Page 138 of Home: Posy 5

"The old man wouldn't step down and even together we weren't strong enough to take it from him," James said, and Posy stared at him in confusion.

"You don't know how many times we challenged him, Posy," he told her, "but he was too strong."

"After our last try failed, we decided to bide our time until Posy turned eighteen," Aiden told us, picking up where we'd left off downstairs. "We had hoped Lark would be strong enough to help us fight him, but we didn't know she was MIA until we tried to talk to her."

"What did he do to her, Posy?" James asked the question we all wanted to know. "How long has it been since you last sensed her?"

She didn’t answer. She hid her face in her thighs and didn’t look at any of us.

She scared, Granite whimpered.Poor mate so scared!

"Is that why we can't sense her wolf?" Jay asked. "Alpha Kendall did something to her?"

"Most likely," James answered. "We'll probably never know everything, but she's lived in hell these past few years."

Then Aiden made the mistake of touching Posy’s arm, and she flinched hard before curling into a tighter ball, making all five of us growl at him.

Considering how badly all of us wanted tokillboth brothers, he was lucky to just get a threat.

When Posy looked at him and asked for water in a rough croak, they fell over themselves in their hurry to reach the bottle of water on the nightstand, and I rolled my eyes.

Where was their compassion and love when she was suffering all these years?

Aiden gave her some of the pain meds as James helped her with the water bottle, then she leaned back against the headboard.

"I'll leave it here if you want it later." He set the bottle back on the nightstand. "You can ask any of us for help."

He swept his hand out to include us, but she wouldn’t look at anyone.

Mase stepped closer to the bed.

"Can we have a word with her in private?"

"Only for a few minutes." James shot him a warning look and I had to hold myself back from throttling him.

Again, dude, where was all that big-brother protectiveness when she was being hurt and starved?

After her brothers left the room, some of our tension fell away, and we slowly moved a little closer. Her eyes flashed up to take a quick glance at each of our faces before dropping back to her knees.

"Please say something to us, little mate. We want to hear your sweet voice again."

Jay spoke first, which was probably for the best. He always knew the right thing to say while Cole and I rarely did, Mase didn’t talk much at all, and Ash would fuck it up.

"Can I have one more minute, please, before you do it?" she whispered.

Do it? Does she think we’re going to mate her right here and now?I scowled.

Her brother said she doesn't even know what mating is,Jay pointed out.I wonder what she wants us to do.

I’m not sure what she means, but I know she’s not thinking clearly,Mase said. She’s in too much pain and had too much trauma.

Ask her.Ash nudged me with his elbow.Ask her what she means.

"Do what, cutie?"

She closed her eyes and twisted her fingers together and took a really deep breath. Then she nodded.

"All right. I'm ready."

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