by Stacy Lee
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demand.
“Exactly as I asked. What do you plan on doing next? I know why you took her as a mate, she is meant for you after all. Why wouldn’t you take what’s rightfully yours? You obviously slept with her, that’s a given with The Claiming, but do you even have feelings for the woman? You have known her a little more than two days.” Again this goes back to believing is seeing. He couldn’t understand how much she already meant to me. Truthfully, neither could I.
“Honestly Archer, I had feelings for her before she chose and I hadn’t said ten words to her. The minute I saw her something tugged inside me screaming at me to keep her safe, protect her above everything else, hold her close and don’t let her go. Granted it took me twenty minutes running through the forest with her at my side before I realized what the hell it was I was experiencing. Now two days later the thought of me or anyone else hurting her makes me want to rip them apart. Hell Archer, don’t tell the guys, but just being this far away from her makes me agitated.” I run my hands through my hair thinking of how rough I had been with her. I didn’t like the feeling. I needed to lay back down with her, hold her, make sure she was alright.
“I see. So we don’t have to worry about you deciding to go off and fight constantly leaving her here alone then?” I raise my brow to him.
“Excuse me?” His deep chuckle annoys me.
“You like control, Dare, you always have. Mates aren’t controllable. They are head strong, relentless, messy, unpredictable, disobedient and sometimes conniving. We have a pool going to see how long it takes you to get fed up with it and leave her here alone to go anywhere she isn’t. If what you say is true, then I will win.” He grins. He must not have bet against me.
“Let me guess, Bane gave me the shortest time? Then Cash, Fin and Emmitt?” He nods. “This is the reason you are here? To make sure I was comfortable with this decision?” Once more he nods. “As if I had a choice in it, but yes I am very comfortable with having Marnie as mine. I understand what you are saying, however I believe I can handle anything she can throw at me. Does that set your mind at ease, Big Brother?” He grins. “Brotherly love. What have we got if we don’t have that?” I snort out. It was our mother’s favorite saying.
“We were only worried about you and Marnie. Nothing more. I better get going. You have a mate to cuddle with.” He gives me an un-Archer like wink then leaves through the door. I stare after him. If I didn’t know better I would say he had been in my head listening. It would break his own rule about never prying things from our heads we weren’t willing to give up, then again if he was really worried, he might. Archer held unimaginable power, more than even we knew about. Controlling us and anyone else who he felt needed it, reading the minds of anyone who wasn’t family --which was only by his rule, not because he couldn’t read ours-- and telepathically moving objects were the only definite things I knew about the powers he held. The rest he kept to himself.
“That was sweet of him.” Marnie’s voice startles me and I swing around towards the hall to face her.
“How long have you been there? Why didn’t you come meet him?” She looks down at my long shirt then rubs her wrists.
“Long enough to know they care about you and I didn’t think I was very presentable at the moment. It must have been nice having a large loving family growing up.” She stares at the door longingly. I stare at her wrists.
“Well you’ll soon find out, they’re your family now. As annoying as they are, they’re good guys. You’ll like them. I’ll introduce you tomorrow.” She nods sharply, a tremor of fear running through her. This might get interesting. I would have to warn them about her fear of men. If Fin was his normal self he would pull her into a hug without thinking about it when I introduced them properly and she might just hit him for it. Then again maybe I won’t warn them.
“Are you coming back to bed?” She asks as her eyes scan my body. I laugh.
“Marnie, there is no way you are thinking about having sex again tonight. Five times in one day especially with the intensity of the last one. No. We are going to sleep.” I pull her to me and tuck her under my arm. She melds to me easily and comfortably. Maybe her fear of me was gone?
“I’m alright, you know. You didn’t hurt me.” She says it quietly as we enter the bedroom.
“Are you sure? Your wrists say otherwise.” I can’t help the small tremor in my voice as my own fears are faced. I never wanted to hurt her. It wasn’t even her wrists that bothered me, they would heal and it hadn’t been done out of malice. It was something inside of me that had been getting stronger since I first laid eyes on her. I needed to protect her at all cost, even from myself. She turns to me and rises up on her tip toes. She is a few inches short of my mouth. She huffs and drags me by the hand to the bed. I let her shove me into a sitting position so we are eye to eye. She immediately removes her hand from mine.
“I am positive. Not only did I goad you into it, I had ulterior motives. Yes, I was testing you. I needed to know how you reacted. I have a very big problem with trusting people, men especially. I had to have proof of your promise.” She shrugs her shoulders like it was no big deal. To her it was.
“And? Did I pass your little test, Marnie? Will you trust me now?” I let my hands rest on her waist as she searches for her answer. Her hands stay clasped behind her back.
“I am going to try. Sixteen years is a long time to just forget about. It’s a lot of fear to just not have it any more. Right now the trust is tentative. Easily broken. Maybe after we have a little longer together it won’t be. Can you work with that?” Her hands hesitantly come up to rest on my shoulders. Even during sex she hesitated to touch me and I wonder if that had to do with this trust she was talking about. If the only male touch she ever had was that of her Uncles I can see where it would bother her for me to touch her but why did her touching me worry her? I would have to ask one day. But not now.
“I can live with that. For now.” I say confidently.
She gives me a small smile then leans in very slowly to lay a sweet kiss on my lips. When she steps back dropping her hands to her sides she looks as if she’s waiting for something for a full minute before her body relaxes. Her mood seems to shift completely and a grin spreads across her face. “Now stop worrying and strip.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me playfully before shucking my shirt from her body and climbing into bed. Man, she was confusing sometimes. I shake my head and laugh.
As I climb in beside her I promise myself I won’t touch her except to hold her.
I lied.
Chapter Eight
I pull myself from Marnie’s side early the next morning. I didn’t want to leave her, but I had a meeting with my brothers on the attack at Yellowstone. I briefly write out a note and leave it on my pillow so when she wakes up she’d know I’d be back soon. I wasn’t sure what prompted me to do this and if I examine it too closely it will probably piss me off enough to make me chunk the note in the garbage. Instead I leave before I can think about it.
Even before I reach the control room I am aggravated and annoyed. When I walk in and see Cash and Bane punching each other, computer parts from previously whole computers spread under them on the floor, it sends my already unsteady nerves over the edge.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” They freeze and look to me. Neither speaks. “If one of you doesn’t tell me why you are destroying high tech equipment I am going to give you to Archer to deal with.” This, of course, wouldn’t have been much of a threat because Archer was the most passive of us all, except he could force them to tell him what was wrong then force them to do whatever he wanted to make it right and Archer had a sick sense of humor. Once Emmitt was seeing this girl, nothing serious but she meant something to him, until Cash decided the girl was bad for him. Instead of talking this out, Cash slept with her then gave Emmitt proof.
Archer made Cash wear a dress for two days because according to Archer he had acted like a jealous teenage g
irl. It had taken almost fifty years before the men let him live it down. Some still called him Cashy behind his back. You didn’t mess with that little thing we call ‘the big brother power’. If Archer wanted you to do it, you did it. We all hated that little gift, except Archer.
“Just a friendly disagreement between brothers.” Cash says pulling himself up off the floor and offering Bane a hand and a hard look that said this wasn’t over. Bane takes it grudgingly and pulls himself up.
“Yeah, just a disagreement.” He mutters.
“About?” I was number four out of six boys and often found myself the mediator, today I wasn’t feeling it. I pick up a chair off the ground and slam it under the table then right the next one as they start picking up computer pieces. I sure hope Emmitt came fix that.
“Nothing, Dare. It was just a stupid comment. Sorry about the room.” Okay, that right there told me Cash had made the comment and he was now feeling guilty about it. He never apologized for anything, not even when he should.
“What did you say Cash?” I huff out and plant my ass in a chair. His face turns red as he does the same. Cash embarrassed? This is new. “Must have been something pretty damn racy or it was about me, you never blush.” Bane snorts as he too takes a seat.
“Yeah Cash, tell him what you said about his mate.” It was meant to harass Cash. It enrages me. I am over the table and have my hand around Cash’s throat and him against the wall before he has time to react.
“What about my mate?” I growl out threateningly. In that moment Archer, Emmitt and Fin walk in the door.
“Let him go, Dare.” Archer’s voice rings out with power behind it and I find my hand dropping. Damn him.
“What did you say about Marnie?” My hand may not be choking the life out of him anymore but my glare should have cut him in two.
“Nothing bad. I just said she was a hot little thing, too bad she wasn’t mine. Then Bane said something, then I said something and fists started flying. No big deal.” He shrugs but cuts a look to Bane who looks away. More than that was said and it was a big deal from the looks of it but I wasn’t getting anywhere like this.
“Keep your hands and eyes off my mate.” I spit at them all before returning to my chair. “Seriously, Marnie was raised with an abusive Uncle and is terrified of men. Do not touch her.” I glare at Fin. “Come to lunch and I’ll introduce you all, but don’t be surprised if she sits blankly and only listens. It’s taken two days but I finally have her where she doesn’t flinch every time I touch her.” I rub my hands over my face then take in their wide eyed stares.
“Blankly?” It’s Emmitt who finally asks what I expected Archer to.
“She has a habit of turning off when men are around. Her voice and face show no emotion. She is just blank. I think it was a coping mechanism with her Uncle.” They nod mostly in understanding although Cash has a thoughtful look on his face. He stays silent though.
“I talked to Emmitt about the asshole this morning. He has something to show you.” Archer nods to Emmitt who walks to a keyboard and begins typing. Soon an infrared satellite image displays on the large screen on the wall.
“This is the two of you right after she saves your ass.” Emmitt chuckles giving me a grin. Yeah, I hadn’t given them the whole story. Annoyance flares through me.
“She saved him? That little bitty woman?” Cash smirks.
“Oh, yeah. He was caught sleeping by the Stroli he’d been tracking. She shot one of them to get him off Dare then he took them out. It is quite amusing, but it’ll have to wait.” He backs up the footage. “As you can see she is just wandering in the trees for the better part of three days. She found you around four on the third day. She slept the previous two nights in the dirt but it is around noon this first day that we see the action.” He backs it up to where you see the two of them coming down a path then hits a button changing it from infrared to color.
“Give them a minute to enter the clearing then you will be able to see them again. There they are.” He points to the two people emerging from the path then zooms in the image to follow them. The man behind her has a gun aimed at her back. She was right when she said he was a computer nerd. That’s exactly what he looks like to me. Gangly arms, thin face, scrawny body, not five foot three in height, he still seems to tower over her petite frame. He directs her to a spot with a large hole dug in the dirt.
“Is that a grave?” Fin asks horrified. I nod. I had seen the hole in her dream. Annoyance and agitation turn to anger as I watch the scene unfold. She turns to face him and he backhands her knocking her to the ground where he falls on top of her. They struggle over the gun before she knocks it from his hand not far away. He manages to get her arms pinned down then says something to her for several minutes before she shakes her head. That blank stare of hers is recognizable as Emmitt pulls the scene in closer to them and freezes it on her face.
“That the look you were talking about? Because any woman I know would be screaming, crying and pleading right then. Not looking like they were lost in thought.” Emmitt says in awe, his respect for her evident. She wasn’t crying, or screaming, but she was fighting with everything she had.
“Yep, that’s the one. She isn’t every woman. She’s tough.” I mumble out staring at her tear stained face. This was hard to watch. I wanted to kill the bastard just because of the hole next to her. He was going to kill her. Or bury her alive. Either way I wanted to kill him for it. Slowly.
Emmitt starts the footage again. He throws a few punches to her ribs as he wrestles with her to get off her clothing. When he finally has her naked he fumbles with his own pants trying to get them unzipped, her struggling hinders the action so he gives up and focuses on keeping her still. He holds her down forcefully by her breasts confirming how those hand prints got there. When he can’t use his legs to pry hers open he tries his hands, more bruises.
All this I saw in her dream. It was a little more intense while watching it from her point of view rather than like this. This way showed her fight clearly, where his hands were, what his legs were doing, what reaction his body was having to her struggling. Whereas being her in the dream it focused on what she was doing to get away only. This showed so much more it made my body hum with rage. But I keep watching. I wanted to know how she got away.
Just as in her dream she looks to have given up. Her head drops down on the grass, her legs fall limp and her arms stop hitting him. The asshole grins in triumph and grabs her legs pushing them apart. He settles on his knees between them still fumbling with his pants. Her eyes close, she takes a deep breath, then her foot swings up taking him across the head and knocking him off her. Standing, she kicks out nailing him in the groin. Then grabbing her clothes and the gun she runs. From here we knew what happened. She kept running straight to me.
“Stop it.” I croak out. I dig at my eyes trying to get a grip. The idea all my brother just saw her naked was not sitting well with me but I’d been so riveted to the screen I hadn’t thought to stop it. Unexpected nausea rolls through me taking me by surprise. I take a deep calming breath and it passes quickly, completely unnoticed by anyone else.
“First there’s something else you need to know.” I look up to the screen gravely. What else could there possibly be? “Look here? See this cool spot?” He flips the image back to infrared and points out a blur hiding in the woods that wasn’t blue or red but something in between. Nothing living I knew gave off that signature.
“What is that?” His shrug is annoying.
“Never seen anything like it but it follows her till she meets up with you. It stays in the heavy forest and I never get a glimpse of it with anything other than the infrared.” With a flick of his wrist he fast forwards the scene till I show up.
“She said something about an animal following her, could that be it?” There wasn’t any other signature to be seen except the obvious forest wildlife; rabbits, deer, and so on.
“I guess, but I don’t know of one that isn’t either hot or cold blo
oded. I mean vamps put off blue signatures because of how cold they are. Stroli, babbles and shifters are a darker red than us from the excessive heat in their bodies. We’re hotter than humans, fairies and witches by twice as much and Thanus don’t show up at all. I’m not sure what that mixed up blob is but it isn’t any breed I know of.” No one else chimes in and the image disappears.
“Were you able to find out who the asshole was?” I ask roughly.
“No. He chased her for about an hour before he throws her shoes and underthings in the hole and covers it up. Then he heads back from where they came to a service road covered by trees. I couldn’t get an image of the vehicle he was in. I lose him in traffic before he becomes visible again.” I nod watching my hands as my fingers tap on the table. I couldn’t force myself to look up yet. I needed to calm down before I meet their eyes but it wasn’t coming as easily as normal. I take a deep breath.
“I have the gun. That work for you?”
“What?! Why didn’t you tell me that? I could have ran it by now.” He sputters.
“I didn’t know it was his. I took it away from Marnie after the Stroli attack. It’s the same one she grabbed from the ground, I’m sure of it.” I didn’t even think to ask her why she had a gun but didn’t have shoes while running around lost in a forest. I didn’t think to ask her a lot of things, too wrapped up in myself to notice her discomfort. I didn’t think at all.
“Yes. I’ll run the serial number. If it’s registered to him then we can pay him a visit.” I finally look up to meet his eyes, Emmitt was normally a steady rock who wasn’t overly emotional, fire blazed in their depths. I glance around the room to see the same anger on all my brothers faces. It’s Archer who speaks.
“We can’t kill the human, but we can teach him a lesson. If he had been prepared enough to already have a hole dug he might have done this before or will do it again. I have a friend in the town she lived in that might be able to help out with this. Give me that name when you get it. Oh and shoot me an email with that footage in it. He will want to see that.” Emmitt nods a confirmation to him then Archer turns to me. “I know you want to hunt him down, Dare. Damn, we all do. But this is human business. She wasn’t your mate then, there is nothing you can do to him legally, by their laws or ours. Now with that being said, if he finds her again, kill him.” I nod my agreement. You bet your ass I would. She was mine now. By our law if he fucked with my mate, he fucked with me. Mates were held in the highest of regards. We didn’t take them lightly.