by Maia Dylan
Grey River 1
Lost Faith
Is it better to have loved and lost than never loved at all? For Ty and Trent Jamieson, the Grey River pack Alphas, they would say either would be preferable to both!
They knew Faith was destined to be theirs from the moment they first came across her scent. Finding out that she was only 19 and studying put their grand mating plans to the back burner, at least for a couple of years. Problems only arose when she suddenly left them when they had finally decided to come clean about their feelings that they had kept hidden and claim her. They lost Faith and when Mother Nature steps in dramatically to give them an opportunity to get her back, things become very clear that perhaps her leaving was not all as it seemed. Can the brothers bring their fated triad together and protect their mate as it should have always been? Or are they destined to lose Faith forever?
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal
Length: 48,609 words
LOST FAITH
Grey River 1
Maia Dylan
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
LOST FAITH
Copyright © 2015 by Maia Dylan
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-128-9
First E-book Publication: March 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
To Nana M, your smile, your laugh, your heart, your sense of humor. It’s hard to think of what I will miss most, but miss you I will.
And to my love, thanks for loving me the way that I am and always encouraging me to do things that make me happy. I love you, always.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
LOST FAITH
Grey River 1
MAIA DYLAN
Copyright © 2015
Chapter 1
SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OKLAHOMA
2303 CDT THIS EVENING MAY 15, 2014
…A TORNADO WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 2330 PM CDT FOR OKLAHOMA…
…THIS IS A TORNADO EMERGENCY FOR THE WARNED AREA…
…AT 2303 PM CDT…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS AND TRAINED STORM SPOTTERS WERE TRACKING A LARGE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SUSPECTED CATEGORY-THREE TORNADO ON THE GROUND. THIS TORNADO WAS LOCATED 19 MILES NORTH OF GREY RIVER MOVING NORTHEAST AT 60 MPH.
YOU SHOULD ACTIVATE YOUR TORNADO ACTION PLAN AND TAKE PROTECTIVE ACTION NOW. SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE HAS OCCURRED WITH THIS SIGNIFICANT TORNADO! THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND SERIOUS LIFE-THREATENING SITUATION. THIS STORM IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING STRONG TO VIOLENT TORNADOES. IF YOU ARE IN THE PATH OF THIS TORNADO…TAKE COVER.
As soon as Tyler Jamieson had finished reading the alert on the comms screen in his police cruiser, he peeled out of the restaurant parking lot he was parked in, lights blazing and sirens wailing. Grabbing his handheld, he called his brother.
“Trent, you get that alert?” Tyler growled into the microphone in his hand, his wolf clear in his voice, rising to meet the tension and stress of the moment. The storm system responsible for this tornado warning had been building all day. It was warm, huge, billowy clouds in the sky, wind slowly building throughout the day. Tyler had thought he spotted a couple of funnels forming in the distance, but nothing touched down. He had started to hope that this system was all bark and no bite—no wolf pun intended. Then that alert had come through, a funnel had been sighted, and it was on the ground.
Trent, who was not on the roster for that day, had spent the day ensuring all pack members had a plan if things got a little hairy later in the day—yeah, that one was intentional.
“Yeah, Ty, I got it,” Trent’s voice came over the radio. “The pack is all good, and most have bunkered down. I’m heading your way, should be coming up on you now.”
As he spoke, Ty watched Trent’s truck fishtail out onto the highway just in front of him. Tyler stepped on the gas and pulled in front so they had blue-and-reds leading the way.
“I spoke with Brendan about fifteen minutes ago. They were active and waiting for instructions. I would say with that alert, they’re heading out this way, too.”
Ty agreed with that assessment. Brendan and his brother Cody were members of the local fire and rescue department as EMTs. They were also wolf shifters and were pack. As a pack beta pair, they had had their back on more than one occasion over the years. Tyler and Trent were the alpha pair of the Grey River wolf pack, and had been since their fathers handed the position over to them a year ago.
Grey River was a shifter town, with three founding families, but their ranks had grown over the years. Wolf shifters tended to l
ive a slightly different lifestyle to other shifters, and humans. Their matings tended to be as triads or more. Trent and Ty had always known they would share their fated mate, and they had always assumed that the Fates would align them with someone they could cherish and place above all others—and that she would, of course, be fucking beautiful.
And she was.
Faith Abrams was the hottest thing walking on two legs as far as Tyler and Trent were concerned. He could remember the day they met their fated one like it was yesterday, but it had, in fact, been three years ago.
Fresh from the academy, they had charged into their roles as deputies with the county sheriff’s department with all the bluster and confidence that came with being alphas. They had embraced their roles in their community and loved almost every aspect of their lives. They were young, and although they longed to meet their fated one, they were in no hurry—women loved men in uniform, but identical twins were a fucking magnet! They had just turned twenty-six, and life was good.
On that fateful day, they had ventured into Molly’s Diner at the truck stop just north of town, and as soon as they had opened the door and walked in, they both froze. A scent so beguiling and filled with sin that it had Ty’s cock rising to attention within seconds slammed into them. Then it happened. The Quickening began. His heart began to race, and he felt light-headed. A quick glance at Trent showed that he, too, was feeling the effects. A strange and not completely pleasant tingling began in his fingers and crept throughout his entire body. Their mate was in this diner!
Trent and Tyler both began to growl low as their wolves demanded they find and claim their mate. As they moved into the room, all the shifters in the diner stilled as the essence of true alphas filled the air. Shifter wolves were the same as wolves in the wild, and they lived with a very distinct hierarchy. The only wolves higher in their pack than Trent and Tyler were their fathers, so all shifters in the restaurant that day cowered at the alpha strength that radiated off them as they searched.
Some of the lower wolves dropped to their knees under the pressure or lowered their heads to their tables, tilting their heads to present their necks in the ultimate show of submission. Others who were higher up simply lowered their eyes and bared their necks with a growl. But all shifters were affected. Such was the power of the alpha pair.
Following the scent, they found a group of college students at the back of the diner playing pool and having dinner. There among them, sitting almost off to the side of the group, was their mate. As soon as they spotted her, the tingling took on a warm glow throughout Ty’s body, becoming an ache as they neared her. She wasn’t a stick like some of the other girls in her group. She had curves that made a wolf want to throw his head back and howl. She had long brown hair that shimmered with red in the light, gorgeous green eyes, and bee-stung lips that would look fucking fantastic wrapped around his cock.
They had charmed her into an invitation to share her table and talked with her for over an hour, steadfastly ignoring the blatant flirting of her girlfriends, as they only had eyes for their mate…Faith.
When they learnt that she was only nineteen and had yet to finish her nursing qualification at the nearby college, they knew they had to give their mate time. As hard as it would be, they knew they had to back off for at least a year before they would claim her. She was destined to be theirs, and judging by the speeding heart rate and darkening eyes they sensed every time they touched her hand or brushed against her, the attraction was mutual. They had only allowed her to leave with her friends once she had given them her phone number and address.
Over the following months, they spent time with Faith, watching and falling more in love with her each moment they spent with her, compounding the fact that they were meant to be together. It wasn’t until almost a year to the day after they met her that Trent and Ty could stand it no longer and agreed it was time to finally claim their mate. They had taken the first step on that journey to something more, sharing a few kisses, and then because the Fates seemed to like to screw with him and his brother…she left them the very next day.
All her things had been taken from the apartment she shared with a fellow nurse near the hospital where she worked. When they talked to that roommate, she had told them that Faith had been offered a role at a hospital somewhere “up north” a few weeks ago and she assumed she had taken it and left. That assumption was supported when they found out that Faith had sent an e-mail to the director of nursing at the hospital in Grey River, resigning her position and advising that she was leaving the state. They stubbornly kept looking for her over the following few months. They just needed to know why she had left. Ty thought perhaps they had scared her with their shared kisses.
Eventually, after six months with no word from her, or a trail to follow, they had to face facts. She had left, no messages, no forwarding address. She left nothing behind except two brokenhearted wolves and their dreams. Both he and Trent then did what others of their kind thought impossible. They used their incredible will to close themselves off from the link that connected them as mates.
The radio squawked and pulled Tyler out of the memories he had limited to thinking about to the hours he lay alone at night thinking about the what-ifs and if-onlys that came with a situation like theirs. A pack that had an alpha pair with no mate was almost unheard of, but there you go. What are you gonna do!
Up ahead in the darkness, Tyler saw a large orange hue that obviously signaled a fire. He had a fair idea where they were despite the carnage of trees torn from the ground and bent in half by the force of the winds. They were about fifteen miles outside their pack lands. Debris from God only knew where scattered throughout the road, all left behind by the tornado that had ripped through the area about twenty minutes earlier. But by his reckoning, there were trees and mountains as far as the eye could see through this area but no buildings or people living this far out of Grey River.
“Ty, are those your red-and-blues I can see heading toward the fire?” Brendan’s voice came over the radio, and Ty recognized stress in his voice—threaded with anger?
“Yeah, Brendan, it’s me, and Trent is right behind me. We should be on scene in seconds. What’s up?”
“You might want to call in the Feds, Ty,” Brendan replied, causing Tyler to look at his radio incredulously. Why in the name of all that was holy would Brendan suggest bringing Feds into the area? They were wolves, which no one fucked with, so what could be so bad that they couldn’t handle this themselves?
Tyler pulled in behind the ambulance where Brendan was no doubt radioing him from, Trent close on his heels. Brendan came around the back of the rig with a face like thunder, hands shaking.
“What the fuck is going on, B?” Tyler asked, unsure of what Brendan was about to tell him but knowing he was not going to like it at all.
“Ty, there are hidden structures and badly made bunkers all throughout this area. So far in our search, which hasn’t ended due to the fact that some of the structures are still burning, we have found seven survivors, one adult male and six children. There are also five dead and, according to one of the survivors, at least another one female unaccounted for. I am not entirely sure what the fuck has been going on here, Ty, but something is hinky.”
Tyler had never seen Brendan so rattled before. He glanced at his brother and empathized with the confused look on his twin’s face.
“Hinky? Really? Is that the kind of language you young kids are using nowadays?” Trent asked with a grin that slid away quickly when he realized the usually relaxed beta in front of him was a hairbreadth away from shifting into his wolf.
Brendan exhaled with no small amount of frustration. “I think, Alphas, that it would best for you to meet Sophia and gauge for yourself if you think that there is something wrong up here.”
With that Brendan led them farther into the carnage left behind in the wake of Mother Nature at her worst, the pathway the tornado had carved more than evident in the way the trees and buildings were
damaged. In fact, some of the trees looked as though they had simply imploded. The force must have been horrific. They walked toward a group of children and an adult that stood all huddling in blankets.
Tyler registered the fear and shock on their faces—well, all except one. The adult male standing slightly behind the children was the odd one out. He didn’t look scared. He looked enraged. He was close to Tyler’s height, which put him around six foot two with a muscular build. His eyes were almost black, and there was a flash of something almost crazed within them. The closer they drew to them, the more rage Tyler could feel emanating off that man. Tyler met his gaze and felt his wolf start to pace. There was something definitely off about this guy. He realized that his brother must have sensed the same thing, as his body radiated the same tension. Yeah, “hinky” covered it just nicely.
Brendan stepped up to one of the older children, a young blonde girl who looked no older than sixteen years old. Tyler watched as the girl’s eyes widened in fear, and he was about to tell Brendan to step back when the girl’s eyes darted to the enraged man behind her. What the hell? Brendan must have sensed something in that look, as he hesitated, and the man took that as an opportunity to step forward, pushing the younger children out of his way as he moved to grab the shoulder of the girl and push her behind him.
Tyler, Trent, and Brendan all tensed as they sensed the fear in the children escalate and heard the scared whimpers of those he touched. They saw the young girl grimace as the man’s hand gripped her shoulder, hard. Three growls erupted into the night, causing everyone to still. The only movement Tyler could sense came from the firefighters who were still battling the final fire on the far side of the compound.