“And you guys don’t know where their group is hanging out while they try to move in on your territory?” I asked.
“I wish we did…but we don’t,” he sighed. “They are well out of sight and reach,” he admitted.
“That’s…frustrating,” I sighed.
“Well, we’re not going to let it disrupt this delicious smelling dinner you made us. I didn’t know you could cook,” Sioux said as he came into the dining room. His voice was full of humor.
“Really? You didn’t think I could cook?” I laughed.
“Yeah, I thought we’d have to live off of our breakfast making skills forever,” he said. I stuck my tongue out at him playfully.
“Well, I do cook from time to time.” I gestured for them to dig in and they certainly did. I’m pretty sure they each took a half of the chicken for themselves.
“Did you want some chicken, Holden?” Aleister asked me, seemingly ready to give me some of the food off of his plate.
“Oh, no that’s fine. You guys eat. I didn’t plan on having too much,” I said.
“Thank you darlin’,” Sioux said playfully.
“So, how is your sister? How did she take everything?” Aleister asked.
“She came around actually, and she’s okay,” I smiled. “I think things are finally…looking up for us in a way. We’re not dwelling on dad’s death so much anymore,” I said.
“That’s good; we hoped we could help with that in a way,” Aleister said. I knew he meant it, what with his setting the party up near dad’s old place and all.
“You guys are helping,” I said, smiling at them both. There was a moment of quiet as we all ate. I was glad I decided to make a lot of the eggplant because they finished the entire tray of it. Not to mention the salad and bread were cleaned out too.
“Wow, you guys are no joke…where does the food go?” I joked.
“It almost instantly metabolizes.” Aleister laughed. They helped me clean up and we retreated upstairs, to the bedroom. Instead of engaging in hot sex of any sort, we pretty much just cuddled and watched a Friends marathon on TV.
* * *
I woke up in degrees. The feeling of soft kisses trailing along my neck and up my arm was a nice way to start the day. When I opened my eyes, I saw Aleister’s lips on my shoulder and Sioux on the other side of me, his nose on my neck.
“Good morning sleeping beauty,” Sioux murmured. I chuckled and stretched like a cat.
“What are we doing today? I want to get out of the house,” I said.
“Well, we wanted to make you our signature French toast, then maybe we can show you to our parents? They’ve been asking about you. The guys has met you and all, so they feel left out. Especially our mother,” Aleister said.
“I’d love to meet your parents!” I said excitedly. I knew they’d be great, just because Sioux and Aleister have such good personalities.
“Wow, I didn’t have to convince you at all,” Aleister chuckled.
“See, this just means she’s even more perfect,” Sioux murmured. He kissed my collar bone.
“Seriously…you don’t even seem nervous to meet them,” Aleister said, a little mystified. I shrugged.
“Well, I want to meet the people who bore the two most beautiful and perfect men onto this fine Earth,” I said cheekily. Sioux laughed, and Aleister turned my chin towards him to give me a kiss.
“Speaking of…how about your mom? What’s she like?” Sioux asked curiously.
“Ah…my mother is…she’s…” I felt awkward all of a sudden. I never really clicked with my mom when she tried to make up with Scout and me. For that reason, I never liked to talk about her at all.
“From what we’ve gleaned from some talks with Mark, he raised you two alone?”
“Yeah, my mom moved across the country when we were young. She only recently reached out to us to make amends. I have a lot of trouble forgiving her and moving past it all. I probably never will.” My tone was a matter of fact, and I hoped they’d let it go after that.
“I can’t argue with that. If you’re happy with your life now, then be happy,” Aleister said. I smiled and gave him another kiss.
“We make you happy, right?” Sioux asked, though to me the question had an obvious answer.
“Of course, you do!” I said right away, without any doubt. Sioux gave me an almost relieved smile, and it was his turn for a kiss. It didn’t take long at all for things to heat up.
After about two hours spent in bed, the shower, and my closet, we went downstairs. I was definitely hungry for some French toast. I opened up the fridge to help them get set up but soon realized that the fridge was on a diet.
“I think I need to go food shopping…” I said as I looked in my fridge. The night before, I had only gone to pick up stuff to make dinner. I hadn’t realized I was so low on everything else. “Okay, I’ll be right back with groceries guys,” I told them.
“We’ll come with you—” Aleister was cut off by the very distinctive and very close by sound of a yell.
“Duty calls?” I asked.
“Yeah, that one is serious,” Sioux said. “We’ll probably miss breakfast,” he added.
“Be careful,” I said as they hurried out of the back door. I wondered vaguely when I would stop being so anxious every time they went to deal with group business. I felt like a cop or firefighter’s wife. Always worrying when their spouse was on duty. I left right after them, heading towards my truck, going over the grocery list in my head. I didn’t pay any attention to the two men who were walking past me on the sidewalk until they ran up behind me and forced a black bag over my head. I flailed my arms in all directions, trying to hit at least one of them. But they grabbed my forearms with enough strength that I thought they’d break my arms.
Just as I let out a good scream, a salty and pungent odor filled my nostrils. Unconsciousness found me fast, and the last thing I was aware of was my strength totally failing me.
9
My head was pounding. The first thing I noticed, after the migraine, was the smell. I was somewhere dank that was for sure. Most definitely underground or in a cave of some sort. The air was cold, the ground felt wet underneath me, and it was pitch black dark. I slowly got to my feet, battling the dizziness and nausea that threatened me. I tried feeling around for a wall but walked like twenty steps before coming into contact with one. It was covered in some network of chain based off of the feel and the loud noise it made. About a second later, the sound of a heavy metal door opening scared a small yelp out of me.
“You’re awake, lovely,” the female voice definitely caught me by surprise. As was the soft English accent. How strange.
“Who are you?” I asked, hating that my voice trembled, but I couldn’t help it. My entire body was trembling. Even though a door was open, I couldn’t see anything. “Where is this place?”
“An old abandoned wood yard. There’s no power so night time it gets pretty pitch black in here. I bet you’re blind right about now,” she said, her voice still sounding far away, though it was smug.
“What are you trying to accomplish? Why kidnap me?” I asked.
“Well, we hope to lure those men of yours to our turf. We have reinforcements now. Fighting against thirty men won’t be so difficult. Not with our size, not with our leverage,” she chuckled.
“Why are you trying to move in on their territory anyways?” I asked, wishing it wasn’t so damn dark. Were there any windows in the warehouse?
“We have nowhere to go, nowhere to call our home up north. I’m not about to march my people all over the continent looking for some place to settle either. We picked a spot on the map, and now we’re dedicated to it,” she said vehemently.
“There’s no way you’re going to win,” I scoffed. Bold only because I knew she wouldn’t kill off her only piece of ‘leverage.’
“Of course, we will. We disrupted their moral by killing that man they were so fond of. I believe he was your father? And now that we have yo
u, it will be icing on the cake. They’ll want to negotiate with us as soon as they see a knife to your throat.”
Ice seared through my veins, and I began to shake with a thinly veiled rage that worried a small part of me. The rest was ready to kill whoever that bitch was. “You killed my dad?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“Of course, we watched the men for months to learn their habits and whatnot. We learned they were all very fond of that ranger, so…to rattle them up, I had to kill him.” She spoke as if the explanation were obvious as if it was acceptable.
“He was…brutally murdered!” I screamed in her direction. “Slashed open and stabbed, you did that to him!” I had to do something to let out all the anger and hate I felt. Otherwise, I’d explode.
“Well, I had to make it look like an animal killed him. For reasons I’m not so proud of by the way, so I’m keeping that to myself,” she said. I was convinced that the woman I spoke to was psychotic.
“You son of a bitch! You should rot in hell for what you did! He was an innocent man!” I yelled.
“Sure, if you say so. Then his only crime was the same one you’re guilty of. Associating with those men,” she said offhandedly. Furious and unable to hold myself in check anymore, I charged in the direction of her voice. When I heard her laugh up close, I swung blindly in the dark. But then I was chin checked, and my head swam with the pain and the threat of unconsciousness. I tasted blood from having bit my tongue and spit it out in front of me. I was almost happy that I managed to get her. Almost. She gave me a swift punch in the gut because of it, and I doubled over.
“You’re a monster,” I said as I tried to regain my breath.
“I’m the monster? I’m not the one who caused so many good people to have to uproot from their lives and live like nomads. I’m not the one who sent men, just like the ones you love so much, into our territory to take it for themselves. This land was ours first, generations back, and we’ve come to reclaim it. We’re done being the lost orphans. It’s our time now, and nothing will stop me from giving my people the home that they deserve.” Was she really trying to spout some sense of morality? Was she really so deluded?
“You’re going to lose, no matter what you do or say, this won’t end well for you,” I told her. All she did was laugh.
“You’d better behave accordingly. I have a lot of guys here who’d like to make you a war bride,” she said. Then I heard the heavy door slide shut, and I was alone again. I prayed like hell that when Sioux and Aleister came, they’d have a game plan to take those people out. That woman wouldn’t be so smug if she didn’t think she had a chance of winning. It made me wonder just how many ‘reinforcements’ they had.
As I laid there on the ground, all I could think about was bashing that woman’s skull in. She killed my dad, and she did it with her own two hands. That was enough to make anyone go crazy just thinking about it. She didn’t deserve to live; she didn’t deserve it.
10
Aleister
“Everyone shut the fuck up!” I was tired of all the bickering. It was getting us nowhere. Nowhere nearer where we needed to be. The need to go and track and save Holden with only Sioux on my flank was almost impossible to ignore. I glanced around the finally silent clearing.
“They have leverage. They have Holden. We can’t let it get to us. They want us disorganized. They use chaos, they use the element of surprise, and they thrive off of being random. The only way to combat it is by taking away their momentum,” I said. All thirty men were present, some twitching and ready to spring into action, others just as anxious.
“We need to send our fastest to scope out wherever they’re hiding. Then we’re going to coordinate a surround and attack,” I said, seven of our fastest runners already stepping forward. “Go now, be undetected, get back as swiftly as possible,” I growled. The men tore off into the trees without further encouragement.
“So, what will we do in the meantime? I can’t just sit here and twiddle my thumbs, Aleister,” Sioux said under his breath.
“We’re not,” I told him, then raised my voice to address everyone. “The rest of us are going to comb through the town and the surrounding woods in the meantime. If we find any suspicious people, don’t spare them.” The rest of the group broke into their smaller units. Sioux was already ready next to me, and I followed suit, letting the heat and anger take me into my mind. I wanted to hunt, rip, and tear. Those fucking people crossed the wrong cock-sucking line. Glancing at my brother, I knew he had my flank. We tore off into the trees, running at breakneck speeds towards the nearby trail. We picked up on footprints and followed them east. It bisected the hiking trail, but we kept form.
We followed the footprints all the way to the edge of the tree line, separating the forest from one of the town’s main roads.
Sioux looked at me. “They must have gone into town,” he said gruffly.
“You go, I’ll take a wide route through the trees,” I said. Sioux nodded and took off parallel to the road, headed towards town. I continued across the road. I heard a noise, and as I got closer, the noise only got louder, until I slowed down and crept along the forest floor. The man was just fucking chilling. As if it’s life wasn’t in danger by being seen out in our woods. Just before I lunged at the fucker, he turned and spoke to me.
“I would kill me if I were you. I know where your girl is,” he said. He had a slick smile and beady black eyes. I emerged from the underbrush and snarled at him. “I can tell you where she is. Or we can sit here and growl at each other…” he offered, his tone smug and annoying as shit. I knew better than to let my guard down and make myself vulnerable. I growled at him instead.
“All right, I’ll take that as an, ‘I won’t kill you now tell me where she is,’” he mocked, laughing at his own tough guy impression. I wanted to kill the idiot just on principle. Those fucking people must have quite the trick up their sleeve if they were being so bold and cocky.
“She’s at the old lumber yard, just past the mountain peak, right on the border of your territory,” he said, flashing me a small grin. “I’d come by before nightfall tomorrow…there’s no telling how long she’ll last,” he said. The idiot started galloping away. He didn’t get far before being taken down by one of the patrols. Snarling, I turned around and sprinted off towards town. When I got close enough, I went in search of my brother. I usually gravitated towards him when I was looking for him. So, it didn’t take me long to find him walking briskly through the town center’s park.
“Sioux!” I shouted, he turned around and jogged over to me.
“What’s up?” he asked, searching my expression for some sign as to what I’d say.
“She’s at the old lumber yard just behind the mountain. One of their own just told me like he was fucking all that,” I huffed.
“What do you think they have in store then?” he mused.
“I don’t know, but if our runners come back, hopefully, they can tell us. I can’t stand this shit…we need her back safe.” I took a deep breath and let it out slow. We should have seen that distraction a mile away. Of course, they’d send another close to Holden’s house just to lure us away so they could snatch her up. It was stupid! I felt as if we were breaking our promise to her and her father. We were letting her down.
“Hey, get out of your head with all that shit,” Sioux said, snapping me out of it. “We’re getting her one way or the other,” he said determinedly. “I think we should round up backup for this because there’s just no way those bitches would be so cocky if their numbers were still small,” Sioux said.
“You’re right…who do you want to go to?” I asked.
“The Blake Town group is closer to the mountain,” he suggested.
“We’ve got to call them the old-fashioned way, running there will take too long,” I said, though the ‘old-fashioned way’ wasn’t old at all. I pulled out my phone to make the call to Olivier, the Blake Town leader. He answered on the second ring.
“Olivier,
I know your boys have been bored over there. How about we do a little hunting?” I said, relieved to hear Olivier’s gleeful chuckle.
“Oh, we’re all in,” he said. I felt more secure about running to the lumber yard then; it would be beyond easy to rescue Holden with the help of Olivier’s men. Right after I ended the call with Olivier, Toby, one of our runners, called me.
“What’s up?” I answered, pushing down the anxiety as to what he’d report.
“They have about thirty people, out of nowhere. They are pretty spread out throughout the lumber yard, but we’ll be able to make a good perimeter and close in,” he said.
“What about Holden, any sign of her?”
“No…” he said, regret in his tone.
“All right, get back to the clearing, we’ll see you in a few,” I said before hanging up.
“Well?” Sioux asked impatiently.
“Toby couldn’t find a sign of her, but the brunt of the migrants’ force is in that lumber yard. Assuming Holden is being held offsite somewhere,” I said. On unspoken word, Sioux and I headed back towards the clearing. We didn’t waste time in coordinating a strategy with Olivier and both packs.
Within the hour, we were all running towards the lumber yard. The sun was starting to rise, and it was as if we were running towards it. I took it as a good omen. There was no way we weren’t bringing Holden back alive and well. The lumber yard was a huge clearing; there was still piles of wood stacked up, breaking up the area, keeping those men hidden for the time being. But their scent saturated the air. We’d definitely found their hiding place.
Both packs made a huge circle in the trees, and we slowly moved in, constricting the circle. We encountered the first wave once we were past the first ring of lumber stacks. It was an all-out fucking brawl. Sioux and I worked like yin and yang. We double teamed a giant. I went for its legs while Sioux leaped for its arms. The beast shook his body and swiped at us, but I easily jumped out of the way. There was no way it was fighting off the both of us. Soon, Sioux had his arm around his neck once more, and I slammed my hand into his leg, good enough to bring it barreling down. We didn’t waste time in finishing him off. We continued forward.
Attraction: A MFM Menage Romance Page 7