Deke growled. "He will never fucking touch her. If he tries, I will rip off every finger that touches her skin. And if he ever hurts her, I will be happy to kill him as slowly and painfully as I possibly can."
I shivered a little at the dark promise in Deke's voice. It was ice cold, and I knew he meant every word. I knew all three of us were badasses but his time as an assassin before joining the pack made him someone much more dangerous when pushed. And honestly, I couldn't bring myself to disagree with him. Wilmington threatened our mate and was terrorizing her, making her afraid to even leave the house.
'We should hunt him down, rip his throat out, and bathe in his blood.'
'Down boy. As much as I agree, that would bring the human police down on us and they would take us away from our mate. Also, I'm not sure how Zoey would feel about us killing him. We don't want to upset her or make her scared of us.'
'NEVER! We would never upset our mate. We need her. Need to mate her and breed her. She needs to carry our pups.'
A warm feeling filled my heart as I pictured Zoey chasing a couple of pups through the house while being round with a third. I finally felt the anger ebb away as a strong longing filled me.
"Dude… what was that?"
I shifted a little, embarrassed by the way Jer was looking at me.
"What?"
"You know what! One minute you were almost in a blood rage and then it was just gone. What made you feel such, I don't know… longing?"
I swallowed and looked down at my feet for a moment before looking up and meeting Deke's and Jer's eyes.
"My wolf said we need to mate with her and breed her, that she needs to carry our pups. I imagined seeing Zoey chasing two pups playing while being pregnant with a third. I want that. I want pups with her. I can't think of anything I want more in life than for all of us to be a family with our mate and our pups."
Jer and Deke came up beside me and each grabbed me by the shoulder.
"We are a family, Ash. We were three and now with Zoey we are four. Our pups will come. Just right now we need to focus on keeping our mate safe and helping her heal from her past." Jer's voice was quiet as he spoke.
Deke nodded. "Yeah. She puts on a brave face and acts like it doesn't hurt her anymore. But you can tell it does. Her belief that she isn't so beautiful that it stops your heart. That she's unlovable. She has emotional scars, not just physical ones." Deke swallowed and paled. "I haven't seen them, but I felt some scarring on the back of her shoulder when I was rubbing in that ointment. The back of her shoulder felt like there wasn't a spare inch of unscarred skin, like someone took a cheese grater to it. There are only a few ways for scars to happen like that and none of them are good, and all are very painful. And since she doesn't have shifter healing, she scarred badly."
Rage threatened to overwhelm me again. "God damn it! What the fuck is wrong with that pack?! Even if she doesn't have a wolf that's no reason to treat her like that." I growled deep in my chest. "We will need to deal with that pack eventually. They're gonna pay for all the damage they did to our mate."
Jer nodded. "Fully agree there, Ash. But… I hate to say this… we need to know more of what all was done to her. I hate it. She is gonna relive all of it, that's just how she is. I don't want to hurt her more than she's been hurt already but we need a clear idea of just what that pack did to her to be able to fully help her heal."
I sighed and bowed my head. "She needs a little more time with us before we can do that, Jer. She barely knows us and doesn't fully trust us. And that's something so private, to tell someone about the hell you went through. I'm not sure if you guys noticed when she was cooking breakfast this morning?"
They both looked at me puzzled and shook their heads.
"Her legs. She has thin silvery scars all over her legs. Thin painful knife cuts, just a little larger than paper cuts. Since we can pretty much say with certainty that she isn't a cutter…"
Deke growled. "It means someone did that to her. She's a fighter. They had to have tied her up or had help holding her down, making her even more terrified because she was helpless to stop them because she doesn't have shifter strength. FUCK!"
Deke turned and punched the bag hard enough that he sent it flying with a hole in it that leaked sand all over the floor. It was his turn to pace as he cracked his knuckles and flexed.
"God damn mother fucking sons of bitches! Why… just fucking why!? Why do that to anyone, least of all to her!!!"
"Um… Deke?"
We all whipped around as we all heard a soft, hesitant voice from the doorway.