Pepper's Journey Home [Grey River 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Grey River 9

  Pepper’s Journey Home

  Some choices take you far from where you need to be…but the journey just might lead you home.

  Pepper Gallagher has been lost in her own mind since the day she gave everything she had to protect her sisters. When the unconventional actions of two men bring her back into the light, she finds it difficult to process all that has happened.

  Diego and Tomas Reyes recognized Pepper as their mate the moment they first scented her. When they feel her slipping away, they decide to do something to save her that flies in the face of pack law.

  Dealing with two pissed off Grey River Alphas and Pepper’s equally angry sisters was the easy part. Convincing their mate take a chance on them—and the future they long for—might take a little longer.

  Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 47,682 words

  PEPPER'S JOURNEY HOME

  Grey River 9

  Maia Dylan

  

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  PEPPER'S JOURNEY HOME

  Copyright © 2017 by Maia Dylan

  ISBN: 978-1-64010-427-3

  First Publication: June 2017

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2017 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

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  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  DEDICATION

  For my family. Wherever you are, that’s home for me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Maia Dylan lives, loves, and works in beautiful New Zealand. She married her best friend, and they have two adorable but stubborn children who obviously take after their father.

  Maia’s career has featured a lot of travel, and she has filled her time at airports and in the air with books, books, and more books. Her love of erotic paranormal romance has seen her amass a huge library. She has been an avid reader and lover of ménage romances since she read her first book in this genre about three years ago.

  In January of 2015, Maia submitted her first ever manuscript to Siren Publishing. She wasn’t at all confident that it would be accepted, and in fact, she was expecting a nicely worded e-mail with a resounding no! Much to her surprise, less than two weeks later, she had an acceptance and a signed contract in hand, and since then, she hasn’t looked back.

  Outside of writing, Maia loves to eat, so she loves to cook! Her herb garden is legendary, but she still has issues getting tomatoes to grow. She’s been a performer for years and has even sung on international stages. She would love to own a classic Ford Mustang one day and of course have the opportunity to race it on a race track without fear of a speeding ticket.

  Although ultimately her dream is to be able to write full-time on a sandy beach with a mai tai in hand, she is quite happy to fit her writing in when she can. As long as someone reads her books, gets a laugh, and maybe comes to love her characters as much as she does, then she feels that she is living her dream no matter what!

  For all titles by Maia Dylan, please visit

  www.bookstrand.com/maia-dylan

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Landmarks

  Cover

  PEPPER'S JOURNEY HOME

  Grey River 9

  MAIA DYLAN

  Copyright © 2017

  Chapter One

  The sound of her own harsh breathing was loud in the trunk of the car. The entire left side of her body was numb from the vibration as it traveled down the road. The steady rumble of it rolled through the vehicle, and the fact that the suspension on the car wasn’t very good didn’t help either. She felt every pothole and imperfection in the highway.

  Reaching down the psychic bridge she held to the driver, she looked to see where they were. She saw a sign coming up on their right and made the man focus on it until she could read it through his eyes. Grey River, ten miles. She was close. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to convince Rafael to go into the town itself. Whatever chemical cocktail he had been taking, it was increasing his own psychic shields, and Pepper worried that she wouldn’t be able to hold the connection for much longer.

  Taking a deep breath and pushing her legs and arms against the sides of the trunk to brace herself, she sent him the image that someone was chasing them. She felt the car leap forward as he started to accelerate. She sobbed as she was thrown backward in the trunk, despite her best efforts to hold herself still. Gritting her teeth, she fed the fear that lurked in the back of Rafael’s mind and planted the seed that whoever it was that was behind them was now firing a weapon.

  Pepper sobbed when the car lurched to the left before suddenly pulling back to the right. She saw the bend coming up in the man’s mind and forced him to overcorrect, aiming for the gravel at the side of the road. As soon as the tires hit that, the car slid sideways out of control. She felt Rafael’s panic and fed it, and then the car was rolling end over end. Pepper couldn’t hold back a scream as she bounced around the inside the trunk. Stars burst behind her eyes when her head connected with the side of the car, and she heard a definite snap when she held her right hand out to stop her ribs from impacting against the wheel cavity.

  She must have lost consciousness for a moment, or perhaps it just took her a few moments for her mind to clear a way through the shock. Either way, one minute she had been rolling through the trunk uncontrollably, and the next the car was still. She knew by the fact she was looking up at the trunk lid that the car had landed on its tires, and she could see the late afternoon sunlight shining through the open trunk lid. She tried to push herself up but gasped at the pain that shot through her when she put pressure on her right wrist. She looked at it, and from the swelling and pain she knew it was broken.

  Tucking her wrist against her waist and tugging her T-shirt up and over it to act as a sling, she rolled the other way and pushed herself up with her left. Her breathing was harsh and uncontrollable sobs kept breaking loose from her as she climbed out of the trunk. She stood for a moment looking around her, trying to—

  “Pepper!” Rafael roared, and she turned to see him walking around
the front of the crumpled car. His face was covered with blood from a gash over his right eye. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, bitch?”

  Pepper’s entire body filled with fear, and she shook her head at the man as he approached her. She walked backward, never taking her eyes off her tormentor. God, with the amount of physical and psychological abuse she had suffered at the hands of this man and his friends, it was amazing she even had the ability to think clearly at all.

  “R-Rafael, please,” she whispered hoarsely, stumbling slightly as she tried to keep some distance between them.

  Rafael grinned, a bizarre and macabre sight through all the blood on his face. “I do so love it when you beg me, Pepper. It is something I am looking forward to hearing more and more over the coming days.”

  He stepped closer to her, and in a move that surprised her as much as it did him, she swung the back of her left hand around hard, slamming it as fiercely as she could into his jaw. The impact drove his head hard to the left, and Pepper rushed to the right, trying to make a last-ditch effort to escape. If she could make it to the road, then perhaps she might—

  “Agh!” Pepper screamed, lifting her left hand to the back of her head where Rafael had grabbed a fist full of her hair and dragged her to a halt.

  “Now, that just wasn’t nice,” he growled against her ear, then turned her to face him before punching her in the side three times. She felt something within her crack.

  Pepper fell to the ground, retching. She would have been violently ill if she’d hand anything to throw up. Her entire side was now on fire, and there were spots forming at the edges of her vision. She took a shuddering breath, trying to fight off the wave of nausea and the threat of unconsciousness. If she blacked out, it would be all over for her.

  “Get the fuck up, Pepper.” Rafael leaned down, gripping her hair once more and lifting her forcefully back to her feet. “We are getting out of here. Together. The sooner you realize that you belong to me and that the only way you have a future is by staying by my side, the better. Now move!”

  Rafael pushed her forward, and she stumbled a few steps. She sent a wave of psychic energy along the connection she still held with Rafael and heard him curse as she lurched away, putting a little distance between them. She turned to face him, rage unfurling within her at a rapid pace.

  “I don’t think so.” Her voice was practically a snarl. “I always knew I didn’t have much of a future, whether I stayed at the compound or not. I certainly will not allow myself to entertain a future with the likes of you. I would rather have no future than have it revolve around someone as narcissistic and evil as you.”

  Rafael’s expression turned ugly. “You can think whatever the fuck you like, Pepper, but you belong to me. You aren’t strong enough to fight me—you never were. You are nothing! No one wanted you as a child, and no one will ever want you as a woman. Look at you! You are insignificant, and you could disappear from the face of this earth and not a single person would give a shit!”

  Rafael charged her, and Pepper threw her hand up instinctively and he fell back onto the ground.

  “My sisters would care,” Pepper whispered. She would have liked to have screamed it defiantly at the man, but she couldn’t. She heard the voice within her that often planted seeds of doubt deep inside her whisper, would they really?

  Rafael groaned as he pushed himself up to stand. “Well, lookee here, the little bitch has a spine and some fight left in her, after all. I’m going to enjoy breaking that spirit of yours.”

  He charged her, and she threw another pulse of energy out toward him, but this time he had shored his shields to protect himself against it. She screamed when he reached her, and it was immediately cut off when he wrapped his hands around her throat.

  Rafael leaned in, his face close to hers. “It has been a long time since I killed a woman this way, while looking into her eyes. Did you know you can choke a woman into unconsciousness more than once before it eventually kills her?” He leaned even closer and pressed a kiss to her mouth. “When a woman is choked like this her face turns red, her eyes widen, and fear fills her expression in the most delicious way. When there is blood on her face, like there is on yours, it is the most beautiful countenance on a woman.”

  Pepper kept scrambling with her left hand, trying to drag his hands from her throat, desperate for air.

  “Now, be a good little bitch, and pass out. I want to get you hidden away before I go hunt down the rest of those cunts you call sisters and kill them. Slowly and painfully. Aristos will pay handsomely for that.”

  Pepper’s fear evaporated beneath the heat of the emotions his statement ignited. Pulling all her rage, all her pain, and all her fear into herself, she threw the energy it amassed within her out with as much power as she could.

  For as long as she lived, she would never forget the look of shock on Rafael’s face as he flew up and away from her. The force of her psychic blow threw him into the air, and slammed him against a tree more than eight feet from where she stood, impaling him on a branch.

  She fell to her knees gasping for breath, her left hand cupping her sore throat and watched in horror as he twitched and jerked, his hands wrapped around the branch that ran through his middle much like they had been around her throat. A few terrible moments later, he exhaled for the last time, and slumped against the branch.

  “Oh, God,” Pepper closed her eyes.

  She forced herself to stand and started to stumble away from the scene of carnage around her. If she were to have any hope of survival, she had to make it to Grey River. Parris was there, and people that Melaina trusted enough to take care of them all. She just had to find the strength to get there. Once she was close enough, she should be able to lock onto Parris and go directly to her. Melaina might trust these Grey River people, but she had no reason to, and experience had always taught her that people were more likely to come at her with violence than anything else.

  * * * *

  “Talk to me, D.”

  Diego grinned at the dominant growl of his boss, Hunter Reed, down the phone. Hunter was a lion shifter, and hearing him in that moment, it wasn’t hard to tell.

  “We’re on our way into town.” Diego answered, looking out the window at the darkness that surrounded them as they drove through the night. They were driving deeper and deeper into the forests that bordered on Grey River pack lands. “A lot of weird fucking shit has gone down these past few weeks.”

  “Tell him about the Jax,” Tomas urged from the driver’s seat beside him, and Diego rolled his eyes. As if he would forget that little detail of the hell that had been the last month. He’d heard about Jax and knew the effects it had on shifters, but up until a month ago, he had never felt the effects of it for himself. Those dandy inhibitor collars Aristos Christakos had slapped on him and Tomas had done a great job of shackling their wolves and preventing their shifter abilities.

  “We are dealing with a larger and much more organized group than what we have in the past, Hunter,” Diego said, his voice taking on a serious tone he very rarely used. “Aristos and his fucking assholes not only have Jax, but they also have shifters who can track among their ranks. We weren’t expecting to have to fucking deal with traitor shifter assholes on this one. Not to mention that that crazy Greek bastard is all fucked up on his own creations and has crazy abilities like the girls. They knew we were there and started torturing this redheaded woman in order to bring us out. They got us and the two Grey River wolves sent after Christakos’s daughter.”

  “How did you get out?”

  Now there’s a question that had him and Tomas grinning at each other. “Well, I tell ya, boss, that Christakos woman is one tough badass chica. She got us out and went after the other woman they were holding. By the time we finished sweeping the compound, the friendlies had all gone. We picked up the trail of one of the rogue wolf shifters—he’s a mean bastard. He’s the one that had been dealing out the pain on the little redheaded chick. We figured we�
�d follow his trail until we caught up to him. If we’re lucky, he’ll be wherever Aristos is and can call back.”

  “Okay,” Hunter snarled, his frustrations clear even over the phone. “So, where are you now?”

  “Well, that’s the funny thing. It looks like this prick is heading to Grey River.” Tomas suddenly slammed on the brakes and muttered a Spanish curse. “Jesus Christ, Tomas!” Diego growled as he was flung against the passenger door of his brother’s truck, throwing out a hand to brace himself against the dash and keep his cell phone in his hand at the same time. It would be just his damn luck to die in a fiery car crash on the day he was finally out of the prison he and Tomas had been held in for the past month. “Are you fucking driving with your eyes open, or are you using the force? Because I have to tell you, you ain’t no fucking Jedi.”

  Barely waiting until the truck had come to a complete stop, Tomas stepped out of the cab.

  “A car’s gone off the road here.” Diego heard his brother scenting the air.

  “Hermano, deja el telefono.” Tomas’s tone had increased in urgency. Whatever it was that caught Tomas’s attention, it was something serious. Diego did as Tomas had asked and disconnected the call to Hunter.

  Diego climbed out of the truck to follow his brother, and as he moved as quickly and as silently as he could toward the place the car had left the road, he lifted his face into the wind and inhaled deeply. What he found intermingled with the earthy tones of the surrounding forest nearly dropped him to his knees. There was a trace of a scent the likes of which he had never encountered before. It was both sweet and spicy at the same time, and it had his mouth watering in anticipation of its taste. A humming filled him, and it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was everything he had been told it would be. The Quickening.