Kaleb (Samuel's Pride Series) (3 page)

“I had to get a few more scents.”
Kaleb turned then and leaned against the wall. “She’s my mate. I’m not really sure what to do about it, but I wanted you to know. And another thing you should be aware of—I’ve given her my blood. It has….”

When he didn’t finish
, Samuel felt his lion shift under his skin. Not really fear dusted along his skin, but something close to it. For whatever reason Kaleb had not to finish right then, Samuel was sure he didn’t want to know. The nurse walking in had them both shifting away from the bed and out into the hall. They had to fix her bandages.

“There you are.”
He smiled at his wife as she moved down the hall toward them. “I thought I’d find you here. Did you know that there is a guard at every entrance of this place, and they’re practically giving everyone the shake down before they can come in?” Kennedy looked at him, but he didn’t have a clue what was going on. Before he could ask her more about it, Kaleb spoke up.

“That would be because of me.
I put them in place when I realized that she might be in danger. Or us if they come here to find her. Whoever had her wanted her dead. I’m not willing to let that happen.” When Kaleb didn’t tell Kennedy that Thor was his mate, he didn’t either.

Samuel wanted answers but wasn’t sure really what to ask to get them. When they were let back into the room
, some of the bandages on Thor’s face had been removed. She’d healed a great deal in the four days she’d been there. He glanced at Kaleb but said nothing.

“I’ve been to the doctor.
She said that I’m doing fine and that I will need to take it easy for the next few days.” Kennedy grinned. “We have nine days left and we’ll be parents. I’m so excited and terrified at the same time.”

Samuel wasn’t afraid to admit he was terrified as well.
Excited yes, but scared shitless about having something so small depending on him. He could barely walk into a room without making something fall to the floor and shatter. What the hell was he supposed to do with a baby? A movement on the bed had them all standing and tensing up.

“She’s not moved before
,” Kaleb whispered to the room as he moved a lock of Thor’s hair from her forehead. “I’m not ready for her to wake yet.”

“Why not?”
Kaleb looked at Kennedy when she asked just as quietly. “I, for one, would like to know who did this to her and kick their ass. No one treats anyone this way and gets away with it.”

“I’ll take care of them.”
Kaleb said it with so much finality that Samuel almost felt sorry for whoever did this to Thor. “I have some of their scents now, and they’ll not get away.”

Kennedy looked at
Samuel, then back at Kaleb. He knew that she got it, and when she smiled he did as well. There would be no stopping her from throwing these two together if either of them had any plans of not going through with their mating business. Samuel knew that Kaleb was a good man, but the man had never said anything about what he’d do with a mate. Kaleb had said he didn’t want or need one, but having one staring right at you like this was something different altogether. He wondered how hard Thor would fall before she finally let him into her life, because Samuel had no doubt that she’d be the hardest one to convince.

A sudden movement on the bed had his lion run to the front.
Thor had grabbed Kaleb’s wrist and held it. Her eyes were swollen almost shut, but she’d turned to him. Neither of them moved.

“I
won’t hurt you.” Kaleb put his hand on hers. “I swear to you I won’t hurt you. Let me go, love, and rest.”

Compulsion was there, even Samuel could feel it
, but she didn’t let Kaleb go. When he peeled her fingers from his skin, Samuel noticed that she’d bled on his arm. When he settled her hand back on her chest, Kaleb licked the blood off. Samuel wondered if the man knew that he’d just exchanged blood with his mate to begin the process of claiming her.

“I know what I did.”
Samuel looked at his friend when he whispered in his mind.
“I need to speak to you. There are things that I need to tell you. Something I should have told you years ago.”

“Are you more than a shifter?”
Kaleb nodded but didn’t speak. “
Am I going to hate this?”

“More than likely.”
Samuel nodded and sat back down. Kaleb said he was going home to take a shower and would be back soon. He left after taking Thor’s hand in his and kissing it. This was not the kick-ass Kaleb he knew.

He had no idea how a bear claimed his mate or
, for that matter, if that’s how it worked at all. Being a leader of all sorts of animals was the hardest thing Samuel had ever done. How the hell was he supposed to keep up with the way they did things, much less keep them all happy? Samuel looked up when Kennedy sat on his lap.

“I love you.”
He nuzzled her neck when she spoke. “The girl there, what does she mean to you? More than a friend, I think. Do I need to
choilleadh
you? Or hurt her?”

Samuel knew the word. She was asking him if she needed to castrate him.
He nipped at her neck and held her tighter, laying his hand over her belly to feel their child move beneath it.

“When I was seven and
she five, we found each other one night after my father had beaten me so badly that I could barely move. I’d found this place about a month before and would go there to hide from him until my mom came home from work. Apparently Thor used it as well when her own dad had taken a belt to her.” Kennedy put her hand over his and moved it over her belly to where the baby was moving. He continued telling her what this girl meant to him as his own child flipped and moved against his hand. “She’d been beaten as well that night. Her back was bloodied, and her face…. It wasn’t as bad as she’d been when we brought her in, but he’d taken his fist to her. I wondered how she could even see.”

“Her mother, where was she when her little girl was being abused?”
Samuel remembered that she’d been alive and wondered if Mrs. Thornton was as yet, but he told Kennedy that he didn’t know. Thor had never mentioned her when they’d been children.

“One night
, when I’d decided that my dad wasn’t going to hit my mom again, Thor talked me out of it. While she said I could take him—I was about nine by then—I could never look my mom in the face if I’d been responsible for killing him. Instead, she and I devised a plan to make him suffer. If I remember correctly, it was the best two weeks I had while he spent that time in the hospital.” Kennedy laughed and asked him what she’d done. “She iced up our front steps and made him fall down them. Broke three ribs and his left leg. Thor had never been one to back down when she felt someone had ‘shit in her oatmeal,’ as she used to say.”

“Oh
, I like her. Very much so. Do you think she could teach me a thing or two about dealing with bullies?”

Christ
, he hoped not. His wife was pretty fierce now. And since she’d been at the end of her pregnancy, she’d been a tad on the violent side. Instead of answering her, he kissed her. Samuel didn’t think it would distract her for very long, but it might buy him a little time to tell her that she was just fine the way she was, thanks.

Chapter 3

The room wasn’t overly bright
. Thor knew it wasn’t, but it was still painful to look around. There was a fuzzy blob in front of her, but other than it being large, she had no idea what or even who it might be. She closed her eyes and opened them again when she heard the laughter.

“You’re not going to be able to lay there pretending you
’re asleep this time. I’ve let it go before, but not this time.” She tried to bring the man into focus, but it was simply too hard.

“I don’t know you.” Laughter again.
“I think you are very rude to laugh at me when I’ve been beat to shit and—Fuck. Where am I?” She had to close her eyes again. The pain was overwhelming and making her slightly sick to her stomach.

“You’re at the hospital, one that will protect you at all costs.” She snorted. There was no way anyone could protect her from
Lipscomb. He was a motherfucker with a god-like attitude. “Don’t you believe me? I’ve never lied to you before.”

This time he was closer to her.
The brown eyes looked familiar, but she couldn’t think beyond hurting. Reaching out to touch him caused her more pain, but she had to see who he was. As soon as he was close enough, she realized who he was.

“Samuel.”
He nodded and kissed the palm of her hand. “I’ve missed you so much. You came for me.”

“I did.
You did tell me to, didn’t you? And when I got there, you didn’t even have cake or any beer.” She moved back on the bed and laid there for several seconds, trying to think how to tell him that he needed to stay away from her. “Oh honey, who did this to you? Thor? Who did this to you?”

“I work for some pretty powerful people.
And I’m not sure, but I think maybe I’ve stepped in more than I can get out of.” She turned to look at him. “It would be better if I don’t tell you anything right now.”

While Samuel nodded
, she knew that he wasn’t satisfied. That was okay with her. She wasn’t really either. When she opened her eyes a bit later, there was a stranger in the room, and this one she didn’t know. Without speaking to him, she reached down and pressed the nurse call button that she’d been handed the second time she woke.

“I’m not going to hurt you
, and the nursing staff won’t kick me out. Not without a fight.” Thor didn’t move as he stood up. “I’m Kaleb Jonas, a friend of Samuel’s. I was with him when we came to save you.”

The nurse walked in
, and Thor glanced at her. She would never have believed it, but the man moved to the side of her bed in seconds and growled low. The nurse took a step back but didn’t leave her.

“She called the desk.” Kaleb glanced at her before looking back at the nurse. “We didn’t know you were in here
, Mr. Jonas. I’ll let the others know.”

“Wait.” The nurse ran out of the room like she’d been shot from a gun and didn’t stop when Thor tried to stop her.
She looked at Kaleb and glared. “You need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I don’t think so. It’s my turn to keep an eye on you.”
Thor didn’t like the way he looked at her, like she was a morsel of chocolate and he was starved for something sweet. “You’re healing nicely. I think that you should be up and about in a few more days.”

“How long have I been here?”
He told her thirteen days. “Mother fuck. I’m probably fired by now.”

“I would doubt that. There’s a manhunt out for you.
They won’t be able to find you, but they do continue to look. The mayor said you were a valued asset to the force and he wanted you found at all costs. Did you know that he’s not human?” That question threw her, but she didn’t have time to analyze what he meant. “Neither am I.”

“Good for you.
Who do I have to blow to get out of here?” His low growl this time made her skin pucker and her hair dance on her arms. Thor didn’t have a clue why it made her want to touch him. “What is wrong with you?”

“You’ll be blowing no one unless it’s me.
I’m not as possessive as some of the others in Samuel’s pride, but I will kill any man you think to have sex with.” Pride? Before she could get him to explain that, she felt someone coming toward them with ill intent. Kaleb moved to the foot of the bed and seemed to grow larger, which astounded her. He was already huge.

The man coming through the door wasn’t anyone she knew
, but apparently Kaleb did. Once the two of them seemed to come to some sort of silent agreement, they relaxed a little, enough for neither of them to go red on a second’s notice. Going red was the way she felt about anger, and there was a great deal of that between these two men. They stepped back from each other a little more, but Kaleb didn’t move from his position by her side, and the man seemed to think that was funny.

“You going to introduce me to her?”
Kaleb didn’t answer him and that had the other man laughing. “I’m not going to take her from you. I simply want to meet her.”

“Why are you here?”
The man’s anger seemed to be there long enough for her to feel it. Then it disappeared. “I didn’t tell you where I was, so what earthly reason can you have to be here?”

“I’m your brother. I think it only natural that I meet your mate. Don’t you?”
Thor could feel the way Kaleb felt about his brother, and it wasn’t the warm and fuzzy feeling she thought siblings had for each other. When the other man started to step around Kaleb, he was suddenly across the room, hanging a foot from the floor.

“I didn’t say you could come near her.”
Thor wanted to point out that she was right there and had been making all sorts of decisions on her own for years. But there was something more going on here, so she kept her mouth closed. This was not going to end well.

“Who is she?”
When the man looked at her, she shrugged. There was no way she was telling this asshole who she was. He didn’t like her. And for that reason alone, she didn’t trust him. “Kaleb, I just want to meet your mate. Is that so bad?”

“Yes.”
Still holding his brother around the throat, Kaleb took him out of the room. She had no idea what happened on the other side of the closed door, but when Samuel came in frowning seconds later, she decided that she needed to get the hell out of there.

“Where are my clothes?”
He didn’t bother telling her that she wasn’t healthy enough to leave the hospital, but pointed to one of the many cabinets on the wall. But getting to them proved to be something she wasn’t sure she could do. “Help me?”

“I don’t think so. Touching you right now could get me killed.”
Thor looked at the closed door, then at Samuel as he continued. “He might say he’s not possessive, but he’s a little on the pissed off side right now, and he might hurt me.”

“Whatever.”
She tried again to get up, but all she managed to do was hurt herself. The scream that spilled from her mouth was out before she could stop it, and she found herself pressed back against the bed by Kaleb. This time his anger was directed at her.

“Stay still.” She tried to brush him off
, but he leaned down close to her ear and Thor felt herself wanting to bring him into the bed with her and wanting her gun at the same time. “I will join you there if you don’t behave.”

“Get out of here.” He nipped her lobe
, and she felt her body respond like he’d set her afire. Before she could do something stupid, like whimper, she curled her fingers into his hair and jerked him back. “I said to get out of here.”

“I can smell you. You smell like sex.”
Suddenly, sex was all she could think about. When he kissed her throat, she did whimper then and looked into his eyes when he lifted his head. “We need to talk. Samuel said you have no idea what we are.”

“Kaleb, perhaps this can wait.”
Kaleb stood up and looked at Samuel as he continued. She ignored them both, trying her best to get her breathing under control as well as her body. Looking down at herself, she realized that most of what had happened to her seemed to have healed too quickly.

“What the hell happened to me?”
Both men looked at her. “And I don’t mean at the big house. Why do I look like I’ve only had a slight accident and not someone cutting me to shit and back? Spill it.”

Samuel flushed. She wasn’t going to get anything from him unless she hurt him. And as much as she wanted answers
, she wasn’t up for taking him on right now. Instead, she looked at Kaleb. He didn’t seem all that anxious to answer her, but he did sit down.

“How much do you remember?”
Shivering, she didn’t answer him, but he seemed to understand. “We found you from your connection to Samuel. When we got there, we had to take out a few of—”

“We who?”
He grinned at her, and she had the sudden urge to smack the shit out of him. “If you called the police, you’d not be allowed in here. For that matter, where am I?”

“Pride Clinic. It’s a private hospital that answers only to Samuel.”
Kaleb nodded to Samuel as her buddy sat down. “He owns this place and a few others. We answer to no one.”

“So you’re big cheese now. Good for you both. But that does not
tell me how I managed to heal so quickly.” When neither of them answered, she nearly told them to fuck off. But someone appeared in the room. And she knew that he didn’t come through the fucking door.

~~~

Kaleb watched her closely. She was taking this better than he’d thought she would. She was a little freaked out when Stephan suddenly joined them, but she didn’t scream or act all girly when he took a step toward her. Instead, she seemed to be reaching for a gun.

“Don’t.”
Stephan stopped moving but smiled at her when she pulled her hand from her naked hip.

“What did you…how did you…
? Fuck.”

“Very good,” he told her
. Then Stephan looked at Kaleb. “You’ve bonded with her. You should know that I’ve made arrangements to have her moved to your home.”

“Excuse me
?” Everyone ignored Thor as Samuel spoke up.

“You have a home? Since when?
I had no idea you even had anything but a cave you slept in on cold nights.” Samuel grinned at him. “Can we see it? Is it one of those nice little places like Jimmy has? I hear the faeries are having fun with his place.”

“I’m right here.
Hello?” Kaleb looked at her but glared at Samuel.

“I have a real house and
, no, you cannot see it. The faeries come to my house and I’ll swat them away like flies. What’s going on?”

“I’ve been informed that the scent she had on her was from a home close by. I think she’s been touched by—” The shrill whistle had him put his hands over his ears.
All of them looked at Thor, and Kaleb felt his boar stir, his bear. Christ, she looked good enough to eat.

“Now that I have your attention
, I’d like to point out that I’m a grown woman—and I’m pretty sure it’s silly of me to point this out—who has been on her own for more years than any of you morons have.” Stephan snorted, but she ignored him. “As I was saying. I’m right here. Any and all decisions that you think to make for me or even about me will be cleared through me. I’m not a simpleton.”

Both Samuel and Stephan looked at him.
“She’s right. She has been making her own decisions. As for her being a simpleton, I’m reasonably sure she’s not that either.”

“Thank you.” Kaleb turned to look at her
, and he could see that she was exhausted and took a step toward her. She put up her hand to stop him. “I want answers. Either you give them to me, or I swear to Christ the first time I have a gun back in my hand, I will shoot all three of you.”

“Do you believe in vampires or shifters?” He watched her face for any sign that she was going to be upset
, but she only shook her head at him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Stephan is a vampire. An old one as a matter of fact. I’m not sure how old, but with his age comes benefits that others wouldn’t have. Such as his ability to be out in the daylight hours. Samuel is a shifter, as am I. He’s a lion and the leader of this pride. He has a mate, as do I now. His mate is Kennedy. She, too, can shift, but she’s a great deal more. How you doing?”

“And you? What are you?”
He told her bear. “I see. And this would mean that…I’m guessing that as a vampire, he gave me his blood and healed me. It’s why I’m in this sort of shape and not dead.”

“He gave you blood at the scene of the crime, yes. But he didn’t heal you. I did that.”
Again, Kaleb watched her face, and he could see that she wasn’t afraid like he’d thought she might be, but a little confused. He waited for her to look at him again before he continued. “You’re my mate. Do you know what that is?”

“No. And right now I have more questions about this scent and blood thing.
Why did you give me blood?” Stephan shifted on his feet, and she snapped her fingers at him. It was all Kaleb could do not to burst out laughing. “Answer me.”

“I
knew you were Samuel’s friend, as he’d spoken about you before. As for giving my blood to you, it was to help you make it here so that we could put you back together.” Stephan took a step toward her. “I do not appreciate you compelling me to answer you. Simply ask next time.”