her in a towel, and carried her to the rocking chair by the bed. He grabbed an extra blanket to wrap her in, and rocked her quietly, hummed a soft tune to try to calm her.
Holding her close, once again Lucca asked her what had happened. Mariah blew her nose and tried to look at Lucca, but was so embarrassed. Here she was crying like a baby, naked, wet, and ashamed she had yelled at Garret. When she knew in her heart he was trying to do something nice for her. She had heard other girls talk at college, not only her sisters, but the college students she had studied with. She had tried to cover her past, so the new students wouldn’t know her history, but eventually they found out anyway.
“Garret was trying to do something nice for me and I freaked out and yelled at him.” Mariah started explaining. Still with tears in her eyes and now with the hiccups, she tried to tell Lucca how bad she felt and that she had gotten scared and didn’t know how to handle it with everything else that had happened earlier. So Lucca quietly asked Mariah if she was a virgin. Mariah sat up straight with indignation and replied “Well, of course not!” But she also realized she owed these guys an explanation, the truth about her past.
No matter how badly she wanted no one in her new life to know, if she wanted to keep Garret and Lucca, she was going to have to come clean. Just then the front door was pushed open, not knowing Lucca had unlocked it as soon as he came in. Big Gray came in, slowly walked over to Mariah and laid his head in her lap. She started to pet him and said” Oh Gray, I was so mean to Garret. Do you think he will ever forgive me?”
“I mean I really yelled at him Lucca. Like the type of yelling that even scared me.” Gray just snuggled his muzzle in deeper, looking at Mariah like he knew just what she was talking about. She could tell the big wolf knew Mariah was in distress and was trying to comfort her.
Mariah reached up with her right hand and laid it on Lucca’s cheek, and she had her left on Big Gray, sighing Mariah said, “Okay, any minute my phone will be ringing and it will be Maranda. Emotional upheavals alert our twin. She’ll know something happened. We can’t always tell if it’s positive or negative emotion, but we always call each other so we know the other is okay. She explained. “Now that I am back in control…and the phone rang. “There she is now. When I get off the phone, the three of us need to sit down and get some secrets out of the way. You both may want to stay a fair piece away from me. Lucca, can you get us all a beer, and Gray, you need to go change while I talk to Maranda in case you have questions.” With that Mariah grabbed her phone and headed to the loft.
Chapter Fourteen
Garret walked back in fully dressed, Lucca met him at the kitchen table with three beers, and Mariah, already dressed, came down from the loft and to the table with her guys. She liked the sound of that, “Her guys”.
Mariah started “Let’s all sit. Thank you Lucca for getting the beer. Looking at Garret, she started with a apology. “Garret, I am so sorry for the way I reacted to you earlier, I was totally out of line. Please forgive me.” Garret came forward, put his arms around Mariah, and said, “You never have to apolojize to me for anything Baby.” Mariah mumbled, “Baby, I kind of like that.” She took her seat looking at Lucca, “Thank you for rescuing me in the shower, and this meeting is NOT going to end until you tell me how you got into the cabin when it was fully locked up.” “Garret, I’m sure Lucca unlocked the front door for you to enter, but he sure as hell didn’t come in that way.”
“Now, I’ll get my ugly story out of the way.” Mariah said as soon as she finished a big swig of beer. “Two weeks before my 18th birthday, I was attacked, beaten, tortured, raped, and sodomized by four men. They stood on my outstretched arms to hold me, My right arm was badly sprained but my left was broken in a couple places. Three ribs were broken, I had multiple bite marks, pinch marks, scratches and bruises from being kicked a number of times. I screamed in my head for Maranda but by the time she found me, I had slipped into a temporary coma. I was put through not only forensics from the police force, but also from the hospital. My Father brought in an old friend from the FBI, Maranda brought me out of the coma and into a world full of pain, distrust, and fear. That’s it, that’s my story. I screamed at you Garret because no one had touched me but my parents, sister and two doctors. You were so gentle and thoughtful, but you couldn’t have known that I had never had an orgasm before, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but the tenderness you showed me mad me realize the problem was mine, not yours. Thus, not a virgin, but only negative experience to compare it to. I went to a female physcologist for four years, not only wanting, but needing a normal life. I finished high school after the first semester of my senior year then classes online as long as I could. Until I met the two of you, that even interested me. I want to be normal. I want what every other woman has. To feel loved and wanted and appreciated. Unfortunately when all this happened, it not only affected me, but my entire family and many friends. They all had to watch me heal on the outside as well as the inside. I was a mess. Coming here was the first chance I had of leaving it all behind and finding a new life. I am going to plead with you guys to keep my secret, if anyone finds out, I’ll have to leave again. You can’t imagine how fast news travels and the way people treat you when they feel sorry for you. I can’t go back to that life ever.”
“Well, aren’t you two going to say anything? I’m done, so now Lucca, how did you get in here if the front door is the only one?”
Lucca stared with a look of total horror on his face. “What, you’re just going to drop a horror story like that on us and then ask if there is another entry? Yes, there is, we were going to show it to you, but we wanted to have full access to the cabin just in case.”
“Just in case…what I freaked out and you felt like you needed to check on me, or you wanted to sneak up on me, in case of what Lucca?” Mariah demanded. Lucca stood to go get them all another beer, trying to think of a way to explain a way that would make sense to Mariah.
Garret spoke first “Mariah, yes. We built this cabin for us. We put in an escape tunnel. It opens into your pantry. We didn’t want you to worry about it. Since the day you got here, Lucca and I have both been obsessed with you. We were going to tell you as soon as we got to know you better, and knew you could take care of yourself. I’m not going to apologize for keeping that information to ourselves. We wanted to protect you.”
Garret continued, “You want to talk about the huge wolves? How did you know? And by the way, I am way beyond sorry for what you went through so young.”
With a big sigh, Mariah stood up. “Guess it’s my turn again. I have already told you I have a great fascination for wolves, all kinds of wolves. From Dire wolves that walked the earth over 100,000 thousand years ago to the wolves all over the world. I always have had this desire to know everything I could find. I have read thousands of books, articles, and even diaries about wolves. Do you guys even know where you originated? Well, I do.”
“Way back hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the Dark ages actually, there was an illness wiping out small towns all over Western Europe. There was a powerful witch that lived in the forests there, seer, magician, whatever you want to call her, had a visitor from far away. They put their heads together and decided to bring in three of the largest wolves, and three healthy men, and switched their souls. Since she only made males to go through this, they all had to find human females to mate with. The male wolf could bite his female mate and she would turn to wolf also so she could bare the wolfen young. This process worked for all six of them. She wasn’t trying to punish any of them, only save the species in the future. The wolves became men, and the men became wolves. They were told to police themselves, keep their abilities a secret so they wouldn’t be hunted down.”
Mariah continued. “The wolves could walk among men, and the men could go as wolves into the forest to forage for food. The men got the improved immune system, heightened hearing and seeing and even smelling. Over the centuries they have multiplied and live all over the world. Unknown to man. Sometimes used in Special Forces, the way you were. Your secret is completely safe with me for I would never endanger you two or any of your colleagues. Since reading this when I was fourteen years old in an old book in the University library, I’ve always secretly hoped this was all true and that I could find