Chapter Fifteen #2
“You bet. They’re strong bears, your stinky uncle can’t keep them down,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.
Hunter shielded both kids from the body, cooling behind them.
Kiera held up her hand to Hunter. “I saved us.” For the first time in her life, she was able to use magic, and it saved their lives.
The relief she felt was bone deep. She wasn’t a waste after all.
True confidence filled the recesses of her heart.
“I can keep us safe.” She smiled at her mate. “I’m not useless.”
He took her hand and held it tight. “You never were, my love. You never were,” he whispered.
*****
Hunter heard his cousins arrive. When he felt Nicol being lifted from his arms, he didn’t let go until he saw it was Connor. He would only hand the kids over to his family. He tried to concentrate, but his mind felt like it was on a two second delay and filled with cotton.
“Is he okay?” Kiera asked, clinging to his hand.
“He’ll be fine when Graham gets here,” Aiden said, in a low voice.
“Kiera, we’re taking the kids to the Nu estate,” Meryn said, holding Keran’s hand. “Nugget said he’d walk back with me.” At her side, Anne now held Nicol on her hip. Connor and Eoin flanked them on either side. Ryuu, Nigel, Neil and Pip waited just behind them.
“We’ll be there soon,” she promised.
Hunter felt his bear clawing at him with nowhere to go. His family had been hurt and he had done nothing.
“Where’s my mother and father,” a familiar voice demanded.
“Later,” Aiden said. “Your brother needs you more.”
He felt Kiera’s hand leave his as he was manhandled to face someone. When his eyes focused, he saw his older brother looking down at him. “Come with me, little brother.”
Graham lifted him and half carried, half drug him past their father’s garden, to the field behind the house. “Need help getting started?” he asked.
Hunter blinked.
“You do,” Graham said, nodding. Then he reared back and punched him across the jaw.
Hunter’s bear became laser focused on the pain as he opened his mouth and roared. He felt his body expand as he swung. Graham easily blocked him, and the second punch landed in his breadbasket.
Hunter felt the air leave his body. As he gasped, he looked up at his brother. “I let them get hurt!”
Graham shook his head. “Wrong answer.” Then kicked him in the chest.
Laying on the ground looking up at the night sky, he tried to remember how to breathe. “I failed!” he screamed.
He felt hands pick him up. “Wrong.” He turned to see his younger brother Ewan standing behind him. He pushed Hunter back toward Graham. His older brother’s fist flew and connected with his chin in an upper cut he would have admired if it weren’t connecting with him.
Once again, he was flat on his back looking up and breathing hard. Graham and Ewan looked down at him. Hunter swallowed hard. “That bastard almost took them from me.”
Graham nodded approvingly. “Good start. What else?”
“It happened without me knowing. I had no way to fight back!”
Graham’s eyes took on a bright sheen. “There it is.”
Hunter sat up. “Does my mate hate me?” Ewan thumped him on the back of the head.
Hunter scowled up at his younger brother.
Graham reached down and Hunter flinched.
Laughing, he messed up his hair. “Impotent rage is dangerous for shifters. It’s a dark, slippery road that eats at you.
That rage will turn into guilt. That guilt will create barriers between you and your mate. And then your enemy wins again.”
Ewan leaned down. “Feel better?”
Hunter held up his hands, and his brothers helped him to stand. “My head is clearer.”
Graham looked relieved. “Good, let’s go check on mother and father.”
Hunter felt a rush of fear again.
“Easy there,” Ewan said.
“I can still see them on the floor. Kiera, the kids, Ma and Dad.” He shook his head. “Ma and Dad are supposed to be invincible you know?”
Graham put a hand on top of his head. “I would take that from you if I could, baby brother.”
“I need to check on them.” Hunter stood straighter.
“What a coincidence, we want to meet our new sister too,” Ewan joked.
Hunter looked over to his parents’ house. Augustus and Rory were waiting for them. They had stayed knowing that Graham and Ewan would be distracted taking care of him. Next to them, his entire unit and unit commander also waited.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
He felt movement to his left, then ducked as Graham went to hit him again.
Aiden laughed. “We’ve all been there, Hunter. If you can’t lean on your family and your unit brothers, then what’s the point?”
Hunter looked at his commander in shock. “You too sir?”
Aiden smiled ruefully. “After the attack that took my first Alpha unit. It was my brother who did to me, exactly what your brother did for you.”
“Adair?” Graham guessed.
Aiden shook his head. “Adam.” He winced. “All that medical training, he knew exactly where to hit.” He looked Hunter in the eye. “As crazy as it sounds, we sometimes have to be reminded we aren’t gods. There was nothing you could have done and that isn’t your fault.”
Hunter looked away. “What was the point of those dreams if they didn’t help?”
Hunter was thumped from both directions, practically ricocheting off his brothers’ hands from one side to the other. “Ow!”
Aiden smiled. “Did you ever stop to think that the dream wasn’t for you to save her, but to help her to save herself?”
Hunter looked at his commander. “Kiera held up her hand, with pride on her face and said, ‘I saved us.’. She used her new magic to save them. What if I hadn’t been waiting outside her home to see her? What if we had missed discovering her magic by even one day?”
The men stared. If they looked at it that way, the dream had made a difference.
Aiden rubbed the back of his neck. “Our mates don’t need us to stand in front of them all the time.
” He stopped when the men around him laughed at the irony of him being the one to say that.
He cleared his throat. “For the most part Meryn just needs me to be there for her to fall back to. My strength let’s her do what she needs to do. ”
“Because you’ll maul anyone who hurts her,” Zev teased.
“As he should,” Konstantine chided.
Hunter began to feel better. Did he wish he could have been there to rip her uncle apart? Yes. But, he was no longer trapped by the suffocating feeling of failure. He had helped her save herself, even if it was in a small way. He smiled wide at them. “My mate is seriously awesome.”
“There’s that goofy smile,” Graham said, sounding relieved.
“Come on, I want to introduce you,” he said, leading them back to the Nu estate.
It’s like he told his mate. He knew he wasn’t the smartest or the strongest, but he would do anything and everything to be perfect for her and their family.
*****
The next day everyone slept in and slowly made their way downstairs. The night prior had been nothing but logistics. Meryn and Kendrick coordinated with Daia about reporting Ellar and Bryson’s deaths.
With a huge hole in the roof, the Armstrong boys fought for floor space to sleep at the Nu estate.
Hunter came back to her bruised, but smiling. Simply seeing him made her feel like everything was going to be fine. He stayed by her side as his brothers harassed Heath about their parents.
At lunch, Kiera watched as Keran and Nicol were constantly passed from one Armstrong to the next. Myra was being babied by her own sister Tabitha, and Johann was bragging to his brother Archibald about his new grandkids.
Meryn elbowed her. “It’s like copy, paste, paste, paste, paste.”
Kiera laughed, because she wasn’t wrong. The Armstrong genes ran true.
“Wanna know what I heard?” Meryn whispered.
She nodded.
“When the guys went to your uncle’s place, Hunter found something in your uncle’s office and was dead set on burning the place to the ground.”
“No way.”
Meryn nodded. “Your uncle was a sicko. Had pictures of you and your mom all over one wall like an altar or something.”
Kiera felt ill. “No wonder Hunter didn’t say anything about it.” She eyed the small woman. “Were you supposed to tell me?”
Meryn just looked at her. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have been pissed if you found out later.”
“True.”
“That’s not all,” she said, dropping her voice to sound more conspiratorial.
“Stop having fun with this.”
Meryn ignored her. “The assistant guy. The one you said could control the wolf. Well, they found a ton of animal bodies buried in the back. They think he was using his magic to perfect the obedience factor in his earth magic. He was an oddball magic user like you and Zoe.”
Kiera looked into the foyer where the wolf lay sleeping, having been fed all morning by tiny hands.
“You keeping it?” Meryn asked, her voice back to normal
“Why? You want him?”
“Nah, I have Colton.”
“You do not have Colton, stop saying that,” Aiden said.
Meryn smiled and mouthed. ‘I have Colton’.
“That’s it, I’m changing our child’s athair,” Aiden announced.
“Cool. Kendrick, you’re up,” Meryn said.
Kendrick shook his head. “No need. I’ll treat them the same regardless.”
Meryn laughed as Aiden narrowed his eyes. “You don’t want my daughter as a godsdaughter?”
Kendrick looked surprised. “I will probably be wrapped around their finger no matter what. Making me their athair is superfluous.”
“Guess you’re back to Colton,” Meryn teased.
Aiden shook his head. “I hope he realizes how lucky he is.”
The doorbell rang and moments later they heard a loud. “Oh my!”
Kiera turned. “Uhh Wolf, come here.”
The large wolf meandered over to her and got comfortable by her chair.
Meryn cracked up. “You named him Wolf? That’d be like naming my nugget ‘human’.”
Kiera blushed. She hadn’t really thought of it. She looked down. “I’ll get you a better name later, promise.”
The wolf simply closed his eyes.
Daia walked in. “Is that the wolf that was bonded to Bryson?” She sat down, putting a stack of papers on the table.
“Yeah.”
“You took his magic and realigned the animal to you?”
“I think so.”
“Amazing.”
“Super helpful at the time.”