Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle

by Sasha Silsbury

  The cold bites immediately but the car stays silent behind him, even as his ears listen out for the sound of Otto coming after him.

  You’ve got a damned death wish, you fool, a little voice says in his head. He ignores it. It’s far too late for that. This has been coming too long.

  Sooner or later, he was always going to have to make a choice about what side he is on. It just always seemed that it was going to be later rather than sooner.

  He unzips, feeling his dick shrivel in the cold and urinates at the base of one of the town’s ancient oaks.

  The oak is bare and leafless under the bright winter sky. Come summer, it will sprout new leaves and Dan has no idea if they will sprout green or yellow if the oak disease has spread as far as he thinks they have.

  The whole town is rotten all the way through, he thinks. Everything from the sheriff to the trees.

  He’s not to blame for the blight and there’s not a whole lot he can do about it, but the other rot? The rot that’s in him and Elyse? That he can do something about.

  He just needs to hold onto his temper.

  He stays out in the snow as long as he can and by the time he gets back in the car, his teeth are chattering and the tips of his fingers have grown numb. The warm air from the car heater feels like pure heaven.

  “You get that out of your system?” Otto says.

  “Yes.” It’s an obvious lie but Otto doesn’t call him up on it. The sound over the speakers has fallen silent. “Are they done?”

  “I believe so. It sounds as if they’ve left the Inn,” Otto replies. He’s closed his notebook and looking straight ahead, his stupid knees still knocking up against the dashboard. “Oh, and while you were out there freezing your dick off and having your little tantrum, Elyse called back.”

  Dan turns to look at him. Otto’s still not looking at him. For some reason, he’s pulled up his backpack by the straps from where it was squashed at his feet and running his fingers over the front of it, almost as if it’s a comfort blanket.

  He’s a weird one alright, Dan thinks. Must be all the murder and mayhem he carries out in Ronmin’s name. A man’s not ever going to be the same after that.

  “The runaway’s in heat,” Otto continues. “Dunno where he thought he was running to this time but that was the reason. The Winterstokes are letting him use their cabin to wait it out.”

  Dan stares at him, trying to understand what’s going on in his head. Almost a week ago, the big man practically threatened Dan with death for not being enthusiastic enough, then he seemed to be trying to annoy him to death. Now, he’s almost ignoring him over an undeserved ‘fuck you’.

  At least Otto didn’t punch him in the face or shoot him in it. Either would have been reasonable for one of Ronmin’s thugs.

  You’re half the problem, Dan thinks. I don’t understand you at all.

  “You done staring at me?” Otto says drily.

  “Just trying to figure you out,” Dan answers honestly, as he turns the key in the ignition.

  Otto stiffens. “It’s against the rules for me to share personal information.”

  “Rules? You make it sound like there’s a handbook. ‘How to make enemies and intimidate people’.” Dan pulls the car out of the rest area, careful on the snow, and onto the main road.

  “That’s not what it’s called.”

  Dan feels his mouth drop open. “You really have a handbook?”

  “More like a pile of Dos and Dont’s in a binder, but yeah. Ronmin’s hot on rules.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Dan had only been in the Fort Gosford back for three years before he was sent to Aylewood and Ronmin hadn’t been pack leader for all of that, but the man’s control freak tendencies were starting to come back.

  Dan turns the car into the parking lot of the Foresters Inn. He’d hidden the little bug well but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be found by an overzealous cleaner. Besides, it was expensive and he wants it back.

  “Lots of rules,” Otto says suddenly. “The more there are the easier they are to break, and the easier they are to break, the easier it is for him to use you as an example.”

  “I remember that too.” Obey the rules. Submit completely. And never ever lie. Michael had learned that the hard way.

  Thinking of Michael still makes Dan’s chest twinge. Michael is buried somewhere in one of the big commercial cemeteries on the edges of Fort Gosford and Dan has never had the courage to visit his grave. A familiar sense of shame floods him with the thought.

  He’s aware of Otto’s eyes on him as Dan pulls the car into a parking space outside the Inn, the big man’s expression suddenly thoughtful.

  Dan sighs. At least he’s not a runaway omega going into heat in the middle of a strange pack.

  What was Sherwood thinking? Dan knows he had heat blockers. Sherwood had bought a pack from Jonah Lawson the second night he was in town.

  “Did Elyse say—” Dan starts to ask before he breaks off, whatever he was going to ask suddenly lost in the white-cold flood of realization that washes over him.

  Jonah Lawson. Lawson is a small-time crook who sells whatever he finds going cheap. Dan’s been wanting to put him away for years but Hamish always nayed it. Lawson would be exactly the type of man to sell fake heat blockers to a runaway omega if he didn’t have the real thing to hand.

  Oh shit. This isn’t Otto’s fault. It’s Dan’s. He should have put Lawson away years ago, Hamish be damned.

  Dan leans back in the driver’s seat and sighs, rubbing his eyes with his hands.

  “Now what?” Otto asks as if Dan were nothing other than a moody teenager he has to babysit, but when Dan turns to reply, the big man doesn’t look annoyed. Instead, there are shadows under his eyes and his shoulders are slightly slumped. He just looks tired.

  “Nothing.” It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. Dan feels guilt trickle through his veins and he’s not sure how much is him blaming a man who is definitely guilty of something and how much is Dan just feeling bad about Caleb Sherwood. “Listen, man. The trick to the seat is to pull the lever upwards just slightly before you pull it back.”

  Otto’s eyes widen in surprise, then he does as Dan instructed, wiggling with it a bit before he gets to work. The seat pulls back, freeing Otto’s knees.

  The big man stretches his legs out, a look of visible relief on his face.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Dan says as he gets out of the car to retrieve the bug.

  He’s not unaware that his upcoming betrayal is going to go badly for Otto. The least he can do is make sure the guy has comfortable knees.

  OTTO

  bugs and betrayal

  “The runaway,” Ronmin interrupts. “Was there an imprint with one of the Winterstokes? It’s a proper mating?”

  The meeting room in the Fort Gosford packhouse is windowless, airless and absolutely tiny.

  It contains a single square table set at an awkward angle and four chairs, none of which has enough space to be pulled out all of the way, so both Otto and Hamish are sitting with the hard edges of the table poking into their stomachs.

  Ronmin has taken the chair closest to the door: the one place where there’s a little more space and he’s got a lot more than he needs. That’s deliberate too.

  The uncomfortable pain in Otto’s belly makes him feel like he’s more nervous than he really is.

  Or at least, that’s what he tells himself.

  You know it is. I put it in my report.

  “Looks like,” Otto replies. He’s been resisting the urge to check his notes in front of him.

  He knows his stuff already but Ronmin hasn’t taken his eyes off of him once. It’s enough to make any man unsure of himself.

  He’s sent reports through in excruciating detail for the last nine months: the packs signed the new summit agreement without difficulty. Luke Winterstoke mated the runaway omega who came to town and got him pregnant. Jax Winterstoke picked himself up another alpha boyfriend and dropped him again just
as fast. Tourism is at the same levels as last year. The Grand Hotel is still making a steady profit.

  The only thing he hasn’t put in is the weirdness that is Dan Callister, but mostly because Otto doesn’t know what to put that isn’t in there already.

  Hamish sits beside him, ostensibly in order to provide any additional knowledge about the area, but really because Ronmin likes to make people feel uncomfortable.

  The old alpha is sitting up unnaturally straight in his chair, his face shaved for once although he missed a strip just below his jaw.

  “The omega’s pregnancy has progressed well,” Otto continues. “He’s ready to give birth any day now.”

  “Excellent,” Ronmin says and Otto feels his stomach churn. He doubts Ronmin’s pleased that everything worked out well for Cal Sherwood. “Remind me where he came from again?”

  “River Beach, sir. He’s a runaway from Mason Reed.” You know that too.

  This isn’t about Ronmin wanting to know what’s happening in Aylewood. It’s about him finding out what Otto’s holding back. Out of the corner of his eye, Otto is aware of Hamish watching him intently.

  “Ah yes,” Ronmin says. “Remind me why we didn’t turn him in again?” The pack leader’s intense green eyes are still fixed intently on Otto, and Otto finds himself wondering if the man has even blinked since he sat down.

  He must have. Otto shakes the thought away. Paranoia is contagious.

  He represses a flush of irritation and answers honestly, “Because you said to me that Mason Reed is crazier than a bag full of cats and we didn’t want to throw him into the mix.”

  Ronmin looks at him and bursts out laughing. “I did say that. I’ve changed my mind. Call him. Tell him where to find his boy.”

  Otto hesitates, then takes a risk. “Are you sure, sir? If you don’t mind me saying, Reed’s a complete psychopath. Chaos might create opportunity but it needs to be our opportunity, not Reed’s.”

  Chaos creates opportunity. It’s Ronmin’s favorite saying. Otto’d parroted that dumb line at Callister and the sheriff had just looked at him like he was an asshole.

  Otto has to admit it is true. He is an asshole. That’s his job. Somehow, it’s been bothering him more than usual.

  Ronmin grins and Otto does his best not to flinch. He’s seen that smile before, usually before he orders someone to kill the person he’s smiling at.

  “Yes, he is. If we’re lucky, he’ll take out the whole pack in revenge. Save us the work. Save you the work. Call Reed.”

  Save you the work. And there’s the threat underlying the grin. If Mason Reed doesn’t take out the Winterstokes, he’ll get Otto to do it.

  Otto has done a lot of things that he’s not proud of, but murder is still not one of them. He’s been thinking about that a lot recently.

  Setting Mason Reed on them might amount to the same thing, but at least he’s not the one pulling the trigger. It’s a fine line but it’s all he has to hang onto right now.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me know how it goes,” Ronmin says with another wide smile that shows all his teeth but doesn’t meet his eyes. “And make sure that Reed knows the tip came from us. Can’t hurt to have him owe us one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ronmin stands up easily from his space behind the table, but he still pushes the table back just slightly when he does so. Otto hears Hamish give out a slight grunt as it hits his belly.

  They wait until the sound of Ronmin’s footsteps have disappeared into the distance before extricating themselves from the table. It’s an awkward feat involving table and chair shuffling and ‘excuse mes’.

  “Fancy a beer?” Hamish says.

  “Sure.” Otto feels his gaze flick up involuntarily to the corners of the room. There’ll be bugs in here somewhere.

  The only question is where the rest of the bugs are. Ronmin never lets anyone have a conversation without him. It was one of the first things Otto learned when he arrived.

  The Fort Gosford packhouse is a warren of interconnected rooms, hidden doorways and secret entrances set in a fifties-built apartment block.

  The leader before Ronmin gutted the place and turned it into an inescapable rat run, all the better to keep his pack jumpy and under surveillance.

  Otto shifts uncomfortably and pulls at his collar as he wonders what it is about leadership that attracts the insane and the paranoid. Personally, he can’t think of anything worse than being in charge. There’s always some ambitious new wolf waiting in the wings for his opportunity.

  Otto follows Hamish through the warren of corridors and passageways until they’re finally standing in Hamish’s quarters with the door clicked shut behind them.

  “Get a couple of beers out of the fridge, will you?” the old man says. He crosses the room and starts fiddling with a Hi-Fi system that would have been cutting edge in the nineties.

  Thumping bass accompanied with an electronic screeching immediately fills the room. Otto’s always been more of a musical theatre man himself, but this is better to block out anyone who might be listening, so he grits his teeth and opens the fridge door.

  The only thing in the fridge that isn’t beer is a pack of cheese slices, dried up and curled at the edges.

  Otto pulls down the little table from its space at the end of the kitchenette and pulls up a chair, placing the Hamish’s beer on the other side of the table and immediately taking a long deep swig of his own.

  It feels like a day for getting drunk. Hell, it feels like a year for getting drunk. Or a lifetime.

  Hamish slides his chair over so they’re sitting at right angles, close enough that he can talk under his breath and still have Otto hear him.

  “You have to do it,” Hamish mutters. They’ve been talking more and more over the last months. The old man seems to want to mentor Otto and Otto has been happy to let him. At first, it was because Otto just wanted to get as much information as he could, but he’s come to like the old wolf. He’s begun to realize that a lot of Hamish’s incompetence is nothing of the sort. He’s just somehow managed to avoid doing a lot of the really bad stuff.

  It’s a skill Otto would like to learn. All he needs to do is avoid the alcoholism and he’s starting to understand why that’s a real risk.

  “I know,” Otto says softly.

  “It’ll get worse too.”

  “I know that too.” Otto tips up the can and downs the rest of it in one go. The thump thump of the bass is starting to give him a headache.

  What kind of life is this? Unable to hold a conversation without earsplittingly loud music.

  He wonders if Hamish ever had a secret bank account, and what happened to it.

  “Don’t give Reed your name,” Hamish says suddenly. “Or whoever it is that you talk to at his pack. Don’t let them know it’s you or they’ll think they’ve got an in here.”

  Otto nods, feeling his jaw clenched tight enough that it feels as if his teeth are going to grind all the way through each other.

  “And remember,” Hamish continues, “You’re going to have to get your hands dirty. And they’re going to get a lot dirtier than this.”

  Otto doesn’t want to hear it. He knows.

  “Another can?” Hamish asks.

  Otto shakes his head. If he’s going to do this, he’s going to have to do it sober and he doesn’t know if that’s because he’ll lose his nerve if he were drunk or, worse, that he’ll gain it.

  “I’m gonna get it over with,” he says, standing up,

  A warm hand touches his arm. He looks down to see Hamish giving him a sad look. “You don’t have a choice,” the old man says. “Remember that. Ronmin will kill you if you don’t. He’s testing you.”

  “I know,” Otto says, but as he walks back to his own quarters, he knows that Hamish is completely wrong. It is a choice. He’s making a choice between him and Caleb Sherwood, and he’s choosing himself.

  What did you do? Nine months ago, Dan had asked him that in a car in the mid
dle of a snowy forest in Aylewood and Otto said he’d done nothing.

  Dan was furious anyway. Otto can still see the fury in his eyes and the way he spat out that ‘fuck you’. And Otto should have been angry back. He should have put a stop to it right there, but he didn’t.

  Because even then, he knew that it was only a matter of time. Dan was right. He was only wrong about the timing.

  Otto shuts the door behind him firmly. He stands leaning with his back against the door, trying to steel himself.

  Just do it. It’s you or him.

  His quarters are an exact match for Hamish’s in size and layout. The difference is in how he keeps them. Everything is tidy. The place is too small not to. Everything is laid out perfectly: the square of the rug on the floor, the cushion on the sofa at an exact right angle. Even the insides of his fridge are laid out in size.

  Otto doesn’t know where the bug is but he doesn’t doubt that there’s one, or that someone will be listening now, making sure that he follows Ronmin’s orders.

  Just do it, he tells himself again.

  He peels himself away from the door and sits on the sofa, his phone in his hand. It takes him minutes to find the number. He dials before he can talk himself out of it.

  He shuts his eyes the moment that he hears the phone ring on the other side, as if somehow that makes it better.

  He clenches his free hand tight enough that he feels the nails biting into the palm, breaking skin. He holds onto the pain, savoring it. This is the moment that the scales finally tip and his road to hell is set in stone.

  The phone clicks on the other end. A woman’s voice says, “River Beach pack. Jeannie speaking.”

  Otto feels his stomach flip over. He leans back on the sofa, crushing his perfect cushion completely out of shape.

  “I know where Caleb Sherwood is,” he says.

  DAN

  paperwork and lasagna

  Luke Winterstoke looks like he’s aged ten years overnight. His face is drained of blood and there are lines at the corner of his eyes that Dan knows weren’t there a week ago.

  Luke’s knuckles are snow-white as he grips the sides of the chair in the station interview room. The liaison from the Omega Unit doesn’t seem to notice. He just keeps droning on in legalese