Cooler air washed over her just before she felt someone grasp her hand and squeeze her fingers. “I thought we’d lost you,” Braxton said then leaned down to press a chaste kiss to her forehead.
Tears filled Hope’s eyes. She swallowed thickly and smiled. “I thought you’d lost me too.” She canted her head to peer around him. “Where’s Joran?”
Braxton’s eyes went wide as though he just remembered something and he hurriedly kissed her fingers. “There’s something I must do.” He turned to leave just as the sound of a female voice filled the room.
“You needn’t concern yourself, General. The threat aboard the Niko class ship has been eradicated. Colonel Keavy is speaking with Chancellor Marholt at the moment. I will transport him to the medical bay when he’s finished.”
“Thank you for rescuing us, Carella.” Hope swallowed again, her throat dry. “You were able to get all of us out of there, weren’t you?” Hope wasn’t sure she could live with the guilt if she was saved and others were not.
“How did Hope and the others escape the shuttle, Carella?”
“I transported the women out, of course. When I discovered someone had programmed the craft to self destruct once it met its minimal safe distance from the ship, I scanned it for life signs. When I found there were several human females aboard, I transported them all to safety just as it detonated. Of course your enemies will assume they were all killed in the blast.”
Hope wasn’t positive, but she could have sworn that the computer sounded smug. She cleared her throat and licked her dry lips. “Thank you, Carella,” she said, though she felt odd talking to a computer.
“You’re welcome, Hope. Though your gratitude is unneeded, it is well met. I only ask that you stay and make General Nylund and Colonel Keavy a good mate.”
Looking down at her chest, Hope raised her right hand to investigate her wound. It no longer hurt and she wondered if Carella had healed her as she’d heard the computer had healed so many others.
“Can I sit up?” Hope’s stomach picked that moment to let out an angry-sounding growl.
“Yes, Hope, you may sit up. You may eat as well.” A wall slid out of the way to reveal a small dining area.
Braxton helped her sit then lifted her in his arms. “I’ll carry you, if you don’t mind. I think it’s going to take me a lifetime to get the sight of you lying on the table unconscious out of my mind. Please humor me while I try to erase it from my thoughts.”
“I think I know what you mean. I couldn’t stand the thought of dying after I’d finally come to terms with what you and Joran are.” Hope wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I had plenty of time to think while I was away from you and I decided that I didn’t care what you are. Who you are is what matters and you and Joran are both kind and gentle men who deserve a woman to love them.” She looked away, heat filling her cheeks. “I would like to be that woman if you’ll both still have me.”
“Have you?” Joran said from the doorway. “What do you mean, have you?” He shook his head. “Don’t you know that we would be honored to have you for our mate?” He moved away from the doorway, waited for Braxton to set her down, then knelt in front of her. “I know we’ve only known each other a short time, but our people know their mates by smell. Though you may have reservations, Braxton and I know you are our mate.” He took her hands in his. “It has been our dream to find a woman like you to share our lives.”
“You know, it feels strange to make such a life-altering decision so fast, but I know from experience that waiting doesn’t necessarily make any difference,” Hope said with a shrug. She widened her eyes when she felt no pain. “Why didn’t that hurt?”
“It isn’t supposed to hurt,” Braxton said as he set three plates and drinks on the table while Joran ran to get napkins and silverware. “When Carella heals someone, she does a good job.”
Joran returned to the table and passed out the napkins and flatware. “I’d bet that you’re in better shape now than you were ten years ago.”
“You’re kidding!” Hope stopped staring at the fried chicken on her plate long enough to look at them both. She wanted to be sure they weren’t joking. Her life could very well depend on it.
“No, love. We aren’t kidding. We would never mislead you in such an important matter.” Braxton pointed at her plate. “Now eat, before it gets cold.”
Hope grinned at that. She knew they didn’t know how to cook for themselves. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was Dana that dropped that bit of information, just before the elitists broke into the kitchen. She didn’t blame them for wanting to eat their meal while it was still hot.
“Okay, but I have one more question.” Hope pressed her lips together when they both shoved a large bite into their mouths before looking up from their plates. “Can one of you teach me how to cook on the old-fashioned stove you have? I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage without at least a lesson or two.”
She almost laughed aloud when their expressions fell. They both looked like two little boys whose mother just told them they must go to bed without dinner.
Hope felt a twinge of something in her stomach. The thought had pricked her conscience. They did look like boys compared to her. How would they explain their supposed age difference to people outside of their little town? To the rest of the world, she would always look fifty to their twenty-five or so.
Joran swallowed then cleared his throat. “We had hoped you would know how to cook.” He looked longingly down at his plate then shoveled another huge bite into his mouth.
“But it doesn’t matter if you can’t. Perhaps we could hire someone to do the cooking.”
Braxton’s idea was a sweet one, but Hope already knew that finding people to work on the ranches was a difficult thing to do. How could they bring in someone from the outside to teach her to use their antiquated kitchen appliances, such as they are?
Joran reached across the table. “Don’t think about that now, Hope. Just think about the fact that we’ll take you any way we can get you. You’re our mate and we love you just the way you are.”
“Joran’s right.
We don’t want you just so you can cook and clean for us. We’ve been taking care of ourselves for a long, long time.” Braxton leaned over and pressed a kiss against her cheek. “We want you for you, and as impossible as it might seem to you, we already love you more than life itself.”
“Already our bond has grown so great that we are bound to you. If you leave us, there will be no other. We are truly mate bound and another woman will not do. It is you whom we wish to share our lives and carry our cubs.” Joran brushed his thumb across the back of her hand. Hope thought he meant the action to soothe her, but it only served to make her more nervous.
Hope froze, her fork halfway to her mouth, when his last words sank in. “Cubs? Her stomach did a little flip at the thought of birthing puppies. “Did you say cubs?” Hope looked back and forth between them. Good Lord! What had she gotten herself into?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Joran was so happy at the thought that Hope was even considering bonding with them that he smiled at her horrified expression. “No, love.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t birth cubs.”
He moved his chair closer to hers. He needed to wrap his arm around her. Moving to her side, he pulled her close to him and looked deep into her beautiful blue eyes. “We call our children cubs, much as your people tend to call them kids on occasion. Kids are baby sheep, just as cubs are—”
“Baby wolves.” She smiled faintly. “I get it now.” She shuddered. “I just didn’t think when you said it. I thought—”
Joran touched her lips with the tip of his finger to shush her. “We know what you thought, darlin’ and it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our people don’t change for the first time until we reach puberty.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “That’s nice to know.” She looked down at her untouched meal. “I won’t…” Hope paused as though gath
ering the courage to ask her next question. “I won’t have litters will I?”
Braxton chuckled as he, too, moved his seat closer. “No, love. You won’t have litters. Just like your people, having more than one or two children at a time is very, very rare among our kind.” He tilted his head. “That’s not to say it’s impossible, but birthing more than three or four babes at a time only happens once in a million or more.”
“That’s a relief.” She smiled. “I wasn’t sure I could handle having more than one at a time.” She pulled her hands free and set them in her lap. “I know twins are rare and triplets even more so, but in my world there are ways to make a woman have more eggs available for fertilization and I wasn’t sure if that was something your people practiced or not.”
“She speaks of in vitro fertilization. Her people have devised a way for the female to produce more than one viable egg for fertilization by administering a drug. They then inject the semen of the father-to-be into the womb in an effort to force conception. It is their antiquated way of helping nearly unfertile couples produce offspring,” Carella added with a disdainful sniff. “As backward as their world is about conception and abortion, you would think they would outlaw the practice as unnatural as they are attempting to do with the practice of aborting the fetus for any reason. Someone must make them understand that no god would want them to trade one life for another.”
Thankfully, Carella grew silent after that. The ship’s computer tended to voice her opinions then go sulk when no one stepped up to argue or agree.
Joran reached behind Hope and grasped a lock of her silky hair. He didn’t understand why, but he had to touch her. He needed to touch her, to feel close to her. Everything within him needed to feel closer to her, to feel her in his arms. He wanted nothing more than to draw her close, press his lips against hers and claim her as theirs once and for all.
“Eat your lunch, little one. We don’t know when you’ll get another that will be as good for you.”
Hope looked up at him and grinned. “I can cook, you know.” She shrugged. “I don’t know about using a stove like the one Dana has, but I can cook over a fire. Bob made sure of that. He liked to camp out while doing his research, and goodness knows he wouldn’t cook for himself. You don’t have to worry about eating raw chicken anymore.” She shuddered. “I wouldn’t have eaten that, anyway.”
Joran didn’t want to tell her that her wolf might eat raw meat when they took her out running after they mated her. He wasn’t sure he had the heart to tell her that she just might find herself doing something that she so obviously found repugnant.
Tapping the end of her nose, he scowled playfully. “I should spank you for teasing us like that.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
His heart turned over at her horrified expression, and he wondered exactly what it was her ex-husband did to her before she finally left him. “No, love. I wouldn’t dare.” He drew her closer, pulling her away from Braxton who scowled and gave a low growl. “As a matter of fact, I would kill anyone who would harm you.”
As a matter of fact, he wanted to know just which one of the elitists it was that had shot her. Braxton projected images of her wound through their mind link when he’d first entered the medical bay. Joran’s heart had nearly jumped to his throat when he saw the wound and he knew that Hope had already gone through extensive repair under Carella’s experienced programming.
One thing was certain, once he and Braxton discovered who it was that shot their mate, there would be no one that could save him.
“If you’re finished with your lunch, perhaps we should let Carella do one more exam before we leave.”
“That’s not necessary.” Joran felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to cup her cheek and cover her lips with his. What was it about this woman that drew him to her with such wild abandon? How would he ever control himself long enough to make her mating experience one she would remember with great fondness as she should?
“Of course it’s necessary, love. We want to be sure that you are hale and hardy.”
Hope shook her head with a slight giggle. “I have to be hale and hardy, because let me tell you, no wounded or sick woman would ever want to do with you what I want to do with you two right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hope wanted to sink down into a hole in the floor at that moment. Or maybe running was better. She couldn’t believe she’d actually said that to the two men. What had come over her? She looked away, her face burning with mortification.
As stealthily as she could, Hope tried to steal a glance at them from the corner of her eyes. Her face only got hotter when she realized they both studied her with wide smiles on their faces.
“So, you can’t wait, huh?” Joran teased.
Braxton reached out and swatted him. “Can’t you see she’s embarrassed enough already? Why are you going to go and make it worse?”
“I was just teasing her.”
“I know that.” Hope reached out, rested her hand on Joran’s arm and made herself look up into his eyes. She couldn’t believe how beautiful they were. Their blue was almost as light as the sky, and they were filled with an emotion that she hoped was love. “I know you were teasing me. I just hope I don’t disappoint you two after all you’ve done to find me.”
Joran grasped her fingers and drew them to his lips. “You could never disappoint us. Don’t you know that? You are everything we ever wanted, ever dared to dream of in a mate.”
Tears filled Hope’s eyes. How could they not? For years she’d lived with a man who at best ignored her. Even with Bob’s average good looks, he made it clear once she’d reached her thirties that Hope was lucky to have his attention. That, in itself, should have been a red flag, she supposed.
Now look at her. She sat there between two of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. One of them just out of bed needing a shower would have put Bob to shame when he was in his prime, and God knew Bob had passed his prime at least three decades ago.
“When do we do this mating thing?” She looked down at her lap, unsure of how to tell them she was ready.
First Braxton then Joran pressed a gentle kiss to her lips that made her toes curl. If all men knew what such tenderness could do to a woman, there would never be unhappy relationships.
“We would love nothing better than to stay here with you and complete our bond.” Braxton took her hand and raised it to his lips. “However, we must join the others in capturing the elitists before they harm anyone else. We were lucky that none of you were harmed beyond Carella’s ability to heal. Once Joran and I return to the surface and apprehend the people responsible for what happened, we will return and complete the bond with you.”
“What do you mean, once you and Joran return to the surface? You aren’t leaving me here to twiddle my thumbs and worry about what the heck is going on.”
“You can’t expect us to take you.” Joran put his fingers under her chin and turned her head to look at him. “Keeping you safe is always our first priority, and you would be a distraction on the surface. You must stay here. All of the women will stay here where there is no question that you are safe.”
Hope bit her lip. She wanted to be with them. After so much loneliness, she couldn’t imagine losing them now. “What if something happens to you? I couldn’t bear it.”
“Just as we couldn’t bear it if something happened to you, and your human body is so much more delicate than ours. Perhaps once we’ve mated and you have shifted several times, and our minds are linked together, we will feel more comfortable taking you into danger.”
“I doubt it,” Braxton added. “I don’t know that I ever want to risk you to anything.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Hell, as much as I want cubs, the thought of losing you terrifies me. I’m almost tempted to ask Carella to make you sterile again.”
“Don’t you dare!” Hope rested her hand over her abdomen as though that alone would protect her womb. “I’ve dreamed of having a child. If I
’m finally able to have one, you aren’t taking that away from me.”
“Then don’t insist on going to the surface where someone can take you away from us. You are our dream, little one. Never forget that.”
Hope’s shoulders slumped. Braxton was right. She needed to stay here and be safe. They were the werewolves, not her. Just as she decided to acquiesce, Hope suddenly straightened and alternately peered into their eyes. “What do you mean after I’ve shifted several times? And are we going to be linked telepathically?” Did they intend to change her into a werewolf too, and if they did, did she really want to let them? She thought about it for a moment and decided that it would be strange and cool, all at the same time.
“Yes, little one, we will all be linked together telepathically,” Joran replied. “Just think of what it will be like to have us know what you want before you think to voice it.”
She tried not to think about what it would be liked to have them know her every thought. It both scared and intrigued her. She set that thought aside when another occurred to her.
“If you’re going to change me into a werewolf, I’m not going to have to eat raw meat, am I? Because If I am…” She paused to wrinkle her nose. “That’s disgusting, and I would rather starve first.”
They both laughed and hugged her to them. Hope gave them a mock glare. “Stop laughing. It’s not funny!” She pushed them away. “You’d better get going before I think up more questions to ask you and make you stay to answer them.”
Hope sighed when Joran pulled her to her feet and kissed her. It wasn’t like the gentle kisses they’d given her just a few minutes ago. This one was all-consuming. His tongue caressed the seam of her lips then swept into her mouth when she opened for him.
Their tongues danced together for a moment before Braxton pulled her away and growled, “My turn.”
His kiss also felt more like a brand than a gentle brushing of the lips. It was as though they feared they wouldn’t get another chance.
Where There is Hope [Taos Wolven Mates 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 12