by Marcy Jacks
“No!” Eli screamed, mirroring Chris’s thoughts.
“The pond! I’ll take him to the pond.”
“He may very well not make it that far,” Old Maggie said. “And
those wild werewolves are still surrounding us.”
Chris didn’t care. He didn’t want to die, and he did his best to
convey those thoughts to Eli.
Eli looked down into his face and must’ve seen that. “James?” his
voice was begging.
Luckily, he was on board. “Andrew, take Nick and Adam and run ahead. Take down anyone you see that we don’t know. Isaac, pull your guns out. You and Morgan can cover us.”
The sound of a gun barrel clicked. “Will do.”
Chris was already starting to feel the world shaking around him. If he’d wanted to fall into a peaceful sleep before, he didn’t now, since
everything was too uncomfortable as Eli ran with him in his arms.
Chris had been told about the pond’s strange healing powers, but he’d never bothered swimming in it before. He really hoped that what Eli and the others said about that water was true and that he could
hold on just long enough to make it there.
* * * *
Eli could hear the growls and howls of the wild werewolves as
Nick, Adam, and Andrew hunted them down.
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But there were far too many of them for just three alpha wolves to take down on their own. There were also the wolves that stayed away from the fighting, the ones who peeked their heads out through the shrub to watch as Eli ran as quickly as he could with Chris’s limp body bleeding profusely in his arms.
Maybe they didn’t attack because James was currently in his wolf form, running beside Eli and growling at any wolf who got too close, and then there was Isaac, who pointed his Glock and let off a random shot into the bushes to scare any wolf away from coming too close.
Maybe they just felt guilty that it was their attack that caused Chris to be in this condition to begin with. That other wolf had certainly fled quickly after he’d seen what he’d done.
The pond, normally seeming only right in their back yard, was suddenly a thousand miles away, and as Chris grew paler, Eli became more panicked.
He shook the other man when his head lolled and eyes rolled to the back of his head.
“Chris!”
We’re here, James said, using the inner voice that all alphas could use on their pack members.
Eli looked up. It was as if he’d stumbled into paradise. Adam, Nick, and Andrew were already there. Some blood matted their fur from the attacks of the other wolves, but they stood strong, their hackles raised up high and lips pulled back, snarling at any wolf who dared to come within their circle.
There were so many werewolves. What had Deacon been doing? Putting them through an assembly line?
Eli ran for the clear water and jumped in. The pond wasn’t immediately deep, so he was forced to splash around some as he went further and further in, until the cool liquid completely covered Chris’s body and his own.
Chris’s heartbeat became small and frail as a newborn bird’s. For
one heart-shattering second, he feared that it had stopped completely,
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before he heard it one more time.
Come on, baby, you’re here. You’re going to be okay. Eli pushed them up for air and took in a deep breath when they broke the surface. He only left their heads above the water. Everything else was to remain below.
Nicked bowels. That meant that all the waste from Chris’s body was pouring into his wound, his veins, down his legs, everywhere. It was poisoning him from the inside. But this water had cleansing powers. They didn’t know where it came from, but this water was pure somehow, it would clean out Chris’s wound and heal him.
They tried bringing Eric here. Eric and the other alphas who’d died that day. They had hoped that the same powers that had brought Deacon back from the dead would do the same for them, but it hadn’t
worked.
This was different. Eric and the others had been dead for several
minutes before they’d gotten them to the pond. Chris’s heart was still beating when Eli jumped into the clear pool with him. He was going to live. He was!
Eli looked behind himself to see James and the others all staring at him, waiting for the verdict. The shocking thing was the way the wild werewolves did the same. There were so many of them. Dozens. If they wanted to, they could ambush the lot of them and take this land for their own, but they stood still, eyes glowing as they stood, staring. The fighting had stopped in favor of seeing to the safety of the man with multicolored eyes.
Eli looked back down at his lover. Chris’s face remained pale, but his body was growing cold.
That was just because of the cool water lowering the temperature of his body, Eli told himself. He put his hand over Chris’s chest, to assure himself that the other man’s heart was beating.
He felt nothing.
The water around them had become stained with red, and Eli
didn’t take his hand away, still searching for that elusive beating.
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It was there. It had to be there. Come on, baby, I know you’re still
alive. You’re not dead.
One of the wolves behind him howled, and a human hand touched
Eli’s shoulder.
He jerked away. It was James. He’d entered the water to come and get him.
“He’s gone. I’m sorry, Eli, but he’s gone.”
“He is not dead!” Eli shrieked, shaking Chris in his arms. “Come on, baby. Open your eyes. You’re okay. I know you are. Wake up!”
James didn’t touch him again, and no one else entered the water to come and get him. More wolves howled, and Eli broke down sobbing.
His mate, his mate that he was supposed to protect was dead, and it was entirely his fault.
He stood in the water for what seemed like several minutes before
he finally got his sobbing under control. Eli pressed his face into Chris’s hair, and then he released Chris’s body, letting the water take him until he disappeared within the red haze that had bloomed in the pond.
Romulus and Remus take you.
He wanted nothing better than to let himself sink under with Chris, let himself drown, because his mind and body were both ready to give up. He wouldn’t struggle for air, and if he did, he had the strength to fight his body’s need for oxygen. It wasn’t like there were many people that would mourn him.
In one strange moment, the epiphany hit him. Eli had nothing to live for. His brother, his only family, was gone, and his mate was just taken from him, right before his eyes, and not even the healing power of the pond would bring him back.
What had he done? What horrible thing had Eli done that he was to be punished like this?
He let go of the thought of drowning himself. James would never let him do it anyway. Instead, Eli turned around and waded out of the pool of water. It was bloody again, just like it had been the first time
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Deacon had been thrown in. The water would clean itself. It always did.
Some of the blood stayed on Eli’s skin when he finally emerged
from the water.
Isaac stepped forward. He looked like he was about to say something until Eli glared at him. He didn’t want any sympathetic words from anyone.
One of the transformed werewolves stepped forward. A large brown wolf, with shame in its eyes and bloodied ears.
His head was down, and tail between his legs. Eli snarled as he
recognized the reason for all of his pain.
“You…you killed him!” Eli charged forth, ready to bash his fist into the skull of the werewolf, who stood in place. He cowered but didn’t move away, as though awaiting punishment for killing a man of lycan legend.
Eli had every intention of
beating the wolf’s skull in and not stopping until he was either dead or that hairy body was twitching on the ground.
Even that satisfaction couldn’t be his. The other wild werewolves
beat Eli to it, and they all jumped on top of the injured wolf in a
massive ball of teeth and fur and claws.
The werewolf whined and cried, attempting to defend himself for only a minute before the body stilled, but the other wolves continued their attack.
Blood and ripped flesh flew about as the wild wolves feasted on their former ally. Eli watched, aware that he should be sickened by the carnage, but he felt nothing but disappointment and loss.
His heart hurt.
“Come on,” James said, putting his arm around Eli’s shoulder. Eli
realized he was still naked when someone took their coat off and
handed it to him, but he shook his head. He didn’t want it.
“I’ll take you home,” James said.
Everyone walked with a slight hunch in their shoulders, and no
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one bothered looking back at the little massacre that was going on behind them. With Chris gone, those wild wolves would have no reason to attack DeWitt’s pack anymore. They would go their
separate ways.
Eli would go with James, but only to keep the others at ease. He
had no intention of staying.
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Chapter Twelve
He came up for air gasping. Choking and coughing, Chris floundered around in the water, searching for a solid surface to grab on to.
Eli!
Chris never grew up near a lake, or any source of water, and because of that he couldn’t swim. He didn’t like going into the water for just that reason. He was choking, dying. Drowning.
Eli, help me!
Something grabbed Chris by the back of the neck. It felt like sharp teeth, like those of the many werewolves Chris had seen since he first came to James’s pack. His heart lurched in panic, but the teeth didn’t bite down hard enough to rip his skin, only to pull him slightly out of the water so that he could breathe.
Try to, anyway. Water was still in his lungs, and Chris coughed and gasped, choking it up until he finally realized he was being dragged away.
Where was he?
He understood when his feet touched down on the smooth rocks
and soft sand beneath the water. Chris was being taken back to dry
land.
He was promptly dropped onto his chest in the grass, and the scent
of it filled his nose.
He felt like he was coming out of an ocean rather than a medium-sized pond, and he wanted to kiss the sweet-smelling grass.
Dry land. Thank you, God.
Chris turned over. His vision was blurry from being under the
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water, but he could still make out the massive shadow above him. It
was definitely in the shape of a wolf. He could tell by the way the ears
pointed. He reached out to touch it.
“Eli?”
The shadow promptly vanished, and Chris’s vision cleared. He blinked several times up at the orange sky. The sun was beginning to
set.
Then he smelled something other than grass. He smelled blood. Lots and lots of blood. The scent was so strong it was nearly overpowering. Chris had never smelled anything like it.
He rolled over and saw the source, and he nearly puked.
In the middle of the grass was carnage. Absolute frickin’ carnage. It looked like someone had improperly skinned an animal alive. Strips of fur and hair lay everywhere, and blood and all sorts of pieces Chris couldn’t name were all that were left.
A black crow stood over the wreckage, eating what it had found, but there was no way the crow had been able to consume so much. Chris knew that there should have been way more pieces of a body left behind.
His first horrified thought was that this was Eli, but then, no, the smell gave it away. Something about this, he didn’t quite know what it was, but there was something in the smell that told Chris that this was not Eli.
His mate was not here.
Chris’s insides shifted. He gasped in pain as everything inside of his ribs seemed to relocate and light on fire.
His wound! He reached down to make sure that nothing had spilled out of him, but there was no longer a gaping hole in his body. The three slashes had been replaced with stinging scratches that hurt
to touch, but when he pulled his hand back there wasn’t even any blood. It was like he’d been scratched by a cat and not a wild werewolf.
Something inside his body cracked, and Chris cried out, falling
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onto his sides in pain. What was happening to him?
Something itched on his hands, and when he looked, he saw all the hair growing from the pores of his skin at a speed that should have been impossible. His eyesight changed. Suddenly he could see all the tiny ants working to collect the bits of meat from the dead werewolf and bring it back to their colony. The smells he picked up before intensified. Not only could he smell the blood in the air, but also the sweat of the men who had been here before, who left very much alive only a few hours ago.
Then Chris knew no more as everything changed, giving over to the animal side of him that fought so hard to come out. He threw his head back and screamed, but it came out as a long howl.
* * * *
Eli had gone back to his cottage but then recalled the scene that would be awaiting him in his bedroom and stopped.
James, knowing what he was avoiding, ordered the omegas to clean up the mess and bring Eli a pair of jeans he could wear.
He didn’t want to stay here. Just the fact that he’d come back without Chris, and everyone who looked at him knew why, drove him insane.
So he left.
He expected an argument or a warning about avoiding the bars, but James never said a word. The alpha put his hand on Eli’s shoulder, squeezed, and then wordlessly let him go.
Eli’s mission was simple. He was going to find one of the many wild werewolves roaming around the woods, and he was going to pick a fight with him. He would do it again and again if he had to, until one of them finally managed to kill Eli in retaliation.
Revenge couldn’t even be his, so he would take out his frustrations and end his own existence, joining Chris with Romulus and Remus, all in one shot.
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It was actually very perfect.
The first wolf was easy to find. The mindless fight they had all gotten into, eating one of their own allies, had brought out more of the animal than the man in all of them. They would be stuck in that state for some time to come, and they would be sticking around DeWitt’s pack land, still mourning the loss of creature they had fought so hard for a piece of.
Eli kicked off his jeans, shifted, and charged. The idiot never knew what hit him, even though Eli was still healing from the attack in his bedroom, and the scent of his blood should have been a
giveaway. It was too easy, and Eli had his neck twisted around before the other wolf was able to do more scratch him across the nose, and it
wasn’t even a good scratch at that.
He would have to give them more of a warning the next time.
He did. The next wolf bit down on his ear and clawed his chest
before he was down for good.
The third wolf winded Eli more than hurt him, and Eli killed him
with little trouble at all.
Why were these wolves so easy to kill? Even as Eli gave them chances to fight back, he still put them down with minimal effort.
Maybe it was the adrenaline inside of him. Maybe he just wanted to kill the werewolves responsible for Chris’s death a whole lot more than he wanted to die.
For now at least.
Eli was tired, hot with sweat, and he needed something cold to drink
more than anything. He shifted back into a man and let himself fall back against the base of a tree.
He chuckled to himself. Maybe he could just sit here and waste away. He could die of thirst, and the effect would be just as good as the one he’d been after to begin with. Death.
He even thought he heard Chris calling his name a couple of times during his fights. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Unless Chris had decided he was going to haunt Eli for his own part in
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Chris’s murder.
It would certainly serve him right.
Maybe he did die. He wasn’t sure, but there was a period there where everything seemed like a hallucination, reminding him of the first time he’d ever gotten drunk or tried smoking the green leaf.
Another wolf entered his hallucination. It growled at him, and Eli
grunted back.
Could it be the spirit of Romulus or Remus, here to punish him for not protecting his mate? Or was it a wild wolf out to avenge his friends? Not likely. Wild wolves weren’t known to have much pack loyalty, if any at all.
This one had probably scented the blood and was just looking for a fight.
The wolf barked at him, and Eli blinked dreamily at it, coming fully awake. Not a ghost, this was an actual werewolf.
It came closer, and Eli didn’t move.
The face of the smaller wolf shifted from angry and defensive to a cautious curiosity as it approached.
Not an alpha then. An alpha would have come to Eli as though he were its own personal meal. The size of the wolf also suggested that this was an omega.
Strange. Omega werewolves didn’t usually survive after going wild. Who was this?
The wolf came way too close, getting all up in Eli’s personal space, and he pushed the head of the animal away when it dipped its head to sniff at his crotch.
“Do you mind?” Eli snapped.
That light brown head came up, ears pulled back, the eyes both
offended and hurt.
The eyes were what made Eli sit up straight, despite the searing pain in his back. He grabbed the wolf by the scruff and pulled it closer until they were nose to nose. Eli’s vision was still hazy, and though he couldn’t blink it away, no matter how much he tried, there was no