I watched as Gammon looked at Mia in silent communication and it was only a moment before she stood up and began to undress. Gabby did not notice at first and by the time her attention focused on Mia it was too late. Mia, unperturbed about her state of dress, wolves were not the least bit modest, we never thought about it, was in the process of changing and letting her wolf out. When Gabby saw her aunt, the spitting image of her mother, change into a wolf in front of her, she fainted. I felt her faint and was able to finally turn around without her fingers clutching me to hold me in place. I could smell she had drawn blood from my back in her attempts to become one with me, or hold me in front of her, I was not sure what her ultimate goal was, I was just happy to be able to get her out from behind me and hold her in my lap.
Stormie headed to grab a wet cloth while mother left to get Gabby a glass of water. Mia, still in wolf form, came over and proceeded to lick Gabby in the face. After a couple of licks Gabby came to and seeing Mia so close screamed before clutching my arms and trying to climb over me. This was not going well at all. How anyone could let a female grow up without knowing any of her heritage was beyond me and this Josh character had a lot to answer for when I finally met him, if he had even survived. But since Josh was not here, and neither was her nanny, or her aunt or whoever she wanted to go by, and Jules was, it looked like Jules was the one who was about to answer to me for what I considered now to be almost a criminal neglect. From the way Gammon was grinding his teeth he was none too happy with the way this situation was turning out either. Mia had backed off and I was able to get my arms wrapped around Gabby, minus the backpack and was rocking her as you would a small child. She had gone from fear to terror and I was really hoping Jules was her grandfather and they had a good relationship. I did not hold much hope for this though considering Gabby had never once mentioned him. My shoulders sagged briefly, before, squaring them I called to David through the pack bond to bring Jules into the study. Time to get some answers, I just hoped the answers were better than the questions.
Chapter Twenty-five
Gabriella
I did not really mean to shout at Gammon but the fear in the room was driving me crazy. Everyone knew what was going on but me. Strangers surrounded the house we were in, wolves were all around, and no one was telling me anything. I could not run, I could not hide, and my trust of these people had vanished. I was starting to think they were in league with the men who had been chasing me the last few years. Like an idiot I had walked right into the trap.
The only person I was feeling a little safe around was Trey. When Gammon started yelling back at me the only thought I had was to get to Trey, he would keep me safe. Gammon had such a dominate personality that it was all I could do to make my body keep moving toward Trey. I did not even notice at first that when I finally reached him that he sat down beside me on the couch.
When Gammon started talking again my rabbit hole exploded. He was lying, he had to be. According to him they were wolf shifters, all of them. According to him I was a wolf shifter, or would be, and so was Uncle Josh and Nanny. That was a lie, I would know if they were wolves, I would. I had to find a place to hide. These people were crazy and I was surrounded. Somehow they thought because they had pet wolves they were also wolves? They had convinced themselves they were part of a wolf pack?
Even though I knew he was lying pieces of my past kept playing in my head. Phrases Uncle Josh had said, things Nanny had done, the comments my pursuers had made. Things were beginning to make sense which meant I was going crazy also. Did they drug me? I did not remember eating anything since I left the cabin, I did not remember drinking anything except from the water bottle I took with me.
Gammon had stopped talking but I was too busy trying to hide to notice at first. Trey did not make the best hiding place but I had nothing else. I could not make my body cooperate and run. I was gibbering but I could not stop, could not ask questions. All I could do was hide and somehow, for some reason, behind Trey seemed the safest place in the world. I could smell blood but I did not know where it was coming from and that scared me. Maybe we were still at the plant. Maybe we never really left and somewhere in that plant they had me strapped down with fibers stuck in my head doing horrible tests on me. What was real?
Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye I turned my attention toward the movement. What I saw confused me. My aunt Mia had gotten undressed, in a room full of people. Oh dear god, were they about to start an orgy? I was still a virgin. This was not how I wanted to lose my virginity. Then, the impossible happened, aunt Mia was not there anymore. In her place was a wolf, a white wolf. I felt my vision fading and held on to Trey for dear life but the next thing I know I was in Trey’s lap and the wolf was trying to eat me. Oh my god I was going to be a sacrifice? I screamed and tried to get away, the only thought in my head was to go, somewhere, anywhere away from the wolf.
The wolf backed off and I could feel Trey trying to comfort me. All I could do was huddle in his arms and try to make myself smaller than normal. I was terrified and yet I felt safe in Trey’s arms. I was terribly confused. When I saw movement at the door I did not realize what I was seeing, not at first. The man in the wheelchair was coming through the door David was holding open. Oh my god, was this someone the wolves had attacked. My attention had started at the wheels but gradually moved up. The scarring on the man was horrible, he looked like he had been savagely attacked or, in some horrible accident. As I reached his eyes I felt my vision start to turn gray. Those eyes, I knew them, the shock in them mirrored my own I am sure. But, that was impossible, it could not be true.
My last thought, my last word before the grayness claimed me, “Poppy?”
Chapter Twenty-six
Jules
When David picked me up to take me to Trey’s house I had no idea the turn my life, all of our lives would take. I was happy my alpha had found a mate, I was surprised to find the female we had heard about, and that the others were guarding was his mate. I was confused as to why a young female would be on the loose and all alone like this one. They told me her name was Gabby and she was very skittish. Trey was letting her meet one or two members of his pack at a time. He was keeping it to the older ones, the mated ones. I knew he had made an exception the day before by bringing Sam and his future nephew Donny over. Donny, that is one pup I would have taken great pains to beat, if I was still able that is, but the attack five years ago had taken more than just my strength, it had taken my mobility for the most part.
While I waited in another room for Trey to tell his mate about me, and prepare her for meeting another member of his pack I took the time to ask David a little more about what was going on. Trey had pack meetings on a regular basis and I never missed a meeting so I knew the little pup was on the run. And the word filtering through the pack at the moment was we, the pack, had a problem coming our way. More information was expected when Trey knew more. According to David, and pack gossip, the little pup did not know she was a wolf shifter, nor did she know she was Trey’s mate. At least, not consciously. But that was about to change, they were telling her today. Whatever had happened earlier that had the pack on edge involved her and they hoped she had some answers for them.
David told me she seemed to gravitate toward Trey, and use him as a shield when meeting others. So far the only problems had occurred when she met Donny. No one knew why but David agreed her scent changed as fear wafted from her. Now they wanted me to meet her, I guess they think she will see me as harmless, and for the most part I am. I was not always crippled, though. That is a recent, if you consider five years ago recent, event, at almost five hundred years old I definitely considered it recent. If the pack is having problems though, and the little pup is involved, I don’t understand why they think she should be meeting me. I would think they would be concentrating on fixing what ever the problem is, coming our way.
Twenty years old, that is how old the little pup is. My twin granddaughters would have been that age, if they ha
d lived. If my son was able to save them they should have gone into hiding. He had the resources to run and hide, but it has been almost five years now and no one has heard from them. Before I could get too deep in my past, in examining what went wrong, David motioned that they are ready for me. By the grim look on his face I don’t think things are going very smoothly. Again I have to wonder, why now, why are they forcing another meeting on the little pup if things are already not going well?
I was about to find out, more than I imagined. David opened the door and I wheeled myself into a room filled with the pungent smell of fear. My eyes caught the little pup being rocked in my alpha’s arms and all I could do was stare. Words were beyond me. I watched her as her eyes drifted upwards from the wheels to my face. I saw when recognition hit her. Before she lost consciousness she managed one word. So faint if I had not had the hearing of my wolf I would never have heard. “Poppy?” How long had it been since anyone had called me Poppy. My wolf whimpered. Only two little pups in the entire world had ever called me Poppy. Even then it had been years, too many years since I heard that word. I could feel the tears on my face.
I heard talking but I could not focus on what was said, sound had mostly faded out as I thought of the past. All I could do was stare. They said her name was Gabby. I knew her name to be Gabriella Bianca, my little Ella Bea. The eldest twin to my son Nate, the son who gave his life to get her and her twin to safety when she was just a small pup. Her parents had died while leading others away from the children. My oldest son Josh and his mate took over raising the girls. I swallowed, hard. I had cost my son his life. If I had not cuddled the girls so much my former pack would not have smelled them on me. They would not have back tracked me to them. I had no proof this is what happened, but over time I put together the truth, or what I now believed was the truth.
Josh was not certain that was what happened either but together he and I had concocted an elaborate plan to make him and his mate vanish. My pack believed them dead, and I stayed away from my family until that one last night. The phone call that brought me to my son’s house frantic to help them escape. I was too late and yet right on time. Maybe my fight bought them time to get away. I don’t know, I may never know. What I do know is one of my grandchildren is here, and my being alive is just as much a surprise to her as her being alive and alone is to me.
I had hoped, dreamed, prayed, for years, that Josh was able to get the children and his mate to safety. And it looked liked he had saved at least one, but, where was Katrina Isabella? If Josh managed to get himself and the others to safety, where were they? And why was my little Ella Bea alone?
I was lost in the past when I finally felt someone shaking my arm. From the angry growls I am guessing they had been trying awhile. I look up into Gammon’s face, I wish all those years ago we had known of his pack. I would have sent my children and their mates to him for safety. I focus on the room and receive my second shock of the day. Nate’s mate is alive? I feel my head start to swim, and I guess Gammon must have realized I was also suffering from shock. He wasn’t shaking me anymore, in fact he was trying to support me. I shook myself free of his grip as I reach out to the female in front of me. Gammon snarled and pulled her to him.
I knew Nate’s mate was a twin, but I never imagined what is even now staring me in the face. Gammon mated to Ariella’s twin. All these years, if we had known. Bitterness swamps me. Ariella had found Nate, or rather Nate had found Ariella before we realized the problems with the shifter community. Well, not before we realized, rather before we found a temporary fix. I think the fix of sending females to Gammon is only a quick time fix. Being mated did not stop males from trying to still take Ariella when she was first mated to my son and for years after wards. Females were in high demand and scarce supply and even after mating Ariella and Nate had to hide a lot. She did not want to lead anyone to her sister so she refused to go back to her pack for a visit. Things had gotten extremely bad in the shifter world and Ariella insisted on sending minimal information to her sister via a post office address. She sent information to her sister but never a return address. She was afraid her sister would come looking for her and get caught up in the danger. Her and Nate made special trips to mail those letters. There had been attempts on his life several times, nothing we could track to one wolf, but they kept escalating.
Josh belonged to another pack, he left ours when he mated Cherise and joined her pack. They had been mated for decades when Nate came along. My mate died giving birth to Nate. I mourned my mate and got on with raising our son the best I could. I was too caught up in the day to day life of raising my son and trying to increase the financial standing of the pack to really pay attention to what was going on in the shifter world when it came to the females. After all, both my son’s had mates and I wasn’t looking for another, couldn’t look for another. But when the attacks against my son started I had to figure out why.
When I finally took my head out of the clouds, and looked around, I found the shifter world had changed. Pack was turning against pack, my son was trying to keep his young mate safe. I began using my resources to increase my wealth and in turn increase the wealth of my sons. It was time to get out, get away and I was going to give my sons and their mates the best chance I could. Money talks and when you have hundreds of years behind you and you invest wisely you have a lot of money. But money can be tracked and I spent years hiding the money. Shell corporations hiding shell corporations hiding more companies just to hide land and more hiding places. When the twins were born I had vast holdings and by the time Nate and his mate were dead those vast holdings had grown even more. I had hiding places all over the country. But even that had not been enough.
Money and land can still be tracked if you know what you are doing. If you have the money or the resources to investigate things you can find what others would keep hidden. We had shifters in all branches of the government, and those shifters had children of their own to hide, or in some cases sons who needed mates. I have had five years to figure out what happened, what went wrong and all my guesses came back to one of our own in some government capacity. As I struggle to bring myself out of my past I realize everyone in the room not tending to Ella Bea, or Gabby as they all call her, is looking at me. Now I know why they wanted me to meet the pup. No one seems surprised at her recognition of me, or at least, looking around the room, none of the males seem surprised.
Before anyone can really question me, or I question them, we hear the faintest of whispers, “Poppy? The vampires are in the basement.”
I blink a few times and look back at my alpha and my granddaughter. He has his eyes closed leaning his head against my Ella Bea. I look up at Gammon again to see him shaking his head and a catch a few mutters about vampires. What the three aliens we have befriended have to do with this I can’t even guess but I know they moved to Slidell so Ella Bea should never have even seen them. Besides, only the ignorant call them vampires. I make a mental note to try to remember everyone here knows her by Gabby but I don’t know if I can stop twenty years of knowing her by the nickname her daddy gave her when she was born.
With her soft whisper she has managed to get everyone’s attention back on her, whether she wanted it or not. She still has not opened her eyes yet and everyone is silent, just watching her. Whether she could feel all the eyes on her or she just managed to finally pull herself together I can’t know. What I do know is when she finally opened her eyes she stared right at me, and held her arms out.
“Poppy.” One word and my world caved in. I wheeled my chair closer to her and in seconds she had wiggled free of Trey’s lap and had carefully climbed into mine. My precious pup was once again in my arms and neither of us had dry eyes. As the tears poured down our faces her grip tightened around my neck. Her next words took me, really took all of us, by surprise.
“Poppy? Did I die? I thought I was going crazy but I musta been really sick huh. I glad you were here to catch me. I have been having some bad dreams and seeing t
hings. Where is Mommy and Daddy? Are they here too?” That lost little girl voice, so confused, yet begging me for answers I don’t have.
What do I say? What can I say? I do the only thing I can think of at that moment. I send a message to my alpha through the pack bond.
Can you give us some time alone? Will you clear the room? I am very afraid this is going to be harder on her than anyone could have imagined. If this had been something I could ever have even imagined.
The last bit was sort of a mental mutter but my alpha heard it.
Oh, you think? Harder? Really? This last week or two with her has not been easy. I will get everyone out if you think it will help but how a dead man helping her is a good thing is something I can not imagine. And I am assuming she thinks you are dead and now she has died and joined you? What a mess. Why did you never tell us about her? You never said anything even when you were told her name. I have questions for you and you best be thinking of the best way to help cause I gotta tell you, we have problems coming.
Gabby (Safe Haven Wolves Book 1) Page 17
