Hungry for Her Mates [Wolf's Pass Shifters 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “Son. Are you sure?” Deland Shoewater, one of Aaron’s fathers, asked.

  “Yes, sir. She’s our mate. The need to claim her is riding me hard. I’m afraid to get near her after tonight. I almost dragged her out of the room earlier,” he told him.

  Deland turned to his brother, “Phillip, have you ever heard of this before? I haven’t.”

  Phillip shook his head, “It doesn’t make sense. Why haven’t you said anything before now, son?”

  Levi winced. “I honestly didn’t think anything of it until now. It never crossed my mind that I wasn’t feeling anything anymore. It must have come on gradually, so that I didn’t notice a change. I just don’t know.”

  Aaron felt for his brother, but the need to hold his mate, assure himself that she was theirs, was about to drive him insane. What was even harder to handle was that the few times he’d been close to her, she had acted as if everything was normal. As if the mating heat wasn’t riding her as well. What if she didn’t feel anything for them like Levi? His wolf snarled inside of him.

  “Son, are you okay?” Phillip asked.

  “Yeah. My wolf is restless,” he told his father.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t approached Gabrielle yet. Am I right?” Deland asked.

  “That’s right. We’ve held off, but it’s not fair to her, or to Aaron, to continue to do that. Is it possible that our bond isn’t complete, and we are going to have separate mates?” Levi asked.

  Aaron’s wolf howled at this. He felt the answering tug of Levi’s wolf.

  “I don’t think so, brother,” Aaron told him.

  “No. My wolf agrees with you in this. We’re bonded.” Levi rubbed at his face with both hands. “What do we do?”

  “First, let’s talk to Harper and let him see if he senses anything. Then we’ll look at the options, son.” Deland walked to the door and opened it a crack, telling one of the enforcers to fetch the healer.

  Aaron felt as if his skin was going to crawl right off his body. His need to be with his mate was almost overwhelming now. He fought it, reminding his wolf that they needed Levi to complete the mating ritual. His wolf kept repeating mine over and over. It was beginning to worry him. It had been ours until Levi’s wolf kept balking at the mating. If Gabby was mated to both of them and only one of them claimed her, it could be disastrous. He wouldn’t allow that to happen. Somehow they had to figure out what was wrong with Levi and fix it.

  A knock at the door jerked his thoughts back to the here and now. Hope built inside of him as Phillip opened the door, admitting Harper.

  “Alpha? What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Check Aaron and Levi. Do you feel anything off about them? Do you see anything?” Deland asked.

  The healer frowned and turned to them. He started with Levi since he was the closer of them. The older man ran his hands lightly over his brother’s body, paying close attention to his head and chest. Then he just stared at Aaron for a long minute before walking over to him and treating him to the same perusal. He felt a light warmth at times, but it wasn’t until Harper just stared at him for a long time that he felt a push of sorts that got his wolf’s back up. Aaron calmed his wolf, but he didn’t settle back down until Harper had turned away to face his fathers.

  “Where have they been?” he asked them.

  Deland and Phillip exchanged glances, then looked over at them. “Boys? Have you been anywhere unusual?” Phillip asked.

  He and Levi looked at each other, frowning, then back at their fathers. They both shook their heads.

  “Other than to some of the smaller towns around us on pack business, we haven’t been off of pack land in a long time,” Levi said.

  Phillip looked at Deland, then back to Levi. “What about just before you began to feel different?”

  Levi stood there looking at the floor as if deep in thought. He could feel his brother’s thoughts racing, trying to come up with somewhere out of the ordinary. In the end, he just shook his head, his expression tense.

  “Aaron? Can you think of anytime either of us have been somewhere different or strange?” his brother asked. “I can’t even be sure when all this started in the first place.”

  Aaron thought about everywhere they’d been either together or apart that might have been unusual. He let his mind wander to things that were notable to him.

  “What about a couple of years ago when we went to see about the report of a lone wolf pup that kept wondering into the cat’s territory?” Aaron asked, wondering why it was so hard for him to think about it.

  Levi frowned, shaking his head, then he stopped and slowly nodded again. “I remember—sort of. We never found one but learned about the cats having trouble reproducing. Their last kit had been born a year before that.”

  “That’s right. They were trying to find someone who could help them,” Aaron continued.

  “Why is it so hard to remember that?” Levi asked.

  “Because you’ve been exposed to some type of magic. There is a trace of it still on both of you. That is probably what has your memory of the incident hazy.” Harper turned to Aaron. “You are in full mating heat. Your control is a very thin line, son.”

  “What about Levi?” Deland asked.

  Harper frowned. “There is no trace of it with him, which is strange. They are a fully bonded mating pair. His wolf senses his mate, but he can’t seem to locate her. I’m not sure why.”

  “What can be done to remove the magic, and is that what has Levi’s mating heat suppressed?” Phillip asked.

  Harper pursed his lips and seemed to think for a few moments. Then he sighed. “I can perform a cleansing on both of them that will remove the leftover magic. As for if it is what has the mating heat dampened, I honestly doubt it. It would have had the same effect on Aaron.”

  “He has no emotions right now, Harper. He said he doesn’t even feel affection anymore,” Phillip told the man.

  Harper’s eyes widened. “Nothing?”

  “I think I’ve been getting a lot of Aaron’s emotions, and that’s kept me from realizing how serious it had gotten. When he asked me about, um, our mate, and how we were going to approach her, I realized that I was feeling nothing at all now.”

  Aaron could see that, despite not feeling emotions, Levi was still uncomfortable about the situation and the fact he hadn’t realized the seriousness of it sooner. More than likely, the more his feelings disappeared, the less worry he felt over the problem, which just fed into the idea that it wasn’t really a problem at all.

  “When can we do the cleansing, Harper?” Levi asked. “Our mate is bound to be confused that we haven’t approached her.”

  Harper nodded. “Come to my cabin first thing in the morning. We’ll do it then. Wear loose fitting clothes you don’t mind ruining and a change of clothes for later.”

  He said his good-byes and left, closing the door behind him. Aaron didn’t feel any better about the situation knowing magic was involved. What if they had somehow brought something back with them from that trip to the cats’ territory? When he looked over at Levi, he could see his thoughts echoed on his brother’s face.

  “Let’s wind the meet down and send everyone home for the night. We all need our rest,” Deland told them.

  Aaron was anxious to see Gabby again before they went home. He knew it was torture to his wolf to see her and not be able to claim her, but it was just as torturous for him not to at least see her.

  He felt Levi behind him and knew his brother was there to stop him if it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to control his wolf. He hated the near loss of control, but he hated even more that his brother, his bond mate, had complete control and wasn’t feeling the pull at all. For the first time in his life that he could remember, real fear oozed through his veins. What would happen if he never regained his ability to feel? What would it mean for their mating? What would happen to Gabby?

  They circulated, thanking everyone for coming and telling them that it was time
to leave now. Everyone needed their rest and the mated pair were expecting, so it was important that they retired early. Though Nessa was only about a month along now, everyone was anxious after her near-fatal shooting. The pack was eager to comply, and soon the community center was all but empty.

  As they headed for the door themselves, Aaron heard their mother interrogating their fathers.

  “Now that everyone is gone, what is going on? You’re not keeping something from me, Deland Shoewater. You either, Phillip.”

  He and Levi hurried through the side door and walked around to where they’d parked their truck earlier. Neither one of them wanted to be around when their parents got into a battle of the wills. More often than not, their mom won, but it always ended in the same way—with wild, nasty sex. It wasn’t something kids liked to think about concerning their parents.

  “I’m sorry, Aaron. I know this is hard on you. I should have said something when I first noticed that I felt odd. I kept thinking it would go away, then before long, I couldn’t really tell that there was anything wrong.” Levi started the truck with a loud sigh.

  “We’ll fix this, brother. Just don’t give up and accept the way you are feeling as normal. Can you feel me, feel what I’m feeling?” Aaron asked, watching his brother’s expression.

  The truth was, Aaron should have noticed the difference as well. He and Aaron were attuned to each other as bond mates. Why hadn’t he felt the decline in his brother’s emotions?

  “Yes, I can sense your emotions about the same as usual. They may be a bit duller than before, but not much. When the mating heat flares, I can feel it fairly strongly,” Levi said.

  “Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice the change in you. I should have.” Aaron shook his head and looked out the window.

  “More than likely, it’s a result of this magic we have stuck to us. It was probably blocking you or keeping you from telling that I was different.”

  Aaron turned to look at Levi. “This wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t trying so hard to control every aspect of our life to prepare for being the Alpha and Beta wolves in the pack. We’ve learned to keep our emotions so tightly under control and our faces free of any hint of how we feel so we don’t upset the pack for some reason that we’ve stopped communicating with each other. We should be honest about how we are doing and what is going on within us with each other when we can’t with anyone else.”

  Levi sighed. “You’re right. We have to start being more open with each other from now on.”

  Once they became the ruling Alpha and Beta, the well-being of the pack rested on their shoulders. When they were happy, the pack was happy. If they were upset or angry, the pack would feel it if they didn’t keep it shielded from them. It was something they’d been taught early to begin learning to do. They’d seen the results of what could happen when their fathers had nearly lost their mom to childbirth when she had Galen, the youngest.

  She’d nearly bled to death despite everything Harper and the midwife had done. Deland and Phillip had gone crazy at the thought of losing her, and the pack had disintegrated into chaos for nearly a week before their fathers were able to regain control of themselves and the pack. Despite having a human nature tied to their animal nature, humans were still animals, and without the cohesiveness of their leaders, the pack had reverted to wolves, wild and without a leader. The fighting had been terrible.

  Neither of them had ever wanted to be the cause of something like that. At the time, they’d felt that if someone like their fathers, who were the strongest and most wise men they’d ever been around, had lost it, then they would never be able to hold their control of the pack. They had taken the lesson to heart, perhaps too well.

  Now, years later, the lesson reverberated between them, and they realized that maybe at their age it had seemed much worse than it was, and over time, they’d built it up even more until they’d faced an almost impossible task of being strong enough to conquer it. They were reaping the fruits of their actions now. What would be the cost this time?

  “We’ll make it right, Aaron. One way or another, we will make things right.” Levi stopped the truck in their drive. Their brothers had all already made it home.

  The house was dark except for the light in the kitchen that someone, probably Even, had left on for them. They didn’t know anything was wrong, or they would have been waiting up to question them about it. Aaron was thankful for small miracles. Six Shoewater brothers would be too much to deal with on top of everything else.

  As they climbed out of the truck, he remembered what he’d wanted to ask Levi earlier. He hadn’t seen Gabby and worried about her going home alone. He’d planned on asking one of his brothers to make sure she got home safely, but he’d never seen her.

  “Did you see Gabby when we were saying good-bye to everyone?” he asked.

  Levi opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit kitchen. “No. I didn’t. I figured you did, or you would have said something.”

  “I was trying to keep my wolf from tearing loose and sniffing her out. Maybe I should run over there and just make sure she’s okay,” Aaron suggested.

  Levi frowned. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go. I’ll go. That way we both know she’s fine, and you won’t be tempted to attack her,” Levi said.

  He should have smiled with that statement. He was teasing Aaron, but his brother didn’t feel it, so he didn’t think to smile. For the first time, Aaron felt the loss deep inside of his heart, and even deeper in his soul. His wolf whined at the unease in Aaron over the thought.

  “Thanks. I don’t know if I can sleep anyway, but I know I won’t be able to if I’m worried about her.”

  Levi just nodded and began undressing. “I’ll be back in less than thirty minutes.”

  Aaron watched Levi shift into his wolf, then slip through the extra-large pet door. He carried his brother’s clothes with him to their apartment. He’d shower while he waited for news of Gabby. He was sure she was fine, but a sliver of unease chilled his spine that something wasn’t right. If it was more than the problem they already had with Levi’s loss of emotion, Aaron couldn’t say, but anything that affected Gabby wasn’t good in his eyes. She was everything to him.

  * * * *

  Levi slipped through the trees without making a sound. His wolf enjoyed the freedom to run so rarely that Levi had trouble keeping him on track to check on Gabrielle. Once he’d reached the clearing where her little cabin was, he sniffed around the perimeter to be sure no one had been close by recently. Then he slowly crept forward and sniffed at the front door. His hair stood up. She hadn’t been through that door in the last few hours.

  He hurried around to the back and relaxed when he smelled her wolf’s scent at the back pet door. It was fresh but had an acrid smell. Not fear, but sadness. His wolf whined. Levi calmed him. It was natural that she would feel sad that they had yet to claim her. Hopefully she thought it was due to the recent attack on Nessa and finding out that she was now pregnant with the twins’ pups. Waiting to announce their mating in deference to the family’s first shifter pups being conceived seemed appropriate enough.

  Of course, if he hadn’t been emotionally crippled, both he and Aaron would have at least approached her and assured her of their intentions. He huffed out a breath that sounded like a cough from his wolf. How controlled and civilized did that sound? Why hadn’t he noticed what a stuffy, pompous ass he’d become? Why hadn’t Aaron already kicked his butt?

  The magic. It’s completely hobbled both of us. We’ve been operating with blinders on. How long has it been going on? Have we let anyone suffer because of it? Well, besides our mate, that is.

  Levi circled around the house one more time before bounding off in the direction of their home. At least he could tell his brother that their mate was home and safe. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell him that he’d sensed the sadness in her scent, though. It would worry him more. Aaron had enough pressure on him already without the added worry th
at she was hurting. He’d bear that load for his brother. Not that it was much of a load when he couldn’t really feel anything over it. He should feel bad that she was hurting. He didn’t like it, and it did bother his wolf, but Levi couldn’t feel the remorse he should be feeling.

  When he entered the pet door into the kitchen, Aaron was there waiting. He’d showered, judging by the scent of soap that clung to him. He wore a pair of warm-ups and nothing else.

  As soon as he’d shifted back to his human side, his brother held out a pair of matching warm-ups for him to put on. He didn’t say anything, but Levi could see the questions bouncing around in his eyes and the set of his mouth.

  “She’s there. No one else has been around the house. The lights were all off, so I’m sure she was asleep.”

  Aaron nodded and tried not to look disappointed. More than likely his brother had hoped he would be able to tell him something more about their mate. If he’d been able to feel the mating heat, he probably would have searched for every little nuance to latch on to. But since he couldn’t feel anything, he hadn’t thought about it. Once again, he felt that he’d failed his brother.

  “Thanks, Levi. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep without knowing she was safe,” Aaron said.

  “I know. You probably won’t sleep much anyway, but you need to. We don’t have a clue what this cleansing is going to be like in the morning. We probably need all of the rest we can get.”

  “I know you’re right. It’s not easy, though. All I can think about is her. Every nerve in my body is vibrating, and my wolf is having a fit to go to her. I keep feeling like something is wrong, something more than your lack of emotions and mating heat,” Aaron said.

  “We’ll see what happens at the cleansing, and then we’ll make plans and go to her after that. She has the right to know what is going on, Aaron.” Levi told him.

  “You’re right, but what will we do if your emotions don’t return? What happens if her wolf won’t accept you without the heat?”

  “Let’s not borrow trouble, Aaron. We have enough already. Let’s see what happens and go from there. We will make this right, one way or another,” Levi assured him.