Where There is Hope [Taos Wolven Mates 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (14 page)

Joran had to laugh at that as he walked away. He couldn’t help himself.

“I’m Dana,” the pretty blonde holding the baby moved forward and introduced herself. “I suppose you know everyone else.” She turned to move to another room when one of the men stopped her.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” She scowled. “I want to go into the kitchen and make some coffee and tea.”

When the man wouldn’t move, she raised a brow. “If you can find another wolf or two to come along, I’ll bake some cookies, too, or maybe a cake.”

“Rafe,” the man reached out and slapped another on the arm. “Clear the kitchen through the alpha. Tell him we’ll go with the women if he wants.” He looked back at Dana. “Throw in an entire meal and we’ll get permission for you to stay out there indefinitely.”

“Fine.” She shrugged. “I have to cook a meal anyway. I may as well start it early.”

The man called Rafe returned. “The alpha said there are three guards outside the kitchen so they should be safe enough.”

Dana gave the two a bright smile. “Thank you, Savio. I’ll make you and Rafe a couple of extra big cookies.”

She led them into a large room with three long tables, around which sat at least thirty chairs. Hope wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a private kitchen that was so large.

“Wow. It looks like you feed an army in here.” Hope couldn’t help herself. She looked in awe at the woman who carried a newborn and looked as though she could cook for a troop that large with the infant strapped to her back if she had to.

“Only when something like this flares up and only when Lorcan and Tarin allow the others over for a hot meal.” She giggled. “None of the poor things can cook, so they’ve been eating raw everything unless they eat here or on the ship.”

“You know about the ship?” Did everyone? Everyone seemed to know more about this situation than she did. Was she the only ignorant one here?

“Of course.” Dana smiled as she moved to a small cradle against the wall and set the sleeping infant inside. “They kidnapped Amelie, Fleur, and me a little over a year ago.” She got a dreamy look in her eyes for a moment. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Huh.” Hope didn’t know why, but she wasn’t feeling very articulate at the moment. Were all of these women nuts, or were they all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

“Do not think we do not realize they were bad men for doing such a thing,” Amelie said as she moved to help Dana with the coffee and tea.

Fleur moved to get some things out of the pantry along with several mixing bowls and some wooden spoons. Margaret and Sara sat down and watched, their chins in hand.

At least she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do.

“They were very bad men to do such a thing, but they wanted what was best for us in the end, and that is what matters, is it not?”

Hope stared at Amelie for a minute, not sure what she should say. “I, uh, I don’t know. I can’t say that coming here was the best thing for me. If we’re really back in the eighteen hundreds, I’d say not. This wasn’t a good time for women. Not really.”

“Back in the eighteen hundreds?” Dana frowned at her. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, back in time.” Hope looked at the ladies. “You’ve all seen that strange ship of theirs. You’ve all known how their food machine works. You know they aren’t from here, right?”

“Of course they aren’t from here. They’re from some far-off place that most people wouldn’t believe in, but I do.”

“As do we,” Amelie added, indicating herself and Fleur.

“Why do you believe them?” She had to know. What could make five otherwise sane women believe in something that shouldn’t possibly exist?

“
We
”—Dana indicated Amelie, Fleur, and herself—“have been there, to their world. We’ve seen it, and we’ve seen the people they call elitists. Let me tell you, Hope, the elitists are
not
nice people.”

Hope sat down and rested her head in her hands. Why couldn’t she just accept this thing that happened to her as easily as these other women seemed to do? Hell, she’d been to their ship in space. At least it looked like a ship in space. Who would, or could, pull such an elaborate hoax?

The only people that she knew of who had enough money and power to do something like that was a government and why would any one of them bother? Hope had never been one for conspiracy theories, and she didn’t plan to start that crap now.

She hated that she kept waffling between believing them and not, but how could any sane, modern person believe the things that had happened to her over the last several hours?

Did she even want to think about the things she’d done with Braxton and Joran? What kind of woman slept with two different men in a matter of hours? Not that any of them had done any sleeping. Hope pressed her lips together, moved to the table and sat down.

This probably wasn’t the best time for introspection, but she couldn’t help it. Not once in her life had Hope ever felt the desire for a one-night stand. She’d had more respect for herself than that. What had come over her in the last twenty-four hours to change her so dramatically?

Was it the fact that two hot young men had taken interest in her or did it have more to do with her loneliness over the last several months? Whatever it was had changed her. A lot.

She looked at the other women who seemed happy to be where they were. What were their stories, and why did they accept these men and their fantastic way of life so readily?

Was there really some strange mystical force that drove these people to their mates? Was she slowly but surely becoming susceptible to it? Hope didn’t know what was happening. All she knew was that it
did
seem as though there was something drawing her toward the two men she’d begun to have feelings for in such a short space of time.

As the other women talked around her, Hope rested her hand against her heart, trying to figure out why she felt so much for them already. Never one to fall fast, it surprised her to find herself half in love with the two men in less than a day.

A sound behind her caught her attention and she turned to look toward the window. She looked at the other women, but none of them seemed to notice. Another sound, a thump against the side of the house, had her checking out her companions again.

Still, nothing seemed amiss. Perhaps it was normal or maybe she was just hearing things. After all, she had been kidnapped and…other things in the last day. Perhaps she just needed a nap.

When the back door opened and a man walked in, Hope didn’t think much about it until three more filed in behind him as he made his way to the door into the rest of the house.

Turning to face the women, he smiled at Dana. “I’m sorry to have to do this, Dana, but it was this or death.” Waving his arm, he signaled the men to take their positions. One of them stood next to the baby, his weapon pointed down at the sleeping child.

“If any of you scream, or call attention to the others in any way, Targis will shoot the boy.”

Dana made a small squeak of alarm and moved toward the cradle. One of the men grabbed her arm and held her back as she fought his hold. “Let me go!”

“We don’t want to hurt the child, but we will, Dana. Just calm down.”

“You’re lying. If you’re an elitist like the rest of them you won’t let him live. You can’t. Elitists want pure blood, not mixed blood Wolven. You know that.”

“No, Dana. They aren’t here to kill you or your child. They’ve come to try to talk reason with the rest of them. They only way to get them to listen is to take you all hostage. Without you women as a distraction, they’ll be able to concentrate on the elitists’ concerns.”

The man who stood behind Hope pulled her to her feet and dragged her toward the door. All of the women went silently as the man standing near the cradle bent to pick up the child.

“Don’t hurt my baby!” Hope could hear the urgency in Dana’s voice, though the other woman kept her voice down.

“Wait a minute! If they don’t want to kill anyone, why did someone kill Robio and Dradon in their own barn?” Hope tried to talk reason with the one man in the group who looked as though he might listen.

“What?” the man looked at the others. “You said you just knocked them out.”

“They might have knocked them out before they ripped their bodies to shreds.” Hope began to retch, just thinking about what she’d seen.

Her actions must have made the man believe her because he turned his gun on the man holding Hope, who was closest to the door.

“Let her go. I want to hear what she has to say.”

Before she knew it, several weapons exploded with flashes of light. Circles of red blossomed in the center of the man’s chest and in the center of his forehead. Another flash had her right upper chest aching, and she looked down. Blood covered the front of her blouse as she started to fall to the floor.

“Leave him, he’s past helping. Let’s get moving. Grab her. We don’t want them healing her. Why let them waste the energy? They’ll need it to take their ship back home when we destroy this place.”

After another bright flash of light, Hope felt disoriented as well as tired. Blood continued to run down her blouse. The sound of material ripping came from her left and she tried to turn her head, but the effort just seemed too much.

Hope groaned when someone pressed against her bleeding wound. It hurt like hell. She would have told them so, but her mouth didn’t cooperate when she tried to open it to tell them.

“Where are we, Maman Amelie?” Fleur asked her stepmother. Hope could hear the worry in her voice, but she couldn’t even open her eyes to try and make the teenager feel better by letting her know she would be okay. At least she hoped everything would be all right.

“I don’t know.” Hope heard the clack of heels against a hard, metallic-sounding floor. “I think we have been taken to another oubliette.” Amelie seemed upset, though it sounded as though she tried to suppress her fears, if the cheerful sound of her voice was any indication. “It looks like a very large and empty storeroom.”

With the glimpse that Hope got just before she crumpled to the floor, she would guess it was some sort of warehouse.

“It is another one of their odd ships, Maman. See the strange walls and how there is no door?”

No door? Hope tried to sit up to get a look around, but she couldn’t move. In fact, she grew weaker by the moment. It felt as though her will to live leaked out through the hole in her chest. After another minute, she could no longer feel, could no longer hear. She floated on a sea of darkness, her body numb and her mind blessedly quiet.

A baby whimpered and someone, presumably Dana, cooed to it. She couldn’t tell. Hope was probably lucky she still had enough sense to make out most of what went on around her.

One thing stayed uppermost in her mind. If she died today, she would die happy and well loved. She only wished it could have lasted a bit longer.

When the hair on the back of Joran’s neck stood on end, he rushed toward the kitchen. Something was wrong. He could feel it. His heart leapt to his throat when he saw Neblix’s body on the floor, holes in his chest and forehead.

The women were gone and he smelled a female’s blood. A closer inspection told him it was Hope’s. Ripping his shirt off, he threw his head back and howled. The others crashed into the room behind him, Braxton and the alphas doing the same.

“The elitists will die for taking our mate.” He growled the words as he ripped his jeans and boots off. “We may not get them all, but we
will
get those responsible for our females’ disappearance.”

Shifting into his wolven form, Joran skirted the room, taking in the scent of the males he would personally see made it to the afterlife,
if
the gods would have them.

Braxton and the others followed suit, quickly removing their clothing so they could shift. “What do they think they can gain by taking the women?”

“They believe taking the women gives them the upper hand in the fight to get the council to listen. They are correct. The council will listen, at least
this
part of the council will listen,” Maxim Marholt, Chancellor of Taos said as he threw his shirt on the floor.

“You can’t go, Chancellor!” Lorcan stepped forward, laying his hand on the chancellor’s arm. “What would our people do if we lost you and Matteus to these lunatics?” Lorcan waved his hand toward the chancellor’s triad mate.

“What would you do with a chancellor too cowardly to stand up for his decisions?” Maxim scowled. He turned to Matteus. “What do you think, old friend?”

“I think that we need to end this line of the elitist terrorist thinking once and for all. How can we claim a mate with them insisting all humans should die?”

Maxim grinned at Matteus then clapped him on the back. “Just as I thought.” He turned to the rest of the men who stood frowning in disagreement. “Anyone else want to voice their opinions before we go?” He crossed his arms. I’m not sure we’ve wasted enough time yet. Are you?” His right brow rose as though daring someone to bring up another argument with the women in danger.