Jack didn’t know because he had never been in a real hospital before. In fact, he had never had to go to the doctor before at all in his life. Shapeshifters were remarkably healthy and resilient creatures. Plus, human doctors liked to take blood, and when you could turn into things that were decidedly not human, traces of that tended to turn up in the blood. Basically, it was just a bad thing all around.
His heart started to pound a little, and he reached out to grab the needle and pull it out of himself.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” a gentle, feminine voice said.
Jack jumped, startled. “What?” he said guiltily. From nowhere, a woman’s face appeared to fill his vision. “Who are you? Where am I?”
The woman gave a tender smile that somehow instantly soothed his soul. She reached out to him and gently stroked his forehead with a cool cloth. The dampness felt good and he sighed softly.
“My name is Agatha,” the woman said, speaking as though she talked to a small child in need of comfort. “And where you are isn’t important right now, dear. You’re safe here.”
Jack wasn’t just going to rest at that, however. He started to struggle to sit up, and that was when his injuries made themselves very clear. A pain lanced through his entire body like he had been hit by an avalanche, literally knocking him back down to the bed. Even lying prone again, his side started to snarl like a nest of angry bees, stabbing him over and over from his armpit all the way down to the top of his hip. “Fuck,” he gasped, breathless. Tears of agony traced down his cheeks.
“Please lie still,” Agatha murmured. The cloth move from his forehead to catch his tears, swiping them away. “You were very badly hurt. Do you remember anything about what happened?”
Jack shut his eyes tightly—for some reason, that helped with the pain—and he reached back into his memories, but all he encountered was a fierce sort of blockage deep inside him. That block was immense, roaring with danger at his touch. He thought he could recall flashes of darkness, a great and terrible presence, but that was all. Shaking his head vehemently, he opened his eyes again and stared worriedly up at Agatha.
“I can’t remember. What’s going on? What happened to me?”
The doctor gave a little hum, laying one hand on his shoulder. “I’ll tell you everything if you’ll lie still for me, please.”
Nodding and gasping slightly with pain, Jack stayed as still as he possibly could except for the motion of his head.
Agatha moved slightly out his line of sight, although from the nearby scuffling sounds she apparently hadn’t gone very far. A soft clunking sound told him that she’d set something down near him, and then her body lowered down into position beside him. Sitting now at his bedside, she started to speak. “We don’t know who you are or where you came from. We were hoping that you had that information for us. We are the Forest Park shapeshifters. The Barrow pack.”
Jack nodded a little. “I remember coming to see you,” he murmured, searching for a way around that blockage in his mind. Luckily, the darkness there didn’t conceal everything he knew. “My name is... I’m Jack Mason. I just moved to Portland on my own. I was coming to...to let you guys know I was here. Are you the leader?”
Agatha gave a little chuckle. “No. I am not.”
He nodded for he might have already guessed that from her scent. She smelled of wolf and human, of course, but also of herbs and growing things, and bitter pills, but little else.
“Well, we’re certainly aware of you now. And don’t worry. You’ll meet your...our leader shortly. In any case, you were attacked by something. Our leader found you and brought you back to us.” Agatha’s voice lowered, sadness in her tone. “Like I said before, you were hurt very badly. Your side and back are covered in lacerations. Those are our biggest concerns, of course, but you also have a sprained wrist and a twisted ankle.”
Jack groaned. “So, why do I feel like I’m hurt all over?”
“Because the body tenses up during moments of trauma. You feel like one gigantic sprained muscle because you currently are one.”
“Fantastic,” he muttered. “That’s what I always wanted.”
To his relief, the woman gave a little smile. However, it didn’t last very long before she started frowning again. “You have no idea how close you came to death. We didn’t think you would last the night. And then you’ve been unconscious for days.”
Fear gripped his chest like a plunge into icy water, making his heart pound rapidly. He gulped in a few rapid breaths, the motion causing his body to shake enough so that his wounds twinged and ached. “How many days?”
“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is...”
“How many days?” he growled.
“Three.”
He groaned and flopped his head back on the pillow. “This really can’t be happening,” he muttered. “I’m a shapeshifter, so why aren’t I healed already?”
The cloth moved slightly against his forehead as Agatha adjusted it for him. “There are limits even to what our strengths can do, you know. You are healing very quickly, and you managed to hold on just long enough for...”
Her voice trailed off with some unspoken meaning that he really didn’t like. Cracking one eye open again, Jack said, “For what?”
“Our leader did something very brave and kind to save your life.”
Jack sighed and tried to disappear inside the blankets. Was this really going to be how the start of his new life went? It didn’t seem fair that he should be stranded in the mountains, injured and alone in the midst of a strange pack. Then again, he felt like this was exactly the sort of luck someone like him would have.
“I think I need to meet your leader,” Jack finally said.
“There’s plenty of time for...”
He shook his head and frowned deeply. “No, I need to see him. I was supposed to have been coming to see him in the first place, so there’s no better time than right now, is there? And I had to tell him some news, too. Please let me do that?”
Agatha looked deeply troubled, and Jack’s heart sank. Could it be that these wolves had gotten word of a mangy mongrel who attacked children and knew it was him? If so, despite his fears and pain and the urge to sleep forever, that was exactly the reason he needed to speak with their leader.
Finally though, the woman sighed and nodded. “Very well. I’ll get him for you.” She started to stand up and rise, when Jack looked up again to catch her attention. She gazed down at him with eyes that were the color of skyscrapers, looking somehow as though she had already figured out what he was about to say.
“You didn’t say anything about a neck injury.”
“Well, there are many numerous small bruises and cuts on your body...”
Jack shook his head. This was different. Every time he moved his head, something at the side of his neck nagged at him, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was because the mirror wasn’t angled exactly right. “My neck feels like there’s something wrong with it. Why won’t you tell me about it?”
“Jack, this isn’t quite the right time for...”
Suspicion and fear raced through his whole body. Wariness prickled in his chest like hackles standing on end. A crazed little whine burst up through his lips, tremors starting to rock him. He was too exhausted and beaten to transform, but he didn’t like this. Whatever it was, it was going to be bad. He knew it, could taste the dreadful hesitation on the tip of his tongue.
“Tell me!”
“Fine!” Agatha tossed her hands into the air. “It’s going to upset you, so don’t say I didn’t warn you when it happens.”
Jack waited with his breath bated, his whole body and his entire mind straining to know. The concentrated ache on the side of his neck only seemed to intensify as he craned his head around to watch as the doctor moved lithely to the other side of the room. Glancing at him again and then the mirror, she moved it so that he was more efficiently revealed.
Jack turned his head and twisted his eye
s back around, using his hand with the IV in it to trace his way to the source of the pain.
All at once, he felt the breath fully leave his lungs. For a single, terrible moment, Jack’s entire body quit. His heart faltered. His lungs deflated. His brain quit thinking. His blood surged to a halt, and he knew exactly what it was like to be dead.
I’m dead, I died. The shock killed me. I’m dead. I actually need to be dead.
There on the side and back of his neck were deep puncture wounds in the shape of fangs.
Jack was marked.
Against his will, some alpha had claimed him.
“No,” he murmured dizzily. Just like that, everything came crashing back in around him, and he honestly felt like there would never be enough words in the world to describe the panic that overtook his body. “This can’t happen!” he cried out.
I’m not supposed to have to depend on anyone!
That was the whole reason he made this move, and look where he was now!
“I have to get out of here!” he yelped and snatched at the IV. This time, he succeeded in ripping it out. Tossing the needle to the side, he arched his back and scrabbled at the sheets, trying to stand up. The pain was too much, however, swamping over him in thick waves that tangled his legs and sent black speckles soaring across his vision like shooting stars. Gasping, he fell out of the bed and fell a very short distance to the floor.
It felt like he had gone skydiving without a parachute and smacked into the side of a mountain on the way down.
Crippled and gasping, he could practically taste the dirt of his grave now. He wanted to die. Anything to end this pain, to get him out of this situation.
His ears were full of the sound of his racing blood, thumping painfully—everything was painful—but dimly, he heard shouting and a name being worriedly called. Everything else was lost to him for what must have surely been an eternity but was probably only a minute. That longest minute of his life faded away when he heard two sets of rapid footsteps approaching, thundering in his ears through the thin floorboards.
A new voice spoke. Not to him, though. “You told him?”
Agatha’s voice now. “I didn’t tell him anything. That’s up to you. He asked. All I did was show him.”
“Thanks,” the new voice growled. Jack focused on that growl. Something inside him tugged strongly in the direction of that deeply masculine voice. “Maybe you should leave us alone for a minute or two while we get this sorted out.”
“He fell,” Agatha said, sounding stressed. “He might be bleeding.”
“This won’t take long.”
A short silence followed, and then the lighter set of footsteps receded back the way they had come.
Jack waited, his thoughts whirling. A set of boots entered into his vision, and then a muscular lower half of a man’s body lowered itself down. The man crouched, the thick muscles of his thighs straining so hard at the denim fabric of his jeans that they practically exploded off of him.
“Well,” the man said, and that was all.
That was all it took.
The wolf inside Jack responded immediately to the sound of the man, immediately craving after his scent. It was pine and musk, delicious and irresistible to the half of him that had been claimed and bound against his will. Even though everything inside him rejected this arrangement, his soul rejoiced at having finally been completed. It was almost as if he could feel a second, stronger heart beating in his chest. Two sets of bewilderment lived in his mind, both of which were wreathed in anger.
This man was his mate. Not only that, but he knew just from the scent that his new mate was very powerful, perhaps the most powerful male that he had ever scented in his entire life.
Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and another slid beneath his legs at the knee. Jack let out a little growl, trying to struggle, but he was torn between wanting to escape and wanting to burrow in closer. He felt like his mind was about to split in half, and a stress headache throbbed behind his eyes.
Meanwhile, the alpha gave no notice of his internal struggle and just set him down on the bed again. “You shouldn’t be doing stuff like that,” he rumbled, the timbre of his voice making it seem as though he spoke from inside a very large cave. It was that deep and immense, commanding respect.
I won’t ever respect you.
Opening his eyes, Jack started to snarl at the alpha, but then he stopped. For a moment, both sides of him were in agreement.
The man was gorgeous.
Even in his human form, he looked like a predator with a hulking, nimble body and sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. He wore a shaggy head of white-blonde hair that tumbled down over his forehead.
Jack felt his mouth open slightly in response to the man’s appearance, feeling the tug on his soul increase now that he could actually see the alpha to whom he was bonded.
Then, he shook his head and let out a growl. “You bastard. You marked me against my will. How dare you.”
The alpha crossed his arms, not looking very apologetic at all. In fact, now that Jack was over the shock of his initial gorgeous appearance, he realized that the alpha had a very condescending, self-satisfied smirk on his face. The grin didn’t quite match the emotion held back deep within his eyes, but Jack didn’t really care.
“I dared to because it was the only way to save your life,” the alpha rumbled. “My name is Tristan Barrow. This is my pack.”
“My name is Jack, and I’m a lone wolf!”
Tristan laughed, although not quite unkindly. “Are you sure about that? What lone wolf bears the mark of another?”
Jack gritted his teeth and seethed, starting to shake from his anger. “I wasn’t given a choice in the matter!”
“That’s because you were about to die.” The smile fell away from Tristan’s face. “I found you being attacked by something that I have a personal vendetta against. I saved your life because I need to know what you remember about what you saw. Anything at all. The only way to give you enough strength to survive was to mark you as my mate. I had no choice.”
Jack fumed, boiling with anger, but there was nothing he could do about it. He stared unhappily at his hands, refusing to look at or talk to the alpha. It was no different from pouting, but he hardly cared.
“In any case, what omega thinks he can be a lone wolf in this world? That’s an alpha choice.”
“I don’t care if I’m an omega!” Jack snapped angrily, addressing his hands still. “I was going to make it all alone without depending on anyone.”
A moment of silence passed between them, and Tristan gave a shrug. Jack could sense that his mate was just as unhappy as he was. “Look, omega...”
“My name is Jack. If you’re going to make me be your mate, I better damn well be treated like it.”
“Fine. Jack. What were you doing coming to us anyway?”
He hesitated to tell this absolute jerk anything, but eventually he told the most important pieces of his story, about coming to tell the Barrow pack that he was a lone wolf on their land and alerting them to the truth about what happened with the child.
“I see,” Tristan said, when he was done. “Thank you for telling me about the child. You’re right. We already had word of it, but we didn’t quite know the truth of it all.”
“Well, now you do. And what do you know about that thing that attacked me?”
Tristan was deathly silent. Jack would have doubled over from the jolt of pain that stabbed at his heart if that wouldn’t have hurt just as much as feeling his mate’s terrible emotions. “It killed my parents. I recognize the marks it made on you. Please, tell me everything you can remember.”
Jack shook his head immediately, trembling a little bit. He remembered that massive, dark shape and kept shaking his head. “I don’t want to remember. Don’t make me. Please.”
Tristan’s expression darkened, but apparently, he could feel at least some of his mate’s trepidation and backed away slightly. “Maybe you’ll remember soon.�
� From the sound of his voice, it wasn’t really a question so much as it was a command.
I just know I’m going to hate being his mate. Maybe there’s a way to undo it.
Something else occurred to him. Every other shifter he came into contact now would be able to smell that he was claimed. Any hopes he had of independence were down the toilet already. His parents would look knowingly at each other and think they were right all along.
His parents!
Jack sat bolt upright again, planting his hands down against the mattress behind him to keep from falling over. “What about my apartment and everything? And my parents will be worried sick about me. They haven’t heard from me in days!”
“I thought you said you were a lone wolf.”
“Just because I left my pack doesn’t mean that I disowned them,” Jack growled a little. “Or that they disowned me. I still care about them!”
Tristan frowned a little, clearly deliberating and weighing odds. “I’ll get word to them that you’re safe. But you are staying here.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why is it so important?”
The alpha wolf just turned his head away, however. “A loner like you wouldn’t understand. But my word is law. You’re staying. And try to remember more about what happened. It’s important to me. The fate of my people might depend on it.”
Jack watched as the other man left, and Agatha reentered. She went over to him and tsked and tutted like a mother hen clucking worriedly over her babies, reattaching him back to the IV after she’d ensured that he hadn’t reopened any of his wounds.
“If you want to move from now on, you’ll need assistance,” she said. “But you’re not going anywhere until you’ve rested more. A lot more.”
The omega sighed and stared at the needle buried in the back of his hand. “I hate this. I’m not happy. I won’t ever be happy here! You can’t keep me trapped here! This wasn’t supposed to be the way my life went.”
Agatha dropped down onto the stool near his bedside, something he noticed that the alpha had not done. “Tell me about it?” she suggested. He hesitated. “You have nothing but time now. Plus, we might as well get acquainted with each other because I’m going to be the one to sponge bathe you later on.”
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 35