Triple Dog Dare [Triple Trouble 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

“Whoa, stop right there!” Elain said, silencing her men. She glared at Brodey and Cail. “Did you two lie to me?”

“No!” Brodey and Cail said together. Cail took over. “Babe, we can’t lie to you. We told you that. We were trying not to heap more on top of you than you could take.”

“Then what the fuck is a cockatrice?”

Ain blew out an aggravated breath at her dropping the F-bomb, but apparently under the circumstances he was going to overlook her swearing since he let her off with nothing more than a dirty look.

Brodey snorted. “They’re a really fucked-up-looking chicken.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Ain said. “Let’s cover the story of Liam and our parents first before we start in on the cockatrice situation and the story about Yellowstone.”

“
What cockatrice situation?
” Elain yelled. “What the hell does Yellowstone have to do with anything?”

Ain calmly took her hand in his. “It’s okay, babe. I promise you, we’ll get to that really quick. Let’s handle one thing at a time. Please? We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I’m not even sure we can figure it all out tonight anyway.”

Grumbling, she finally nodded. “Fine.”

Ain looked at Carla. “So let me get this straight. Liam and Maureen showed up at your place late one day. Liam said he was meeting with our parents. Then the next day, our parents died and he disappeared after his phone call to Maureen.”

Carla nodded.

Ain chewed on that for a moment. “Do you think he had anything to do with our parents’ death?”

Carla firmly shook her head. “No. I’d be willing to bet he did not. He was a nice man. A good man. I knew them both before I left Spokane. He adored Maureen. I could see how much it hurt him to have to leave her, even though I was really mad at him for doing it at the time. He might have killed to protect her or the baby, but he wouldn’t hurt someone maliciously. I can’t believe that about him.”

“That’s not what you said about him all these years,” Elain groused. “You said he was a jerk for leaving after they found out I was a girl. You painted him to be a deadbeat and that my mom was a saint for ever marrying him in the first place.”

Carla took a gulp of her drink. “I know. I’m sorry I did that. Honey, I convinced myself the shape-shifter stuff wasn’t real. I did what I had to do to keep Maureen and you safe. You mother was dying, and I never expected to have a baby of my own. I loved your mom like a sister, and I love you more than anything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. Would you really have believed me if I told you all this before you met Ain, Brodey, and Cail, and saw what they could do?”

“I—” She stopped and thought about it. Would she have believed her? Honestly?

I would have taken her to the doctor and gotten her evaluated for Alzheimer’s.
“No, I guess I wouldn’t have believed it,” Elain softly admitted.

Ain gently squeezed Elain’s hand to silence her again. “Carla, what else did Liam and Maureen say? When you saw we were triplets, you reacted.”

“Maureen made me promise that if Elain ever started to, you know, to do the wolf stuff, that I would find you three. That you and your brothers lived in Arcadia. That if I asked around, someone would know you or know of you and be able to find you for me. She insisted you would be able to protect her. I just…”

Carla took another drink with trembling hands. “I honestly put your names out of my head. I spent a lot of years convincing myself that what Maureen and Liam showed me was some sort of daydream or nightmare. Maureen got sick when Liam left. I was too busy working and trying to take care of her to think about anything else. Not to mention all the adoption paperwork. She had me adopt Elain immediately after her birth. Maureen knew she was dying, even though doctors couldn’t tell us why. Once Elain was born, she didn’t even try to keep herself alive. I was suddenly a single mom with a baby to raise. The last thing I wanted to think about was that wolf craziness.”

Carla’s hands still trembled as she emptied her glass. Without comment, Cail stood, walked over to her and took her glass, and went to the kitchen to make her a fresh drink.

Carla’s eyes looked bright with tears. “I’m sorry,” she continued. “I did the best I could. Maureen got to the point where she refused medical treatment and wasted away. As the years passed and Elain grew older, like any other normal little girl her age, it was easier for me to just pretend the wolf stuff didn’t happen. That I imagined it.”

“You asked if we’d marked her,” Ain pointed out.

“Maureen told me about that the first night. When we were waiting for Liam’s call. She showed me the mark on the back of her shoulder, said that’s what wolves did when they…mated. Said it joined them together forever. She told me she’d marked Liam first, then he marked her.”

Cail returned with her fresh drink and handed it to her. “Thank you.” She took several long sips from it before continuing. “She told me the basics, that there was a very old blood oath in Liam’s family. That some family named Abernathy wanted Liam’s girl baby because he was the first Alpha in his family line to have one. They said that’s why they came to me. They’d found out through ultrasound in Spokane that Elain was a girl and had to hide.”

“How did you know Maureen?” Cail asked. “Wasn’t Liam afraid they’d track Maureen through you?”

Carla shook her head. “We worked together for a couple of years in Spokane and became really good friends. Then I moved to Tampa for a job. After a couple of months, I lost touch with her. There wasn’t the Internet and Facebook back then. Hell, we didn’t have cell phones. I sent her a letter, and the post office returned it, no forwarding address. I tried calling her, and the number was disconnected with no forwarding number. I called my old job. They told me Maureen left with no forwarding info, and none of my former coworkers knew where she went, either. I was shocked when they appeared on my doorstep in Tampa.”

“Well, that explains that,” Ain said. “They came to you because they knew they could trust you. They’d no doubt heard about our parents and what they did. It was either that or stay on the run with a pregnant wife and then a new baby, and he didn’t want to risk their safety like that.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Carla agreed. “That’s what she told me.”

Elain looked at the photo. It explained everything. It explained why she’d reacted the way she had to the man in the steakhouse.

He is my father.

“What does this mean?” Elain quietly asked. “I’m…I’m a shape-shifter? I’m a wolf, like you guys?”

The men exchanged a guilty look.

“What?” she asked. “What do you know?”

Ain took point. “We suspected, based on a few things, but we had no idea in the beginning. We were just so grateful to find you in the first place, we never thought to try to figure out if you were a shifter or not. We assumed you weren’t. Just because someone is from a shifter line doesn’t mean they will shift. When I saw your birth certificate and saw your father’s name, I made some calls.” He looked at his brothers. “We
think
you probably are a shifter.”

“How long have you suspected?” she quietly asked.

“Not long,” Ain said. “We suspect the night Brodey chased you that you probably shifted during the chase. But none of us ever actually saw you shift.” From his quiet tone of voice, she suspected he thought she’d probably erupt into a tantrum over them keeping the news from her.

Normally, she might have. Tonight, however, Elain felt too exhausted and emotionally wiped out to throw a temper tantrum. She emptied her drink. “May I please have another?” she quietly asked Cail.

He jumped up to get it. “Of course, sweetheart.”

While he was gone, she stared at the picture of her parents, then at her mom.

“Do you hate me?” Carla asked.

“No!” Elain said, and meant it. “I love you. You’re my mom.”

Carla studied her glass. “I never believed the shape-shifter stuff,” she said once again. “It didn’t make sense. I twisted it around in my mind so I didn’t have to believe it. As the years passed and you never did any of that stuff, I convinced myself it wasn’t real. That I’d dreamed it or imagined it or something. I just never thought—”

“It’s okay,” Ain gently said. “We understand.”

Carla stared at him, anger suddenly painted across her face. “No, I don’t think you do! I’d just watched my friend die! I had the responsibility of raising her baby. Her father disappeared, and I suspected he wasn’t coming back. All this crazy stuff she told and showed me, it was too much to handle.”

She tipped up her glass and drained the rest of her drink. She looked at Brodey. “I wanted to hate Liam. I’d liked him when I first met him. He seemed like a nice guy, a handsome guy, very sweet. When I knew them in Spokane, I always envied Maureen. I’d wished for a guy like that for me. Then I went through Elain’s early years afraid someone from Maureen’s family would come and try to take her away from me. I loved her as if she was my own baby. She
was
my baby.
My
daughter.
My
little girl. If Liam returned, I knew he wouldn’t take her away from me. At least, I wouldn’t let him have her without a fight. I was even afraid to date guys who showed too much interest in the fact that I had a daughter. I always thought in the back of my mind ‘what if.’ What if there might be something to that crazy story about the blood oath, and they were someone trying to find Elain?” She burst into tears.

Elain moved to sit next to Carla and hugged her. Cail brought Elain’s drink in and set it on the coffee table in front of her. She picked it up and downed it in a few gulps.

“What did the letter say?” Carla tentatively asked when she’d composed herself.

Ain handed it to Elain, who passed it to Carla. They all sat there, waiting for her to finish reading. When she did, Carla looked up at them. “May I have another drink?” she softly asked.

“I think I’ll take one, too, please,” Ain said. Cail got up to make them. “It’s going to be a long night,” Ain said.

Cail returned with the drinks. He handed Ain’s to him, Carla’s to her, and gave Elain another rum and Coke. Elain downed half the glass in two large gulps. They sat there, silently trying to absorb all the information Carla had given them, as well as the contents of Maureen’s letter to Elain.

Ain found his voice first. “What are the odds?” He looked around the room at everyone. “What are the odds we would find not only another shape-shifter as our mate, but that she was born to two Alpha shape-shifters, and she had no idea she was a shape-shifter?”

Brodey snorted and with his thumb pointed over his shoulder to the hall leading to Micah and Jim’s bedroom. “The same odds as two straight men becoming mates. Anyone want to go with me to buy a few hundred dollars in lotto tickets? It might be our week to hit it big.”

“We do seem to be bucking the odds,” Cail agreed. He looked at Ain. “I think we need to make a few more phone calls. It’s time to bring Daniel, Callie, and Lina and her guys into this.”

“Lina’s in Brussels with the gang on business,” Brodey said. “I’m not sure how to get in touch with them over there. I’ll try later. I think it’s the middle of the night there right now.”

Elain didn’t try to make sense of all of that. At that moment, she still felt too stunned as she tried to absorb all this new information. She took another sip of her drink. Unfortunately, she didn’t even feel a buzz yet.

“That wasn’t nearly strong enough,” she flatly told Cail.

“I’ll make you another when you finish it. I don’t want you getting sick.”

She gulped the rest, belched, and handed him the glass. “Hit me again, bartender. Please?” With a sigh, he took her glass from her and returned to the kitchen.

Elain was trying to figure out what her next question should be when they heard what sounded like multiple cars pulling into the yard. Before Brodey could reach the front door, it flew open. A very pregnant redheaded woman stormed in, her smile brightening when she spotted Brodey.

“Brod!” She threw open her arms and waddled toward him.

He looked surprised to see her, but he laughed as he picked her up and easily swung her around. He planted a kiss on her cheek. “Holy crap! We were just talking about you guys. I thought you were in Brussels.” He patted her belly. “And when did you get a bun in the oven? You look wonderful!”

“Thanks,” she said, rubbing her belly, “but they’re twins. Double your pleasure, you know.” She laughed. “And double the trouble.”

“Congratulations!”

Elain felt the instinctive growl start deep in her gut. Before Ain could grab her, she jumped off the couch and stalked toward them. Pregnant or not, no woman touched her mate like that!

She was preparing to swing when the woman spotted her. A wide, beaming grin spread across her face. “Elain!” she happily squealed, as if they were long-lost friends.

Elain didn’t know how to react when the redhead threw her arms around her and gave her the biggest bear hug she’d ever had. A sudden wave of joyful glee washed over Elain. It had to be coming from the strange woman, because she herself felt anything but joyful.

Now unsure of herself, Elain unclenched her fist and looked over the woman’s shoulder at Brodey, who stood there laughing.