Jericho looked at him. “Stay vigilant. You’ll be out patrolling and from what you said, Ashland is a pretty small town. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, then you can call me and I’ll help you investigate.”
Alek opened his mouth to protest that he was perfectly capable of protecting Lachlyn, but before he could speak, Jericho raised his hand. “I’m not saying you can’t handle things, Alek, because I’m certain that you can in most instances. But if my father were to find out where we live, the men he would send here would not be the sorts that would fight fair.”
Alek wasn’t the type to piss and moan when someone told the truth. Jericho was a big man and, judging from what little Alek had learned last night of his history in the den, he was a fierce warrior. Alek had always considered himself capable of defending his future mate under any circumstances, but he’d never anticipated coming up against pissed off bears with murder on their minds.
Jericho’s hand landed on Alek’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be everything for Lachlyn. The benefit of being part of a mating trio is that we can share the responsibilities of the mating together. You’re stronger than me in some areas, and I’m stronger than you in others. Together, we’ll be the perfect mate for her.”
Alek liked that idea a lot. He wondered if his brothers and uncles had come to similar terms when they first mated to their women.
When the dishes were dried and put away, they joined Lachlyn in the large family room where she sat in the middle of one of the couches and discussed the finer points of SpongeBob with two of his cousins, Nathan and Owen.
“Why is there a lake under the ocean?” she was asking when they came into the room. She looked up at them and winked.
“Lachlyn,” Owen said, shaking his head, “it’s a cartoon. It’s not real.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Oh. But they’re cooking underwater.”
Nathan laughed. “It’s just pretend!”
“I see you’ve met my cousins,” Alek said as the boys hopped up and darted over to another couch.
He sat on one side of her and Jericho sat on the other. “Yes, they’ve been setting me straight about the yellow sponge.”
Alek introduced Jericho to the boys.
“You’re a bear, like Lachlyn, but you can shift, right?” Nathan asked.
“Yes,” Jericho answered.
“Cool,” Owen grinned. The boys turned their attentions back to the television, and Lachlyn leaned against Alek and sighed.
“Tired, sweetheart?” he murmured in her ear.
“A little, but it’s a good tired.”
They sat in silence while the show continued on, and by the time the credits rolled, Lachlyn was asleep, her head in his lap.
Jericho smiled and stood. “I’d like to use the computer now,” he said with a low voice.
“The office is down the hallway, the last door on the left.” As Jericho stepped around the coffee table, Alek said, “I can help pay for the IDs. You shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden by yourself.”
Jericho shook his head. Keeping his voice low, he said, “It’s probably going to be around ten grand for her and I to have new identities. I appreciate the gesture, but it’s my deranged father who’s causing the issue, and I have plenty of money saved up.”
“You never said what you did before you left your den.”
His brow furrowed. “I was my father’s enforcer.”
Without another word, Jericho left the family room, and Alek was left thinking about Jericho’s job.
Tuesday morning, Alek left the warmth of Lachlyn’s side and got ready for work. He absolutely didn’t want to go into work, but he now had a mate to provide for and needed his job and the benefits that came with it for their new family. Jericho had made arrangements for new identifications for himself and Lachlyn, and he was going to pick them up later today at Don’s house. He was waiting until Alek got off work so that they could go together since Jericho didn’t have a vehicle of his own.
Leaning over, he kissed his still-sleeping sweetheart’s cheek and nodded at Jericho, who was using Alek’s iPad to read the local news, and headed into work.
Pauline was pouring a cup of coffee when he walked into the station, and she turned towards him with a smile and reached for another cup.
“How was your weekend, Pauline?” he asked, accepting the cup and fixing it to his liking.
“Good. Grandkids spent the night Saturday, so we had a campout on the back porch. How was yours?”
Although he wanted to shout to the heavens that he’d found his mate, he and Jericho had agreed that keeping things quiet for now was a good idea.
“I had a really nice weekend, Pauline.”
Heading into the office, he got to work, waiting anxiously for his shift to be over so he could see Lachlyn again.
By the time he’d made the rounds through town, written a few tickets, and done his paperwork, he was practically twitching with the need to see Lachlyn. Three o’clock couldn’t come fast enough.
As he clocked out and his father clocked in, he chuckled, “In a hurry, Son?”
Alek fisted his keys and grinned at his dad. “I really am. I had no idea it would be like this, but it’s amazing. Thanks for making me go to dinner with you.”
His dad squeezed his shoulder. “You deserve to be happy.”
Feeling as though his cheeks would split from his broad smile, he said goodbye to Pauline and his dad, and headed home. His cat was pacing in his mind as he drove the short distance from the station to the boarding house. It was a relief to walk into the house and catch the faint scent of her skin. He followed it into the kitchen where she stood at the island with Jericho and talked to his young cousin, Henry.
Lachlyn closed the distance to Alek in a few short strides, a happy rumbling sound coming from her chest as she leapt up into his arms, locking her arms around his neck. Their mouths met, and he groaned at the sweet relief that filled him.
When their kiss ended, Jericho asked, “Did you make that sound, Lachlyn?”
Alek lowered her until her feet touched the ground. “I guess I did. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“It sounded like a bear’s happy growl,” Jericho said. At the odd tone in his voice — as if there were something wrong — Alek looked at him in alarm.
Lachlyn said, “The part of me that feels like a bear, way deep in my mind, feels more prominent now.”
“Is something wrong, Jericho?” Alek asked. Jericho met his eyes and frowned, but shook his head.
Henry asked, “Can I go with you to Don’s?”
Jericho said, “Sorry, man. But if you like later on, we can work out some more, if that sounds cool.”
Henry’s eyes brightened, and he moved off the stool and left the kitchen.
“You worked out with him today?” Alek asked in surprise.
“Sunshine was making brownies with the younger kids, and I decided to work out for a bit in the weight room, and Henry was in there but wasn’t lifting right, so I helped him out.”
Lachlyn smiled warmly at Jericho and went on her toes to kiss him. “What was that for, Sunshine?” Jericho smiled.
“You’re just very sweet.”
Jericho made a face, but Alek imagined that Jericho didn’t really mind being called ‘sweet,’ especially by their mate.
Lachlyn stuck her hand out towards Alek and he stepped to her, sandwiching her between their bodies. “This is nice,” she whispered.
It was nice. He could stand here all day with her soft curves against him, but they couldn’t. Kissing her shoulder, he said, “We should get going.”
In no time, they were on their way to Don’s. Lachlyn sat in the front seat and Jericho sat in the back. She leaned on his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his.
“Did you have a good day, sweetheart?”
“I did! I helped Tristan make breakfast, and then I played soccer with the kids in the backyard while Jericho helped your dad clean out the gutters.
”
Alek looked in the mirror at Jericho and he shrugged with a half smile.
“Oh,” Lachlyn said, “and I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
Chapter 10
Jericho looked at his new driver’s license. Jericho Brio Fallon. Everything was different except for his first name. Don’s guy had changed his middle and last names, as well as changing his birthday to make him two years older than his current twenty-six. The pictures used were taken with Alek’s phone, and his address was a warehouse in southern Indiana somewhere, and Lachlyn’s was somewhere in the northern part of the state.
Lachlyn was staring at the birth certificate. Alek spoke quietly to Don, and Jericho moved close to her. She lifted her eyes, and tears pooled in the pretty blue depths. “What’s the matter, Sunshine?” he asked with a low voice.
“Why do you call me Sunshine?” She sniffled, biting her lower lip to stop the trembling.
He said, “Because you’ve always been a light in the darkness to me. Even when we were young and the other kids were afraid of me because of my father, you were always there for me, with a smile or a kind word.”
“Or half of my lunch,” she said as she smiled. Tears spilled over her cheeks.
“You’ll always be the sun in my life, Lachlyn. I wish that things were different, that you weren’t in danger from my father, and we didn’t have to hide, but I wouldn’t change anything about our past because it’s brought us both to this place. Now, love, tell me what the tears are for.” He cupped her face and brushed the tears from her cheeks.
“It’s weird to see a birth certificate without my parents’ names on it.”
He looked down at the paper and saw that the forger had given her a maiden name of Jones with parents named Beth and Luke, and had changed her birthday to make her a year younger.
“When the threat to you is gone, we’ll get your real birth certificate. Then you can change your name legally when you marry Alek, and I’ll change my name, too. The only thing that these papers mean is that we’re keeping ourselves safe. We’re still the same people we were when you came back to the den, except we’re wiser.”
She put the paper down on the counter and leaned into him. He hugged her tightly, feeling her tremble. He glanced over his shoulder and found Alek and Don looking at them. He motioned with his head to Alek, who joined them quickly, pressing against Lachlyn’s back and gripping her sides. Her trembling eased quickly, and it was one more way that proved Lachlyn needed two mates, and her other mate was Alek.
After several quiet minutes, Lachlyn wiggled around between them and faced Alek. “I saw the marriage license.”
Alek smiled. “What a whirlwind romance we had. Met and married within three days.”
She laughed. “I know it’s not real right now, but I like being Mrs. Fallon to my two Fallon men.”
Jericho nipped her neck and kissed her ear. “It’s real, Sunshine, just not legal.”
She shivered. “I mean legal. It’s definitely, definitely real.”
After giving Don ten thousand dollars in cash to give to the forger, they said goodbye and headed home. Jericho had a million things running through his mind; the foremost was marking Lachlyn formally.
After dinner on Wednesday night, when Alek was working his night shift, Jericho and Lachlyn went for a walk in the woods behind the boarding house where the pride shifted on the full moons.
As they walked through the woods hand in hand, he said, “I wanted to ask you about formally mating.”
“I wondered if you were going to ask me.”
“I do want to, but I recognize that it’s not just you and me in the mating, and I don’t want to offend Alek. But it’s not my decision, it’s yours.”
“What do you mean?” She stopped walking, and he turned to face her. The light from the setting sun that filtered through the trees bathed her in amber, making her look like a goddess, deserving of worship.
For a moment, his brain derailed and his bear roared in his mind to strip her and take her. But then she cleared her throat and brought him back to reality. “I mean that if you don’t want to mate me formally because of Alek, then we can do whatever mountain lions do.”
She chewed on her bottom lip. “I can’t really mate you right, Jer. I don’t have claws or fangs. I might as well be human.”
He snarled and wrapped his big hands around her upper arms. “You are special and amazing, Lachlyn. I don’t give a damn that you can’t shift, but you’re not human. You’re the child of two were-bears, and that makes you a bear whether you shift or not. Don’t belittle your heritage.”
“Why didn’t I ever shift?” She gripped his arms as he held her, her eyes wide and imploring.
Loosening his grip, he pulled her into his arms and said, “I don’t know. But you’re still perfect to me.”
She squeezed her arms around his waist, and they stood in the silence of the woods while the sun set. As they walked back home, he said, “If you want to formally mate to me and Alek, then Alek and I could mark each other in your place for the ceremonial marks.”
For bears, the mates used their claws to mark their mates — the females on their arms and males on their chest. Then they used their fangs to mark the side of the neck.
“Do you think he would mind?”
“I think that he’d do anything to make you happy, Sunshine, and you know that I would, too. You could still use your blunt teeth to mark our necks, and we could use our claws on each other and you.”
“I’d love that.”
The following day, Jericho left Lachlyn with James, John, all the kids, Tristan, and Wesley, and borrowed Tristan’s truck. He drove into the next county to a bank. Using his new identification, he opened up a checking account and then he withdrew funds from his off-shore account and transferred them into his new account. He’d never had many bills, so he’d saved the money he’d earned from working for his father because he’d hoped one day to buy a house for Lachlyn and start over somewhere.
He hit up a department store and purchased clothes for himself and stopped at a grocery to buy a few things for Lachlyn.
He dropped the grocery sack on her lap. “Oh! What did you get?” she asked, beaming at him as he sat next to her on the couch in the family room.
“Just a few things for my mate,” he said.
She opened the bag and looked inside. Gasping, she pulled out a box of Lucky Charms, a big bag of Skittles, and a bottle of Yoo-Hoo. She laughed and hugged him, kissing him repeatedly on his face.
“You’re so sweet. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
He liked seeing her smiling and happy. Although she’d been markedly happier since finding Alek, he knew that she was fighting to stay positive, worried over what his father might do.
When Alek came home from work, the two of them took Lachlyn out to dinner. They also took her shopping, since she was still wearing Sarah’s hand-me-downs. Jericho bought a pickup with a bench seat so that all three of them could be in the same row together.
Lachlyn leaned against the hood of the truck after they got back to the boarding house. “I didn’t know that you got paid so well, Jer.”
“I made a percentage from everything that I collected. And I really never had any expenses so I just saved it.”
“Collection? I thought you were an enforcer?” Alek asked.
“One and the same in my case. My father was a loan shark, and when people didn’t pay, he sent me to collect from them. Within the den, if he felt that a bear was out of line and needed discipline to remember that he was king bear, then I handled that as well.”
Lachlyn shivered, and Jericho knew she was most likely thinking about his father’s brand of punishments, which in her case would most certainly have ended in her death.
“Do you think we’ll ever be free of your dad?” she asked, her brow furrowing in worry.
Jericho cupped her face. “We will be, Sunshine. One way or the
other.”
* * * * *
Friday morning, he and Lachlyn headed into the next town to find the supplies for their mating ceremony on Saturday night. When Lachlyn explained the ceremony to Alek the night before and asked if he wanted to be part of it, he’d been thrilled. In a perfect world, he and Alek would have been shopping for things together, but Alek had to work, which meant that the shopping fell to Jericho. And Lachlyn hadn’t wanted to spend another day puttering around the house. The kids were done with school for the summer, and although she had a ball playing with them, he knew she was feeling a little cooped up.
“So tell me again why we have to buy everything when half the stuff on the list is already at the house?” she asked, looking at Jericho’s new smart phone and the digital list he’d created. He’d also bought a cell for her as well, with a girly white and pink sparkly case.
He braked at a stop-light. “Because it’s bad luck to use old things in a mating ceremony.”
“Why?”
“Because, Sunshine, our people believe that physical objects retain the memories of the people who have used them before. If we were to use a blanket that belonged to someone else, we’d be bringing in the memories of those people into our mating. If they were good memories, that’s fine, but if they were bad memories, then we’d be tainting our mating.”
She hummed thoughtfully. “When my parents moved to Georgia to be with me, my mom said that she had to buy a new broom. I asked her why, and she said that she threw out the one she’d had before, because it was bad luck to use an old broom in a new home. Something about sweeping the old problems into the new place. Sounds similar to the mating rules.”
He agreed. Squeezing her knee, he said, “Do I really think that using John’s tent or the blanket from Alek’s bed will cause our mating to be bad? Of course not. But I want to start out our mating on the right foot and follow our ancestors’ traditions, while making new traditions of our own.”
He looked at her as he put the truck in park and turned off the engine. She smiled. “I want our mating to start off on the right foot, too.”
Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two) Page 7