Loch

Johnny has friends in weird places.”
“This is a surprise to you?” Holly chuckled.
“Just be glad you didn’t have to meet them. Let’s get you inside.” He tucked Holly under his arm.
Garret stepped up to Holly’s other side. She leaned against him, letting her head rest on his thick bicep. She peeked over her shoulder at Loch, who’d shifted back. She wanted to make sure he made it into the house. She let her eyes wander down his sculpted chest before she caught herself and looked away. That didn’t stop a blush from heating her cheeks.
“Sit here,” Garret urged once they were back in the familiar living room. He deposited Holly on the couch, quickly wrapping her in blankets. “Tea?”
“I can make some.” Holly moved to get up, but Garret held her in place.
“Just sit for a spell. I’ll get dressed and be right back.” Before Garret retreated to his room, he looked to Loch. “I’ve got something you can borrow. Wait in the guest room down the hall on your right. I’ll knock when I have the clothes.”
“Thanks.” Loch kept his hands cupped over his lower region.
Holly stifled a laugh as Loch walked toward the guest room.
Keller also went up to his room to change. Holly was alone in the living room.
She stared up at the familiar vaulted ceilings and their rustic exposed beams. She looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that took up the entire wall opposite the door. Looking out into the blackness sent a shiver down her spine.
She looked away, praying that Trevor and his followers weren’t watching her from the woods.
A chime caught her attention. On the coffee table, right where she’d left it before she and Keller had hiked to the natural springs, was her phone. She had left it plugged in the whole time.
She grabbed it and started looking through her notifications. She’d missed hundreds of emails, phone calls, and texts, most of which were from her sisters.
She had sent each of her family members an apologetic text saying she’d sworn off technology for a week and that she’d call them later. It was a lame excuse, but she was tired and stressed. She’d deal with it properly tomorrow.
She was prepared to put her phone down for the night until she noticed an email from her boss with a subject line in all caps. Against her better judgment, she opened it. Contained in the email were several very angry, very colorful paragraphs about Holly’s lack of communication and the devastating effect it had on several significant networking events. In short, and in long, Holly was fired.
Tears welled in her eyes.
By the time all four men rejoined her in the living room, she was sobbing into one of Grandmother Pearl’s decorative pillows.
“Holly?” Johnny took a seat beside her and gathered her in his arms. She lifted her face from the pillow and began to cry into his neck. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?” Keller asked. “She just survived a kidnapping. That’s what happened.” He took a seat on Holly’s other side and began gently rubbing her back.
Garret stood behind the couch, gently stroking Holly’s hair.
Holly wasn’t sure where Loch was, but she could sense his presence.
“It’s not that,” Holly sniffed when she finally had control of her voice again. “Well, I mean it is that. It’s also other stuff. It’s everything, okay?”
“You don’t have to justify anything to us, all right?” Garret said.
He moved from his position behind the couch and walked into the kitchen. Holly heard the sound of the tea kettle filling with water.
“I got fired,” she mumbled into Johnny’s neck.
“You…got fired?” he repeated, uncomprehendingly.
“She lost her job,” Keller clarified.
“Yes, I know what fired means. I just didn’t realize Holly loved her job so much.”
“I didn’t.” Holly brought a shaky hand to her face to wipe away her tears. “I liked it, but I didn’t want to be there forever.”
Johnny pushed the wayward locks of hair away from her face.
Holly spotted Loch sitting on the coffee table, opposite her. She could practically see all of his thoughts whirling around in his head. Concern gleamed in his eyes, but she also caught him glancing between Johnny and Keller.
In all of their time cooped up in their neighboring cells, Holly had never told Loch about the arrangement she had with the others. She didn’t even fully understand it herself. All she knew was that sitting on her grandmother’s couch, in Johnny’s arms, with Keller rubbing her shoulders, and Garret making his special tea in the kitchen, she had never felt more secure and cared for. She didn’t have to explain a damn thing to Loch. Not tonight.
“Then don’t worry about it,” Keller advised. “You can get a new job.”
“I know, I know,” Holly sniffed. “It’s just so…ridiculous. I just spent a week in an old mine in a cage, I’m destined to unite the bear clans through the birth of my child, and I regularly convene with what I can only assume is some kind of ancient goddess—”
“You heard the voice again?” Loch said. “I knew it! You always get that look on your face when you speak to her.”
“What? What voice?” Keller asked.
Holly sucked in a breath. “The day I was kidnapped, I heard a voice in my head. She called herself the Maiden. We’ve been looking at the legend of the Maiden the wrong way. I’m not an incarnation, I’m a chosen vessel as was Phaedra Glint.”
“Who?” Johnny furrowed his brow.
“The first Maiden. Rather, the first vessel,” Holly corrected. “The true Maiden doesn't have a physical form. She told me just now, as we were running from the mines that I was worthy of her.”
“A vessel,” Keller murmured thoughtfully. “Did she say anything else?”
“Yes.” Holly nodded. “She told me I was