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follow her and take her in the shower. The woman was going to kill him. “Damn.”
    Abel chuckled. “Yeah. Something like that.”
    Cain grinned. Abel knew exactly what he was thinking, because he was thinking it, too. He bent to retrieve his boxers and pulled them on before going to the teakettle. He poured two mugs of the hot water and got bags out of the cabinet, then handed one to his brother. He pulled out a chair and sat at the table, cocking an eyebrow when his brother didn’t follow suit.
    “Talk.”
    Abel’s expression shut down, and his eyes glowing with a feral intensity that Cain recognized. He was in Hunting mode, as if a switch had been flipped. Most people believed Cain was the more dangerous of the twins. They were dead wrong.
    “Greg Thompson was attacked last night.”
    Cain stood, the slowness of the movement at odds with the need to act rushing through his body. Greg was one half of the only other identical twin set of their age in the pack, and they’d recently mated.
    “Is he okay? Where was Jeff? And their mate?”
    He should remember the woman’s name but didn’t feel too bad about it. She was so new no one had met her, yet. The Thompson brothers had just brought her home.
    “He’ll live, and she’s fine. Her name is Michelle, by the way.”
    “And Jeff?”
    Abel pressed his lips together. “No sign of him. He went into Knoxville for supplies and never made it back. Greg thinks he holed up somewhere to wait the storm out. Greg and Michelle are up at the big house. They’ll stay there until he heals.”
    The storm had been bad enough to keep people off the mountain roads for a few hours, which meant whoever had attacked Greg had already been in place.
    “Who was it?”
    Abel shook his head. “Greg didn’t recognize him.”
    He heard a hair dryer start upstairs and smiled. Delilah had rushed through a shower. He’d heard the water turn on and off while he and Abel talked. She must be worried about what was going on downstairs.
    “You better get going. We’ll be up in a little while.”
    Abel hesitated, looking like he might argue with the plan. Cain knew he wanted to, but finally he nodded. “Until we know what’s going on, I’ll feel better if we’re both with her. And there’s enough people at the house she’ll be safe, even if we can’t both be there for some reason.”
    Cain didn’t respond to that, but they both knew she wouldn’t be alone. He’d retired from the Hunters and had come home intending to finally write that book he’d always promised himself he would. With a laptop he could do that just as easily at the big house as in his own office. He and Abel shared an almost psychic bond. There were no words on that mental path, but they knew the others feelings, the others thoughts. Abel understood that he could perform his duty to the pack, and Cain would watch over their mate. It was the nature of such bonds. They exchanged a look that spoke their mutual understanding. Words weren’t necessary. When they heard Delilah’s hair dryer switch off, Abel spun around and left the house through the kitchen door.
    Delilah had no idea what to expect when she returned to the kitchen, but it was not Cain leaning casually back in a chair smiling at her with a cat-ate-the-canary grin on his lips. There was no sign of Abel, and she half expected Cain to leap up and grab her.
    She wasn’t sure if she was ready for that again and looked around. A platter of scrambled eggs sat warming on the stove, and bacon sizzled in a pan. She walked over to check it, but that was only a few seconds of diversion and, swamped by awkwardness and confusion, she had to turn around and face him. By this point, that seemed par for the course. She desperately needed space from both brothers and blushed as she remembered in vivid detail how little space she’d had minutes ago.
    She’d never done anything like that, had never slept with two men in less than twenty-four hours’ time. She was uneasy