by Coyote Starr
This time, Jamal didn’t stop the building pressure, his own breathing harsh as he stepped up the pace. His liquid brown eyes seemed to glow with an inner light.
Ethan couldn’t look away, drawn into those eyes, suspended in a moment of heated passion that he almost hoped might never end.
When Jamal came, it was with a hoarse cry and a pulsating heat that swelled inside Ethan, setting off his own orgasm. His cock jerked, pulling cum from deep inside him, taking his breath away as it exploded from him, leaving him thrashing as Jamal kept him pinned to the bed with his hands, his cock, and that magical stare.
* * *
Ethan watched with half-hooded eyes, feeling some combination of utterly relaxed and completely turned on as Jamal disappeared into the bathroom for a moment. When he returned, it was with a glass of water for Ethan.
“Here,” Jamal said in that lyrical accent. “You must be thirsty.”
Ethan sat up and took it from him, and as Ethan drank, Jamal pulled down one side of the comforter they had never bothered to take off the bed, setting up the pillows and gesturing him to the spot in an oddly gentlemanly fashion. Ethan allowed himself to be tucked in, feeling languorous and calm.
Tomorrow, he would have to go back to his real life, hunting and killing monsters, but just for tonight, he could revel in being well-fucked and treated nicely afterward.
Exactly what I was looking for.
When Jamal crawled under the covers on the other side and pulled Ethan against him, the Hunter didn’t protest, though he usually didn’t stick around for post-coital snuggling after a one-night stand.
This guy is different, he acknowledged.
For one thing, Jamal was just about perfect in bed, as far as Ethan was concerned—able to play rough, but gentle afterward.
It wouldn’t make any difference in the long-term—Ethan was still a Hunter, would still be leaving before dawn—but for just a little while, he could at least pretend that there was more to this than a night of hot fucking.
“Talk to me,” he said, tucking his ass up against Jamal’s groin and his back against the other man’s broad chest, reveling in the heat that poured off of him.
“Okay.” Jamal’s voice rumbled in his chest. “What shall I talk about?”
“You said you’re from Botswana?” Ethan felt the nod as much as he heard the noise of affirmation. “Tell me what it’s like.”
Although Ethan had traveled all over the United States, and had even been to Mexico and Canada a couple of times, he’d never traveled to another continent. And unless one of the other Hunters needed him, he probably never would see any other countries.
Jamal began describing his homeland, the village he had come from, the people he had known there, and Ethan drifted off to images of the night sky, full of bright stars, over the plains of Africa.
Chapter 4
The buzz of Ethan's phone woke him for the second time the next day, sometime after noon, and he blinked away the sleep still fogging his thoughts and vision.
He glanced at the screen long enough to determine who had messaged him.
Adrian. Of course.
At least he was in his own, much shabbier, motel room. He had tiptoed out of Jamal's hotel room sometime in the wee hours of the morning, gathering his clothes and slipping into them, but carrying his boots in one hand until he reached the elevator. He had still been lacing them up as he hopped out into the lobby, and the single bellhop on duty had raised one eyebrow at him.
Fuck him, anyway, he had thought. It was none of his business what he was doing there.
That was what came of staying at fancy hotels with people who did things like carry luggage.
He had stalked through the streets back to his car, still in the parking lot at the bar. By the time he punched the key to open the door, his hair was damp with gathering dew.
Sleeping with that slight dampness to his hair, on top of the sweat-soaked sex before, must have messed with him—he felt slightly sick to his stomach.
No time for that now. Swallowing convulsively, he quickly scrolled through the messages to the latest one.
Rumor: Deviant pack meeting tonight. Call me.
So much for luxuriating in the sense of relaxation he had gained last night. Hell, he could already feel it dissipating as he instinctively began tensing up in preparation for a battle. His stomach continued to roil.
Battle with a whole pack, though? As far as he knew, Ethan was the only active Hunter in Charleston. Taking on a pack by himself wasn't wise.
No, unless Adrian had made arrangements with another Hunter to head this direction, his best bet would be to watch and wait, take out a few of the monsters at a time until he had thinned them down a little.
It would mean staying in South Carolina longer than he had intended to.
But it's not like I have anywhere else special to be.
Idly, he wondered how long Jamal's team was going to be in town. Maybe he could go watch them play.
Even better, maybe Jamal could let Ethan play with him again.
He shivered a little in remembered reaction. Damn, that had been amazing.
Deal with the abominations first, Ethan.
Setting a pot of coffee on to brew, he took a deep breath and prepared to speak to the elder Hunter, the man who had trained him, been his mentor—the man who had taught him everything he knew about hunting monsters.
The man who was about to quiz him about his activities the night before.
The activities he couldn’t quit thinking about.
Ethan needed to get his mind on his job and off of the memory of Jamal’s hands holding his ass, pressing into him and shuddering as he came.
It's none of Adrian’s business, he reminded himself. He could just keep wondering.
He opened up the phone app, poured himself a cup of coffee, and prepared to dial.
But then one sip of the coffee—black, just the way he liked it—sent him running to the bathroom, heaving up bile.
What the hell? I didn’t drink enough last night for a hangover.
Wiping his mouth, he took a careful sip of water, then brushed his teeth.
The roiling feeling didn’t quite go away, but Ethan at least stopped feeling like he was about to boot again any second, so he carefully sat down on the edge of the mattress and tapped on his mentor’s name in his phonebook.
* * *
When Jamal woke that morning, Ethan was gone. Somehow, he had known that would be the case, that their tryst the night before would not survive into the morning light.
He felt oddly disappointed, anyway.
But his list of things to do in order to prepare for that night’s meeting with the South Carolina wolves would keep him too busy to worry about the beautiful, blond Beta with the bright eyes and an Omega’s sense of play in the bedroom.
Right now, though, he needed to focus on making sure the South Carolina wolves didn’t betray his pack. They were there to trade mating members—hopefully to diversify their genetic pool, if any of the pairs worked out. But the packs were wary of one another. And Kamau’s pack was especially suspect, made up as it was of wolves of primarily African origin. Wolves who had left their homeland to make a different life for themselves.
Kamau might be certain the other pack would behave. Jamal was not.
His first step was to make sure that the square in the historic district where they would be holding their meeting was secure—or at least as secure as an open space in the middle of a commercial area of a major city could be. Still, the cities were the best places to meet. No wolf wanted to be caught by humans—but even more than that, they didn’t want to share their own territories. Human cities were, by definition, neutral.
He knew Kamau would want to walk to the meeting site—he was already complaining of being cooped up inside too much on this trip—so Jamal chose to walk the short route between the hotel and the square. The morning air was cool and the walk gave him time to think.
Not
that there weren’t other dangers besides shapeshifters. Rumor had it that The Huntsman had been sweeping through the Deep South lately—the monstrous predator who stalked the Alpha and Omega packs across the world, using some sort of magical tracking skills.
Never mind the fact that most Alphas and Omegas avoided all-Beta packs at any cost. It was against Council law to kill a Beta—not out of any kind of morality, particularly, though Jamal saw no reason to harm beings that were, essentially, his biological siblings—but because the last thing the Alphas wanted was to confirm the Betas’ worst fears: that they were not needed to perpetuate the wolf-shifters’ lineage.
Beta packs outnumbered Alpha/Omega packs by ten to one, if not more. Their males mated with females. And their Huntsman killed any Alpha or Omega he found.
Different, not better or worse, Jamal thought, shaking his head in disgust.
Anyway, stories of The Huntsman were legion, and all depicted him as a giant of a man who carried a broadsword that could split an Alpha down the middle with one fell stroke, much as he had dispatched the werewolf who had made the mistake of attacking the very pregnant Omega Red Riding Hood and his witch of a grandmother. Despite being fairly certain that most of the stories were myth, Jamal felt equally certain that there was some kernel of truth to the legends—a person or group who tracked and murdered Alphas and Omegas.
If he was right, and there was a chance The Huntsman, or even some less-infamous huntsman, was nearby, Jamal needed to make sure he would find no way to pursue Kamau’s pack.
The historic square was would do, he decided. It was surrounded by trees, but the vegetation was sparse enough that no human could conceal himself there. A child, or maybe a very small man, might be able to find a hiding spot. But not a huntsman.
* * *
Pulling on a dark hoodie over his jeans and black t-shirt, Ethan slid his dagger into its scabbard at his hip, slipped out of the nondescript car he drove, and moved into the night.
He raised the hood of the jacket over his bright hair, camouflaging it in the night. In his jeans pocket, he carried a compact filled with a black face-paint. If he got close enough, he’d smear some on to cover his pale skin. All his hunting clothes had been washed with baking soda and bagged before he packed them, and he had used scent-killing soap before dressing.
If he could have, he would’ve shifted into his wolf form. But he was less able to hide his scent in that form.
This way, he was as close to imperceptible to a shifter’s heightened sense of smell as he could make himself. A handful of crushed leaves rubbed along his body would help cover what was left.
Adrian still favored the old ways—he kept a chunk of charcoal with him at all times. Ethan preferred a simple greasepaint.
But until he was actually ready to fade into the surrounding trees, he would actually draw less attention to himself if he avoided the wargames-style face-paint.
For a stroll through Charleston’s historic district, a man in jeans and a hoodie was as unusual as he wanted to appear.
Of course, Ethan had been trained by Adrian, so he wasn’t entirely unprepared, either. He had a few other tricks and even some stronger spells in his pockets—some flare-powder to use as a distraction if he needed it, a strength supplement, even a confusion spell. But spells too often went awry, and he didn’t want to do anything to draw attention to himself in a city. They were neutral territory, after all.
He was still having difficulty believing that the deviant wolves were having a pack meeting in the middle of Charleston's most famous park in Marion Square.
As he moved down the sidewalk across the street from the square, he blinked at the figure of a dog that darted out from the underbrush and into a patch of darkness nearby.
Wait.
A dog?
No. A wolf.
Checking the air currents flowing around him, he moved around until he was downwind of the square before ducking behind a tree.
He caught a whiff of something similar to the scent he had gotten from the wolf he’d taken out the night before. Something wild and exotic. Something other.
Something laced with a trace of an almost-familiar fragrance that hadn’t been there on the wolf the night before.
But whatever this new scent was, he had definitely smelled it before. Recently.
It had a pleasant association with it.
And then another wave of nausea hit him.
Ethan bit back a sound of annoyance as he swallowed convulsively.
Whatever was going on with him was fucking with his ability to tease out the constituent parts of scents.
I need to get closer.
Lowering his face to keep any moonlight from shining on it, he opened the compact and swiped his fingers through the paint, then dragged them across his face.
Ethan wasn’t sure exactly how many monsters there were out there. He had taken down maybe a dozen in his time.
Ethan could barely make out several figures, man and wolf, milling around in the center of the square, and although he couldn’t distinguish any specific words, he definitely heard voices.
The monsters would have set guards. That he hadn’t seen or sensed any yet meant absolutely nothing. No matter, though. Far too many of them were milling about—he would never be able to take them all down.
He needed to get close enough to listen in, figure out what was going on. Then maybe he could track them back to their lair. Adrian was on his way to Charleston, already on the road. Working together, perhaps the two of them could figure out a way to take out a whole pack of the deviants.
Maybe two packs, given the clear lines of separation he was seeing.
I need to hear more.
Slowly, he shifted his weight forward, ducking down behind a line of ornamental bushes and working his way through the sparse underbrush centimeter by centimeter so as to avoid making any noise that might attract the wolves’ attention. A single gap in the leaves caught his attention. If he could slide his eyes up to it without causing any of the foliage around him to rustle, he could watch the meeting—and maybe even hear what was going on, too.
Don’t get too impatient, Ethan.
He could hear Adrian’s voice. Be a shadow. Unseen. Dark. Unnoticed.
His own voice seemed to echo back mockingly. Unvomiting.
God. What was wrong with him?
Clenching his teeth against the sickness, he settled in to wait for his chance, moving only one muscle at a time, shifting in tiny increments until his face pressed up against the opening in leaves, his eyes gazing through the gap. The plants he crouched among had scratchy, waxy leaves that scraped against his face. Only years of training kept him perfectly still.
Well, training and the fact that he had finally gotten into position to both see and, mostly, hear what was going on.
Several wolves stood facing him in a semicircle, facing off across from a similar number of wolves. Behind them stood several men and women, the abominations in their human shapes, Ethan assumed. Some of the men were even visibly pregnant. Ethan sneered at the sight.
And at the center of the circle created by the creatures stood two men, engaged in intense conversation.
Whatever was going on here was something serious, and he could almost—almost—make out what the two people at the center of the circle were saying to one another in quiet voices.
But not quite.
Carefully, he slowed his breathing, letting most of his senses fall away, focusing on sight and hearing, waiting for the scene before him to come into sharp focus.
Chapter 5
Merely from the tense lines of Kamau’s back, Jamal would have known that the summit with the other wolf pack was not going well, even if he had not been in the First Circle behind his lead Alpha, listening to every word.
“I was under the impression that your pack was here to engage in mating trade,” Kamau said, his voice low and commanding.
“My pack does not need Alphas. We need Omegas. We do not need to
give up any of our own Omegas.”
“Every pack needs more Omegas,” Kamau pointed out calmly. “We were assured both.”
“I don’t know who told you—” the Alpha began.
“The Alpha Council,” Kamau interrupted. “Would you prefer to speak to them?” He waved a cell phone in the other Alpha’s direction, and although he could not see it, Jamal knew that Kamau waited for an answer with one eyebrow raised, looking more patient than he probably felt.
“In any case,” the lead Alpha continued, “if you are not here for a true mating trade, then we have nothing further to discuss.” He began turning his back on the wolves.
That almost certainly had to be a bluff. Walking away from Alpha Council-coordinated negotiations could be a dangerous move.
“Wait,” the other Alpha said, shaking his head. “What do you want?”
The tiny smile at the corner of Kamau’s mouth disappeared by the time he was halfway around to facing the Alpha and his pack.
Ah. Now that the posturing is over, they can get down to the real negotiations.
Even in his animal form, it was all Jamal could do to keep from laughing aloud. He didn’t even try to stop his tongue from lolling out to one side as he opened his mouth in a wolf-style grin. The wolf directly across from him hunkered down and snarled. Without turning around, the other pack’s lead Alpha reached behind him with one hand and snapped at the growling animal, who instantly stilled.
Treats his people like dogs. Disgraceful.
Kamau would never do that.
Jamal allowed himself one more sniggering glance at the reprimanded wolf. Kamau might speak to him privately later, but he would never rebuke him in front of an opponent.
As Jamal raised his head proudly in the air, he caught a whiff of something … familiar.
An image flashed across his mind of white-blond hair curling around his fingertips.
Ethan?
Here?
He sniffed again, but the scent was gone.
No. Wait. There it was again, like a bright, hot trail through the night air. He wanted to follow it, needed to, but as the only Enforcer here, he couldn’t leave the First Circle during the negotiations.