Pepper's Journey Home [Grey River 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Maia Dylan

  Diego nodded. Grey River had seen its fair share of violence and blood spilled on its land in the past few years. Tomas once told Diego he thought it was because the town was a beacon for the lost and the hurt, and that there were always people out there looking to take advantage of those who were weaker than them. Looking at some of the mated triads in the area, it was hard to argue the point. Many of the groupings had come together during emotionally charged moments in their lives, and all involved them having to fight for what they wanted most. Seeing Pepper upstairs lying so still and not being able to help her in any way was hard. Diego would have liked the opportunity to fight for her. To spill the blood of the fuckers who had hurt her, tormented her, tortured her, and allow his wolf to wallow in their blood, but the fucker who was mostly responsible was already dead.

  “Pepper’s”—Diego paused as he searched for the right word—“special. And that is a really pitiful word to use, but I can’t find one that tells you just how amazing that woman is. She’s been hurt and abused her entire life and had to fight her way out of situations no one should ever have to. Then when she was finally safe, she risked everything to save her sister.”

  Father Graham’s eyes lit with respect. “It takes a lot for a person to be willing to give everything and do anything for someone, even a member of their family.”

  Diego nodded. “And that’s the type of person she is. Tomas and I haven’t had enough time to get to know her, but we have spoken at length with the women she calls sisters. The bond that exists between us is enough to tell us that the Fates chose her for us, but hearing the stories of how strong, passionate, and caring that woman is, I would have fallen for her, anyway.”

  “She does sound like an amazing woman. So, you and your brother come here day after day, night after night, so I assume that whatever the good doctors are trying, it is not working.” It was a statement more than a question, but Diego nodded anyway. “And I know that you have both prayed for your mate, and for whatever reason, that, too, has not seen your mate return to you.”

  “I didn’t think it would.” Diego gave a small smile. “Not really.”

  Father Graham’s brows lifted in surprise. “And yet you come, bow your head in prayer, and ask the Lord to bring your mate back to you. At least, that is what I am assuming you are asking him.”

  Diego nodded. “It is. It is all that I have asked.”

  “Then perhaps it is not for medicine or for God to do that for you.”

  Diego frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I can see that.” Father Graham slid forward and dropped to the kneelers in front of them, lifting his arms to the rail in front. “Sometimes we look to others or to the heavens for answers and are frustrated when they simply do not come. But, when we look at the problem that lies before us in a different way, perhaps the answer or the solution has been inside us the whole time. I do not know if I have any more pull with our Lord and Savior than you or your brother do, Diego, but I will lend my prayers to yours.”

  Diego moved onto the kneeler beside Father Graham and lifted his eyes to the crucifix once more. Closing his eyes and clasping his hands together in front of him, he bowed his head and prayed.

  * * * *

  The gentle whoosh of the hydraulic door to Pepper’s room had Tomas looking up, but he knew it was her doctor, Chris Carson. He and Diego had spent so much time in this hospital room they knew every staff member by the way they walked along the hallways.

  “Hey,” Chris said quietly as he approached the bed and grabbed Pepper’s chart.

  “Hey, Doc, you about finished up for the night?” Tomas asked as he stood up from one of two armchairs the nurses had moved into the room when it became apparent neither he nor his brother were going away anytime soon.

  “Yep, Angel’s cooking fajitas for dinner,” Chris said with a smile as he looked over the chart in his hands. “If I don’t get there on time, Noah will eat the lot.”

  Tomas grinned, knowing that was something Diego would do. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chris placed the chart back and then turned to face him, both hands in the pocket of his lab coat and a calculating look in his eyes. “What about you?”

  Tomas frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “When are you heading out?”

  Tomas shook his head. “We’ve had this conversation before, Chris. Diego and I are here for the duration.”

  Chris drew his hands from his pockets and crossed them in front of him. “I get that, I do. But you’re not going to do Pepper any favors if you allow yourselves to wither away here. When was the last time you let your wolves out for a run?” Tomas flinched, his wolf growling low within him. “Days? Weeks? How long, Tomas?”

  Tomas sighed and crossed his arms over his own chest. “Weeks.”

  Chris scowled, and a low growl rumbled around the room. “You can’t fucking do that, Tomas. Your animals are dominants, and if you lose control of them and shift spontaneously, you might hurt someone. You might hurt Pepper.”

  Tomas turned to look at the young woman on the bed in front of him, her long red hair pulled back and over the pillow, her long dark lashes standing out against the pale white of her flawless skin and her full lips softened in sleep. His wolf whimpered within him. Chris didn’t get it. Tomas had never had more control over his wolf. Both man and animal were on the same page, pining for the unconscious woman, only feeling out of control if they ventured too far away from her.

  Pepper had been in this room for the past eight weeks, and in the beginning, he and Diego had managed to visit but then venture out of the hospital when they needed to. They even took turns running their wolves at night and allowing them some freedom. In the first two weeks, they even managed to purchase a property near Parris, Rhys, and Jase’s house, wanting to make sure their mate was close to one of her sisters. They had talked about pledging to Ty and Trent in order to make this town their home, and they had arranged for all their stuff to be sent here from Texas.

  But three weeks ago, that all changed. He and Diego found it harder and harder to leave. It was almost physically painful to walk too far from her. The pain that had started in their chests the day they almost lost her started to resurface when they put too much distance between them and their mate. Hell, the chapel next door was as far as he was comfortable going. Tomas feared this was a sign that the thin bond between them and Pepper was weakening even further, and if they ventured too far, that the bond would snap completely.

  “I would never hurt Pepper,” Tomas said in a low voice, pushing aside his thoughts, not wanting to dwell for too long on the possibility of losing her.

  “He couldn’t,” Diego said from the door, and the fact that he entered the room and Tomas hadn’t even been aware that he’d walked down the corridor told him how far inside his own head and thoughts he had been. “Neither could I. If we lose her, then yeah, we might be a danger but only to ourselves. We might not have claimed our mate in the way of our kind, Chris, but we are bound to her just as you are to Angel.”

  Tomas nodded in agreement as his brother stepped into the room and went straight to their mate, pressing a soft kiss to her temple. “If she slips from this life and into the next, then we will follow.”

  Chris sighed and moved toward the door and turned to face them with his hand on the door handle. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You two are a part of our pack. We’ve only just started to recover from losing Joshua in that damn battle with Aristos. I am not sure how we would survive losing another three members. So, do what you need to do. Stay in this hospital keeping vigil by her side, and you let me know if you need anything. There has been no change in your mate’s prognosis. No change means she is not getting worse, but she is also not getting any better. I don’t think medicine is going to help in this case, but I have no idea what will.”

  With that, Chris left the room, and Tomas might have imagined it, but it seemed that his footsteps were heavier as he walked away than they were w
hen he came into the room. With a frustrated growl, Tomas sat back on the arm chair and dropped his head into his hands. Chris’s words cut deep. Pepper’s condition hadn’t changed in the two months since she had been there, and despite Chris saying her condition was not worsening, Tomas knew that it was.

  “I spoke with the priest in the chapel,” Diego said quietly.

  “Yeah?” Tomas looked up. “Did he put in a good word with his boss?”

  Diego grinned. “Actually he did. He knew you and I were brothers and that we were here for our mate.” Tomas nodded. Grey River was too small a town, filled with too many shifters for some of the humans who lived there not to know. “I told him about our mate, and he said something that has been swirling around in my head.”

  “What did he say?”

  Diego moved to lean back against the wall on the opposite side of the bed. “He told me that perhaps, if after all this time, medicine and God are simply not meant to save our mate.”

  Tomas stood up, anger flooding his system, and his wolf rising to the surface. “The fuck you say. What, he thinks we should just let our mate pass on from here? What the fuck kind of thing is that for a priest to say?”

  Diego rolled his eyes at him. “Calm the hell down, Tomas. Jesus, it’s amazing Ma didn’t drown you at birth. He didn’t imply that we allow her to slip away from us—he said that perhaps we weren’t looking for an answer in the right place.”

  Tomas frowned. “Where the hell are we supposed to look then? Dial 1-800-WITCH-DOCTOR and ask for a goddamn miracle cure?”

  Diego closed his eyes and shook his head. “Yep, you should have been drowned at birth. I’m going to suggest it to Ty and Trent the next time I see them. No, you asshole, he didn’t talk about a fucking witch doctor. I am not sure someone like him would even believe in such a thing. No, he said that perhaps you and I hold the key to helping her.”

  Tomas felt his heart stutter a little. Could they be the key? He turned to the bed and gently took his mate’s right hand in his, locking his gaze to her beautiful face. Diego mirrored the move and stood close to her other side.

  “We have tried talking to her,” Tomas said slowly, his mind racing to think of a way they might help their mate. “We’ve both reached for her down the thin bond we hold with her, and nothing has worked.”

  Diego nodded, and from the small frown on his face, Tomas knew he was desperately searching for an answer, too. “AJ and Sam Carter’s mate Cassadee can talk to anyone telepathically, but she can’t ‘see’ Pepper. She said that it wasn’t like Pepper wasn’t listening, but more that she was behind some kind of dark void. And neither Parris nor Melaina were able to reach her, despite the fact Melaina had been talking to her in Pepper’s mind on the day of the attack.”

  Tomas growled in frustration. “Hijo de puta! What the fuck are we missing here?”

  Diego looked up at him, frustration clear in his eyes. “I don’t know! But I feel like she is slipping away from us, and it’s fucking killing me. Are we grasping at straws here, hermano? Do I want her to come back to us so damn much I am looking for answers in anything someone says?”

  Tomas took a deep, calming breath. “Maybe, who the hell knows? But what the hell else do we have, Diego?”

  Tomas watched as his brother’s shoulders slumped. “Nothing. So when a priest tells me that perhaps the answer has been inside us all this time, then I’ll listen and I’ll hope, because you’re right, Tomas. We have nothing else. We must do whatever we have to do to tether her to us.”

  Tomas froze, his mind swirling with possibilities. Could it be?

  “What?” Diego’s voice was more wolf than man, interpreting Tomas’s posture as indication there was a threat.

  “Is that what the priest said?” Tomas asked urgently. “That the answer may have been in side us all this time?”

  Diego’s frown deepened for a moment and then cleared as he no doubt caught on to what had Tomas’s pulse racing. “And Chris said that he believed that he didn’t think that medicine was the answer.”

  Tomas felt hope flood through him. “We’ve exhausted every other avenue. This might be the only way forward for us.”

  “Agreed,” Diego said, excitement clear in his tone. “We’ll have to call Hunter and let him know.”

  Tomas nodded as he reached to pull his cell phone from his back pocket and dialed.

  “Has there been a change?” Hunter asked as he answered the phone. He and Dane were the heads of the Enforcer group Tomas and Diego worked for.

  “No, but we have an idea on what might help,” Tomas said. “That day out near Red Ridge, we felt Pepper dying. The bond between us might not have been fully formed, but it was there.”

  “I remember you telling me,” Hunter said slowly.

  “So what if all we did was stop the inevitable, but didn’t bring her back completely?” Tomas knew he was talking quickly, but he couldn’t stop. “Her bond to us would be holding her here, but she wouldn’t be close enough to close the gap herself.”

  “Which could be why Chris believes there is nothing more medically that can be done,” Hunter added, and Tomas could hear the excitement in his voice. “So, do you think you need to call to her down your bond?”

  “No,” Diego answered from across the room. With their shifter hearing, they didn’t need to use the speakerphone function on his cell. “We thought about that and have tried it multiple times over the past two months. What we need to do is boost that bond.”

  “Shit,” Hunter growled as he came to the conclusion Tomas and Diego had.

  “The claiming bite is the only thing left for us to try,” Tomas said quietly.

  It was what they wanted more than anything else in the world for the three of them, but to do that without Pepper’s knowledge or consent went against everything they were as shifters. The problem they also had was that it went directly against the laws of the Grey River Alphas. And that was a death sentence.

  Chapter Four

  “…come on, cariño. You’ve been gone too long…”

  The voice broke through the darkness but sounded strange. It was as if she were hearing the voice from beneath water. Cariño. She knew that the word. It was an endearment. She had heard it before, and it conjured the image of a tall man with dark black hair and brown eyes that darkened to black when they looked at her sometimes.

  “…Pepper, you’re safe. Come back…”

  Pepper. That was her name. Pepper. She didn’t have a last name, or at least not one she could remember.

  “…we’re here with you, Pepper…”

  She didn’t recognize the male voices. There were two of them, and they seemed intent on drawing her out of the darkness.

  “…she moved! She’s coming out of it…”

  This time the voice was clear. No longer did it sound like it was coming through water. Did that mean she was coming to? Was there light in this world? She had long since thought that impossible.

  “That’s it, Pepper, open your eyes, niña.” Another endearment.

  She then became aware of her physical self for the first time in who the hell knew how long. She was lying on a bed, the weight of blankets across her. She could feel herself breathing, so she knew she was alive. That at least answered one of her questions.

  She opened her eyes. Or at least she tried to. When she eventually managed to crack them open, shards of pain shot through her as she registered light. With a moan, she slammed her eyes closed.

  “That’s it, baby,” an excited voice said from her left. “Open those beautiful green eyes and look at us. You can do it.”

  Pepper gritted her teeth and prepared for the wave of nausea she knew was coming. Then she cracked her eyes open. Everything around her was blurry, so she blinked over and over, desperately trying to get her vision to focus. She took a couple of deep breaths to force back the urge to vomit, and slowly her equilibrium returned.

  She was staring up at a high vaulted wooden roof she didn’t recognize. Knowi
ng that there was someone to the left of her, she turned in that direction. The movement was exhausting, but eventually she was able to see the man who stood beside her. He was tall, very muscular, and had dark hair and black eyes. Although he looked similar to the man she conjured when she heard the word cariño, this was not the man. This man’s hair was long, falling almost to the collar of the shirt he wore and had a wave to it. There was also a scar over his right brow that the other man didn’t have.

  “Hey, niña, welcome back.” The man smiled at her, and she felt something squeeze her left hand. A glance down showed that the man was holding her hand gently in his. As soon as she saw it, she became aware of the fact that someone held her right hand as well. Turning her head against the pillow, she looked at her hand and saw the hand that held hers. It was a man’s hand, and the skin was much darker than hers.

  Her gaze followed the hand up to the arm and the man it was attached to. This was the man she imagined when she heard the word cariño, same dark short hair, dark brown eyes, and stubble across his face. She met his eyes and wondered at the relief she saw there.

  “Cariño.” The way the man whispered the endearment had her frowning. There was a lot of emotion in that one word. Relief, happiness, and a whole slew of others she struggled to name.

  “Wh—” She broke off into a dry cough, her entire body convulsing with them. The man on her left reached for water, and the man with the shorter hair lifted her into a sitting position. Then a glass of water with a straw was held in front of her.

  “Here, Pepper, take a few sips of this.” The straw was pressed to her lips, and she drew it into her mouth. “Not too much and slowly.”

  Thinking that the man’s advice sounded good, Pepper complied, but it was difficult. The cool water felt fantastic as it slid down her throat. All too soon the straw was taken away, and she frowned.

  “You can have more soon, sweetheart,” the one with longer hair said as he placed the glass back on the bedside table. “Just let that little bit settle for now.”