by Marcy Jacks
66 Marcy Jacks
Chapter Nine
Jason did not appreciate being locked inside this room, his and Mick’s room, like he was some kind of helpless child, waiting for news of Mick’s return.
Jason had wanted to go with him. He knew how to shoot. He didn’t like the killing, but he was a good shot, and that Isaac guy had guns on him that he could use. Mick had promptly kissed him, thrown him on the bed, and run out, locking the door from the outside before Jason could get to it.
There must have been a chair put under the door handle or something, because he couldn’t get out no matter how much he banged on the door. The bars over Mick’s window didn’t help anything either.
He knocked over the dresser and kicked the bed frame he was so
angry, and then he had to sit down on the bed, clutching at his foot because of the pain, swallowing over his tears of fear.
He hadn’t known about werewolves and hunters or any of that sort of thing for long, but in his limited experience he knew that hunters killed werewolves. Mick could die, and Jason was locked in here with
nothing to do but think about it.
He wondered if Isaac had locked Tristan up, then thought it unlikely considering Tristan was a werewolf himself. If there were bars over his window, he could probably break them with enough effort.
Jason opened the window and gripped the black metal bars. Why in the fucking hell were these even on here? His second floor window wasn’t facing the fight, but Jason could hear the growls and the
Handcuffed to the Werewolf 67
gunshots.
It wasn’t some huge, epic battle. He was sure if it was, more destructive noises would be coming his way. Maybe they were at a deadlock, neither side really able to advance.
That was no good either.
If only he could get these off!
Then he stopped, recalling the sight of something that might help him that had come to his attention when he knocked over the dresser.
He went to it, pushing it back up and searching through the closed and old T-shirts that had fallen out and onto the floor before he came
back with it.
A Swiss Army knife. Guess even werewolves, for all their strengths, liked having these around, or maybe it was just Mick.
Didn’t matter. Jason flipped through the blades as he went back toward the bars until he found one that looked to be the right size.
The blade fit nicely into the screw, and Jason began to loosen the bolts that kept these bars in place. He was going to find a gun and—
“Hello there!”
Deacon’s sudden appearance on the other side of the bars, his wide smile and bright, eager eyes, made Jason scream and jump back. He fell onto the bed, the knife forgotten in his hand.
Deacon gripped the bars and gave them a test pull, and then he grinned at Jason. “Really strong, these are. Don’t worry. I’ll just be a minute.”
Jesus Christ! Jason ran to the door and began pounding on it in earnest, bashing it with his shoulder, anything that would make it
open.
“Help! Help!” he screamed.
“Don’t think they’re going to hear you, boy. Everyone’s kind of busy,” Deacon whispered, pointing around the house to where the fight was still happening. Then he clenched his neck and jaw in the way one did when there was a screwup. “Oops for you.”
“Stay away from me,” Jason said, lifting his hand just enough so
68 Marcy Jacks
that Deacon could see the knife he held.
Deacon snorted. “You’re going to hurt me? With that?”
“I’m warning you.”
“Why am I not afraid?” Deacon pulled against the bars, and slowly, they warped under his strength. He stopped for a breather, shaking his head. “Phew! This is always much easier when I’m in my true form, let me assure you.”
“What do you want?”
Deacon stopped pulling the bars apart. He almost had it so that he could fit his body through. His eyes scanned around the room, like a bored shopper browsing a store’s selection. “Mostly, I was hoping my Tristan would be in here with you. Hiding with the other omegas would be too obvious a place for him to be, so I searched you out, and he’s still not here.”
Deacon licked his lips and smiled encouragingly at Jason, returning to his task of breaking apart the bars on the window. “That’s all right, though, you’ll do.”
One of the bars finally popped off, and Jason rushed forward and sliced the Swiss Army knife across Deacon’s knuckles.
Deacon yelped, and with a speed Jason should have been prepared for, he reached forth, snatching Jason by the green T-shirt he wore, and pulled him so hard and fast that his forehead banged against one of the bars with a bell-like ding.
Jason saw white, then black, and felt only pain. He fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the hardwood floor, and pain exploded in the back of his head, too.
The knife had dropped out of his hand, and he heard Deacon picking it up. He managed to open his eyes just long enough to watch him toss it out the window. “Stupid thing,” he muttered, sucking on the hand that Jason had cut.
Then he glared down at him and kicked him in the ribs.
Jason yelped and curled onto his side, trying to protect anything and everything on him that could be damaged, though he knew
Handcuffed to the Werewolf 69
realistically that it was no good.
Deacon knew that, too, as he booted him in the lower spine.
As Jason screamed, something soft entered his mouth that muffled
the sound.
Deacon was tearing apart the bed sheets and stuffing them into his mouth. Jason spat them out. Deacon grabbed him by his hair and smashed his face down into the hardwood floor.
Jason cried out at the crunch he felt in his nose, and tears pooled from his eyes.
“Don’t move or I’ll do that again,” Deacon commanded. He didn’t release Jason’s hair until he nodded in agreement. Everything on him hurt so badly he could barely speak.
“Good.”
The strange thing was how Deacon then started to pet the back of his head, almost as though he were trying to offer comfort. “Didn’t want to do that. I’m sorry. You and I will get along better when we get away from all this fighting. Those hunters will kill as many of DeWitt’s pack as they can, and the pack will kill off every hunter.”
DeWitt’s pack? James?
“And you and I,” Deacon said, and Jason felt a long, hot, stinging slice run down his back, and it took everything inside of him to not struggle against it, potentially making it worse. “You and I are going to make a brand new pack. Can’t have pups with you, of course, but we can still have some fun while we’re out recruiting.”
Deacon returned to tying Jason up with the strips of cloth he’d made from the bed. He’d tied one around the back of Jason’s head
and through his teeth to keep him from spitting out the cloth he was practically choking on inside, then drew his arms painfully behind his back.
It wasn’t enough to just tie his hands together, Deacon had to make sure that Jason couldn’t so much as shift his arms around by tying more longer strips of the bedsheets around his chest. Then Deacon gripped him by the back of his neck and pulled him up.
70 Marcy Jacks
“Now then,” he said, still running his hands through Jason’s hair
in a way he was coming to despise. “Let’s go.”
* * * *
The fucking hunters were like fleas that just couldn’t be killed. They were constantly jumping around, hiding, coming out to attack, and right before you could scratch them out of existence, they vanished within the trees.
They were getting better at what they did. It was annoying as hell.
Because of the guerrilla warfare tactic, it was difficult to count precisely how many there were of them, but not impossible.
It was only three.
That was a low numb
er of hunters to be on the attack like this. No
wonder they resorted to such desperate fighting.
It also made their eventual defeat inevitable.
As far as hunter battles went, this was a glowing success. Every hunter dead, and as far as injuries went for the pack, Adam had been sliced down the arm with a knife and was currently gripping the wound to keep from bleeding out until his regeneration abilities would kick in, and Morgan had taken a silver bullet in the hip and
would need a day in bed to go through the poison that had seeped into his body. The twins, Eli and Eric, the lucky bastards, had barely more than a bleeding nose on the one and a cut lip on the other. Currently, they were goofing off.
Mick had only broken a sweat, and while the hunter body he carried stunk unbelievably, he was still glad he was going to be going home to his mate.
Maybe Jason would go easy on him for locking him inside their room if Mick pretended he’d hurt his foot or something.
Though they had their wounded to tend to, and three dead hunter bodies to dispose of, the alphas and Isaac returned from their hunt smiling and feeling chatty. The omegas came out of the houses they’d
Handcuffed to the Werewolf 71
locked themselves into to greet them.
James and Isaac were met with kisses and gentle, inquiring touches to their bruises, and Mick felt a longing inside of him for his mate, no matter how pissed off he would be when Mick let him out of the room.
Before he could go back to the main house, Tristan tensed up and started looking around. “Does anyone smell that?”
Mick frowned, as did James and the other alphas. All they smelled was blood and fresh corpses, but that’s what tended to happen when there were three dead bodies within feet of you.
The thing that had him and James back on alert was how scared Tristan looked.
Isaac pulled his gun out, unable to scent what his mate had picked up on. “What do you smell, baby?”
Tristan was still searching around, his eyes wide and panicked. Unconsciously, he reached up and touched he bite mark on his neck. “Deacon. He was here. I can smell him. He was here.”
The omegas looked amongst themselves and also cast their eyes about, as though they were trying to decide whether or not an enemy alpha who may or may not still be on the land was worth their running back into the houses to hide.
Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman, was the one to decide for them as she shooed them away and back to their rooms. She was barely half the size of some of the wolves here, but no one would ever dare to argue with her.
Mick dropped the body he’d been holding, which landed with a smack and a crunch, but he didn’t care. He searched around, using his eyes, ears, and nose, hoping to pick up on any scent that was lurking beneath the rank of the bodies to tell him what that fucker was up to
now.
When he caught Jason’s scent, fresh and outside, too fresh to be from when they first arrived back on pack territory, Mick’s insides froze up.
72 Marcy Jacks
“Mick?” He heard James call to him as he ran to the main house, but he didn’t stop. He had an idea of what he would find, and please, please, God, let it be wrong.
Mick ran to the side of the house. It was faster than just going inside and upstairs to see for himself.
Besides, Deacon’s scent was strong over this way.
He stopped, fisted his hands into his hair, and nearly fell down to his knees with the scream he released.
The bars on the top floor windows were all the same as they had been left save for one. Those bars had been warped, and in the case of some, torn out altogether.
He felt a hand touch his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and jumped clean onto the porch roof, then walked to the window.
The faint scent of blood became stronger as he approached. He had to remind himself that it was not strong enough to mean a dead body, nor did the scent of a corpse radiate from the space.
But neither did Jason's scent.
He stepped inside his bedroom. It was a wreck. The bed was shredded, clothes all over the floor. There was a spot of blood in the middle of the hardwood. Mick bent down to sniff it. Definitely
Jason’s.
He growled. That spineless fucking—
“He’s not dead. We can still find them,” James said.
Mick rounded on him. “He distracted us! He distracted us and
came and took him!”
“I know.” James’s words were comforting and striking at the same time, reminding Mick who exactly was the alpha in charge in this room. “He took him, but he hasn’t been gone long. We can still catch them.”
Mick recalled the way James had been when that hunter had taken Corey, how James had feared Corey would have been tortured so badly that he would be required to kill his mate just to put him out of his misery.
Handcuffed to the Werewolf 73
It must have taken some killer bravery to even contemplate thoughts like that. Mick couldn’t even stomach the idea of what Deacon might be doing to Jason at that very minute.
“Let’s find them then.”
* * * *
Jason had no idea where he was. He wasn’t the least bit familiar
with the land he was on to have any clue to their whereabouts, and he was sure he’d blacked out there for a minute, so his location was a
mystery.
They couldn’t have gone that far from the pack already. Could they? Every step he stumbled on, every rock he passed was like another drop in the heavy bucket of despair he was carrying around.
This guy was actually kidnapping him and taking him away from Mick, and unless Jason learned how to fight back ninja style using only his legs, there was nothing he could do to fight back. Whenever he’d stopped, pretending to stumble or be too hurt to keep going, Deacon had just carried him.
He was just glad they finally stopped at a pond. It looked like it was being fed by a small waterfall. The water must be coming from the river, and it was so clear that Jason could see straight to the little minnows and frogs chasing each other around at the bottom.
Deacon bent his head into the water to drink. He didn’t offer Jason
any water, but that was all right. Despite the raging fire on his skin, his main concern was getting the gag out of his mouth. He’d been pushing and prodding at the ball of shredded cotton in his mouth, but the gag tied around his head kept it in place no matter what he did.
It was getting too dangerous keeping it in there, and he was having trouble breathing. He needed to get it out. Something in his nose must have collapsed, or maybe it was just the buildup of drying blood, but it was getting increasingly difficult to breathe through his nose, and he had to force the air in and out, and always with a loud
74 Marcy Jacks
whistling sound to accompany his efforts.
“Wish you would stop making that sound,” Deacon said, raising
his head from the water to look at him. “It’s not attractive.”
Jason tried telling him that he couldn’t breathe right, but Deacon didn’t understand him and went on splashing the water over his face and neck. The effort only took up more Jason’s air and left him out of breath, so he stopped trying, hoping Deacon would just take the gag out when he was about ready to let Jason drink from the spring.
Deacon lifted himself up about a minute later, wiping his hands on his pants. “Don’t know if DeWitt finished off the hunters or not, so I think it’s best we leave now, just in case.”
No! He had to take the gag out!
“Yes, yes, I know you’re impatient to get gone,” Deacon said, grabbing him by his T-shirt and yanking him up again.
Jason made an effort to struggle out of Deacon’s grip, but Deacon just wrapped his huge muscled arm around Jason’s chest, bent down to grab his legs, and then hurled him over his shoulder.
The knock against his stomach pushed all the air right out of his lungs, and Jason struggled violently, u
nable to breathe, to think.
He was going to die!
“Hey there, quit your struggling now.”
“Put him down, now!”
Jason’s heart soared at the sound of Mick’s voice, but he could he
couldn’t see him from the position he was in.
Strangely enough, he could smell his scent. The scent he recognized as strictly Mick’s from the time they spent chained together and making love.
He could also smell the different scents of sweat belonging to at least four other men, or was it five?
He also still couldn’t breathe.
Though the movement took up more of his oxygen, Jason struggled and kicked, desperate to get off of Deacon’s shoulder so Mick could pull the gag out of his mouth.
Handcuffed to the Werewolf 75
“Don’t any of you fucking move or I’ll throw him into the water.”
Throw me in! Throw me in! Jason inwardly screamed. At least that way someone could dive in and grab him. He would breathe again.
Around the edges of his vision, a dark shadow loomed, coming in, taking over. He fought against it, knowing he didn’t want to give himself over to it, but his entire body was on fire, burning with the need for oxygen, for escape.
“I said don’t come any closer!” Deacon screamed.
“You throw him in there and you’re a dead man, Deacon!” Mick screamed.
Despite his panic and burning lungs, Jason was strangely aware of the sound of a gun clicking. “He already is a dead man,” Isaac said.
Too late. The very thing that Jason had been fighting so hard against was upon him, and the darkness took him.
His entire body swelled, skin tingled and itched due to the lack of oxygen, and the sensation of falling came over him. Then Deacon’s bloodcurdling scream rocked the trees.
76 Marcy Jacks
Chapter Ten
Deacon stood no chance when Jason’s body swelled on top of his shoulder, sprouted fur, claws and teeth, tearing apart the binds that contained him, and then attacked.