Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle

by Sasha Silsbury

  Luke is respectful and decent, and Luke...had driven up here while Cal was in heat knowing that Cal would struggle to say no to him.

  Cal has known Luke for less than a month, and only spent a few days with him out of that. Luke had raged into Cal’s room at the tower when he thought Cal wasn’t who he thought he was.

  Luke comes from a pack of four brothers and none of them have children. Cal knows Luke and he knows Jax, but he’s barely spent time with Gregor or Adam at all. Luke wouldn’t do that, but one of his alpha brothers might.

  Cal doesn’t think the Winterstoke brothers are like that and he’s at least ninety-nine percent sure Luke will never let anyone hurt a cub, but he can’t take the risk, no matter how much he wants to.

  LUKE

  self-control medals and rabbits

  Luke’s lying on his bed and trying to read, but the words won’t flow into his head. He keeps finding himself reading the same paragraphs over and over again until he finally puts the book aside and lets his thoughts drift to where they really want to go.

  Three weeks. Three weeks. He deserves a medal for self-control. He hasn’t gone up there. He hasn’t called. He’s followed Adam’s rules to the letter. Jax has been in contact with Cal by phone and said that Cal was doing just fine, and he’s tried to be satisfied with that.

  He tried to lose himself in work at the store, but everything there reminded him of Cal. Cal was the last person to have swept the floor. Cal had rearranged that shelf. Cal said that memoir had left him in tears. Cal stamped that set of invoices. Everything was Cal. Luke knows he’s pining like a love-sick teenager and he doesn’t care.

  It wasn’t so bad when the mountain road was impassable. There was no physical way for him to get there. Now, it’s different. Luke can’t help it. All he wants to do is get in his truck, drive as fast as he can and kiss those soft full lips until the two of them fall into the biggest cabin bed and stay there for the rest of their lives.

  He gives up on the book and makes his way through to the common room where he pours himself a stiff drink. The sky beyond the open window is a bright and brilliant blue against the white tops of the trees. Luke grew up here. He’s used to the cold. Luke wonders if Cal will take to it. If Jax’s rendition of Cal’s story is to be believed, Cal ended up here entirely by accident. He might be a beach person.

  The door opens and Jax comes in, shaking the snow off his boots and jacket which he hangs up, then saunters over to join Luke at the bar.

  Luke doesn’t wait for his brother to sit down. “Have you spoken to him? How’s he doing?”

  Jax raises his eyebrows. “He was just fine last I heard. The snow should have melted enough for me to go up there. Thought I’d make sure he hasn’t gone completely cabin-crazy.”

  Luke’s breath hitches. He swallows the rest of the whiskey on one go to give his mouth something to do so it won’t blurt out the question it wants to.

  “No, you can’t come with me,” Jax says with more emphasis than he needs.

  “I didn’t ask!”

  “You didn’t need to.” Jax shakes his head sympathetically. “Wow, you’ve got it bad. Hell, if I ever get like that over some dude, take me out back and shoot me.” He glances at his older brother. “I’m less pissed with you than I was by the way. I just didn’t expect that from you, you know?”

  “I know. I screwed up. I know I did.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Jax says. He gets up from the bar stool. “I just wanted to check in with you before I went up there. I’ll feel Cal out, see if he’s ready to talk to you.”

  Luke’s heart leaps. Cal will be. He knows it. There’s no mistaking the passion that had been in Cal’s eyes. That was more than just a heat. Luke smells as much like a mate to Cal as Cal does to Luke. He knows it.

  “Thank you,” he says. “Drive safe. It’ll be treacherous up there.”

  Jax pats him on the shoulder. “Will do. Oh, and Luke? Go and do something other than moping around here for a bit. Go for a run or something. You’re making the whole place miserable.”

  It’s good advice. He watches Jax’s truck leave the packhouse grounds and wend its way upwards until it’s out of sight, then makes his way to the change hut at the edge of the boundary fence.

  The last time he was in here, Cal’s clothes were neatly stacked in one of the cubbies and Luke had been confused by the weird beta scent that he now knows was a fake.

  The next time he’s in here, he hopes it would be with Cal. He should have known that their midnight chases were a sign of something more. Luke smiles to himself, and undresses quickly, and then shifts even faster. It’s too cold to hang around naked if he doesn’t have his fur on.

  It feels odd going running without Cal, which is ridiculous because Luke has been doing it all his life. He races around the usual routes, chasing out rabbits and stretching his legs.

  He doesn’t stay out long. He just isn’t feeling it. He’s back in the change hut within an hour, putting his clothes back on a now sweaty body and thinking he has just enough time to shower before Jax is due back.

  He’s halfway back to the packhouse when he hears Jax’s truck, coming back far too fast.

  Luke’s heart skips a beat. Something’s wrong with Cal. He races into the front of the packhouse and meets the truck just as it skids to a stop outside.

  Luke pulls the door open without waiting for it to stop completely. Cal isn’t in the cab. There’s no one but Jax, his face white and concerned.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” A horrible image of Reed surfaces in Luke’s brain. Somehow Reed sniffed Cal out while Luke did nothing but stay home and read.

  “He’s rabbited. His scent leads away from the cabin. He’s gone into the mountains.”

  Luke relaxes. He puts his hand over his heart, grinning. “Oh my god, you scared me. He’ll have just gone for a run then.”

  Jax gives Luke a pained look. “Dude, his scent is hours old.” He doesn’t meet Luke’s eyes, and Luke gets the distinct feeling that Jax is leaving something out.

  “And?” Terror strikes at Luke’s heart. He knows what Luke is going to say. Cal wasn’t alone. Reed had found him. “It was Reed, wasn’t it?”

  The look of sympathy on Jax’s face makes Luke panic even harder. “No, there was only one scent,” his brother says, but it was... different. You might need to sit down.”

  “What in the damn snow? Just tell me what’s going on.”

  Jax takes a deep breath. “Luke, he’s pregnant.”

  CAL

  sea air and crunchy mice

  Wolves survive the winter all the time. There is no reason Cal can’t. He’s in good shape, well fed and has human smarts to go along with his wolfy instincts.

  The worst things he’ll have to cope with are the cold and having to eat raw rabbit. The protein from the latter is probably good for his growing cub anyway.

  He can’t go down. That will take him right through Aylewood and far too close to the Winterstoke wolves. If he crosses the mountains, he can come out the other side, and then hitch a lift into the nearest town.

  He doesn’t know much about the mountain range, but he does know it’s part of one of the biggest national parks in the country. There are places here that are nothing but mile after mile of wilderness. It’s a multitude of hidden valleys, remote peaks and crags. There’ll be somewhere for him to shelter for the worst of it.

  The man in him is bright enough to shove the basics into a small bag he can wear around his neck, so that if it comes to it, he’ll have the makings for a fire.

  But first he needs to concentrate on putting as much ground between him and the cabin as possible. If he’s lucky, more snow will fall to mask his flight, but he can’t rely on that. He’s under no illusions that Luke’s pack will come after him one way or the other. Dad had made it clear to him in their many talks about the subject that an omega can never hide a pregnancy, not after the first week
or two.

  Cal needs to get far enough away that they lose his scent and are forced to give up. The sky above is a bright and brilliant blue without a cloud in sight, but the weather can change in an instant. He might get lucky and have a little more rain or snow to wash his path away.

  Around the little clearing in the cabin, the snow is melting and showing patches of green beneath, but further out among the trees where the sun has not yet reached, it takes Cal almost up to his belly and he has to get out in undignified little hops.

  Anyone trying to track him needs simply follow the broken snow. He needs to get up higher to the stone and rocky peaks where the snow is lighter, and he can run through the streams and rivers of melting snow that will lose all trace of his scent.

  He’s making a mistake. He knows he is. The chances of Luke or his brothers doing the same thing that Reed had done to Ben was almost certainly zero. Almost.

  ‘Almost’ is why he’s running. It’d be nice to stay and play out the daydream a little longer, but it isn’t reality.

  Ben is reality. Even if Cal lives to be an old man, he’ll never stop dreaming about Ben and how the omega had grieved.

  He hopes Ben is okay. The last time they’d seen each other had been in that same townhouse where Ben had given birth. Cal hadn’t said goodbye. He hadn’t had the chance. He thinks Ben wouldn’t have minded, but he can’t be sure.

  Ben before his baby had been born would have understood, but afterwards Ben seemed to forget everything, even Cal. He just stared out of the attic room absent-mindedly, not seeming to care about anything or anyone.

  Reed’s territory spanned six counties, with its power center in River Beach. The townhouse was at the center of that.

  From the attic room where Reed stashed his omegas, Cal could see the beach and the river that emptied into it and gave the town its name. He spent a lot of time looking out of that window before Ben arrived.

  That was four years before Cal escaped. He was a skinny dark-haired omega in his early twenties with wide eyes and dark bruises on his upper arms.

  Reed shoved him into the attic room with nothing other than a gruff: “Sort out the new guy, Calie,”

  The new guy trembled as Cal approached, and Cal couldn’t help but wonder if this is what he’d looked like when he’d first arrived. It seemed likely.

  What Ben looked like was what Cal remembered: bruises and fear.

  The only other omegas in the pack had grown up in it, and there was a strict hierarchy that consisted of Cal and Ben right at the bottom, and Cal was glad none of the others were there the day that Ben arrived.

  It had only been the two of them in the omega room. That made it easier for Cal to let his guard down just for a moment and step up to the shivering omega and hold out his hand. “Hi, I’m Cal. I don’t want to be here either.”

  They tried to make plans to escape, but it was impossible. Even if they could have made it out of the locked room, and down the narrow staircase past the rest of the pack, the town around the townhouse belonged to Reed as did the counties all around it. Reed’s territory stretched out for miles. They’d have to both leave the house unnoticed and then still get far enough away that they couldn’t be tracked before they were missed.

  It didn’t stop them whispering about it, trying each plan this way and the other in each other’s minds like a piece of a jigsaw before being discarded as not a realistic fit.

  That all stopped when Ben lost his baby. Cal didn’t know whether Ben had simply given up or if he’d just lost something of his mind when his cub died.

  Cal still doesn’t know why Reed took him out of the house that last week. Perhaps Reed thought Cal was finally completely broken. Cal certainly had been doing his best impression. He’d learned quickly that disobedience was more trouble than it was worth.

  In the end, it had been dog crap that allowed Cal to escape and he still can’t believe his luck. They were in the city, heading down the platform while they waited for the next train, Reed on one side of Cal, Reed’s second Eric on the other.

  Reed had stepped in the mess, right there on the platform. Cal had had first-hand experience of Reed’s sudden rages, but the other commuters hadn’t.

  That’s when the interesting thing happened. Eric pushed Reed’s bag at Cal and raised his eyebrows, then Eric seemed to spot a culprit with a dog and pointed him out to Reed.

  Reed raced after him, screaming obscenities at anyone who would listen. That included two police officers standing a couple of feet away.

  The subway arrived, spilling passengers and gawkers out onto the platform.

  Cal just stood, holding the bag, mouth open, and that’s when Eric elbowed him in the ribs and nodded at the open subway doors.

  “What are you waiting for? Go.”

  Cal jumped onto the subway just as the doors closed, and the train was already building up speed and halfway out of the station before Cal saw Reed look up and realize Cal was gone.

  He still doesn’t know why Eric did it or how much trouble he got into afterwards. Cal never paid much attention to Eric. He was just one more scary alpha to be avoided in a pack full of them.

  After that, it had been subway after random subway, then a bus, and another one. There hadn’t been much money in Reed’s bag, but it was enough for the fare he needed.

  Each time, Cal simply took the first bus or train out of wherever he found himself until it was three days later, and he was on the other side of the country and still moving.

  And now he’s on the move again, just in a different place and away from a different alpha.

  It takes him two hours of leaping through snow and wending his way through the trees before he reaches the first of the mountain streams. It’s running fast, carrying lumps of ice swiftly downstream. He leaps in. Ice cold pain spikes up his paws and makes his jaws clench. He keeps running, leaping up the stream as fast as he can.

  He darts in and out whenever he reaches a suitable spot that is clear enough of snow to allow him to mix his scent and make it seem as if he’s left the stream at that point.

  Around mid-afternoon, his nose picks up the scent of hibernating rodent and he snuffles along the warming ground until he finds its hole underneath a giant fir. The little bones crunch in a way that make his human side shudder, but they fill Cal’s belly and give him the strength to keep going.

  By the time the sun begins to sink below the heights, he’s been in and out of the stream dozens of times and crossed into a second one.

  Now he’s struggling to put one paw in front of the other. The warmth of the day left with the sun and Cal can’t stay in the icy water any longer.

  He exits the stream onto a rocky ledge. Although he’s been climbing steadily upwards all day, the peaks above seem to go on forever and Cal recalls that they are one of the highest and longest ranging in the country. It’s a perfect place to get lost in.

  There’s a clear view down towards the forest and the town, and little dots of light are starting to appear in Aylewood. He wonders if Luke knows he’s gone yet.

  Nope. Can’t think about that. If he starts thinking about Luke, he’ll be tempted to go back and that isn’t a risk he can take. The stakes are far too high.

  The little cub in his belly is no bigger than a tomato seed and far too small to do anything other than make his papa throw up all over the place, but Cal feels a fierce protectiveness whenever he thinks of it.

  It... he or she, more like. He wonders how early it will be possible to find out. Some people like a surprise, but Cal thinks having to deal with a newborn cub will have surprises enough. He wants to know as much as possible about his little son or daughter. He probably won’t have a choice about finding out early anyway, Cal thinks sadly. He can’t afford to feed himself right now, never mind pay a sonographer. If his plans play out, he’ll give birth alone right on this very mountain. Going back to humanity will have to wait until the cub is big enough to be left on his or her own while Cal goes to work.

>   The ledge he is padding along is growing steeper and thinner, winding and turning every few steps.

  Cal has to be careful where he puts his paws. He has to stop himself from stumbling with every second step, and he begs whatever gods might be listening that the ledge leads somewhere he can rest instead of disappearing into nothing like it appears to be doing.

  He can’t face the thought of having to turn around and go back along the narrow ledge and having to find his footing on the slippery rock in the pitch dark.

  The moon is starting to appear but so are the clouds, happily blocking out what little light there is. He can see well enough for now, but the light is going to fade fast. If the clouds blocked out the stars and the moon...Cal’s wolf eyes are good, but they aren’t that good.

  Getting on this ledge was a dumb idea. Beyond dumb. It might be one of the dumbest things Cal has done in his entire life and there are a good few to choose from. Another few minutes and he’ll have to turn around and head back while there’s still enough light, having lost a good half hour of his head start on Luke’s pack.

  The ledge turns again, and Cal tries to slow his aching paws while he navigates the bend, but he’s too tired. His knees buckle and he slips.

  Cal shifts the second he feels himself falling, but his fingertips simply scrape along the rock before he plummets into the darkness below.

  LUKE

  ravines and scenarios

  “Budge up, I’ll drive,” Luke barks.

  As annoying as usual, Jax just shakes his head and doesn’t move an inch. “Oh no, you won’t. You’re in a panic. You’re going to crash and kill us both, and then where will your precious Cal be?”

  Luke growls low and rough, letting the raw anger make his throat rumble. Jax growls right back.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, I don’t have time for this.” Luke scowls and climbs in the passenger seat.