“Those are happy tears, right?” Alek asked, his face carved with concern as he brushed a tear she hadn’t realized she’d cried off her cheek.
Her hands were in her lap and she lifted them, inspecting the tips. “My hands.” She rubbed her hands together, willing the mild ache away.
“What about your hands, Sunshine?”
She looked at her mates who were both worried about her and shook off the strange sadness that had settled over her. “I don’t know. My hands hurt, and I felt like I could use my claws to mark you both, but then it was over.”
Jericho’s brows rose, and he picked up one of her hands and looked at it, testing her joints. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No.”
Alek brushed another tear from her cheek. “You’ve growled a few times, too. What do you think it means?” He looked at Jericho.
Jericho let out a slow breath and then kissed her fingertips. “I have no clue. Lachlyn is the first non-shifting bear I’ve ever known. Maybe because she’s finally found both of her mates, her bear is becoming more prominent.”
A skitter of excitement flitted through her. “Do you think I might shift?”
He smiled sadly. “I don’t see how you could, sweetheart. If you were going to shift, you would have done so when you were a teenager.”
As quickly as the hope had sprung up inside her, it was dashed. Flexing her fingers, she kissed them both. “I’m glad you accept everything about me, even my non-shifting side.”
Alek grinned. “You could turn yellow and breathe fire, and I’d still be thrilled to have you as my mate.”
She chuckled and turned her attention to the marks on her arms. Now that her endorphins were wearing off, her arms and neck were beginning to ache. One arm carried Jericho’s thicker claw marks, and the other had Alek’s slightly thinner marks. Alek opened a cooler in the tent and drew out a bottle of water. Leaning out of the tent, he soaked a cloth and pressed it gently against the mark on her neck. Hissing under her breath, she closed her eyes and let him clean up her marks.
When he was finished, she took a clean cloth and cleaned his and Jericho’s marks, kissing them gently.
Alek pulled plastic containers from the big cooler and Jericho touched her face. “Do you want to mark us now, Sunshine?”
“No. I think I’d like to do that another time, when it’s just two of us together. If that’s okay?”
Alek nodded. “As long as I get to wear your marks on my neck, love, I don’t care when it happens.”
She grinned. “Eager to get marked?”
He scooted close and handed her and Jericho bottles of water and picked up a plastic bowl of cut fruit. “I can’t wait for the world to know that I’m mated to the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.”
He held a red grape up to her lips, and she ate the sweet fruit.
Jericho picked up a peach slice and rubbed the corner across her lips. “I think you’re the most wonderful woman in the world, too, Sunshine.”
She bit into the ripe peach and juice dripped down her chin. Jericho kissed and licked the juice from her skin, pushing her back onto the mattress as Alek joined them on her other side. He placed the bowl between them, and as Jericho drew a wet line with the remaining half of the peach down her throat, lapping up the sticky sweetness as he went, Alek fed her a slice of strawberry and then kissed her deeply.
After eating their fill of fruit, she made love to her mates, their skin sticky with fruit juice. She felt the bond between herself and her men grow stronger now that they were officially mated. She already loved Jericho, but her feelings towards Alek were growing stronger by the minute, and she knew she was falling in love with him, too. They fell asleep just when the night reached its darkest point before dawn, and she’d never felt safer than she did at that moment, held tightly between her two mates.
Chapter 12
Melody Marx looked over Julia’s shoulder as she screened video footage from cameras in the small town of Ashland, Indiana. Julia was marking date and time information on a pad of paper. Whenever one of the males would show up in a frame, Julia wrote it down. Melody found the whole process dreadfully boring and pointless. She hadn’t been with the female lions very long, less than a year, but she already knew why the males had taken off.
“What is the point of all this again?” Melody asked, sitting down in a desk chair in the home office of Honor Parkins, head of the mountain lion pride.
Julia paused the footage and glared at Melody. “You know why. We’re looking for weaknesses with the males so we can break up their group and get them here where they belong.”
She opened her mouth to say something snarky, but snapped it closed. The females didn’t really trust her. She hadn’t been raised with the females, so even though she was one, she wasn’t really one of them. She wasn’t even sure where she was, because they’d drugged her when they had brought her here and never let her leave the area. Turning her eyes to a console of eight screens, she used the controller to play the footage from the last twenty-four hours.
Ashland was a town that was similar to the one she was raised in. She’d grown up in Bent Creek, Ohio, where her and her father were the only two mountain lions in the area. Her father had passed away the year before. His late-night shift at the power plant had always worried her, because the back roads that led into town could be treacherous in bad weather. It had poured the whole day, and the roads were flooded in some areas. When the doorbell rang at four a.m., she’d instinctively known that something bad had happened. The two police officers looked at her sadly when she opened the door, drawing her robe around her waist tightly.
“Miss Marx?” one asked, pulling off his hat and gripping it in his hands.
“Yes?” She clutched at her robe and stared between them to the police car that sat in the driveway, lights flashing.
“Your father has been in an accident.”
Her heart throbbed in her chest, and tears filled her eyes. “Is he, is he okay?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Marx, but he died on the way to the hospital. Can we come in? We’d like to talk to you.”
The day was a blur after that. Mrs. Downs, a neighbor, came over when she saw the police car and helped Melody dress. Then there was the morgue. So many visitors at the house that their faces and kind words mashed together. The funeral. The empty house. It had taken her weeks to be able to open her father’s bedroom door to start packing up his things. Her best friend, Scarlett, a werewolf in the local pack, came over to help her pack because Melody didn’t think she could do it alone. In a wooden box on top of the dresser where her father kept his watch and cufflinks, she found an envelope with her name.
My sweetest daughter, Melody. If you’re reading this, then I’m no longer with you. Know that you were the best decision I ever made, and I don’t regret a second of our time together. I’m so proud of the young woman you’ve become. You’re unique and wonderful, and I couldn’t be happier to be your dad. I don’t want you to be alone, so when you’re ready, I want you to go to King, Pennsylvania, and find my younger brothers Holden and Jackson. They’re your family, and they’ll take care of you and watch over you in my place. Until we meet again in the great beyond, may the great lion spirit watch over you and protect you, sweet daughter of mine.
Inside the envelope had been several thousand dollars, directions to King, and a photograph of her father, Bradley, with his brothers. She knew her uncles by name only, and the multitude of stories her father shared about their lives together, but she hadn’t been in King since she was a baby and had no contact with them or anyone else from the King Pride. Her father had been insistent that they live apart from King because he was worried about her coming into contact with the female lions. From all accounts, the females were cold and callous, not wanting to find mates or start a family.
Her father had left with her the day she had been born and cut all ties to the pride, starting over in Bent Creek. She didn’t feel cold and callous
, or as though she didn’t want a mate or a family, the way her father described the other females. She wanted to find a mate and start a family. She wanted to have cubs and take care of them. She hated being alone in the house with only memories to keep her company.
She packed up the house with Scarlett and loaded up the Ford Focus that had been a present from her dad when she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. She’d left Scarlett and her old life behind, looking forward to meeting her uncles and starting her life over with the family she never knew. She’d stopped just over the border into Pennsylvania for gas and caught the scent of mountain lion. She found a woman pumping gas a few pumps over and went to see who she was. They’d told her that the pride was no longer in Ashland, that they had moved up to Canada and encouraged her to follow them. Foolishly, she did.
Once they crossed into Canada, one of the females named Gretchen said she’d drive Melody’s car while Melody rode in the big paneled van with the others. They’d offered her a bottle of water that had a strange taste to it, and within minutes, she had passed out. When she woke up, she was in a tiny bedroom somewhere in Canada and found out quickly that the females had been driven out of King by the males and had relocated to Canada to lick their wounds and regroup. They were trying to find ways to make one small group of lions in Ashland miserable so they would realize the folly of living without the females. There were still several dozen lions in King, but the females were obsessed with Ashland, and that obsession stemmed from a grudge they held against twin males, Ethan and Eryx Fallon, and their shared mate, Callie, who were the first to break away from the pride as a mating group.
Melody thought the females were certifiable. Why would they think the males would want to come to the middle of Canada to start over in another pride where they were the ones taking care of the females and getting nothing in return except hostility? After attempting to leave several times, they disabled her car and started locking her in her bedroom at night. She was biding her time and looking for a chance to escape again.
The constant spying on the males was starting to become too much for her. She didn’t hate the males the way that the females seemed to. She didn’t want them to be servants of some kind, only existing to make the females happy. Not all the females believed in the rule of females over the males as strongly as Julia, Honor, and many others did, but as far as she could tell, Melody was the only one who was being held against her will.
“Oh, who’s this?” Julia asked.
A woman with long auburn hair was holding hands with one of the male lions in the parking lot of Cherie’s Diner. All the males ate at Cherie’s at least once a week, many of them more frequently.
“Could be a first date,” Melody offered, not wanting to know what would happen if they decided the woman with the male was his mate and a threat.
“I doubt it,” Julia snorted, zooming in on the woman. “That male doesn’t date, and they’re holding hands. They’re together.”
Shit.
Julia was a tech wizard, and her fingers flew over the keyboard as she took a picture of the woman and ran her through some kind of photo recognition program.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Julia glanced up. “Yes, it’s the FBI database. Go tell Honor I need to see her immediately.”
Melody left, feeling even more strongly that it was time for her to leave. After getting Honor, who brought along a few females with her, Melody slipped back into the office and listened to what Julia had learned.
The female in question appeared to be mated to one of the Fallon males and also to another male who was not part of the pride. She and the new male were living under false identities, and once Julia found out their true identities, she discovered that they were both were-bears and had come from a were-bear den in Virginia. The news made the females giddy, and Melody didn’t understand why.
Honor clapped her hands together, her perfectly manicured nails looking like claws. “Get me the number for the king bear of that den. He’s probably going to be very interested in knowing where one of his females is.”
“Why?” Gretchen asked.
“Because bears are very strict about who they mate with, and they don’t necessarily care for mixing species together.”
“And they’re using fake names, which means they’re hiding from someone,” Julia added.
As Julia went to work trying to find the information for Honor, the females’ leader detailed her intentions to send the bears to Ashland to reclaim the female bear and to let the males know that they were being watched.
Melody bit her tongue against asking why they couldn’t simply leave the males alone. The females were determined to break the males by any means necessary. The females wanted the males to admit that they weren’t complete without the female lions and that they never should have left them and tried to find mates with humans and other supernatural groups in the first place.
Stealing out of the office, Melody went to her room. She had lived in Honor’s home with a handful of other females since she’d been brought here. It had never been home to her. She kept a small bag packed for when she had an opportunity to leave. While the females were occupied with their plans to try to destroy the males and send them running back to the females’ arms, she knew it was her chance.
The sun had set and the temperature was cooling quickly. Keeping an ear trained towards the office, she moved into one of the bathrooms, shut and locked the door, and turned on the shower. As quickly as she could, she unlocked the window over the toilet and climbed out of the first story bathroom. She stripped and tucked her clothing into the small pack, securing the bag around her neck before shifting into her sleek cat form and darting away from the house as fast as her paws could carry her.
She didn’t know where she was, but she knew that if she traveled south, she’d eventually find people and could pay for transportation down to the states with the money her father had left her. She’d go to Ashland first and warn the males about what was coming for the one Julia had called Lachlyn, and then she’d reunite with her uncles and give her friends in Bent Creek a call to let them know she wasn’t dead.
As she ran south, keeping her ears open for anyone who might follow her, she thought of her father. He would be proud of her for going to the males and warning them, and he’d want her to find his brothers and join her family. And someday she’d meet her mate. She hoped he was an honorable male like her father had been, and they would start a new kind of pride, where the females stayed with the males and raised their cubs together. Because that’s what she wanted, at the very core of her soul. To find her mate. To have a family. And to live her life free of the shadow of the female lions and their strange, hateful ways.
She would do it, too. She just had a stop to make first.
Chapter 13
When the sunlight woke them Sunday morning, Lachlyn followed Jericho and Alek out of the tent. She picked up her dress and pulled it over her head.
“You don’t want to change into the clean clothes you brought?” he asked as he deflated the air mattress while Alek took apart the tent.
She tapped her fingers against her arm, and he could hear how sticky her skin still was. “It’s amazing that we weren’t attacked by ants last night.”
He chuckled. “I think ants are too smart to bite weres. Even if they are covered in fruit juice.”
He wasn’t nearly as sticky as she was, but he decided to put back on his clothes from the day before, saving his clean clothes for later.
“Can I help?” Lachlyn asked.
“Just relax, love,” Alek said as he began to fold up the tent and put it back in its carrying case.
Jericho noticed she was shifting from foot to foot and he grinned. “Something up, Sunshine?”
“I have to pee. So get the lead out.”
“There’s a whole forest full of trees.” Alek pointed out.
She made a face. “No way!”
Jericho and Alek teased her about
being too prissy to pee in the woods. She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s so easy for you guys, just point and shoot. But with me, it involves putting a part of myself I like a great deal very close to the ground. No thanks.”
Even though he enjoyed her feisty side, he didn’t want her to be miserable the first day of their mating, so he and Alek hurried through their cleanup, loading their supplies into a wagon that he pulled back to the house. Lachlyn raced into the house, and he heard her saying hello to whoever was in the house before her footsteps moved quickly up the stairs to their bedroom.
James, John, Aaron, and Grant were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when they finished putting their supplies in the shed, except for the air mattress, which needed to be washed before it was put away.
“Congratulations, boys,” James said, standing and hugging Alek and squeezing Jericho’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Jericho said, accepting a cup of coffee from Grant and joining them at the table with Alek.
“Do you feel any different?” John asked, pushing a plate with a wedge of coffee cake across the table.
Alek said, “Definitely. I mean she was already our mate before we marked her, but now it’s permanently etched on her skin.”
Jericho liked that, too. He couldn’t wait for Lachlyn to be able to mark him. Her suggestion that she mark each of them privately made his blood heat.
Over the last week, he’d had no trouble sharing her with Alek. His bear was content to be part of a tri-mating, and it didn’t bother him to have Alek’s scent on her skin. He was lucky because he had been able to spend more time alone with her during the day than Alek had because of his job. Speaking of jobs…well, he didn’t need a job for financial reasons because of the money he’d saved. But he’d go nuts if he just sat around the house all day. Even working out with Henry every day and doing odd jobs around the house hadn’t occupied him enough.
Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two) Page 9