Nicole

by Sherry Foster

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Excuse me? Oh no, not no but hell no. I don’t think you understand. I do not want to be a wolf. I do not want a mate. I refuse to be a wolf. You can take my wolf away by having sex with me or I will find somebody else.” Nicole’s eyes flashed with anger as she stared Samson. Her stomach was full, her brother and sister fed and telling the men all about the tragedy that had struck their family. Including the poo filled toilet to hide their scent when their dad had hid the two beneath the bathroom floor.

  “Dammit, I can’t do that. Why are you being so difficult? We don’t have to do that. Haven’t you heard anything I said.” Samson raked his hand through his hair and then had to untangle his fingers when they got stuck.

  “I heard everything you said. Now you listen to me buster, this entire mess is my fault. My parents are dead, my brother and sister are orphans because I wanted to wait for my wedding day. The man I trusted most in the world next to my daddy had them killed, he sold us out and if— um, can you shift back? I know from my parents you can understand me perfectly while in that form but still, it is unnatural to try to argue with a wolf. It feels stupid and immature. Like arguing with a brick wall or something. Which you resemble now that I think about it. You listen about as well as a brick wall. Oh good, now where was I? Oh yes, if I had not wanted to wait and had— will you quit that? One more time buddy and I swear I am telling Gammon!”

  “I can’t help it. If you would stop throwing this ex-fiance of yours in my face like that my wolf would not keep fighting me for control. Wait, you said he had your parents killed? What do you mean?” Samson snarled.

  “He is the one that called the people to attack us. They killed my parents and kidnapped me. They threw me in the van and were heading away from the house when he called them to make certain they had killed all the monsters in the house. He is the one who told them they missed the kids. He is the reason the men turned around and went back. He is the reason— uh, really? You know what, if you can’t stay in human form I am so done with you.” Nicole turned toward the house. She had only taken two steps when she felt her arm grabbed. She screamed in surprise. Samson released her with a startled look.

  If she had thought about it she would have thought men would have poured from the house in her defense. Instead she watched the door open and one man stepped out. Gammon crossed his arms while he stared at the two.

  “Now what? You can’t tell me he hurt you and make me believe it because it is physically impossible for him to harm a hair on your head without his wolf destroying him. If you are looking for attention you will never find anyone in the entire world who will give you more attention than Tiny there. If you want to complain that he pissed you off, well everyone pisses me off and you don’t see me complaining about it. I told the two of you to talk the situation out and figure out what you want to do. Let me help you narrow down your choices. Your dad was going to bring those children to Alaska which tells me his wish for their future would be with my pack. Now that makes me guardian of those two inside. As the closest living relative you are in control of their future as long as you can keep them safe. Which you can’t. If you agree to be Samson’s mate, which you are, then as your mate he becomes the guardian of those two children. Do you see where I am going with this?”

  Nicole shook her head in confusion and Samson snarled.

  “The children go with you to his pack territory if you agree to be his mate. If you don’t, he dies and the children come to me. You won’t find a single male in my territory who will take your wolf from you knowing Tiny there will die. If you try to leave the territory to accomplish the task, and you are successful, you will never be welcome in my territory and would probably be killed on sight for killing a good man. Your brother and sister would grow up without you. If you choose to stay with your mate there he will take you to his Alpha who will accept you with open arms, will accept your brother and sister, and you will be loved and pampered the rest of your life.”

  “Don’t I get a say? How are you people better than the people who took me? That sounds a whole lot like just another form of slavery to me.” Nicole narrowed her eyes at Gammon. “Do you hear what you are saying? You don’t see anything wrong with that? I sell myself to this man in exchange for what? Watching my siblings grow up? News flash, I wasn’t going to get to see them grow up if Drew and I had gotten married.” She turned on Samson in frustration, “Will you stop changing to your wolf every time I mention the man?” She whirled back to Gammon, “You tell him to stop it right now!”

  “Who is Drew?”

  Samson shifted, “The bastard who sold her family out. He called someone to kill them, all of them. She was going to marry him.”

  Gammon grimaced, “Yeah, no wonder you can’t hold your form.” He fell silent for a moment before speaking again. “The guys are working on tracking this Drew down now. You get them the information on him and they will make his life a living hell before he dies.”

  “No, it is my right to punish him for hurting my mate.”

  “Excuse me? It is my right, not yours, he killed my parents. And I am not your mate, Tiny.”

  Samson turned snarling at the name, “I am almost a foot taller than you and outweigh you by at least a hundred pounds, don’t call me Tiny.”

  Nicole smirked and pointed to Gammon, “Why not, he does.”

  “Have you seen him? He has his own zip code. Everyone is tiny to him.”

  “Yeah? Well if he can call you Tiny then I can call you Tiny, In fact I can call you a horse’s ass and you can’t do a dang thing about it.”

  “Do not call me names! How would you like it if I stood here calling you names? Did you ever consider that maybe you are hurting my wolf’s feelings? We spent our entire life looking for you and when we finally find you, and rescue you all you want to do is run off and find a stranger to hook up with.”

  “You did not spend your entire life looking for me. That is such a bald-faced lie. How do you look at yourself in the mirror telling lies like that? Do you think, just because I don’t smell a lie that I can’t recognize one?”

  “The same way you can look yourself in the mirror while considering leaving your brother and sister to face life as orphans without you to love them and care for them.”

  “How dare you. Don’t bring my brother and sister into this, they have nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh really? Can you stand there and tell me, honestly tell me that whatever choice you make for your future won’t affect those two children in there.”

  “That is none of your business is it?”

  “Well sound to me like it won’t be any of yours if you go through with your plan.”

  “Oh, and your plan is so much better? Tell me, are you a Seeker? Can you see the bad men coming before they reach us? Cause my daddy was and that didn’t save us when the enemy turned out to be within. How can your protect us if he couldn’t?”

  “Because he wasn’t pack dammit. I have a safe stable pack. I have a good man for an Alpha. I have all the technological toys a person could dream of for surveillance to keep anyone from sneaking up on us. I have an Alpha who will kill to protect his people. I have pack who have killed to protect the territory. I can give you a home and a future. You can watch those children grow up in a stable community surrounded by love and attention.”

  “So you want me to sell myself to you in exchange for the safety of the children? Whore myself out so you can feel better about yourself? Cause your wolf wants me for some reason?”

  “No! What the hell is wrong with you. I want you to—well shit, your parents weren’t true-mates were they?”

  “I don’t really understand what that means. They were legally married. I am not a bastard child. They were married when they had me. Are you accusing me of being born out of wedlock?”

  “Well shit. Come on. We better head inside and get Gammon. He can explain better than me.”

  “Explain what? What are you talking about? My pare
nts were married dammit. What is wrong with you. Let go of me. No, Put me down.” Nicole screamed when she found herself upside down over Samson’s shoulder. She pounded on his back and tried to bite him but he just kept walking. “Put me down or I will scream bloody murder, I swear I will.”

  Samson opened the door and placed her down just inside the door. Her brother ran to her and glared at him. He reached down and ruffled the boy’s hair while shaking his head. “Does your sister always have a problem listening to people?”

  Chris grinned, “Dad said she is the most stubborn female ever.”

  “I believe it. Gammon, would you explain to this woman what a true-mate means. She has it in her head I am accusing her parents of not being married when they had her.” Samson glared at Nicole before walking toward the op room. The men shuffled around so he could get through the crowd.

  “Jeffery, my man, did you call Landel yet?”

  “Call Landel? And tell him what? We were invaded by aliens and shifters and the place we had under surveillance went up in flames a little while ago? Oh sure, I told him everything. Are you nuts? I haven’t figured out what to tell the man yet. We seeded the intel reports but nothing was said about blasting the building back to the stone-age.”

  “Oh for the love of—fine, I will call him.” Samson pulled out his phone and turned it on. He turned to look at the crowd in the house before shrugging his shoulders.

  “You aren’t going to go outside or something? Man, he is gonna ask if we are having a party. Shit, there goes my future. Give me the phone. I will call him.” Jeffery reached for the phone but Samson ducked and hunched over keeping the phone out of reach. A brief tussle ensued as Jeffery tried to stop his partner from making the call sure to doom both their futures.

  “Landel, we have a situation.”

  It sound like it. Is that Gammon’s voice I hear in the background?

  “I can neither confirm nor deny the possibility that the voice you heard belonged to any specific person.”

  Shit. What have you done?

  “I need to use the back door for my new family.”

  Family is important. Is your partner still alive?

  “Yes, he played a pivotal roll in introducing me to my future.”

  I see. How much clean-up is involved.

  “I couldn’t say. I don’t see anything around us to clean.”

  You just made my job a thousand times harder. Tell your partner I expect him in my office no later than Monday morning. You better be with him.

  “That went well.” Samson turned his phone off and placed it back in his pocket with a smile.

  “What did he say?” Jeffery demanded.

  Samson shrugged, “The two of us are to be in his office no later than Monday morning.”

  “That’s it? He didn’t ask any questions?”

  “Jeffery, my main man, the intel we seeded wasn’t for Landel, it was for the others. Landel didn’t have to ask questions when I asked for a back door for my new family. Oh, yeah, he did ask a couple of questions. He wanted to know if he heard Gammon in the background. And he asked if I had killed you. Well, to be technical he asked if you were still alive. Probably figured I would take you out the way Hendrix would take out his partner if faced with the same situation.”

  “Wait a fucking minute. He knows Hendrix will probably kill his partner if some shit like this goes down and he is okay with that? Are you telliing me Landel knows about you peopl—uh shifters?”

  “Knows about us? Who the hell do you think lobbied for this organization and recruited shifters?”

  “But why? I mean why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he hopes one day we will find him a mate. Maybe he just wants to save the world one female at a time? How the hell should I know.”

  “Definitely getting human only partners put in my next contract.” Jeffery muttered. “Can’t even trust the boss to be human.”

  Samson laughed and slapped him on the back. “Admit it, the mission was a success and you can say you learned something today. Not that you can tell anyone what you learned. For one they wouldn’t believe you and for two, well we would have to kill you and that would suck.”

  “I need a beer, or a case of beers.”

  “Well, let’s finish getting everything packed up and we will get one at the next stop. You got the birds refueled right? Good. We will head to Drac’s house, he said he has room for everyone to bunk the rest of the night and head out tomorrow. But we need to get back in the States ASAP cause Senator Avery could only pull enough strings to get custom and immigration to turn their heads for twenty-four hours.” He turned his head and raised his voice, “Come on people, grab some boxes and let’s get this finished so we can go.”

  “Senator—you know what I decided? Ignorance is bliss. Hopefully I will wake up and all of this will be a bad dream. But out of curiosity, if it does turn out to be real, what are you going to do about that young lady in there?”

  Samson turned snarling “Why? You touch her and I will gut you.”

  Jeffery raised his hands and backed away, “Whoa buddy, hold up now, I am not after your girl. I am asking, is she going with you or what? I mean, the guys were talking while you and Nicole were outside and it seems Gammon won’t take all the children with him. He is only taking shifter children. Marcus is taking the human children. But no one was sure where Nicole and her brother and sister were going. They said that decision was hers to make.”

  Samson shrugged, “It is but apparently she is terrible at decision making. After Gammon talks to her I will try to get her to my pack territory to stay with my parents or my brother, hell even my, no, Stormie may not be the best choice. But if she refuses she will go to Gammon’s and he will protect her. When she comes of age, as long as they don’t let her run off, and she would have a long way to run, she will accept me as her mate.”

  “You don’t know that. She seems adamant about not having anything to do with you unless it is a one night stand. What if she still refuses to have anything to do with you?”

  Samson smirked, “From what I have been told her wolf will shred her insides to get to me.”

  “From what you have been told, but you don’t know that for a fact? What if she says no?”

  Samson looked down at the floor before he looked back up. The blank look in his eyes caused a shiver to run down Jeffery’s spine. “It won’t much matter then. I won’t live much past her refusal. My wolf will go insane and my brother will put me out of my misery. She will probably survive, but she will be pack-less. Or at least, the only packs she would find who would take her would be ones with no honor. She would end up in a situation not much different than the one we saved her from.”

  “Are you saying your females get no choice?”

  “They have the choice, they can say no. Jeff, man, the magic of a true bond is never wrong, has never been wrong, can never be wrong. Our souls are tied together, our wolves are two parts of one whole. Without her I am, nothing, and without me she is nothing. But our females, they don’t feel the pull until they are old enough. In all the world, if you go asks her right now, in all the world who she feels most safe with, she will say me. She doesn’t understand why, but that will be her answer unless she lies to you. She may want to say Gammon because that is who her dad was going to go. She may say Gammon because compared to me he is a monster of a man. But if she says anyone but me she is lying. If you don’t believe me go ask her. Take her little brother with you.”

  “Why the brother? You know I am going to take you up on that right?”

  “I figured you would. Take Chris because he can smell the truth from a lie. He said something earlier, accused someone earlier of lying when they spun a tall tale. He was indignant about it too. Take him, he is at the age lies offend him. He will learn diplomacy later but for now, he will call her out on it. Go ahead. But don’t get out of my sight, I don’t have that great a hold on my wolf. Not after what she stated she plans on doing.”

  Ch
apter Twenty-seven

  When Jeffery walked up to Nicole she had a shell-shocked look on her face. He had Chris by the hand and when he had Nicole’s attention he urged her to follow him and Chris to the corner of the room. He noted she looked around to find his partner before she followed him.

  “So Samson told me I could talk to you.”

  “I beg your pardon? You need permission to speak with a female or with me in particular?”

  Jeffery shook his head, “No, you misunderstand me. Or rather, I misspoke I guess you could say. You see until two days ago I didn’t have a clue shifters even existed much less how rare and treasured the males consider females. I joked with him that we were going to go all Indiana Jones and rescue the treasure from the bad men. I have struggled the last few days to understand what would bring together men from different packs to save one female when I couldn’t get my people to act to save the lives and futures of many. You see, we look for people like the men who took your family, and we watch them, and we try to gather enough information to safely recover the children. Sometimes our people are slow to act on our information. But Samson knew the morning you were taken and within hours had called his people for help. Within forty-eight hours he had people in the country to rescue you. What makes it even harder to understand is I found out just now that our own boss is one of you. Yet he followed all the rules the organization has in place. We have watched dozens of children come and go while we waiting for our operation to get the go ahead to move. Samson threw it all away in one morning without ever having seen your face. He hasn’t slept since the morning he felt you arrive at the compound. He has paced and talked and paced and raged and paced some more. All for a female he had never met. And now he admits the feelings are all one sided. You don’t care about him, you can’t care about him until you are old enough. So why do they go to so much trouble for a female who may never want them? I don’t get it. He said I should ask you, in all the world, if you had one person you could trust to keep you safe, if you could choose only one person, who would you say you felt the safest with?”