Remembering Melaina

by Maia Dylan

  “Oh, I know that,” Pepper answered, excitement in her tone, “but I had to wait until Parris and Xanthe got to that clearing. They’ll be there in less than a minute, and your wolves, the men who call you their mate? They are not far behind either. They come with some of their friends, and all of them are very angry.” There was a pause, and Melaina felt a wave of emotion she couldn’t quite name. “Tomas and Diego are with them.”

  “Well, little sister, they care about you, too. And it would appear that once again we have all underestimated you, so tell me, what’s next?”

  “Now, you wake up. Look to the east side of the clearing. Parris and Xanthe will come out of the forest there and they will add their powers to yours. And then you will battle Aristos.”

  “Will we win?”

  Pepper’s laughter warmed Melaina’s heart. “We’ve already won, Laina. We won the moment Aristos took the three of us and kept us prisoner. We formed a bond stronger than any familial link or bond that can exist. No matter how hard he tried, he could never take our humanity, and that was the one thing he could never fake or formulate no matter how many chemists he brought in. Now, wake up, look to the east, face our demon, and take him down.”

  Melaina’s eyes cracked open, and she was staring up into the blue, cloudless Oklahoma sky. She inhaled deeply, and although she could still scent the coppery tang of her own blood, she also drew in the scent of the forest that surrounded her. As she exhaled, she felt the power flow through her and knew it was a parting gift from Pepper as she released Melaina from her mind. She rolled onto her side and pushed to stand with a single movement, looking toward the east, where her father was laughing with his guards.

  The guard directly behind her father cried out when he saw her standing and her father whirled to face her. The shocked look on his face had her smiling. “Where are you going, old man? You think we’re done here? We’re not. Not by a long shot.”

  Aristos’s eyes narrowed and his face filled with thunder. “It must be my lucky day. I get to kill you twice.” He walked toward her with a confidence she was looking forward to shattering. “This time, once I have you down on your ass, and trust me when I tell you that will not take me but a moment, I’ll be the one to put a bullet in your head and there is nothing you can do to stop me!”

  Melaina locked her gaze with his, feeling her power pool within her. “You’re right, there wouldn’t be, if I were standing here alone. But there is one thing you didn’t count on.”

  “Impossible.” Aristos dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “There is nothing I have not factored into this.”

  “Wrong,” Melaina said with a grin. She felt the buildup of power behind her and knew that Parris and Xanthe had just stepped out of the shadows. “You forgot to factor in the power of family.”

  With that Melaina blast her power at Aristos as hard and as fast as she could. Aristos launched a counterattack as soon as she started, and Melaina had to battle to keep her feet beneath her for a few seconds. Then she felt the blast of energy fire past her and she knew that Parris and Xanthe had joined the fray. The energy being aimed directly at her weakened when Aristos pulled his energy back in an attempt to bolster his own shields.

  Knowing that this was the only chance that they would get, Melaina bore down and forced even more energy down the bridge she held to Aristos. Absently, she noticed that the guards were all moving in their direction. No doubt they were running to aid their boss, but to Melaina, they looked as if they moved in slow motion. If they got to her before she was able to dispatch Aristos, it would all be over.

  She kept her eyes locked to her tormentor, refusing to look at the threat that ran at them, but she sensed it when there was movement from her right. A wave of anger, tinged with a strong thread of blood lust rolled over her. Then, as time seemed to speed up to real time, she felt the pressure of two warm bodies press into her thighs. Without looking down she knew it was her mates. She reached down and placed a hand on each of them as the roar of lions and the growls of wolves filled the air, seconds before the screams of men joined the cacophony of sound.

  The shifters of Grey River had joined the fight.

  In her mind, she felt Xanthe and Parris both weakening. Sustaining a continuous bridge to Aristos and fighting against the psychic energy he was firing back with was taking its toll. She felt it when Xanthe’s connection broke, and despite everything within Melaina screaming for her to turn and run to Xanthe, she knew that if she did, she’d be dead. Aristos must realize that his guards were lost, all of them falling beneath the rage of the Grey River pack. He had nothing to lose, and he wasn’t going to go down without taking her with him.

  She felt Parris fighting to maintain the link, heard her cry of rage and pain when the tenuous hold she had on her connection to Aristos snapped, leaving her to battle alone. Aristos grinned at her, his eyes swirling with madness and Melaina was almost swamped with fear. Not for herself, but for her mates. There was a sound in the field that almost had her dropping her shields to see what had happened. A haunting howl of wolves echoed around her, the sound so pain-filled and the loss so real that her heart ached. The bond she shared with her mates echoed with the pain despite the fact that they were desperately trying to shield her, so she knew that something really bad had happened.

  “I will not leave here without knowing your mates are dead, too.” His words rang in her head and she cried out at the word too. She knew that his final act of hatred toward her would be to take Kyle and Grant from her. And that was not something she could live with.

  Pulling back from her attack, she threw her shields out from her, wrapping them around her mates. Kyle and Grant had been standing beside her, growling and snarling in Aristos’s direction, but not leaving her side. As soon as the shield came down around them, they knew what she had done, and both went ballistic, trying to get out from behind it and throwing themselves at Aristos, but she held them strong. She knew it left her completely unprotected, but there was nothing that could be done about that.

  Aristos must have felt the shield around Kyle and Grant and deduced what she had done. He had always said her protective streak would be her downfall, but what he never really understood was that it would also be her salvation. She had done things in her life she had never been proud of. But all of it would be exonerated with this one act in death, and she was more than happy to face death with that knowledge.

  “No!” Pepper’s cry of denial sounded in her head. “Not you, no. That is not supposed to be the way this ends!” Melaina had known Pepper for most of her life, and she had never heard such conviction in her voice, and there was a strong thread of anger in there, too.

  Melaina’s eyes locked to Aristos’s but not of her own accord. She had been thinking that if she was about to be killed, she wanted her gaze to be on her mates. Pepper had pushed in and compelled her to obey, and she was helpless but to comply. Then a power the likes of which Melaina had never felt flowed from her, hitting Aristos with an energy that burned so brightly it was almost hard to keep her eyes open. But Pepper wouldn’t let her look away. Fear filled Aristos’s face and Melaina knew that he could see his own death coming.

  Pepper screamed in her mind, a sound filled with anger and pain. The force of the energy that burst from her increased for a moment, and she watched as the pupil in Aristos’s left eye seemed to explode, and he dropped to the ground. She knew he was dead before he even hit the earth.

  “Laina?” Pepper’s voice sounded in her mind again, but this time, it was quiet, almost as if from a great distance.

  “Pepper? Are you okay?”

  “He’s dead, Laina, he won’t hurt you again.” Pepper’s voice was weakening and Melaina’s heart began to pound.

  “Us. He won’t hurt us again, Pepper,” Melaina cried out, trying to draw Pepper to her psychically like Pepper had to her.

  “Good-bye, Laina. I love you, sister, I love you all.” And with that, Pepper was gone.

  “Pepper!” Mel
aina cried out aloud, dropping to her knees in the field. Around her, she could see the carnage that remained behind the battle between the Grey River pack and Aristos’s guards. She turned her head to meet Parris’s and Xanthe’s gazes and knew they had heard Pepper’s farewell. The pain of knowing they had lost their little sister was clear in their expressions of grief, both of them wrapped in the arms of their mates.

  It was in that moment that she felt two pairs of arms wrapped firmly around her. Kyle and Grant knelt with her in the grass, holding her as she screamed and cried. Pepper had been the kindest and the best of them. She had never known happiness or pleasure in her life, and she had sacrificed herself for them.

  She’d been right. Life was unfair, and there wasn’t shit that they could do about it. No matter how badly she wished it weren’t true.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” Kyle murmured from where he leaned against the hospital room wall, his voice breaking the monotony of hearing the machines beeping rhythmically in the room. Grant dragged his gaze from their mate and looked up at his older brother. Kyle was staring over at their mate, his face tense, his jaw like granite. “When we arrived, and I saw her standing there, facing her father, covered in blood, I thought we’d lose her.”

  Grant sighed as he rocked the chair he was sitting in back on to four legs and rested his elbows on his knees. “Me, too, Kyle. I’ve never known a fear like it. Not the last time we stood in that clearing and watched our mother die. Not even when our father turned his knife toward us. Nothing came close to the fear of losing her.”

  Grant turned back to look at their mate, wondering if they would ever be able to get over what happened that day. Although victory had been theirs and they had killed Aristos and his men, it had not been without payment on their side. Many of those who had fought with them had been injured, and one of their own had lost his life that afternoon. Jacob Clarkson was a young firefighter, just out of college and following in his older brother’s footsteps, and he fell in that field today. Grant would never forget the howls and cries of loss from his brothers Hayden, Caleb, and Benjamin.

  “Do you think she will ever find her way back?” Grant asked, his gaze shifting to the women in the hospital bed, “or is she lost to us forever?”

  “She’ll find her way back.” Melaina surprised him by answering as she lifted her head from where she had rested it beside the figure lying so still on the bed. “She has to. We need her to come back, and once she’s finished healing, she’ll come back.”

  Melaina’s voice wavered and shook like she wasn’t as convinced as she’d like to be, and Grant sat forward to reach across the bed and touch the back of Melaina’s hand where it rested on Pepper’s leg. “Of course, she will, baby. With you, Parris, and Xanthe praying for her, talking to her, and guiding her back to us, there’s no way she could go anywhere else.”

  Melaina turned her hand over, so that she could entwine her fingers with Grant’s and when Kyle stepped up behind her, placing his hand on her shoulder, she reached up and gripped his hand as well. “I was scared, too,” she whispered as she closed her eyes. “I thought that I would either be lost to you, or he would take you from me, and either way, I knew I would be dead.”

  Kyle sighed, his hand tightening gently on her shoulder. “You should have called us, Blue Eyes. As soon as the bond was closed off to you, you should have picked up your phone and called us.”

  Grant winced, not sure if now was the time to chastise her, but he couldn’t disagree.

  “I couldn’t,” Melaina whispered. “He threatened you both. I couldn’t put you in danger like that. You have told me on more than one occasion that your role as my mates is to love, cherish, and protect me. Well, you have to respect that is just as true for me. I will do anything and everything in my power to prove my love for you both, to cherish you for as long as you will let me, and to protect you when I can. If you, me, and this whole mating is going to work, you have to respect and accept that about me.”

  Grant sat completely still. He was afraid to move for fear of breaking the spell of that moment. Their mate sat between them, holding their hands and linking the three of them, and talking about her role as their mate. Grant shot a quick glance at his brother and saw the awe and wonder that was no doubt a reflection of his own. A silence fell over them as they absorbed what she had said until Melaina fidgeted. The two of them had sat there dumbfounded by her statement for too long.

  “Baby,” Grant said softly as he stood up from his chair and walked around the hospital bed to where she sat. When he reached her, he gently tugged her chair around until it faced him before he dropped to his knees in front of her, holding her eyes with his. “You have nothing to prove to Kyle and me, the least of which is your love. We see it in your eyes every time you look at us. It’s there in the way you cherish and protect us, and it is most definitely there when you give yourself so completely to us when we make love.”

  Kyle stepped out from behind her, and knelt down beside him and Grant shuffled sideways to make room for him. The irony of the position he and Grant had taken had not been lost on him.

  Kyle reached out and gripped her right hand in both of his. “Blue Eyes, you humble and honor us with your love. We will cherish you for as long as we live and adore the fact that you will do the same”—Kyle grimaced—“and we will try and not overreact too much at the protective streak a mile long you got going there, but I can’t promise anything. The thought of you putting yourself in harm’s way to protect us doesn’t sit well with me as a man. And it sure as shit does not sit well with my wolf. Hell, baby, call me old-fashioned but I want to be the one that keeps you and our children safe.”

  Melaina’s eyes widened and filled with shock. “You want to have children with me?”

  Kyle frowned. “Well, yeah. Where the hell else did you think this was heading? We would be more than honored if you would bear our children, and one day we will convince you to take our last name, too.” Tears shimmered in Melaina’s beautiful blue eyes. “From the moment we met, I knew you were the one for us. Grant had been talking about you incessantly and I will never live down the fact that my little brother met our mate first.”

  Grant grinned. “You sure as hell won’t! I’ll be dining out on that story for the rest of our lives.”

  “Everything about you,” Kyle continued, completely ignoring Grant, “complements us. You ask about us respecting and accepting you as you are, and the answer is we do. We accept everything about you, and we sure as fuck respect the hell out of you. How could we not respect a woman who can break down and put back together an assault rifle, shoot with deadly accuracy, fight in hand-to-hand combat with assholes who dare mess with her, and put the psychic smackdown on just about anyone?”

  Melaina giggled, the reaction Kyle had no doubt aimed for with that last part, and Grant smiled. The sound of her laughter was a balm to the pain and the fear that they had felt throughout that terrible day. Grey River had lost one of their own, and another lay ill on the hospital bed beside them. There may be other battles the people and pack of this town would need to step up and fight, and Grant was under no illusion that he, Kyle, and Melaina would be one of the first to step into the fray to protect their way of life. But right now there was no fight left in him. All he really wanted was to take their mate back home, crawl into their bed, and reaffirm that they were alive by making love.

  “Take me home,” Melaina said gently, a soft smile on her face. It was a sad smile, but one that Grant understood completely.

  “Of course,” Kyle answered as he and Grant stood up. “Let’s get you home and tucked up into bed. Things in Grey River will be sad and difficult over the next few days, and we will all need the rest.”

  Melaina nodded as she stood up from the chair. She moved back to the bed as Grant returned the chair she had been sitting in to the wall. Melaina leaned down over Pepper and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Good night, little
sister. See you tomorrow. You are safe. Come back to us soon. We miss you. “

  Grant’s heart ached for his mate, and he moved to wrap an arm around her shoulder as they stepped out into the hallway. Kyle stood close to her other side, with her hand clasped in his as they walked.

  “I feel like I haven’t slept in thirty years,” Melaina groaned as she rested her head against Grant’s chest, snuggling into him in a way that made him feel ten feet tall.

  “We’ll soon have you tucked up in bed, my love,” he murmured before pressing a kiss against her silken locks. “We’ll get you something to eat as soon as we’re home, you can take a hot shower, and then we’ll sleep wrapped around you until morning.”

  Melaina sighed. “That’s sounds almost perfect.”

  “Almost perfect? What’s missing?” Kyle asked.

  “The part where the two of you make love to me, together, and claim me again.” Melaina looked up almost shyly from beneath her lashes, first at Grant, then over at Kyle. “The first time there was an underlying reason why I asked you to claim me. Now, it is because I love you both with everything in me, and I want our claiming to be in truth.”

  Grant’s heart began to beat a little harder and his cock stirred behind the zipper of his jeans. “Our claiming was always in truth, but we can make that happen. I want nothing more than to make you ours again.”

  “Then we’re all in agreement,” Kyle said as he started to move quickly down the corridor. They were all practically sprinting for the truck by the time they walked out of the hospital and into the calm stillness of the Oklahoma night.

  * * * *

  Melaina turned her face up under the hot water of the shower and reveled in the heat and steady rhythm of it. Her mind was a swirling mess of images from that day. Facing her father hadn’t exactly turned out the way she’d hoped, despite the end result being what she’d wanted. Her father was gone from her life, and her sisters were safe, but until they had Pepper back with them, whole and healing, then the saga was not truly over.