The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

“So do we go?  Do we have to go?”

“Meena, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want.  I’ve got to go, though.  I can’t just leave him there.  Things will get bad with us and I don’t want that kind of trouble.”

“No.”

“No?  No what?  Are you saying I can’t go?”

“Of course not,” she smiled, “I would never tell you what to do.  At least not when I’ve known you for such a short amount of time.  I meant no, you don’t have to go alone.  I don’t want trouble with Tyler either.  We’ve just started down this crazy road and if we’re going to do something that involves all three of us, we can’t start excluding one right at the start of it.  The whole thing will be doomed if we do.”

“Alright.  Just stay close to me, OK?  No matter what happens, try and stay close to me.”

He could smell the fear coming off her and it made him want to break something.  She was afraid, very afraid, in fact, and instead of taking her away from it he was walking her into the heart of the danger.  He felt like a piece of sh*t.  He finally had a woman he wanted to protect and he knew he wasn’t doing it well enough.  Just another thing that Tyler’s forceful personality was overshadowing and robbing him of. 

Still, there was no turning back for them now.  Caleb moved in front of her, wanting to shield her small body with his much larger one and walked her through the little archway the trees had grown into that acted as a kind of a foyer into their secret lair.  And there he was.  Tyler, just as Caleb had expected to find him.  From behind him he heard Meena let out a little gasp and her grip on his hand grew so tight it almost hurt.  As the clouds above them passed momentarily and the bright light of the moon shone down with full force, she got a really good look at what they were dealing with and her entire body began to tremble.

“Caleb.  Caleb, do you see that?  Am I seeing things?”

“No, you’re not seeing things.  It’s there.”

“But it can’t be.”

“I know, but it is.”

She started to tug on his hand, hard, trying to pull him back and far, far away from this place.  Unfortunately for her, she was no match for Caleb when it came to strength.  She could have pulled with everything she had and not move him even a fraction of an inch.  He was immovable to the mere mortals he usually dealt with.

“Let’s go!  Please,” she hissed, her whisper sounding very close to panic, “we have to go.  It’ll see us and then what’ll we do?”

“No, Meena.  We can’t go.  This is what you were meant to see.”

“But I don’t understand.  You aren’t making sense.”

“Do you trust me?  I know you don’t know me very well and you don’t have any reason to, but do you think you can trust me just on this one thing?  If something goes wrong, if I’m wrong about this, you don’t ever have to trust me again.”

Meena couldn’t even talk, but she nodded slowly that yes, she would trust him even though every instinct she had was telling her to do just the opposite.  Walking slowly, slowly enough so that if she panicked he could do whatever was needed from him, Caleb led Meena into the clearing. 

There, right in the very middle, was a massive lion.  A passerby may have even thought it was a statue if he didn’t take a second look, but it wasn’t.  It was Tyler.  He had always been a show off, a bit of a prima donna even, so this wasn’t really that much of a surprise.  Once Tyler decided that Meena needed to be made aware of what they were, there was no way he was going to do it without all of the dramatic flair.

It wouldn’t even occur to him.  Apparently it was just too bad for Caleb if he wasn’t ready to reveal himself.  Apparently to Tyler, the thing he wanted was the only thing that mattered and Caleb was pretty much just supposed to make a snap decision about whether or not he was going to lay himself bare as well. 

And that was assuming Tyler didn’t just go ahead and out him.  It seemed pretty likely that if Caleb didn’t explain that he was also a shifter it would just be taken out of his hands altogether.

“Caleb-”

“I know, it’s OK.  I know what I’m doing.”

Tyler hardly moved as they approached, except to stand slowly, moving almost like he was bored, and yawned widely so that all of his needle sharp teeth were on display.  Caleb rolled his eyes and sighed.  He was going to milk this thing, wasn’t he?  He was probably enjoying how frightened Meena was of him at this point.  He had always been of the misguided (in Caleb’s belief) opinion that fear meant power and respect. 

As far as Caleb was concerned, fear was the last thing he wanted a girl he was involved with to feel.  He had seen his father inflict that on his mother for years and he had seen the way she wound up hating him for it.  That was something Caleb wanted no part of.  But now Tyler was taking a step towards them, as if to remind Caleb that this wasn’t the time for deep thought.  He really couldn’t let anyone else run the show, could he?

“Jesus, Tyler, you really like to do things over the top, don’t you?”

“What do you mean, Tyler?  Where is he?  Do you think he’s hurt?  Did that animal hurt him?  We should go for help.”

“No, Meena, he’s not hurt.  He’s right there.”

“I don’t get it.  I don’t see what you mean.”

“The lion.  Tyler is the lion.  He’s a shifter, Meena.  A man who shifts into a lion, kind of like in the stories about werewolves.”

“That can’t be real.  Is this some kind of a strange joke?  How could you believe that?  He’s got to be messing with you.  Somehow.”

“Meena, please, just look at me for a minute.  Try to listen to the sound of my voice.  I don’t want you to pass out, OK?  And I could see that happening with what I need to say.”

“Which is what?”

Caleb took a deep breath and fought back the urge to lose his dinner right in the middle of the clearing.  He used to imagine having this conversation with someone.  He would imagine saying the words, revealing that he was a shifter and not only a man and then he would imagine the person he was telling (a person who was always faceless in these fantasies) responding with nothing but unconditional acceptance.