by Jana Leigh
Hope frowned. “If you would have identified yourself.”
“I know, but what fun would that have been,” Mak said and then looked at everyone who was staring at them. “Maybe we should take this somewhere else. We have a lot to do, including getting to know one another a little, but we also have a mission.”
*****
Four hours later, Hope and Gio couldn’t argue with the fact their mate wasn’t only organized, but also very powerful. They had taken the time to grab something to eat where they talked a little about their pasts. Hope and Gio shared they had already had a relationship such as it was. It didn’t seem to bother Mak, especially when he told them it didn’t matter as long as they had not taken a third.
“We would never,” Hope said and looked at Gio and frowned. “Well, I would never have done that. Listen, we discovered we were mates a long time ago, you know as well as I do when you find your mate, no one else will do. So we waited, but as time wore on so did my patience. We have bonded, but our mating is not complete.”
Mak grinned. “You created a blood bond without mating?”
Hope nodded and Gio grinned. “Had to make sure I tied her with me somehow, you will learn our little mate here has a mind of her own. She seems to like going out and doing things that are dangerous without backup. I had to make sure she was safe.”
Mak nodded. “I have already seen our mating, it is important we do it in the right time, if we do it to soon things will change yet again and we will have a bigger mess.”
Hope frowned. “So what you are saying is that some weird dream is going to tell us when we can mate? I mean I am all for destiny and shit like that, but seriously? This is what we are waiting for?”
Mak grinned. “Come on now, I have been living with this my whole life, can you think how it has been for me? Should I do this or that, and what will it affect. It kinda sorta sucks.”
“You know this whole thing sucks,” Hope said and looked around. “I have been trying for years to figure out some of this shit. It is like there is something blocking me from seeing shit. I have all these powers that work, I can feel it but I can’t control them. And finding out Kade is my brother, where is Stephan? He is missing, all of this sucks because part of our family is missing and we don’t know where the hell they are and seriously, what are we going to do if some of them are dead?”
“Can’t think like that,” Mak said softly. “If I did, I would have driven myself crazy a long time ago. You know, I can remember some things from when I was young, like I said flashes and stuff. But I remember playing with a group of kids in a huge garden, it was strange because we were all happy and carefree, but one thing sticks in my head.”
Gio leaned forward and asked, “What?”
“When we are all together, our powers were unrivaled, but one of us, and I don’t know who has a special gift, one which will benefit us in the end.” Mak smiled.
“What is that?” Hope said and Mak looked at her closely.
“One of us holds all of the gifts that each of us have, all of them, they can use them as well, this same person can also change our gifts, switch them back and forth for whatever we are doing. For example, if Gio was in danger and couldn’t find a way out of the situation, this child could give him the ability to pop out of the situation and get to safety.”
Hope frowned. “How can they do that? I mean they are our gifts, it is not like someone can take them and give them away.”
“That is not what I am saying, we all have gifts that were given to us, and most of the time that is what we do. But look at the Drekinn Council, Hope, you are the Seer? Rissa the Beta? Yeah you both have the ability to do that. Is it your strength area? No, but it is where you are supposed to be. Question why.”
Hope was silent and she looked at Gio and Mak for a long while, knowing that Mak could see the past, present, and future, which technically is the Seer of the group, and while she had the ability to see things in the future, she had to admit that some of her other powers were more effective in situations. Like the ability to pop in and out of places, or the ability to know so she could strategize and plan.
“Okay, still not with you here,” Hope said slowly.
“In the books there are a set of twins who were born to Jo and Tey, Cassandra and Christen. It was well documented the two had the ability to heal and draw people together. Right?”
Hope and Gio both nodded. “Also documented as the strongest of children was Hope, she was the leader per se.”
“I have no desire to be the leader,” Hope said. “Marcus, I mean Kade is, he has always been meant to be the Alpha of the pack. Stephan is strong, he is powerful, but he also has another path to take.”
“How do you know that?” Mak asked softly.
Hope shrugged. “I don’t know, I just do.”
“Just the same as you know Kade is supposed to be Alpha?” Mak asked.
Hope nodded. “I was right.”
“You were, but when you were young, you also knew who and what each of the children were going to need in order to get to this place where we would need these powers and need to be able to use them,” Mak said slowly and Gio leaned forward and looked at Mak.
“Are you saying Hope is the one who can pull and transfer powers to those who need it?” Gio asked.
Mak grinned and leaned back. “That is exactly what I am say, she contains all of the powers that are needed to defeat the Ulfer, however, one person can’t do it. The rest of the Chosen children have their own powers, which are strong and useful, but during the final battle, they will each need something else, something only Hope can give them.”
“What?” Hope said.
“That I do not know, I only know that our mating needs to happen at a certain time, because when we mate, all of the powers which have been latent in you will burst out, and when that happens, we have to be prepared.”
“Why?” Gio said.
Mak laughed. “Because the pull that Calli, Rissa, and Cherri have, that Hope gave them when they were smaller will magnify, and wherever we are when that happens, the children will come. We have to be in the right place when that happens or we risk the chance of them being captured.”
Chapter Seven
Mates, Hope thought and watched as the two men who were destined to be hers forever worked alongside her as they planned for the move to Colorado. It had been decided, the pack needed to move back to where everything began. She and the others had talked about going home. Because that is the way they felt about it. Hope had felt a deep sense of satisfaction knowing they were going back to where her and Kade’s parents lived.
She had also been worried about Stephan. Now that Kade remembered him, he wanted him found, like immediately. Hope had grinned, she had spent enough time with him to know the years they had been separated, nothing had changed. Kade was her protector; he had proven it already by threatening to kick both Gio’s and Mak’s asses if they hurt her. That had been a fun conversation as she chuckled to herself, remembering.
“Do you like where your dick is located?” Kade had asked both Gio and Mak who were grinning and not even remotely worried about being threatened but they had both nodded. “Good, remember that, ‘cause my mate and her best friends know exactly how to remove that appendage with the maximum amount of pain so fast it will make your head spin. Don’t think for one second I won’t unleash her on you, especially since she is pregnant, all those hormones need a release.”
“Valid threat,” Gio said softly and nodded.
“There is seriously too much stuff going on here,” Mak said.
“It is a nuthouse,” Hope said and grinned. “It drove me nuts for a while, seriously, but then it felt familiar, like I had always been in a place like this even though I didn’t remember it. Reading on the New Council, I would bet we are close, some of the women were characters.”
“Including your mom, Cami,” Mak said softly and Hope bit her lip and nodded.
“I read about her,” she whi
spered.
“She was a force to be reckoned with,” Gio said softly. “So were the rest of them, I have images of all of them together, I remember my fathers being annoyed when they would have girls’ night.”
“Yeah, the infamous girls’ night,” Mak said. “You know there are still some people in Colorado that talk about them. Especially a bar in Denver they went to for someone’s bachelorette party. Apparently it was wild.”
“I wish I would have known her,” Hope said. “Or at least remember her. I have tried, I just can’t.”
“It will come back, and then you will have all the wonderful memories of your parents,” Mak said.
“It just sucks, ‘cause you know they went through all they went through and to what end? They lost. If they would have found the real prophesy before the Wars began it may have changed everything,” Hope said and Mak looked at her intently. Was it time to tell them? Maybe not quite yet.
All of them had noticed the longer they were together the stronger the mating pull was. Mak knew when they were supposed to mate, and yet he hadn’t shared it. His excuse was because it would bring more stress, knowing. But damn, the not knowing and the fucking wanting was driving her nuts to begin with. It sucked.
For two days they had been working side by side, and then sharing their free time together to get to know one another. Not the best courtship on record, but seriously, Hope didn’t give a shit, she only wanted to get this going because she was feeling very uneasy about being here at this Drekinn compound right now, something was telling her they needed to hurry, and she never ignored her feelings.
Hope stood and looked around the room, they were in the main common area, and they were getting boxes packed and people organized. Their announcement had caused a lot of panic at first, and just like they predicted, some of the people weren’t happy about moving yet again. That was until Kade explained their reasoning, then everyone was on board. The people wanted to go home.
Sabrina and Trina had been hard to get a hold of, and so far no one had spoken to them. Rissa was trying to get someone at the hotel to answer their phone, but nothing. After looking online, they saw an unpredicted snowstorm had hit the area, and it was bad. Kade and Calli decided they were going ahead with their plan, and if nothing else, they would figure it out on the fly. Not the best plan in the entire world since the numbers of the people whom were moving was in the hundreds.
Hope looked at Mak who was bending over lifting a box, damn, his ass was fine. She saw Gio out of the corner of her eye looking at the same thing and smirked. She knew he was Bi and it didn’t matter, it was supposed to be that way, she had accepted it a long time ago.
Having two mates was going to be challenging, juggling both of them, but honestly, she looked forward to the day she wouldn’t have to be a kick ass bitch and would be able to focus on being a mate. Of course she didn’t know what that entailed, hell, she had never learned how to cook, why would she, eating in pubs was the way of her life. She wondered if they expected her to cook, or clean, well shit, that was seriously gonna suck, she didn’t do either, in fact, she was a slob.
Gio whispered in her ear, “Stop panicking, I can feel it from here.”
She frowned and glared at him. “You can’t tell me what to feel.”
He shook his head with humor. “Baby, I know you better than you know yourself, right now you are worried we are going to want Suzy homemaker, and we won’t, we want you.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” she smirked.
Gio laughed loudly, Mak turned and smiled at them, and he continued. “DO you remember the day we met?”
Hope rolled her eyes. “Of course I do. You were in an alley looking for an Ulfer for information. You had tracked him there, and I had been walking by following up on a lead about a guy who had been arrested for going rogue. I heard you, went to check and we met. I hated you on site.”
Gio smiled bigger. “No you didn’t, but I will let that go. And that is not the first time we met.”
“Yes it is,” Hope said.
“No it is not, the first time we met was when we were children,” Gio said.
“But I don’t remember it,” she argued.
“I do, when we were talking earlier I remembered. Your parents had flown into our compound to visit. They put us all in a playroom with a nanny to watch us. You walked right up to me and said, ‘you are my mate, that means you do what I say’. We were very young, and I fell in love.”
“You can’t fall in love as a child.” Hope chuckled.
“Yes you can, because when I saw you for the second time, my heart knew it belonged to you,” Gio whispered and Hope narrowed her eyes.
“What have I told you about being nice?”
“I know you hate talking about feelings and stuff, but it doesn’t change the fact, you belong to me, I belong to you, and Mak belongs to us as well. We are going to mate, and be happy, none of us will try to change the other because we are all too strong to fall into that mistake,” Gio said.
Hope closed her eyes and then opened them again. She saw the raw need in his eyes and remembered what it was like to have him hold her in his arms. He was a good lover, and she craved it all the time when they were apart, and when they were together, it got worse, but she controlled it, like she always did. Maybe it was time to let loose and actually make an attempt to get this whole mating thing going. Even though they couldn’t consummate their mating, they could still move it forward. She had been holding back, being standoffish, mostly because that was her way.
Since she was young she felt like a freak, of course now she understood why, she was missing part of her—she, Kade, and Stephan were triplets, part of each other. Even finding Kade it felt like a piece of her that had been missing had finally returned. She wished they could find Stephan, he was also her protector like Kade, but he was also her confidant. The quietest of the three, Stephan was a natural born peacemaker. Even though she didn’t remember him fully, she did remember him. Damn it, she wanted her family back.
Mak walked to them and when they were this close, the snap of electricity crackled around them. The mating call was getting strong; she really didn’t know how much longer she was going to be able to hold out.
“Hey,” Mak said. “Do you guys want to go grab something to eat?”
Hope nodded and put down the clipboard she had been holding and yelled at Vivi who was in the corner, ordering people around. Silently they walked to the dining room where they had a buffet set up, like they had for the last few days.
“Go sit,” Mak said. “I will grab you food.”
“Do you know what I want?” Hope frowned.
“Yep, you want mac and cheese and ketchup, which is totally gross by the way,” Mak said.
“Hey, that is my comfort food, one of the few things I remember about being a kid. My mom made that for me all the time, I loved it,” Hope argued and Mak chuckled and then leaned over and kissed her on the nose.
“Cute,” he said and walked away while Hope, the hard ass bitch, stood there stunned. He hadn’t just done that in front of people. She looked around and thankfully, no one had actually noticed.
Hope went to the farthest table in the room where no one could interrupt them and sat down. A few minutes later, Mak and Gio appeared with a huge bowl of mac and cheese, a bottle of ketchup, and three beers. She looked at them surprised and said, “You are eating the same thing?”
Both men smiled and Mak said, “We decided we needed to see what all the fuss was about.”
Hope shook her head and then grabbed a fork and said, “You have to eat it the right way or you won’t get it.”
Both men watched as she took the bottle of ketchup and poured some into the bowl and then mixed it up until the cheese looked orange and then she shook some pepper and salt on it and handed them forks and waited. Both men looked at it suspiciously, it had sounded like a good idea at the time when they were getting food but looking at it now, they were ha
ving second thoughts.
“Come on you pussies, just try it.” Hope laughed.
Both men took a bite and both grinned around the fork. “See, I told you,” Hope muttered and then took her own fork full of food.
She took her bite and then closed her eyes, thinking how good it was. Pulling the fork slowly from her mouth, she opened her eyes to see both men staring at her with hunger on their faces, and not for mac and cheese either.
“What?” she muttered.
“Fuck me,” Gio said. “You can make mac and cheese sexy.”
Mak took a deep breath and said, “Hell yeah she can, can you imagine what she would look like sucking one of our cocks?”
“Shit,” Gio said, shifting uncomfortably.
Hope grinned. “All I have to do is sit here and eat, you two can torture yourself.”
“You mean you are not hot and bothered around us at all?” Mak lowered his voice and Hope grinned and shook her head.
“You guys are hot and all, but I can control it.”
Mak looked at Gio and raised an eyebrow. They had talked last night, Mak said the time for their mating was nearing, and they were going crazy waiting. At least the two men had been able to talk about what they wanted in a relationship. Last night proved they were on the same page.
Mak had knocked on Gio’s door last night and waited impatiently for the door to open. The two had been working all day long side by side and each time they had brushed up against each other the searing awareness shot through both of them. It was driving Mak nuts and he needed to talk to Gio. He was Bi, had always been Bi, but never acted on it, he knew the only man he would ever share that type of relationship with was his male mate, so he had ignored men he found attractive over the years, it hadn’t felt right.
Gio opened the door in a towel, Mak had lost his control and slowly walked toward Gio, backing him up out of the doorway against the wall and with his foot, Mak shut the door and kissed his mate for the first time. He hadn’t been able to wait, seeing his perfect body with little droplets of water clinging to his skin made him want to lick them all off.
