Cael (Were Zoo Book 11) Read online

  Cael

  Were Zoo Book Eleven

  R. E. Butler

  Cael

  Were Zoo Book Eleven

  By R. E. Butler

  Copyright 2021 R. E. Butler

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Coming May 2021 in the Sable Cove Series

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  Cael (Were Zoo Book Eleven)

  By R. E. Butler

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  Cover by CT Cover Creations

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.

  Edited by Sarah Dawn Johnson

  Thanks to Joyce, Shelley, and Ann for beta reading.

  Cael (Were Zoo Book Eleven)

  By R. E. Butler

  November Jones is the product of a one-night stand. She didn’t know her father except to curse his name and the weird genetics he left her with. She wouldn’t give him a single thought if it weren’t for the fact that he tried to kill her several times and she and her mother have been on the run since she was a toddler. When an invitation for a safari tour shows up in the mail addressed to the previous occupant, Novi feels compelled to go.

  Elephant shifter Cael spends his days as the in-house veterinarian at the Amazing Adventures Safari Park taking care of the normal animals and his nights underground with the other shifters, staying hidden from humans. It’s a day like any other when he’s in his shift in the paddock while the safari tour vehicles drive by…until he smells something amazing and knows the beautiful brunette VIP is his soulmate.

  The problem? Novi is no ordinary human. Can Cael and the shifters in the park keep Novi and her mom safe in the park or will Novi’s father finally catch up to them?

  Chapter One

  Cael Donnelly shoved his feet into his work boots and laced them, then stood and picked up the gift bag from the coffee table. His friend and fellow elephant shifter, Kelley, had just had a baby with his soulmate, Rhapsody. The little one was one week old, and Cael hadn’t seen the baby since he’d been brought home the day he was born. The couple hadn’t wanted to know the sex of the baby in advance, so Cael had decided to wait to get them a gift.

  He’d had to call his mom and ask her what was appropriate, because he’d had no idea what to get for them. With her advice, he’d settled on something called a onesie with cartoon elephants on it and an infant rattle shaped like a black cat, since Rhapsody was a black panther shifter.

  Leaving his house, which was in the elephants’ private living quarters underneath the Amazing Adventures Safari Park in New Jersey, he headed to Kelley and Rhapsody’s home. He knocked on the front door and heard Kelley’s muffled “Come in.”

  “Hey,” he said when he opened the front door and found the trio sitting on the couch in the family room.

  “Hey yourself,” Rhapsody said, lifting little Khap onto her shoulder and patting his back. “It’s so nice of you to stop by.”

  “I would’ve dropped this off sooner, but I was afraid to wake the baby,” Cael said. He handed the gift to Kelley and sat in a comfortable chair across from them.

  “He’s a great sleeper so far,” Rhapsody said. “We’re very lucky.”

  “And also hoping it stays that way,” Kelley said.

  Kelley took Khap from his mate and gave her the gift. Rhapsody pulled out the blue and green tissue paper from inside the bag and took out the onesie and rattle. “Oh! You got something for each of our animals, that’s so cool! Thank you!”

  She beamed at Cael, and he made a mental note to thank his mom for the advice. “You’re welcome.”

  “Wanna hold him?” Kelley asked.

  Before Cael could answer one way or the other, Kelley set the little boy in Cael’s arms. Khap smelled like powder and the mixture of both animals—the dry sweetness of savannah grass and the deep earthiness of the jungle. Cael’s heart clenched as he looked down at the baby, smiling as he stretched his little arms and yawned.

  “He’s a good-looking kid,” Cael said with a low voice.

  “Takes after his daddy,” Rhapsody said.

  Cael was a little jealous. Well, a whole hell of a lot jealous, because Kelley was the only elephant in the memory who’d found his soulmate. Rhapsody had bought a ticket for the VIP safari tour, which had been arranged by the alphas to draw in unmated male and female humans to the park. The hope had been that their people would find soulmates among the humans, but while the tours had been running for a long time, few soulmates had actually come from the tours themselves.

  Looking down at this little baby, so sweet and cute, made him long for that in his own life. He could do what his mother wanted him to—which she herself had done—and find an elephant to mate with solely to have a child and not for a life-long mating. His mother and father were not mated, but neither had ever mated others. While both his parents believed he should’ve had a child years earlier and not waited, they weren’t romantics at heart like Cael was. He wanted to wait for his soulmate. He didn’t want to mate with a random female simply to have a child, he wanted to build a life with the one female on the planet meant for him, and in order to do that he had to wait for her.

  He’d certainly like it if she hurried up, though. His bed was damn lonely.

  “You look like you’re thinking about something,” Kelley said.

  Cael looked up and realized that Rhapsody was gone. Kelley explained she went to take a shower while Khap was sleeping.

  “I was thinking about my soulmate.”

  “You’ll find her when the time is right.”

  “Everyone always says that.”

  “Well, it’s true. You don’t want to go into an arranged mating or have a child without finding your soulmate, so you have no choice but to wait. Once you find her, though, your whole world is going to change in a heartbeat. Finding Rhapsody was like suddenly realizing that part of me had been missing and I hadn’t ever realized it. She completes me.”

  Cael rolled his eyes. “You’re getting really poetic there, bro.”

  “Love will do that to a male. Wait and see how goofy you sound when you find your soulmate.”

  Cael and Kelley talked for a while longer, with Cael holding his friend’s son and thinking about how much he longed for what Kelley had. He knew it would be his someday, he just hoped he’d find his soulmate sooner rather than later.

  Cael’s phone buzzed, alerting him that his shift was about to start. He handed the still-sleeping Khap over to his father. “Where did you guys get his name, anyway? It’s cool.”

  “It’s our names together. Rhapsody was trying to combine my first and midd
le names to come up with a new name, and I suggested we use both our first names and see what we could come up with. As soon as we said Khap, we both loved it.”

  “Maybe you’ll start a trend in the park of combining names.”

  “I think because Khap is unique as an elephant-panther hybrid that having a unique name suits him.”

  “You’re really lucky, Kelley. Congrats.”

  “You’ll be lucky too someday, trust me. I believe with my whole heart that every shifter has a soulmate out there somewhere, it just requires a whole lot of patience.”

  Cael said goodbye and left the house, shutting the door quietly so he didn’t wake Khap.

  “Hey.”

  Cael looked up and saw his alpha, Alistair, walking out of his house. There were only four elephants in the memory led by Alistair. Kelley and Cael had both come from other memories, but Indio had been part of Alistair’s memory and followed him when he came to New Jersey to join with the other shifters. Cael was a veterinarian and handled the non-shifter animals, which they referred to as the “norms.” Alistair, Indio, and Kelley cleaned the paddocks and tended to the norms, but Cael was solely responsible for the norms’ health and welfare. He’d come to New Jersey when he was eighteen, and after spending time with the norms, he’d decided to go to college to be able to take care of them. There were three sections of norms—rhinos were in one paddock, giraffes were in another, and deer, antelope, and a cranky Moose named Tank were in a third. A bird sanctuary had been created in the fall and was run by owl shifter Jess and her wolf mate Auden, and while birds were not his specialty, he helped with the rehabbing and care of the natural birds whenever he could.

  “You heading topside?” Cael asked as he caught up to his alpha.

  “In a little while. I have a meeting with the alphas to discuss the VIP tour.”

  “What about it?”

  “We’re just going to look at the numbers and see if there’s a way to cut costs for the tours without sacrificing what they were designed for. We probably need to either do more tours in a day or add a day.”

  “So long as you’re not planning to stop them.”

  “Not even a little bit,” he said. “We’re also talking about whether we can get into some online advertising and encourage people to register online which would help with printing and shipping costs for the paper tickets.”

  “Advertising sounds like a good idea to me.”

  “Me too. We’ll see what the number crunchers say.”

  “Good luck,” Cael said.

  “Thanks. I’ll see you up in the paddocks after the meeting.”

  The two parted ways, his alpha heading out into the hall to go to the conference room as Cael opened the door that led to a stairwell that would take him up into the norms’ paddocks. He could get topside three ways—through the main hall, with a stairwell that would take him directly to the employee cafeteria, through a stairwell that would take him into the elephant paddock, and through a second stairwell that would take him into one of the norms’ paddocks. Both paddock entrances opened up in the floor of large maintenance sheds in the paddocks, so he could get into the paddock without having to walk all the way around the park.

  He climbed the stairs and opened the door in the floor that led to his favorite of the norm paddocks: the one with Tank. The moose’s full name was Cantankerous, and he was the park’s unofficial mascot. Cael was going to check each deer and antelope to ensure they were healthy, give them their vitamins, and set out feed, and then he’d see if Tank would cooperate with an exam. Sometimes the moose would, and sometimes he’d try to swing his big antlers around like he wanted to stab people. The norms trusted the elephant shifters so they were able to get up close with them. Predator shifters like wolves and bears couldn’t even set foot in the norm paddocks without causing problems. The only predator shifter who could be in the norm paddocks without issue was Rhapsody, and they were fairly certain it was because she and Kelley were mated and the norms sensed she wasn’t a threat.

  After gathering his supplies, he headed out of the maintenance shed and stopped, looking around the huge paddock. He took in a deep breath of spring morning air and tried to clear his head of everything but the tasks at hand, but no matter how he tried to focus on his work alone, he couldn’t shake the thoughts of finding his soulmate.

  Hurry up and come to me. I promise to wait for you.

  He hoped she would somehow hear his silent plea and come to the park so their paths would cross. He couldn’t wait for the next chapter of his life to begin.

  Chapter Two

  Novi Jones checked her watch as she strolled into the storage room of the Nifty Thrifty Thrift Store to check out the boxes donated from a local library. She was a bookworm of the highest order and particularly loved old books. Working at a thrift store often gave her the opportunity to look for unique books among donations. That she had four boxes to go through from the library was a boon. She hoped she’d find some good romances for herself and some cookbooks for her mom.

  “I’m going to take a break, Novi,” the store manager, Katya, said. Her eyes went wide as she looked at the stack of four boxes that was taller than Novi. “Holy crap, let me help you.”

  Together they lifted the boxes one by one and set them on the floor. “Thanks,” Novi said. “I’ll keep an eye on the front in case anyone comes inside.”

  Katya nodded. “I have to make a couple phone calls and I never took my break earlier. Holler if you need me.”

  Novi nodded and turned her attention to one box, keeping her ears attuned for the telltale ring of the bell signaling someone had come into the store. The first box was full of DVDs, so Novi closed the lid and pushed the box to the section of the storage room for electronic-related items to be shelved. The second box held a mishmash of non-fiction, from war stories to gardening to biographies.

  She sat back on her heels and took out one of the books titled “Grow Your Own Food,” with pictures of fruits and vegetables on the front. Novi actually enjoyed gardening, but she and her mom moved too frequently to really get a garden going.

  Her thoughts turned bitter for a moment. Why the hell did they have to live in hiding and move every six months, or whenever her mom felt like they were being watched? Little girls often dreamed of growing up to be a princess or an astronaut or finding Prince Charming, but all Novi had ever dreamed of was staying in one place long enough to make friends. Maybe she could have attended a real school instead of being homeschooled.

  Shoving the dark thoughts away, she set the gardening book to the side and decided to see if she could start some kind of container garden they could take with them when they moved again. Or, maybe, she could convince her mom to stick around. So far, Novi liked New Jersey. The small town of Little Neck—which she supposed was named after the type of clams—was quaint and friendly, and the spacious yard of their rental home backed up to a forest refuge so she had loads of acreage to roam in. She adored being out in the woods in nature. Her mom said she was born wearing hiking boots.

  The front bell rang, and Novi stood and dusted off her jeans before heading out to greet the customers.

  “I’m looking for a wedding dress,” the young woman who appeared to be in her early twenties said. A woman who looked like a slightly older version of her was staring at the row of wedding gowns along the wall with a scowl.

  “All of our gowns are on that wall,” Novi said, pointing to where they were both looking.

  They walked to the wall and quickly flipped through them. Novi had really good hearing, so she heard them making comments about the low quality of gowns available. Novi mentally rolled her eyes. It never failed to surprise her when people expected top quality items at thrift stores. Sometimes—rarely—something amazing came into the store, like a priceless painting or real jewelry or a couture dress, but those times were few and far between.

  “I want to see what you have in the back,” the older woman announced, turning to look at Novi.

/>   “What we have is out already,” Novi said.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said with a sniff. “I want you to go look in the back and bring out any dresses you find.”

  Novi had the urge to growl and bare her teeth at the irritating woman, but she tamped down the feeling. “I assure you that there are no wedding gowns in the back.”

  “You’re lying,” the young woman said.

  Novi’s gums ached suddenly, and she ground her teeth together to stop the ache before she spoke. “I beg your pardon?”

  “A friend of a friend said she read on social media that a wedding store had donated a bunch of gowns to this thrift store and they were being held back for some kind of promotional sales push. We want to see them now.”

  Novi inhaled and exhaled slowly. “That’s simply not true. We haven’t gotten a shipment from anyone with wedding dresses and we don’t do promos like you’re suggesting. Your information isn’t accurate, so perhaps you have the wrong store. I’ll say it again, what we have is what you see, period.”

  “Get your manager, right this instant!” the older woman said, her tone furious.

  Novi’s fingers tingled, and she clenched them together as she turned to get Katya from the office. Novi had no idea why she was feeling so emotional, but it sometimes happened. Her mom said they were panic attacks from being confronted, but Novi didn’t feel panicked, just pissed. The women had no right to question her integrity off some random social media post. It was a thrift store for goodness sake.