Remembering Melaina

by Maia Dylan

  “There is a clearing at the north end of town beneath a place called Red Ridge. An associate of mine faced his own daughter in this clearing and it seems fitting that I should meet you here.” Melaina knew exactly what Aristos was referring to. She had heard that Cassadee, the mate of two of the Grey River pack, had faced her own father in that clearing and lived to tell the story.

  “I will come.”

  “And, Melaina, if you bring those guard dogs of yours with you, this time, I will gut them. But I will not stop there. I will take out every single one of this Grey River pack.”

  Melaina bit back the pain and sent back her own pulse of energy. She didn’t know if it had been strong enough to drop him like his did her, but it certainly had his hold on her easing even further.

  “This town and the shifters within it are stronger than you think. They do not need me to stand in front of them. If you come at them, they will kill you, make no mistake about it. They have their own resources and skills. The shifter world is larger than you realize, and if you take on Grey River, you will make yourself the target for every single shifter race on this earth. Do you have the skill and resources to take them all on?”

  “Just come to me,” Aristos answered after a pause. “Now, before I change my mind.”

  Melaina sensed him not only close the link between them but shatter it. He was so much stronger than she had anticipated. She had thought that perhaps his delay in coming for them had something to do with rallying his army, but now she knew better. He was finishing his own treatments to give him the strength to face her. She walked back to the house in a daze. She knew exactly what she needed to do, but as soon as she stepped into the house and caught the scent of her mates, her resolve began to waver.

  Turning to the room where she had given herself so completely to her men, she grabbed her keys and her cell phone from the dresser and walked back to the living room. Her eyes locked on the counter where the three of them had breakfast that morning and a solitary tear slid down her cheek. She’d had so much hope for the future this morning, and now all she felt was despair. How was she going to find the strength to leave?

  Just then, her phone rang in her hand as she stared at the front door, willing her feet to move. She glanced down at the display, then answered it immediately. “Hey, Parris, how are you, little sister?” She fought to keep the tremble from her voice.

  “Laina.” Parris’s voice held a tremor of its own, and Melaina’s blood ran cold.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Aristos. He’s near. I can feel him close by. He isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he’s here. I think maybe he knows that I’m alive. I am at Xanthe’s with Pepper and she’s sensed him, too. She cried out before and started to cry silently. She is completely shut down now. It’s almost like she’s catatonic or something.” Melaina could hear the panic Parris was desperately trying to control in her voice.

  “I know,” Melaina admitted. “He’s close.”

  “Oh, God, we need to tell Ty and Hunter. I need to tell Rhys and Jase.”

  “No, Parris,” Melaina said firmly. “If we tell them, they could get hurt, and I refuse to allow that to happen. He doesn’t know that you are alive. I am going to—”

  “Hell, no!” Parris interrupted and Melaina blinked in surprise. “There is no way you are going to, not by yourself. You tell me what the plan is and we do this together. If you don’t, I swear to God I will have Xanthe talk with Hunter right now and blow this right open.”

  “You tell her I’m coming, too.” Melaina closed her eyes at the sound of Xanthe’s voice in the background.

  “Melaina, Xanthe—”

  “I heard, Parris.” Melaina sighed. “Okay, we need to meet in order to get everything sorted, get a plan together to make this happen. But I don’t want anyone in this town knowing what we are doing. Meet me here at Kyle and Grant’s in an hour. You need time to make sure Rowena stays with Pepper, I don’t want her left alone. We’ll work out what needs to be done.” Once they arrived, Kyle and Grant wouldn’t be too far behind. Her men would look after them. Her mates. She placed her hand against her chest, pressing against the ache that came with using the word mate for the first time.

  “Okay,” Parris answered determination clear in her tone. “We’ll be there. Wait for us, Melaina, we will do this together. We will all help to keep our families safe the way you always have. It’s our turn to help you now.”

  Melaina nodded as a single tear slid down her cheek. “Okay, see you soon.” The click of the phone disconnecting triggered Melaina’s tears. She bent forward as the pain in her heart almost dropped her to her knees. She hated lying to Parris and Xanthe, but she needed to do everything in her power to keep them safe. For her, there was just no other way. And just like that, she found the strength she needed to do what had to be done.

  She walked out the door, climbed in her car, and drove in the opposite direction to town. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be taken by Aristos and his men. She’d been there and done that and she was never again going to allow that man to have any control over her or her life again.

  As she drove, Melaina thought of a quote she had once read that had stuck with her all these years: “I am dead. Vengeance can restore me! Only victory can return my life to me.”

  She had never really thought about her life as her own. She had always been about protecting those she loved, and then she’d met Kyle and Grant, and suddenly the thought of living a life for herself became something she very much longed for. The only barrier standing in her way was her father.

  She only hoped victory would be hers today.

  * * * *

  “Goddamn it,” Ty whispered, “how in the hell does Faith do this and get these damn things to stay on?” Kyle wanted to roar with laughter as he watched his great big, badass Alpha try and get the small metal domes on his sleeping sons’ onesies to close. Sean wiggled in his sleep, causing his father’s fingers to slip from the small metal fasteners. “Mother fucking monkey’s ass, these fucking things are going to fucking—”

  “Ty!” Faith scolded softly as she strode into Ty’s office, handing their other son Scott to Grant as she walked past and moved to the bassinet Ty was huddled over. Pushing him out of the way, murmuring nonsensical words of comfort as she deftly fastened Sean’s PJs and tucked him beneath his blankets once again. “I swear to all things holy that if my son’s first words are an expletive, I will make you pay, and pay big.”

  Grinning, Kyle looked over at his brother, who was currently locked in a staring competition with two-month-old Sean. The look on Grant’s face was one of longing and awe. The thought of them having children with their mate, and seeing her holding a child of theirs to her breasts, was almost overwhelming but something they both wanted desperately.

  His heart filled with love for his mate and he reached out for her through their bond. He paused when he felt nothing coming back from their link. Looking within himself, he could see the connection he had to his mate, but the bond was dimmer than it should be.

  “Grant?” he asked down their link, but his brother didn’t even flinch. Something was muting the connection, not allowing them to sense or speak to each other.

  “Fuck,” he growled aloud, and all three adults and one baby turned to look at him. Faith looked as if she was about to ream him for cursing in front of the kids, too, but his concern must have shown on his face because her expression swiftly changed to concern.

  Grant frowned for a moment. “Melaina, I can’t reach her.”

  Kyle nodded, standing up from the chair and pulling his phone from his pocket, fear starting to build within him. “Me neither. Something’s wrong.” Kyle walked out of Ty’s office as Faith took Sean from Grant. He walked into the conference room where Hunter, Dane, and the Reyes brothers were drinking coffee as the call connected and he waited for Melaina to pick up. When it became clear that she was not going to answer the phone, he disconnected the call with a
growl.

  “Let’s move,” Hunter snarled, his lion very clear in his tone. “Ty’s mobilizing some of his team and the wolves over at the firehouse.”

  Kyle ran with the rest of them for the vehicles parked outside, grabbing his medical kit from his own car before leaping into the back of Hunter and Dane’s Expedition with Grant. “Where are we going?”

  “Let’s start with your place. Zane’s just got in contact. One of the kitchen staff at Aristos’s compound has been beaten to hell and back, but managed to get herself to her car and drive out of the compound. She passed out at the wheel and slammed her car into the van Zane and Riley were in. When they got her out, she tells them that the man who had beaten her left with the rest of them the night before.”

  “Wait, what!” Grant roared from the other side of the car. “If they left the night before, then they’re already here.”

  “I know,” Hunter snapped back, “and if he’s here, then he’s going to go for Melaina.”

  “How in the fuck did this happen, Hunter?” Kyle snarled. “I thought your men were professionals? How did Aristos and his goons get past them?”

  “I have no idea, but I can assure you that I am going to find out.” Hunter’s voice had turned to ice. The man did not take too kindly to failure, and this was nothing short of a complete clusterfuck.

  They were just about to take the turn into the drive that led to their property when Hunter cursed again, slamming his foot on the accelerator. The massive engine in the truck leaped to do his bidding and they flew forward. “You’ve missed the turnoff!” Grant yelled as he leaned forward, gripping Dane’s headrest like he was about to launch himself into the front seat and snatch the steering wheel.

  “He knows that,” Dane said sharply, his words slightly garbled as his lion no doubt edged closer to the surface. “Xanthe’s just told us that she’s not at home, or at the shop. She’s gone after your mate. Melaina had told them to meet here in an hour, but they suspected something and came sooner. When they found your place empty, she worked her ability and ‘saw’ where Melaina had gone.”

  Kyle frowned, his entire body beginning to hum with an urgency that had his heart pounding in his chest. “Where are they?”

  “The clearing below Red Ridge,” Dane replied.

  Why the hell were the fates so determined to fuck with them both? Kyle looked over at his brother in concern. Grant had not been able to go to the clearing since the night their father took them both and killed their mother. The night Cassadee faced her father in that clearing, the two of them had stood guard in the car park. Could Grant do this?

  One look at Grant’s face told Kyle everything he needed to know. Grant didn’t care where the hell they were going or what they had to face—the site of their worst memory, the gates of hell, or even death itself. To Grant and Kyle, it simply didn’t matter. Their mate needed them, and there was nothing they could not and would not face to get to her. Grant nodded at him, a fierce look on his face, and Kyle returned the acknowledgement. They were going for their mate, and nothing and no one would get in their way.

  * * * *

  Melaina walked out of the trees and into the clearing below the ridge. Although there were signs of regrowth and the ground no longer carried the scorch marks of the battle that took place here, Melaina could see where the fires created and thrown by Cassadee’s pyrokinetic brother had destroyed the forest up on the ridge and throughout the clearing.

  She stopped when she neared the center of the clearing. Aristos was close. She wanted to be able to see him coming. Lowering her shields a little, she waited. She didn’t have to wait long, she felt the first wave of psychic energy slam into her and she stumbled but didn’t go down. She turned to the left, watching as Aristos walked out from the east side of the forest and no less than twenty men stepped out behind him, but stayed near the edge of the forest, allowing Aristos to step closer to her on his own. She noticed he carried one of the insidious inhibitor collars he’d designed.

  “I knew you would come.” Aristos stopped a good twenty feet away from her, and she took a moment to really look at the man. He had changed in the weeks since she’d last seen him. His hair was grayer, there were lines of fatigue and stress around his eyes, and he was thinner than she had ever seen him.

  “You didn’t exactly give me a choice,” she answered as she stared into his eyes, noting how dilated his pupils were. His psychic assault on her shields hadn’t stopped since he exited the forest. “I’m surprised to see your entire entourage here, though. You really need all those men to take me down?”

  Aristos grinned. “Not at all. Once I have you collared, we will leave, but I wanted these men to clean up what’s left behind.”

  Melaina frowned. “What do you mean clean up what’s left behind?”

  “I cannot leave without punishing these mongrels for the pain and suffering they have caused me,” Aristos sniffed in disdain. “Not only is my eldest daughter now a little bitch to two of these animals, but my youngest has betrayed me with two men who also fuck each other. I cannot and will not allow that slight against me go unpunished. I will not leave here without knowing your mates are dead. Anyone who comes looking for you here will be met by my men.”

  Aristos stared at her as if expecting a certain reaction. When she smiled at him, he frowned in confusion. “Well, then, if this doesn’t go as planned, then at least I know you won’t be breathing for much longer. As I said, you take on Grey River, you bring about your own painful death, and that makes me one happy little bitch.”

  Melaina dropped her right foot back, pulling all her psychic power to the fore. She was going to need everything she had. “Now, I see you have one of your collars, and I don’t particularly want to wear one, so why don’t you come on over here and try and make me?”

  Aristos’s confusion washed away beneath a smile of his own. “I had so hoped you were going to fight me.” Without warning, Melaina felt shards of pain ricochet around her head as he threw pulses of energy at her. They came hard and fast, not giving her time to launch her own attack. When he stepped closer, assuming she was too busy blocking the pulses to put up any resistance, she waited until he was in striking range before she spun on her right foot, slamming the heel of her left foot into the side of his face.

  The pulses stopped as he fell to the ground with a shout of pain, and everything within her wanted to cheer. “That hurt, Daddy?” Melaina stepped back, balanced on the balls of her feet, waiting for her father to get to his feet. She had waited so damn long to strike out at the man. The hit had felt amazing, and she wanted more than anything to feel it again.

  His guards all surged forward. “Stay back!” Aristos yelled from his place on the ground pointing back at his guards. “All of you are to stay back. I can handle this.”

  He looked up at her from the ground, his eyes now completely black, no whites showing at all. She threw her shields up, but in a moment of blinding pain, they crumbled beneath Aristos’s attack. The agony inside her head dropped her to the ground with a scream, her entire body convulsing against the assault. She felt as though her blood had turned to fire and she was being set alight from the inside out.

  “Does that hurt, kori? No, I won’t call you daughter, not anymore.” Melaina could barely hear Aristos talking as he stood over her and spat on her. “You are nothing to me! I hope you can hear me. I was always my own endgame. You were nothing but the pawn in my game. I hope you like pain, because that is all I have left to give you.”

  Melaina felt the warm slide of her own blood flowing from her nose, and the coppery taste of it filled her mouth. She reached for her mates along their bond, wanting her last act before her death to be telling them both that she loved them with everything within her. Aristos still had a hold of the bond and she wanted to scream with rage. He had taken her childhood, stolen her life, and now, Aristos robbed her in death. She would go to the other side never having told the two men who owned her heart that she loved them.

/>   And of all the pain and agony she had endured in her life, it was that he had been a part of this that hurt the most.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Melaina floated away. Or at least, that was what it felt like. There was no sensation, no more pain, nothing. She felt nothing. She had read about sensory deprivation tanks and thought that this must have been what it felt like, but she had no real way of knowing. All she really knew was that whatever Aristos had done to her, it had killed her, and now she was floating in this endless darkness, and the fear that this might be what she would endure for all of time was almost more frightening than knowing she was dead.

  Her own father had killed her, and it was unfair that she would never see him face justice for what he had wrought against her and her sisters. It was all just so unfair.

  “You told me once that life was unfair, and there wasn’t shit we could do about it?” At the sound of the voice in the darkness, Melaina wanted to cry out. To scream in rage that not only had Aristos killed her, but he had taken Pepper as well.

  “No, Laina, this is not death, at least, I’m fairly certain that it’s not,” Pepper said quizzically.

  “Where are we?” Melaina thought she’d asked but she heard no sound in the darkness.

  Pepper sighed, sounding almost happy. “My happy place, my mind. When I felt your spirit waiver and knew Aristos was winning, I dragged you into my mind.”

  “Why is it so dark?”

  “Is it? I hadn’t really thought about it like that. This is the place I go when everything is too much, when what they are asking of me is impossible to do. This is where I go when the pain is too much. Nothing can hurt me here, and no one can hurt you here, either.”

  Melaina liked the idea of there being no pain, but her determination and thirst for vengeance were too strong. “We can’t stay here forever, Pepper. We need to bring Aristos down. He cannot win this one. There are too many innocent people that will be hurt if we don’t.”