Every Dawn Forever (22 page)

“I know you will.  I’m not worried.”

Orion growled.  “That makes one of us.”

Sterling kept his hand on Sydney’s shoulder and walked with her to the edge of the porch, where four women stood several feet below on the grass.  They were at least Sydney’s age, if not a bit older, and all had the same look on their faces that Sydney had when they found her.  As if they were free but not really sure it was true.  He put his arms around Sydney and squeezed her, just tightly enough to reassure himself that she was there with them.

“What are you guys doing here?”  Sydney asked when the quiet had grown heavy with unanswered questions.

One woman, with short, choppy hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a dull knife, cleared her throat.  “Last week, Reuben said he was coming with the alpha to bring you back to the pack.  He never came back.  I — we — just want to know what happened to our mates.”

“How did you find us here?  How did you know where he went?”  Sydney asked.

Lita’s voice rang out from a tall, blonde woman with a long scar down one cheek.  “He has a GPS on his phone, and I used Peter’s computer to locate Reuben.  He was around this area and this is one of only two houses around, so we knocked.”

The one named Marianne said, “Sydney?  What happened?”

The
baro
had joined them on the front porch and stood behind them like a silent wall of protection. But Sterling knew now that they had nothing to fear from these women.  They were clearly abused like Sydney had been.

Alyssa spoke quietly.  “Dante, let’s bring them into the front room so they can sit comfortably and we can talk, please?  Clearly they’re exhausted from their trip.”

Dante looked out over the women and said, “If you do anything threatening to anyone, especially our mates, we will snap you in half.  Are we clear?”

Lita said, “We don’t want any trouble.  We’ve had enough of that to last a few lifetimes.”

The
baro
filed back into the house and to the large living room.  Nyte and his clan gathered chairs from the dining room and stretched them out in a line in front of the single couch that looked out the large picture window at the front of the house.  The she-wolves sat together on the couch.

Sterling kept his hand entwined with Sydney’s as she sat between him and Crux, and they waited for the she-wolves to tell their story.

* * * * *

Marianne said, “When Byron came home the night you left, he went berserk when he found the house empty.  All the males began searching for you.  Then the alpha decided that a female couldn’t leave on her own, and had to have had help, so he made all of us come to his home where he interrogated us for hours.”

Sydney swallowed audibly and Crux caught the scent of her tears.  He squeezed her hand a little tighter.

“I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know that he would hurt you because of me.”  Sydney said with a thick voice.

A short woman with red, curly hair, named Ica, shook her head.  “It was okay, really.  It gave us hope that we could be free, too.  That one of us had managed to get away meant that all of us could.”

Lita nodded.  “Which is why they went on lockdown with all the females.  Even those of us who had a little bit more freedom were suddenly being locked in their houses twenty-four hours a day.  The alpha said that the males hadn’t disciplined their mates enough, because you escaped without fearing what would happen when you were caught.”

Sydney shivered.

The one with short, choppy hair, who identified herself as Honor, said, “It was hell for a long time.  More hell than normal.  And then Reuben came home one night and ordered me to pack an overnight bag for him.  When I didn’t move fast enough and asked too many questions, he said I was getting too proud and forgetting that my place in his house was to serve him no matter what.  He, he…”  She stopped speaking, her trembling fingers reaching up to touch the jagged ends of her hair.  “He cut off my hair with his pocket knife and locked me in the closet in the bedroom.  I was there for a whole day before Lita came into the house and let me know what had happened, saying the males hadn’t come back.”

Marianne slipped her arm around Honor’s shoulders while she started to sob.  “When they didn’t come back after a whole day, we knew something was up.  The alpha and the best fighters in the pack had left and the other males just about fell apart waiting.   Lita rescued Honor from the closet and we waited in my house, watching the GPS program for Reuben’s phone.  When it finally went out, we hoped that, well… That he and the others were dead so that we could be free.”

Sydney stood suddenly, dropping their hands and taking two steps towards the couch.  She looked down at the women.  “I thought I was alone all those years, until Katharine told me that she’d been abused by the alpha for their whole mating, too.  I’m so sorry that you were hurt because of me.  I wish I’d known I wasn’t alone.  I wish I could have come back for you.”

The women stood one by one and hugged Sydney and all five of them cried.  Crux glanced at his brothers and saw their grim, determined faces.  The other males around them were watching with varying degrees of anger and pity, and Crux felt the same way.  Angry that the abuse had been throughout the pack and encouraged by the alpha.  Sorry that the women had suffered.

After several minutes of crying, the women seemed to pull themselves together and Lita scrubbed at her eyes with a tissue that Alyssa gave to her.  “Are they dead?  There were seven of them, including her mate Byron and the alpha, and our mates, plus one other guard, Jimmy.”

Crux and his brothers stood and drew Sydney into their arms.  She shuddered against them.  Orion said, “They’re all dead.  They attacked in wolf form on the full moon and they died in that form.  We burned their bodies in our ceremonial firepit.”

Honor wiped under her eyes.  “Can we see, please?”

Orion nodded, and after letting the women clean up in the first floor bathroom, the clans led them into the woods with battery-operated lanterns to light their way.

“How are you, baby?”  Crux shortened his stride so that he could keep his arm around Sydney as they walked through the woods.

She held onto his waist with one arm and held Sterling’s hand with the other.  “I don’t know.  Okay on some level, but losing it on another.”

Crux kissed the top of her head.  “We’re not going to let you lose it, baby.  We’re here for you.”

The males held the lanterns around the firepit, which was still burning, thanks to their continued vigilance to ensure that every bone was turned to ash.  The fire was low, and for a long time the only sound around them was the crackling of the logs that had been laid recently.

Lita stepped free of the women who stood on one side of the firepit and looked down into the flames.  “My father told me that a good female never questioned the three most important men in her life:  her father, her alpha, and her mate.  The first time that Peter hit me was on the day we mated, because he said I looked like a whore.  I went running to my father and
he
struck me, for running away from my mate. I thought I was all alone, too.”  She took a deep breath and then said, “I’m glad he’s dead.  I’m glad my father is dead.  I’m glad to be free.”  She spit into the firepit and turned her back on the flame, lifting her foot and tapping her palm against her heel.  She spoke a few words in a language that Crux didn’t know, and Sydney whispered, “She’s shaking the dust of the pack off her foot.  It’s a way of leaving the pack and separating yourself from them forever.  She said
I’m a prisoner no more
.”

The other three women did the same thing, each sharing a short tale of their life in the pack, so many of them similar to what Sydney had suffered.  Betrayal.  Pain.  Hopelessness.

Sydney joined the women and shook the dust of her pack from her foot.  Then she joined the women, and they hugged tightly.

They walked the women back to the house.  Nyte asked, “Where will you go now?”

Marianne answered, “I have a sister in Burbank who left her pack when her mate was killed and is living by herself.  We’re going to drive out there and maybe start our own pack.”

Lita nodded.  “Yeah. Where no one lifts a hand in anger, and females are free to mate who they want, or no one at all.”

Orion offered to give them money to help them on their trip, but Ica said, “We sold some things at a pawn shop before we left, so we’re good for the trip.”

Alyssa and Mason came out from the house, a large cooler in Mason’s arms.  “We put together some food and drinks for the road,” Alyssa said.  Mason put the cooler in the open trunk of the older sedan that they were driving.

“Thank you.  For everything.”  Lita said.

The women all shook the hands of the men and hugged Alyssa, and then they pulled Sydney away to the car and spoke to her quietly for several minutes.  They hugged her tightly and got into the car, pulling out of the driveway and heading back to town.

“They just wanted to make sure that I was safe now, and happy.  I promised that I was,” she said as she returned to their arms.

Crux kissed her cheek.  “Do you need anything, baby?”

She stifled a yawn and said, “Just a warm bed and my mates.  It’s been a long night.”

* * * * *

Orion woke up slowly on Saturday when his brothers got out of bed.  Sydney was nestled in his arms.  Her mouth was parted slightly and her warm breath cascaded over his chest where she rested her cheek.

He cracked his eyes open and watched his brothers move silently around the room, gathering their clothes and leaving quickly.  There was still work to be done for the party tomorrow, and his brothers had been happy to handle meeting with a caterer and picking up some more decorations while he and Sydney slept in.  Friday night had been hard as hell.  Sydney had been so heartbroken to learn that the women had suffered as much as she had in their own matings.  She felt selfish for leaving without them.  Even though he didn’t think she should feel any guilt for getting herself out of a bad situation, he understood.  And he hoped in time, as the women found their own way, that Sydney would realize that her leaving had helped pave the way for them to be set free, too.

He drifted off in thought as he stared at the ceiling, listening to the even cadence of Sydney’s breathing.  She stirred eventually, blinking her beautiful blue eyes at him and brushing her blonde hair away from her face.  “Morning,” she smiled.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”  He kissed her forehead.  She rolled off him, stretched, and then sat up.  Looking down over her shoulder, she asked, “Where are the guys?”

“Out running errands for their future bride.”

“And you got to stay home and sleep in?”  She raised a brow in jest.

He shrugged with a chuckle.  “What can I say?  Delegation is an awesome thing.”

He joined her for a quick shower, tamping down his insane urge to fuck her through the wall once she said she was starving.  When they were dressed, he found a breakfast casserole covered in foil on the stove, with a note from Crux directing them to a plate of blueberry cream cheese muffins in the oven, and a fruit salad in the fridge.  Sydney’s eyes widened at the sight of the huge bowl of cut berries and she said, “Oh, yum.  I can’t get enough fruit, it’s all I can think about when I’m hungry.”

He reheated the casserole and put the muffins in a small basket on a wooden tray.  “Our cub giving you some serious cravings already?”

She put the bowl on the tray and grabbed silverware from the drawer.  “I think so.  I’ve never really been much of a fruit person, but I think I’ve eaten my weight in fruit salad this week already.”

When the casserole was hot, he loaded it onto the large tray and suggested they eat in the family room for a change.  Sydney carried a jug of orange juice and glasses, and followed him into the family room, where he filled their plates.  Balancing his plate on his knees, he turned on the television and BluRay player and queued up an episode of The Simpsons.

He’d never known anyone that loved The Simpsons as much as Sydney did.  She’d enjoyed watching it as a teenager, but had missed the last few seasons.  He had picked up all the seasons so that she could watch them.  And he was kind of enjoying them, too, but mostly because he loved to hear her laugh.

“Oh, that one.  The third down,” she said between mouthfuls of casserole.  He selected the right episode and pressed play.

They didn’t say much as they ate and watched the show, but he found silence with her was very comfortable.  Just being around her made him feel happy and blessed.

When the credits rolled and the familiar theme song played, she put her empty plate down and rubbed her palm over her stomach through the thin shirt she wore.

“Are you and our cub full, sweetheart?”  He put his plate down on the coffee table.

“For now,” she chuckled.

“Want to watch another one?”

She swung her leg over his and straddled him suddenly, caging him in her arms as her hands gripped the back of the couch.

“Not yet.  I think we need to work off some of the big breakfast we just ate and I’m feeling…really…turned…on.”  She punctuated each word with a subtle shift of her hips, grinding the apex of her thighs against his already hardening cock.