There was an entire box of single serving packets of peppermint flavored hot cocoa in his camper. And dry socks. And food. Cole was hungry. And his face felt like it had been pummeled with a bat; he needed to check his badly broken nose. It was mostly the thought of the hot cocoa that kept him moving though. Because, chocolate.
But then they saw the wolves.
JIN
He’d never seen a wild wolf up close before, though he’d spotted their tracks in the area more than a few times. They were gorgeous animals with turmeric eyes that could read Jin’s soul. Their tails, backs, and heads were marbled with browns and silvers, their underbellies as pure as the snow. And there were teeth. A lot of pearly white teeth, stained red from blood. As he and Cole stood rigid in the snow, he realized how very un-smart it was to have followed the boy up the drift-covered game trail. The wolf pack, only three creatures that Jin could see, had recently downed an elk, based on the blood that was splattered in messy arcs across the snow. Two of the animals rose from their eating positions and stared down the trail at them. The other, the largest, stood just behind the elk on the incline, watching Jin and Cole with its head lowered, its mouth and snout streaked red.
Jin didn’t know what to do. Run? Stand his ground? Should he pray for the first time in his life? Being uphill, the wolves had the advantage of speed, except the snow was deeper where Jin and Cole stood. Several long minutes passed where no one spoke and nothing moved, except for the trees. They simply observed each other, man and wolf, each waiting to see what would happen.
When Cole swayed, Jin reached forward, clutching the back of his suit to keep him upright. If the kid went down, Jin wouldn’t be able to save him. He tugged softly on the material, and Cole began to lift one leg, then the other, stepping backwards into his previous tracks. The wolves watched and blinked. Cole continued to move, allowing Jin to guide him into the large holes his legs had punched into the snow. They made it ten feet before the larger wolf stepped forward, moved around the elk, and growled down the trail at them.
Both Jin and Cole froze. His heart rate spiked, and Jin imagined how long it would take to die, being ripped into pieces by the three predators. He had only his knife on him, which wouldn’t scare them off and would probably take only one down, at best. Even with the snow as an obstacle, they couldn’t outrun the animals. He glanced at the closest trees, gauging the height of the lowest branches, trying to do the math in his head; could he make it up a tree before one of the wolves tore off his leg? Probably not.
A piercing howl followed by the guttural tone of whoops and hollers boomed up the trail from behind Jin, and he turned around just enough to spot Riley on the trail, her arms up high, waving and screaming up the hill. She flung something through the air, and it landed with a silent plop in the snow five feet from Jin. The moment he saw her, he realized what Riley was doing, and began yelling at the wolves, pumping his fists in the air. Cole cried out from shock, and cursed at Jin and Riley, who continued to shout and scream at the wolves like a mad woman. At first, it worked, and all three animals flinched at the noise, dashing several feet up the slope, but the alpha, the only male, refused to leave the kill.
“Back,” Jin yelled at Cole. “We’re going back!” He tugged on the kid’s arm, and kicked through the snow, retracing their steps.
“Don’t run!” Riley warned. “Keep moving, slow…that’s right…I think it’s working,” she hollered.
“Why are you screaming,” Cole hissed.
Jin let out a string of unintelligible words, just sounds really, and Cole’s face went from alarmed to excited. He joined in, hollering, whooping, and waving his arms. The wolves, confused, circled the elk, but didn’t follow them down the trail.
The space between them stretched out, and though Jin’s voice was hoarse by the time the slope turned them out of view, he kept yelling. The three of them moved down the hill together, Riley facing forward, Cole in the middle, and Jin at the back, keeping his view on the top of the trail to make sure the wolves weren’t pursuing them. When they hit the halfway mark back, they finally quieted and rushed through the deep snow as quickly as their legs would allow, reaching the cabin exhausted and pink-faced. But alive.
Chapter Seven
JACKS
The room smelled faintly of dirty cloth diapers and spit up, but he’d gone nose-blind to the odor weeks before. As he stared up at the varnished ceiling beams, Jacks listened to the baby sleep. For two days, he’d been trying to do the math to figure out exactly how many weeks old she was. He was disgusted that he didn’t know his own child’s age. The day before, he finally picked a number, sixteen weeks. But no, as he stared at the damn ceiling, that didn’t seem right. She was already rolling over, trying to sit up. Did babies her age sit up, he wondered. Would she be crawling soon? He scratched at his beard and added a month. Twenty weeks. That sounded right, too.
“Fuck,” he whispered into the room.
A gust of snow slammed against the window, and he sprang up on an elbow, expecting to see Lily stir herself awake, but she stayed asleep, dreaming whatever dreams babies had. He flopped back down onto the lumpy pillow and rolled onto his side so he could see the edge of her hotel-standard crib. He’d been thinking about her mother a lot. Ana would know how old her damn kid was, even if she was a bitch the entire time he knew her. Moms were good with that kind of stuff. He cursed again and punched the pillow into a more comfortable shape.
His eyes had just closed from exhaustion when something in the hall broke, and bodies began slamming into the walls. At first, Jacks thought he’d slipped into a nightmare, so he rubbed his face, hoping the noises would fade away. When the dog began to wildly bark, and Lily woke up screaming shortly after, he realized whatever was happening in the hall was real. He launched out of the bed and across his room, and pressed an ear to the cold door. His heart thudded in his chest, but not for his safety, for Lily’s. She was too young to survive without him, and after losing Win, Jacks was acutely aware of how important his role as a father truly was.
Kris began to shout, and it didn’t take long, a few seconds at most, for Jacks to realize it was Connor and Drake tussling in the hall, so he opened the door and carefully stepped forward. The two were rolling around the ground, precariously close to the top of the staircase, taking turns hitting each other in the face. He knew there was no love lost between the two men, but Jacks had never seen them physical with each other before. Whatever had set them off had turned them wild. At first, he stayed back, keeping Kris and the dog at a safe distance, but when Drake began to strangle Connor with his hands, Jacks leapt in and pulled him back. Instantly, both men were on their feet and going back at it. He took two hits to the gut, and one in the throat during his struggle to break them apart, but it was Ashlyn who ended the fight. She came out of the dark like a ninja, unaware to everyone, and broke an already downed lamp over the top of Drake’s head. Ceramic shards flew across the hall, bouncing into the walls and spinning along the wooden floor like coasters. She dropped the base, and vanished into the shadows as quickly as she had appeared, and for a moment, as Jacks sat panting on the floor, holding his ribs, he wondered if Ashlyn had been there at all.
When he caught his breath, he scrambled to his feet and pointed a stern finger at Connor’s bloodied face. “You fuckers better have a good explanation for this in the morning.” He began to walk away, back to his room, where Lily was practicing a new high-tone wail, and then turned around and grumbled at the mess. “He can’t stay there like that,” he snapped, referring to Drake’s unconscious body slumped over Connor’s legs.
Kris sniffled in her doorway, then shooed the dog into her room, closing the door. “I’ll help you move him to bed,” she squeaked.
“You shouldn’t have to,” Jacks mumbled. But Connor hadn’t attempted to stand yet, and Jacks realized Kris was his only option unless he wanted to drag the man down the hall on his own.
The wind whistled against the window above the stairs, and Kr
is jumped. “It’s getting worse,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Always gets worse before it gets better.” As he rolled Drake onto his back and grabbed his ankles, he waited for Kris to get a secure hold under the man’s arms, and thought to himself that never had he said anything truer.
While Kris helped him drag Drake into his room, Connor crawled out of the hall and disappeared behind his own door. Probably to stop the bleeding from his mouth, Jacks imagined. It took several attempts to get Drake’s dead weight into his bed. Jacks wasn’t feeling kind enough to do more than cover the man with a blanket, but Kris stayed behind to pull off Drake’s boots. In the doorway, he watched her carefully place them on the ground at the foot of the bed, and then she checked Drake’s head. Amazingly, he wasn’t bleeding from the hit that knocked him out, but his lip was split, and one side of his nose was bleeding. She dabbed at it with the corner of his blanket, then looked to Jacks for help. The shadows of the room danced around her face, playing with her features, and for a second, Jacks could have sworn he saw Riley’s face in Kris’ reflection. The jolt made him stagger away from the teen, and he rubbed at his eyes, hoping it would clear away the troubled thoughts spinning through his mind.
He wiped at his mouth and sighed. “Honey, there’s not much we can do for him tonight. Bastard’s going to wake up in the morning feeling like he got ran over by a snow plow whether you clean him up or not. It’s his own damn fault.” He gestured for her to leave the room, and pulled the door shut behind them.
She seemed so small, standing in the dark hall, with only one wall lit up by a fallen flashlight. Her face was drawn, tired, and pale. Her body shape had changed over the last few weeks, too, filling out her curves and adjusting to the constant transformations made by her pregnancy. Jacks recalled how hard things were on Ana’s small frame and even more fragile state of mind. Yet, here stood Kris, just a girl, really, all on her own with no support, even though she was surrounded by others, and somehow, she was okay. He’d been so lost in his own misery that he’d not spent much time thinking about hers. As Lily wailed in the background, Jacks pulled Kris into a tight hug, kissed the top of her head, and gently ushered her toward her room.
“Get some sleep,” he whispered, waiting for her to retreat safely into her quarters. “You both need it.”
When her door was closed, Jacks grabbed at his hair with both hands, pulling till it hurt, and began to shake. What the hell were they doing there? Why did they bring a pregnant girl and a baby out into the harshest weather possible? They were snowed in, stuck until the fucking sun came back and melted enough to see where the land ended and the pavement began again. But then what the fuck were they going to do? Move on to another abandoned building and wait for the next fucking storm to trap them in? Jacks wanted to find Riley just as badly as the others, if not more so, but at what cost? He’d seen her bloody shirt. He’d heard Keel and Drake talk about what they found in that camper. Riley was probably dead, or very close to it even before this bitch of a storm landed on their heads for a skull fucking.
Had he stayed back at the Ark with Lily, Winchester would have stayed with him. He’d be alive. He’d be with Jacks right now, sleeping next to him as the little spoon, or the big spoon, fuck, Jacks didn’t care which. The shake became uncontrollable and Jacks spun around, and collapsed against the wall before his legs gave out completely.
It was impossible, fucking impossible, to get the image of Win’s exploding head out of his mind. He couldn’t. Since the day it had happened, it was the first thing that Jacks saw when he thought of the man. Until now. His legs caved and he fell on his ass, the threat of hot tears coming on strong, as he pushed the bloody image of Win aside and struggled to see him the night before he died, and the night before that, and the night before that one. He could smell Win’s aftershave, and as promised, tears filled his eyes. He could taste the mint of Win’s toothpaste, and the tears spilled over his cheeks. He told him, not even a week before Win died, that he wasn’t gay. But Win had only smiled, and asked him to trust him. Jacks closed his wet eyes and replayed that day, even though to do so hurt so deep inside him that his bones ached.
“Do you trust me?” Win whispered, slowly closing the space between them.
Jacks, who had just stepped into the shower thinking he was alone, still had his dick in his hand, and balked at Win as the younger man held his gaze from the doorway with a smile. “I’m not gay. I can’t give you what you want,” he stammered, embarrassed to be caught jerking off.
As Win pulled his shirt over his head, and began to step out of his jeans, he laughed, and something in the pit of Jacks’ stomach flipped. “You already have, you just don’t know it.”
He was within arms’ distance then, waiting for Jacks to either invite him into the shower or punch him in the face. Jacks wanted to do both. But as he glanced down at Win’s naked and aroused body, Jacks’ dick twitched in his hand, and he backed deeper into the shower, letting the water stream hit his shoulder and spill over his heaving chest. It was the invitation Winchester had been waiting for, and he stepped inside, pulling the curtain closed behind him.
They faced each other, and though Jacks had been in every glorious sexual situation he thought possible with a woman, that moment in the shower took him back to his fifteen-year-old virgin self. He didn’t know what to do, so he stood still, and let Win reach out and touch him. When Jacks flinched, Win took the last remaining step forward and pressed a palm against Jacks’ chest, feeling the thud of his heart and the hitching of his breath.
“Do you trust me?” Win asked him. When Jacks couldn’t speak, he nodded once, and Win brought his mouth up to his, touching only his lower lip. “Then close your eyes…” Win whispered.
Tears streamed down his face, and he began to choke on the rapid pace of his breathing. Before one of the others found him blubbering on the cold floor, he stumbled down the hall and into his own room, realizing not for the first time, the severity of what he’d lost and couldn’t replace. There would never be another Winchester.
It was going to be a long night, he thought, as he weaved his way across the room to Lily and picked her up, cradling her small body to his chest. She found her hand to suck on, and hiccuped against it as Jacks sang to her like Win had every night before he died. It usually put her right to sleep, but the baby missed Win just as much as Jacks did. She reached across the front of Jacks’ t-shirt and grabbed a handful, pulling it into her mouth. He let her gum the material till it was soaked, and then laid her back in her crib, where she found her thumb and blinked her droopy eyes at him. With a trembling hand, he smoothed down her feathery curls, that grew longer every day, and just as dark as her mother’s. He wanted to bring Ana back for her. To bring Win back, too. But he couldn’t. Jacks didn’t know how to tell Lily that he was all she had.
The others were just as fucked up as Jacks was, for different reasons, and they’d been walking around in their own hells. He refused to burden Kris with his pain, not when she was suffering with so much. He knew little about Ashlyn, and didn’t need to know more. Jacks couldn’t talk to the men. Connor and Drake were like volatile hand grenades with missing pins, just waiting to explode at the worst time. Like they’d just done in the hall. Jacks didn’t even care what started the brawl, because like the storm outside, something had been building up between the two for weeks, something dark and festering like a cancer, waiting for its time to destroy its host simply because it could. Didn’t they understand that even if they got her back, one of them would still lose?
As he listened to the contrasting sound of the storm raging outside the window, and the delicate rhythm of the baby’s breathing, he wished Riley was there with him, holding onto him and promising that everything was going to be okay. Aside from keeping the baby alive, he wanted nothing more than to find Riley safe, because he couldn’t do this alone. He rolled onto his side, facing Lily’s crib and the window, and pulled the pillow into his chest so he could cry into it
without being heard. He stayed that way all night, until day woke the house with the pleasant surprise of still, blue skies.
DRAKE
He woke up on his back with one arm dangling over the edge of his made bed, and the other propped across his stomach, wondering why it felt like someone had run a lawnmower over his face. When he tried to sit up, his left side protested, and a pain from the top of his head radiated down his neck. The sudden compulsion to vomit came faster than he could react. He began to throw up in waves, and since the muscles in his arms felt like pudding, he used his legs to push him off the bed before he choked to death.
Once on all fours, he yacked until it made him dizzy, then swayed on his knees as he peeled his wet and torn shirt off and dropped it on the floor. It took three tries to free his lower body from his jeans, and after a naked stumble he only half-remembered making, he staggered into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Not until he saw his black eye and swollen mouth did he recall the fight with Connor.
“Jesus, Drake,” he mumbled at himself, touching the cut on his lip and the dried blood beneath his nose.
“You should see the other guy.”
He didn’t have the balance to whirl around, so he gripped the sink and leaned to the side to get a proper look at his room through the mirror. Ashlyn stood in his doorway with a tray in her hands and a neatly folded white towel over one of her arms. They stared at each other longer than Drake was comfortable, especially considering that he was butt-naked, until Ashlyn cleared her throat.
“Do you need stitches?” she asked.
He blinked at her reflection. “Stitches?”
She set the tray down on the edge of his bed, but didn’t come closer to the bathroom. “For your cuts…do they need to be stitched up?”
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 6