Nicole

by Sherry Foster

  “And me! I want to see him. I want to hurt him. I want to watch him suffer.” Nicole turned pleading eyes toward Samson, “Please?”

  Samson smiled, face full of menace, and a voice as dark as death, “Sweetheart, I can’t wait. I want to see his face when you walk in the room. I want to hear his screams. He will beg for mercy and plead for death.”

  “Oh thank you thank you!” Nicole leaped up and wrapped her legs around Samson’s waist and peppered his face with kisses.

  Marcus turned started eyes toward Jaden, Fuck man, I guess those two have at least one thing in common. Torture of her parent’s killer wouldn’t be high on my list of things to share with a mate. Jeffery was concerned about how a man with feelings as dark as Samson’s could make an innocent girl happy. He swore our magic woo woo shit had to have called that match wrong.

  Magical woo woo? What the fuck is a magical woo woo?

  Wait till you meet the man. He is something else. He is convinced we are products of a drug induced coma or a massive head injury. Either way he has requested to swap from his organization to one of our teams. Said as long as we are something he dreamed up he might as well direct the dream in his favor.

  A human? Did you tell him that wasn’t likely?

  Nope, he presented some damn good arguments and I can’t say he didn’t sway me to his way of thinking. In a way he is already trained to be a seeker. Just not for rogues. Think about it, they go in and gather intel on child trafficking, sex trafficking, and then they take out the bad guys and rescue the kids. Not much different from what we do except we don’t wait around for some desk jockey to give us the go ahead. He said he is tired of waiting for someone behind a desk to tell him he can rescue the innocent. He suggested we join forces somehow with his organization and get his people out of there and on our payroll. He said they already have someone highly placed to help make it happen if he can get the man to come around. I told him we don’t go around telling our secrets to humans and he laughed. Said he just found out the man he had in mind didn’t have a human bone in his body. Then he asked if that would be the correct way of saying the man was one of us. Now I want the men to track down what they can on this organization, if they can get anything on it and tell me who the hell we have placed in the government in charge of running that outfit.

  Sounds like a character. Seriously though, magical woo woo?

  Hey, I am just repeating what the man said. Come on, some of our people are just as bad about it. They can’t wrap their heads around what we can do. The human mates that is. What is it Carolyn says about Jed? ‘And poof he’s a wolf.’ She loves the man but she can’t wrap her head around it and just calls it our poofing ability. But this man, he is something else. Funny as fuck.

  Marcus turned his attention back to the couple in front of him. Krys had gone back inside moments earlier and he was kind of glad. Sometimes the little things could color a person against another and he wasn’t sure how his mate would have taken Nicole’s comments. Samson was on the phone with Rimier and Nicole was dancing from foot to foot impatiently waiting.

  “Okay love, Rimier says they have stopped playing with the man. He pissed them off with his crying. He is currently incarcerated in one of their closets and they can have him to us in a matter of a few minutes whenever we get ready for him. So we need to get home and get ready. I need to ask Trey if it is alright first, but I’m sure he will agree.” He turned to Marcus but before he could say anything Marcus started talking.

  “Where did they get the ship? My understanding from the last mission which was just a few weeks ago mind you, they did not have any kind of transport on Earth. The new guy bring it?”

  Samson shrugged, “In a manner of speaking he did. Drac’s sister brought him and she left the little runner behind the moon with Drac’s ship. Their technology has increased in leaps and bounds since Dracula and the others were semi stranded here. They don’t have the capabilities to call their ship from a distance so it has been hid behind our moon for hundreds of years. They go check on it occasionally when his sister comes to visit. But they have advanced to the point with the right controller they can command one of their ships from a distance and Mela happened to have one in the hold of her ship this time around. I understand the technology for it is recent. She left her controller and the ship behind for Dracula to use. Actually for Dacron since he has to teach the others some of the new technology. But according to Dracula she refused to say she left it for Dacron since they don’t get along. So the men have new technology to learn and new toys to play with. They are all happy as clams. Dracula is a bit pissed they can’t put the technology on his ship for instant retrieval though. I think they are getting ready to go back home. Seems they are waiting to see what Dracula’s brother can do to clear their name first. They gave him some records of shit that happened on their home planet. Said it will be a few more months before they know anything. Can you get us a ride home?”

  Marcus shook his head at the information dump before he told the couple, “That’s actually what I walked over here for, Roberts is ready to go whenever you get ready.”

  “Awesome.” Nicole spun around and ran toward the door of Marcus’ house leaving Samson to stare after her.

  “Honey? Where are you going?”

  “To wake up the kids. We gotta go. I gotta get everything ready.”

  Samson turned to stare at Marcus in confusion, “What do you think she has to get ready?”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Nicole hugged Sammy to her and Samson held Chris as they scrambled from the helicopter. Samson had offered Roberts drinks and refreshments but the man had wanted to get back to his pack. They still had a lot going on and he didn’t want to short the pack a man or a helicopter. Trey was waiting for the four with a woman Samson had only seen in photographs and news reports. He gave a slight shiver, she was identical to Jaden’s mate. He had met Trina for a few brief moments shortly before they left and having her look at you was like having someone look into your soul. She was, to him, a most uncomfortable woman. Nicole had gotten along with her great in that brief time, even more so when she found out that Trina was like little Sammy. Samson on the other hand had wondered if Sammy would grow up to look at people like Trina did. When Gabby smiled at them and reached out tentatively to hug Nicole before turning to him he saw the resemblance between the two twins was only skin deep.

  Where Trina’s gaze seemed to bore into his soul Gabby gaze skittered away from him just to briefly come back before she looked away again. He had seen that look too many times before in too many faces of far too many rescued children. Humans were no different from shifters in that respect. She had the look of one who wanted to make friends but didn’t want to call attention to herself. Someone who wanted to be seen but didn’t want to be seen. She had that look. And his heart broke for his brother. He wondered if they had gotten her the therapy that look showed she needed. Trey hadn’t said anything about it but Gabby had that almost broken look that rescued children so often had. The ones who had not quite given up on freedom but too afraid to believe they had it when it happened.

  From what Trey had told him when he was home before and Gabby was in Alaska she had been alone and on the run for five years. Five years of terror and fear and loneliness. Years of not having anyone to trust and not knowing why. Being free didn’t mean the person was free. Gabby had lived a life not much different from some of the trafficked he had rescued. Torture didn’t have to be physical for it to be torture. Mental and emotional torture could be worse in some ways than physical. The body would eventually heal from physical torture but the mind would replay the torture for the rest of the person’s life. Gabby had lived life on the run, never knowing if the next day would be her last day. Never knowing security or comfort or love, for five long years.

  He looked at his brother and wondered if his brother saw the little lost girl inside his mate or if he believed being mated had made Gabby whole. He had been that naive once. The fir
st time they managed to rescue two young girls. He thought the girls would be happy to be free and everything would be fine. The screams of those two girls still echoed in his head some nights. The girls hadn’t believed they were safe, hadn’t dare trust the men were not just playing a new game with them for fun and amusement. The girls had refused to go outside thinking they were being tricked and they knew the punishment for going outside. Had refused to eat at the table, instead putting it on the floor and eating from the floor like dogs with fearful looks at the men. Hendrix, older and wiser by far than he had been, had pulled him outside and talked to him far into the night. They had run into problems getting the girls out of the country and had to hold them for four days. Some screwup with paperwork. Four days of watching the girls faces fill with hope only for the fear to replace it. Nothing Samson could say to the girls could convince them they were safe. Maybe if they had been able to get the girls out of the country immediately, but they hadn’t. Hendrix had managed to get photos of the men they killed and had given the photos to the girls. Samson had been horrified. The photos showed a gore splashed scene with mutilated bodies. He had been sure the girls would be even more terrified after seeing what they had done. Instead the first smiles had cross their faces. That fourth and last night was the first night the two girls slept thought the night without waking up screaming. That was the night he realized, until the girls saw their captors bodies tortured and brutalized almost beyond recognition they had not believed they were free.

  From his understanding the men who had so long chased his brother’s mate were still out there, somewhere. Unless something had been done and Trey hadn’t mention it to him. Which meant for Gabby the nightmare wasn’t over. The men were out there and could still come after her. She was free, but she wasn’t. Samson was determined to talk to Trey about it, or possibly his mom, at the first opportunity. For now though he had to get his mate settled in his pack and then get Trey’s permission to have the ex-fiance brought to the territory to be tortured and killed. So his mate could have closure, so she could begin the long road of healing. He knew she blamed herself, and she would live with the guilt for the rest of her life but he wasn’t about to let her suffer for something she could not have foreseen. He would torture a hundred men and kill a thousand if it brought his mate one moment of peace for the past she couldn’t change.

  Nothing of his thoughts showed on his face as he hugged his brother and Gabby. Turning he introduced them to his new family. As they all piled in the Suburban to head back to Trey’s house where the rest of their family was waiting he kept the conversation centered on the children. He had them spilling stories of their childhood and their favorite things to do so by the time they reached Trey’s he had a long mental list of things he could do with his new family and things he needed to buy them. It would be a few more months before the ground thawed enough to start construction on his house and he was hesitant to stay with his brother that long. Not after finding out his mate could truly become his in one more week. He knew it would take longer before she would feel she knew him well enough to consummate the bond, or at least he figured it would take longer. He was willing to wait, but in the meantime he planned on finding out what the Simpson’s intended to do with their guest house. Trey told him it was still empty and the family were reluctant to sell it since Mr. Simpson’s mother had passed but he hoped they could be persuaded to let him and Nicole stay there for awhile. The house wasn’t big enough for them on a permanent basis, and he hoped the couple would be eager to have children practically in their back yard and would let them rent it for a few months.

  The first person he saw was Stormie and he winced. He had noticed Nicole was quiet and thoughtful when she responded to people and Stormie was anything but quiet and thoughtful. His mate seemed to often consider things before responding and Stormie had the habit of saying whatever was on her mind with no thought to how it would affect the people she was talking to. A brief look of distaste had crossed Trina’s face earlier at the mention of Stormie’s name and that spoke volumes to Samson. People either loved his sister or disliked her, and he was afraid his mate would fall into the dislike category.

  “Oh my gosh, you are finally here. What took so long. Trey told us this morning all about you and said you got rescued Thursday but it Saturday. Why didn’t you come straight home if you got out Thursday. I mean you had helicopters, you could have come straight here. Look at the kids. Oh my gosh I get a new brother. I mean I don’t need a new one, I have two but I will still love him and babysit him and we will be one big happy family. Oh, the little girl is so precious, what’s her name? Can I hold her? She looks like a little doll.”

  Samson was watching Nicole’s face and he saw the look of distress before her face smoothed out. “Look at you. You look like you are going to have your own little bundle of joy. Samson said you are having a boy. You must be so happy. I’m Nicole, this is Chris, and this is Sammy. I am pleased to meet all of you. I hope you won’t mind if we are not great company right now but we have been traveling for days and things have been a whirlwind of awful for my family this last week. Samson promised us baths and food in that order so if you don’t mind too terribly much,” She smiled at his parents before continuing, “I don’t want the children to think Samson doesn’t keep his promises. If someone will lead us to the bathroom so I can get these two, and myself, bathed and clean. We were so tired after everything that happened we haven’t had a chance to bath in almost a week. Samson, darling, if you will grab the bags of clothes the guys got us?”

  Samson tried to hide his laughter as his mate railroaded over his sister who stood there in disbelief at being so effectively and swiftly shut down. It happened so smoothly and with such tact his sister didn’t even look hurt and he didn’t see the first tear. When she recovered all she had time to say before Nicole shut her down again was, “Samson never breaks his promises.”

  He knew she would have said more, she always had plenty to say but Nicole grabbed the conversation ball again. “I knew you would agree on the importance of keeping promises. We will be back before you know it all clean and smelling like roses.”

  “I don’t want to smell like a rose NikNik.” Chris inserted his way into the conversation.

  “Sammy and I want to smell like roses. If everyone will excuse us. Mr. And Mrs. Caveno, so pleased to meet you. I assume you will be eating with us? Samson did say we would be having a family meal here.” She nodded at David who had his hands resting on Stormie’s shoulders and up until now had not said a word. Before anyone else could say anything she turned toward the door and headed inside. Samson hurried to grab the bags and catch up. He wasn’t sure what she would do when she got inside since she didn’t know where to go but he thought if he hurried he could keep himself between her and everyone else and get her to one of the guest rooms before anyone recovered from her take charge tactic. He saw Trey’s lip twitching from trying to contain laughter as he passed him.

  “I like her.” His brother whispered as he passed.

  Epilogue

  One week later

  “So you are telling me we don’t actually get married? But your brother had a ceremony so it isn’t out of the question.”

  “Well, we don’t have to get married for the bonding ceremony. I mean, shifters don’t require a ceremony.”

  “Okay, yeah, perhaps you missed part of the conversation. Let me replay the last bit. But your brother had a ceremony so it isn’t out of the question.”

  Samson looked at his mate. His lips twitched. He was trying hard to contain his laughter. They had talked long hours this last week and he knew how much she had looked forward to getting married. He had finally gotten his wolf to stop taking over every time she mentioned the wedding by convincing him they were on a fact gathering mission. He needed to know what kind of dreams she had when she thought of getting married so he could give her a wedding she would love. One as different from the one she had planned as possible. Which he had found out
wouldn’t be that hard since the one she had planned had been a quiet ceremony with only her family and the minister and a witness in attendance. He had given all the information to his mother as he gained it and left everything in her capable hands. She had shaken her head in disbelief at the short notice but he knew she had enlisted every female in the pack to turn the meeting hall into a stunning fairy tale wedding with the entire pack invited. The plan was to call her wolf forth then have her shift back and then propose to her. With her brother and sister as a witness. He wanted them to feel included in becoming his family. His brother had vetoed the idea swiftly when told the plan. Had laughed in his face in fact. Then told him if he called the wolf out he might have problems getting her back. His mate was very much an independent take charge sort of person and based on that, and the true-mate feelings, Trey said he had no doubts Nicole would demand to go explore as a wolf. So now he was waiting for his mom to bring Chris and Sammy back from their ‘outing’.