Why wasn’t it getting hotter?
She needed it hotter. She needed more water, more soap, she needed…she just needed…….
To feel clean.
That monster had destroyed her family. He’d torn them apart. Ate them! Then he’d held her down, pinning her with his claws while he’d meticulously shredded her back, finishing her torture by slicing her open and ripping out her womb. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d also stalked her, toyed with her, seduced her and then-
A broken sob broke free as she forced her trembling legs to work and carry her to the bar of soap forming suds on the tiled shower floor. She picked it up only to drop it again when it slipped out of her hand. She tried again and again with the same results until she couldn’t take it anymore.
She covered her face with her hands and stopped fighting it.
The grief that she’d held in, tried to ignore, broke free. The tears that she’d refused to cry wouldn’t stop. God, she missed her parents and her brothers. She’d give anything to see them one more time, to tell them that she loved them and hold them.
She just wanted her family back.
She’d do anything to have them back, to not be alone again. All these years, she’d been so lonely, so afraid and now she-
“Shhhh, mein Schatz,” Christofer said softly, enveloping her trembling body with his as he pressed a kiss against the back of her neck. “You’re not alone. Not anymore,” he said, making her realize that she must have spoken out loud.
“P-please just leave me alone, C-Christofer,” she said even as she grabbed onto the arms wrapped around her and held on as another sob rocked her.
“No,” he said, pressing another kiss to the back of her neck, “I’m never leaving you, mein Schatz.”
She shook her head, trying to stop crying so that she could call him a liar, to yell at him for making promises that he couldn’t keep, but instead she felt herself relax in his arms and say, “Then make me forget. Make it all better, Christofer.”
*-*-*-*
“Cloe, I don’t know how to-”
“Please, Christofer,” Cloe whispered, turning in his arms so that she could kiss him.
The kiss was desperate and angry, but he took it. For her, he took it. Her nails dug into his shoulders as her kiss became harder, punishing. Her body shook against his, her nails bit through skin as she sobbed against his mouth. He felt his heart break a little more with each sob.
What he wouldn’t do to take this pain away from her. He’d do anything to free her from this pain, anything, but he knew there was nothing that he could do for her. She’d bottled up her pain for too long, and now, it was breaking free. When she tore her mouth away from his and buried her face against his neck as loud sobs rocked her body, he tightened his arms around her and sat back against the shower and held her.
As she finally mourned her family, he gently pried one hand away and moved it down, pressing it against her stomach. When she tried to pull her hand away, he gently pushed it back and covered it with his own. Closing his eyes, he pressed his lips against her hair and held her.
“You will never be alone again.”
*-*-*-*
“Give. Me. A. Coke.”
“No,” Chris said, pressing a tiny kiss to the top of his newborn daughter’s head. “Not while you’re breastfeeding.”
“Then we’ll buy formula,” Izzy bit out evenly, looking close to killing her mate.
Chris paused mid-kiss to glare at his mate. “You dare suggest giving my precious babies formula?” he demanded as though Izzy had suggested giving the babies crack coc**ne.
Shaking his head with a sigh, Kale carefully placed Jessica on the bed beside her mother. Once the toddler was settled in next to Izzy, he sat down on the bed and laid back with CJ in his arms. The baby boy curled up against him in his sleep as he continued to dream of that 69’ Mustang that Kale had promised him for his sixteenth birthday.
“Don’t you have some place to be?” Chris snapped at him.
“No, not really,” he said, kissing the top of the baby’s fuzzy head.
“Well, get the hell out anyway,” Chris snarled, apparently still pissed that he’d kept the whole New York episode to himself.
“It was none of your business so get over it,” he said, turning his head to give Jessica a mock glare as the little girl reached for his nose, apparently still hellbent on getting revenge for the game they’d played earlier.
“You should have told us,” Chris said, apparently deciding to take up where his father had left off, bitching him out about loyalty and all that other bullshit that he didn’t owe any of them.
“But, I didn’t,” he pointed out with a shrug.
“You should have-”
“Oh, my God!” Izzy snapped, cutting off her mate. “He never tells us anything! Either get me a Coke or let it go! You know this was just a job to him!”
Kale didn’t say anything, just continued to hold CJ in his arms. He didn’t bother telling them that this was anything but a job to him, that after he saw what that piece of shit had done to Cloe that he’d decided to give her the one thing that he’d swore he’d never give to another woman.
His protection.
For the rest of his life, Cloe and her children would be his to protect and watch over. Her children, God help him, would make it to their immortality. As much as it pained him to protect more Pytes, he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t protect the mother and not the children, couldn’t let Cloe experience the pain of losing a child. As far as the rest of the shifter population was concerned, Cloe belonged to him.
“Is no one getting me a Coke?” Izzy demanded when the silence in the room thickened to the point of danger.
As one, both men turned their glares at the small woman breastfeeding her newborn baby daughter and snapped, “No!”
Izzy looked pointedly away with her little nose in the air. “Then I hate you both,” she said with an uppity sniffle that had them both rolling their eyes and their lips twitching despite the tension in the room.
She was just so damn cute sometimes.
“If you want our help then you’re going to start sharing,” Chris announced, ruining his, semi, good mood.
“No,” he said immediately, because he didn’t need their help.
“How exactly do you plan on finding the other Pytes without our help?” Chris asked, sounding genuinely curious as he carefully sat down on the chair by the large bed.