Authors: R. E. Butler
“I’ll never find another tenant like you, Rue,” Mrs. Milford said.
“Aw, I’m sure you will. You’re the best landlady I’ve ever had. I’m gonna miss you.”
Mrs. Milford hugged Rue and sniffled. “I’m going to miss you, too.”
Rue wrote her a check for the remaining rent and handed her the keys. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome, honey.”
Rue walked outside to where James and John stood next to her old beat-up car.
“How much time do I need to give you before I toss this junker out and get you a new car?” James asked.
“Hey, don’t bash my car.”
“Yours and Dom’s.”
Dom straightened from where he had pushed a pillow into the backseat of his car. “Don’t judge, man. Donna’s gotten me through a lot of hard times.”
“Donna?” John asked.
Dom grinned. “Yeah.”
James snorted. “I’m still getting your mom a new car.”
“Hey!” She groused. “I’m standing right here.”
“One morning you’re going to wake up and this car will be replaced with something shiny and new.” James stepped close to her and pulled her against him with a low growl. “Then you’re going to say ‘Thank you so much, James,’ and take off your clothes.”
“Gross, man!” Dom yelled, putting his hands over his ears.
She blushed and laughed, ducking her head against his strong shoulder. James chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “Ready to start the next chapter of your life, love?”
“First, we have to stop by the bar and say goodbye to Titus,” she reminded him.
James drove her car to the bar, and he and John came inside with her. She introduced them to her old boss and he stared at her for a long, quiet moment. “I wondered what was under those wigs.”
“The real me.”
It was possibly the most truthful thing she’d ever said to her boss. Packing up and leaving the house behind had helped some of her walls come down. She felt freer knowing she had shut down that part of her life and was moving on.
“I’m sorry to see you go, but glad that you’ve found your mates. Take care and stop by anytime you’re in town.”
He hugged her briefly and his eyes were suspiciously wet as he turned back to the bar and began to rub invisible spots off a clean glass.
She stepped into the bright sunlight with James and John and turned her face up to the sun, closing her eyes and letting the warmth seep into her skin. Exhaling loudly, she pulled her sunglasses down from where they’d been perched on top of her head and hooked her arms through her mates’.
“I’m ready to start the next chapter of my life.”
“The best one yet,” John promised.
She certainly hoped so.
Saturday night, Rue came down the stairs with a large packing box. James and John were in the kitchen talking to Jilly and her mates.
“It’ll be completely innocent,” Fate said.
John shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the whole ‘innocent sleepover’ scenario.”
“Daddy,” Jilly said. “I’m eighteen now.”
“You’re still my little girl,” John said, sighing unhappily.
Rue put the box down on top of the island and said, “What about a camp out?”
“Camp out?” John asked, turning to look at her.
“Sure. We could all camp out together. We can build a bonfire and pitch some tents. Well, by ‘we’ I mean you muscly guys. That way they can have their ‘innocent sleepover’ but still be within earshot of adults.”
Jilly’s frown slipped into a broad smile. “Really? That would be cool.”
Rue put her hand on John’s shoulder, and he placed his hand over hers. “Henry can’t come. He’s grounded,” John said.
Rue said, “Dom said he was taking on Henry’s punishment as his own, so he won’t join on principle. Maybe just the six of us?”
“Sounds good. Do you have a tent or do you need to borrow one of ours?” Fate asked.
“We have one,” James said. “There’s a clearing not too deep into the woods where Alek and Jericho spent their mating night with Lachlyn. It will be perfect.”
The kids stood to leave and Rue said, “Would you guys give us an hour or so before you head out there? There’s something I need to do.”
“You bet,” Wyked said.
When they were alone in the kitchen, Rue suddenly felt nervous. “I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds, John.”
He swiveled on the stool and rested his hands on her hips. “Not at all, sweetheart. It’s a great idea. I didn’t know what to do when she asked if the twins could spend the night in her room. I know she’s technically an adult, but when I look at her, I see a little girl in pigtails.”
“I feel the same way when I look at Dom. I can’t believe how grown up he is sometimes.”
John’s nose wrinkled adorably and Rue kissed it. “I need to build a fire. There’s something I want to share with you both.”
“There’s firewood at the side of the house,” James said. “You guys pack a bag, and I’ll fill up the carrier and grab snacks.”
Rue and John headed upstairs and packed a duffel with clothes. John stopped at the hall closet and pulled down several blankets and old pillows, and they carried them down to the first floor. Rue left him and James to get finished packing and went to find Henry and Dom.
“No, no, you have to wash the white items separately or they get dingy,” Dom said to Henry when Rue found them in the laundry room.
“Dingy? Is that even a real word?” Henry groused.
“Of course it is. It means ‘separate the white clothes or Mom will make you wash them again.’”
“It’s true,” Rue said.
The two boys turned and looked at her. “Hey Mom,” Dom said.
“Hey, Mom,” Henry repeated, tossing a white undershirt at Dom.
Rue smiled. Henry had been calling her “mom” since they’d gotten back the night she and Dom had run away. John had asked her privately if it was okay, and she’d promised that it was. She and John were mates, and that made Henry her stepson.
She explained about the camp out. Henry pouted, his lower lip sticking out. “I like camping. Aaron, Grant, and Sam took the other kids up to the cabin to camp out this weekend. Everyone is camping but us.”
“We’ll camp as a family another time, I promise.”
“Oh, cool.”
“Don’t stay up too late.”
Dom smirked. “You, either.”
She threw a stray sock at him, and he caught it with a chuckle.
Heading back to the kitchen, she found James and John packing a cooler with snacks and drinks and added her two cents in their discussion of trail mix versus Chex Mix. She voted for Chex Mix.
The only thing she carried out of the house was the box. James carried the wood and tent, and John carried the rest of the supplies. They walked across the grass and into the trees, James leading the way.
“Sweetheart?” John asked as he fell into step next to her.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay? You’ve been kind of quiet since dinner.”
“I am. I’ll be even better once we get a fire going.”
The woods closed around them, and she listened to the sounds of nature as they made their way to the clearing. She was jealous of Dom getting a chance to hunt, since she hadn’t gone hunting since before Dom was born.
“I want to hunt.”
“Right now? I thought you wanted to camp?” James asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Oh, right. Not tonight, but another night?”
“Whatever you want, love,” James said.
Love
. James had been calling her love since they came to get her that night at the side of the road. Her heart stuttered a bit at the thought of actually loving him and John. She’d been doing her best over the last few days to share her life with them and break down the walls that she’d hidden behind all those years.
A part of her, no matter how small it was, still wanted to run. She’d always thought that being on the run was difficult. A life she wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy. She saw what running really was now, though — easy. Running meant never saying goodbye, never looking someone in the eyes and telling him that you’d given up. Staying was far more difficult than running, but she wouldn’t change her decision to stay now for anything in the world. Dom was thriving, her dreams were sweet, and the pride had enveloped them as if they’d been part of their people all along.
The clearing came into view and James set the wood down next to a fire pit that someone had made. He knelt next to the pit and began to lay the wood inside the circle of stones and explained how Alek, Jericho, and Lachlyn had spent their mating night in the clearing and had made the fire pit.
She put the box next to the fire pit and joined James, tucking paper and kindling in between the logs. John set up the tent a few yards away.
“My dad would have liked you,” James said as he pulled a lighter from his pocket.
“Really?”
He nodded, flicking the lighter and watching the flames catch the paper then the kindling. “I wish he would have lived long enough to see how far lions have come. His whole life, he only wanted our mother to love him back. He died with a broken heart.”
“Were your dad and your mom truemates?”
“I really don’t know. I know that he loved her and never wanted anyone else. If someone had told him that he could have her if he only shared blood with her, he would have done it in a heartbeat.”
“Why did you stay in King so long if things were bad? Rhett came here to Ashland years before you did.”
“I guess because King was our home. We were led to believe that there could be no other way for mountain lions to live. The females and males would never be together because it was the way we were made. To find out all these years later that we weren’t
meant
to be that way, but warped through a goddess’s curse is hard to understand.”
Rue watched the flames licking the wood. She had never believed in gods and goddesses from mythology, thinking them simply characters from stories and nothing more. After spending time with Jilly and hearing about her transformation from a loving child to an unfeeling woman because of poisoned claws, Rue knew that the mountain lions had indeed been cursed.
James looked at her. “I never believed that the female who bore Ethan, Eryx, and Alek was my truemate. I…cared for her, but it’s not even a shadow of what I feel for you.”
She leaned on his shoulder. “I care about you, too.”
James kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her.
“Hey, if you’re done molesting our mate while I’m working like a dog, come help me,” John groused.
Rue chuckled and looked up at James. “Are you done?”
“Never,” he said, grinning.
They joined John and helped him erect the tent and inflate the queen size blow-up mattress using a battery-operated pump. The tent was big enough for the mattress and their supplies, and tall enough so they could stand up inside without their heads touching the ceiling. After fitting a sheet on top of the mattress, she and James arranged the pillows and blankets. Outside, John had laid out a blanket for them to sit on near the fire.
She and James joined him, and she went to the box, pressing her hand to the top. “Before Jilly and the twins get here, I wanted to share something with you. I know that you don’t think anything of my white hair, but this is the longest I’ve ever gone without covering it up. Before I shifted, my hair had been dark brown. In a heartbeat, everything about me changed, and I was cast away from the people who were supposed to love and support me. My hair color set me apart, made me stand out. I cut it short and wore a hat at first, but eventually I found a wig store and bought my first one. From that point on, I never went out in public without the wig on.
“Before the night that I became pregnant with Dom, I hadn’t thought about my scent. I didn’t know that other cats would recognize me just on my scent and that they might want to know more about me. After I recovered, I knew that hiding my hair wasn’t enough and I had to go into total lockdown on anything that made me unique.”
She opened the box and pulled out two large bottles of perfume. “The perfume made me sick at first, but I finally got used to it. I felt safer, knowing my hair was hidden and my scent drowned out, but I never really ever felt safe. Even after I changed my name and moved to Perry, I was always wary, never trusting, never giving people a chance to get to know me.”
James and John came over to her and she stood, gripping the two perfume bottles.
“Let’s bury them,” James suggested.
She nodded and John went to the supplies and pulled out a small shovel that was going to be used to cover the fire with dirt when they were done for the night. They walked silently into the woods until they were far enough away from the campsite that she could only see the barest orange flames flickering through the trees. It took only a few moments for John to dig a hole deep enough for the perfume bottles. She opened them, dumping out the contents into the freshly churned earth, and then dropped the bottles into the hole. She took the shovel from John and covered up the bottles, effectively sealing up her past.
John took the shovel from her, and they returned to the campsite. She didn’t speak for a few long moments as she dropped the wigs into the flames. They had been her way of keeping others at arms’ length. Even if people guessed she wore wigs, they never knew why. The wigs scorched and smoked and she and her mates stood off to the side while the breeze carried away the scent of the physical barriers she’d used for so long.
When the wigs were ash, they joined her as she knelt next to the box and pulled out an envelope of pictures. As each one went into the flame, she told them the names of the people on the photos, her biological family and members of her clan. The heat curled the photos, warping them before they succumbed to the flames and burned away.
“I don’t know why I kept these. I think my…biological mother was the one who packed up my belongings before they banished me that night, and she grabbed a photo album I kept in my room. I used to stare at the photos and wonder why they didn’t love me enough to let me stay.”
James and John put their arms around her as the last photo turned to ash and held her while she cried. She’d destroyed everything that had been part of her life before she met them. All of the things that she had used to keep people from knowing any truths about her were gone, and she was stripped bare, emotionally and physically.
James cupped her chin and turned her head until she was looking at him. “Thank you, love.”
“You’re all I have now,” she said the words slowly, not realizing until that moment how very true they were.
James growled softly. “We’re not going anywhere.”
John gripped her hand. “You’re ours forever.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. For more years than she could count, she’d wanted someone to
want
her. The people who were supposed to care about her — her family, her clan — had betrayed her. Worse than their betrayal was that they’d cost Rue the ability to trust others.
She swallowed hard. “I trust you both…with my secrets, my fears, my heart. Everything I am is yours.”
James’ fingers tightened fractionally on her flesh and his eyes shone with unshed tears. “We won’t let you down, Rue. Your trust is everything to us.”
John murmured his agreement, moving closer until she was surrounded by them, cocooned in their warm embraces; the worries and fears she’d carried eased away, much in the same way that the flames had turned her past into ash.
They sat there for a long time just holding each other, and it was the sweetest moment she’d ever had.