by Anya Nowlan
Thatch grabbed her chin with two fingers, tilting her to face him, and kissed her deeply. It was long and sensual and Madeline sighed into it, her muscles contracting again as she felt Tex slam into her for the last time, blowing his load in her. When Tex was done, Thatch released Madeline from the kiss and she slumped back across Tex’s wide chest, feeling his heart thrum so hard that it rattled through her.
She grinned, angling back a bit to steal a kiss from him as Thatch sat down on the couch too, visibly shaken and sated.
“That was…” Madeline started, looking for words that didn’t come as easily as she would have liked.
“It will be again,” Tex promised with a chuckle, carefully moving her off his lap and letting her curl up on both of them.
She’d never felt quite as safe and protected as she did with these two shifters she was certain she’d only have one night with. It was almost unnerving how good she felt there in their arms, her head on Tex’s shoulders and Thatch’s arms draped over her long legs.
For a hot second, fear gripped her heart, bringing back all the uncertainty she’d felt right after she woke up. And then it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived when Tex kissed the top of her head and Thatch squeezed her thigh gently, like they’d picked up on her nervousness.
Madeline smiled, relaxing.
I’ll worry about it tomorrow.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Madeline
The weather was, in a word, miserable. The sky was gray, the rain kept coming down like it was never going to end, and the whole of Chicago looked worse for wear. Or maybe that was a feeling Madeline got from her vantage point, looking at the big city lit brightly from her suburban home.
“Shh, honey, it’s okay,” she said as Raze bumped down on the ground on his butt, his mouth already wriggling in those pre-crying rituals he had mastered so well.
Picking him up, Madeline shifted the baby boy on her hip and brushed her hair back with her other hand, smiling at the bright green-eyed boy with golden flecks dappled in. He looked just like his daddies. And it stung every time she looked at him.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked inquisitively, quirking a brow as she grinned at Raze trying to get his hands around her locks. “Is he up to trouble again?”
Madeline walked through the small living room, peeking into the corridor in time to see Rhone half-crawling, half-walking down it, hell-bent on some mission his mind had gotten stuck on. His onesie was twisted at his knees, the sleeping bears on a blue background seeming to go off on an adventure right along with him.
“Rhone, where’s the hurry?” she asked, slowly walking behind him. “Are you going to bed? Is that what this is?” she cooed, getting a look from the brown-haired boy that told her that sleep was the furthest thing from his mind.
As usual, Rhone never wanted to be put down for a nap or for the night, and Raze seemed to be happiest when he was close to Madeline. Preferably close to Rhone as well, but the younger of her two twin boys seemed to prefer her company for now at least. She couldn’t say she minded.
Rhone inched his way into the nursery and made a beeline for three wooden ducks on a string, triumphantly plopping down next to them. Raze yawned, looking at his brother with his thumb in his mouth, seemingly deep in contemplation. Madeline couldn’t help but grin a little. The boys could look so damn serious, even though they were barely more than seven months old. Still, both of them were far above human babies their age already in strength, speed, and dexterity. The twins were progressing fast.
So fast, in fact, that a single mother had a hell of a time keeping up with them! Raising a shifter baby alone was no joke, but two? Madness. The amount of mischief those two could already get into was absolutely mind-boggling and Madeline had understood that the only way she was ever going to have a chance was if she read as much as she could about shifter babies in general, in order to raise them right.
But for this night, she wasn’t in the mood to start tackling the big issues of raising shifter babies. Instead, she was much more interested in simply getting her boys to go to bed. She walked over to one of the cribs and put Raze in, tucking him in safely. Kissing his forehead, the baby boy smiled back at her, his eyelids already getting heavy. He was never any trouble. She knew that was definitely going to change.
“Now your turn, little man. Fiona will be here soon and you’re too young to be sitting around while we have girl talk,” Madeline said, crouching down to be closer to eye-level with Rhone. “Bedtime, honey?”
“No,” he said resolutely, the word a bit garbled but his intentions clear.
He gave her a quick look, already full of determination and knowing his own mind. Madeline sighed, reaching out her hands for him.
“Come on. Bedtime. You know the drill. You go to bed now and we get to go on a walk tomorrow!”
Rhone seemed to contemplate this for a second, but Madeline didn’t wait for a reply. The only real word in his vocabulary currently was “no,” much to her chagrin, and she wasn’t expecting a long conversation on the topic of the positives of sleep. A pointed pout curved his little lips as she put him in the crib next to his brother’s, and she could have sworn she got a tiny little scowl from him. But when she kissed his forehead, Rhone smiled brightly, looking every bit the mischievous angel that she knew him to be.
“That’s it, honey. You be good now and go to sleep,” Madeline cooed, grinning as she tucked him in.
She snuck out of the nursery, leaving the night-light on, and closed the door behind her while holding her breath. It was a rare occurrence that sleepytime came this easily, and she didn’t want anything to jinx it. Madeline practically crept down the corridor, making it to the front door of her tiny house in time to hear a soft, careful knock on it. Peeking out through the glass, she saw Fiona standing there, her hair a wild mess as usual and a toothy grin on her lips.
“Are the hellions down?” she asked, holding up a bottle of Merlot as Madeline opened the door.
“They are,” Madeline chuckled, taking the bottle and ushering her friend inside. “Let’s go to the kitchen, the baby monitor is there right now.”
They snuck through the corridor, both of them tossing glances at the nursery door, and Fiona was the one to quietly close the kitchen door. Producing two glasses and a bottle opener, Madeline popped the bottle down on the kitchen table and rummaged through her freezer for some snacks. Not surprisingly, she didn’t have much other than baby food and leftovers. Still, she found some Brie, probably from Fiona’s last visit, and some carrots. That would have to do.
“How are you doing, Adley?” Fiona asked, opening the bottle and practically emptying the contents of it into two oversized glasses, one of which ended smoothly in Madeline’s hands.
She took a long gulp before choosing to reply to that question, and then locked eyes with Fiona, a slight smirk on her lips. Her new name, Adley, still made her cringe a little because of its newness, but she’d gotten used to it. It didn’t sound too far from Maddy, Madeline figured, so it would have to do.
“What do you think?” she asked, falling into the blue canvas-covered wooden-backed chair at the kitchen table.
She had a small kitchen, but it was clean and neat. Madeline had never been very organized before, but having two kids changed a lot for a woman. Well, that, a near-death experience, and starting her life all over again had a way of jiggling around some preconceived notions, it seemed.
“I think the bags under your eyes don’t look so bad anymore and I haven’t gotten a panicky call in a week, so that’s good, yes?” Fiona noted, peering over the glass.
“Can’t argue with that. How are your boys?”
Madeline had met Fiona in a delivery prep class specifically geared toward first-time mothers carrying shifter babies. While Madeline had been going through it alone, Fiona had had her husband, Cornell, with her for most of it. They struck up an easy friendship that had lasted through their pregnancies, deliveries, and now the general madness that w
as raising shifter twins.
“Oh, you know. Clay is arguing with me using hand signs that I assume mean I’m being unreasonable and totally motherly, and Cory is mostly sleeping. They’re so different! But then you put them together to play and it’s like they’re two halves of the same mind, working together and plotting and scheming. Unnerving. I can’t imagine what they’ll be like as teenagers. And how about Raze and Rhone? Is Rhone still saying no to everything?”
“Of course! He wouldn’t have it any other way,” Madeline said, grinning happily. “But they’re good. A lot of work. Don’t get me wrong, I miss sleep. I miss it so much. But I’m lucky that I can work from home for now and I have the time to spend with them. I’d love having some help, but it is what it is, hmm?”
“I still say you should find those daddies of theirs,” Fiona said, giving Madeline a subdued look.
“I know what you think, Fiona. But it can’t happen. They’ll never know they are fathers and I’ll never see them again. It’s for the best.”
“Oh come on, even one-night stands can be found in this day and age! Nothing’s private anymore,” Fiona protested, nibbling on a carrot stick. “You know how important first-borns are to shifters.”
Madeline mutely nodded, concentrating on her drink. Yes, of course she knew. And it was partially because she knew it so well that she wasn’t going to expend any energy looking for the men who had given her the biggest blessings in her life. They’d made it abundantly clear that there could be no future for them.
A happy life was not built on one adrenaline-filled day and one long, sweaty night. It needed more. She’d never use her kids to rope in men who weren’t ready for it. Especially if it could put their lives, and hers, in danger.
After Arizona, Tex’s and Thatch’s employers had grilled her for a few days about what, if anything, she knew. She gave them partial sketches from memory of the two men she’d seen and confirmed and reconfirmed everything she remembered from the train. After that, she’d spent a miserable week locked up in relative comfort, wondering what would happen next.
The Firm set her up with a new identity, Adley Aldridge, a mild-mannered biochemist originally from Idaho, bought her a tiny home in a suburb of Chicago, and gotten her a low-level tech job at Xavian Technologies Limited. For all of that, she was entirely grateful, if a bit bitter that things ever got that far to begin with.
The job was especially welcome. She’d been on the final stretch of finishing her PhD in the field anyway, and though she’d hoped to continue in academia, it was clear that there was too much risk of exposure there. So she got a good desk job at Xavian, one of the biggest research units running on private funding, to do biochemical research and generally complete any task her supervisors gave her. Charlie, her direct superior, was a nice enough guy and a brilliant scientist himself, putting all his time and effort into developing more targeted, precision explosives.
It wasn’t exactly something Madeline had dreamed for herself, having thought that she’d go into medical research one day, but it paid her bills and kept her kids safe and sound. That was a huge thing for her these days, and definitely not something she took for granted.
“I do. But it won’t happen. Not now, not ever. Besides, I have a good thing going with my boys. We have each other. That’s all that matters,” Madeline said, rolling the wine around in the glass.
“I know you can do it all on your own, Adley. You’re Superwoman. I was still crying into a pillow because my little angels both had big damn heads, while you were already getting out of the hospital and calling your boss to let him know you’d be back working in a few days. Insane. But what I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be this hard,” Fiona said sagely.
They’d both stopped breastfeeding about a month ago, as shifter babies tended to go for solid foods much faster. That was when their little wine get-togethers started. Once, maybe twice a week, Fiona would run over to Madeline’s place and they’d have drinks, discuss the daily terror of having twin boys, and generally chit-chat. Those evenings were invaluable to Madeline, seeing as she hardly knew anyone in or around Chicago other than at her job, and she wasn’t even going there anymore.
Everything had changed after that day on the train. She’d found out that the train had only been stopped because of some good luck involving an incline and someone managing to get the emergency brakes to respond—the someone in question was quite definitely Thatch, in Madeline’s opinion, but he was never mentioned—and it was a miracle that so few people died. Madeline figured that she was maybe the only true civilian who knew what had really happened on that train.
She’d expected it to haunt her. It did, in a way, but never as badly as she had feared. Sure, sometimes she would wake up in a cold sweat, thinking that the man who wanted to kill her was standing by her bed or something equally as crazy, but those dreams were few and far between and growing ever rarer as her boys came into her life. There was another, much more prevalent dream, and plenty of daydreams though, that kept her attention.
Tex and Thatch had been on her mind every single day since she left them at that safe house in Arizona. They’d fucked the night away, the three of them, and it had been the most delicious experience Madeline had ever had. She’d had them every way she could think of, and them her. It had been amazing, and though she wished she could distill all those memories and never let them go, she figured that if she had to only remember those two strong, spectacular men by that night and their heroics on the train, that wouldn’t be too bad.
She’d been on birth control when they had met that night, but she got pregnant anyway. She’d blamed the potency of her two lovers, and it seemed like a solid enough assumption. When she found out she was pregnant, she’d known immediately that she’d keep the babies. What she’d told Thatch and Tex had been true—she wanted to bring children into a loving family—but for her, the right decision was to make sure that she would be all the love they needed, if fate had decided things that way.
She’d manage. She always did. No matter what, she’d make it work.
Anything for my boys, she thought, taking a big sip of her wine.
“Earth to Adley! You still there? Did I give you too much wine? I’m happy to keep it all,” Fiona said with a laugh, waving her hand in front of Madeline’s face.
“Oh! Sorry,” Madeline replied with a start, brushing the thought of her hot wolves out of her head. “What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you wanted to come for a walk in town tomorrow. Cornell is leaving me with the van so we could fit the kids and the strollers in it and go have a walk through town. You know, see humans again, the type other than the suburban variety?”
Madeline nodded quickly, grabbing for the wine bottle to fill her glass again.
If it gets Tex and Thatch off of my mind for a minute, I’ll do anything!
“That sounds like a great plan. What time?”
But as usual in Madeline’s life, nothing easy was actually going to be easy. There was no such thing as a simple walk with luck like Madeline’s!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thatch
“I’ll be expecting to see you tomorrow, man. Bring the cash.”
The text was nondescript as usual. Thatch’s face hardened as he stuffed the phone into his pocket, pretending to ignore it but knowing damn well he was going to show up. Blake Wilby was like a big pus-filled wart on his life for the last two years, sucking the life out of him however he could. And the worst thing was, Thatch couldn’t get rid of him. Instead of putting the son of a bitch out of his mind once and for all, one way or another, he constantly had to pander to the man’s ever-increasing appetite for money and being a pain in Thatch’s ass.
“What was that? That girl from last week blowing up your phone?” Tex asked, leaning back with his chair so far that Thatch was sure the knucklehead would topple over.
“Naw. It’s no one,” Thatch replied offhandedly, flicking the TV on.
He clicked thro
ugh the channels until he arrived on some obscure news channel, blasting Chicago news around the clock. Though seeing as it was Chicago that they were currently hunkered down in, not much was actually going on. Connor, their squad leader, was out somewhere, and Grim was out looking for trouble, presumably, even if it was the middle of the damn day.
By the sounds coming from one of the adjoining rooms in their spacious, but still suffocating rented apartment, Grant was busy pummeling the shit out of the heavy bag. Only Dutch was in the living room with them, sprawled out on the couch, reading something. Everyone with the notable exception of Thatch were entirely bored of… well, everything. They’d been on hold in Chicago for a week now, waiting for mission details that were arriving “any minute” and it was driving the special ops shifters wild with impatience.
Thatch, of course, had other things on his mind. Like how to deal once and for all with the guy trying to wrangle money out of him for the last two years, and as usual not coming up with anything other than murder. But that wasn’t his style.
Though the bastard completely deserves it, he thought grimly.
Slumping down in a recliner, Thatch kicked his legs up on the coffee table, garnering a look from Dutch. The sniper quirked his brow, looking at Thatch’s boots and then at his face.
“What?” Thatch snapped, practically snarling.
After a short pause, Dutch shrugged. “Nothing, man. Chill.”
Tex leaned back again, stopping his incessant twiddling on another timer. Thatch could feel the question coming before it even left Tex’s mouth, and he already knew it was going to annoy the hell out of him.
“You cool, bro?”
“No, I am not cool,” Thatch spat, snapping his neck side to side. “We’ve been on hold for a week while I could have been doing other jobs with other teams, nothing’s fucking happening, and I can feel myself growing old and withered as we fucking wait. This shit’s ridiculous. And it’s Chicago. In the fall. Nothing but wind and rain.”