More Than Pride (5 page)

“Can we help you with something?” Talan asked.

“I need an assignment away from the pride.” As soon as the words left his lips, he knew that was the best approach. He couldn’t stand to be there as Evin and Chester mated and became a bonded pair like Talan and Adrian. He wanted both of his mates to have the best and maybe that shouldn’t include Dillon.

He tried to stand strong beneath Talan’s hard examination and Adrian’s gentler concern.

“What happened?” Talan asked.

“I-I don’t want to talk about it.” Dillon’s throat tightened as tears threatened to choke him.

“How do you feel about wolves?” Adrian asked, changing the subject.

As neither of his mates was a wolf shifter, Dillon had a ready answer. “I adore wolves.”

Adrian’s brilliant smile soothed his battered spirits. “My brother is having some issues with hunters. We think the ones Evin came to warn us about are starting with my brother’s pack. We want you to check it out and let us know your opinion of the situation first-hand and report back to us. Kade can’t leave to check it out because my sister-in-law is pregnant.

We’d appreciate it if we could send someone we trust. An impartial observer.”

“It’s not that we don’t believe the wolves—we just need someone who has some experience in scouting things out,” Talan interjected.

Adrian nodded. “What do you say?”

“I’ll do it.” It was the perfect solution. He could step away for a few days and still be close enough if his mates needed anything.

“Great.” He turned to go but was stopped by Adrian’s soft question.

“What do you want me to tell them?”

He didn’t turn back to face the wolf shifter as his shoulders tightened. “Tell them to enjoy their bond.”

He didn’t return to his room—the less he saw of his mates loving each other without him, the better off he’d be. Dillon grabbed a set of keys off the key rack by the front door and didn’t look back.
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* * * *

Evin’s heart ached for Dillon but it also hurt for whatever was eating away at Chester.

Torn between two lovers, Evin chose to talk to the more fragile of the pair. He had no doubt Dillon could handle anything thrown his way but Chester looked as if he’d already had one too many things weighing down his soul.

Since Dillon had already given him permission to enter, Evin spared little time in popping the bathroom door off the hinges and walking inside. Steam billowed around him as he approached the shower. The sound of sobbing reached his ears.

Pulling back the curtain revealed Chester curled up in a ball at the bottom of the enormous shower. There was probably room to fit an entire pride of lions in there. Evin crouched down to Chester’s level.

“Hey, are you all right?” He wished he could blame Dillon for this catastrophe but he’d watched the lion shifter closely and he hadn’t seen that Dillon had done anything wrong.

“I-Is D-Dillon mad?” Chester’s teeth chattered and his entire body shook despite the scalding water temperature.

“No.” Dillon had looked devastated to Evin, but not angry. He kept that opinion to himself. “Come on out of there. We have to talk.”

Chester shivered. “P-promise not to hate me.”

“Promise.” Evin didn’t know what was eating away at the younger man but obviously it was something he thought was terrible. Considering his apparent youth, Evin doubted it could possibly be as bad as Chester was acting. “Now, let’s get you out of there.”

Straightening up, Evin turned off the water before helping Chester to his feet. Evin’s mind kept drifting back to Dillon and how broken he’d appeared at Chester’s rejection.

Chester gave him a grateful smile when Evin handed him a towel. “Thanks.”

“We’ll have to go get Dillon so we can all talk. I won’t have him thinking we talked behind his back.”

Chester shivered again.

After making sure Chester was completely dry, Evin took his hand and led him back to the bedroom.
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Chester whipped his head around as he searched the area. “Where’s Dillon?”

“I don’t know.” A sinking sensation filled Evin’s chest. He couldn’t lose one of his mates…not when he’d just found him.

“Get dressed. We’ll see if we can find him.” Since they hadn’t officially mated with Dillon, they didn’t have a psychic link between them. Evin had no idea where the lion shifter might have gone but he knew whom to ask.

A few minutes later they left Dillon’s bedroom. Evin found Talan and Adrian sitting in the kitchen with a stack of pancakes piled in front of them.

Evin stopped in his tracks when Talan shot him a blood-chilling glare.

“You know where he went, don’t you?”

“Apparently to get away from his mates that he worried he was traumatising,” Talan responded. “He said you two were better off without him.”

“Oh, no!” Chester exclaimed, wrapping his arms around his waist. “This is all my fault.”

Evin wanted to make him feel better but he couldn’t push the lie past his lips. It
was
Chester’s fault. If he hadn’t had some sort of meltdown when Dillon tried to claim him, they wouldn’t all be in this mess.

“We’ll get him back,” he said instead. Turning to the alpha pair, he asked, “Where did he go?”

Adrian spoke first. “I asked him to investigate some hunters encroaching on my family pack.”

“No!” Chester shouted.

Evin slid an arm around the fragile man. “What’s wrong?”

“The hunters. He can’t go see them. They’re counting on it. They sent me here.”

Evin removed his arm. “What do you mean, they sent you? Are you working for them?” He didn’t understand people who aided the enemy. Why would you help someone whose goal was to eradicate your species?

Talan stood and approached Chester. It took all Evin’s resolve not to step in front of his mate and block the lion’s approach.

“What do you know about these hunters?” Talan asked.
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The lion growl underlying his words sent a shiver of fear down Evin’s back. He didn’t frighten easily but the look in the alpha’s eyes would scare a more stalwart person than himself.

A fine trembling shook Chester’s frame. Evin couldn’t stand it anymore. He placed a supportive hand on Chester’s back, rubbing it soothingly. Chester relaxed into his touch.

After licking his lips and swallowing a few times, he started speaking. “My parents were killed by a rabid dog when I was a young child. For a long time it was just me and my brother, Garfield.”

Evin gave a surprised laugh.

Chester turned towards him. “Yeah, I know, my mother had a wicked sense of humour, and he does look a lot like an orange tabby cat, just not as fat. I hadn’t talked to Garfield for a few years. I travel around and can’t always afford a phone, so I usually call him when I get to someplace stable. Two months ago I called and a stranger answered the phone. He told me my brother was in trouble. I-I went to see him and found out a group of men had taken over his house. They had him in a cat carrier so small he couldn’t change even if he wanted to.”

Rage tore through Evin. No one should be treated that way.

“They told me they had been tracking the lion shifters for a while and figured the best way to catch a shifter is to send in another shifter. Th-they injected me with a poison. They said it would kill me if I didn’t return in a week with everything I can tell them about the lion shifters’ base. To make sure I did what they said, they injected Garfield too. I-I don’t care if I die—my life hasn’t been much anyway—but my brother doesn’t deserve this. He helped raise me. He wasn’t the warm cuddly type but he’s the only family I have left. He told me to r-run.” Tears welled in Chester’s eyes.

“That’s why you wouldn’t let Dillon bite you, isn’t it? You were afraid he’d get poisoned.”

Chester nodded. “Yeah, I couldn’t take the chance.”

“You should’ve told him,” Adrian said, a scowl marring the pretty shifter’s face. “He thinks you’ve denied his claim.”

“No!” Chester shouted. “No. I just wanted to protect him. I didn’t expect to find my mate, much less two of them. I couldn’t infect him.”
3
Talan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I wonder how long they’ve been trying to get to us. We’ve had some problems lately with People Against Werekin. Do you think they’re part of that organisation? That might have put us on their hit list.”

Chester shrugged. “They didn’t find me worthy of discussing the details. They saw me as a pawn and treated me like that. It could be the same people. I did hear something about a society, but, like I said, they didn’t really talk to me until they shot me full of poison.”

Evin sniffed at Chester. “You don’t smell infected.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not,” Adrian warned. “If it’s PAW, they used to have an entire lab at their disposal and we don’t know how many more they might have that we don’t know about. They could easily have developed a poison.”

“True,” Talan agreed.

“Dillon might have gone straight into a trap,” Evin snarled. “You can debate my possible poisoning later. Right now we need to go after him and make sure he’s safe. He could’ve been captured and we’d never know it.”

Talan narrowed his eyes. “As Dillon left about two minutes ago, I think, even if he were captured, they wouldn’t have had the chance to do much. I value each member of my pride and I don’t appreciate you behaving as if I were negligent in their care.”

Fear dried the moisture in Evin’s throat. In either form, the alpha lion would have little trouble killing Evin if he tried to protect Chester.

To Evin’s surprise, Adrian pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialled with the speaker turned on. A minute later Dillon’s voice came across the line.

“Hello, Adrian.”

Adrian didn’t bother to return the greeting. “Dillon, get back here—your mate is in trouble.” Adrian hung up before Dillon had a chance to respond.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Chester asked.

“Yes, Chester. I’m sure he’ll come,” Adrian said in a gentle voice.

Evin rubbed Chester’s back. How had everything fallen apart so quickly? He’d come to warn of hunters and his brother’s collaboration and had met his mates, only to lose one right away and have the possibility of losing the other one.

A door banged open somewhere in the house. “Adrian!” Dillon’s voice echoed from down the hall.
3
Adrian smirked. “In here.”

Dillon came skidding into the room. His frantic gaze swept over Chester and Evin before settling on Adrian. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll let you talk then we’ll decide what to do.” Adrian grabbed Talan’s arm and pulled him out of the room, their pancakes abandoned.

Chester leapt at Dillon. Instinctively, the lion shifter caught him. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought they’d captured you,” Chester sobbed.

Dillon turned a questioning look towards Evin, who stepped in and told him everything Chester had shared with them.

“We need to go and rescue your brother, find the poison cure and find out who these people really are,” Dillon said.

Evin nodded. “As long as we stand together we can beat them.” It sounded trite and something a Hollywood hero would say, but he stood by his statement. If things went well he would spend the rest of his life with these complex, beautiful men. Bad guys with drugs and guns were not going to stand in his way of the life he could imagine.

He might not have planned to mate with two feline shifters, but he wasn’t going to back away from the chance, either.
3
Chapter Three

“We need to corner them at their hideout,” Evin insisted.

“I don’t want them to kill Garfield.” Chester gnawed on his nail in between statements.

He twitched more than a cat in a room full of rockers. Evin had no doubt that, if Chester had been in cat form, his tail would be flicking madly back and forth.

Adrian and Talan sat on the couch across from Evin, Chester and Dillon. Other members of the pride sat around the room, but Evin’s focus was on the alpha pair. They were the ones who would make the final decision.

“I can send some of the smaller bird shifters. I know a pair of wrens who could do it without anyone suspecting a thing,” Evin offered.

He knew Chen and Marlen would be happy to be of some help. The mated pair had been tossed out of their home aviary for loving each other. The owls had taken them in because they were great at security. No one expected a small bird to turn into a six-foot-tall man. He only hoped they were still willing to talk to him after his banishment from the flock.

“Good—you do that,” Talan said, pulling Evin back into the conversation. He found focusing difficult while surrounded by his mates. Chester’s warm body sat on one side of him, with Dillon’s hard muscled form on the other. His hormones raged at the thought of being sandwiched between them.

Blinking, he focused on the alpha. He was supposed to do something.

“Call your friends,” Dillon whispered in his ear.

Warm breath caressed his lobe and heat flashed through his body. It took him a moment to get himself under control to answer. “Um, yeah, I’ll go do that.”

Standing up, he walked stiffly towards the doorway, seeking a quieter spot to make his call. The lions were a loud bunch and if he wanted to hear Chen then he’d have to go someplace quieter.

The big porch outside the pride house beckoned. Sitting on the swing, Evin dialled.
3
“Where the hell are you!” Chen shouted. “This place is falling apart. There are hunters running around like they own the place and all the bird shifters are freaking out. Tilden’s ordering us to attack some lion shifters. What the fuck is up with that?”

“Have you seen the hunters?

“Yeah, there’s twelve of them here and I think more are on the way. Tilden is sending out some owls to scout the territory. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Thanks, Chen. I’m at the lions’ pride and they think the hunters are part of the People Against Werekin. They’re dangerous and they torture shifters for research. Stay as far away from them as you can. When you get the chance, grab Marlen and head out here. I need someone to spy on a wolf pack’s territory. We think the hunters have moved in there. I need you to tell me if they are the same group. If you can help, I’m sure I can get the lions to find you a new home.”