Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two)

by Butler, R. E.

  “The future,” he said, his eyes darkening slightly. “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  He dropped a quick kiss to her mouth, stroked his thumb down her jaw, and abruptly left. Her mind raced as she stood in the kitchen alone. Did she dare to hope that the future Jericho wanted to speak with her about was a future involving her? Although her heart desperately wanted to believe that Jericho could be with someone like her, she knew that Detroit would never allow it. Jericho would be forced to choose between his family and her, and she could never ask him to do that. No matter how much she really wanted it. She would stay until he came back tomorrow night, and if he wanted to broach the subject of a mating between them, she would tell him that she couldn’t do it. He deserved to be king bear. He’d more than earned it.

  Clutching the mug, she drifted back to her grandma’s bedroom and found the other items she wanted to keep: a figurine of a bear, an embroidered pillow, and her grandma’s wedding ring. Lachlyn slipped the simple gold band on her ring finger, and it was too big, so she tried it on her middle finger and it fit. All her grandma had ever wanted for Lachlyn was for her to be happy. Closing this last chapter of her past, Lachlyn could move on completely now. She would rescind her membership of the bear den and return to her life in Georgia. The only bright spot about her life in Georgia was her job as a library assistant at Fremont Junior High. During her time at community college, she’d worked in the library part-time and had adored it. She switched her major from business to library science and received her associate’s degree.

  Her phone beeped, signaling an email, and she pulled it from her back pocket and opened the program. It was a message from Leonitis, beta of the bear den, stating that the den was holding a celebration in her grandma’s honor, and she was expected to attend at seven p.m. that night at Detroit’s home.

  She hadn’t expected a celebration for her grandma, but it would be a good opportunity to speak to Detroit about leaving. She knew he had never really liked her friendship with Jericho.

  Because she hadn’t planned to go to a party, she didn’t have anything dressy to wear. Instead she changed into a pair of nice jeans and a short sleeved top. She applied some makeup and brushed her long auburn hair until it shone.

  When she opened the front door to leave for the celebration, she was surprised to see Leonitis and another bear, Klaymar, waiting in the driveway. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all, Lachlyn. Detroit wanted us to bring you so that you didn’t have to drive by yourself,” Leonitis said.

  Frowning, she wondered why he had chosen to do that. It was strange. But she knew that if she turned down the gesture from the king, then she ran the risk of pissing him off.

  “Thanks,” she said as she smiled at the two men and closed the front door behind her. Unease settled on her, but she shoved it aside, sitting in the backseat of a dark blue sedan while the two men sat in the front. They didn’t say anything to her as they drove her to Detroit’s home. The sky was darkening as the sun set, and when Klaymar opened her door, she could smell smoke and knew that a bonfire was burning nearby. She might not be able to shift, but she had heightened senses of smell, sight, and hearing.

  She followed the men around the house and into the backyard. She froze when she saw that the only ones in the backyard around the bonfire were Detroit and two more male bears. Klaymar’s and Leonitis’ hands latched onto her upper arms and pulled her forward, dragging her easily through the grass despite her struggles. Something was definitely wrong here. This was no celebration in her grandmother’s honor.

  Klaymar and Leonitis shoved her down by her shoulders until she knelt at Detroit’s feet. She tried to rise and run, but their hands remained clamped firmly on her flesh.

  Detroit looked at her with narrowed eyes. “My son told me the most disappointing thing today, Miss Manning.”

  Lachlyn’s heart dropped into her stomach. Had Jericho said something to him about her? About them?

  “It seems that he plans to leave the den. Don’t think for a moment that I believe it has nothing to do with you. In spite of my orders to the contrary, he seems intent on making you his mate.” He squatted in front of her. “I know all about you, Lachlyn, you worthless piece of trash.”

  “Detroit, I —” she started, and he backhanded her so hard that her head snapped back and her teeth clacked together. Whimpering at the taste of blood in her mouth, she struggled not to cry or throw up, both of which she very much wanted to do.

  “You’ll do well to remember who you speak to,” Detroit growled. He leaned forward and sniffed loudly and then he licked the corner of her mouth where she knew blood was seeping. She jerked away, revolted, and he chuckled, rubbing her blood along his teeth and then licking it away. “Bring me the prod.”

  One of the men behind him handed him a long silver object that reminded her of a fluorescent tube, complete with prongs sticking out of one end. Then her brain put together the object with the word prod and she knew she was looking at a cattle prod.

  Detroit stood and took the object, testing its weight in his hand. “Shift.”

  “Wh-what?” Lachlyn stuttered.

  “I won’t repeat myself again. Shift into your bear form. Show me that I’m mistaken in believing that your parents hid you away from me all these years because you can’t shift.”

  Her mind raced as she scrambled to come up with a reason not to shift. “I won’t strip in front of you. Let me go and I’ll pack my things and leave now.” She would just contact Jericho and tell him what happened. He was the only one who knew for certain that she couldn’t shift. At least she thought he was the only one.

  Leonitis pressed his mouth to her ear. She cringed as his hot breath washed over her skin. “You’ll do as the king commands, bitch.”

  “No.” Her voice sounded stronger than she felt. This time it wasn’t Detroit’s hand that struck her, but Klaymar’s fingers that grabbed her throat and squeezed tightly. She gasped for air, her hands flailing uselessly. Her vision began to darken, and her lungs burned with the need for oxygen. Just as she thought she might pass out, Klaymar’s hand loosened, and she fell onto her hands and knees on the grass, gasping for breath.

  She felt a sharp jab in her shoulder, and electricity coursed through her body. She screamed in pain and terror as her muscles spasmed.

  The electricity stopped and she fell to the grass, unable to move as her body twitched in the aftermath of being shocked with the cattle prod.

  “If she was a bear, she’d have shifted with that much juice running through her,” one of the men said.

  Detroit laughed. “I knew they were hiding her. Cowards. Strip her.”

  Hands grabbed her roughly, tearing her shirt and pants from her body, stripping away all her clothing until she was naked. She struggled to stop them, but her movements were sluggish and weak. She couldn’t even see clearly through the tears to know who touched her.

  Detroit leaned down next to her ear. “Let’s try that again, shall we? Maybe I can shock your bear into coming alive. Tell you what. I’m going to shock you until you either shift or die. There’s no room for non-shifting frauds like you in my den, and I’ll be damned if I let you take my only son away.”

  He shoved her to her back and she groaned. She had no more than taken a breath when he jammed the prod into her thigh. She tried to scream, but while her mouth was open, she lacked the ability to form any sounds. Her body locked up as electricity raced through her like a forest fire.

  As she convulsed on the ground, she knew that she was going to die. She would never have a chance to tell Jericho that she had loved him since they were kids. That she was sorry they’d never had the opportunity to see if things could become permanent between them. He would probably be told that she had taken off and left him behind, and he’d hate her for the rest of his life. That thought, more than the pain, struck her heart like a blade. As darkness descended, her final thought was Jericho.

  Chapter 3
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br />   Jericho didn’t like leaving Lachlyn with so much unfinished between them. He stood on the front porch of her grandma’s home and stared at the closed door for several minutes. Part of him wanted to ignore his father’s order and stay with her. She was distraught and needed him.

  Earlier in the day, he had spoken to his father about leaving the den. He hadn’t said anything about Lachlyn being the reason, stating that he wanted to retire from his position as hammer and start somewhere fresh. He planned to join Lachlyn in Georgia where she lived. His father hadn’t seemed surprised by his request to leave the den and was more accepting than Jericho thought he would be. When his father called for the errand, he promised it would be the last thing he would ask of Jericho as hammer before he left the den in a small ceremony on Friday night. Jericho wanted to leave the den with as few problems as possible, so running the errand was one way to ensure that he stayed on his father’s good side. He didn’t think that his father knew that Lachlyn couldn’t shift, or that anyone else in the den knew, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  He turned away from the door with a sigh and got into his truck, leaving Lachlyn behind. As he headed out of town to run the errand, his bear prowled restlessly in his mind, yearning for him to go back and stay with Lachlyn. They’d always been close. Although the bear den lived in the den’s territory, the children all went to the public school in town. He’d known Lachlyn since they were very small, because her mother and his mother were close friends. When his mother died in a hunting accident when he was five, Lachlyn’s mom, Lucy, had treated him like a son, filling in a much needed gap of motherly love in his young life. His father, on the other hand, had no desire to coddle his son and had decided that when he was old enough to start school, he was old enough to learn how to fight and hunt. His lessons were often cruel and brutal, and the day Lachlyn became more than just a family friend to him was etched into his memory.

  Jericho was so hungry that his stomach hurt. He hadn’t eaten anything except a slice of bread before bedtime in the last three days. His father said he couldn’t eat until he caught and killed something with his bare hands. For the last few days, Jericho had been chasing rabbits, squirrels, and other small creatures around the woods, desperate to catch one so he could actually eat. But he wasn’t any good at hunting. He was already five feet tall at age eight, and his arms and legs didn’t always work like he wanted them to. His grandma said he was ‘gangly,’ but all he knew was that when he tried to be quiet and sneak up on an animal, his big feet always seemed to step on something that would snap or crackle and he’d lose his prey. At first, hunting with his dad had seemed like a fun thing to do. But after the first day, when he’d been so hungry and had gotten nothing but the end slice of a loaf of bread and a glass of water, he realized quickly that it wasn’t a game at all. No, his dad was going to make damn sure that Jericho could hunt in his human form, regardless of how long it took.

  He sat by himself at a table in the back of the lunchroom. None of the kids ever played with him or talked to him or wanted to be his friend. Maybe because his father was the king bear. Or maybe because his mom was dead. Or maybe it was because his dad forced him to fight older kids for his amusement. Whatever the reason, the ache in his stomach was less pronounced than the loneliness he felt.

  A chair scraped backwards drawing him away from his unhappy thoughts. Jericho looked up in surprise to see Lachlyn opening her My Little Pony lunchbox and setting things out on an unfolded napkin.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “I heard your tummy growl on the bus today,” Lachlyn said as she looked up at him with blue eyes the color of the sky in summer, her head tilted to the side. Her auburn hair was in pigtails tied with pink ribbons. She always wore pink.

  “So?” He wrapped his arms around his stomach to hide the growl that threatened when he saw her food. A simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bag of potato chips, some baby carrots, a container of yogurt, and two cookies.

  “So you didn’t eat lunch yesterday, and you don’t have anything to eat today. Why aren’t you eating, Jericho?”

  He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to tell her that his dad wasn’t letting him eat. He could already see pity in her eyes, and it suddenly made him unhappy. He didn’t want her to pity him. He wanted her to like him.

  “I’m just…not.”

  She hummed in her throat. Placing her fingertips on either side of her napkin, she pulled until the center of it ripped and left it in two pieces. She laid one half of the sandwich, half of the chips and carrots, and one cookie on each half and pushed one half towards him.

  He stared down at the food in utter surprise.

  “Well, go on. I won’t tell,” she said softly.

  Jericho felt unbidden tears well up in his eyes, and he blinked furiously until they disappeared. He hadn’t cried since his mom died.

  “I, I,” he stammered, and Lachlyn reached her small hand out and curled it around his.

  “I’m going to be your friend, Jericho Knight. Bears should stick together, and I like you. You have nice eyes. And one time, Paulie Feltman was picking on me and you punched him in the nose.”

  Jericho remembered that, because it had made him so mad that Paulie would call Lachlyn names.

  She smiled encouragingly at him. His mouth watered as he reached for the sandwich and lifted it, taking a big bite. Nothing had ever tasted as good as that peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich. And he didn’t even like strawberries. He wolfed the food down, and when Lachlyn gave him the yogurt, saying she wasn’t hungry anymore, he gulped that down in three bites. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he grabbed the napkin half and stuffed it into his pocket. When she stood, he walked with her to the playground and pushed her on the swing. They spent every lunch and recess together from that point on, constant companions.

  He still had the napkin half tucked inside a book in his dresser drawer.

  He was two years older than Lachlyn. He’d shifted at age sixteen, just like most bears. When Lachlyn turned sixteen and didn’t shift, everyone in the den assumed that she was just a late bloomer. Females sometimes didn’t shift until they were eighteen. But month after month, Lachlyn’s bear never came out. Her parents were worried that she would be turned away from the den if she didn’t shift soon, so they sent her away to Georgia to college and then moved there themselves shortly afterward. It had killed him to see her leave, but he knew it was for the best. They kept in touch by phone and email, and he visited her from time to time when he could, but it wasn’t enough for him anymore. He’d grown tired of emails and phone calls and video chats. He wanted to ask her to be his mate.

  His plan had been to ask her first, and then when she said yes, for them both to go to his father and ask to be ekscluhded, removed from membership in the den. There were other bear dens around the country that wouldn’t care if she could shift or not, and they could join one together if she wanted. She had an uncle on her mother’s side who was king bear of a den in Indiana, and he would offer to go there first if she wanted to join with them.

  Jericho was next in line to be king, but he didn’t care about that. Only fully shifting bears could be rulers, and their mates were required to be shifting bears, too. He didn’t want to be king. Not if taking control of the den meant that he’d have to see Lachlyn find a mate with another male.

  All these years, he’d wanted to ask her to be his mate but something had seemed as though it was missing between them. He loved her. She was the only female he had ever loved. But they’d never been more than friends and occasional lovers.

  His bear grew more restless the farther away from town he drove until he finally had to turn around. He would just take Lachlyn with him on his errand. It wasn’t a dangerous errand — picking up some money owed to his father — and Jericho would make sure she was safe in the truck and away from any possible danger.

  It was nearly three hours since Jericho left when he parked on the street in
front of her grandmother’s home. The interior of the house was dark. It was too early for bed, but she had been stressed out and clearly not sleeping well, so it was possible she was already asleep. Indecision tore at him as he walked up the sidewalk towards the house. He didn’t want to wake her if she was asleep.

  And then he caught a scent that made him freeze in place and his bear roar in anger. Leonitis had been at Lachlyn’s? He drew in a deeper breath, finding the scent concentrated on the front porch. Snarling, he tried the front door and found it locked. Pounding on the door, he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed her number. He faintly heard a phone ringing in the house. Dread pooled in his stomach as he raced off the porch and jumped into his truck. The only place that Leonitis would be taking Lachlyn was to see Detroit. And his father wanting to see her when Jericho was conveniently out of town didn’t bode well for her. Tearing down the dirt roads, he closed in on his father’s house within minutes, slamming the truck into park and lurching out of the cab. Several vehicles he recognized were parked in the driveway, and the scent of smoke came from the back of the house. As he moved towards the back of the house, he caught the scent of fresh blood and then heard Lachlyn making pained sounds.

  Running into the backyard, he saw Lachlyn stripped naked on the ground, his father jamming something that looked like a cattle prod into her thigh while four of his top-ranked males watched. They were so involved in watching his father torture Lachlyn that no one saw him coming until it was too late.

  He smashed Leonitis’ and Klaymar’s heads together with a furious roar, and then he tackled his father. He rolled his father away from Lachlyn, knocking the prod out of his hand. He slammed his stunned father’s head into the ground and then leapt off him, snagging Rob, one of the remaining males by his pant’s leg. The other male, Seb, kicked Jericho in the side, but Jericho ignored the steel-toed shoe and jerked Rob off his feet. The large male fell to the ground with a thud, and Jericho rounded on Seb, growling, his claws broken free from his fingertips and his fangs bared.