by Marcy Jacks
Something hard whacked into the back of the guy’s head, and he squawked indignantly at Buzz Cut. The stronger man only glared down at him. “I said I was going first.”
“But I caught him!” the other man complained.
Buzz Cut glared down at him, and Chris could’ve sworn he’d heard the other man whine like a kicked dog.
Corey and Tristan had explained this to him. They said that even though there was always more than one alpha in a pack, there was always one alpha to lead the others, and he was the one who had to frequently put the others in their place, otherwise risk losing control.
James DeWitt was the leading alpha of Eli’s pack, and it looked like Buzz Cut here was the one in charge of these two.
“You can carry him back to our camp,” Buzz said. “That’s as much as you will handle him until I say so. You don’t even like men anyway.”
“No,” the man agreed. “But this is different. He’s different.”
Chris squirmed as the guy’s meaty hands began caressing him again. Buzz punched the guy upside the head again, making him cry out and stop.
“Keep your filthy―”
A gray blur smashed into Buzz’s side, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. As one, the two other men ran after him, trying to help him.
Chris got up and saw the way the huge wolf was tearing into Buzz’s neck and shoulders until blood spurted like water from a
56 Marcy Jacks
broken pipe.
It was the same wolf from before, when Chris had been attacked
the first time. It was Eli.
“Look out!” he yelled as the two other men transformed. The one changed so quickly that his clothes were shredded in the process. The other actually took the time to remove his shirt and pants before getting down on his hands and knees. For some reason, the change seemed to come onto him much slower, and Chris could practically watch the tough hair growing from out of his pores as his muscles
grew.
Buzz was done for. Chris didn’t think he was getting up again, and Eli turned just as the other wolf leaped onto him, and a new fight began.
One-on-one was one thing, but Chris didn’t know how Eli would fare with two wolves jumping all over him, biting and clawing at him until he was dead like Buzz down there.
Chris found a heavy rock in the earth, picked it up, and ran up
behind the other half-transformed man.
He didn’t notice Chris coming until it was too late, and Chris smashed the rock down on the wolf-man’s hairy forehead.
There was a sickening crunch, and the moss growing on the rock made it difficult to grip, and he dropped it right after making impact.
The guy was definitely dead, his limp body in some strange in-between of man and wolf, a huge indent in the head.
Another dog whine sounded, and the body of the wolf that Eli had been fighting with dropped limply to the ground.
Chris stayed on his knees in front of his own kill, staring at the wolf in front of him.
Eli had blood all over his face, and he was panting heavily. He
didn’t pass out like the last time, though.
Maybe he spoke too soon. Eli stumbled and fell over, his body shifting back into a naked man. It was strange how used to seeing his body Chris was becoming.
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 57
Though his legs were shaking like crazy, his entire body still pumping adrenaline, he managed to make it over to Eli’s side. He was careful not to touch him.
He was definitely awake this time. Probably just exhausted. His breathing said as much. “You all right?”
No. “Fine.”
Eli nodded then bit his lower lip. His jaw trembled like he was about to start crying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You were right. I shouldn’t be out here by myself.”
“Not for that.” He managed to laugh a little while fighting back tears. “James is gonna want to talk to you about that. I meant before.”
Chris inhaled deeply. “You didn't do anything wrong. It was…It was me. Let’s get you back home.”
“I would never hurt you,” Eli said.
“I believe you. Come on, try and get on your feet now. I don’t want to drag you all the way again like the last time.”
* * * *
They made it back safely enough, and the first thing Eli did was pull himself away from Chris and hobble back to his own house before anyone could come up to him and start asking questions.
Mostly he just wanted to be alone with his shame. Chris had said that Eli was forgiven, and for some reason had said he was the one to blame. He’d probably only said that it was okay because he felt grateful that Eli had come for him and fought off those weres.
Meanwhile, Eli had been the reason Chris was attacked again to begin with, and Eli doubted he would have been so lucky as to defeat all of them if Chris hadn’t snuck up on that other were with a rock in midtransformation.
Let Chris tell James what had happened. Eli wanted to be alone.
He slammed the door to his cabin and went straight for the kitchen
58 Marcy Jacks
cupboard under the sink. He grabbed the first bottle he saw. It was a
little more than half full. It would have to do.
Just as he lifted the bottle to his mouth, he caught sight of one of the framed photos of himself and Eric, still propped up on the counter from when Eli had put it there the last time he’d been home.
His hand shook around the bottle as he looked into the smiling eyes of his brother. Eli smiled, too, and he and Eric were proudly showing off their fishing catches to the camera.
He reached out and flipped the photo down, not wanting Eric to watch him drink himself stupid. Even though it was only a picture.
He took a long swallow of the whiskey, letting it burn all the way down his throat and into his stomach.
You should have been his mate. Not me, he thought, putting his
head back and taking another long swallow.
He sat down in one of his kitchen chairs. Both the table and the
two chairs had seen better days.
Eric was always the most sensitive of the two of them. On the few times when they went out, sometimes sharing the men, or women, they picked up, Eli had always seen the gentlemanly way Eric had treated his partners, even when he’d had his dick in their mouths.
He never would have misread the signs Chris was sending him as badly as Eli had done. He never would have been that rough.
Don’t think about it. It’ll be okay soon. Don’t think about it.
“God, I wish I had some ice for this shit.”
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 59
Chapter Seven
“Well, it’s not like you’re officially part of this pack yet, so I can’t exactly punish you for running off like that when it was explained to you the dangers that would be lurking out there,” James DeWitt, the pack leader in charge of this camp of werewolves, said. Words like that were supposed to be comforting, but it was the way he said it, and the tone he used, that made Chris feel a whole lot of shame for his
actions.
He was a grown man. He should have known better than to just
run off like that, and he felt the need to apologize. “I’m sorry that one of your friends was put in danger because of what I did.”
James looked at him, and that scarred face of his made it difficult for Chris to tell whether or not he was being glared at. “Why did you run off? No one here has threatened to hurt you, as far as I know, nor would they. Intentionally,” he added, hastily.
Chris pressed his lips together, forcing himself to keep his eyes locked onto the man in front of him. He was not weak or small or
helpless, and he wouldn’t act like he was either.
“Corey tells me that he left you with Eli. What happened out
there?”
Chris almost took a step back in his shock. This guy d
idn’t politely beat around the bush. He wanted an answer, so he asked for it straight out. “That’s not your business.”
“No?” James folded his arms, but Chris got the feeling that he wasn’t being challenged. Measured up, most likely. “By your reaction, I’m going to assume that he attempted to mate with you and finish your bonding process. You got scared and ran. Am I right?”
60 Marcy Jacks
“No!” Chris snapped. “We are not mated, and there’s no bonding going on between us.”
James’s brows, what little of them there were, shot up. “Did no one explain this to you?”
“Eli might’ve mentioned something about it,” Chris muttered. “But I’m not a werewolf. I don’t mate.” Not with other men.
James rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “I can see this wasn’t explained to you properly.”
“You can’t force me to marry anyone, or to stay here,” Chris said. It wasn’t a good idea to get defensive in front of this man, and he knew it, but he just couldn’t help the way his fists clenched up.
“No one is saying that. And being mated isn’t the same thing as being married.”
“What’s the difference?” Chris asked, genuinely curious.
“When you mate with someone, there is no divorce.”
Great.
James laughed at him. “You just went pale there for a second.
Don’t worry, though, it isn’t all that bad.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look.” James approached him and put his arm around Chris’s shoulder, all best-buddy-like. “Corey was a human when I found him. The species hardly matters.”
That threw Chris off. “Seriously?”
“Well, no one is ever going to mate with the elephant at the zoo, but the humanoid species, as far as I know, won’t matter.”
“Humanoid…there’s more like you?”
“We’ll just stick with werewolves for now, and as far as werewolves go, when we sniff out our mates, we tend to lose a little of our control.”
Chris recalled the way Eli had kissed him and the hard press of the other man’s body as he pushed Chris down onto the ground, grinding their cocks together. Eli hadn’t been the only one to lose a little control. Please, don’t let me be blushing. “Yeah, I got that.”
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 61
“Well, just so you know, I’m sure he didn’t mean to scare you. For a werewolf, the urge to complete the bonding is strong. Sometimes it can even impact the health of the wolf in question if they ignore it too long.”
“It can?” Chris shouldn’t be caring about this. He shouldn’t be allowing James to butter him up the way he was, but he couldn’t help but be worried for Eli, especially with the way the other man had hobbled off to be alone once they’d returned to clearing of houses.
“Well, nothing too severe ever happened to me aside from having the sweats at night,” James said. “But for Corey it was different. He was human when I met him, but, ah, let’s just say that he wasn’t when I brought him here. Don’t worry. No one will transform you if you don’t want them to, but Corey was a special case.”
“Okay.”
James cleared his throat. “Anyway, I wanted to give him some time to get used to me, and the fact that we were mated, because, like you, he was under the human impression that something like that just wasn’t possible. Little did I know that it was affecting his ability to learn how to shift into his wolf, and that wasn’t good for him.”
Chris looked up at James’s face, and he really looked at the scarring that was there, and he thought about the scarring on Corey’s hand. James’s scars looked like deep pockmarks, like someone had gone after his face with an ice chipper or something, while Corey’s hand looked like he’d dipped it into a deep fryer. Were those the products of not mating? Could that happen to him or Eli if he didn’t just admit that he found the other man attractive and spent the night with him?
“I can see you’re still hesitating,” James said, gripping Chris by the shoulders so that they had to look each other dead-on. “I don’t know who it was that hurt you.”
Chris stiffened.
“But I promise you, Eli isn’t like that.”
“I can’t just jump into bed with him,” Chris said.
62 Marcy Jacks
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to just give him a chance, get to know him a little bit. Maybe because of your eyes, just being around him will be enough, and he won’t be…”
James didn’t finish. He looked like he was struggling for the right
word, and Chris didn’t want to help him find it.
Maybe if he was around Eli a little more, his lucky eyes would see to it that Eli didn’t get insane blue balls and expire from lust.
Right, Chris’s magical lucky eyes. “Are you sure my eyes are supposed to bring luck? I haven’t been feeling too lucky lately.”
James chuckled. “I doubt they bring much more luck than any lucky rabbit’s foot would. I think it’s really just part of the allure. Your eyes attract werewolves, so whoever mates with you is considered the luckiest wolf on the planet.”
And according to everyone, that was Eli.
He still wasn’t too sure about this, but Eli did save his life again,
so…
“Do you know where he is?”
James sighed. “From what I was told, he was seen stomping off to his cabin. You might want to give him the night alone, unless you want to see him in one of his less than better moments.”
Considering Chris had met Eli while he was drunk and about to get his ass kicked in a bar, he had an idea of what James was talking about.
Poor guy had lost his brother and was mated to a chicken like Chris. That would drive anyone to drink.
He nodded and agreed to speak with Eli the first thing in the morning. Whatever it was that was happening between them, they would need to find some way of settling it.
“Oh, and uh, sir?” Chris said before he left. Calling James by his first name seemed a little too informal, considering they weren’t actually friends, but he didn’t look that much older than Chris for him to be addressing him as Mr. DeWitt.
Sir didn’t sound much better, but there was no taking that back
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 63
now.
“Yes?” James looked up from a small stack of papers, looked like legal stuff, on an old wooden desk that was in a bad need for varnishing.
“I was going to ask Eli about this, but all things considered…”
“What can I do for you?”
He asked it so casually, as though doing Chris any sort of favor wasn’t a problem for him at all. Chris relaxed.
“My brother. He’s gone, too. I think he might be in trouble, or dead, considering some of the things he was into. Usually he would call or something to check up on me, let me know he was fine, once every couple of weeks or something, and I haven’t heard back from him in several months.”
“All right. He was last seen around this area?” James asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t think I would find anything at first, especially since he usually moved around a lot, but now that I know there are wild werewolves around…” Chris let James finish that one off for
himself.
“Right, you want to know if we’ve heard anything.”
Chris nodded.
“All right, what was his name?”
“Dean Lefroy. My older brother.”
James’s neck seemed to get a little tighter than it had been before.
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Really?” Chris hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “Do you know
what happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
The words were like a blunt object ramming into his gut. “You’re not one for candy-coating it are you?”
“Are you going to be okay?” James asked.
No. Chris had suspected all this time, but the actual realization wa
s having more of an effect on him than he thought it should have. “What happened? When?”
64 Marcy Jacks
James wet his lips. “Were you aware that he was a hunter?”
“What? Well, yeah, sure. He had his license and went out all the time to catch things. We did that as kids.”
“I don’t mean the kind of guy who hunts rabbits or buck. I mean he hunted werewolves. My kind.”
James pointed at his mean-looking face. “He gave me these scars, and he tried to kill Corey.”
Chris was frozen in sudden fear. “Did you―?”
“I was the one to kill him, yes.” That chummy air that James had about him was entirely gone now as he and Chris looked at each other.
Chris swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”
“You haven’t done anything to purposely harm my pack, so no. You’re mated to one of my alphas, whether you like that or not. If I meant you any harm I’d have to go through Eli first to get to you. If I were to kill you right now, he would just try to kill me later.
“I won’t hurt you, or try to,” James said. “But seeing as you’re related to one of the worst hunters I’ve ever met, I will have to keep a strict eye on you from now on. No more walks out into the trees with my omegas.”
“Right,” Chris was only too happy to agree so long as it meant he was able to leave. He practically ran out of the small office and bolted out of the cottage.
It was stupid, but he wished he knew which one of these houses belonged to Eli. If he was one of the main reasons James was going to give Chris some slack, then, drunk or not, desperate to have sex or not, Chris would stay as close to him as possible.
As it was, the only remotely safe place he could return to was that tiny little one-bedroom cabin that had been offered to him. He locked the doors and prepared to wait out a long night of making sure that no one busted inside to exact any revenge for a crime his brother had supposedly committed.
He and Dean had never been close enough for Chris to think it
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 65
was worth putting up with all of this shit.