Marking Melody (4 page)

Holden straightened slightly and swallowed hard.  “Is Bradley dead?”

She almost lost it again, but Micah reached for her hand and laced his fingers with hers.  She told them how he had died and about her capture by the females as she came to King to tell them the news.  Her voice grew too thick with sorrow to continue.  Micah recited the rest of the story to her uncles when she couldn’t form the words herself.

When the story of the last year of her life was finished, Jax snarled angrily.  “Why the hell would James tie her up?  I will skin him alive.”

She wiped at a few tears.  “He didn’t know I was different.”

He shook his head, handing her tissues from a box on the desk.  “He has two ears, doesn’t he?  To hear the truth of your story.  Two eyes to see that you’re compassionate and risked your life for someone else.  A brain in his head to tell the fucking difference between one of those brainwashed blonde bitches and you.”

She smiled at his harsh words and dabbed at her eyes.  He sounded as put out by James’ actions as Tristan and Micah.

Tristan said, “Do you think there will be a problem with us being here?”

Holden’s brows rose.  “I don’t know.  There haven’t been any females in King since the pride split up.”  His voice lowered, and she felt as though they were hearing a secret.  “Thirty-two miles from here is a town called Twin Pines.  There’s a small group of thirteen females who live there.”

Judging by the way Tristan and Micah stiffened, she guessed that it was a surprise to them.  An unwelcome one.

“They’re not welcome here.  The police force and remaining males are adamant about keeping King female-free.  So asking if we believe that Melody will be welcome here, the simple truth is we don’t know.”

She shared with them how the females in Canada had monitored Ashland, and they decided to discreetly pass along a hint to the police chief — who was a pride member — that they should look into the traffic monitoring system to see if the females watched them.

Tristan said, “We need to check in with our dad.  Would it be alright for Melody to go home with you guys and we’ll come over in a little while?”

“Of course.  You know where our place is?” Jax asked.

Tristan nodded.  Jax and Holden left them alone in the office.

She was feeling as though no one wanted her around.  It was like hating someone because of the color of his or her skin.  She couldn’t control that she’d been born a female.  She and Micah stood, and he cupped her face, his light brown eyes sad.  “They just don’t know you, sweetheart.”  He chuckled.  “I know what you’re thinking.  I don’t care if I’ve known you less than a day.  My cat knows you and my heart knows you.”

Her heart thudded.  “That was really romantic, Micah.”

He shot a grin at Tristan who groaned.  “No one-upping me in the romance department, bro.”

“I can’t help it if you don’t have my skills when it comes to our woman.”

She laughed and leaned into Micah, letting him fold her against his warmth.  “Go home with your uncles, and we’ll come for you in a few hours.”

“Will you stay with me?”

Tristan snorted and cupped her hips with his hands.  “Did you think you could get rid of us so quickly?  We’ve just found you and we’re not about to spend a single night away from you.”

Her whole body warmed at the thought and her mind flipped through decadent images of the three of them together.  Tristan leaned against her back and kissed her neck, inhaling slowly.  His voice was deeper and laced with a growl.  “You smell so good.”

She shivered and Micah groaned, nuzzling under her ear.  She felt pleasurably assaulted on both sides and would have done something about all the clothes in the way of more pleasure if Tristan hadn’t nipped her neck and taken a step back.

He exhaled loudly.  “We should get going.”

She squeezed herself against Micah a little tighter.  “How can you think straight?”

Micah ran his hands up and down her back.  “The first time we’re together shouldn’t be in a dirty office at the garage.”

She peeked at Tristan and he shrugged.  “I can’t think straight when I’m touching you, baby, and my cat is snarling in my head to do more than kiss, but we can’t.  Not here.”

She agreed.

They kissed her goodbye, and after Micah returned with her bag and kissed her once more, she was alone in the office.  But not for long.  Holden knocked and came in ten minutes later.  Then he and Jax led her out the back of the garage, and she climbed into Jax’s F-250.  Holden followed in his matching truck.

It had been heartbreaking to watch her uncles deal with her dad’s death.  They had both said they wished they’d known so they could have been there to support her.  She wished the same.

The home Holden and Jax shared was a ranch on a bit of property less than two miles from the garage.  Located at the end of a cul-de-sac, the house butted up against a stand of pine trees.

Jax told her that pride members all lived on the street, and the home had belonged to their father who had died before she was born.  He pulled underneath the carport and turned off the engine.  Holden parked behind him, and the three of them went into the house.

The country blue kitchen with striped curtains and a small butcher block table felt cozy.  Holden took her hand and said, “I’m so glad you’re here, Melody.  I want you to see something.”

He took her into the family room.  She gasped.  Scenery pictures, taken by her, were framed and hanging on every wall, on the mantel over the fireplace, and on every flat surface.  Some of the photos were from when she was a teenager and just learning how to take pictures, and some were from the year her dad died.  Jax went to one wall where pictures hung with twisted wire.  He flipped the pictures over one by one, and she saw each of her school pictures and candid photos of herself and her dad throughout the years.

Jax touched a picture of herself and Scarlett roasting marshmallows at a bonfire.  “This was the last picture we got from him.  When six months passed and we hadn’t heard from him, we knew something was wrong.  We looked for you, baby girl.  But your dad was so afraid that if he told us where you lived that somehow the information would get back to the females and you’d be taken from him.  We thought it was in the Midwest somewhere, and we made contact with a lot of wolf packs, but none of them would say whether they knew you or not.  And there are a lot of packs that don’t want to be found, so we had no way of knowing if we’d even contacted the right one.  And we didn’t know what last name he had chosen, either, which made the searching even more fruitless.”

“I was on my way here to King to tell you in person when I was taken.  I lost so much time.”

They hugged her and cried together, standing in front of the images of her life.

* * * * *

While Holden tossed chopped vegetables in a bowl for a quick salad and Jax marinated chicken breasts, they asked her about Micah and Tristan.  She blushed and looked everywhere but at her smiling uncles.

“Don’t be embarrassed.  You found your mates.  That should be celebrated,” Holden said.

“Not
too
celebrated,” Jax said, making a face.

Laughing, she shook her head.  “They said that the males in Ashland are sharing their mates, so they weren’t surprised to feel connected to me.”

“Were you surprised?” Holden asked.

“I was too upset with the way the pride treated me to even realize that it should feel strange to think of both of them as my mates.  I can’t really explain it, but we just fit together.  Now that I’ve met them, I can’t imagine my life without them in it.”

They remembered Tristan and Micah from when they lived in King and had nothing but good things to say about them, which didn’t surprise her.  Her mates were lions-in-shining-armor.  So to speak.

By the time the table was set, wine poured, and chicken pulled from the skillet, Micah and Tristan walked through the front door, looking like men who’d been missing part of their bodies.

She enjoyed being sandwiched between them in a tight hug and laughed at the way they scented her and held her close.

While they ate together, she listened to her uncles tell her mates about the state of the King Pride.  With the females gone, the males had regrouped and taken up the slack for the ones who had left.  The Fallon family, who she knew well from when they tied her to a radiator, had been the police force in town.  Now, the peace was kept by four brothers with the last name of Parker.  Tristan said it was ironic that the law in town was now being upheld by the biggest troublemakers he’d ever known.

When dinner was over and the dishes were clean, her uncles made up the pull-out couch for them.

She didn’t have anything to wear to bed, so after showering, she changed into one of Jax’s shirts, which fell almost to her knees.  They said goodnight to her uncles, and after Jax gave them a stern warning to go to
sleep
, they were alone.

Micah pulled back the sheets on the queen-size pull-out and climbed in, patting the space next to him with a boyish smile.  She climbed on and settled on her butt, watching as Tristan joined them.  They were shirtless but in their jeans, which Tristan assured her meant they would keep their wits about them and keep them from trying anything that would bring her scowling Uncle Jax into the room.

They settled on either side of her in the dark room and scooted close.  Tristan grunted.  “This isn’t going to work.”

“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.  There’s no such thing as a comfy pull-out.  But what I mean is that you smell like Jax, and that is definitely not working for my cat.”

He rolled over and reached for something on the floor.  Then he turned back and put his shirt in her hands.  “Put that on instead.”

She laughed quietly.  “And you won’t look?”

Micah assured her they wouldn’t.  Tristan snorted.  “Speak for yourself.  I’m trying really hard to see in the dark.”

Pulling off her uncle’s shirt and tugging Tristan’s shirt — that was still warm from his body — over her head, she settled onto her side.  Tristan was at her back and he moved closer, until their bodies touched and she was tucked against him.  Micah wiggled down the bed a bit and rolled away from her, backing against her.  She reached over him and laced her fingers with his, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and inhaling the sweet, spicy scent of him.  He kissed her fingertips, and they all said goodnight.

No matter what the sunrise brought, they were together and that was all that mattered.

Chapter 4

Monday afternoon Jilly Fallon walked through downtown King, Pennsylvania.  No one would recognize the almost-eighteen-year-old.  She wore a dark wig to cover her long, blonde hair, big sunglasses to hide her face, and men’s cologne.  She couldn’t personally stand the stuff.  It made her nose itch and her mountain lion snarl in disgust.  But men’s cologne was something that the other females discovered actually repelled males.  If a female smelled like a male already, male mountain lions tended to look the other way.  Perfume, on the other hand, seemed to have an opposite effect, and drew attention to the females, which wasn’t what they wanted at all.  The females wore heavy colognes to mask their natural lion scents.  Coupled with wigs and sunglasses, it allowed them to keep an eye on things in town without being discovered.

Jilly lived with twelve females in Twin Pines, thirty miles outside of King.  They shared a large home that the head of their all-female pride, Layla, had purchased when they split from the rest of the pride.  It had been a dark, frightening time for Jilly.  Two of their females were killed by the human girlfriend of one of the males in King, and the females feared for their lives and scattered.  Most settled in Canada, but Jilly hadn’t wanted to leave the states and had chosen to follow Layla and the others.

Jilly stopped at the crosswalk and looked at the gas station across the street.  A truck pulled in front of a gas pump.  One of the workers came out of the station, and she recognized him as one of the Whitman brothers.  The truck doors opened and two males got out with a female who had long, blonde hair.  Jilly frowned.  If she didn’t know better, she would think that the female was a mountain lion.  But that didn’t make sense.  She didn’t recognize the female.  Perhaps she was human.  Except there was something about her that screamed
mountain lion
to Jilly.

After a brief pause, the male who came out of the station hugged the blonde female and then another male from the station joined in the hug.  After a moment, Jilly realized that she recognized the two males who had gotten out of the truck as the Harrison brothers.  They weren’t upset that the blonde was being hugged by two other males.  The hairs on the back of Jilly’s neck rose, and her lips twisted in a grimace.  Something was off with the situation.  It almost looked like a…reunion.

She fingered the cell in her pocket for a moment.  It was her duty as a female to report any strange goings-on in the community.  Her heart panged slightly as she lifted the phone from her pocket.  There was a part of her, however small it might be, that wanted to ignore what she saw and report nothing.  She knew the females would cause trouble for those males, whether the female was human, another shifter, or an unidentified female lion.  If she wasn’t a lioness, then it might explain her being mated to the Harrison brothers.  The males had discovered that they could share a mate, forming a polyandrous relationship.  It went against everything she’d ever been taught by the females.  That the males were supposed to only be with female lions and only for procreation.  Having a relationship, creating a family — the females viewed those things as
soft
. 
Weak
.  Females were strong and independent, staying within their all-female pride not out of a sense of camaraderie or family, but because it was their way.  Still, a part of her found the idea of having just one male — or two — care for her and no one else enticing.

She turned away as the small group headed into the station and looked down at her phone.  Calling Layla was the right thing to do for her pride, but it didn’t entirely feel like the right thing.  Some of the females thought Jilly was too soft, that she cared about the males when she shouldn’t.  She would never admit it to any of the females, but she
did
miss the large pride.  The feeling of safety the males had provided, especially the male who raised her.

Snarling inwardly, she dialed Layla and reported.

“Are you on your way back?” Layla asked, after hearing about the two returning males, the suspicious blonde female, and what appeared to be a reunion at the gas station.

“I’m going to do some more scouting.  I’ll be back later,” Jilly said.

“Fine.  I’ll want a full report in the morning.”

Jilly ended the call and walked back to her car she’d left at the park.  She didn’t plan to do more scouting around King, but instead drove north twenty-three miles to Nemo’s Campground.  She parked in the main parking lot and pulled off her sunglasses and wig, running her fingers through her hair and scratching her scalp, glad to be free of the confining wig.  She came to Nemo’s when she wanted to be alone.  None of the females knew what she did.  They wouldn’t understand.  The male who raised her had brought her and her biological brother here for vacations in the summer.  When she left home to join with the females, she came to Nemo’s shortly afterward.  She’d loathed her birth family, but she’d still felt lost.  The females were about as compassionate with her as they were with the males, telling her to accept her role in the pride as one to keep the mountain lion lineage pure and to destroy any usurpers.

A frisson of guilt wafted through her as she thought of the blonde female with the males.  If she was a mate to those males, Jilly had just painted a bright red target on her back with that phone call.  But shouldn’t the males have known better than to bring her back to King?  And on the off chance she was a mountain lion, it made even less sense for her to come to King.  The males in King hated the females with a vengeance and kept an eye out for them.  They hadn’t yet figured out the disguises or that the town was being monitored, so maybe it was just their own fault for being lax.

Rubbing at her temple, she sneezed when she caught another whiff of the strong cologne that masked her natural scent.  She wanted to wash the scent off, shift, and go hunting.  Grabbing a small backpack to stow her things, she got out of the car and headed for one of the many walking trails around the campground.  The trail she chose crossed over a stream and she could rinse in the water and then go off the trail to shift and hunt.

She started down the trail, her boots crushing the sun-dried leaves scattered along the path.  Pausing, she caught the scent of something spicy.  Inhaling again, she lost the scent and shrugged, continuing on her journey.  But the scent plagued her from time to time, making her cat yowl and her body heat.  Sweat poured from her, and it had nothing to do with the sunshine beating down on her through the canopy of trees.

When she finally reached the stream, she peeled off her top and dunked it in the stream, squeezing the cool water over her head.  She was shivering and twitching, her cat pacing in her head.  Anxiety crashed over her, and she scrubbed at her wrists with her shirt to remove the cologne and then splashed cool water on her face.

Something was wrong with her.  Pressing her hand to her heart, she wondered if she was going to die.  Her heart felt as though it might pound out of her chest.

“Are you alright, little kitten?” a male voice asked her.

Her head shot up and she found herself staring at twin males.  They were identical save for one having slightly longer hair than the other.  The one with longer hair was without a shirt and clad only in jeans.  Her cat howled in her head, and her heart pounded so fast that she felt lightheaded.  She’d been crouching next to the stream, and her legs weakened, causing her to tip to the side.  She never hit the ground.  Instead, she was caught up in the strong arms of one of the males.  The same spicy scent she’d smelled before swirled around her as the two males caged her between them.

* * * * *

Fate Myers watched his twin, Wyked, pace around the fire pit where he and his family had enjoyed a campfire the night before.  Wyked was the more aggressive of the two.  Hard where Fate was soft.  Rough where he was smooth.  But he’d never seen his twin so agitated.

“Would you stop pacing?  You’re making me dizzy.”

Wyked snarled and turned.  “Don’t tell me you’re not feeling what I’m feeling.  I’m going batshit crazy.”  As if to prove his words, Wyked tugged on his shirt collar as if he were being choked.

Fate was indeed feeling what his brother was feeling.  A strange, deep anxiety that was making his panther prowl in his mind.  But he was trying to remain calm.  Flying off the handle — pacing like a caged beast — wasn’t going to reveal whatever they were feeling any faster.  At least he didn’t think so.

Their mother, Dionne, stepped out of the RV she shared with their father, Dag.  “It sounds like an elephant stomping around out here.  What’s the matter?”

She sat next to Fate on a folding chair, looking at both her sons with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

Wyked sighed loudly.  “I feel strange.”

“Strange how?” she asked as their dad joined them, resting one hand on their mother’s shoulder.

“Antsy.  Frustrated.”  Wyked’s voice came out on a growl.

She glanced at Fate with a raised brow.  He nodded.  “I feel the same.”

“You’re not pacing,” their dad said.

“I don’t want to get steamrolled by Wyked.”

Their dad rubbed his chin in thought.  “You’ve both been acting strange since we came into Pennsylvania.  I wonder…”  His voice trailed off.

Fate’s cat snapped to attention.  Their dad wondered what?  He straightened and stood, facing their dad.  Wyked came to stand by him.  Fate could feel his twin’s tension, and the tension was mirrored in his own body.  He’d tried to be calm.  Breathe deeply.  Not pace.  But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t feeling as though his cat was about to erupt from his skin.

Their mom looked up at their dad and understanding lit her face.  “Oh, of course.”

Wyked growled.  “What?”

Their dad’s head tilted to the side.  “Maybe you two should take a walk.”

“Stop speaking in riddles!”  Wyked almost howled the words.

Fate put his hand on Wyked’s arm.  “Calm down.”

Wyked spun away, snagged his hands in the collar of his shirt and ripped it off.  In another instant, he shifted into his panther form.  The sunlight glinted on his solid black fur as Wyked roared his displeasure.

Fate watched his brother bound off into the trees.  Looking back at his parents he said, “What’s going on?  What do you see that we don’t?”

“I think we came to this place for a reason.  A reason that is affecting the two of you
and
your beasts,” their dad said as their mom stood and picked up the tatters of Wyked’s shirt.

“By some miracle, the jeans are okay.  Go take them to him so he doesn’t have to walk through the woods naked.  Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for and solve the riddle of your anxiety.”

She dropped Wyked’s jeans into Fate’s hand and then strode to their father, taking his hand and leading him into the camper.  They were both smiling and whispering, but since they walked away, Fate knew they didn’t want to tell him any more or share their thoughts.  The RVs door shut, and Fate was left alone at their campsite.

Tossing Wyked’s jeans over his shoulder, Fate headed into the woods to follow his brother, his mind racing to decipher what would drive him and his brother — and their beasts — crazy.

* * * * *

Wyked knew that racing off in his cat form was childish, but he was feeling too testy to not give in to his beast.  Of course the rational part of his mind, however small it was at the moment, wanted to go back and find out what secret their parents were hiding behind their knowing smiles.

As he slowed his run, he rounded a tree and headed back towards the campsite.  He might only be nineteen, but that didn’t mean that he could act like a temperamental five-year-old.  He needed to talk to Fate and try to figure things out.  That they were both feeling strangely, and had been for the last few days, meant that something was going on.  He caught the scent of something amazing and froze, his whole body on alert.  Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth and drew in the scent slowly, allowing it to saturate his tongue and the deeper scent receptors at the back of his mouth.  A growl rumbled in his chest.  It was the most amazing scent.  Thunderstorms and strawberries mixed together.  Sweet.  Exciting.

Someone was walking towards him, and he knew it was his twin.  Shifting into his human form, he held up a hand as his brother began to speak.  “Smell that?” Wyked asked.

Instead of asking what he was talking about, Fate stopped and inhaled.  His eyes flashed to the gold of his beast for a moment.  “What
is
that?”

Clarity rushed through Wyked’s mind, and in that moment, he knew that Fate had come to the same conclusion.  They’d been feeling anxious since they crossed into Pennsylvania because their mate was here in this state.  And not just in the state, but near them.  So near that they could smell her.

Turning towards the scent, he tugged on the jeans that Fate tossed at him and they moved together through the woods and followed the scent of their mate.  The sound of rushing water greeted his ears as they moved through the trees, and a stream came into view.  A young blonde woman knelt next to the stream wearing only a thin white tank and splashing water on her face.