Uncaged

Chapter 23

Nikki's mother stepped forward and pulled her into a crushing hug. "Oh, my baby! I'm so glad you're okay! I was afraid I'd get here too late, and then I saw the house and thought they might have taken you!"

As for Nikki, she just stood in shock for a moment, before hugging her mother back. I saw Jasmine coming from the kitchen and racing to her mother to join in the hug, so I ran upstairs to get their dad, not sure if he knew she was there. Knocking on his bedroom door, he answered a bit later.

"Your wife is here," I stated simply.

His eyes opened wide, and he ran down the stairs to join the ladies of his family. I pulled my phone out and typed a quick text to Adam to tell him to come on over with Ben and to bring several pairs of work gloves. It would be a busy day here. and he should see his mom too.

When I got back down the stairs, there were a lot of happy tears. Jane and I could feel the happiness of our mates, bringing tears to our own eyes, and all the Garrisons were sobbing together as well. We finally got everyone sitting down on the couch to discuss what was happening.

"When your father called me and explained what was happening," Mrs. Garrison started, "I dropped everything and got on the first flight I could to get here. Unfortunately, I was in the Baltic, and it took me a few days. When I saw the condition that the house was in, I feared the worst. But now I've never been so happy. And there are so many wolves!"

"Yeah, we've been expanding our little pack," Nikki said with a giggle.

"I realized on the flight home that I have been so wrong about this. I was trying to protect you from the wolf inside you, and instead I should have been training you and protecting you from people like that awful man that tried to take you." Her mother gave a full body shiver at the thought of it.

"Good, because we missed you!" Jasmine said, hugging her mom again.

One family had their mother come home, and another got their mother back. It was a good couple of days. I snuck out of the room to take an inventory of the house, trying to see if there was anything I could do to clean while waiting on Ben and Adam to get there with the gloves so I could handle the silver. I didn't want to do it, but I stuck my head out into the garage to see the bodies. It was hard to look at, but part of me knew I needed to accept what I'd done to defend my mate and my family.

There were 5 wolf bodies, and one human. Evidently, they stayed in whatever form they were in when they died. The human must have been the one on the stairs, that I'd shot with the crossbow, and thankfully someone had closed his eyes. He was a short man, with greasy blonde hair and a wispy beard. He didn't look to have been much older than I was, and I felt a momentary sadness that he had got pulled into this mess as well. I couldn't tell which wolf was which, but I was happy that they had stayed in that form. I knew one was Brad, but I didn't need to see his body. The garage smelled like death, and I couldn't stay too long, but I was okay with what I'd had to do. I went back into the house and took a deep breath to clear my lungs of that stench.

I looked around the kitchen and then the laundry room but didn't see any bleach bottles. I didn't really want to go back into the garage, so I went back into the living room instead. "Excuse me!" I interjected into the discussion they were having. "Do you have any bleach around? I want to get started cleaning up all the blood if I can."

"Oh! I can take care of that!" Mrs. Garrison happily replied. "I can finally do more with my spells after all this time!"

"Perfect! Can you get rid of dead bodies too?" I asked.

"Of course!" said the grisly Mary Poppins with a grim smile.

I had to admit, she was fast. Before Adam and Ben had arrived, the house was already cleared of all the blood, and all the bodies were gone as well. I don't know how she did it, but evidently Jasmine and Nikki got some on the job witch training while she made it happen. While that was happening, my folks went upstairs and changed into their wolves, and each took a quick turn biting both Fran and Leon. They were too young and too excited to worry about any pain, and they were just thrilled to be part of the pack. Fran was convinced she was going to meet some hot werewolf to be her mate some day and was over the moon. Leon just wanted to be like Sam since the twins always stuck together.