The Trail Back (7 page)

“I think that he’s dead, guys,” Brody said, “I’ll go and get some more help.”

He vanished, and Josh padded over to stand beside Shane.
“He came for Abbie.”

“There are going to be others coming for her,”
Shane said.
“I won’t leave her protection to Brayden and the rest of the pride.”

“There’s Kaitlyn to protect as well,”
Josh said.

Josh looked into his brother’s glowing eyes and saw something he’d never seen before—fear. You had to have a desire to live if you were afraid to die. Shane wanted to live. Josh didn’t recognize that same feeling in himself yet, but he recognized that he was now as determined as his wolf was to keep Abbie safe from this threat.

“She’s mine,”
Shane said.
“They won’t take her from me.”

“I’m with you all the way, brother,”
Josh said.

Brayden had ignored his brothers as they’d ran from the clinic. Abbie had become his alone to care for. Brayden had lain beside her on the slim cot and held her tenderly as she cried for them. She had scented their pain as clearly as he had.

“They hurt so much that they don’t even want to live. The spark of life is absent from their souls,” Abbie said, her sobs finally slowing.

She’d known them for five minutes and had seen straight into the hearts of his brothers. When her sobs slowed to occasional hiccups, he rose up on his elbow and wiped the wet tracks of tears from her face with his fingers. “It happened a long time before we met you.”

He had spoken to no one but Caleb of the incident that had forever damned his brothers, but Abbie deserved to know the reason for their actions. She deserved to know why she would never have mates.

“Stop. You’re in pain, Brayden. You don’t have to do this. I know it’s nothing I’ve done. It’s simply the way it is.”

Brayden growled and raised an eyebrow in question at his mate. “I find I don’t like the smell of despondency and defeat coming from you any more than I did the scent of your pain.”

“Well sorry, your highness, but I’m fresh out of cheery, optimistic thoughts this month.”

Brayden smiled down at his mate.
My brothers have gone off to kill themselves, and my mate has managed to make me happy. She’s a certified miracle.
“I like the scent of your anger much more, little wolf.” Brayden forgot a lifetime of manners and lowered his mouth to hers.

When she gasped in surprise he took the opportunity to swipe his tongue into her mouth and take a taste of the mate he could never claim. He moaned. He couldn’t help it. She tasted so good that he felt the pleasure of their kiss suffuse through his entire body. He hated parting from her soft lips.

“This is very confusing. How can I feel like this after all I’ve just been through,” Abbie said. She reached up her small hand to cup his face. She was shaking, but he knew from the change in her scent that she wasn’t feeling scared.

“The mating bond engenders great attraction between mates, no matter what. Josh and Shane feel the pull, too. We both smelled the musk on them.”

She nodded and looked so sad he had to kiss her again.

“Thank you for that, little wolf,” he said, already missing her sweet taste.

She just watched him, her gaze alight with the pale red glow of her wolf.

“When I was fourteen my parents took us all to a small cabin high up the mountains above our home for the weekend. It was not long after my first shift, and my father had taken me out on my first hunt. It was the happiest I’d ever been, until today.” He saw her blink in surprise at his words, but he didn’t pause in his story to reassure her.

He tore his gaze from Abbie’s beautiful face and stared at the uninterrupted white of the clinic’s wall. He could see the forest as it had been that day, thickly covered in snow that sparkled under the weak winter sun.

“I remember the joy I felt at running as my wolf. My paws perfectly suited to running on the deep snowdrifts, being all but invisible in the snowy landscape, scenting the rabbits and deer as my wolf.”

“Beautiful,” Abbie whispered.

He looked down to see she was also staring at the wall. “While we were away hunting a group of hunters found my mother and brothers alone in the cabin. Josh and Shane were only four years old. My father felt my mother’s distress through their bond, and then we heard her howls when she shifted in an attempt to protect her children.”

“No.”

Abbie grasped the arm he had resting across her body, but he didn’t want to stop. He needed her to know everything so she could truly understand.

“We heard her die. I still hear her screams in my nightmares. When we reached the cabin they were gone. The hunters had taken her body and had also taken my brothers. It took my father and me nearly a week to find them. The hunters had skinned my mother in front of Josh and Shane. The horror of that sight had forced a shift, despite their age. Their wolves had taken over to protect their young minds.”

“No,” Abbie repeated, gripping his arm tighter. Her claws pierced his skin as her wolf shared in her horror.

“They were chained in a barn when we arrived, my mother’s pelt drying a few feet from them. Once my father and I had killed every last one of the hunters, my father lay down next to my mother’s, his mate’s, remains and simply died. Josh and Shane were unreachable to my wolf. Their human minds were totally submerged. Their wolves had complete control. I took them home to our ranch and let them run free. I remained with them as my wolf, and it took me two years to get them back.”

“They stayed as wolves for two years?” Abbie asked.

Brayden released the vision of that barn from his mind and dropped his eyes to hers. Her eyes were bright red, her canines visible between her slightly parted lips.

“We all did. It took me that long to coax their humanity back.” He stared fixedly at her to make sure she understood his next words. “I didn’t really succeed.”

She nodded, and he found the strength to finish the story of his brother’s suffering. “I home schooled them from when they were six. They were unable to tolerate being indoors for any length of time. Once they were old enough to work they got jobs as forest rangers here in Pine Falls. We were accepted into the pride by Caleb, despite my brothers’ instability. They enjoy being outside as much as possible. I’m sure they still spend most of the day as wolves, even now.”

“That has to be the saddest, and cruelest, thing I’ve ever heard,” Abbie said, a final tear overflowing her brimming eyes and running down her cheek.

She released his arm as her claws receded back into her fingers and she tried to sit up. His mate had just been released from a month of imprisonment, torture, and violation, yet she still felt sympathy for his brothers. She was a deeply caring person who Brayden was honored to be spending the rest of his life with, even if the rest of his life comprised only of today.

“I wish I had more time with you, Abbie Munroe. I think I’d find you’re quite extraordinary.”

“I’m just sorry I wasn’t enough, not enough to tempt them into taking a chance at living.”

Brayden was about to answer Abbie when Brody appeared at the side of the cot. The demon’s pale blue jumper was splattered with blood. The coppery scent had Brayden’s wolf growling as he leaped over Abbie to stand beside Brody. He was barely containing his wolf as it pushed for him to allow the shift, to allow him free to take on the threat no matter what it was.

“Vampire,” Brody said. He grasped Brayden’s arm and took him through the cold space between the elements.

* * * *

Abbie screamed when Brayden disappeared before her eyes. She held her arms across her stomach and braced them against the wounds as she sat up and slid to the floor. That had her screaming again. White-hot pain speared her. “This place, where ever the hell it is, is messed up.”

Charlie ran back into the room. She reached out to catch Abbie as she fell, but Abbie didn’t want any help. She wanted to go home, back to Canada, back to her cabin in the woods and her beautiful huskies. She shifted, the pain of her wounds adding to the discomfort of her shift. She pushed through the agony and let her wolf take her. She ran past the doctor and between the legs of a huge man standing in the doorway.

“Oh no you don’t,” the man said. “Brayden will kill me if I let you leave.”

He reached for her, but she was a particularly small wolf, and she slipped past him. The room she ran into held no people, but she smelled cat, bear, and wolf in the air.

Charlie ran after her. “Abbie, wait.”

Abbie ran for the light coming from the open doors across the room. She was outside in seconds and ran for the trees on the far side of a large parking lot.

“We’ve done this dance before, Abbie,” said the vampire.

He was running beside her, his stride relaxed and fluid. It was very unlike hers at the moment. She was running as hard as she could. Her heart felt as though it was about to explode from all the effort she was expending. Her wounds were hurting less and less, masked by the adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her. She was also healing more rapidly now that she was shifted.

“Will you come back and talk to us?”

Something had just appeared at the bedside and taken her mate. Abbie was not sitting there and waiting for it to come and get her as well. She kept running, even though the vampire was easily keeping pace with her.

“The man who took Brayden was a member of our pride. His name is Brody. He didn’t mean to frighten you. He is a demon and mate to the bears who own the tavern you were just in. He will not hurt Brayden.”

She didn’t slow her frantic pace as she entered the safety of the trees. She lived and worked in the forest and immediately felt the familiar peace that being surrounded by trees gave her. It slowly eased her panic. She desperately wanted to go home. She wanted to go home and heal, heal from all the pain inflicted by the vampires and inflicted by her mates.

The vampire slowed to a walk as she did. She was panting with the strain of her run. After being in captivity for so long, her muscles had wasted, and she was so weak that even two minutes of running had exhausted her.

Abbie stopped in a small clearing. Her legs were shaking with the effort of holding her up, so she sat, then lay, on the pine needles of the forest floor. The smell of the clean, pine-scented air washed away some of the cloying aroma of blood and excrement that had surrounded her for so long in that cage.

My mates aren’t coming back. Whether they’ve gone to die, or just gone, I don’t know. But they were saying good-bye when they left.

“I can’t hear your thoughts, young Abbie, as I can my mate’s. But I’m growing accustomed to the differing scents that emotions convey. I know you’re feeling guilty and sad.”

Abbie stared up at the vampire she had no chance of outrunning.

“When Josh and Shane left they had decided to end their lives. They thought it would free you and Brayden to mate.”

Abbie’s heart clenched painfully. She didn’t even know them, but it seemed as though her appearance in their lives had driven them to their deaths. For that she would feel deeply guilty until she died herself.

“They were, however, prevented from doing so when they were attacked by a vampire that was sent to find you.”

* * * *

Shane stepped from the vampire’s body and shifted when Brody came back with Brayden. “This fucker came looking for Abbie. There may be more of them,” Shane said. He swung his head around searching for any imminent threat.

“Aiden is with both her and Kaitlyn. He’ll know if any others approach. Caleb and his brothers are there, too. They’ll scent any that may get close,” Brayden said. “What do you care anyway?”

Shane was shocked at the vehemence in his brother’s voice. He breathed deep and smelled the anger coming from his brother. Brayden had never been this angry before—not at them. Josh shifted and came to stand beside him.

“What happened? Why are you so angry?” Josh asked.

“I always thought I was the stupid twin,” Shane said, not bothering to look at Josh. He kept his eyes on Brayden. Brayden was the dangerous one right now.

“Why should I be angry?” Brayden ground his teeth together. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his side. “The brothers I have loved and bled for, for the last forty-six years, decide dying is easier than living. I get to hold my mate in my arms as she cries for the loss of mates she never got to know. Vampires are coming to kill Abbie and Kaitlyn, putting the whole pride in danger. Why should any of that make me angry?”

Brayden’s eyes were shining bright red. He was shorter and leaner than Shane and Josh, but Shane could see how formidable Brayden was. He was a solid mass of angry shifter.

“You’ve never been angry at us before,” Shane said. He spoke softly as he wondered at the rage in his brother.

“You’ve never been such monumentally selfish bastards before,” Brayden replied. “Until today I always had hope, hope that you’d finally let the pain go. I had to. They were my parents, too, you know.”

Shane looked at Josh and found him looking as crestfallen as Shane felt. Not once in all these years had he even had that thought. Brayden may not have seen their mother killed and skinned, but he’d seen her pelt. He’d seen their father die, as they had. Brayden had been the one to take their bodies home and bury them when he was just fourteen years old. He’d suffered, too.

“I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in my pain for half a century. I had two brothers to care for. Two brothers who I wept for night after night as they howled in pain at the shit fate had thrown their way. So when fate finally brings us—yes,
us—something good, something potentially wonderful, and my narcissistic brothers decide it’s time to give up, I get a little angry.”

“Well, that explains it. Thanks.” Shane now understood the saying about steam coming from people’s ears when they got mad. Brayden was on the very verge of shifting when Brody appeared beside him with Elliot.