Trinity of Power novel Chapter 6

My beautiful mate. One of the two loves of my life. Her beautiful red hair is wild, the smell of ash and smoke clinging to her. She’s been trying to burn away her pain in the forest. Her face is flushed and the tear stains on her cheeks pull at my heart. I want to go to her, I want to hold her, to comfort her and wipe the tears away, but she wouldn’t want that. For one, we’re in front of someone else. For two, she just wouldn’t want it. Talking about our pups…it’s too much for her.

Even four years later, the pain of losing our pups is too much, too raw. She deals with it with anger instead of facing it and dealing with the loss. It’s caused so many difficulties for us. We’re not as close as we were when we grew up together or when we were first mated. I lost absolute control with her when we had sex earlier because it is so few and far between. Maybe once or twice per month. I love her, so very, very much. But she’s shut both Casen and me out. I think that’s why we’ve gone along with all of her plans. Partly, it’s our pain. They were our pups, too. But I think we’re trying to do anything we can to help her move on. To get our Rin back.

Brandon stopped when she came in, frozen by her announcement. I see the fear on his face, not of our mate, but of the thought that somewolf would do that.

“What do you mean?” Brandon asks slowly, putting down the knife and turning completely to Rin.

“When I was pregnant, the Black Night Pack in Minnesota figured out that we were all mates. They didn’t let us know that anything was wrong, that they knew. But quietly, they called together all of their allies in all the surrounding states. When I went into labor, they drugged Sev and Case with wolfsbane and silver chained me to the bed. They took our pups and broke their necks right in front of me.” Rin’s voice is choked with emotion: anger, hate, grief, and loss.

“Rin,” I say quietly, moving to her. I know she won’t like it, but I have to hold her. I have to touch her.

But she moves towards Brandon, not noticing that I’m trying to come to her. “They shot quicksilver into my womb! I can never have pups again!” She screams in Brandon’s face.

He stands there, frozen in horror at what Rin just revealed.

“Those packs that we decimated? Those ‘innocents’ that you say we killed? They were the ones that killed our pups.” Rin turns on her heel and heads to the entrance of the cave. “Let me the fuck out, Sev!”

I open the passage and she runs out.

“I’ll go after her,” Casen says with a deep sigh. “Keep going with dinner, though I have the feeling that we’ll be a while.”

I pull him in for a kiss. This grief. This heavy weight has been over us for years and it has never gone away. I worry that it never will.

Case wraps his arms around me, deepening our kiss. Though Rin has retreated into herself, Case and I have found comfort in each other. Our relationship has gotten stronger over the years, where Rin has seemed to fade away from us. We’ve tried. Done everything that we can. But the only thing that seems to work is to follow along with her plans for revenge. Now that we’ve gotten rid of all of the packs that helped with killing our pups, Case and I are hoping that she will be able to heal. That we can move on from this. Hopefully.

“I love you,” I whisper against his lips.

“I love you, too,” he whispers back, a small smile playing on his lips. When he pulls back, I see his love for me dancing in his eyes. His love has been all that’s kept me going all these years. The same is true for him. I hope that you can help her calm. When you come home tonight, I’ll repay you for the blowjob you gave me earlier. I link to him. He’s going to need something to help him through the hell that our mate is going to throw at him.

His eyes immediately darken. “Fuck, Sev. You want me running through the woods after our pissed off mate with a hard on?”

I step into him, grabbing hold of the bulge that is showing up in his pants. “Incentive to get back quickly.”

We hear a pointed throat clearing from the other side of the kitchen.

Both of us break out of our heavy lidded gaze to see Brandon standing there, decidedly uncomfortable.

Shit. Forgot that he was here.

We step apart from each other. “Sorry man,” Casen says. “We’re not used to other people being here. Kinda forgot about you.”

“I gathered that,” he says, turning back to the vegetables he’s massacring. Dude was right when he said he wasn’t good in the kitchen.

I’m holding you to your promise when I get back. Casen mindlinks me. He kisses me one last time before heading out of the cave and I close the barrier behind him.

The kitchen is quiet for several minutes, only the sounds of Brandon’s knife on the chopping board and the sizzling of the meat in the pan.

“I’m sorry,” Brandon says, his voice quiet.

I look over and am taken aback to see that his cheeks are wet. He’s crying! For us? I feel amazed that he would have that much compassion. It completely surprises me and I can’t stop my jaw from literally falling open.

“Fuck!” Brandon says, throwing the knife onto the counter and using the heels of his hands to rub his eyes. It makes me spring into action, since he was just cutting a jalapeno.

“Don’t touch your eyes!” I spring forward, making sure that he keeps his hands right where they are so he can’t open his eyes. “You were just cutting a pepper. That’s gonna hurt like hell if you get that in your eyes. Keep them closed and I’ll wipe them off.” He nods and I quickly wet a paper towel and use it to gently wipe his eyes. “Keep ‘em closed. I’ll lead you to the sink so that you can wash your hands and then you can take care of your eyes better.”

I bring him over to the sink that we’ve set up in the kitchen and hand him the soap so that he can wash his hands. Fuck yeah, we have indoor plumbing. Heat and electricity, too. It’s amazing the things that you can learn how to do on YouTube with a generator and some desperation.