by Owner
It was degrading, but he was too tired to argue. His body wanted to give in and pass out now that he’d worked through all his adrenaline. He hoped they planned on feeding him. Something with protein, preferably. Having only a bowl of rice yesterday for supper, and this morning for his breakfast, was definitely not enough to keep his engine going. If he just got some energy in him, he could fight back, stay awake at the very least. If he accidentally shifted into the wolf in his sleep, he was fucked.
The man with they eye patch was the one walking with him, both of them stepping awkwardly over the slightly flattened trail of snow that the snow mobiles were making.
It shamed Morgan that he couldn’t even pull together the strength to break the ropes binding his hands and attack the man.
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Overriding that was the curiosity he felt as to why he would basically offer his vote to allow the others to escape and why he didn’t smell entirely human, either.
He wanted to ask him what he was. The man walked with a stick
up his ass that Morgan knew had nothing to do with the fact that he was guarding a prisoner.
He was scared that Morgan was going to rat him out. What the hell was he?
Morgan was better equipped to handle the cold, even without a fur coat on him, but now that he was walking, stumbling, through so much of it and his body was hardly producing any heat at the rate they were walking, he soon started to freeze.
Again, the man with the eye patch spoke up for him. “I think we should find someplace soon. It’s starting to turn blue.”
The leader of the hunters stopped the snow mobile he’d been riding to turn and look back at them. He’d since bandaged his hand with a strip of a shirt one of the other men had been wearing under a jacket, but blood still seeped through and stained the yellow material.
He frowned, staring at Morgan, as though determining whether or not this was a decent place to stop.
“We’ve been moving for nearly three hours now. Those other wolves aren’t coming back,” Storm―the name Morgan had heard―said.
Their leader looked around the huge expanse of white in all directions. There was nothing surrounding them except more snow and the skeletal reaching hands of leafless trees and shrubs. The only green came from the pines, and there was very little of that either considering the blanket of snow that covered them.
“We’ll keep on for another hour. If we find a suitable campsite that we can hide from those wolves before then, then so be it. I want
no chances.”
Morgan nearly fell over again as he was forced to walk some more. He could hardly feel his legs, and the urge to fall asleep was a
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small torture in of itself.
He wriggled his wrists around. He needed to get out of here.
* * * *
Nick could smell pack land a good hour before they made it there, which, even with his senses, was pretty good, considering the fresh snow that covered absolutely everything.
The farther he traveled with Morgan’s mate, panting behind him, the more confident he grew that there was no one following him. He let out a long howl when they were only twenty minutes out, announcing their arrival.
Adam’s reply howl was milk chocolate for the senses, and he pushed himself harder, forcing his way through the thick, sticky snow to get to him.
The yipping sounds of his mate, along with another werewolf, that kid, John, were what he heard next before he was tackled back into
the snow.
He’d been so excited to get back to his mate that he hadn’t sensed it coming.
Adam’s happiness must have matched Nick’s because he hardly seemed to notice, or care, that his claws were digging harshly into Nick’s pelt as he smothered him with licks and rubbed his body over Nick’s.
“So glad you’re okay,” Adam said through the mental link that
two mated werewolves shared.
When Nick got back onto four paws, he was quick to start jumping and nipping and licking back. His tail wagged like it hadn’t wagged since he was a teenager and he and Adam had met for the first time.
“Missed you,” he replied.
There were a curious whine behind them, and Nick turned toward
the sound of it.
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Adam and John must have then seen that the other wolf he was
with was not Morgan.
“Who is this?” Adam asked.
They were less than ten minutes outside of the main area for the pack where all the cabins were. By now they were definitely on pack land, so Nick felt safe getting back on two legs.
He heard Terry’s frightened whine, and he knew he would have to get this over with before the wild werewolf could bolt on him.
“This is Morgan’s mate. He’s been taken by the hunters. We need to see James right now.”
There was silence for about five seconds before he heard the voice
of his mate. Adam’s real voice, not just the sound that appeared inside Nick’s head whenever they spoke as wolves, which meant that he, too, had put himself back on human feet.
“All right. Let’s get the both of you back and we can figure out what to do,” Adam said.
* * * *
Terry jerked awake from what felt like the worst dream he’d ever had in his entire life. No, not a dream, and he hadn’t been sleeping. Maybe that was the reason why he felt so exhausted.
He’d just transformed from wolf to man. The air was warm, and when his skin stopped tingling, he recognized that he was lying in a bed. His whole body was in a sweat, and when his vision cleared, he saw the faces of a whole lot of men he didn’t know.
The most prominent, and mean looking, of those faces belonged to a man with heavy scars that marred his neck, cheek, and to a lesser extent, right around his right eye and forehead.
He was an alpha. Terry could smell it. Terry’s first reaction was to skitter out of bed and find safety, but the man put his huge hands on Terry’s bare shoulders, holding him in place.
“Let me go,” Terry demanded.
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The alpha’s face came a little closer, his dark-brown eyes not blinking as he stared at Terry. “I am the leading alpha of this pack, and I am claiming you as my own. You will follow me from this day on. Do you understand?”
Shit! He was being forced into a new pack! He didn’t want to be here!
“Morgan!” he yelled, falling under the spell that was commanding him to bow down and follow like a good omega.
The alpha’s fingers dug just a little deeper, pressing a little harder into Terry’s skin. “You will follow my command.”
Terry squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t help himself. He obeyed the order. “Yes. I will follow.”
Goddamn it if he didn’t hate being an omega right about now.
The alpha didn’t release him until Terry’s body relaxed. He then got up from where he’d been kneeling by the bed.
Terry wondered what the plans these men had for him were, until the alpha reached his hand out, and took the scarred hand of another blond omega in the room.
The other alphas who’d also been in the room to act as witnesses to Terry’s initiation smiled at him, but there was no malice in their grins.
“One of us now. The pack keeps on growing.”
“We’ll be a whole village soon if we keep this up.”
Terry tried to think about who these men were, but he didn’t recognize any of them, or remember coming here.
“Where’s Morgan? And Nick?”
The leading alpha answered him. “Nick is making preparations with his mate. From what I’ve been told, Morgan had the hunters chase him to give you both the chance to get here before you could get caught.”
Terry’s eyes widened, vague and faded memories coming to him from when he’d been in wolf form and still mostly wild.
Helplessness w
as the main emotion to envelope him, and fear.
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The certainty of being caught and skinned had overpowered him, but then his mate had shifted into a man and had spoken to Nick, telling him to take Terry and run.
Terry hadn’t wanted to go, and Morgan had actually slapped him to make his wolf flee with Nick.
Terry wanted to be sick. “Jesus Christ. Is he okay? Did he make it back yet?”
The face of the blond man whose hand the alpha held fell in pity.
The alpha wet his lips, but his expression remained calm. “We can only assume that he was captured at this point since we’ve heard nothing back. No howls, nothing.”
“Are you going to go and look for him?” Terry asked, and he felt like crying.
He didn’t know how this pack worked. For all he knew, Morgan’s pack was the kind that left their captured and injured behind.
It wasn’t something he could blame them for, considering that was how many werewolves escaped dangerous situations with their lives. The enemy liked to wound instead of kill because that would always slow down the others, after all.
Terry had never been in a pack that had needed to do anything like that, but he’d spoken with other werewolves who had been. They had all been poor, tortured souls with blank, haunting stares. Unable to forget the things they’d seen, and unable to forgive themselves for running away.
The same way Terry had run away the moment he was able to. That was why he was alive. He left the others behind and escaped before he could be skinned, too.
“I’m getting some of my wolves together now. A human and two vampires also live here. We even have a dragon shifter, and they will be offering their services.”
Terry looked out the window. It was still midday, but the sky was gray. With the right kind of protection, he imagined a vampire would be able to travel in that sort of weather. But still…
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“What can a human do to help you other than slow you down?”
“That human,” said a new voice in the back.
Terry turned toward the sound, just as another man with a grim expression, strong jaw, and high cheekbones―and were those purple eyes?―walked into Terry’s line of sight with only a slight limp.
He frowned at Terry. Terry didn’t scent any were in him, but if there had been, he would definitely be an alpha.
He crossed his arms, all serious as he finished his sentence. “That
human is a trained hunter. I know how they work, and I will track them before they can touch Morgan with any kind of knife.”
Terry shrank away from the man when he mentioned he was a hunter, and yet none of the other alphas in the room tried to jump him and tear him from limb to limb.
Everything inside of him shifted, his wolf wanting out, wanting to run away, to attack, to go and find Morgan himself.
He swallowed all of that down, forcing his human mind to stay in control.
“Can you really find Morgan?”
The hunter nodded. “He’s smart. He won’t let them skin him.
He’ll have shifted to make things harder for them, and if what Nick told us about those snow mobiles is true―”
“It is,” Terry said quickly.
“Then they won’t have a comfortable way to travel with a naked human. Not a way that they would trust without him attacking them,” the man said, as though Terry hadn’t interrupted him. “They won’t just vanish like ninjas or anything. They’ll have to stop and make camp, betting that we won’t be coming for them.”
Hope swelled inside Terry’s chest like a balloon. He barely knew his mate and didn’t want to lose the man before that could be
rectified. Or ever, for that matter. This hunter suddenly made Terry feel a whole lot less antsy. He was eager now, eager to run and save his mate.
“Good, because I’m going with you.”
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Chapter Twelve
Morgan wasn’t really in a mood to deal with this pissant hunter. By listening to the conversations around him, Morgan had learned the man’s name was Tatum.
The hunter Morgan had bitten had the most pissed off, crazed look, of any hunter Morgan had ever come across.
All things considered, he really couldn’t blame the guy.
Two of the other hunters had gone to set up a perimeter, and the other, the one wearing the eye patch, was off checking something with the snow mobiles. Maintenance, Morgan realized. To make sure they would work in a pinch in case they needed to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Will I transform?” Tatum seethed, keeping his voice low and looking over his shoulder at where Storm worked for the third time. He was terrified that one of his hunter friends would learn about what
happened and turn on him.
He was out here all alone with these other men. If they decided to do just that, it wouldn’t be long before he went down, and they would be injecting him with adrenaline shots to make him transform so they could skin him, too.
He was a hunter. He would have seen some of the things these men did to the creatures they hunted. He knew what was in store for him if his secret was out.
Morgan was tempted to just start yelling it out, but then his chances for survival would go down to almost nothing. Tatum would stab him in the throat if it meant shutting him up.
He also considered telling him that he wouldn’t transform, that a
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single bite wasn’t enough to do anything. That way, when his first transformation did happen, it would be against his will, he would go wild, and he would hopefully be smack in the middle of a hunter camp. Tatum could kill off a lot of hunters like that, and werewolves everywhere would be so grateful to him.
It was such a good idea that he decided to go with it. “No. I didn’t have time to release my venom.”
The idiot actually looked like he believed him. Hope was a strong force like that. “Really?”
There wasn’t just hope on his face or in his voice. There was also disbelief. Morgan had to lie. If he said that Tatum would transform, then the man would go into hiding, running away from other hunters. He was likely to do that where some other normal humans were bound to be, and Morgan didn’t want this idiot killing regular people because he was too stupid.
A lot of people became hunters because of attacks from wild werewolves, after all.
Morgan turned away from him. He’d answered enough questions, and right now he just wanted to sleep.
Tatum suddenly became a tough guy again, taking out a serious-looking hunting knife and pressing the flat of the blade against the flesh right beneath Morgan’s eye.
“If you think for one second that means I’ll go easy on you, you fucking piece of wolf shit, you’re out of your mind. I still need to pay you back for this.” Tatum held up his bandaged hand, as though Morgan could’ve forgotten it.
He pulled out a small, black case from the inside pocket of his winter jacket. It looked like it might be the kind of thing that would contain some reading glasses, but then he opened it up, and Morgan cringed.
“Yeah, you know what this is, don’t you?” Tatum said, holding up the opened case for Morgan to better see the needles inside.
Adrenaline. They were going to pump him full of it and try to
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force a transformation. He’d heard horror stories about this kind of
thing, usually second hand from relatives of the few to survive or fight against the effects long enough to be rescued.
“Why don’t you just get it over with?” Morgan asked.
“So you can go wolf while my backup is gone?” Tatum let out a small laugh. “No thanks. But just in case you get any ideas about getting away, we’re going to do this the second they get back. I’m going to personally rip the skin off your body, and then I’m going to wear it around as a trophy.”
Morgan shivered. Even the toughest of alphas could be brought
down with ideas of being skinned alive.
He wriggled his wrists harder behind his back, and that act had apparently not gone unnoticed by Tatum. “Don’t get your hopes up trying to break through that, either.” His grin was toothy. “I was a Boy Scout. Got my badge in tying knots and everything.”
Morgan couldn’t resist. “Thought they didn’t let fags into the scouts?”
That earned him a punch in the nose. The pain blinded him for a
second, and the crunch was the worst sound he’d ever heard.
He groaned but managed to keep from making any other pained
sounds.
Tatum must’ve punched Morgan with his injured hand because when his vision cleared and he looked at the man, he was shaking his hand out and sucking on the blood that had started to flow again. He was cursing something awful, too.
If Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman, had ever heard that kind of language, she would’ve torn his head off.
“Filthy, stinking, motherfucking―”
“Sir!”
Tatum looked up, and Morgan did, too, when Storm called out. The man was standing up straight, his one eye focused as he stared off in the distance.
“What?” Tatum snapped, looking in the direction Storm stared in.
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His face blanched when he caught sight of the younger member of their team, Chance, if Morgan remembered the name right.
He was walking back to the campsite, shifting his legs through the high snow, pushing through.
Morgan couldn’t smell it because of how clogged with blood his nose was, but now that he was looking in that direction, he could see the way he left a dark trail of red behind him.
Something had attacked the guy, and now Chance was trying to get back to the camp.