by Marcy Jacks
Dillon’s heart leapt. He’d forgotten that Rowan had seemed to know who Warren was. On the off chance that Warren didn’t know anything about werewolves and hunters and whatever else was out there, Dillon figured the best plan of action was to keep his mouth shut on that one. “Do you know his brothers? Alistair, Edward, and Brishen? It’s very important that I speak with them.”
“What? Why? What happened?” Warren asked, and there was a note of suspicion in his voice that was damn near making Dillon start to panic.
“Look, I can’t exactly explain this, all right? It’s personal and involves his family and he needs his brothers. I have to find them.”
That was probably the right thing to say, hopefully, because Warren looked at him for only a few seconds more, as though sizing him up, before he put his hand on Dillon’s shoulder. “You wait here and I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Thank you,” Dillon replied, and he kept checking the glass doors while he drank his water, just to make sure that no one was following him.
Which was why he spit out his mouthful, right onto some unsuspecting patron, when he spotted Mark in the window.
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man who Dillon had just spat all over snapped.
Dillon didn’t have time for any of that as he started running in the other direction the second Mark opened the door and looked like he was about to give chase.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Patrons in the diner yelled out their shock when all the running got started, and the only place Dillon could run to was down the hall of the diner, hoping to find a back door.
He was lucky, there was one there, and the fact that he was able to burst through it meant that it wasn’t locked either.
The problem was that he found himself in an enclosed space that was completely fenced off with high wooden fences. Warren was there, and he was speaking with three people, some of which were huge men and one of whom had piercings on his face.
That all looked up from the picnic table they were sitting at when Dillon suddenly appeared.
Warren went to him and put his hands on his shoulders. “What happened?”
“I have to get out of here,” Dillon said, and he tried to push past him, searching for maybe another door in the fence or something that would allow him to get out, but the two big guys were completely blocking him off. One had a buzz cut and piercings on his face, and the other had shaggy brown hair. They in turn looked at the last man who was still sitting wide-eyed at the picnic table. “You might want to let us handle this, Daren,” he said.
Daren nodded before he got up from the picnic table and went inside.
“This the one you were telling us about?” asked the man with the facial piercings and huge muscles.
“Yeah,” Warren said.
“Fuck, he’s got a gun on him,” Piercings said, pulling the weapon out from Dillon’s pants.
“Shit,” said his friend.
Dillon jumped and struggled when the door opened again, and Mark appeared.
“Let me go! Get him away from me!” Dillon yelled.
Mark put a smile on his face, the same one that had always seemed to make Dillon uneasy when they were still dating.
It was somewhere between smug and condescending. The type of smile that made Dillon think the man was a real predator.
“I’m so sorry about my boyfriend here,” Mark said.
“We are not dating!” Dillon snapped.
Mark inhaled a deep breath, and he looked like he was doing his best to keep calm now. “I don’t want to embarrass him or anything, but you all have to understand, he’s bipolar, and sometimes he has these episodes whenever he forgets to take his medication.” Mark’s eyes then went to the gun that was now in the hands of one of the men. “As you can see.”
“What?” Dillon snapped.
Bipolar? Was he out of his mind?
“I just want to take him home and get him the help he needs. I’ll pay for anything he might’ve broken as well, or even emotional damages because of the gun. I don’t want him to get a criminal record because of this.”
“Don’t listen to him! Please! I’m not bipolar and he’s going to kill me when he gets me out of here.”
“Baby, please, we’ve had this discussion before. No one’s going to hurt you and no one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. The only thing I want to do is get you home so you can take your meds. That’s it.”
Jesus Christ. If this wasn’t happening to Dillon then he would have believed the man with all the sincerity he heard in his voice. Mark even sounded genuinely worried for his safety and well-being. He was a fantastic liar, that was for sure.
“You’re lying! Please, he broke into my cabin earlier today and attacked me with his friends,” Dillon said, staring up at the two big men who were still holding on to him.
It seemed like they didn’t know whether or not to let him go or give him to Mark, and whereas before Dillon just wanted to get away from them, now he was clutching to their shirts and begging them to not let him go.
“Is that true?” asked the man with the piercings, and he looked pretty damn scary as he stared at Mark.
Mark rubbed his face before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. “Here, see?” he said, and Dillon was horrified to see a picture of the two of them, on their first week of dating, smiling for the camera as Dillon himself held the thing back and took the picture.
“We are dating. We have been for the last couple of months now. He just gets like this and all I want to do is take him home.”
“That picture is old and we broke up! I broke up with you!” Dillon snapped.
“Maddox, what if he’s telling the truth?” Warren asked.
“The longer you hold on to him like that the worse off he’ll be. He’s panicking because you won’t let him go and he feels trapped,” Mark said, and the man actually glared at Maddox.
“I’m panicking because I don’t want to go with you!” Dillon snapped.
“You told Warren that you knew Rowan and had something to tell his brothers,” said the other huge man. “What was it?”
Dillon opened his mouth, but then abruptly closed it. What the hell was he supposed to do? How was he going to answer that without sounding like he was losing his mind?
Mark smirked, as though he figured that he had Dillon by the balls now or something. “Go ahead and tell them,” Mark said, right before he started talking to the other men again. “He does this sometimes. If you can get him to talk, he’ll tell you that werewolves attacked his house or something. Right, Dillon?”
That prick. The unbelievable prick. “Not werewolves,” Dillon said. “You did. You attacked Rowan and me with your sick and twisted friends, and I’m glad I broke up with you. I hope I broke your damn heart, too.”
Mark made Dillon’s insides seize up when he actually pulled a pill bottle from his pocket. It looked like an orange thing with a white cap, the type that came from having a prescription. “You won’t say that after I give you your meds,” he said, and Dillon never fought so hard to get away in his entire life.
He was so completely weak in the arms of the men holding on to him, that it was almost like he wasn’t giving them any trouble at all. Maddox and his other friends were just standing there.
“Please, please don’t!” Dillon said.
Maddox shocked the hell out of him when he pulled Dillon behind him. “You can’t take him,” he said.
Oh, thank you, Jesus. Dillon thought he was going to pass out, and he’d never had the urge to vomit with relief before, but it must’ve been his nerves and all the running that was catching up with him.
Mark’s face twisted with anger incredibly fast, and gone was the worried boyfriend routine he was putting on. “You can’t do that. I just told you that he has a medical condition and he needs to be taken care of. Do you have any idea how fast I will call the cops on you if you don’t let me take him home right
now?”
Maddox turned to the other large guy. “Damian, do you got your cell phone on you?”
“Got it,” Damian said, and he pulled out his phone from the pocket of his jeans and tossed it to Mark. “Call them if that’s what you want so bad,” he said.
Mark stared at the phone in his hand, completely flabbergasted, and Dillon could hardly believe that the tables had turned so quickly in his favor. He thought he was a dead man, but now it almost looked like these men Warren had gone to for help, Damian and Maddox, were testing Mark for something.
Mark sneered at them. “You people are out of your damn minds,” he said, seething.
“You think he’s not calling the cops because he’s a hunter?” Damian asked.
“Has to be,” Maddox replied. “If this one’s really with Rowan, running for his life and scared to shit like this after claiming chuckles over there broke into his house—”
“I get it,” Damian said, and nodded to Warren.
Warren immediately seemed to know what to do as he got behind Damian. Getting back into the diner was likely a bad idea since Mark was still blocking the door.
Mark dropped the phone in his hand. “You’re werewolves. Should’ve fucking known he’d run to your lot,” Mark said.
He then quickly reached behind him, presumably for another gun, since Dillon seriously doubted that he and his friends only had the one that Dillon had stolen to share between them.
Maddox and Damian shocked the hell out of him when they didn’t just stand back so Maddox could shoot him first, but they actually charged forward. Dillon watched, almost in slow motion as their hands and faces started to change. Claws and fur emerged as they attacked Mark. The man’s gun appeared, but he didn’t get to fire off any shots with it because Damian and Maddox were already on him.
Dillon couldn’t look, but it was still over quickly. They weren’t like piranhas who bit and chewed and ate until there was nothing left. In fact, there was no eating at all.
Mark’s throat and chest were slashed, and he wasn’t moving on the ground. Maddox and Damian hardly had any blood on them at all as they approached Dillon.
Dillon could hardly move, and now the shakes were finally coming over him as he could barely believe what had just happened.
“You’re werewolves, too?” he asked, knowing full well it was an obvious question.
“They’re not going to hurt you,” Warren said, touching Dillon’s shoulder, but he couldn’t feel any better about this.
This wasn’t like the last time when Dillon had killed a man but his brain was blocking out the memory of the dead body. Mark’s corpse was right there in plain sighting, and seeing a dead person was nothing like writing about it. This was real. There was an actual body there.
Maddox shook him by the shoulders, and it was only then that Dillon realized the man had been speaking to him.
“What did you say?” Dillon asked.
“Where is your cabin? We need the address and we’ll go over there with the rest of Rowan’s brothers to help. You just have to tell us where it is.”
Dillon had to think about that, and then it came to him and he was finally able to tell both men the address and which road to turn down.
Then both were gone. They were gone before Dillon could even ask them what the chances were of Rowan still being alive, or unhurt.
“Come on,” Warren said. “I’ll get you back inside so you can get something to eat.”
“Actually, I’d really just like to know where your bathroom is,” Dillon said. “I think I’m about to be sick.”
Chapter Eight
Rowan was groggy as all hell when he finally woke up. He knew better than to make any noises, however, or even to open his eyes, but he couldn’t stop the frantic beating of his heart while absolute terror ran through him.
He’d failed. He’d gone out into the cabin to search for any possible threats and had been ambushed with a cloud of wolf’s bane in his face. The metal links he felt around his wrists had some silver on them as well, otherwise he wouldn’t feel that burning sensation. Silver and wolf’s bane wasn’t quite as poisonous to him as to other werewolves. It wouldn’t kill him, but it still weakened him, and he was going nowhere.
Did they have Dillon as well? For the love of all things holy, he’d told the man to hide in that room! To not move! Where was he?
It took some seconds before Rowan was able to decipher from the lack of noise, as well as the muffled voices outside, that he was very much alone where he was.
He chanced opening his eyes and looking around. He was still in the cabin. The hunters hadn’t moved themselves, and Dillon was not beside him, though Rowan still felt incredibly groggy. He was surrounded by wolf’s bane. It was dusted all over every bit of furniture thanks to the hunters.
Currently, they were outside, yelling amongst each other. There seemed to be only three of them.
When Rowan had been fighting them off, attempting to kill them before the wolf’s bane could completely take away his strength, he’d noted that there were at least four. More than that, if any were left outside to defend the perimeters.
From the sound of it, Dillon had killed one of the men and escaped, forcing another to give chase before he could get very far away.
Rowan smiled at the thought of Dillon doing such a thing, teaching those hunters a lesson. He only hoped now that the man was long gone, and that the other hunter would not be able to return with him.
He closed his eyes when he heard the footsteps returning, and he was back to pretending to be asleep once the door opened.
“So what do we do with him until Mark gets back? It’s been over an hour,” said one of the men.
“We can’t kill him until he turns into a wolf. We have to wait so we can skin him.”
Ah, yes. Rowan had nearly forgotten about that. Humans and their need to wear the fur of everything else but themselves. Couldn’t they just be happy with their own skin?
“We should still cut something off of him. Take away one of his feet or hands, and there’s no way he’ll be able to fight back when he wakes up.”
“How do you know that?” asked one of the men. He sounded a great deal younger.
“Because I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive. You don’t want to see how desperate these things can get when they think they’re about to die. I’ve seen some of them take off their own limbs, biting them away just to get free of the cuffs. Sometimes they even attack the hunters if they think they aren’t going to make it very far for escape.”
“That’s sick,” said the younger hunter.
It was also true. Rowan had seen it a time or two himself, amongst werewolves and normal wolves who were caught in traps. They would bite away at their own paws if it meant escaping and living to see another day.
“Taking off a hand probably wouldn’t do anything then. He’ll still have his feet that he could run with. We should cut off a foot.”
“Wouldn’t that ruin the pelt?”
“Not if it’s a clean cut. We can sew it back on once we get the pelt, and then sell it at a discounted price. Even most rich vampires or people won’t mind it.”
“Oh.”
Thank God that Dillon was not here for this. Rowan believed he was going to get away, but he had to stay silent and still. He wasn’t sure his mate, as brave as he was, would be able to do those things while Rowan was having his foot removed.
The three men came to him, and Rowan held perfectly still as they lifted him up. He just had to wait. Patience was not something he had in great supply at the moment, but if he was too soon to move and attack, then they would have him.
He allowed them to carry him outside. Good. That was good. He was out of the house where the wolf’s bane was, and in the outdoors with all the trees for cover, escape would be easier.
If only he hadn’t been so drugged while unconscious. He might’ve been able to call for help from his brothers. Hopefully Dillon was safe with t
hem at that moment.
“Put him right there,” said one of the hunters. Rowan was placed rather carelessly onto the ground, on something that felt like soft plastic. “That’s to catch the blood, and we can get rid of it later. There’s deep lakes all over the place around here,” he said.
“Good thinking.”
Rowan very barely opened one of his eyes. There were sharp objects that looked perfectly capable of removing a limb near him, and one of the hunters was still overtop of him.
He had to do this now before it was too late.
He opened his eyes and lunged, latching his teeth onto the arm of one of the hunters, the young one. The man screamed, and Rowan bit down harder until he felt bones snapping and muscles tearing. Only then did he let go.
The man fell on his back, clutching at his ruined arm while crying and screaming. He wouldn’t be a problem for some time after that.
The screaming drew the attention of the other two hunters, but even with his hands behind his back, Rowan was confidant enough in his fighting abilities to keep himself alive long enough to kill them.
He kicked up onto his feet, but his body was still sluggish and heavy from the silver and wolf’s bane poisoning.
He was tackled and put back onto the plastic tarp before he could so much as kick one of his feet up and attempt to slash at the men with the claws that had grown there.
Even their combined weight was heavy, and he couldn’t buck them off. “Get him down! Keep him down!” one of the hunters yelled.
Their companion was still screaming and crying where Rowan had left him, and he was able to look up to see the way the man was clutching at his bleeding arm. Likely he would be turned into a wolf, and though Rowan hated to give him a gift like that, the man would think of it as the worst sort of punishment, and he would be hunted by his former companions for the rest of his life.
Assuming his friends did not kill him today, that was.
“Get off me!” Rowan roared.
“I’ll get the wolf’s bane!”
“No! Don’t move! If you get off him then I won’t be able to hold him down,” the other one said.
Fuck. Rowan struggled harder and gave everything that he had, and he was almost free a time or two, but he couldn’t get either man to get off of him.