Exploring Alaska (The Juneau Packs Book 3) Read online

  The Juneau Pack 3

  By Katherine Rhodes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Exploring Alaska

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2019 © Author

  Cover: JRA Stevens for Down Write Nuts

  Formatting: Down Write Nuts

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Contents

  The Beginning

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  About

  Katherine Rhodes

  WARNING:

  Please be aware that this story addresses child sex trafficking and FMG (Female Genital Mutilation). These topics are sensitive for some.

  The Beginning

  “Addison!”

  I wasn’t sure that was my name.

  I thought it might have been at one time, but The Man had been calling me Ghalyela.

  Valuable.

  Bought and sold. Over and over. Until I had stayed here.

  “Addison.”

  Maybe that was my name. It had been so long since I had heard anyone use my name. All I knew was pain.

  At first I struggled. But that only brought me more pain. My first beating. My first caning. My first rape. I had been in pain so long now I wasn’t sure I could ever feel pleasure again.

  Traded. Bought. Handed along as one grew tired.

  Not all of them raped me. In fact, few did.

  White devil.

  But enough.

  Those who didn’t, used me around the house. Beat me into submission, humiliated me. I was nothing more than a housekeeper while their wife or wives bore them children. We were all in our own hells.

  But The Man. He raped me. He liked it. I left my body, so it didn’t bother me anymore. It was just a body, just a vagina.

  What he didn’t like about Ghalyela was her response to him. That there was a chance he could cause her pleasure. She was intact.

  I was intact. My parents were fools for not giving me The Cut. I was well beyond the years where the girls were given The Cut and it made me unruly.

  Instead of calling the village doctor—who would tell the elders I was there, and tied up, and raped repeatedly—he called in a friend who had a sister who had been Cut.

  I didn’t remember getting Cut. I didn’t remember much after the first touch of the knife on my vulva. I passed out, maybe, or left like I did when The Man raped me. I wasn’t there.

  But I was awake a few hours later—lying in wet dirt. Shivering, cold, alone, in the dark, with a terrible pain in my vulva. With my skin pulling, with darkness creeping in.

  The friend had messed up The Cut.

  I was dying.

  “Addison!”

  That was my name. I was Addison. I was a little girl. I belonged in my school in Oklahoma. I missed my silly white dog.

  I missed the dreams of the big, gray and red wolf that would come visit me at night and comfort me.

  I missed being a little girl. Now, I could never be.

  “Addison!”

  The voice was so close and so familiar.

  I didn’t think it mattered anymore. I was dying. I’d be dead soon. It was better than living, and better than being raped again and again.

  There was gunfire. Three pops, no screams. I hoped the next shots were for me.

  The bush I lay under rustled and someone parted it.

  “Oh, Addison…”

  Looking up, I saw a familiar face, dressed in fatigues and armed with a massive gun. I shivered and curled up again.

  “Medic! Medic! Bring me a blanket! Fast! Blanket.”

  The familiar face knelt next to me. “Addi, please say something?”

  “Ghalyela,” I mumbled. “No more.”

  “Sweetie, do you know me?”

  I managed to turn and look at him again.

  Brother. I had a brother. “Winter.”

  “Oh, gods, babydoll.” He gasped. “I’ve been looking for you for two years.”

  Someone appeared behind him and handed him something. The next thing I felt was the warmth of a rough wool blanket around me. An army blanket.

  My brother picked me up. “Come on, Addison. I’m taking you home.”

  I didn’t even know what home was anymore.

  Prologue

  “I told you this would be worth it!” Brandy crowed.

  “My ass is killing me,” Delia answered. “How much farther? Why does this road suck so much?”

  “Should be just ahead.” Brandy was clearly excited. I just leaned on my fist. The cabin had been ‘just ahead’ for about an hour.

  Thankfully, the window I was staring out of had a great view. I had never been to Alaska and the views of Favorite Channel and Berner Bay were stunning as we managed to rumble, slowly and carefully over the rough road alongside Davies Creek. A small sign, after a half an hour of plowing through the underbrush scraping and dinging and ripping the paint on the Land Cruiser and banging around against the SUV and each other in back seat, that directed us away from the precipice that had been getting closer. I let out a sigh of relief as Brandy took the turn.

  Zanna admitted, out loud, she’d been afraid of heading straight for the ice field at the top. I hadn’t told her about the deadly cliff on the left.

  I questioned the road even more after a very long mile drive. Couldn’t blame me—my ass cheeks simply couldn’t be any more numb.

  The view as we rounded what I thought was supposed to be a corner, was well worth it. The bay, channel, and the archipelago that hid Glacier Bay National Park from view were set up neatly in picture-perfect early summer scenes. It was everything I had ever dreamed June in Alaska would look like and the delightful shock that I was actually in Alaska rolled up from my toes.

  The rough-and-tumble, well-love—also known as beat-up—Land Cruiser managed to bust through the last bit of underbrush and into a clearing. Allegedly, the cabin would be there, slightly protected by the trees at the edge.

  Brandy threw the vehicle into park. Her eyes grew wide, and her face contorted with complete disgust. “No!”

  Yanking her seat belt out of the lock, she nearly ripped the door off the hinges as she burst into the cool early summer air—and mud. “No, no!” Her feet stuck in the thick, sucking mud as she headed for what sort of looked like a porch. Yanking branches out of the way, screaming and yelling the whole time, it took only a minute before we could see a front door.

  Brandy’s words echoed back to us through the trees. “This place is a mess! No! This can’t be! Harrison swore the place was in g
ood order!” She turned to us, as we all climbed out of the SUV.

  “That lying fucking dick-weasel!”

  Chapter One

  I wasn’t impressed with Juneau at all.

  After the mess of the house, and the hard sleeping on the floor last night, it was a letdown. I was hoping for something a little interesting.

  Or larger, anyway.

  Then again, I didn’t think I was supposed to be impressed, and we weren’t here to hang out in the state capital. I wanted to get back to the cabin and plop my ass in a chair and read, enjoy my months in Alaska, and that was it.

  Now, we had to outfit the damn cabin.

  Thank God for Delia and her megabucks.

  “Is Jess going to be okay up there on her own, with that electrician coming?” Delia looked at each of us.

  I shrugged. “Someone had to stay. We can’t all keep hovering over her all the time. It’s been almost a year, and she needs her space.”

  “I wanted this to be a damn vacation.” Brandy slammed her hand on the wheel and scowled at the store’s edifice. “Home Depot, on vacation. How is this a vacation? I don’t want to pick out plumbing.”

  “Come on, Bran, let’s go get a new, clean fridge and we’ll worry about everything else later.”

  I felt terrible for Brandy, and I knew she blamed herself for this mess when it wasn’t at all.

  Harrison had called her months ago, offering her family land outside Juneau for an unreasonable amount. She wanted that land and was pissed that she had to pay for them, but we all helped her raise the money for the down payment, and to qualify for the mortgage. Lo and behold—she got both.

  And we were off to Alaska as a post-college romp for three months!

  Her cousin Harrison had swindled her out of the money for the land and the cabin. If it weren’t for Delia, we’d all be paying change fees for our plane tickets.

  Instead, I was heading to appliances with Brandy to find a new fridge.

  She was grumbling the whole time. I was trying to be serious, but she was just so ridiculously angry, I couldn’t help snickering.

  “Brandy, you have to calm down. You have the place. We’ll get it up and running just fine. Pick out a nice mid-priced fridge that can hold enough food for five women whose cycles have synced and get the munchies within hours of each other.”

  She gave me a sidelong glance, then sighed and slumped. “Can I sue him? Is that legal? Is there real estate lemon laws?”

  “Forget him, Brandy. You can afford the mortgage and we’re all here. I didn’t think we were going to be able to pull this off, but we did. Let’s just think of this as an adventure.”

  “Fuck adventure.”

  I burst out laughing. “Pick out a fridge so I can stick your hot head in it and cool it off.”

  She finally smiled. “Yeah, I mean. I guess I should just relax about the whole thing. We’re going to need more appliances than just the fridge, though.”

  I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Delia’s rich. Don’t even think twice about asking her for help on this. Let’s also pick out a stove because I suspect that one up there makes a hibachi grill look sophisticated.”

  Brandy snorted and I knew I’d gotten her calmed down. She really didn’t need any more stress than she had.

  She picked out an apartment refrigerator. I talked her into a proper, full size side-by-side without an icemaker. I didn’t actually want to add to Delia’s bill for this.

  We picked out a nice midrange stove with a cool split oven that could heat at two temperatures. With five women, we needed that. Especially if my digestive tract decided to revolt and I had to cook some bland shit again.

  God, I hated that.

  Delia dragged us to the furniture store, where beds, living, and dining room furniture was bought. She bought four queen-sized beds, one with a queen trundle, and a queen-sized pullout couch for the living room—plus a loveseat, regular couch and two chairs.

  Then she bought a massive smart TV and aircard so we could watch movies.

  There was a reason we all loved and protected Delia. She was the purest kind of bad ass on the planet.

  At the same time, she was a little off, judging by the restaurant she picked for lunch. She was going on about some pine beer, but I was stuck on the menu.

  “Elk? Elk burger? Caribou? Are you serious?”

  Brandy sighed. “We’re in Alaska, Addison. What did you expect? Vegan kale bean burger and kombucha?”

  “But… reindeer…”

  “Mm. Dinner,” Zanna teased me.

  Delia waved at the two of them to shut up. “Addi, they have chicken, and fish. Look. Fresh salmon.”

  I was about ten seconds from being a vegetarian, and offering me reindeer for dinner was a good way toward closing that gap. I’d already given up pork and beef, and I was definitely not venturing into reindeer.

  I slapped the menu closed. “Kombucha is disgusting. Fuck your caribou. I’ll get salmon.”

  What should have been a perfectly delicious ice cream sundae after such a perfect piece of salmon suddenly went dead on my tongue.

  My whole body shivered, and a nausea settled in my stomach.

  There is a man staring at me.

  I put my beer down. “Do you feel that?”

  Brandy twitched her nose. “The dude staring at us?”

  “Yes. At that bar. He’s been watching us the whole time, but he’s started staring, hard about a minute ago.”

  “He’s creepy. He has beady little eyes.”

  Zanna wrinkled her nose. “I agree. Creepy.”

  I needed to get rid of the feeling of filth and disgust that he was giving me. I leaned forward. “He’s the kind of guy who thinks a dick would make you straight, Bran.”

  Brandy shook her head. “Nope. No interest.”

  The man just kept staring at us, and his eyes would land on me for just a few moments too long. Panic would start to rise and then—

  He’d move away.

  Brandy eyeballed me and thumped her beer on the table. “What are we doing about this guy? None of us are interested and he probably doesn’t care that we aren’t interested in his tiny... ego.”

  “Tiny ego?” I chuckled as the waitress placed another round of beer on the table.

  “Well, that’s not right,” Zanna said. “The penis is an inverse unequal correlation with ego. Small dick, big ego. Big dick, big ego.”

  Brandy’s forehead wrinkled. “Wait, what?”

  “Guys just have big egos,” Zanna said. “Some just don’t have the dick to back it up.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how you all put up with that shit.”

  “The same way they put up with our mood swings.” Delia nodded sagely. “If you come at me helicoptering that thing, I’m going to give you a mood swing in the balls.”

  Even though we all burst out laughing, I could feel the slimy guy moving across the bar, toward our table.

  “Oh, hey, look at that,” Delia grumbled. “He’s on his way over.”

  I only saw him out of the corner of my eye, but I could tell he moved like a predator. Delia quirked an eyebrow at me. Of all five of these women I called best friends, Delia was always the most observant, and the best at non-verbally asking if we were okay. She was our group’s secret weapon—she had deep-seated suspicion of everyone around her, save those she trusted, and she could spot trouble a mile away.

  Slimy stopped between me and Brandy.

  “Ladies…”

  I was pretty sure Brandy’s eyeroll sprained something. We all chuckled at her, but he thought we were laughing at him.

  “What’s funny?” he snarled.

  Zanna cleared her throat. “Inside joke.”

  “Inside your pants,” I heard Brandy whisper under her breath. I choked on my sip of beer.

  His creepy, yucky smile was back—which meant he hadn’t heard Brandy. “So, which one of you ladies wants to dance with a real man?”

  Zanna smiled and ra
ised her hand. “Let me know when he gets here.”

  Both mine and Delia’s eyes grew wide and shocked. Was she insane? Could she not tell how dangerous this guy was? This guy was bad news.

  And of course he walked around the table to where she was sitting and grinned at her. As fast as lightning, his hand was around her throat.

  Nope. Not on my watch.

  I was around Brandy to the guy as fast as I could and drove my two fingers into the nerve on his wrist and held on.

  He screamed like a wounded dog and let go, and with a step into him, I used the momentum of my body and my other leg to shove him backward into the wall fifteen feet behind him.

  I strode over and let my hands hang loose at my sides. “Get the hell out of here, you asshole.”

  He clutched his hand and growled.

  Growled?

  He leapt off the ground and darted back inside, smashing through the tables, tossing the place into chaos, and slamming out the front doors.

  “Zanna, are you insane?” Delia snapped.

  “I didn’t think he was going to choke me!”

  Brandy shook her hand. “Zanna. Even I knew the guy was unstable. You shouldn’t have poked the bear.”

  Chapter Two

  Jess got herself laid, and good, by a delicious brute of a man. She was smiling stupid the whole night.

  Delia and I fist bumped when Delia shared the news with me. I grinned the whole time, but deep down, I was not only jealous but angry.

  Things like that never, ever happened for me.

  Brandy plunked down on the couch once Hot Electrician and All Around Hunky Handyman Garrett Pauler left, and our teasing was thoroughly fleshed out.

  Brandy needed one more jab, though.

  She grabbed one of the pillows we’d just bought. “So, what did you and Garrett do to my house… aside from befouling it with your sex romp?”

  Jess narrowed her eyes, trying to be angry, but the blush that rose told everyone she was pleased and sated.