Marking Melody Read Online Free PDF Page B

death.  They had both said they wished they’d known so they could have been there to support her.  She wished the same.
    The home Holden and Jax shared was a ranch on a bit of property less than two miles from the garage.  Located at the end of a cul-de-sac, the house butted up against a stand of pine trees.
    Jax told her that pride members all lived on the street, and the home had belonged to their father who had died before she was born.  He pulled underneath the carport and turned off the engine.  Holden parked behind him, and the three of them went into the house.
    The country blue kitchen with striped curtains and a small butcher block table felt cozy.  Holden took her hand and said, “I’m so glad you’re here, Melody.  I want you to see something.”
    He took her into the family room.  She gasped.  Scenery pictures, taken by her, were framed and hanging on every wall, on the mantel over the fireplace, and on every flat surface.  Some of the photos were from when she was a teenager and just learning how to take pictures, and some were from the year her dad died.  Jax went to one wall where pictures hung with twisted wire.  He flipped the pictures over one by one, and she saw each of her school pictures and candid photos of herself and her dad throughout the years.
    Jax touched a picture of herself and Scarlett roasting marshmallows at a bonfire.  “This was the last picture we got from him.  When six months passed and we hadn’t heard from him, we knew something was wrong.  We looked for you, baby girl.  But your dad was so afraid that if he told us where you lived that somehow the information would get back to the females and you’d be taken from him.  We thought it was in the Midwest somewhere, and we made contact with a lot of wolf packs, but none of them would say whether they knew you or not.  And there are a lot of packs that don’t want to be found, so we had no way of knowing if we’d even contacted the right one.  And we didn’t know what last name he had chosen, either, which made the searching even more fruitless.”
    “I was on my way here to King to tell you in person when I was taken.  I lost so much time.”
    They hugged her and cried together, standing in front of the images of her life.
     
* * * * *
 
    While Holden tossed chopped vegetables in a bowl for a quick salad and Jax marinated chicken breasts, they asked her about Micah and Tristan.  She blushed and looked everywhere but at her smiling uncles.
    “Don’t be embarrassed.  You found your mates.  That should be celebrated,” Holden said.
    “Not too celebrated,” Jax said, making a face.
    Laughing, she shook her head.  “They said that the males in Ashland are sharing their mates, so they weren’t surprised to feel connected to me.”
    “Were you surprised?” Holden asked.
    “I was too upset with the way the pride treated me to even realize that it should feel strange to think of both of them as my mates.  I can’t really explain it, but we just fit together.  Now that I’ve met them, I can’t imagine my life without them in it.”
    They remembered Tristan and Micah from when they lived in King and had nothing but good things to say about them, which didn’t surprise her.  Her mates were lions-in-shining-armor.  So to speak.
    By the time the table was set, wine poured, and chicken pulled from the skillet, Micah and Tristan walked through the front door, looking like men who’d been missing part of their bodies.
    She enjoyed being sandwiched between them in a tight hug and laughed at the way they scented her and held her close.
    While they ate together, she listened to her uncles tell her mates about the state of the King Pride.  With the females gone, the males had regrouped and taken up the slack for the ones who had left.  The Fallon family, who she knew well from when they tied her to a radiator, had been the police force in town.  Now, the peace was kept by four brothers with the last