Cole Bennett nods just slightly.
“Good boy,” Ronmin says in what he probably thinks is a soothing tone, then the tone changes. “Hold him down,” he orders.
Even in the dark, Otto can sees Garrett pale.
Otto does as he’s told. He holds down Bennett’s left shoulder with one hand and holds his belly down with the other.
He meets Garrett’s eyes and widens his own slightly, then gives a tilt of the head. Do it.
Bennett screams when Ronmin bites into his neck although the noise is muffled by Ronmin’s hand over his mouth.
Bennett bucks against the alphas holding him down. Otto looks across and sees that Garrett has his eyes shut tightly, his face an unsightly green.
Otto wants to shut his eyes too. Hell, he’d like to shut his ears and his whole brain if he could.
Ronmin’s not going to kill the guy, Otto tells himself even as Bennett struggles underneath him. He’s going to go home. That’s what he wanted.
The screams go on and on, making Otto’s stomach churn until Ronmin finally leans back, wiping Bennett’s blood from his mouth and says, “That’s it. We’re done. Good job.”
Otto lets go of Bennett’s shoulder. The omega falls limp back to the forest floor.
“Now, my dear,” Ronmin says, “Just so we’re clear. Who did this to you?”
Bennett is breathing hard, his eyes glazed but at Ronmin’s voice, his head turns towards his pack leader. He flinches with the movement.
“Who did it?” Ronmin asks again.
“Alpha. Smells of ash,” the omega rasps.
“That’s it. Good boy.” Ronmin gets to his feet and stretches. On the other side of him, Garrett moves suddenly, racing off into the trees.
Otto hears the sound of retching.
Ronmin looks at Otto and pulls a face.
Failed, Otto thinks.
“I could do with a drink, how about you?” Ronmin says. “You think the bar at the hotel will still be open.”
Otto shrugs like the thug he’s supposed to be. “We’ll open it if it’s not.”
Ronmin bursts out laughing. “Yes, we will.”
The town is still and quiet as they make their way out of the forest and down to the main street and the hotel, leaving Bennett alone and wounded in the forest.
Ronmin is quiet for once which Otto is grateful for. The man has a mouth like a babbling brook. It just never stops.
Unfortunately, it does mean Otto has time to think about what they just did. About what he just did.
The new guy follows them just as silently. He gives off a shocked, subdued air.
That used to be me, Otto thinks. I took some seriously wrong turns in life to end up here. He wonders what Garrett’s wrong turns were and when it all started going wrong for him.
He knows what Dan’s wrong turns were. He was just born wrong and then he made the mistake of letting people know about it.
Dan Callister. He’s been avoiding him for months. He’s not going to be able to for much longer.
They’re just past the hairdresser and just before the clinic when Otto picks up another scent on the wind blowing towards them.
Otto puts a single finger up to indicate to the others to stop. Ronmin’s eyes narrow, then he sniffs and nods.
The Fort Gosford wolves stay where they are in the shadow of the building and out of the way of the breeze, as a completely naked man, his arm bound in white plaster walks up the middle of main street, his gaze firmly fixed on the road leading up to the Winterstoke packhouse above.
They wait until the man is well out of sight and scent range, then Ronmin turns to Otto with a smirk. “That kind of thing happen a lot here?”
Otto throws up his hands in mock defeat and gives his boss a grin he doesn’t feel. “First time I’ve seen it.”
The door to the bar is locked when they get into the Grand Hotel, so Otto goes in search of a key. He finds it behind the desk in the lobby.
The chairs and stools are all stacked on top of the tables ready for the morning, and there’s a grill pulled down on the bar. He has to go through six of his stolen keys before he finds the one that he needs to get through to the alcohol beyond.
Fancy gins, whiskeys and vodkas line the back of the bar, set out in pyramids which are clearly more for decorative purposes than practicality.
“What’ll it be?” he says.
The other two pack members have pulled the chairs off of a table close to the bar counter and have taken seats. Garrett is looking decidedly less green but he’s still not said a single word.
Normally, Otto’d be a bit uncomfortable with them all walking around openly and leaving their scent trails, but it’s the month of the mating run. The town is filled with strangers. A few more won’t make a difference.
He ends up pouring all three of them glasses of Warwick cider from the tap on the counter after Ronmin makes a comment about staying local.
Suck up to the boss, Otto thinks, even to the extent that we drink the same damn drink he does.
He hasn’t even had a chance to take a sip when the door to the bar slams open.
“Who the—” Dan breaks off when he sees them. He’s wearing pajama bottoms and a plain white shirt. Dan’s got a gun trained on them, and the movement has caused his shirt to ride up, revealing a soft strip of tanned stomach.
He doesn’t look that much different to when Otto kissed him so many months ago, with the exception that his jaw is now covered with sandy stubble.
It wasn’t like that when Otto kissed him, Otto thinks suddenly. Dan had been smooth and sweet-smelling.
The thought immediately leads to him wondering what it’ll be like to kiss Dan with stubble.
He imagines it’d be as rough as sandpaper. The thought is unexpectedly arousing.
Dan’s eyes flick to Otto’s and widen in surprise, then to Ronmin’s where they narrow.
“You going to join us, officer?” Ronmin says.
Dan lowers the gun. “You set off the silent alarm.”
“Is that a problem?”
A muscle in Dan’s jaw ticks as he shakes his head. “No, sir.”
Otto can see Dan’s thoughts ticking over as his curiosity about why they’re in town wars with his need for caution.
Caution wins out.
Dan nods slowly. “Since everything’s just fine here, I’ll head back to bed. Apologies for disturbing you.”
Dan’s sea-storm eyes are carefully blank, and there’s nothing but respect in his voice that Otto knows is nothing other than a damn lie.
Why aren’t you deferential like that with me?
Then Dan is gone, leaving nothing but his scent and Otto has to stop himself from running after him to explain like some lovesick schoolgirl.
DAN
heat rash and a small town clinic
“There’s been an attack on an omega,” Gregor says over the phone. “And it’s a bad one.”
Dan stands in his kitchen holding his third mug of coffee of the morning and resists the urge to slap himself upside the head.
There it is.
He hasn’t slept a wink since the alarm went off in the bar seven hours ago. Instead he’s lain awake wondering what is coming that is so bad that it needs both Ronmin himself and two of his thugs.
That one of those thugs is Otto...he’s not going to think about that.
“Where?”
“Attack was somewhere in the forest. We haven’t found the site yet, but the omega’s at the clinic now.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Dan says before he hangs up.
He downs the rest of his coffee and pours another mug as he leaves.
The Aylewood clinic is a small-town clinic fifty weeks of the year, and a make-shift field hospital for the two weeks that the mating run is in progress.
The Winterstokes have been admirably trying to cancel the run for years, but in Dan’s opinion, it’s a lost cause. Mating runs have been going on for thousands of years, it’s
going to take lot more than the actions of a small but earnest mountain pack to put an end to them.
The scents of the run drift down from the mountain. It’ll be weeks before they completely dissipate.
The mixed scents and the flood of strangers into town creates the perfect storm for chaos. Dan should have seen it coming.
Just as he should have seen the attack on the wild wolf coming. The man hasn’t yet spoke about what happened to him, but right now Dan would put good money on Otto and his jerk pack being behind it.
You’re part of that jerk pack, his conscience reminds him. No, I’m not. Not really.
Dan shoves his thoughts away. He’s been making a habit of that recently. If he doesn’t think about it, it isn’t happening. Or it hasn’t happened.
Otto kissing him didn’t happen. Neither did Dan kissing him back.
For something that didn’t happen, Dan’s been thinking a lot about it.
The scent of omega-in-heat assaults his nose the moment that he pushes open the glass doors to the clinic. Dan resists the urge to hold his nose. He’s supposed to like the scent but he’s always found it far too sickly sweet.
Instead, he prefers the strong, solid scent of alphas. That knowledge hit him at puberty when he first presented as an alpha.
It took him a long time to recognize it for what it was and what he was, but hiding a recoil at the scent of omega-heat has now become second nature.
He does his best to put on that slightly cross-eyed expression that alphas always seem to get in the presence of heat-stricken omegas, and crosses the room to the reception desk.
He doesn’t recognize the woman on duty, likely one of the temps brought in for the run, but she buzzes him through after he tells her his name and shows his badge.
He pushes open the consulting room door to find an omega he recognizes lying back on the examination cot.
What he doesn’t expect to find is Gregor sitting beside him, his eyes shut tight and his leg bumping up and down as he tries to ignore the waves of heat scent rolling off of the omega.
“Where’s the doctor?”
Gregor’s eyes fly open. “On his way. He’ll be here any minute. Thank god you’re here. I’ve been carrying this guy for ages. I didn’t want to leave him but I really need a break.”
“Uh sure,” Dan says.
Gregor is up and out of the chair in a shot, heading for the door, then he stops. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes, I’ll manage,” Dan lies. He’s going to do more than just manage. He’s not going to be bothered at all.
Heat scents have never affected him. Growing up in Blood Moon, when the mating run came, all the other alphas used to make such a fuss about the scents rolling in from the desert. Dan did his best to mimic them but it was hard. It’s difficult to pretend to be something you don’t even understand.
Gregor scurries out of the door fast enough that it slams behind him on the way out.
Dan turns to the omega in the bed. He’s unconscious and flushed with heat, his dark hair sticking to his head. His neck is a mess of blood and torn tissue.
Dan frowns. He recognizes him. He doesn’t remember the guy’s name but he remembers his face from his short-lived stint living in Fort Gosford.
This is what the Fort Gosford alphas were out doing last night. He’s sure of it.
Was it Otto?
Otto’s got the pure brute strength to hold the man down. Dan imagines Otto’s thick arms straining as he pushes down the omega’s chest.
It was wolf teeth that did the damage. Or at least, lengthened human ones. The thought makes Dan realize that he’s never seen Otto as a wolf.
Dan’s never been much of a fan of wolfing out. It comes in useful sometimes with the police work, and it can be a problem on the rare occasion that he loses his temper, but there seems to be little point otherwise.
He’d far rather stay home curled up with a book. It saves a lot of changing in and out of clothes, and worrying about not being able to find a proper toilet or cup of coffee in the middle of nowhere.
Was it Otto’s teeth that shredded this poor man’s skin? Or did he just hold the guy down? Maybe he was lookout.
Maybe...
Stop, Dan tells himself. There’s no point in speculating and it doesn’t matter anyway.
He knows the kind of man that Otto is. He always did.
The only question is why? Who are they going to blame for this one?
The man on the bed is deliberately created chaos.
Dan leaves the moment that the doctor arrives with an instruction to let him know the moment that the man regains consciousness.
Whoever he is, if he’s part of the Fort Gosford pack, he’ll lie about what happened, but the moment Dan knows what that lie is he’ll know what Ronmin wants the Winterstokes to think.
Or he could just ask. Dan helps himself to coffee from the staff lounge before he leaves, taking it away in his ever-trusty travel mug.
It’s his fourth this morning, and he’s starting to feel the too-much coffee jitters rising up through his bones.
Or perhaps that’s just Otto coming back after so many months. The butterflies in his stomach haven’t stopped since last night.
He heads right instead of left when he hits the street, heading towards the hotel rather than the police station.
It might have been Ronmin who committed the crime, but he has to report back to Otto just the same as if it wasn’t.
The whole thing makes his head hurt.
He crosses the garden at the back of the hotel with a feeling of trepidation. He scents Otto before he sees him, the big man’s scent discernable even through the closed door.
Otto hasn’t changed although Dan’s not sure why he would have thought that he had.
He’d kept his eyes averted in the bar the previous evening, somehow paranoid that the moment he and Otto even so much as looked at each other, Ronmin would know what happened between them.
He knows that’s impossible. It was just a kiss and he’d bet his life on Otto not telling anyone.
Hell, he’s not even so sure that Otto even remembers. He’d been so drunk that it had taken both him and Elyse to manhandle the man back to his hotel room, and then they turned him onto his stomach so that he didn’t end up choking on his own vomit.
Otto was gone first thing the next morning, when Dan went to knock on the door to check on him
Dan walks into his lounge to find Otto standing beside Elyse. They both fall silent when he enters.
“Hey,” Otto says.
Dan nods as casually as he can.
He risks meeting Otto’s eyes and the moment his gaze meets Otto’s, he knows.
Oh yes. Otto remembers. There is exactly no doubt that he remembers.
Otto’s skin at the base of his neck is turning a deep pink, rising up through his jaw and painting his cheeks with color.
Dan feels his lips part in surprise. Out of all the ways that he might have expected Otto to react when they finally saw each other, blushing was last on the list, right after bursting into song or dancing a jig.
“Do I need to report in what happened,” Dan asks, “Or do I just assume you know everything.”
He’s still unable to look away from Otto. The pink isn’t fading. If anything, it’s growing deeper.
“I don’t know what the Winterstokes are going to do about it,” Otto says.
“I don’t know that either,” Dan says. “The omega is still unconscious.”
Otto nods. He’s looking away now, suddenly fascinated by the wall of romance novels.
Elyse looks from one to the other of them, suddenly uncertain.
Crap. Dan thinks.
“Was it you?” Dan asks. He’s not even sure why he’s asking. Of course, it was Otto. It’s going to be Otto until Ronmin finally wins and takes over this town.
“I don’t think I need to answer that.”
That’s a yes, Dan thinks.
“Send me everything
you know as soon as you get it,” Otto says, still seemingly fascinated by the bookshelf. “And everything. I want every theory, argument and random thought that comes out of the Winterstokes heads.”
Dan’s not going to do that. They both know it.
“Yes, of course,” Dan replies.
“Good,” Otto replies. He’s still not looked Dan in the eye. “I’ll be back later this evening.”
He brushes past Dan as he leaves, leaving behind a scent of clean soap even under the soft remainder of cider from the previous night.
Dan breathes out heavily through his mouth. That could have gone better. Could have gone a lot worse too.
Writing up a report for Otto won’t take more than five minutes. He knows nothing, but the box has to be ticked. He starts to head through to his bedroom to retrieve his laptop, but Elyse grabs his arm and holds on with unexpectedly strong fingers.
“Whatever’s going on with you?” she says. “You need to stop.”
Cold slices through Dan’s spine.
“There’s nothing going on,” he says but he blurts it out so fast that the panic in his voice is obvious even to him.
“Just stop,” Elyse says. “You’re going to get all of us killed. And I have no intention of going down with you.”
“Elyse—” Dan starts, but she’s already half-way out of the door.
“Just stop,” she says over her shoulder as she leaves.
There’s nothing going on, Dan thinks desperately. Not really. Not yet.
It’s the ‘yet’ part that makes his stomach twist over and he has no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad one.
OTTO
a boring book and a failed murderer
Otto stands, arms folded, while the respective pack leaders of Aylewood and Fort Gosford do everything except actually beat their chests and hoot like chimpanzees in their attempts to out-alpha the other.
It’s the first time, Otto’s had a chance to actually see Adam Winterstoke in the flesh. He’s a tall man who does a good job of hiding the limp in his leg, but not good enough.
He’s also far too nice. Ronmin is needling him every chance he gets, and the man just puts up with it, trying to play Ronmin’s game when he should be punching him in the face while he still can.
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