Read Online The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats by R.E. Butler - Free Book Online

quietly
and went into the kitchen to get a drink.
    A door was open and she heard kids laughing
and running around. She had wondered where the little ones had
gone. Except for the girl. She was sitting with the other two
females in the front room looking superior and bored to tears. She
wondered why they’d even come.
    Callie walked down into the basement. The
boys were chasing each other and acting very much like rowdy little
boys. As she watched them playing chase, she wondered why the
females were so cold and distant. It wasn’t a bare minute that she
was down there when the atmosphere shifted and the three females
came downstairs and stood looking disapprovingly at the boys
playing, and her. She decided to be perfectly quiet and ignore
them. She had a good rule of thumb that if she didn’t open her
mouth and give someone a reason to pound her, then they probably
wouldn’t. She was hoping that would hold true with female
lions.
    One of the little boys, a sweetheart with
sunshine bright blonde hair, tripped and fell, and he sat up with a
surprised gasp as his cousins gathered around him. He started to
cry, holding his arm. The other little boys all tried to comfort
him, but they were not much older than him, and he couldn’t have
been more than 7. She looked at the females and they watched the
whole thing dispassionately.
    “Aren’t you going to help him?” Callie
demanded.
    The one she’d been introduced to as Layla
sniffed. “Why would we help that cub?”
    “Because he’s a child and he’s hurt. Are
either of you his mother?”
    The other one, Tanya, looked at the boy like
she’d never seen him before. “I have no idea.”
    In confusion, her mouth fell open. “How can
you not know if you’re his mother?”
    “Because we don’t, dog.” Layla said with an
annoyed tone.
    Callie sucked her teeth at the dig. She
didn’t particularly care for bitch cats calling her a dog. It was
derogatory. A wolf and a dog were no more alike than a housecat and
a puma.
    She moved over to the throng of little boys
and the injured one looked up at her with big blue tear filled eyes
and the other boys separated for her as she knelt next to him.
“Hey, cutie. Did you fall?” She took his hand in hers as gently as
she could.
    His lower lip quivered, “I got cut.”
    On his forearm, through a rip in the fabric
of his shirt, was a narrow gash about an inch long. “Aw, it’s not
so bad.” She stood up and held her hand out to him. “Come on,
kiddo; let me clean it up for you.”
    He took her hand with his uninjured one and
she pulled him gently to his feet and they moved like a little
throng with the other boys until they reached the stairwell where
the females were blocking their way.
    “Excuse us.” Callie said, beating down the
fear licking at the back of her throat. She would not be afraid in
front of the kids. She could do this.
    “All you’re going to accomplish, dog, is to
help make that boy like all the other males around here.
Whimpering, pathetic things that they are.” Tanya looked derisively
at the injured boy holding her hand and he shrank against her.
    “There is nothing wrong with helping a child
that is hurt. What kind of people are you, anyway?” Callie growled,
her desire to protect the children from these uncaring women came
roaring to the surface. With amazing clarity, she realized that her
earlier thinking was true: she found she could be strong if she had
something to fight for. She could be strong and get the kids away
from the females. She would stand up to the females to protect the
boys. Even as she didn’t understand why they were afraid of the
females, why the females were so cold and callous towards them, she
instinctively drew herself up trying to stretch her 5’4” frame to
match their close to six foot ones.
    “We could just end you, dog.” Layla sneered
down her nose at Callie.
    Callie let a trickling growl seep from her
lips and let go of the little boy’s hand and folded her