Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Hudson
Fire licked up the side of the building, radiating heat through the wood and stone, scorching my skin. I winced, taking a step back, and bumped into Fox.
“Duck and cover!” Hernandez shouted. I hit the deck, covering my head as debris flew over our bodies and the sound of screaming echoed throughout the now shattered room.
Then we were on our feet, crouched down, moving swiftly, and yet not swiftly enough.
“Cage! Behind you!”
I turned, but not quick enough. Light flashed in my eyes, and sound followed—a cacophony of shouts, screams, and silence.
Then I blinked and looked down at the blood coating my hands, the sickly sweet smell muted for some reason. Only the blood wasn’t merely my own.
The bodies piled at my feet pressed against my shins, the blood from my fingertips dripping on their torn flesh. Faces of people I knew—who I called friends—stared up at me with empty eyes and gaping mouths.
Fox. Hernandez. Smith. Williams. Martin. Robinson. Lewis. King. Scott.
So many and yet blood trickled down my chest, coating my skin.
And then it was her. Her face.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was all the way back over in the States. She was supposed to be safe. Not with me. But safe.
Michelle’s eyes changed once again, and Scarlett blinked at me, her mouth barely moving as she whispered a single word.
“Help.”
I opened my eyes and realized that my dreams had taken a turn. I sat up, chest heaving, and sweat coating my body. The sheet pooled around my waist, and I ran my hand over my face and through my beard, pissed off.
I didn’t have nightmares every night. I honestly had come back from my tours overseas relatively unscathed. I might have earned a purple heart but so did many of my friends. It was the ones who hadn’t come back that had done far more than me.
But it wasn’t as if I thought about that every day. It had been years since I’d returned home. Years since my life had changed, and I joined the family instead.
I hated the fact that even after all these years, I couldn’t get the sight of their blood on my hands out of my dreams. And real life had been far worse than my dreams—though I hadn’t held each of their lifeless bodies in my hands. I had been sent home before a few of them had died.
And wasn’t that a pleasant thought to think of in the morning.
My alarm went off at that moment and I cursed. I hated waking up right before my alarm. Though it wasn’t as if I was going to go back to bed anytime soon. Not when Michelle and Scarlett once again decided to pop into my dreams.
With a grunt, I slid out of bed and padded my way to my bathroom.
I stared into the mirror, annoyed that no matter what I did, getting a full night’s sleep wasn’t going to work.
With a sigh, I brushed my teeth, knowing that today was going to be a long fucking day.
Thankfully I didn’t have to go to the resort.
I shuddered, remembering the last time I had truly been there.
Scarlett had shoved me out of that room and refused to tell me a damn thing about why she carried those bruises.
That it wasn’t my problem, and I wasn’t going to be her protector.
I spit into the sink, before washing my face and turning on the shower.
Of course it wasn’t my problem. I’d wanted to fix it.
Scarlett had wanted nothing to do with me.
Which was fine. It wasn’t as if we liked each other.
We yelled at each other more often than not.
She was just so perfect. She snapped at me with her orders, as if I were some flunky who was supposed to do what she said.
She always thought she knew better and ignored anything I had to say.
Except of course when she wanted to counter it.
That was just Scarlett for you, and I couldn’t stand it.
Why she couldn’t be as nice as her twin, I’d never know. Because Luna might not be soft-spoken or unopinionated—neither of which were things that I needed or cared about—but she didn’t butt her way into everything that you were doing at all times.
I ran my hand over my beard and figured I should probably trim it eventually. This Cabin Man look might work for some, but at this point, it was turning into a recluse look. That was going to have to change.
I smirked, imagining my family’s faces if I went to our family dinner tonight clean shaven. I rolled my eyes and washed my hair and beard. There was no way I was getting rid of it.
Flynn, my twin, had shaved recently, showing his baby face skin and firm square jaw, and that was enough for me. I knew what I would look like without a beard, and while we weren’t ugly, I liked the beard.
I ran my hands down my body and let them linger over the puckered scars on my shoulder, and down below on my rib cage.
Two edged pieces of skin that reminded me of why I had come home.
I swallowed hard, pushing away those thoughts.
The deeper I shoved them, the further they would stay away. That was how things worked.
I turned off the shower and reached for my towel before wrapping it around my waist. I had a few projects to work on around my house, and then the old Ackerson place, before family dinner tonight.
My siblings Isabella and Dorian were handling everything with the resort these days, and for that I was grateful.
I was tired of Scarlett either glaring at me or skedaddling as soon as she saw me.
And it was a skedaddle. Even in those stilettos that she loved to wear, she took her little steps and practically hid behind a fucking pillar if I walked by.
Well, that was just fine for her. She could handle everything on her own. That’s what she claimed after all.
My phone buzzed and then buzzed again. And again. And again.
I groaned, knowing what was to come.
The family group chat.
My family wasn’t what some would call normal.
Nobody would call them normal. My father, the bastard that he was, had not one family, but two.
I had grown up with six siblings—all brothers.
We had been loud, rambunctious, and probably annoying as fuck.
But our nannies had done their best. It wasn’t as if our father had been around often to have a hand in raising us, other than to scream at us.
Rather, scream at me. I was always Dad’s least favorite. Though I never quite knew why.
Our mother, a shrew of a woman if there ever was one, had once been a little softer. But now all she did was try to barge into our lives, as if she hadn’t spewed terrible words at us, and those who had married into the family.
Our loving father had been around when he could, running Cage Enterprises, a real estate firm that gained in financing, worked in development, small businesses, environmental research, and God knew what else.
I wasn’t part of it. Yes, technically I was on the board because all of our siblings were, but I had nothing to do with the family business.
Joining the military at age eighteen and running away from home had ensured that.
Dad wasn’t around enough to care at first.
In retrospect it made sense. He was traveling for work or traveling down south to Colorado Springs where he not only had a secret second wife, but I had five more siblings.
That meant twelve. Loren Cage had twelve kids.
And somehow, we were all becoming friends. A family.
I shook my head, wondering if my father would’ve ever imagined that. No, not even a little.
We were forced to have a dinner once a month where at least five people had to be in attendance, three from one side, two from another. Lately we’d ended up with more than five at a function because we liked hanging out with each other. And I usually attended if it was up in Cage Lake.
But with eleven siblings, there came one caveat: The Family Group Chat.
It wasn’t just one family group chat. There was the mega family group chat that had all twelve of us.
Then there was the ultra family group chat that had all twelve of us plus any spouses that had been added in over time.
Considering Phoebe, Ford, Aston, Isabella, and Sophia were all married, that included a lot of spouses.
And Dorian had his fiancée Harper in the group as well.
And from each of those were subsets of family group chats. The original seven had a group chat, just like the Colorado Springs five did. And then there was a mix and match. There was a one of just the women vs the men. There was the one of people who lived in Cage Lake.
Because of course our family, not wanting to just take over part of Colorado, had its own small town set in the mountains of Colorado.
Just off I-70, with a beautiful mountain to the west, and a large lake at the north, Cage Lake was everything you could want in a small town.
Complete with flower beds at each street that changed with the seasons, and what once was a simple stop sign, had turned into multiple stoplights.
The town halls that made those happen apparently had been slightly dramatic.
The main income for the town was tourism, and the resort that the Cages owned to the east of it. A resort that I wasn’t going to step in to anytime soon.
As my phone buzzed again, it pulled me back to the present.
Family.
And their group chat.
I was in at least seven of them, maybe more. Though I didn’t initiate. I tried to leave them often, but Dorian always found a way to pull me back.
If it wasn’t Dorian, it was Flynn.
My damn twin loved reminding me that I was part of this family, and I needed to participate. He had my face. He could just participate for the both of us. But that didn’t quite work when it came to reality.
Today’s group chat was the group chat of all group chats. The ultra. All twelve of us and spouses.
If I had my sound on, my phone would probably be constantly making that ding sound with the number of texts going through.