Accepting My Twin Mates

Chapter 86

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 86

CHAPTER 83 – I KNOW THAT VOICE?

(Coincides with Astennu and Badru searching Finley’s apartment in Chapter 77)

Evgeniya

2 months ago

…Evgeniya…

A garbled and distant voice rang out, somewhere over a high-pitched ringing sound floating around my head. A wave of nausea was rising from within my stomach, pulling me in its undertow currents and swaying me like I was adrift in a tumultuous sea.

…Solnyshko…

That voice again. Louder now and deeper, more distinct, with a recognition attached. The backs of gentle fingers stroked my cheek, rousing my consciousness over the waves tolling their dispersing chime. My eyes flickered open in an attempt to clear the dry blurry sting from them, a deep gold fuzzy mass taking up most of my vision.

“Moye solnyshko, you hear?” Something bushy grazed my forehead.

“That tickles…” my voice sounded ragged and cracked, a hoarse whisper the only sound my chapped lips could mumble. “…Dad?”

“Yes, Evgeniya. Can you see?” Rough but gentle hands took my face in a featherlight embrace.

“Yeah,” I croaked.

The edges of my father’s face came into focus, his worried sunken eyes focused intently on me. Black circles lined his lids and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot but not from tears. Wherever we were, it was dark and freezing. A cold chill breezed across my skin making me shiver involuntarily. I attempted to sit up, the motion causing a jackhammer to pound behind my eyes. My neck was killing me, along the right side, and stinging at a particular spot.

A strong palm eased my back and aided my upright posture. “Here, take,” a layer was draped over my shoulders, thin and scratchy.

‘I don’t know what party we smashed last night, but next time, take it easier,’ the groaning voice of Evva stirred in my mind.

‘We didn’t go to any party…’

At least, I didn’t think we did… but what did we do?

“Where are we?” I began to take in our surroundings and scents.

The heavy smell of something akin to bleach emanated from the surface of the stark concrete walls. An open thin slit of a barred window allowed a billow of frigid air to pour in. Whatever time it was, it was late, a midnight moon shining a glow through the small opening. A dim light filtered through the bars of the slat on the gleaming door opposite. I didn’t need to be told the metal that coated it was silver. What I sat on was a solid and hard lump with only the slightest cushioning to it.

“Are we in a prison cell?”

“Yes. I am afraid so,” my father’s voice was unnaturally despairing, nothing like the comfort and steady timbre I was used to receiving.

“What do you remember,” he tilted my chin. “You met with Luna, yes?”

I nodded, the memory coming back, along with my nerves and panic. “Yeah, I think we went for tea…”

My arms pushed me from the squeaking metal frame, the thin itchy blanket pooling upon the hard futon, and I regretted the moment my legs pitched under me. I was going to hurl.

I aimed for the metal toilet bowl by the bed, my stomach’s contents retching and burning my throat. A sharp and acrid taste followed, scorching my mouth and tongue. A thick green bile erupted, as disgusting and rancid as it sounded, causing a chilled sweat to gather on my brow. I flushed the gross sight away, hitting the push button faucet in the tiny basin above to rinse my mouth out and splash my face. The water could have flowed straight from a glacier for its Baltic temperature.

I heaved to gain my breath, feeling a strange tingle in my belly. Not queasy per se, but not entirely normal. Something that felt like it had a life of its own.

A memory stirred. I had felt nauseous like this before, a stomach camp hovering, also, in the back of my mind… and the Luna sipping tea… did she do this?

A large and warm consoling hand rubbed my back, easing the tension of my muscles.

“It will pass. I felt same when I woke.”

“Do you know where we are?” I turned, gazing up at the thin window a few inches above my line of sight. “This doesn’t feel like Two Moons…”

A notch of panic rose and spread through my chest. “…Aste… Ru… I can’t feel them!”

I could sense our bonds intact, but I couldn’t sense them near. That only meant one thing; we were separated over a huge distance.

‘I can’t sense Aasim and Baniti either,’ Evva whimpered, her confident and snarky tone replaced with fragility.

“I know. I feel same with Lucy. We are in mountains,” my father’s arms wrapped around me, encasing me in his comfort. “Wherever we are, it is far from them.”

“Their father did this,” he mumbled into my hairline, and I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

“You think it was Alpha Isaac?” I pulled away, feeling queasy again. “That can’t be right, he-”

“Knocked me out with dart,” he sat me down and knelt in front of me, gripping my chin lightly. “He knocked on door and say he came to talk. He said he wanted to put fight away. I knew I should not have trusted, but I did…” his fists clenched and his eyes grew black, a bitter twist of regret contorting his features. “When I turned to close door, I felt sharp sting in arm. I remember more hitting my chest and then… dark. I woke here and found you with me not long ago.”

I shook my head, unable to believe my mates’ father would do something like this. I knew he disliked rogues, but to do this? Astennu and Badru were trusting, too trusting. They weren’t used to backhanded remarks, hidden agendas and betrayal. They were used to the face value of others and they loved their father despite their differences. They would never, in a million years, suspect him of being behind this.

Who else was in on it? How many? Were my mates in danger?

‘It’d have to be a pretty huge effort to take that nugget and goober down,’ Evva muttered with a tint of pride. ‘Our pair of big, muscly, strong, warm… sweet… little bit dumb… what were we talking about?’

‘You were supposed to be making me feel better and you started fantasising.’

‘Oh, yeah’ she regained her facilities from her distraction. ‘My point is, when they put their heads together, those two are smart. They’ll work it out.’

‘Well, I’m not about to sit here and wait!’

I marched to the solid cell door, refraining from touching it. The sizzle of silver crackled against my skin from just being close. I tried my best to look out into the dim hallway beyond, not seeing or hearing another soul.

“We are alone,” my father interrupted my useless search. “I checked, twice.”

‘Evie? We’re alone, but I’m fairly certain there’s a third set of paws in this cell…’ Evva whispered, protectively.

‘No, there isn’t!’ I rebuffed, digging my heels in denial. ‘I feel sick from whatever damn poison or drug is wearing off in our veins. That’s all.’

A faint bond chimed within my heart, one I wanted to pretend was that of my mates; at least, I wanted to pretend for a little while longer.

‘Fine, do an ostrich and bury your head,’ Evva huffed. ‘Maybe once our stomach is the size of a beach ball, the penny will drop.’

My stomach growled warping in hunger; a thankful distraction from my wolf’s attempts to be rational.

“Goddess, how long were we out,” gripped my abdomen, feeling the soft woven fabric of my silver diamond knit dress. Thank the moon, I hadn’t been stripped.

“A day at most. I know hunger and thirst,” my father gripped my hands. “We have not been out long.”

“They must’ve jabbed us a few more times on the way to wherever this is,” I rubbed at the sore spot on my neck which must have been the site of the injections.

‘I could eat a cow. And I mean all the cow, hoofs, horns, udder-’

‘I get the picture, Evva!’ I felt my stomach lurch again. This was a trippy sickness, that was definitely only a sickness and nothing else.

“Solnyshko, your scent…” he cupped my cheeks.

“I think we have more pressing things than how I smell, dad.”

“No, you still have plant scent. Evgeniya…” he placed a hand on my abdomen. Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

“No! No, no, no, no, no,” I pushed him away and rushed up, backing into the corner as though I had any way out of this. “I am not being kidnapped and pregnant! One catastrophe is enough!”

My damn uterus was not playing host!

‘Am afraid it is,’ Evva soothed. ‘Our eggo is preggo.’

“Evgeniya,” my father steadily approached me like I was a frightened child. “I will protect you. No one will harm you and pup. I swear.”

“That’s bizarrely not what I’m worried about.”

I should have known. The twins were obsessed with the plant scent on me, more than obsessed. They kept trying to rub themselves up me for it. I couldn’t be pregnant. I wasn’t ready to be pregnant or to be a mother! Forget being taken and kept in an unknown place, this terrified me more!

How could I have missed the signs?

‘I’ll hold my paws up and say I was an equally dense muffin. Which one do you think did it? Goober or the Nugget?’ Her thoughts ended in a whimper ‘…I want them back.’

‘I want them back too. Mainly so I can slap the ever-living s**t out of them for putting me in this state!’

We used protection. How did one of their little swimmers get through? Was it in those blurry moments?

‘I think it was that night before, when they got super amorous and tried to wear us like a glove.’

Oh… that night.

My face heated, as Evva flashed the memories of the night before I thought my heat had hit, remembering how thorough they had been all night. Perhaps that was the start and I hadn’t realised it. Oh hell, of course it was! My wolf was right, I was a dense muffin. Astennu and Badru had practically humped my leg all day, they even felt me up under the table at dinner, right in front of my father.

“Solnyshko, I was scared too,” my father stroked my hair. “But it is happening whether you accept or no. And I will be here for you.”

I was trembling, and not from the cold. The cold was, in truth, helping. It was grounding me.

“I can’t be a parent! I’m not pleasant, I’m not nurturing. I don’t even know if I actually like kids!”

“Neither did I. Pups are loud and smell bad,” He chuckled. “When I held you, when I pulled you from your mother, all of it vanished. When your tiny hand gripped my finger, I would have died for you. You will see.”

“You’re taking this pretty well, considering…” I gestured around our dank confines, still in a state of denial it was happening.

“If I panic, you panic. If I calm, you calm.”

“I wouldn’t say I was entirely calm.”

An irritated shadow suddenly passed over his face. “I will be having strong words with volchata (little wolves) when I see them next.”

I chuckled in a small moment of levity. “Not too strong, though. They’ll have been through enough without my angry lycan father dropping like a boulder on them.”

That tiny faint tug chimed again at the mention of them, a fragile and slender tether pulling at my heart and spreading a warmth within. A little life that I would be responsible for and my only connection to my mates through the distance that separated us. I wondered if they could feel it too.

My hand slid over the soft knit fabric wrapped around my stomach. My father was right, getting myself worked up over the small bean-sized pup growing mere centimetres under my fingertips wouldn’t suddenly make my situation easier. Denial wouldn’t make it go away.

I didn’t know where we were held or by who, or whether we would be at Alpha Isaac’s mercy, but I knew I had to keep this quiet and for as long as possible. I wouldn’t be able to hide it completely. My scent would change and grow day by day, a distinct second layer in addition to my own. And if there were wolves here, they’d smell it.

“What if they think I abandoned them?” A creeping fear pressed its claw into my heart.

I had denied marking Astennu and Badru, and denied their declarations of love for too long.

‘There’s no way in whatever hell this is, that wingus and dingus would ever believe we left them, not after everything we’ve been through,’ Evva slapped the stupid out of me. ‘If we wanted to walk away, we would have done the first day when they chased you down in the snow. They know that. No way will they believe just hours after you said we wanted their mark that we got cold feet and ran away.’

‘And what about Lucy?’

I noticed the silence my father stood in. His eyes were no longer on me, but downcast and pensive.

Finley had abandoned Lucy in the first breath he had and she had struggled to believe anyone would want her again. It had been her first reaction when feeling the mate bond once again, to believe the worst.

“She loves you. I don’t think you have much to worry about her doubting you,” my own regrets started to pour through me. “You were always good to your mate…”

A loud clang echoed down the empty hallway outside, metal against metal, like a large bolt grinding on its lock. Slow and heavy footsteps followed, belonging to multiple people. They stopped outside the solid cell door and screeched open a larger viewing port.

A strange displacement of air swelled, like that of an aura.

“So you’re up?” I knew that voice. “Not so much my f*****g Luna now, are you?”