Chapter Twenty-Eight

Abbey stepped into the kitchen that night after the kids were in bed and found Julian at the table once again immersed in papers, bills and lists. He was rubbing his temples and seemed overwhelmed and stressed.

Abbey came up behind him and he dropped his hands and leaned back against her. She laid her fingertips against his temples and rubbed gently.

“Are you okay?”

“Better now,” Julian replied with a sigh. “You should be resting. After last night and all the excitement today you have to be tired.”

“A little,” Abbey admitted. “It felt so good to finally put Samantha in her place after all these years.”

“I would say it did,” Julian agreed. “That woman is evil, Abbey, I could see it in her eyes. I don’t want you to worry yourself about people like that anymore. You’re too good to give her anymore of your time or anymore of your thoughts.”

Abbey smiled and kissed his head, “Why don’t you come to the living room and rest with me?”

“I need to finish…”

Abbey moved her lips to his cheek, “I’ll finish it in the morning. I‘m decent with numbers.” She took his hand and tugged, “Come on.”

That little tug was all it took to have Julian coming off the chair and following close behind her as she led him into the living room.

Marcus was just stoking up the fire after getting it roaring in the fireplace. The lights were down, darkness pressed against the windows and Abbey settled down on the couch between the two men.

She rested her head against Julian’s chest while laying her legs across Marcus’s lap. She practically purred and her back arched when Marcus began messaging her feet. Abbey let herself relax that way for several long moments. Julian’s heart was beating soothingly beneath her hear and Marcus’s big, calloused hands were hitting all the right spots on her sore feet.

But she knew they needed to talk. She needed to be prepared for what could be coming their way.

“Do you think the council is really coming?” she questioned, her voice disrupting the silent peace they’d all been enjoying.

“Could be.” Julian replied.

“Yes.” Marcus was more honest.

“Should we be running?” Abbey asked.

Julian shook his head. “If we run then they’ll chase us. They have Hunters and eventually we’d be caught. We can’t risk the pups like that.”

“Hunters?” Abbey frowned. She’d never heard of them before. “What are Hunters?”

Julian pushed her hair from her cheek, “Hunters are born to mortals but it becomes obvious when they reach six or seven that they are not like their parents. They have super human senses, strength and abilities. There used to be a council that oversaw them but it was overthrown about a hundred and fifty years ago. It isn’t known how many Hunters escaped, and it’s impossible for me to say how many have been born since. But the council has at least one that it can call on and one is all it will take. Hunters can hunt anything and they’re dangerous…. Very dangerous. You can’t smell them and you won’t see them unless they want you to.”

“Fuckin’ sneaky little bastards,” Marcus agreed.

“Somehow this isn’t making me feel better,” Abbey grumbled.

“You wanted honesty,” Marcus reminded her.

“Will they kill us?”

“No,” Julian and Marcus replied in unison. “They aren’t evil. But we did break rules so prison isn’t out of the question.”

Abbey swallowed hard, “Prison?”

“Abbey, quit worrying so much. There’s a chance they won’t really come. The only way they’ll show up is if the sheriff contacts one of the council members and I don’t think he will,” Julian assured her.

“And I’m your mate.. Surely they’ll understand that you had to change me. Any of them would have done the same for their mate, right?” Abbey questioned.

“That’s right.” Julian agreed.

Abbey realized that Marcus had stopped answering questions and was staring into the fire. She had a feeling that Julian wasn’t being completely honest and was simply telling her what she wanted to hear.

After this morning she should get upset with him for doing that but she couldn’t seem to right now. Finally Marcus spoke again, “Abbey, no matter what happens; if the council comes, if they don’t come, if they realize I killed those two, if they don’t, if they want us punished or decide to be lenient, I can promise you one thing--”

Abbey looked into his blue eyes so light they were nearly translucent and saw the love he had for her shining back at her, “What?”

Marcus’s voice was low and even, “They will not harm you. I will protect you and those pups until my very last breath if it comes to that and I will not hesitate. And no matter what happens I do not want you to ever think that I regret meeting you. The short time that we have had together has been the best of my life. You and those pups have given me more in this short time than I could ever hope to pay you back for.”

Tears filled Abbey’s eyes as she rose up and threw herself against his chest. Marcus held her tightly as Julian stroked her hair and moved closer.

“Don’t talk like that!” Abbey exclaimed. “I can’t lose you. I can’t lose either one of you. I refuse to believe that anything bad is going to happen. The sheriff is not going to call the council, the deaths will be ruled an accident and we will go on with our lives and forget all about this.”

“You’re probably right.” Julian cooed into her ear.

“I am right,” Abbey snapped in return.

“Yes ma’am.” Marcus conceded.

Abbey hadn’t realized until today how very fragile her new life was. She’d had no reason to think that it could be ripped away from her in an instant. It was not fair. She had lived for so long without any real happiness other than those few smiles her children had given her. There had been constant fear. Fear that she would be killed during one of her beatings. Fear that the kids would be their father’s next target. Fear that her children would starve, that they would get sick, that they would lose their sad excuse of a home.

Julian and Marcus had given her true happiness, they’d given her children true happiness and Abbey was not going to believe that some council could come take that away from them simply because they did not belong to a pack. She refused to believe that life would be that unfair.

So instead she decided to act as if all was good with the world. Perhaps if she ignored the troubles they would simply disappear.

Abbey pressed her lips tenderly to Marcus’s mouth. She rested her fingers against his bearded cheek and felt the tension there. Her mate was worried. Abbey deepened the kiss, desperate to take his mind away from things that caused him anything but pleasure and happiness.

The tension disappeared from Marcus in a rush and his hands buried themselves in her hair before he took over the kiss. She felt his teeth nipping at her lip and a growl tore from her throat. She felt Julian beside her and pulled away from Marcus to taste Julian’s kiss.

She felt hot, wild, just on the edge of out of control as she alternated between kissing both men. Her mates. She loved the scent and taste of them.

Abbey felt herself lifted from the couch and her legs went around Marcus’s waist as he carried her across the living room. He sat her down on her feet beside the armchair and his big hands were rough as they tore her clothes from her body. A desperation was in his movements and Abbey matched the emotion.

She cried out when Julian dropped to his knees and his tongue danced across her thighs, leaving trails of trembling awareness in its wake.

Marcus’s mouth closed around her swollen nipple, twirling the bud with his tongue before nipping at it and leaving Abbey panting and clinging to him as she struggled to regain her balance.

Somehow Abbey found herself sitting upon the arm chair with Julian knelt in front of her. His kisses moved higher up her thigh and then settled on her throbbing clit.

Abbey threw her head back and lost herself in the pure pleasure of his tongues caresses. She felt her release building and knew that Marcus sensed it too because just as it began to rip through her he sunk his teeth into the mark he’d placed on her left shoulder.

The pleasure Abbey felt was unlike anything else. Her blood burned inside her veins. The ecstasy was so all-consuming that she went blind with it. She felt the raging animal in her blood and her teeth sharpened as she leaned down and let them sink into Julian’s right shoulder.

Julian stiffened beneath her bite and then convulsed with his own release as Abbey’s name left his mouth like a curse.

Her head still reeling from the power of her orgasm, Abbey found herself moved to her knees sideways on the chair. Marcus slid himself into her from behind without warning and Abbey would have screamed his name but Julian’s lips on hers swallowed the sound.

The firelight danced across their sweating bodies moving in unison and their kissing lips. Abbey whimpered when Marcus pulled out of her. She turned to look at him and he smiled softly before picking her up in his arms.

“I want you in the bed, little Minx.”

Abbey traced her tongue along the mark on Marcus’s left shoulder and he trembled against her, whispering her name and cursing her.

The bed was soft beneath her as Marcus laid her down gently. Abbey had never felt this side of his lovemaking before.

He and Julian both moved so tenderly around her. The kisses were soft, the caresses were tender. She lost track of who was touching her where. Whose fingers were caressing her breast, whose teeth were nibbling her neck. All she knew was that her body was soaring.

So many times they brought her to her peak and sent her tumbling over only to pick her right back up and lift her once again.

Abbey’s body became spent. She could hardly hold her eyes open as the brother’s finally seemed to become sated themselves and settled down beside her on the bed. They wrapped her in the protective cocoon of their bodies and whispered their love for her into her ears.

Abbey was able to pretend, if only for a moment, that everything was going to be just fine.

***

Sheriff Bingham rubbed his aching eyes as he sat at his desk and waited on the telephone call that should be coming in soon. He was tired, it was nearing midnight but he refused to go home and call it a night until he heard from Ben Brashear from over St. Pierre. Joseph and Jason’s bodies had been taken there, nearly two hours away, where the medical examiner had better equipment to help aid him in the autopsy.

As if on cue, the telephone rang. Sheriff Bingham heaved out a heavy sigh, dreading what this call would tell him, but knowing still what it would be. He picked the phone up and pressed the receiving to his ear, “Hello?”

“Sheriff Bingham, I figured you’d still be at the office waiting for the my call.”

“Yeah, I’m here, Ben.”

“I finished up those autopsies, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Bingham‘s grip tightened on the pen in his free hand, “And?”

“And you were right, Sheriff. Some of those wounds aren’t consistent with a crash.”

There were days that Sheriff Bingham hated his career choice and today was one of them, “What seems off about them?”

“Well… it looks like they were punched, Sheriff, and kicked repeatedly. A few of the bruises are more consistent with those kinds of injuries. And there was something else…”

“Spit it out, Ben. It’s late and I’m tired.”

“Claw marks, sir. I found a few claw marks. And both men had gunpowder residue on their hands.”

“But their guns weren’t missing any rounds.” Sheriff Bingham grumbled.

“I’m just telling you what I found, sir.”

“Alright, Ben, I apologize. Just leave the bodies alone, I have a phone call to make and I’m not sure what’ll happen after I make it.”

“Alright then, Sheriff. Try to get some rest.”

“You too, Ben.”

Sheriff Bingham hung up the phone and rubbed roughly at his face with his hands. He didn’t want to make the phone call he knew he had to make. He had a job to uphold the law and that included the werewolf laws as well. He certainly didn’t want to ignore the wrongs that Julian and Marcus had done and end up with council coming down on him.

Marcus and Julian were good men but it was clear, to Sheriff Bingham, that they’d done wrong. The fact remained that he was fairly certain they’d murdered those men up on that mountain.

There was only one thing that he could do. He picked up the phone, scanned his rolodex for the number he needed. His fingers dialed the number quickly before he could talk them out of it and the line began to ring.

“Hello?” A tired, gruff voice answered on the third ring.

“Zeke Thompson?”

“Yeah.”

Sheriff Bingham scratched at his cheek, “Alpha Zeke Thompson?”

“Yeah, do you have any idea what time it is? Who is this?”

“I apologize for the late call,” Sheriff Bingham sighed. “My name is Sheriff Bingham, I’m up here in Crittenden, Wyoming. I’m afraid we have a problem up here.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A werewolf problem….” Sheriff Bingham tossed down his pen. “A rogue werewolf problem.”