The Happily Ever After Mating Agency Presents Snövarg Island (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour ManLove) Page 4

  “No, it’s a pretty informal thing. Everyone’s just eager to meet you,” Eric told him.

  “Why?” Tyler asked, feeling genuinely confused. “I mean, I get that you’re the alpha and all, and that I’ll eventually be cooking your buns in my oven, but why the big party?”

  Eric frowned and crossed his large arms over his chest. “You’re going to be a big part of this community. Of course they want to meet you.”

  Tyler was glad to hear that. He had been around his uncle, the chief, enough to know what went in to keeping a pack, or warren in their case, running smoothly. Every member had their own place and a job that somehow contributed to the pack. As a gay bunny who could bear children, Tyler was usually thrown in with the women and it was expected that he would contribute to the warren by mating and having babies, staying at home to raise them rather than work. There had been one or two women over the years who had wanted more from life and had left the warren, but for the most part they were all happy with the way things were.

  It wasn’t so long ago that arranged matings were commonplace in shifter culture. The world was a smaller place now, though, thanks to the internet and phones. It was harder to remain secluded as towns were constantly expanding, shortening the distance between communities. It was near impossible to function in the modern world and still keep the shifters isolated. Tyler himself had several online human friends who he gamed with, not that he could ever tell his spiciest family about them. A small group of protesters in the seventies had quickly become a large group, and over the course of a few years much of the way things were done in the shifter world were changed, though the council’s rule about never letting the humans know of their existence was absolute. Although things were better, in Tyler’s opinion, the older generations still had trouble adapting to the changes. Tyler hoped it was different here than it had been in his warren, but even if it wasn’t it still had to be better to be the alpha’s mate than the mate of whatever bunny shifter the chief could bribe to take him off his parents’ hands. Finn’s own grandmother was an elder of their pack. That right there gave him hope. No women were allowed in the chief’s council where he was from.

  Huh, he thought to himself. Maybe we were the Amish ones.

  “Can I ask you something?” Finn said as he brought over Tyler’s coffee. Tyler wrapped his hands around the steaming mug and leaned over it, breathing in the heavenly fumes.

  “Sure, you can ask me anything you like,” Tyler assured him as the other man sat opposite him at the table. Eric remained where he was, his facial expression not changing one bit. “But first do you think you could get Grumpy Pants over there to stop glowering for a minute?”

  While Finn snorted, Eric just looked confused. The dark-haired wolf looked over at Tyler and cocked his head.

  “Do you mean me?”

  Finn laughed out loud this time. “Don’t worry about him. It just takes a while to get to know him.”

  Eric uncrossed his arms and walked over to the table, his large frame looming over Tyler, before sitting himself down beside him at the head.

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said, taking Tyler by surprise. “I wasn’t…glowering as you say. I was thinking. If the idea of this party makes you too uncomfortable then we can reschedule it for after you’ve settled in. We can tell everyone that the long journey took it out of you.”

  Tyler stared into the man’s green eyes and felt his heart do a strange lurch in his chest. The idea that Eric had looked so somber because he was thinking of Tyler’s needs made Tyler feel something he couldn’t remember having felt before. He felt cared for, important. Worried that he might embarrass himself by getting choked up over such a simple thing, Tyler quickly coughed and looked away from the intense green gaze.

  “I’ll be fine. I mean, who doesn’t like a party, right?” he said breezily.

  “Eric,” Finn answered with a shrug of his shoulder, making Eric roll his eyes.

  “Sorry, what was your question,” Tyler said, finally getting back to what Finn had begun asking him.

  “Why the hurry?” Finn asked as he leaned his elbows on the table and sat forward. The guy was pretty cute, despite his large size, and the front of his blond hair had escaped its ponytail and was falling in his eyes, making him look a little like a puppy dog. Tyler hoped that wasn’t an offensive comparison to wolves. “Often it can take years for a right match to be made and even then you’re usually given several options. The matchmaker on our end said that you only showed up on the database a few days ago, and with your rare ability to carry cubs you had to have had a lot to choose from.”

  “So why did I choose you?” Tyler guessed. “Well, I was signed up to the mating agency a few weeks ago, but only to other bunny shifters. I didn’t actually know I could mate with anyone else. My parents are a little speciesist I guess in that they think bunnies should stick to their own kind.”

  “But not you?” Eric asked, frowning again as he listened to Tyler’s story. Tyler was starting to think that frowning was just Eric’s resting face. It was pretty sexy actually. He looked like he could snap and kill a man at any second. Tyler thought it was probably weird that such a thing should turn him on.

  “My parents have been trying to get rid of me for a long time,” Tyler confessed, no longer able to look them in the eye. It was a hard thing to admit that even your own family found you lacking. “I guess they were kind of at the end of their tether.”

  “Tyler,” Eric interrupted him. “If your parents are making you do this, then you don’t have to. There are strict laws in place now against forced matings.”

  Tyler smiled up at him shyly and shook his head. “No. No one’s forcing me. They wanted to get rid of me and I wanted to get away. So, I told the matchmaker to open the search up to anywhere, and any kind of shifter, and he gave me a list later that day. There were a few I considered but I guess I liked that I was helping you guys out. Your story about having been together for so long, and not being able to mate with each other until you found this loophole kind of got to me. I guess I’m a sappy romantic at heart.”

  For the first time since meeting him, Eric smiled at him. “We hope you can be happy here, Tyler.”

  Finn nodded and reached out his hand to take Tyler’s. “I think if we all go into this feeling comfortable with each other, and knowing that we can discuss anything, then we will be fine.”

  Finn’s hand was warm and soft except for a few calluses on his thumb. It would be too easy to let himself fall for the two of them. They had been together since they were kids and they had found a way, against all the odds, to be together. Tyler needed to remember his place. It was good that they were nice to him, he was stuck with them after all, but it wouldn’t do him any good to forget his role in this mating. Tyler was there to bear their children and help them run the pack, nothing more.

  “Are you okay?” Finn asked suddenly, his smile dropping off his face for the first time. He gave Tyler’s hand a gentle squeeze and Tyler forced a smile onto his face.

  “Yeah, just a little tired I guess. Do you think I could maybe take a nap before the party? Do I have time?” he asked as he got up from the table, leaving his mostly untouched coffee.

  “Of course,” Eric assured him. “I’ll show you to our room.”

  Tyler practically did a double take at that. “Our room? You mean I’ll be sleeping in with the two of you?”

  Eric frowned again and looked over at Finn as though for help. “Well, I guess we didn’t think about how it might make you feel pressured. You can sleep in one of the spare rooms until our mating, if that’s what you prefer.”

  “Oh, uh, no that’s fine,” Tyler quickly assured them. “Whatever you think is best.”

  Eric nodded but still didn’t look convinced by Tyler’s reaction.

  Eric grabbed Tyler’s bag from the foot of the stairs before taking him up to their room. There were several rooms with closed doors upstairs. One of the doors was open, however, and Tyler could see that it
was a little girl’s room. There were two beds in it and an awful lot of pink on one side. He wondered that if the two girls had to share a room then where exactly his offspring would sleep, but that particular concern was hopefully a very long way off. Tyler wasn’t ready to be a dad yet. If he was honest with himself, the entire idea of being pregnant freaked him the hell out.

  Eric took him to the end of the spacious hallway and opened the door to their room. It was pretty big, with tall ceilings like the rest of the house.

  “Did your ancestors build this house?” Tyler asked as he walked in and took a good look around. The room had an en suite bathroom, something that Tyler was extremely glad to see. Sharing a bathroom with all those women was not Tyler’s idea of fun. He had grown up in a four-bedroom house with seven siblings. He wasn’t sure he had a single hot shower growing up. When they all eventually got mated and moved out, Tyler started taking long, well-deserved showers. The bedroom had pale-blue wallpaper on the top of the walls with white wood paneling at the bottom. The room had something of a beach house feel to it, with the white-washed wood dressers and the large bay windows that opened up onto a balcony that looked out over the ocean.

  There were a couple of chairs at the bottom of the bed that were facing a fireplace with a well-stocked bookshelf on either side.

  “My great-great-grandfather built most of it, but as the pack grew so did our family. I helped my dad build the kitchen extension. The old kitchen is now the dining room,” Eric explained. It was still daylight out but it was darkened by the abrupt shadow of gray clouds.

  “It’s a great house,” Tyler told him with an awkward smile. “Lots of character. How many bedrooms does it have by the way?”

  “Six,” Eric told him as he put Tyler’s bag on the bottom of the bed. “If you really don’t feel ready to sleep in here with us then you can take one of the other rooms.”

  “No,” Tyler quickly said. He’d take sleeping between two warm, sexy wolf shifters over sleeping alone in a strange place any day. He hadn’t thought it would be like this, that he would be sharing a bed with them all year-round like this, but he couldn’t deny it made him feel more like a part of their lives. “I just wanted to make sure there were enough bedrooms for later on, you know, when we have kids,” he said somewhat awkwardly.

  Eric smiled a little at that. “Oh I see. There are two rooms that are empty right now, but my sister won’t be living with us forever.”

  Tyler frowned as he opened his bag and began pulling out his clothes. “So why do your nieces share? And I’m guessing that they aren’t your sister’s kids, given how young she is.”

  “No,” Eric answered as he sat himself down on the bed beside Tyler’s bag. “My brother, Anders, was supposed to be the next alpha, but he died when my father did in a boating accident. The oldest, Katja, is nine now. She was with my father and brother out on the boat when they drowned. Kat was only five at the time and from what she told us, and what we gathered from the wreckage, the boat experienced engine failure. They smelled burning and realized it was going to blow so they inflated the life raft because they knew that Katja couldn’t swim back to land. They put her on it, but before they could get on themselves the boat blew. The force of the blast pushed the life raft away, thankfully, though Katja has a small burn on her arm. Inga was just a baby at the time. She’s five now and she refuses to let Katja sleep on her own. She knows what to do when Kat has a nightmare, how to stop her from panicking. I sometimes feel like I’m doing wrong by letting a five-year-old carry such a burden, but she would just sneak in and sleep with Kat if we separated them, she told us as much.”

  Without giving it any thought, and acting entirely on instinct, Tyler moved forward, coming to stand between Eric’s legs, and leaned in to hug him. Eric seemed surprised by the contact but he quickly loosened up and hugged Tyler back.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you all,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say. When he slowly pulled back the two men looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, both of them seemingly a little surprised by what had just happened. “Uh, sorry. I’m a hugger.”

  Eric smiled at him fondly and slowly rose from the bed. “Don’t be sorry. We already emptied that dresser over there for you, but it doesn’t look like you brought much with you.”

  Tyler knew that his mate-to-be was changing the subject, clearly feeling a little uncomfortable about letting himself seem vulnerable in front of a virtual stranger.

  “Yeah, I kind of wanted to never go back to the warren again so I only have what I left with,” Tyler told him.

  “Was it so bad there? Did they mistreat you at all?” Eric asked as he crossed his large arms over his chest again.

  “No,” Tyler assured him. “Nothing like that. I guess I just always felt different, like I didn’t belong. Kind of ironic that I feel more like I belong as a bunny in a wolf pack than I did in the place I grew up.” He smirked at the irony and shrugged it off like it was no big deal. Turning his back on Eric, he began putting his few items of clothes into the dresser.

  “Do you need anything for tonight? I can get you whatever you need,” Eric assured him.

  “Nah, I think I’m good. I just need some sleep. Thanks.” He kept his back to Eric, hoping that the other man would leave. He didn’t like the alpha seeing on his face how hurt he was by his own father’s rejection. It was pathetic how easily his emotions showed on his face. If he ever tried his hand at poker it would be guaranteed he would soon be a very poor man.

  “Okay,” Eric finally said after a minute of silence. “Then I’ll let you rest. We’ll wake you up in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “Yeah, great,” Tyler said breezily as he rummaged around for his sleep pants. “Thanks.”

  Once Eric left, Tyler slumped down on the large bed, letting out a heavy sigh. He didn’t know if he was doing the right thing in coming here but his options had been limited. Eric and Finn seemed like good guys and already he felt more wanted here than he had in the warren. It was such a big change from everything he had ever known though. Only time would tell if he had made the right choice.

  Chapter Four

  Tyler wasn’t sure how long he had slept but by the time he woke up it had gotten much darker out. Eric hadn’t been in to wake him yet so he figured he still had time before the party started. He could hear noises downstairs, the sound of at least fifteen people moving around. It wasn’t until then that he even considered the possibility that the party was actually happening there, but it made sense, he supposed, given that it was the alpha’s house. The thought helped relax him a little. Although he hadn’t been in the house long he at least knew where the bedroom was if he needed to escape for a bit. He blinked as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness and finally realized what had woken him. His senses told him that he wasn’t alone.

  Turning onto his side, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the face of a little girl watching him from beside the bed.

  “Argh,” he yelled, quickly sitting up and reaching for the lamp on the bedside table. The little dark-haired girl smiled at him, showing her two missing bottom front teeth, as he turned the light on.

  “Hi,” she said, beaming at him happily. “You snore.”

  “No, I don’t,” he argued defensively before remembering that he was talking to a child. “Do I?”

  “A little bit,” she told him with a nod of her head. She had long, wavy black hair that was pushed back off her forehead by a sparkly, emerald-green headband that matched her eyes. She put her hands on her hips and leaned in to look at him better. “You sound like this.”

  Tyler couldn’t help the smile that spread on his lips as the little girl started making little snuffly sounds, trying to imitate his snoring, and twitching her nose like a rabbit.

  “Well, if I snore then at least I sound and look cute doing it,” he said to her with a shrug. He had fallen asleep over the covers, still wearing the clothes he had traveled in. He needed a hot shower and a shave des
perately. He also needed to eat. He was starving, which was probably a good thing, seeing how Finn and Eric had told him that a lot of people had been cooking all day just for the party.

  “I’m Tyler,” he said, holding out his fist for the little girl to bump. She grinned again and knocked her much smaller fist into his.

  “I know. Eric told me you were sleeping and that I shouldn’t wake you up,” she told him. “That’s why I was really quiet watching you.”

  Tyler snorted. This kid was adorable. “You must be Inga, right?”

  She nodded her head and quickly twirled in a circle, showing off her silver, glittery party dress. “We’re having a party because you’re going to mate my uncle and Finn.”

  “That’s right,” he said. He got up off the bed and stretched. He turned quickly and looked at the little girl’s outfit again as something dawned on him. She looked like someone had made an effort in dressing her. “I don’t have anything nice to wear for the party.”

  Inga frowned and crossed her arms over her chest much like he had seen Eric do many a time already. “You need a fairy godmother.”

  Tyler laughed and patted her on the head. “Well I tell you what. While I go shower, maybe you can see if you can find me one.”

  Inga beamed at him and nodded her head once. “Okay.”

  Tyler watched her run off with a fond smile on his face before going to take his shower.

  He took his time in the bathroom, luxuriating under the hot, powerful spray. He had yet to ask about Wi-Fi but at least they had hot water and good water pressure. As the steam rose up around him, making his skin turn pink and sensitive, Tyler ran his hands slowly over his body, his thoughts firmly on the two men he would be sharing a bed with later that night. They were both so built and good-looking. He wondered if they would want to wait until after their mating to have sex with him. He really hoped not. It had been a while since Tyler had gotten laid. In fact, the only person he had ever slept with was this douche he had gone to school with, who acted like Tyler should be grateful he ever put his dick in him. He had also been threatened after every illicit encounter that if he ever told anyone he would get his face caved in. Tyler knew it was sad that he had kept going back for more, but the only other options had been his own hand and he was a typically horny teenager. Things were going to be better here, at least in the sex department. Eric and Finn were clearly out and proud, so there would be no threats of physical violence or meeting up in secret.