Chapter 2

His sex life with Zoya had always been passionate and warm. They’d shown their love of one another by letting the urge to possess each other dictate how they made love. Adding Rider’s gentle yet firm, but no less passionate, character to the mix had been interesting.

Somehow, almost miraculously, the three of them fit. Whatever combination they were making love in, nobody felt left out. The first time Sean had seen Rider make love to Zoya in their bed, he’d been afraid that his wolf would take control, force the shift, and try to harm Rider. But it hadn’t. Instead, his wolf had felt… content.

That had helped Sean come to terms with the fact that there were three of them in the relationship. It was a little bit like walking an obstacle course with your eyes closed, but it was a new ménage. Whenever the men hesitated, Zoya was there to pull them back together, figure things out with them. And now that she was gone, Sean had no clue what to do.

Was this another alpha/alpha relationship? Could two males form an alpha pair? Did this mean he was gay now, in a same sex partnership? What if a female wolf came along that one or both of them wanted? How about the kids? Would Sean and Rider be enough for them as parents? Yes, the “what ifs” were back, and they were trying to drown Sean.

The table set, Sean left Rider in the kitchen and looked around the house to see if the kids were somewhere inside. It wasn’t that large a house, but there were many rooms and sometimes all three of the little ones would just curl up together somewhere and fall asleep.

He didn’t find them, so he pulled on some boots and his winter jacket and braved the snow. The kids would be at the new house where most of the farm family lived.

The farm was owned by half-human Mikael Jarvela, whose father had founded it after Mikael’s mother—a full tiger-shifter—died giving birth to their son. The shifters now living on the farm were all young. Mikael was the oldest at thirty-eight.

Mikael’s partner, Maxim, was a Siberian tiger, and the rest of the main house’s inhabitants were mostly other cat-shifters like him. Lark was a Eurasian lynx, and her current partner Shani was a cheetah. Both of the women were in their early twenties.

Noah, who was more or less Mikael’s left-hand man together with Sean himself, was a black jaguar. He was a former Marine from the US, and when the man from his past, Dallas, had come to the farm, a lot of things about the melancholy that sometimes surrounded Noah were explained and cleared

The only “dog” in the main house was Anton, a red fox. Together with Jude, the teenage boys got into trouble, or used to get into trouble—it seemed that Zoya’s death had changed them both.

Sean wasn’t worried about Anton, who was a good kid underneath the mischief. He was worried about his own son, who had been homeschooled by Zoya like the other pups, but was now old enough to apply to the high school. Jude seemed to be drifting. The boy hadn’t come to him to talk—he was too concentrated on tending to his siblings, it seemed—but Sean could tell everything was not fine

Sean stomped up the main house’s stairs to get the snow off his shoes, and stepped inside. Nobody knocked here; it was all one big family, after all.

The chatter from the large family room drew him in as soon as he’d gotten rid of his boots in the tiny hall. He walked into a cozy scene. There was a fire in the fireplace, and Lark and Shani were sitting on the floor with the little kids, drawing with them, while Anton and Jude sat on the couch, feet tangled together as they both read what looked to be horse-related books.

“Here you guys are, I wondered why the old house was so quiet. Now I know.” Sean smiled, even though it hurt his heart to see how reserved the kids became when they noticed him.

“Oh, is it dinnertime already? I have food in the oven, and there’s the timer, 1so I haven’t been paying attention to the time,” Lark said and frowned. She was punctual, and she made sure the kids would be shooed back to their own house if they were in the main house come dinnertime. Not because they wouldn’t have been welcomed at the table here, but because Sean preferred to feed his own kids, even with their mother gone.

“It’s okay,” Sean assured her and the kids relaxed. Had he really been so strict? He remembered mornings when he could barely function and Rider had made sure the kids were fed. In the evenings he’d sometimes been snappy. He knew that.