Accepting My Twin Mates

Chapter 117

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 117

Chapter 114 – Persuasive?

Evgeniya

Upon hearing the slithering voice dripping in condescension, my mates quickly formed rank around me; Astennu to my front as a shield and Badru to my back, his arm wrapped around my belly to protect our pup, leaving me sandwiched between a pair of rumbling Alphas. Any other time, Evva would have been beside herself to be the toasty filling between our Alphas once again. But with a blond pig-of-a-man dressed in a suit in front of us, all she wanted was to break free and run with a bloodlust.

“I knew my lovely lycan would round herself up without me having to spare a few men,” Marceau paid no attention to the twins, focusing his gaze on me, and inclined his head to the right, straight in the direction that a round of metallic clicks rattled at the same time.

My eyes trailed towards the sound, following the littered line of torn bodies of some of the rogues that had attempted their escape and the few guards that had died trying to stop them. But it wasn’t the slew of dead bodies bare from their shift that drew my attention, it was the line of vampire males forced to their knees under threat of fire from the eight guards at their back. Four knelt, bloodied and bruised. Five lay unconscious on the cold snow in front, in an equal state. The only indication that they were alive was the imperceptible rise and fall of their chests.

“Barend…” Bastiaan’s features peeled back in dread.

The red-haired vampire shook his head, signalling to his charge and coven leader not to make a move, earning a swift smack to his head from the guard’s gun over him. Blood gushed from the welt across

his forehead and he swayed on his knees. I could almost see the stars pop around his eyes from the force used.

Bastiaan’s distress for his mentor quickly transformed into wrath as he bared his elongated fangs at his former captor. “Jij kutwolf, let them go!”

I had no clue what he had said in Dutch, but I had an idea of what ‘kut’ meant.

His body began to move forward, either wanting to get to his people or wanting to take Marceau’s head. Neither option would lead to any form of success. I reached between my mates and grabbed hold of his upper arm to stop him, rapidly shaking my head to stop him.

‘That’s his coven,’ I mind-linked my mates. ‘They’re all he has left.’

“Marceau-” Astennu warned, his figure trembling with hostility as he outstretched an arm to pull Bastiaan back and put himself squarely in front of us all.

“The older one, I assume?” Marceau cut off whatever it was my mate was going to say, setting his sights on Catalina who clutched onto her mate behind her. “Imagine my surprise when I was sent footage of a rather interesting altercation involving a particularly fiery young lady and one of two familiar faces with her. Unfortunately, someone’s little jailbreak spoiled my welcome reception for our Alpha visitors. So, let’s drop those weapons, including those you think I can’t see,” the venomous wolf in front of us stepped forward and with him came the reason for his confidence; wolves.

There were too many to be more of the guards, they had to be the rogues that I thought had managed to get away. None looked willing to be there or act as backup to the man that enslaved them.

“A little innocent of you, Evie, in thinking all my fighters would turn on me. All those evenings together, alone, didn’t teach you how persuasive I am?” His eyes flashed in delight as my mates’ snarls vibrated

the very air surrounding us and the ground under our feet, my skin crawling with the vivid memories of every moment alone with him.

While they were enraged at the thought of Marceau being alone with me in a room, I caught his real meaning. I was only persuaded to be anywhere alone with him because he used the threat of harm against my father to keep me in line.

‘Some of those men have families that Marceau uses against them,’ Diego quietly backed up what I had worked out. ‘They’re not going to risk their pups’ lives for you Alphas.’

“Well, Alphas?” Marceau raised an imperious brow in challenge, keeping behind his wall of wolves in the tree line. “The three of you don’t seem to be dropping anything and I know you didn’t saunter in here without weapons.”

Reluctantly, Bastiaan was the first to throw down the large knife in his hand, flinging it in an arc, tip first, into the snow- covered dirt. His gaze never dropped from his subdued coven. Astennu, Badru and Catalina followed suit, reaching into the back of their pants’ waistbands and throwing down what was concealed.

The minuscule yet smug and haughty smirk never left Marceau’s face as the weapons hit the ground, the clunk of each ringing through the mountainous forest. I caught a small glimpse of a thin knife still tucked into the back of Catalina’s pants. That crazy she-wolf was gonna try something.

“I had hoped we could have done business in the future, but I assume this…” Marceau goaded, circling his index finger in the air. “…Will get in the way of that. Pity. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking my she-wolf back.”

He held out his hand as though I was meant to stride on over and take it without a fight.

‘Is he deluded?’ Evva snapped her jaws, a rumble working its way up my throat. ‘And where the hell is Adrian in all this?’

She was right. Wasn’t he supposed to be acting as ‘look- out’?

“You will no take my daughter anymore!” My father shouldered in front of me, trying to hide the winded tinge to his voice. The dark steely blue of his irises flickered and struggled to bleed into black, his wolf trying to come forward but unable to fully overcome the lingering wolfsbane in his system.

“Lycan, don’t you grow tired of making threats you can’t act on?” Marceau’s smirk broadened. “You’re fighting to simply stand. I doubt we’ll be meeting your wolf any time soon.”

‘I don’t care what you do, but you get my Evgeniya out of here,’ my father’s shoulders rolled, his back tensing like he was preparing to engage.

‘No one is sacrificing themselves,’ Catalina reached behind her. ‘We’re all leaving and since this pinche lobo (f*****g wolf) won’t step into Adrian’s firing line, I’ll have to make him.’

In a fluid and smooth motion, the knife flew out of Catalina’s outstretched hand and into the throat of one of the guards standing over the vampires. At the same time, a thunderous gunshot reverberated, amplified by the crisp air. The bullet tore through the guard’s jaw and erupted the side of his face apart in a shower of blood. The once eerily quiet mountainside descended into the inevitable frenzy.

At the unexpected ear-splitting sound and two guards dropping down dead on impact, those of us in clearing flinched, ducking our heads downward on instinct. The four vampires still conscious took their moment, kicking out the legs of the guards they could reach. Three of the remaining six guards were taken down, but as they fell, they fired… straight in our direction.

Diego flung Catalina to the side, taking the full force of an unknown number of darts to his body. Bastiaan had thrown himself into the fray of grappling with the guards, who were breaking out into their

wolves. He slashed in streamlined motion over his mentor, Barend, acting as his protector against the wolves shifting above him. Astennu was already mid-shift, tearing through his clothing, and snapping at one of the more bloodthirsty rogues that had leapt forward. Which left my father and myself open to the stray wolfsbane darts about to make their unintended target.

Just as my father grabbed me to turn us and take the hit, Badru’s partially shifted body ploughed us both into the snow, his voice mangling from a wolfish yelp to a human hiss of pain.

I stared in horror at his back as he fell to his knees and dropped to his side by me on the cold rock. Four darts, and emptied, sunken into the thick muscle near his spine, leaving him vulnerable and unable to shift until his body flushed the toxin from his body. I knew he underwent training for wolfsbane, but the recovery wasn’t instant. Four full vials would take their toll, and time, to cleanse and expel.

Had the darts hit my father, he would have been dead in seconds…

If they had hit me…

The thought clogged in my throat, choking and smothering the cry of panic for my mate.

“Subdue them you fools! If you ever want your pups to see their first shift you’ll bring me my female lycan!” Marceau roared, picking up one of the wolves near him by the scruff of its neck that looked reluctant to attack and hurled them in our direction to a skidding halt at our feet.

Astennu’s wolf was locked in a dog fight, raised on his hind legs and hackles stood on end with a surging aura to grapple down the rogue that gnashed its teeth at his claws. The shaggy sandy brown rogue streaked with cream and grey I recognised. The same jagged scar that ran down his flank ran down his human form too; a rogue that had made several vile and obscene comments to me. I doubted whether he had pups or a family, he was simply after blood or maybe he had nothing else to live for.

And Catalina was in the midst of four wolves, snapping their jaws and yet to launch an attack at her or Diego under her wolf’s midnight chest. It appeared as though she was mind-linking them, talking them down from attacking. It wasn’t the rogues’ fault. If they had pups or mates, they were acting out of fear for them. Years of separation and confinement, stewing in helplessness, had left them desperate.

Either way, help would not come from Astennu or Catalina in time and, judging by the slow show of fur on his knuckles and the claws that could barely break through his nail beds, my father was still labouring to regain his wolf.

‘Shift!’ Evva commanded. ‘We’ll deal with this ourselves. Our pup will be fine.’

I didn’t need to be told twice and if she knew our son could take the shift, that was good enough for me. However, I drew the line at embroiling ourselves in the middle of the skirmish Astennu and Bastiaan were at the centre of.

A shuddering roar I hardly recognised shredded my throat, my wolf form rippling behind it and contorting my long limbs into that of a beast with long thick claws and a build that dwarfed my mates’. The rogue that had stalked forward after collecting himself from the snow, recoiled, indecision flashing in his eyes as he looked back at Marceau.

To back up mine and Evva’s threat, we snapped our bared teeth in the air between us and our opponent. Neither of us wanted to harm a wolf forced to fight, but if the choice was them or our father and mate, we would be compelled to make the hard choice.

A gunshot ricocheted off of the rock under the wolf’s paw, throwing up a small cloud of snow in his face as he blenched backwards. In the distance, we could just about catch sight of Adrian, expertly proving his metal as an expert marksman. All those times he offered to show me how to shoot and I refused, not liking the idea of handling a firearm, had come back to bite me in the ass today. Who knew I would have needed it in my future to break free of a mafia-wannabe wolf-trafficking overlord?

Another wolf stalked forward barking at the unwilling rogue, who snapped back in return, but while we would hesitate to attack the latter, we had no reservation in clawing the wolf we recognised by scent; a guard.

As the guard’s line of sight lingered too long on the rogue, we swept our claws through the air, landing on his flank and splitting him open like a ripe watermelon. The blow atomised his blood, spraying it across the white landscape of the clearing. Another gunshot rang out, but it was somewhere in my peripheral vision.

“T-that was hot,” Badru croaked, sweat dripping from his forehead as his body burned through the toxin, raising his body temperature to do so.

‘You’re so cute when you’re stupid,’ we licked his temples, cleaning his face and nuzzling his cheeks to distract from our father yanking out the darts still protruding from his back.

“Silly volchonok (little wolf),” my father rubbed where the darts had hit his back. “You will not leave my daughter to raise your son alone. That is order as your Beta.”

‘We’ll tell him later how being Beta works,’ Evva chuckled at the fatherly fondness that shone in his eyes. He hadn’t just accepted the role Badru and Astennu had offered him. He accepted them as his own.

‘You had better know what you’re doing,’ an unfamiliar accented voice spoke in my mind. The rogue that had been thrown at me stared back warily, his deep brown eyes flickering between us and our mate to our father, his nose twitching to scent the air and his tail hung low. ‘That man has my two young daughters who I haven’t seen for three years. If they die because of you,’ he fixed us with a sharpened glare, sharper than the blade of a silver- dipped knife. ‘There is nothing that will stop me from repaying their blood with yours.’

‘Then fight with us, not against us,’ our dusky blonde muzzle jutted in Astennu’s direction as he helped defend the five unconscious vampires with Bastiaan at his back to take the last of the guards. ‘If you turn on Marceau now, we’ll help all of you find your families.’ Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

The internal battle raged across his wolf’s features, more rampant than the one around us. Choosing his side, he spun on his paws, his hackles raised in a line down the ridge of his spine to his tail. The few wolves that surrounded Marceau took in the dwindling number of guards that had contained them for their incarceration and the man that had held their leashes, separating them from whatever family or life they had in the world. If they chose us, there was no guarantee we could reconnect them with that life. But if they stayed with him, their life would never be their own and would be dangled forever just out of reach.

The temptation for retribution was too great and they turned.

Instead of showing any unease or dismay at the challenge and betrayal, Marceau stepped up to the bat. The black irises of his wolf manifested and swirled in his eyes, his sights set on us. The seams of his suit split apart like a fissure with blond fur bursting through the slits left behind. His size was immense, like that of a top warrior and lean for speed, mature and honed enough to give a young Alpha a challenge.

The wolf was not about to go without a fight.