~
“Oh look, how like a man to have a big old truck as an extension of his lack of equipment elsewhere!” Faith bit out in annoyance, as her mate half-heartedly manhandled her out of the bar and onto the dark street.
“Geez, Sister,” The bouncer said, eyeing Faith with disbelief for a long moment.
“She’s not a nun, damn it!” Mick growled at the shifter that the pack had supplied to Clive for the private party that they were supposed to be holding for Ryan’s birthday. Mick reminded himself to thank the man for letting in the nuns.
“She looks like a nun,” Trevor leaned in and whispered.
“Could that be because she’s dressed like a nun?” Mick growled back, shaking off the urge within him to head butt a wall, or Trevor, or anything that wasn’t his mate and couldn’t break easily.
“Oh … yeah.” Trevor shrugged.
“You really got a smart pack of shifters, don’t you?” Faith bit out, as he half-walked, half-lifted her towards his truck.
“What about the other nun?” Trevor called out, and Mick rolled his eyes back in his head as he grumbled and growled.
“Not a nun!” He called back over his shoulder.
“There’s a lot of not-a-nuns around tonight,” Trevor bit out with a small shake of his head.
“Must be something in the water,” Faith chuckled.
“Stop picking on people,” Mick growled against her ear.
Faith felt a flush of heat go through her body that she wanted to deny, but just like the menopause, when you were in the grip of it – there was no shaking off that sucker.
“I’m not going home with you,” Faith hissed up at him, and as she craned her head on her neck to get a better look at him, and to try out her evil glare of death and destruction – the look in his jet black eyes told her that he had other plans, and the set of his jaw said he meant to get his way.
“Fine, where’d you live? I’ll go home with you – your neighbors might be a little put out by the mating howl,” Mick teased.
“Mating howl!?” Faith grumbled a growl of her own – admittedly, it was nowhere as good as his, but that didn’t stop his wolf from showing a lot of interest in that sound, and Mick cursed as he mentally slammed that cage door shut within his mind.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?” Mick offered her a wolfish grin, and she offered him one bony elbow to the ribs – he was glad that he had a full set of hard muscles that saw her elbow skirt right off.
“Kiss my backside you…”
“Hey!” The deep, dark tones of another shifter caught the beta’s attention, and Mick groaned inwardly.
“Not a damn nun!” He growled, and his pack brother held up his hands as he took a long step back from his beta.
“Just checking,” Rodney said with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
“She looks like a nun, right?” Trevor said, and Faith couldn’t help but groan.
“I can see why you need a new gene pool. Unfortunately, I’m not your girl,” Faith bit out.
“No, just my mate,” Mick growled back.
“Your mate is a nun?” Steve spat out on a holler of disbelief as he sauntered down the road towards them.
“Not a nun,” Rodney said quickly back over his shoulder.
“Looks like one though, right?” Trevor offered.
“Oh … my … God!” Faith bit out in pure and unadulterated disbelief.
“Yeah, ok, you got me there,” Mick growled back.
He couldn’t help but see her point of view.
“Let me go!” Vanessa squealed out in annoyance as she squirmed and turned, and tried to push up from where she was hanging down the alpha’s broad back.
The last that she’d seen of Jeannie; the woman had her hand wrapped around the handle to a door marked private, and her mate was trying to get her free.
Vanessa had tried to help out, and she’d zapped his backside on the way out the door, a door held open by a grinning vampire that she’d also zapped, and now she was out in the night air – hanging upside down like a sack of potatoes from her mate's shoulder.
Oh, the indignity, and her wearing a nun’s habit as well.
“Not until you learn to play nicely with others,” Ryan tossed the words back over his shoulder as he stalked towards his pickup truck that was parked behind Mick’s.
Ryan couldn’t say that he hadn’t enjoyed hearing Jason’s yelp of pain when she’d zapped him. He had.
Neither could he say that he hated the sound of the vampire biting down on pain of his mate’s wrath as he’d left the bar behind him. It kind of made his year.
But still, he didn’t need her to know any of that, and he’d made a point of admonishing her behavior. Because he was the alpha and a pack needed discipline.
“Another nun?” Rodney bit out in surprise.
“We’re kidnapping nuns now?” Leslie said, as she stopped beside the other members of the pack and twisted her head to one side, offering her older brother a questioning look.
“There not nun’s,” Rodney said, and then he frowned. “At least, Mick’s one isn’t.”
“Not a nun – a mate – two mates…” Mick growled out, but he never got to finish.
“You both found a mate?” Leslie splattered amusement through her words like confetti.
The thought of her Neanderthal brothers having found woman that one woman who would put up with them was unbelievable to her. Welcome though it was.
She’d had to live with them long enough to know that they didn’t exactly keep the house as a female friendly zone.
“All,” Ryan corrected her.
He turned towards his little sister and saw her frown, then, there was a timely loud squeal from inside the bar, and all eyes, except Mick’s and Ryan’s, turned towards the entrance.
Jason came out carrying his mate over his shoulder, and she had the door handle still in her hand. Jeannie was using it to beat her annoyance against the beta’s backside.
“Damn, she’s a mean one,” Jason growled.
“At least she’s not a nun,” Trevor offered with a small shrug as Jason shot him a curious look.
“No,” he offered dryly. “That would be bad.”
“They’re not nuns,” Ryan growled.
“Yeah, but they’re wearing penguin suits – that one’s not, she’s … normal,” Trevor offered back.
“For a witch,” Jason grumbled.
“They’re witches?” Leslie’s night just got a whole lot brighter and more interesting.
If anyone could keep her three shifter brothers in line – then witches could. Oh, she knew that she was going to enjoy the wooing part that was to come.
Ryan grumbled a growl back at her, and she shrugged a helpless grin.
“Really?” He eyed his little sister as she practically shone with glee.
“What? I think I deserve to enjoy the mating pull after all these years of being teased, prodded, pinched and treated like a female in a house full of male chauvinist pigs – that’s only fair. I guess it’s true what they say; God pays debts without money.” She offered back, grinning with glee.
“Newsflash little sister, you are female,” Jason offered.
Then he unceremoniously tossed his mate up in the air with just a flick of his broad shoulder, and she squealed out as he caught her at the waist with his two large hands, and gently eased her down the hard length of his body to her feet.
“Butthead,” Jeannie bit out, swinging her hand with the handle in it right at his head.
Jason’s eyes widened, but his hand shot up and his long fingers wrapped around her wrist, stopping her from hitting him upside the head with the metal handle and growling a warning to her.
“Geez, you two have only just met, and yet she knows you so well,” Leslie grinned.
“Right, let’s get this mating and wooing show on the road,” Clive announced with glee, slamming the door shut on his bar, and locking it behind him.
“No party?” Victor asked with a deep frown.
“Oh yeah,” Clive said with a smug smile, “there’s going to be fireworks and everything – back on pack land, as we watch the truly awesome threesome woo their mates.”
All eyes fell on the three brothers. Expectation and amusement shone in equal measure in their eyes, with Clive and Leslie the worst as they grinned with uncontrollable glee.
“No pressure,” Ryan growled out, rolling his eyes in his head, and his body towards the truck as he tried to think of the best way to get his mate in the truck without looking like a complete idiot or breaking her.
Mating was a right royal pain in the backside.
“And you, the redhead,” Clive pointed at Jeannie, and the witch scowled back. “I want my damn handle…”
He got no further as she lobbed it at his head.