CHAPTER 29
~ Wake Up Call ~
Five days later, Callie lies Clara in her crib and leans over to tenderly kiss the forehead of her drowsy baby as she gently brushes the dark copper colored curls from her face. Callie wonders briefly if she should be terrified that her daughter is maturing so rapidly. But Morna, and everyone else who should know, has assured Callie this is perfectly normal for a human-vampire hybrid child. Whatever their future holds, the new mother cannot imagine anything more precious than the unconditional love between a mother and child. Callie knows that she will always do everything in her power to protect her child and that precious parent-child bond.
Despite those assurances, Callie worries that being so busy helping her lovers and the other TRMC enforcers in their attempts to track down Dysnomia and her horde is robbing her of precious time to strengthen their mother daughter connection. In that moment, she realizes she will always strive to strke a balance between duty and her heart’s desires. As a mother, she’d be perfectly content to spend her every waking moment with her child, and yet she also has two mates to consider as she navigates her way through her new role as the Dragon Queen. She would be wise to focus on building strong connections with her family as their lives race toward a fantastical future.
When mother and daughter’s gazes meet, the babe’s eyes momentarily flash a brilliant vermillion, a subtle reminder of the beast which dwells within this small child’s body. While Callie has not witnessed Clara’s dragon form, she is well aware of its existence. Their inner beasts are bonded on a level even deeper than a typical mother and child connection. Her baby’s inner glow and innate brightness call out to Callie’s very spirit, which in turn calls out to the baby.
Her name means one with the light. Her bright and innocent spirit will serve our realm well when she grows into her potential. Callie smiles at the inner voice and answers aloud. “Do you know what her destiny holds in store for her?” She frowns when the inner voice doesn’t reply. Instead, the new mother is filled with utter certainty that Clara’s destiny is huge… perhaps even greater than the emergence of the Western Dragon Péntearchy. But the road to realizing that potential fate will not be an easy one.
In that moment, she realizes her duty as Clara’s mother neatly coincides with her duty to her newly forming realm. She must give Clara, and shifter mix breeds everywhere, the love, support, guidance, and freedom to grow and be their most fulfilled selves. She must give them the tools and opportunities to build happy lives, to work for the greater good, and the love to temper the ever changing future unfolding before them all.
A soft sigh escapes her lips as she thinks upon the enormity of the tasks before her. “How can one woman shoulder all of that alone?” she whispers into the room that is silent but for the soft, deep breathing of her infant daughter.
“You’ll never be truly alone, Lonnàille,” Nyle’s voice rasps against her ear as he wraps his arms around his mate’s waist. “Kazar and I will always stand at your side, protect your back, or charge forward to clear the way for you. As your mates and Sentinel Consorts, we will be whatever you need us to be.”
Callie closes her eyes and reaches down to pat Nyle’s hand, which is possessively cupping her hip. “It really seems as though you and Kazar got the short end of the stick, doesn’t it?”
Without responding, Nyle turns Callie around and scoops her up to plant her firmly over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Callie suspects she allowed her inner doubts to anger her shifter mate, again, when he stomps down the hallway to their bedroom and tosses her onto the massive custom bed at the center of the luxurious master suite. Callie rises up and kneels to watch her ginger haired, blue-eyed mate. Her mate, who is at present, furiously pacing the width and breadth of their suite as if trying to control himself or make a difficult decision.
She licks her lips nervously as his inner frustration and turmoil roils off him to wash over her in a painful miasma of dark emotions. For one terrible fleeting moment, she is convinced he is about to decide being her mate and consort is just too much bother. That being in a mating triad with Callie just isn’t worth the struggle. But his gravelly voice when he finally speaks drags Callie from her dark and very unwelcome musings.
“What’s it gonna take, beautiful? What the fuck is it going to take to get through that thick skull of yours that we are just as blessed in this union as you are? Perhaps more so. Before we met you, Kazar and I had each other, but we remained incomplete. Always wanting, always needing, but never feeling truly fulfilled. Our love for each other and our mate bond was a paltry ghost of a true mating. It was like being invited to a feast, but only being allowed to scent the food and take a bite here and there, but never partake fully. It was wonderful and hellish all at once. But mostly, it left us desperate for the missing element that would make us whole.” He growls and drags his hands through his hair in an effort to stem his frustration. “We knew our lives were lacking… we just didn’t know it was you that we were missing.”
He stops pacing to glare at his female on the bed. He has to ignore her tousled mane of lustrous mahogany curls, which beg for him to wrap his hands in their silken lengths as he bends her body to his will so that he can take what he desires from her, while giving her what she craves. He has to disregard the fullness of her succulent lips which beg for him to devour her sweetness as he basks in her strength. He has to disregard the angry flash in her intelligent gaze, which always challenges him to match wits and wills with this woman in this enthralling dance of a triad mating.
“From the very first moment I scented your cotton candy and buttered popcorn scent, I was captivated. Kazar has craved you for centuries and watched over you for your entire life because he could not give up that minimal contact with you. How in all the nine hells can you even imagine that either of us regard being your mate as getting the short end of the stick?”
Callie sighs softly and looks away from the obvious pain and disappointment she can see in Nyle’s expressive blue eyes. “That look on your face at this very moment confirms my worst fears,” Callie quietly wails. “The bald truth is simple. I’m not enough. I’m not confident or capable enough. And I am causing you pain and disappointment.”
“Arrrrrgh!” Nyle growls savagely. “Only because you refuse to acknowledge the truth about yourself. Only because you insist on playing it safe!”
That comment hits a chord deep inside of Callie’s consciousness and she snaps her head around to glare at her mate. “Playing it safe?” She roars. “How am I playing it safe? I’ve been plunged into a reality that would make Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the stupid Cheshire cat run for the damn hills. And yet, I’m still here, am I not?”
“You are barely here, Callie.” His blunt assertion feels like a knife to Callie’s heart, but Nyle is far from finished. “You are playing it safe because you are not all in. If you hold onto this cockamamie belief that you are not enough and you will let us down then you don’t have to take the risk of really letting us in. By hanging on to those feelings, you don’t have to truly open your heart to us and run the risk of one, or both of us, hurting you.” Nyle shakes his head and snarls; “You may still be here, Callie Emma Boyd, but you most certainly are…not… all… in!”
A heated retort rises to Callie’s lips, but she quells it instantly because there is far more truth in Nyle’s accusation than she cares to admit… even to herself. Frantically, her mind races to rationalize her beliefs and her actions, but the truth will not be bent to fit her needs, and her conscience screams at her to own up to her deficiencies. To acknowledge the truth of Nyle’s excruciating indictment. As the tense and painful moments tick by Nyle continues to glare at his female, making Callie suddenly want to flee. She wants to run fast and far from the verity of his denunciation and the agony in his gaze. Because she knows he is right. Callie is terrified of going all in when it comes to her relationship with Kazar and Nyle. That fear freezes her entire being and halts the words she knows she needs to utter. Her naturally reserved nature takes over and Callie cuts her eyes away, looking for an escape route.
Eventually, Nyle begins to slowly shake his head as he backs away from the woman he loves. “Ahhh, I see,” he despairs before he turns to walk away, halting in the doorway just long enough to hit Callie with his parting shot. “I have no idea what time Kazar will return from helping our MC Brethren clean up that mess in Chouteau. Perhaps, he will join you upon his return. As for me, I will be sleeping downstairs in the guestroom. If you or Clara need anything, I will hear and come immediately.”
Instead of going after her male like every instinct, human and dragon alike, are urging Callie to do, she simply scrambles to the head of the bed where she wriggles under the covers like a scared little girl. Burying her face into the pillow, her sobs are wrenched from her very soul. The tantalizing cocktail of Nyle and Kazar’s scents saturate her senses and warn her that she is truly in danger of losing everything. Her instincts and desires are screaming at her to get up, wipe away her childish tears and go downstairs to claim what fate has gifted her, in the form of her mates. Every fiber of her very being urges Callie to follow her heart and her love, but long held beliefs that she is just… not… enough, hold her back.
The pain of growing up without a father, and losing her loving mother when she was only ten years old, left Callie feeling alone and undeserving of love as she was passed from one foster home to another. And then in high school, she gave a bit of her heart away only to have it rejected as high school sweethearts grew up and grew apart. Later in college, Callie tried another relationship, only to once again be rejected as not good enough. True, her college boyfriend was wholly unreliable and unworthy of her heart, but his rejection still hurt and shaped Callie in very negative ways.
And then when the car wreck happened, and Callie went back in time to meet Kazar, she truly believed, for a short while, that she had found the one. The one who would always see her as good enough. But fate ripped her away from that time and brought her back to Tulsa and all the uncertainty of her mundane life. Eventually, Callie allowed the doctor’s and counselor’s words to convince her that Kazar and her time in ancient Alexandria were simply coma induced hallucinations. Desperate longings of an unworthy heart. That is when she truly began to shut down emotionally and build a wall around her heart.
Callie lies there, swallowed up by their massive mating bed, sobbing her heart out over every single past heartache, and every single time she failed to step forward and take a chance on building a connection with another person. Not only does Callie weep for the heartaches of this life time, but for the heartaches and vicious endings she endured in all five of her past lives.
Eventually, the tears stop flowing, and the gut wrenching sobs cease. Despite her insecurities, or perhaps because of them, her mind begins to logically sort through her feelings and reactions. She doesn’t know how long she wept or contemplated her next move, but in the end she sits up in the bed in realization. Nyle was right! If she always holds back and refuses to bare her heart to go all in when connecting to others, she can’t be hurt again. Thoughts of forever withholding some part of her heart from Clara out of fear makes Callie growl in rage over the injustice of such a choice. Callie’s own mother never held back any portion of herself. And as a result, even after her mother died, Callie always knew she had been well and truly loved… once.
“Am I really callous and craven enough to risk hurting my daughter or my mates because I am not as brave as my own mother?” Her entire spirit and every instinct rises up to scream out with a resounding, “Hell no!” to that question. The realization instantly sends Callie flying from her mating bed to find her mates. She’s been given a chance at forming a permanent, unbreakable bond with two men who personify every quality she could ever want in a man, and yet until this very moment she has held back from truly claiming this monumental gift.
“No More! No More!” echoes repeatedly through Callie’s mind as she dashes from the master suite to scamper down the stairs in search of her destiny, the other half of her heart and soul – her mates!
At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses to calm her racing heart and reclaim some semblance of control. She doesn’t want to hide her desperation nor her need to finally make things right from her mates, however, she also does not want to cause them alarm by charging into the room in an apparent panic.
As she makes her way to the guest room on silent feet, she hears Kazar’s rich, accented voice drift through the silent house. “Dammit, Nyle. What if your temper tantrum pushes her away from us? Are you ready to face the rest of our long ass lives with a gaping hole in our hearts?” Callie is unable to make out Nyles muffled reply. “I love you, Nyle. I adore your decisiveness and confidence, but I want to kick your ass when you allow your impulsiveness to take over. Why must you frequently react first and think later?”
By Nyle’s own admission, she knows the Celtic wolf shifter tends to act rashly at times. But this is not a time where he behaved impulsively. This time, Nyle’s words and actions were exactly the wakeup call that Callie needed. Now is not the time to indecisively lurk in a dark hallway, now is the time to step forward with an open heart. It is time to go all in.