Bound by Two Alphas

by Lynn Hagen

  A rumble of laughter vibrated in Mikhia’s chest. “Beautiful, you can do whatever you want to my facial hair,” he said in my ear. “I’m hoping you sit on it while I lick your balls.”

  I elbowed him for making me blush. “Behave.”

  “Never.” Mikhia nipped my ear.

  “Let’s go,” Lucas said. “Our first appointment is in half an hour.” He grabbed a bag off the counter. “I got you something to eat.”

  “If you guys keep plying me with food, I’m gonna be three hundred pounds in no time.”

  Casey pulled me from Mikhia’s arms and hugged me, whispering in my ear, “See, good guys. Go for it, hon.”

  I whispered back, “If you don’t stop hugging me in public, the town is gonna think I’m sleeping with three guys.”

  Casey gave an exaggerated sigh. “You wish you were lucky enough to have me.”

  Not really. I loved Casey like a brother, but he wasn’t my type. I didn’t go for short and slim. I liked the two mountains standing next to me.

  Lucas placed a hand on my lower back and guided me out the door of the café. Ten minutes later we were pulling into a driveway of a white house with dark green trim.

  “I still say I should’ve stayed at the motel,” Mikhia said from the backseat. “Some people don’t want to rent to a ménage couple. Humans can be so fucking uptight.”

  Looking over my shoulder, I smiled at Mikhia. “The owner will be dazzled by your sunny disposition.”

  Mikhia grinned, and my heart skipped a beat at how gorgeous he was when he smiled. “I sure as hell dazzled you.”

  I turned back around. “Don’t remind me. I’m feeling queasy and want to cry, and I’m craving some ice cream. If I turn into a blubbering fat ass, it’s all your fault.”

  “I deserve some credit.” Lucas winked at me. “And if you put on some weight, there’s just more of you to desire.”

  I was almost certain Lucas was going to say more of you to love. I was glad he hadn’t, because I wasn’t even sure where my feelings were. All over the place. That’s where they were. I was falling for the two, resisting their charm, and going crazy in the process.

  Never before had I felt like such an emotional basket case.

  “The guy said the door would be unlocked, and that if we beat him here, go ahead and give ourselves a tour,” Lucas said as we got out.

  Dizziness made me sway, but I managed to hide it as we walked into the empty house. It had looked kind of small on the outside, but once we entered, I was surprised at how roomy it was.

  There were shiny wooden floors, wood beams on the ceiling, a sunken living room, ceiling fans everywhere, and oh my god! There was a humungous backyard that I instantly fell in love with.

  Excited, I raced upstairs to see what the second floor had to offer while Lucas and Mikhia kept looking around the ground floor. The tan carpet looked plush, and I was dying to take my shoes off so I could curl my toes into it.

  The first door I opened was a giant bathroom. Swoon. The second door was a small bedroom. A nursery popped into my head. The next bedroom had to be the master bedroom because it was huge and even had its own balcony with French doors.

  I was in love with the house.

  Then I felt it. Right behind me. I thought it might have been Lucas or Mikhia, but when I turned, I gasped when I saw Bert.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  My boss grinned. “Getting paid handsomely to hand you over.”

  I opened my mouth to yell for Lucas and Mikhia, but Bert slapped a hand over it, silencing me. I tried to wiggle free, to elbow him or bite his hand, but Bert dragged me to the balcony door and shoved me over.

  I flailed as I landed on the hard ground, the air knocked right out of my lungs. I was dazed and in pain when my arm was grabbed and I was hauled to my feet.

  The reverend.

  Shit.

  He pressed a cloth over my mouth and nose, which made me dizzy. “I’ve been meaning to have a long talk with you about your sins,” he said as he yanked me around the house. “Two men, Dillon? Really? Your father is very disappointed in you.”

  The reverend wasn’t there to preach to me. He was kidnapping me, and I was powerless to stop him.

  * * * *

  Dillon…

  I was groggy with a pounding headache when I came to. My mouth was dry, and I was dead certain I would throw up. It took a moment for me to focus and remember what had happened.

  My boss and the reverend had kidnapped me. I was definitely going to throw up as I remembered how Boss Hogg’s sausage fingers had dug into my skin as he pulled me along. I needed a hot shower to scrub away the memory of the reverend touching me.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I strained to listen to any noise around me, anything that would tell me if I was alone or if someone was in the room with me.

  “Dillon, are you awake?”

  My eyes shot open and my jaw dropped when I saw Casey kneeling in front of me. Had I passed out in his office and dreamed the rest? I pushed to my elbows and looked around.

  We weren’t in Casey’s office. “What’s going on?” I pressed a hand to my aching head. “What did they do to me?”

  “Chloroform,” Casey said. “That’s how they got me. I took a bag of trash out to the dumpster behind the café, and I was jumped.” He looked around. “Where the fuck are we, and who kidnapped us?”

  “Bert and the reverend,” I groaned. “Bert was hiding in a bedroom at the house I was looking at with Lucas and Mikhia.” I shot up. “Fuck, do they even know I’m gone?”

  Casey sat on his ass and curled his arms around his bent legs. “You’ve been out for about an hour. I’m pretty sure they know you’re gone. I’m pretty sure Jack and Ken know I’m gone. I just don’t think they’ll find us.”

  After getting my mind to finally focus, I looked around the room we were in. Over in the corner was another guy, and he looked to still be passed out. “Who is that?”

  Casey looked over his shoulder before pulling his attention back to me. “You don’t recognize Shane Phillips?”

  The name sounded familiar. I shrugged.

  “He moved out of town after he graduated high school. He came back about a month ago for his mother’s funeral. He works for Delvin and Joshua at Bailey’s Bar and Grille. I think Shane is one of their waiters.”

  I knew the Bailey brothers. Delvin was a dark-haired hottie, and Joshua was handsome, too, though he always reminded me of a boxer. It was his build and the way he carried himself. Also it was the fact that he used to box for a living.

  “Shane was quiet and stayed to himself in high school,” I said. I was starting to recall him. The guy’s hair was dark and cut short, and he was stocky. The last time I’d seen Shane, he’d been scrawny. “Why do you think he’s here?”

  “For the same reason we’re here,” Casey said. “Do you think what Lucas and Mikhia told you was true? Are there really evil entities in town? I mean you said they were after you because you could get pregnant. I can totally see why you’re here. No offense. But why am I here?”

  “Because you’re a breeder.”

  I snapped my head around at the sound of the stranger’s deep voice. The guy stood by the doorway, smiling, showing off his crooked front teeth.

  “No I’m not!” Casey argued.

  “All three of you are,” the guy said. “Nezat is going to be pleased that we captured all of you.”

  If he was talking about Nezat, then I surmised that this was Bodin. My stomach filled with ice. If Bodin thought for one second I was sleeping with some evil creature, he had another think coming.

  When Bodin walked away, Casey stared wide-eyed at me. “No way I can get pregnant. No fucking way.”

  Now Casey knew the shock I was still in. “Welcome to my world. We can discuss that later. Right now we need to figure out how to get out of here.”

  I spotted a window, but unfortunately there were bars on it. I had no flipping clue where we were, but I missed Lucas an
d Mikhia and wished they would come save us because I didn’t want to know what Bodin and the others had in store for us.

  “I’m not sitting around waiting to be carted off to some evil dude who wants to fuck me.” Casey got to his feet and went to the door. He stuck his head into the hallway then jerked it back. “Bert and the reverend are at the end of the hallway, so escaping that way is out of the question.”

  “So is that window.” I pointed to it. “Unless you know how to remove the bars.” I patted my pockets.

  “They took our phones,” Casey said. “We’re going to have to figure this out on our own.”

  Even if I had to rescue myself, I was getting out of there.

  Shane groaned and turned over, slowly blinking his eyes open. He stared at us and then looked around. “Where am I? What the hell is going on?”

  This was a discussion I wasn’t looking forward to having. I still found it impossible that Lucas and Mikhia were black panthers, that I was their mate, and that I was pregnant. Shane would look at me like a lunatic when I told him why we were there.

  That was why I left the talking up to Casey.

  Chapter Ten

  Mikhia…

  “This is Devlin and Joshua,” Ken said as he waved at the wolf shifters. “Their waiter disappeared this morning, right out of the parking lot.”

  I didn’t give a rat’s ass who they were. I just wanted to get Dillon back. I was still seething that he’d been taken right out from under our noses, and if anyone harmed a hair on his gorgeous head, I was razing this town.

  I stood inside the empty house, my leg bouncing and my arms crossed over my chest. I didn’t like doing nothing. I wanted to hunt. My panther wanted to hunt and kill.

  I’d promised Dillon that he was safe, that nothing would happen to him, and now he was in Bodin’s and Nezat’s hands, although that hadn’t been the scent I’d discovered upstairs.

  Those scents belonged to Bert and the reverend.

  When I found those two, I was tearing those bastards apart. I couldn’t wait to unleash my panther on them. I still had a lot of pent-up rage in me from my family being murdered, and ending any one of those assholes would help me vent my anger.

  That wouldn’t bring my family back, but I would get satisfaction from tearing Bodin’s heart out.

  “A demon,” Delvin said. “That’s what Nezat is. This won’t be my first run-in with him. He showed up in town about a hundred years ago, kidnapping chosen ones, and no one has seen the humans since. I’m not sure what he does with them, but they vanished.”

  “I still can’t believe Casey is a chosen one,” Jack mused to himself. “I never would have suspected it.”

  I was starting to lose my patience. “Can we go over the history lesson later? I want Dillon back before we’re too late to save him.”

  “They’re six of us,” Ken said. “That should be enough to at least kill Bodin. I’m not sure how we’re going to kill a demon.”

  That was a damn good question, one I didn’t have an answer to. I’d worry about that later, after I had Dillon in my arms and Bodin’s entrails at my feet.

  Lucas shook his head. “We tried to follow Dillon’s scent, but it disappeared at the curb. He had to have been taken by car.”

  “Same here,” Joshua said. “We tried to follow Shane’s scent, but lost it.”

  Lucas pushed his hand through his hair, shoving aside the strands from his face. “We need a starting point. There’s no way three guys were kidnapped and no one saw anything.”

  “No one in this town is gonna talk,” Joshua said. “The residents are too afraid of the stories they’ve heard over the years about missing people.”

  “I haven’t been a resident long enough to hear them,” Ken admitted.

  “People in the south tend to believe in voodoo and ghosts,” Devlin explained. “When rumors started that the missing men were used in bloody rituals, the townsfolk believed it. Now they think if they get involved they’ll be next.”

  I was really starting to hate small towns. I wished I were back in the Smoky Mountains where I wasn’t surrounded by close-minded idiots. Then again, their belief wasn’t too far from the truth. It had been an evil entity who’d kidnapped those humans. What happened after that was anyone’s guess, but I wasn’t willing to wait around to find out.

  As the others talked, I went to the trunk of the car and opened it. After moving everything aside and digging into the space where the spare tire should have been, I pulled out my Glock and shoved it into my waistband.

  Next I retrieved two wicked-looking knives and the sheaths that strapped to my thighs. My panther was a weapon itself, but it never hurt to have backup.

  Just as I closed the trunk someone pulled to the curb and got out. The guy was tall, lean, with unruly blond hair that was peppered with gray. “Is there a reason you’re on my property?”

  He looked at the knives in my hands.

  “My brother called you about seeing the house,” I said. It was too late to tuck the curved knives behind my back. The guy had seen them already.

  “No one called me. In fact, it was a neighbor who alerted me that you were here.” He nodded toward the knives. “Do you always go to look at a house with those?”

  “I thought I saw a rat.”

  Lucas walked outside, and I told him who the guy was.

  “We talked this morning about your rental,” Lucas said. “We agreed to meet here at eleven.”

  “I’m not sure who you spoke with, but it wasn’t me. This house isn’t for rent. It’s for sale, and if you don’t leave, I’ll be forced to call the sheriff.”

  I didn’t think it was so much that we’d invaded his property as it was that I was armed. I was certain the knives scared the crap out of him. We probably could have solved the misunderstanding if I didn’t look as though I was going to war.

  Humans tended to get spooked very easily.

  When the other men filed out of the house, the owner’s eyes rounded. “Just how many people do you have with you? I swear, if you’ve destroyed the house, you’ll pay for all repairs.”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” Lucas said in his calm, smooth voice. “Clearly I was hoodwinked. Probably someone who was out to steal my money. I’m sorry for the trouble, and I assure you nothing has been damaged.”

  Lucas. The charming York brother. I, on the other hand, would’ve told the owner to go fuck himself and driven away. Had I mentioned that tact wasn’t my strong suit?

  Lucas waved at the other men. “My friends came by to help me decide, but now that I see this was a mistake, I’m sorry for the intrusion.”

  Ken and Jack walked to their pickup that was parked across the street. Devlin and Joshua strode to their cherry-red Charger and got in but didn’t drive away.

  The owner took out his phone and snapped a picture of our license plate. “If anything is wrong, I’ll be handing this picture over to the cops.”

  I rolled my eyes as the owner walked into the house. I wasn’t a complete dick. If it had been my property and I’d found strangers coming out of it, I would have flipped, too.

  But I had other things to worry about.

  “We’re going to start at that big white tent and work our way out from there,” Lucas said.

  The others followed as we made our way across town. “So do you think it was Bert or Reverend Goodstocke who set up the appointment?”

  Lucas shook his head. “I’m not sure. I’ve never heard Bert’s voice, and I only heard the reverend talk once, when we were outside the drug store. I could’ve been either of them.”

  “Do you think Nezat put some kind of spell on those humans to make them do his bidding?”

  “Again, I’m not sure, but I would think you’d have to have ill intentions in the first place to be so easily susceptible. It’s just a theory, though. I haven’t the first clue about demons and what they can and can’t do.”

  “I need to ask the Bailey brothers how long Nezat sticks around to do w
hatever he does before he vanishes.” There had to be a way to kill him, and if I could find out before Nezat went back into hibernation, or whatever he did for one hundred years, I would make sure he never rose again.

  “Do you think Dillon is okay?”

  Lucas’s jaw clenched. “That’s what I keep telling myself so I don’t go insane. Whatever happened, we’ll deal with it. Right now we need to concentrate on getting him and the others back.”

  If Nezat had enthralled Bert and the reverend, and even Bodin, to do his bidding, what was stopping him from ensnaring others? What if Bert, the reverend, and Bodin weren’t the only minions?

  The thought sent a chill down my spine as I prayed we found Dillon in time.

  * * * *

  Dillon…

  “Get your damn hands off me!” I struggled to break the grip Bert had on me. He was dragging me down the hallway, and no matter how hard I fought him, the bastard was strong enough not to let me slip from his grip.

  “Dillon!” Casey shouted from the room we’d been kept in. I heard tears in his voice and wanted to run to my friend to comfort him. “Dillon!”

  I was yanked into a living room before Bert tossed me toward the floor. I scrambled to my feet and backed away when I saw the guy sitting behind a desk.

  He didn’t look evil. In fact, fuck, he was handsome as hell. Was he Nezat? It didn’t matter how gorgeous he was. I didn’t want him. I wanted Lucas and Mikhia.

  “I am Nezat.” The blond gave a single nod. “And you must be Dillon.”

  I wasn’t going to be charmed by this jerk. I tried to imagine exactly how he ate souls but couldn’t picture him doing it. Nezat looked so damn…normal.

  “I’m not telling you anything.” I crossed my arms over my chest, quivering on the inside as I tried my hardest to seem badass on the outside.

  Nezat waved his hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter what your name is.” He cocked his head to the side and glared at me before turning to the reverend, who was standing off to one side. “You didn’t tell me he’s already conceived! He’s now useless to me.”