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  Readers Love CARDENO C.

  Strong Enough

  “There may be plenty of sex in this book, but there's a whole lot of emotion with it, so it's a beautiful thing to experience as the story unfolds.”

  —Happy Ever After (USA Today)

  “This book is special. It made me feel so happy. There are sad moments and struggles and these men both have to grow and adapt and learn how to be more than they ever knew they could be, but sweet mercy, the journey was beautiful.”

  —Gay List Book Reviews

  More Than Everything

  “A family size package of Double Stuf Oreo cookies—that’s what this book reminded me of. For me, that equates to a package full of pure bliss. And, as if one helping were not enough, I had to gorge myself with a second (or in this case, an immediate re-read)!”

  —Hearts on Fire

  “This isn’t the average M/M/M story. In my opinion, this is a very unique take on the concept and it just works.”

  —The Novel Approach

  Something in the Way He Needs

  “My favorite kinds of romances are ones that offer unusual leads or leads with lots of character growth, and I got both of those here.”

  —The Book Vixen

  “If you like your stories messy and your heroes flawed, then Something in the Way He Needs is a must!”

  —Guilty Indulgence

  Readers Love Mary Calmes

  Old Loyalty, New Love

  “It’s pretty much got the whole package. You will walk away feeling like a part of the story and wanting to know what happens next and for me that's what makes a great book.”

  —Guilty Indulgence

  “Mary Calmes has done it again with Old Loyalty, New Love. As usual, her characters have exceptional depth and make you feel as if you know them personally.”

  —The Novel Approach

  “This story had passion, suspense, humor and action. The combination of passion and chemistry, want and needing were just the right mix to send my romantic heart a flutter. Overall a winner of a story and I will be waiting and hoping for more of this series.”

  —Sinfully Sexy Reviews

  Where You Lead

  “For a short story, it still managed to display a loving relationship, make you fall for both MC’s, and sprinkled w/ signature MC hot lovemaking scenes! A complete story in very few pages and warmed my heart.”

  —Boys in Our Books

  “I enjoyed this one. I found this a warm and lovely holiday story and great for the season.”

  —Joyful Jay

  “This story is another feather in Mary Calmes’ hat. She has that special touch with her feel good stories and this is another one that will leave you blissfully happy.”

  —MM Good Book Reviews

  By CARDENO C.

  THE MATES SERIES

  Until Forever Comes

  Wake Me Up Inside

  THE HOME SERIES

  He Completes Me

  Home Again

  Just What the Truth Is

  Love at First Sight

  The One Who Saves Me

  Where He Ends and I Begin

  Walk With Me

  THE FAMILY SERIES

  Something in the Way He Needs

  Strong Enough

  More Than Everything

  OTHER TITLES

  Control

  Eight Days

  In Another Life

  Places in Time

  A Shot at Forgiveness

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  By MARY CALMES

  NOVELS

  CHANGE OF HEART SERIES

  Change of Heart • Trusted Bond • Honored Vow

  Crucible of Fate

  A Matter of Time Vol. 1 & 2

  Bulletproof • But For You

  Parting Shot

  Acrobat

  Control

  The Guardian

  Mine

  Old Loyalty, New Love

  Three Fates (anthology)

  Timing

  Warders Vol. 1 & 2

  NOVELLAS

  After the Sunset

  Again

  Any Closer

  Frog

  Romanus

  The Servant

  Steamroller

  Still

  What Can Be

  THE WARDER SERIES

  His Hearth • Tooth & Nail • Heart in Hand

  Sinnerman • Nexus • Cherish Your Name

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Suite 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Control

  © 2014 Cardeno C. & Mary Calmes.

  Cover Art

  © 2014 Reese Dante.

  http://www.reesedante.com

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

  ISBN: 978-1-62798-741-7

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-742-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  April 2014

  From Mary Calmes: I want to thank Cardeno for writing with me even though I was whiny about plotting. CC, you’re a trouper.

  From Cardeno C.: Mary, thank you for agreeing to write a book with me, for putting up with my not-so-mellow writing style, and most of all, for being a wonderful person and amazing friend. To Robert Solon, thanks for your support over the years. I know he’s the opposite of you in important ways, but I hope you like your bear anyway. ;)

  From both of us:

  To Lori Borgaard, Lisa Horan, and Crissy Morris: Thank you for your support.

  To Kelly Shorten: Thank you for making us wonderful websites. You’re the best!

  To Reese Dante: Thank you so much for yet another wonderful cover.

  One

  Vy

  MRS. CHOI didn’t bother looking up when I walked in the store again, even though the bells over the door jangled like mad. The shopkeeper, who had gone to school with my father, was purposely ignoring me. I couldn’t very well blame her. I had been in and out a total of six times in the last seven, maybe nine, minutes.

  Crap.

  Walking right by her, I strode quickly to the back of the store, which I had been in more than a thousand times in my life. It was the local hardware store, and being in construction—demolition—it was a place I frequented often. So it was crazy that I had flushed hot and cold within seconds and then had to grit my teeth through a surge of adrenaline only to feel an absolute sense of peace roll thr
ough me in the very next moment.

  What the hell is going on?

  “What are you doing?”

  I snapped my head up and looked at Louisa Maberti, the ahir of the kettle of hawks, or the second of the flock, that I lead. The fact that she was also one of my best friends—so I trusted her not only with the ket but also my sanity—was a big fat bonus. At the moment, though, watching her lift one of her thick, dark eyebrows as she crossed her arms, I knew she was very concerned about what I was doing. I knew she’d have questions when I passed her for the sixth time in my back-and-forth madness.

  “It’s like watching a pinball from my cruiser,” she said snidely. “What can you possibly need in here, Vy?”

  I always thought of myself as short, but compared to the five-foot-four deputy sheriff, at five foot nine, I was huge.

  “Vy?” she pressed.

  Inhaling deeply, filling my lungs with the rich, smoky scent that was hovering around me, I closed my eyes a second and breathed it in.

  “This is where you do that thing called speaking and don’t make me dig,” she said.

  What to say?

  “I hate digging. You know that,” she said.

  I did.

  “Vy,” she said, her voice rising shrilly. “I have a taser, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  As hawks, if we weren’t careful, sometimes we got a little screechy.

  Clearing my throat, I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I think I smell my mate.”

  Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. She looked good and stunned.

  “Crap,” I grunted.

  Still nothing.

  “Lou?”

  She huffed out a breath, obviously trying to pull herself together. “I…. Your mate?”

  “I think so,” I said forlornly, feeling worse than I sounded.

  She rushed up to me, grabbed my biceps, and stared up into my face. “Vy…. Kuar… you sense your mate… I’m so happy for you.”

  “No,” I snapped at her, yanking free. “You feel the same way I do about it—like shit.”

  “I—”

  I made the sound in the back of my throat, the scolding call all predatory birds made.

  Taking a step back, she winced. “We knew this day would come. We did. And we’re both, well, you’re—” She gestured at me. “—prepared. I don’t know if I ever will be.”

  Squatting down in front of her, I raked my fingers roughly through my hair.

  “God, you’re a mess,” she said, chuckling, trying to divert me, using her hand to tousle my hair, trying to shake some of the dust loose. “You can’t even tell there’s blond under all this. What were you doing today?”

  “We gutted the Coleman house; then we had to load it up and haul everything out.”

  She started picking tiny pieces of gravel out of my hair.

  “Will you stop?” I pulled away, irritated at the whole world and knowing she was going to bear the brunt of it because of geography: she was closest. “You’re driving me nuts.”

  She stepped back and crossed her arms again, which emphasized her muscle definition, the utility belt, and gun. The woman was not big, but people always forgot that. Criminals remembered Louisa Maberti as being tall and big and tough. They were always surprised when they saw her later and found she was not.

  She could bring down a man twice her size. She knew pressure points, was a black belt in tae kwon do, and Lord help you if she drew her gun and had to shoot at you. Game over. In our small town of Elk River, Colorado, she was much scarier than Sheriff Davis, her boss. There were three employees in the sheriff’s office altogether, but they called Lou when things got dicey. The sheriff was a pacifist, and Zach Westerman, the other deputy, was great as backup but not so scary out front. Lou did all the heavy lifting. What helped was that people never saw it coming before she had them in a choke hold on the ground. At first glance, the woman looked fit, but not fearsome.

  When Lou wasn’t in her uniform, she looked like the toned, buff Pilates instructor she also was. Every other weekend, at nine, eleven, and one, she taught class at Mike’s Gym on Main Street. Her husband worked two weekends a month on a hotshot crew, battling forest fires. Instead of sitting home, waiting, worrying herself to death, Lou got out and did something. She knew going into the marriage that being a firefighter’s wife would mean a life fraught with worry, but added to that was the man himself. He could have easily graced a month in a beefcake calendar if his wife would have allowed it. Fortunately, no woman in town was stupid enough to make a play for Carlo Maberti; not when his wife could kill them and make it look like an accident.

  “… and don’t take this crap out on me!” Her snarl brought me back from my drifting thoughts. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she groused, throwing up her arms in resignation. “Were you even listening?”

  “I am now,” I sighed, smiling at her, standing up. “And sorry for being a dick. It’s just, you know, I—I always thought when I met my mate I’d still be me.”

  She nodded, brows furrowed, trying to keep it together for me.

  “I told you. We’ve talked about this a million times,” I said.

  “Yes,” she croaked.

  “What would you have done if your mate was a woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not that that could have happened, because why would it? Mating is about the natural order of things, and two women or two men—” The shot to my shoulder hurt. “What the hell?”

  She pointed at me. “Don’t you dare start quoting Sophia Aleknos. I don’t like it. We both know your folks won’t like it, and—”

  “You can just say my grandmother,” I grumbled, rubbing my left bicep where she’d hit me. “You don’t have—”

  “Sophia Aleknos ceased being your grandmother when she called the ket together and tried to have you first removed and then jointed.”

  I came out to my parents when I was fifteen. They had both announced that they had known for some time and were pleased I’d told them, but, really, beyond that, they couldn’t have cared less. The similarity with the rest of my family stopped there. Because someday I was going to be kuar, or leader, of our flock, my grandmother and my Uncle Peti—my father’s brother—his wife, my cousins, all of them said I owed it to the ket to try and be cured of my affliction. I was stunned. My parents weren’t; they were livid.

  When my mother stood up at that Thanksgiving dinner, incensed, ready to defend me, looking like she was going to rip peoples’ heads off, my father slowly rose beside her. He took her hand in his, squeezed it gently, and smiled. I saw the tension drain out of her as my father gave his attention to the rest of the table. I had never seen his eyes turn hawk gold in his human face. I had no idea that could happen. Everyone, including me, went mute.

  “My son will be kuar after me,” he announced, and his voice was trembling with razor-thin rage. “And anyone who does not think him fit may leave my table and my ket… now.”

  The man had always been the strong, but very silent, type. The windfall of words from him, the way his voice stayed low and yet filled with anger, had been amazing.

  Two weeks later, at our normal conclave, my father’s ahir reported that his mother had called the ket together in secret, under false pretenses, and tried to rally the ket to turn on me. She wanted my father to replace me with my cousin Adomas and have him become kuar instead. And her plot only grew more sinister after that. Not only would I be removed from the line of succession, but my wing joint would be cut through as well. It would render me flightless in hawk form, and when I transformed back, my arms would be severed at the elbow. I was horrified and hurt. My father was furious.

  He stood up in front of everyone, and his voice rose with his anger, seething, boiling, until it finally became a sharp, whiplike cry.

  No, I would not be sent to a conversion therapy program!

  No, the youth minister would not be asked for help!

  No, the matter was not up for discus
sion!

  And finally, anyone who had anything to say could shift and meet him in the sky for an individual challenge.

  No one even breathed in the room. I had no idea two hundred people could be that quiet.

  “If you joint him,” my grandmother said, breaking the thundering silence, “then he would be disfigured. If he were, then perhaps men wouldn’t want him, and I would never have to live through the horror of having a gay grandson.”

  “It could kill him,” my father stressed to her.

  “Better dead than gay.”

  And with that, he sent her from his ket, his house, and his sight forever. On the way home in the car, I had apologized to him, because she was his mother, and because of me he didn’t have one anymore.

  He stopped the car, got out, opened my door, and ordered me out. I stood on the side of the road, unsure of what was going to happen, and he grabbed me tight, crushed me to him, and kissed my hair.

  “Your mother and you—that’s all that matters to me. Never forget it. You will lead the ket. You love your family. We’ll never speak of this again.”

  We never had.

  Jecis Aleknos, my father, paid for my grandmother to go live with her sister in Philadelphia as well as for his brother Peti and his family to relocate to New Mexico. I knew, not from my parents but others, that they hadn’t wanted to leave my father’s flock. He was a good leader, a strong one, and there were benefits to being related to the kuar. But their feelings were known, and just looking at them made him sick. He was raising his heir and the child he loved; no one was allowed to be near me who could poison my vision of myself.

  I never heard from any of them again, and my folks acted like they were dead. I missed having an extended family, but we had our ket, and my parents were beloved. Friends became family, and it was enough. My mother wished often that her folks had lived to see me, and I wondered if they too would have turned their backs on me for being gay. My mother was certain they would not have, and I liked to believe she was right.

  “You’re not listening to me!”

  Again, my mind had drifted. I forced myself to focus on my best friend.