Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two) (16 page)

Alek soaked a thick, soft hand towel in the water and laid it at the back of the tub, urging her to lean back and relax.  With some effort, she stretched out.  Her legs and arms tensed, and her hands clenched.

Jericho knelt next to the tub and massaged her calves.  “Do you have any aspirin, Alek?”

“Sure,” Alek said, opening the medicine cabinet and retrieving several pills.  Lachlyn opened her mouth, and Alek put the pills on her tongue and gave her a drink of juice.

He knelt next to Jericho and followed his lead, massaging her hands and arms.  When the water was high enough, Jericho turned it off, and Alek brought the sandwiches to her.  She didn’t want the bread, so he fed her the deli meat piece by piece and gave her sips of juice in between.  When she was finished eating and soaked for a few more minutes, Alek could tell she was about to fall asleep.  Jericho turned down the bed, and Alek lifted Lachlyn from the water and dried her off.

He put her in bed, and she rolled onto her side with a groan, closing her eyes.  Alek climbed into bed with her and Jericho got in on her other side.  In the darkness of the bedroom, Alek listened to Lachlyn’s steady breathing as she drifted off to sleep.  Jericho broke the silence.

“I think it was stress.”

“That caused her to shift?”

“Yeah.  I mean, she’s twenty-five.  It should be nearly physically impossible for her to shift.”

Alek leaned up on his elbow and looked down at Lachlyn.  “Do you know what happened?”

“She came out, and one of the bears grabbed her.  Before I could do anything, a lion knocked the bear off her.  I saw you get knocked out, but I couldn’t get to you.  She stood up and shifted.  Then she knocked the bear who was attacking you away and stood over you protectively.  So either stress from the fight or fear that you were going to be killed drove her to be able to shift.”

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad that she’s okay, and you, too.”

“Me too.”

Alek settled back on the bed and closed his eyes. He wanted to ask Jericho about his dad, because he knew that he hadn’t been among the ones who were taken away by Don’s den.  But he didn’t want to pry.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Jericho said after several quiet minutes.

“He’s dead?”

“Yes.  And he’ll never be found.”  He paused.  “I didn’t want Lachlyn to be burdened with the sight.”

“Do you want to keep it from her?”

“No.  She’ll sleep easier knowing that we’re truly free.”

Alek knew that he would, too.

Jericho chuckled.  “Now, you can marry her for real.”

“And you can join the family officially.”

Plans could be made later.  For now, he could rest in the knowledge that Lachlyn and Jericho were free from the threat that his father had posed.

He would never forget how close he’d come to losing everything.

Chapter 19

Micah Harrison prowled back and forth in his bedroom.  His whole body was tense and his stomach was in knots.  During the fight, he and his brother Tristan had been fighting alongside Hunter and Ray against one of the bears, and had just subdued the beast, when he heard a commotion from the side of the house.

Micah saw a female mountain lion leap at a bear who had grabbed Lachlyn.  She was magnificent.  She was small and perfectly formed.  Her fur was golden and her face was marked with white.  Everything in his world narrowed down to her, and he snarled in rage as the bear kicked her.  She flew through the air and smashed into the corner of the screened-in porch.  His cat yowled in alarm.  He glanced at the unconscious bear on the ground and then raced towards the female to protect her.

Tristan had been equally entranced by the female, and the two of them scrambled to help.  They attacked the bear before he could get back on his feet.  By the time the male was unconscious, the other bear den had shown up and was in the process of rounding up the attackers.  Micah growled angrily at the unconscious male, wanting to bite off the leg that had kicked the female.  Tristan chuffed at him, and the two turned to move to the female.  But James and John beat them to her and were standing close, looking down at her with wary anger.  He and Tristan moved to put themselves between her and the lion males.  Micah knew how the males felt about the females, and he didn’t want to risk her being hurt.

James had practically ordered them away like bad cubs in need of punishment.  It had torn Micah up to see them tie a rope around her neck and carry her inside.

He’d pushed himself to shift as soon as possible, and he and Tristan had conferred that they both wanted to protect the female.  The lion males had refused to allow them to see her.  Micah wanted to tend to her wounds and feed her.  He wanted to curl around her and protect her while she slept.  Something strange had happened to him when he saw her.  He didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he knew that being away from her was tearing him to pieces.

The bedroom door opened and Tristan came inside, closing the door and leaning his back against it.  His face shadowed darkly.

“Well?” Micah asked.  Tristan had gone to talk to James and appeal to him to let them tend to the female.

Tristan shook his head.  “He believes that we’re too young to understand the difference between our general caring natures and truly caring for a female.”

“What?”

“He means that he thinks we only want to take care of her because we’re lions and she’s one of us.  He didn’t believe me when I said there was more to it than that.”

Micah swallowed hard.  “Is there?”

Tristan’s blue eyes narrowed.  “Tell me that you can leave her in that empty room all night.  Let James and John and Aaron take her to jail and interrogate her like she’s a criminal.”

Micah blanched.  Tristan closed the distance to him and put his hands on Micah’s shoulders.  They were nearly identical in height at slightly more than six feet.  Tristan was older than Micah’s twenty-six by only thirteen months, but sometimes he seemed much, much older.  This was one of those times.

“Tell me exactly what you’re thinking right now, Micah.”

Micah wanted to turn away under Tristan’s intense scrutiny, but he didn’t.  He forced himself to stare into his brother’s eyes and say what was in his heart.  “She’s our mate.”

The words had come so easily that Micah could scarcely believe that he’d even uttered them.  But it was the most truthful thing he’d ever said in his life.  Although mountain lions had long believed that males would never truly mate with female lions, there was something different about the female who had come tonight.  She’d helped save Lachlyn’s life.  That alone made her different than the other females who had never cared an iota for anyone else but themselves.  And more than that was the simple truth that he felt connected to her in a primal way.  Even now, his cat was clambering in his skull to go to her.  He’d watched enough males in this house find their mates to know when it was really happening.

Tristan released his grip on Micah’s shoulders and said, “I believe so, too.”

Micah laughed and hugged his brother.  Tristan grinned briefly, but sobered quickly.  “We need to get her out of here.”

Micah nodded.  “Tell me your plan.”

Tristan outlined his idea to set the female free, and Micah listened intently and then the two went to work quietly.  Several hours later, when the house was quiet, he and Tristan walked silently downstairs and made their way down the hall to the storage room.

Chase sat on a chair in front of the door, his legs kicked out in front of him, his arms folded as he leaned back against the wall.  His eyes had been closed, but they popped open and he looked at them silently.  Micah didn’t know what to say and apparently Tristan didn’t either because the three men just stared at each other.

After a long moment, Chase cleared his throat and stood, stretching.  “I’m gonna take a piss.  Keep an eye on the door for me, will ya?  I’ll be about ten minutes.”  He dropped a key on the chair and walked away.

Micah let out a relieved breath.  Tristan unlocked the door, and they walked into the room, shutting it quietly behind them.  A young blonde woman stood looking out the only window in the room, a bath towel wrapped around her.  She turned to face them, pressing her back against the wall and gripping the towel to her body.

Micah snarled softly when he saw that the rope was still knotted around her neck, the end tied to an old radiator near the window.  He knew James and John had been in the room at least twice to check on her.  The fact that they hadn’t given her clothes or taken the rope off chilled him to the core.

“Did you come to yell at me, too?”  Her voice was raw and her eyes were bloodshot from crying.

Tristan started to growl but cut it off quickly, shaking his head.  “We came to get you out of here.”

“Why?”  Her brows furrowed and she frowned.

“Because you don’t belong here,” Tristan answered.

Her mouth fell open and tears filled her eyes.  She looked…utterly heartbroken.  “If I don’t belong with my own people, then where
do
I fit in? My-my dad said that —”  Her voice broke and she started to cry.

Micah couldn’t stand it.  He moved to her slowly and touched her shoulder.  He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, until she turned into him and cried harder.  Closing his arms around her, he held her tightly and breathed in the darkly sweet scent of her.

“We’ll fix it.  I swear.”

* * * * *

Tristan hadn’t cried since he was a kid and he smashed his finger in the door of his dad’s car.  But watching the female fall apart in Micah’s arms made him want to cry like a baby.

Restraining himself from joining them and hugging her, too, he cleared his throat.  “We need to get out of here before Chase comes back.”

Micah nodded, his whiskey-colored eyes shining with unshed tears.  “Tell us your name, sweetheart.”

“Melody Marx.”  She shivered in Micah’s arms, and Tristan pulled the pack off his back and opened it, removing a shirt and pants.

“I’m Tristan Harrison, and this is my brother, Micah.  Put these on and we’ll get out of here and figure things out as we go.”

Micah undid the rope and dropped it with a barely contained growl.  She smiled gratefully and rubbed at her neck.  Micah seemed spellbound, so Tristan grabbed him by the shirt and turned him around.

He heard the towel slide to the floor, and it took every ounce of willpower not to turn around and see what she looked like naked.  He thought her lion form was beautiful, but her human form was breathtaking.  Golden blonde hair fell past her shoulders in a thick curtain.  Bright blue eyes like a summer sky.  Lush mouth made for kissing.  She was shorter than them, perhaps around five-foot-seven, and judging from the way the towel hugged her body, she was curved in all the right places.

“I’m done,” she said.

Tristan turned around and thought he’d never seen a more appealing woman in all his life.  She was wearing his shirt and Micah’s pants, which were both far too big for her.  But she was wearing
their
clothes, and that’s what he liked most.

Tristan gave her a pair of Sam’s sandals that he’d found in the hall closet, mentally promising to send money to Sam for the pilfered shoes.  “I had a bag,” Melody said as they walked to the door.  “Do you know if someone picked it up?

He shook his head.  “I didn’t see anyone with a bag.”

She said she dropped it at the side of the house, and she needed it back because it had her identification and other important items.

Micah said, “We’ll look for it outside.  If it’s not out there, then I’ll come back in and figure out where it is.  We won’t leave without it.”

The hallway was empty, and Tristan focused his hearing to see if anyone else was around and heard nothing.  He locked the door and left the key on the chair.  They went out a side door, avoiding the backdoor through the kitchen and the front door by the stairs.  He led Melody to where he kept his pickup parked and opened the passenger door for her.  She slid into the middle and buckled her seatbelt.  He was humbled by her trust in them.  She was definitely not like a normal female.  The females he had grown up with would have bolted at the first chance of freedom.

By the time he tucked his bag behind the seat and sat behind the wheel, Micah was walking quickly towards them, carrying a pack.  He sat down in the seat next to Melody and asked, “Is this yours, sweetheart?”

Her smile was as much an answer as her words.  “Yes, thank you so much for looking for it.”

“I’m glad I found it.”  Micah smiled at her and then looked at Tristan.  “We should get going.”

Tristan started his truck and pulled away from the boarding house, keeping the headlights off until they reached the street.  He and Micah had called Ashland their home and the pride their extended family for the last few months.  But now he had mixed feelings.  He never thought that the pride would treat a female so badly.  Even when things had been so awful in King, the females were still treated with respect.  And there was definitely something different about Melody.  She’d
cried
, and those tears were as real as any he’d ever seen shed.

“Do you have a home that we can take you to, Melody?” Micah asked.

“Not anymore.  I was going to go up to King, Pennsylvania, to see my dad’s brothers.”  She shivered, rubbing her arms.  “After the way I was treated by the other males, though, maybe that’s a bad idea.”

“It’s not a bad idea.  Things have been bad here because of the females meddling,” Tristan said.

“I wasn’t part of whatever bad stuff they’ve been doing.”  Her voice was earnest.

Micah took her hand and squeezed it.  Tristan took her other one.  His heart stuttered in his chest at how right it felt, as if the simple act of all three of them touching at the same time connected them on a supernatural level.  His cat rumbled in his mind in agreement.

“I believe you,” Tristan said.

“Thanks.”

Micah said, “We’ll go to King and find your uncles.  We haven’t been back since we left, so we were due a visit to our dad and uncle, too.”

They left Ashland and headed towards King.  He didn’t know what type of reception waited for them there, but he had no doubt that his and Micah’s dad and uncle would welcome Melody into their home.  She was their mate, after all, and that made her family.

And family stuck together, no matter what.