It takes some time to get up to Isaiah’s territory. The forest is dense, and where it isn’t, there’s rock. It’s not the most hospitable place. It would be hard going for an able-bodied man, and Adam hasn’t been that in months.
Jax leans back against the wall, and tries to listen out for anything going on outside but there is nothing but silence. Somehow that makes it worse.
The thought makes him shiver even harder, despite the warm summer evening.
He needs to get some sleep. His brain has been shooting live sparks for almost two days. It needs to shut down and get some rest, before it shorts out completely.
He’s just drifting off where he sits on the hard cold floor, when the sound of the door unlocking makes him jump to his feet, head spinning.
“It’s just me,” Adam’s voice says. There’s an exhausted quiver to it that makes Jax’s stomach hurt.
“You need to sit,” Jax grabs his arm in. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Adam shrugs. “Probably.”
Jax lets his oldest brother lean on him and does his best to pretend that having a six-foot-six alpha lean on him doesn’t make it feel like he’s being squashed into the floor.
Adam collapses into his usual chair by the fireplace and lets out a deep sigh.
Jax takes the chair opposite and leans over, searching for signs of injury, but there’s nothing wrong with Adam that wasn’t there that morning. Nothing but over exertion.
“You need to look after yourself.”
“I know.”
Jax lets it go. They’ve had this argument a hundred times. “What’s going on out there?”
Adam looks up. “Isaiah’s dead. We found his body up near Charen Peak.”
The leader of the wild wolves. Dead. Jax feels an eerie calm descend on his body. There are a thousand things that could have happened, and another thousand that could result from it. None of them are good.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. His belly was ripped out, but it doesn’t look like he fought it.”
Adam’s eyes are closed. He’s leaning back in the chair as if even looking Jax in the eye is too much effort.
“Are—” you sure. Jax doesn’t complete the sentence. Of course, Adam is sure. It’s not the kind of thing you could mistake. Jax never met Isaiah but the man was a legend of sorts: old, belligerent and fiercely territorial.
He wasn’t the type to go down without a fight or be taken by surprise.
“It was a mess,” Adam continues, rubbing at his forehead. It only serves to smear the mud across it further. “There was a lot of blood, fur and not just his. At least three types, maybe more.” He grimaces, breathing out hard.
Jax doesn’t need him to explain.
He’s been in enough emergency rooms to know what it must have smelled like: the stink of fury and fear, blood and flesh.
“And the rest of the pack?”
“No sign of them. It looks as if they headed straight up into the mountains. We saw a good number of runners and talked to them or shouted at them from a distance in the case of the omegas. No one’s seen them either. Did the wild wolf say anything about what happened?”
Jax thinks of Gray and the stink of panic that had filled the air when he asked. “He’s…confused.”
Adam tips his head, finally opening his eyes. “So, I hear.”
The tone is clear. Gregor must have passed on exactly what Gray had said about Jax being his mate.
Jax opens his mouth to try explain but Adam hasn’t finished. “You can’t do anything about it.”
“What?”
“Gregor said you imprinted on each other. You can’t consummate that. I assume you haven’t already. You don’t smell like it.”
Jax bristles. “What business is it of yours?”
Adam sighs, and rubs at his eyes again. “All of it. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t care who you sleep with as long as it’s consensual, but this feels like pack politics. Please don’t make this more complicated for me.”
The previous year, the Winterstoke pack had re-signed alliance agreements that had been in place for the better part of a century between the four local packs.
That had included Isaiah though his signature was only an X and Isaiah’s idea of an alliance was shouting at the other packs to stay from his territory.
The alliance with the wild wolves had always been more of a truce that suited everyone, but if Isaiah was dead, then that might change.
“It’s not just them,” Adam continues. “It’s me and this stupid leg. And it’s the Foster pack. They’re weak right now too. Almost all of our allies are.” Adam’s rubbing at his injured leg harder now, uncharacteristic agitation showing in his eyes.
“Adam—” Jax needs to tell Adam that he gets it. Four packs. One with a dead leader, one with an injured one and one with an omega in charge.
That leaves only the Warwick pack with a strong alpha. It’s not enough to keep the proverbial wolves from the door.
“We just need to make it through the damned mating run without any more serious injuries and without anyone deciding that the Aylewood territory is ripe for a takeover...” Adam says stabbing at his leg with his index finger.
A thousand different emotions are battering at Jax’s body and he’s just plain exhausted trying to make sense out of all of them. He doesn’t have the energy to argue with Adam, even if he wanted to.
“I won’t do anything about it,” he says.
Adam’s shoulders relax visibly. “Thank you. I know it won’t be easy. Just hold off for a little longer. He breathes out heavily. “Where’s he now?”
“At the clinic. I put him in one of the single rooms. The medication he’s on should have knocked him out until morning and there’s a night nurse on duty for the run. I’ll check in on him again in the morning.”
Adam nods slowly, as if his head is too heavy for his shoulders. “See if you can get what happened out of him. Use the imprint if necessary. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.”
The weight of it all hits Jax like a hammer. He’s hardly slept in the last few days, and the urge of the imprint is still gnawing at him in a panic, screaming that he’s too far away from his alpha.
Jax tells his inner omega to shut it. He stands. “I’m going to bed,” he says. “You should too. Doctor’s orders.”
“I will,” Adam replies, but he doesn’t make a move.
Jax suspects he’s going to spend the night in the chair watching out in case the ash-scented alpha comes back. Jax doesn’t have the energy to argue with him.
He trudges along the corridor to his room, trying to ignore the forest scents swirling in with the breeze through the open windows. That’s the scent that Gray lives in.
Jax’s world is now the gray-eyed wild wolf. He can feel it in the depths of his bones and by the way his heart beats faster at every thought of him, which is all the time.
He just has to keep away from him as much as possible. He does have some self-control, but it’s going to be hard. Especially this week.
Jax pushes open the door to his room and shuts it firmly behind him. He’s got a big bed, the biggest in the packhouse.
He’s always been a selfish and restless sleeper, star fishing across it and moving around in the night so that his head always ends up on the opposite side to where it started.
It’s one reason he’s always preferred not to sleep over at any of his lovers or to bring them home. He likes his own bed. He loves his own space.
And now?
It doesn’t matter. He can’t do anything about Gray for a thousand different reasons.
I need to sleep, he thinks. There’s no point worrying about Gray while his brain is too tired to do anything other than throw up panicked thoughts.
He’s too tired to even shower or do anything other than pull off his dirty clothes and fall onto the bed naked against the sheets.
He’s not too tired for his dick, which h
as been half-hard since that damn wolf turned up in the back of Gregor’s truck, to spring itself to full attention at the knowledge that he is finally alone and capable of getting some attention.
He groans. It feels wrong to jerk off to the thought of Gray, when the man is alone and injured having just lost his family.
But if he doesn’t get some relief, Jax knows he’s going to be nothing but a jittery, horny wreck in the morning and certainly not capable of having a clear head when he does see Gray again.
Besides, he really, really wants to.
He lies on his back, legs spread slightly and runs a light fingertip over the length of his dick, down past his balls and to the increasingly slippery space behind them, and just that single light touch is enough to make him shudder.
In his head, he sees Gray: intense eyes the color of storm clouds and strong hands, gripping Jax’s own as he holds him down on the bed.
You’re mine.
The memory of the words prompts yet another rush of slick. Jax grits his teeth to stop from moaning out loud. He’s never been this horny outside of a heat before.
It doesn’t take long. He’s been stuck in confined spaces with Gray for hours, breathing in his scent and desperately trying to ignore the instinctive reaction of his own body.
It doesn’t take more than a few tugs and he comes hard, biting his lip and whimpering at the thought of Gray buried deep in his ass.
He cleans up quickly. His dick feels better, but his mind is still confused. Finally, he falls asleep, worry, lust and guilt warring in his brain, dick softening against his stomach.
GRAY
pebbles and door handles
Being human is hell. Wolves don’t do this much thinking.
Gray can’t stop the images running through his head. This doesn’t happen when he’s a wolf either. Then he just does things. He doesn’t think about them, not before and not after.
He hates the bed too. It’s as soft as mud, but it’s dry and warm instead of cold and wet. He should like it. It’s warmer than the cave where the pack sleeps, and it’s softer. There are no burrowing creatures scratching outside, and no cold wind whistling through the grooves in the rocks. Pine needles don’t prickle at his fur.
There is also no whuffling or snoring from the pack as they sleep, accompanied by the scent of pine.
The thought of his family brings a deep pang. He shuts his eyes tight and tries forcing himself to sleep. It doesn’t work.
It also doesn’t help that the clinic is completely dark, still and silent. The glass in the windows muffles any sound from the outside world.
Gray shifts in the bed, trying to get comfortable. He wants to shift with a longing that resounds in his bones. He has too few legs, and too many arms. He can’t curl up and lay his nose on his paws the way he usually does. Instead this strange long body needs to lay almost flat.
The only thing that isn’t horrible is the mate scent of his beautiful omega. He can still smell it, but the scent is dissipating with time, leaving an empty space behind it that makes Gray want to howl.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed. The floor will be better. He’s not used to sleeping so high up. He’ll be more comfortable on the ground, away from the unnatural softness.
He lies down on the ground, carefully protecting his broken arm as he moves. Jax’s liquid worked for a time, but now his arm is starting to throb, and that’s not helping him sleep either. Jax said he can’t have it more than every four hours. Gray should have asked him how long an hour was.
The floor is made of some kind of slippery, cold stone set out in squares. Gray pulls down the sheet from the bed and tucks it under himself, putting a layer between the cold and his skin and then lies down again on his back.
He stares at the ceiling. It is also made up of square panels, and then long rectangle-shaped lights. Gray wonders what it is about squares that make humans like them so much. Everything in the human town is made up of squares and rectangles: the floors, the ceilings, the beds, the rooms, the buildings and their doors. Even the vehicles are mostly rectangle shapes with the edges blurred.
He wonders if Jax loves squares as much as the other humans. Jax must. This is his place. He would have made it out of squares.
Gray stretches his legs out flat on against the floor and wonders why he’s thinking about squares. They’re human thoughts. He never thought about this kind of thing when he was a wolf. He wonders how long it will be before he too is just another chemical-smelling human who has forgotten how to be a wolf?
The wolf closes his eyes and breathes in deep, seeking the residual scent of the omega. He picks up the trace of it easily. It’s soft and comforting, but it’s not enough. If he could only shift, he’d be able to smell Jax’s lingering scent better, but he can’t. He can’t shift until his arm is better and the white thing comes off.
There are other places in this building that Jax has been. All he needs to do is find the place where his new mate spends the most time, and then maybe he’ll be able to get to sleep.
Gray gets clumsily to his feet, still a little unsure of himself on only two, and steps out into the corridor. The floor is cold under the soles of his feet, and he wonders what it is about the material that humans find so attractive that they fill their buildings with it. He’ll have to ask Jax when he sees him next.
The lights are on overhead and he has to squint to see where he’s going.
He walks down the corridor slowly, sniffing into empty rooms and trying doors. Some are locked but not all of them. There’s the scent of an omega in the room opposite his. He stands at the doorway for a moment, listening to her breathing as she sleeps. There’s no one else with her; she’s alone in the room, and the wolf guesses that this is another thing that humans do. They sleep alone.
He’s only been down from the mountains a day and he’s learned a lot about them already. Other than Jax, the painkillers, and the ability to fix his arm, he doesn’t think he likes any of it.
There’s another scent too: that of the beta night nurse. She’s in another room, the door open a sliver, paying attention to yet another square that reflects light onto her face.
He follows the strength of Jax’s scent until, near the back of the building, he finds a room without a bed.
It’s completely saturated with Jax’s scent. His mate spends a lot of time here. The wolf stands in the middle of the room, eyes closed, and breathes in deeply. The calming scent fills his nostrils, and the panic from being stuck in the strange square spaces begins to subside. Even the throbbing from his aching arm seems to diminish.
He opens his eyes feeling soothed and looks around for a place to sleep. The floor in this place is made of something different; it’s more like the clothes Jax wears if a bit rougher.
There’s a square picture on the table. The wolf picks it up. It shows four men: one is his mate; one is the blond man with the beard who was there when he woke up in the clinic. The other two are also blond and both tall: clearly alphas.
This is Jax’s pack, the wolf thinks. They’re all grinning, and the image of Jax smiling so happily makes the wolf want to give him a hug and never let him go. It looks like a good pack. Not all packs are good. He knows that.
Humans kill for fun. Or because they’re angry. Or for no reason at all. That was another of his father’s life lessons. Keep away from humans.
Now, Gray is mated to one, and stuck in a strange human building.
His father was the one constant throughout his life: always there, always in charge and completely powerful. Until he wasn’t any more. And yet it only took one night for the world to end and a new one to start.
Wetness forms at the edges of Gray’s eyes. He blinks it away with burning eyes.
He wants his pack. He can’t have that. He wants his mate, and that he can. Or he should. Jax is the only thing he has to hold onto in this hard, bright place of strange scents and unpredictable humans.
This room with its hard corners has
the scent of Jax and the image of him, but it doesn’t have the real thing.
The wolf remembers the way out of the clinic, although it takes him a little while to work out how to unlock the front door from the inside.
The world smells better when he steps outside in the cool night air. The sky above is clear and black, and dotted with bright stars. Best of all, it’s far away instead of right above his head. By the light and location of the moon, it’s not long until dawn.
For the thousandth time, the wolf wishes he could shift. His inadequate human nose is barely picking up Jax’s scent.
Jax spends a lot of time on this sidewalk, sometimes the scent takes the road to the right but mostly it goes to the right, towards the town.
The wolf follows the strongest scent into the town. There is no one out on the streets or the sidewalks so the wolf feels comfortable taking his time staring at the strangeness of it. Some of the buildings smell delicious, others just odd.
He passes one that appears to be nothing but food, and another with the mixed scents of human hair and chemicals. When he finds Jax, he’s going to ask him what all the buildings are for.
There’s a light on in one of the buildings, one with a blue and white vehicle outside. The wolf can see a man inside, awake and paying attention to something in front of him. The wolf gives him a wide berth.
The sweet scent of his omega leads him out of the town and up towards the mountains. The wolf follows the road. That’s the way humans do things. They build roads then they put boxes of buildings beside them. All the wolf needs to do is follow the scent until he finds the right box.
The trees alongside the road grow thicker and it begins to smell better, the fresh scents of the forest starting to dominate the greasy human ones.
The scents tug at his heart. They feel like home: pine, soil, fir, the sharp scents of mice and rabbits, of cooling rock and the river in the distance.
For the briefest moment, he thinks he scents his pack on the wind: his brother somewhere in the maelstrom of scents. His brother smells of the dry heat and devastation after a fire. He smells of ashes. The memory-scent of his brother has been lingering the gray wolf’s nostrils ever since he woke up.
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 24