a few steps.

No one said anything. Only birds and the wind through the nearby trees stirred the silence.

Elain stared.

After a few minutes, a concerned Brodey asked, “Um, babe? Say something.”

Elain stared. “They’re
dragons
!” she whispered, stunned.

Zack grinned “Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Dragons!” Elain said again. Even though Cail had once mentioned to her that there were other kinds of shifters, she really thought he’d been messing with her when he’d told her there was such a thing as dragon shifters.

Brodey stepped behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “No weirder than us shifting into wolves, when you think about it.”

Elain stared. “Wolves are
real
! You said they were shifters. But… they’re
dragons
!”

“Yep,” Brodey agreed, nonplussed.

They let her stare for another minute while her brain tried to absorb the sight.

Lina walked up to Elain and slipped her arm around her waist. “I actually fainted the first time I saw them shift. This is their largest form. When I saw them for the first time, they’d only shifted into their smallest form,” she said. “It was a shock.”

Elain looked at her in disbelief. “Ya
think
? That’s like the understatement of the…forever!”

Lina laughed. “I know. Hey, Brodey?”

“Yeah?”

“Original recipe, or crispy?”

He howled with laughter. When he finally composed himself, he snorted out, “Crispy, kiddo. Definitely crispy.”

Elain realized this had to be a joke between them. She waited for the explanation. By the time Lina and Brodey got the story out about how Lina fried Lenny the cockatrice in Yellowstone, Elain was laughing with them and finally getting used to the fact that she was now staring at three dragons.

“It wasn’t funny at the time,” Lina said, “but looking back at it, I can laugh my ass off.”

Brodey sighed. “You know, babe,” he said, slipping his arms around Elain’s waist, “Lina’s the reason I found you.”

“Yeah?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yep. I’d forgotten it while it happened, but after the fact, I remembered. She told me we’d find you at a Highlands games festival.” He turned her around so he could stare into Elain’s eyes. “She gave me hope. When Lina and I first met, I was in a pretty low place emotionally.”

“After you broke up with Kimberlie?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“I told furface here to not give up,” Lina said. “That they’d meet you in a few years. And here you are.”

She broke free from Brodey and hugged Lina. “You feel like a sister. I never had a sister before.”

“Ditto. I’m telling you, adopted family is the way to go.” She laughed. “That way you can disown anyone you don’t like, and no one can guilt you about it at family dinners.” She thought for a second. “Well, they can try, but if you’re me, you can threaten to freeze or fry their ass so they think twice before giving you any grief about it.”

* * * *

With the worst of Elain’s shock out of her system, Kael, Rick, and Jan took off. Literally. With each one shifted into their largest form, they launched themselves into the air and began soaring on the thermals.

Elain watched with her mouth gaping again. Somehow, it was easier to deal with the truth when the three men…eh, dragons, were sitting on the ground in front of her.

This took her sanity to a whole new level of strained.

“Aren’t they neat?” Lina asked. She lifted one hand to shade her eyes from the afternoon sun. “They love coming here because they can fly in the daytime without worrying about being spotted. Our property isn’t this big, and we’re pretty close to the interstate.”

Elain thought of something. She spoke to Brodey, but still stared up at the sky. “Brodey, do you guys have alternate forms, too?”

“Nope. Just wolves. Dragons are actually an older shifter race than wolves. You ready to try learning how to shift?”

She shook her head as she watched Kael do a lazy cartwheel fifty feet over their heads. “Nope.”

Zack chimed in. “Brodey, I think you need to let her settle into this new reality first before trying to teach her about shifting.”

Elain, still gazing skyward, slowly nodded. “Yep.”

“But it’s easy,” Brodey insisted.

“I don’t care,” Elain said, her eyes never leaving the dragons.

“Brod,” Lina gently said, “give her some time. Seriously. Take my advice.”

Brodey grumbled, but he wrapped his arms around Elain’s waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I want to be the one to teach you, babe,” he softly said into her ear.

Now Elain understood why this was so important to him. Not so much what he said as what she felt from him, the protectiveness, the desire to be the one to usher her into this new phase of her life.

She turned in his arms and kissed him. “I promise I’ll let you be the one to do it,” she said. “Right now, Lina’s right. I’m too overwhelmed.”

There’s that damn word again.

She looked up as Jan’s shadow gracefully flowed over and past them. “
Way
too overwhelmed.”

Ain didn’t plan on staying long at the barns after lunch. “I need to go talk to Mark,” he said.

Cail frowned. “Why?”

“Seriously? With everything that’s happened, you ask me that?”

Cail shrugged. “What’s there to tell? Besides, what’s he going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.
I
don’t know what to do. Part of me says we need to cancel the wedding and bug out to Maine for good.”

“You don’t mean that, do you?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” Ain said, running his fingers through his hair. “That’s the problem. Right now, I have no idea what to do. That’s why I want to go talk to Mark.”

“How about talking to me and Brodey?”

“Do you know what we should do?”

Cail stared at him. “Okay, fine. Fuck, you’re right. I have no clue either.”

“Exactly. I want an objective opinion.”

“Fine. Go.”

Ain climbed into his truck and took off. He tried to quiet his mind as he drove. Mark, also a wolf shifter, as well as a distant cousin of theirs, was currently the Clan representative in their area. An unofficial title that meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Several of the local shifters, including Ain, took turns doing the job, but Ain still wanted Mark’s opinion. They’d been friends up in Maine. Mark was one of the reasons they’d chosen to settle in Florida in the first place.

Mark Telford ran a beef production outfit, different from the Lyalls’ breeding stock operation. Mark looked up from his desk when Ain walked into his office. He smiled at first, his pleased expression quickly fading as he sized his friend up.

“Ain, what’s wrong?”

“Can we close the door?”

Mark nodded. Ain closed the office door behind him before taking a seat in front of Mark’s desk. “I don’t know where to start.”

Mark closed the lid on his laptop and sat back in his chair. “Start at the beginning.”

Ain snorted. “That’ll take a couple hundred years.”

“Then give me the short version.”

“I have to warn you, there’s a blood oath involved.”

Mark frowned. “No one does those anymore. Well, except maybe those bugshit-crazy Abernathys.”