Ian's Choice (Wolves' Heat)

by Lynne, Odessa

  Ian screamed. Because, by God, it hurt.

  He lost sight of what was happening as he sucked in air through gritted teeth and scratched for leverage at the floor as he was dragged around the corner of the bed to the sounds of his own rushing blood and the roaring of wolves.

  Then he was free, the hand torn loose from the grip on his leg, and he panted past the pain, cheek pressed to the hardwood, hands flat to the floor. He pushed himself over onto his back just in time to see Craig’s mouth close over the fleshy part of Third’s neck.

  All he could think as he watched Craig bite down was that he was going to be sick.

  Chapter 7

  Ian didn’t throw up even though he came close.

  Third didn’t die.

  Craig did, however, take a chunk out of the side of Third’s neck that he said would put him out of commission for at least a week. His body would be too busy healing itself to get caught up in his heat again, even with the presence of humans and their irresistible scent around.

  Ian didn’t care. He just didn’t want anything like that to ever happen again. Ever. “So next time I should just skip the shower, huh?”

  Craig’s mouth was a tight line of anger. Ian thought it made him look fierce and strong, a conqueror of wolves. Alpha.

  “We’re out of our drugs,” Craig answered and he sounded as angry as he looked as he sat on the edge of the bed where Ian sat propped on lots of fluffy fat pillows, his bandaged leg stretched out in front of him. “Your renegades have seen to that. We don’t have any way to control the lust craze around you humans until the heat season ends or we get a shipment in from one of our compounds farther to the east, but they’ve already said they don’t have any to spare. If you had smelled more strongly of me, the way you did before your shower, he might not have gone as wild as he did when he caught your scent.”

  Ian grinned. He felt wonderful despite the five deep gouges in his calf. “I smell like wolf bait.”

  “The pain medication has intoxicated you.”

  Ian felt his grin get wider. He blinked a few times but Craig still loomed. “I’m hot.”

  “Do you need water?”

  “No.” Ian frowned. “No, no, no. I’m hot,” he said again. He waved at his naked torso, his cock and balls. He spread his thighs, just a little. “All you guys want to do me. You know, fuck me. Take me. Mate me.”

  “Ah.” Craig shifted on the side of the bed, then reached out and put his hand in the center of Ian’s chest. “The only reason I’m not fucking you right now is because your injury makes my heart hurt and I can’t stand the thought of giving you pain instead of pleasure. If I wasn’t sure before that we should be mated, I don’t have any doubts left.”

  Ian could see the sweat on Craig’s brow. He wondered if that was a symptom of him exercising such great restraint over his heat cycle.

  “You know I don’t care if you want to fuck me. I can take it. I feel pretty good right now. And, wow. Your heart hurts for me. That’s…something.”

  “What it is, is normal. Love isn’t an emotion reserved for humans. We can feel just as strongly about one another as you do.”

  Ian scoffed. He wondered if the pain meds were making him dizzy. Too warm, too confused, and his chest hurt. “Love? You can’t love someone you’ve just met. That’s ridiculous.”

  Craig shook his head. “Go to sleep. You probably won’t remember any of this later.”

  “I don’t know. I might. I want to.”

  Craig leaned in, pushing Ian back, and with the hand not centered over Ian’s heart, he started pulling pillows out from behind Ian.

  Ian humphed and then slid down to lay flat on his back on the mattress.

  He closed his eyes, and he felt Craig’s kiss all the way to his bones.

  Chapter 8

  Ian came awake with the most god-awful headache he’d had since that time he had mixed tequila, rum, and vodka and drank a pint of it just to prove a point to his best friend’s bitch boyfriend Devon. Devon had not been the one to suffer, which Ian had never really appreciated, but since he’d been seventeen at the time, Ian had long since forgiven himself for being a complete ass about the whole thing. He’d gotten his tattoo that night, covering almost half his torso and down his hip, and had to live with it ever since.

  Devon had gotten his dick tattooed with a snake’s head, and that sight alone had made it a lot easier for Ian to forgive him later.

  Ian let out a rough groan when he tried to move, his head busting, his leg throbbing. Whatever he’d been given for pain earlier had definitely worn off.

  He finally got enough spit into his mouth so he could talk, and he said, “Craig?”

  No one answered.

  Ian raised his head. Sometime during his rest he’d flipped over onto his stomach. He didn’t see anyone at his side. He twisted to look to the other and saw that the door’s lock had been patched up. He was alone.

  He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. Now that he was incapacitated—and he could certainly tell he was hurting bad enough that he was going to have trouble walking on that leg for a day or two—he was going to have to rethink his rethought plan. Just what he needed. Another setback.

  Damn good thing he hadn’t gotten off a reply to that message though, because whatever he would have said, he wouldn’t have been able to follow through.

  He couldn’t remember a lot after taking the drink Craig had given him. Some kind of medication meant to ease his pain and strengthen his immune response. He’d heard that in deep wounds the wolves’ claws could introduce bacteria into the bloodstream that humans didn’t fight off easily, if they were lucky enough to fight it off at all.

  He was just starting to push himself up in the bed, grimacing the entire time, and thinking it was time to take a piss when the door opened and Craig entered, carrying food.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Ian said. “Help me to the bathroom so I can eat some of that when I get back. I’m starving.”

  Ian hobbled from the bed to the bathroom with his arm over Craig’s broad shoulders and Craig hauling most of his weight. Having someone watch him piss wasn’t his favorite thing in the world, but he could only be grateful he didn’t need to do anything else other than wash his hands and splash water on his face. As he stood at the sink, hip resting against the bowl, he stared at Craig through the mirror.

  “Do you really think a person can fall in love just like that?” he asked. “No personal histories, no real knowledge of who they are when you’re not around?”

  Craig looked up and met Ian’s eyes in Ian’s reflection of himself.

  “Yes,” he said simply. His gaze flickered to Ian’s back. “That doesn’t mean we won’t regret it if it turns out to have been a mistake.”

  And if that wasn’t double-talk, then Ian didn’t know what was. Craig probably knew about the phone. But Ian couldn’t mention it without risking everything and if he turned out to be wrong and Craig didn’t react to knowledge of the phone the way he seemed to be reacting, as if he knew, then Ian would have given up his only advantage in this messed up thing going on between them.

  He was in a right pickle, as his grandfather would have said.

  “I’m done,” he said. “Take me back to the bed.”

  Craig reached out for him, and Ian thought it was strange how he could say something like that, in such a demanding tone, and get nothing out of Craig other than a raised brow. As if he was secure in the knowledge that when it came down to it, Ian had submitted and would continue to submit.

  But, he had, and he would. So, yeah. Craig’s self-assurance made sense. Ian’s lack of caution didn’t, but he couldn’t help himself now that he was feeling more secure himself around Craig.

  He made it back to the bed and when he went to turn so he could scoot up onto the mattress, Craig grabbed him by the waist and manhandled him onto the mattress and into a sitting position.

  “Okay,” Ian said. “You’re not going to feed me again, are—”


  Craig stuffed a piece of bread between his lips, rudely interrupting his question.

  Ian chewed and swallowed. “Well, I guess that answered that.”

  “It was a stupid question. I’ve already told you. I mated you. It’s my responsibility to take care of you.”

  “It makes me feel weird to have a grown man—I mean wolf—treating me like a two year old.”

  Craig huffed. “A minor difference in culture. This should make you feel special. Cared for. Worthy. Taking care of a heat mate eases the constant ache of desire and calms the need to fuck.”

  “It makes me feel like a baby.”

  “Eat this.” Craig stuck a rolled up slice of roast beef between Ian’s lips.

  Ian bit off a chunk and chewed. Before Craig could shove anything else in his mouth, Ian said, “Worthy?”

  “You submitted to me as a heat mate. Of course, you’re human and that changes things, but your submission deserves the same treatment I would give any mate I would chose from my own people. We give a lot of ourselves when we submit. That submission deserves respect.”

  “You don’t submit. You’re Alpha.”

  “I am now. I wasn’t always.”

  Interesting. “So you change roles, change status, over time?”

  “No one starts out Alpha. It’s a position that has to be earned. I’ve earned it.”

  “What happened with Third, earlier?” Ian asked, his curiosity flaring as he tried to work out the pack dynamics of this group of wolves in his head.

  Craig shook his head and brought a square of cheese to Ian’s mouth. “It’s complicated. You should quit asking so many questions.”

  Ian noticed the sweat on Craig’s forehead again, the faint tremble in his hands. “Are you getting close to another heat cycle?” He realized it had actually been a lot longer than last time between their mating sessions.

  “I can either take care of you or fuck you. Right now, it’s in your best interest to submit gracefully to my care so that I don’t end up hurting you because I can’t resist the smell of you when all I really want to do is spend the next few hours with my dick in your ass and my tongue on your skin.”

  “Okay.” Ian cleared his throat, finding it hard to swallow that last bite. “Give me more pain medication for my leg and then you can ease the constant ache of your desire in my ass the rest of the damn night.”

  Not his finest line, for sure, but Craig’s growling lunge said it did the trick anyway.

  Chapter 9

  The pain medication wore off about the time Craig curled up around him, burrowing his nose into the back of Ian’s underarm, and started to doze off, leaving Ian smeared in semen and sticky from saliva and sweat.

  He elbowed Craig, gently, and spent the next fifteen minutes on a trip to the bathroom and swallowing down another dose of liquid sunshine. The medication looked like piss, he couldn’t deny that and smelled even worse, but calling it sunshine did make it easier to choke down.

  He had just drifted off, tucked in tight against Craig, naked but warm, when he heard the explosion.

  Chapter 10

  Craig roared as he came out of the bed, the look he gave Ian setting Ian’s heart to pounding faster even than the adrenaline coursing through his blood. His medication hadn’t had time to kick in but he still had that shaky feeling he got when he woke up too soon. Light from the full moon glowed through the window, bathing everything in pale tones of gray.

  Craig hurtled across the room, grabbing a t-shirt and Ian’s jeans on the way and tossing them at him. The denim hit him in the chest with a thwap, one of the legs loosening from the roll and smacking him in the side of face. “Get your pants on.”

  The vibrating growl coming from Craig’s chest sent a shiver of cold, hard dread over Ian’s skin, his hair standing on end at the sound.

  “What’s happening?”

  Craig stopped at the door and looked back at him, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. “Your renegades. What do you think? Did you tell them where to find us? Did you find a way around the signal block?”

  Ian sucked in his breath. “It’s not what—”

  Craig roared at him, his teeth visible in the bright glint of moonlight through the window. “Get up!”

  Ian swallowed and decided now wasn’t a good time to try to explain anything. He pulled on the t-shirt. Then he rolled out of the bed, feet hitting the floor with a painful jolt up his injured leg. Getting his pants on was going to be an ordeal.

  Craig left at a run, and stayed gone for no more than a minute before he came back. He grabbed Ian’s half-dressed leg and yanked the pants up and then, even when Ian didn’t figure Craig believed he deserved more care, he carefully eased the pants up over his bandaged calf.

  “You’re not leaving,” Craig said, not even looking up at him. “You might think you’re going to get away from me, but you won’t.”

  “I really don’t think I’m going anywhere without your help right now.”

  At that Craig raised his head. He ran his hand up Ian’s legs and stopped over the spot where the phone should have been hidden inside, luckily not in the leg that covered Ian’s wounds. “Where did you move it?”

  So he had known about the phone.

  Ian reached behind him and patted the bed beside where he leaned on it for support. Acting innocent would be foolish. Craig expected submission. “Under the mattress.”

  Craig reached past Ian’s hip and felt around for the phone between the mattress and support springs. He found it quickly, pulled it out, and then tucked it into Ian’s front pocket.

  Ian took that as his cue to get himself zipped and snapped and buckled, and he did that hurriedly while Craig stood. Then Craig hauled his arm over his shoulders, clamping his hand around Ian’s wrist almost painfully tight.

  Ian understood the need, but that didn’t make it feel any better.

  “Where are—”

  A loud yell came from down the hallway. Ian shut his mouth and looked up but all he saw in the dark was a pair of glowing eyes headed their way.

  Craig swung him around, putting his body between the doorway and Ian. But then he turned back to face whoever it was coming toward them, and as whoever it was got close enough to see in the moonlight, Ian realized it was the wolf he’d been calling Second, the one who’d had his fingers inside Ian’s ass just the night before last. Seeing him again was weirder than seeing Third had been, because while Third had touched him, he hadn’t had a part of himself in Ian. As far as Ian was concerned, finger fucking was on a whole other level than dick fondling.

  He was grateful for the darkness.

  Second stopped right inside the door. “Power supply is gone.”

  Ian heard Second’s sniff and saw him shake his head hard. Second growled low, a pained sound. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Focus,” Craig said harshly, and then he repeated a name Ian recognized from having heard it once before that sounded like “Ashikid,” with a sharp inflection at the end. After a moment of trying to recreate the sound in his head, Ian decided to stick with Second.

  Craig continued when Second just stood there, obviously struggling with Ian’s scent. “We’re mating. He belongs to me. Submit or I’ll rip out your throat and show you your place at his feet.”

  Ian tried not to react.

  Second’s head bowed, his stance firming, his breaths slowing. “Alpha. Forgive me. I submit.”

  “Get the gear.”

  Without another word or look at Second, Craig dragged Ian from the room, arm tight on Ian’s waist. Ian’s hopping gait wasn’t near fast enough to keep up with the speed at which Craig pulled him to, and then through, the door, so most of Ian’s weight stretched through his shoulder and back and rested on Craig’s shoulders.

  Something clattered and banged as Second gathered together whatever gear it was Craig had ordered him to get. Then a rustle followed as he stuffed his armful into a canvas-like bag with a strap that fit over his shoulder. Before Ian and Craig
had reached the end of the long hallway, Second had caught up with them.

  The stairs were tricky, and about halfway down Ian’s bare foot slipped on a tread, and he bit back a startled yelp as Craig’s hold on him tightened and shifted, stopping him abruptly from losing his footing completely.

  His injured leg bumped the wall and he muttered, “Son of a bitch,” before he thought better of it.

  He could hear the harsh breathing of Second behind him, and he couldn’t stop the creep of rising anxiety. Trapped in a house full of wolves in the middle of the heat season seemed to be a disaster waiting to happen, and even more disturbing, running from an unknown something in the dead of night had to be its own disaster in the making.

  Despite what Craig might think, Ian really didn’t know what was going on.

  Ian hadn’t had the opportunity to discover much of anything about Craig and his pack. He didn’t know what kind of defenses this den had, if any, and he didn’t know why the house wasn’t overrun with humans determined to kill all the wolves.

  Because if this den had been discovered by renegades, and they caught the wolves in a vulnerable situation, they would kill them all.

  But humans were here somewhere. He had heard the talk the night he was caught and Craig had confirmed it yesterday. The presence of humans turned this situation into something entirely different and these renegades, whichever group they were, might set off exactly the kind of frenzy they claimed to want to protect everyone from.

  Ian was more certain than ever that Craig had been right when he’d said there was a lot of propaganda being spread. Ian knew at least one person who had been spreading it.

  By the time they made it down the stairs, Ian’s head swam with the effects of the pain medicine he had taken. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Craig’s hand clamped tight over the lower half of his face.