TRIPLE DOG DARE
Triple Trouble - 4
Tymber Dalton
To Hubby and Mr. B, who both have an infinite well of patience to put up with me. (It’s not easy having a writer for a pet.)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book picks up in the Triple Trouble series where book three, Three Dog Night, ends. If you want to read the entire Triple Trouble series in order, including the prequels involving the Alexandr dragon shifters, this is the proper sequence:
Boiling Point (Tasty Treats, Vol. 3 anthology)
Steam
Fire and Ice (A Triple Trouble Prequel)
Trouble Comes in Threes (Triple Trouble 1)
Storm Warning (Triple Trouble 2)
Three Dog Night (Triple Trouble 3)
All of those titles are available from Siren-BookStrand. If you haven’t read Fire and Ice yet, I highly recommend you do. Otherwise, some of the events in this book might not make sense. Fire and Ice covers the events and time gap between Steam and Trouble Comes in Threes.
Thank you all for reading, and a huge thank-you to all of you for your patience for the time it took me to get this book finished. (I promise the next book in the series won’t take as long.) I never expected the dragons’ and wolves’ stories to merge the way they did, but sometimes those pesky characters just have minds of their own. When they decide to take a story in a certain direction, all an author can do is follow them.
Prologue
Then…
Maureen touched one trembling hand to her swelling belly. In her other, she tightly held the phone receiver.
“Are ye still there?” Liam asked.
She nodded before realizing what she’d done. In a barely audible whisper she said, “Yes.”
“Love, I’m so sorry.” Liam sounded choked up, near tears.
She prayed he wouldn’t cry. Because if he did, she would, too. And she didn’t know if she’d be able to stop.
“When I can join you?” she asked, already knowing the answer in her heart.
“Ye can’t right now, love. They’ll find ye. We can’t let them have her. Not them. I don’t give a bloody damn about ancient blood oaths. Those filthy bastards aren’t getting their hands on our daughter. Besides, ye never swore to the oath. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.”
“Can I see you before you leave?”
Another long pause that nearly ripped her heart out. “We can’t. We can’t risk those bastards finding ye. I never should have told my brothers about ye. Goddess, I’m so fecking stupid! This is all my fault. And now Ellie and Charles…” She heard him make a noise on the other end that sounded like a choked sob. “This is all my fault,” he said again.
“No! Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.” She closed her eyes and pictured his face, his dark hair, his green eyes. His scent still lingered on the shirt she wore, his button-up shirt.
Her mate. The love of her life. “I love you, Liam.”
“I love ye, too, baby. I’m so sorry I have to leave ye.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe they murdered Ellie and Charles. I never dreamed…” He choked up again, and she gave up trying to mask the sound of her own crying. “They must have been watching them and saw us meet yesterday. They might be watching the Lyall ranch now, looking for ye there. I’m afraid to even call and talk to them. I don’t know what resources the Abernathys have.”
“How long do you have to stay gone?”
“I don’t know. Whatever ye do, stay with Carla. They don’t know about her, they don’t know where she lives or anything. They don’t even know yer name. As soon as I think it’s safe, I’ll track Carla down and find ye through her.”
Maureen glanced across the room to where her best friend sat in a rocking chair, watching and listening. Carla looked like she was still in shock over their recent revelations, probably wanting to believe it had all been a bad dream or a funky hallucination.
The baby chose that moment to kick. Maureen choked back yet another sob. “Talk to the baby, Liam,” she softly said. “Let her hear your voice.” Whenever the baby grew active in her womb, all their little girl had to do was hear Liam’s voice and she settled right down. A daddy’s girl even before birth.
“All right, love.”
Maureen pressed the receiver to her belly and held it with both hands. She could faintly hear his words, assuring their daughter she’d stay safe, promising to one day come back to them both.
Elain. They’d already agreed on her name.
After a moment, she put the receiver to her ear again.
“Mate, hear me well,” he said. Alpha tone. It didn’t matter that she’d claimed him first. He owned her, heart and soul.
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Stay safe. Keep our daughter safe. I will come back, I swear it. And ye will both be in my thoughts every day while I’m away from ye. Never forget how much I love ye.”
“I love you, too, my husband.”
He whispered the last. “Ye are my heart and soul.”
“And you are mine.”
When he hung up, she nearly dropped the receiver as the dial tone sounded. It felt like part of her soul had died. It’d been over a day since she’d seen him, when he’d left to go meet with the elder Lyalls and arrange for a safe hiding place for them.
With the Lyalls now dead, she suspected she would never see Liam again.
When she felt hands on hers, she realized Carla had crossed the room and took the receiver from her to hang up the phone.
“Are you okay?” Carla asked in a shaky, quivering voice.
Maureen shook her head and burst into tears. She would never be okay again. Not as long as she was separated from her mate.
Now…
Marston didn’t like meeting with this man. Especially since Marston had suffered from a really bad run of luck the past few decades. He nervously waited in the outer office, where one of the man’s flunkies had parked him a few minutes earlier. When the inner office door opened, yet another flunky silently waved him in.
Feeling more like a naughty schoolboy than a man over three hundred years old, he walked in, trying not to flinch when the flunky stepped out and closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with the other man.
Rodolfo Abernathy sat in his wheelchair behind his desk. He liked to portray to the world the image of a kindly, wizened, world-weary man. A weak man.
A man beyond his prime, harmless.
The truth was, despite his wrinkles, Rodolfo Abernathy was still one cunning, dangerous wolf. And he didn’t fool Marston in the least.
“Marston,” he said. “What news have you for me?”
“I believe I’ve located Liam Pardie’s daughter.”
“You believe, or you know?”
Marston swallowed hard. “I cannot confirm anything yet, but—”
Rodolfo slammed his fist on the desk and slowly stood. “I am tired of your failures. Explain again to me why I shouldn’t take the blood oath out of your hide and be done with you once and for all? I have waited far too many years already for my satisfaction.”
“Her last name is the same. She just hooked up with the Lyall triplets. I don’t know for sure if she’s Liam’s daughter, but everything points to it.”
Rodolfo’s wrinkled visage eventually split into a horrific smile. “Excellent,” he said as he dropped back down into his wheelchair. “How long before you obtain her? The last thing I want to do is go through their Clan Council.”