by Marcy Jacks
“Hold him steady and I’ll get his feet.”
Panic rushed through Rowan’s body as he felt one of the hunters shimmy his way down his body, and then both of his ankles were grabbed on to before the hunter put his knees on one of them, crushing the bones beneath, and held on tight to the other.
“Hold him still!” the hunter yelled, and whenever Rowan managed to look down, it was just to see the hunter reaching for one of the long and heavy looking blades that he could use to cut off Rowan’s foot.
He bucked harder and felt the metal of the cuffs that held his hands behind his back start to warp.
“I’m trying! He’s strong! Hurry up!” the other hunter yelled.
Rowan did not want to lose a limb. He was powerful, but he could not re-grow something that had been cut away, but then the hunter grabbed on to the nearest machete and positioned himself for the downward strike.
Rowan held his breath for the coming pain. Let them take his foot! He would still destroy them without it!
The pain did not come, and the pressure on him vanished as a black blur crashed into the hunter holding on to the machete.
The machete blade came down between Rowan’s feet, landing in the tarp, cutting a hole into it and sticking up into the air.
Rowan looked at it, and so did the hunter who was holding him down, right before they both stared at each other.
The screams of the hunter who had been about to cut off Rowan’s foot could be heard in the bushes, and Rowan knew what it was that had taken the man. He didn’t have to be a werewolf in order to know that it was another large alpha that had taken him and was currently making a slow killing of the man.
Rowan then took note of his brothers appearing in the trees. One red wolf, Alistair, the blue wolf, Brishen, and the green wolf, Edward. Their bodies were glowing, and though it was not a real fire, it certainly looked real enough as the three wolves stood there and stared at the man who was still above Rowan.
“I’d take your friend and run quickly, if I were you,” Rowan said, and because he was a cruel man, he couldn’t help but smile up at the poor fool as he stared in horror at Rowan’s brothers.
“What are they?” he asked, and he stared down at Rowan. “What the fucking hell are you?”
“Either live because you ran,” Rowan said, “or stay and find out the answer to that, and then die immediately after. That’s your choice.”
Rowan looked up, making sure his brothers heard the agreement, and all three wolves nodded their heads.
The hunter made his choice and he did it quickly. He scrambled to his feet, taking the machete with him, which caused Rowan’s brothers, as well as the black wolf, and the brown wolf that had come with it, to growl.
The hunter did not use the weapon in a vain attempt to make a hostage out of Rowan. He seemed to be thinking of self-preservation as he rushed over to his still injured, and now very pale, companion.
The man was shaking as he clutched at his arm. Rowan didn’t know what the man’s problem was. It wasn’t as though he’d cut the thing off, like they had been planning on doing to Rowan. He’d just bitten him hard enough to break the bones inside, that was all.
Both men turned tail and fled into the bushes, as quickly as possible, and Rowan sighed as they went.
“I hadn’t realized how much they were scaring me with the threat of cutting off my foot until just now,” he said.
Alistair was the first in his line of sight, in human form with his red hair flowing around his face. “They were going to cut off your foot?”
Rowan nodded as his other brothers appeared and helped him up. “Yes, to keep me from running.”
They grabbed on to his silver shackles, very briefly, and then broke them off. Edward shook his hands out when the stuff was on the tarp, and Damian and Maddox refused to go anywhere near the stuff.
“I always hated how silver felt on my skin,” Edward said.
“Imagine being shackled in it,” Rowan said, snarling down at the metal. “Where is Dillon? Is he hurt? Please tell me that he’s all right.”
“He’s fine,” Damian said. “He knew to come to the diner, and he talked to Warren, Warren got us, and after we dealt with the hunter who followed him, we went and got your brothers.”
“Did you kill him? The hunter who chased Dillon?” Rowan asked.
“Yeah,” Maddox said.
“Good,” Rowan replied.
“Rowan! Really?” Brishen asked, and his eyes were the widest of his three brothers.
“I know it’s out of character, but the man attacked my mate and brought hunters to this house. He and Dillon were former lovers, so I hate to think of what could have happened if the man had caught him.”
“Yeah, he said something about that,” Maddox said. “Tried to say that Dillon had some kind of mental disorder and that was why he was panicking and running through the woods. Even showed us a picture of them before pulling out a pill bottle.”
Had Rowan been in wolf form, the hairs on his back would have stood on end. “You did not let him near—”
“No, we didn’t,” Damian said.
Edward clapped Rowan on the shoulder. “I’m happy you found a mate, but sorry that all this happened so soon after. We left him with Roarke’s pack. He’s safe there.”
“I want to see him before I agree with that,” Rowan said.
No one argued with him. Rowan supposed it was difficult for anyone to want to argue, no matter how difficult he was being, when there were two hunters dead on the property, one somewhere near the diner, and hunter weapons everywhere.
“You lot take him,” Alistair said. “I’ll handle the bodies.”
“I’ll stay with him to help,” Brishen said.
That was all Rowan wanted to hear. He couldn’t shift into his wolf form thanks to the wolf’s bane that was stunting his gift, but he would be able to make it back to his mate at least without any more incidents.
Chapter Nine
Dillon was going insane with the restlessness that was rushing through him. These werewolves were loaded with cash. Had to be for there to be three houses on a lake, and the furniture was nice, but there was no way in hell that Dillon was sitting down.
He’d tried that once, and his legs got all twitchy and jumpy and he had to get up again. The werewolves were not only the big family of rich people that Dillon had heard about when he’d first come to Willow Lake, but they were also incredibly nice, and nothing like what he’d read about in books.
They’d offered him food and drinks while he waited, but he was pretty sure that if he ate anything, he was going to end up throwing up again, and that was something he didn’t want.
One thing that really almost made him sick was when he realized why there were only two girls in the pack, one of whom was a grown woman, and the other looked like just a ten year old. It wasn’t the fact that they were female that bothered him, what bothered him was the information that came after that.
Apparently, werewolves came in different types. Just like there were different breeds of shark, there could be different breeds of shifters, and luna werewolves could get their men pregnant.
There were too many questions about that, but the only thing Dillon wanted to know for sure was that Rowan wasn’t a luna wolf.
He got a couple of chuckles for that, he didn’t know why, but they confirmed that Rowan and his brothers were not luna werewolves. In fact, Edward’s mate was here, and he was a luna werewolf, and he had carried a child.
Any other time, Dillon would have loved to meet Rowan’s family and get to know them, but at the moment he couldn’t think about anything else other than what the hell he was going to do if Rowan was dead or hurt. He just wanted the man to come back.
“Do you need to use the bathroom again?” Westley asked.
He was the mate of the alpha in charge of this pack. That dynamic seemed to at least be the same as what Dillon had read up in all of the paranormal romance novels he’d read.
Dillon shook his head. “I think I’m fine,” he said. His stomach was still in knots, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get sick again. It was embarrassing enough that it had happened, but he didn’t like having to steal their mouthwash just to get the nasty taste out of his mouth.
Because Dillon didn’t have the amazing sense of hearing that every single werewolf in the pack seemed to have, Dillon was forced to watch their reactions, and when everyone in the sitting room turned to the window at the same time, some of whom ran to the front door, Dillon followed right behind them.
He was outside right when Rowan, who was naked and bruised and dirty, but still blessedly alive, walked down the unpaved road that led to all of the houses with one of the glowing wolves that was his brother. The blue one, Dillon couldn’t remember his name.
The two other alphas from the diner were also beside him, helping him to walk, but Dillon ran to Rowan. He’d forgotten to put his shoes on, but he didn’t even feel the rocks or rough, uneven earth beneath his feet.
Rowan held out his arms and ran to meet him halfway.
Dillon could hardly believe the man’s strength when he was lifted right off his feet and spun around. Like in a romance novel or something.
Rowan hissed, though, and Dillon was back on his feet very quickly.
“Are you hurt?” Rowan and Dillon asked at the same time, and they both laughed at themselves.
Then Dillon looked down and took note of how the bruises on Rowan’s ankle were much deeper than what was simply on the rest of his body from the fight. He was also keeping much of his weight off of it. “You are hurt!” Dillon said, and he bent down to have a look.
Rowan cleared his throat, and when Dillon looked up, Rowan’s entire body, not just his face, was turning a cute shade of pink. He had a look on his face that really suggested how much he was trying to hide his embarrassment.
“What is it?” Dillon asked.
“Are you sure that’s a position you should be in when we’re in public and I’m naked?” Rowan asked.
Now Dillon felt humiliation come onto him, swift and eager to slap in him in the face with how close he was to Rowan’s cock.
He immediately shot to his feet and clapped his hands together. “Right. I think you can have that looked at when you get inside, right? Yeah, right,” Dillon said, but he wasn’t about to leave Rowan’s side either.
There were some chuckles from the rest of the pack over Dillon humiliating himself and Rowan, but no one outright mentioned it, which was a good thing.
Dillon got on Rowan’s side with the bad foot, and he made sure that the man could put as much of his weight on Dillon as he needed to in order to get to the house.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Dillon said. He had the inexplicable urge to cry because of that. He’d never been so unbelievably happy about anything in his entire life. Even after he’d come out to his parents and realized they knew all along, when he thought he’d been hiding it from them for years that he was gay, it didn’t come close to how he felt now.
It was a miracle that he wasn’t feeling the need to be sick again.
“I could say the same to you, considering I stupidly told you not to leave the room,” Rowan said, and he leaned down and put his nose in Dillon’s hair.
At first Dillon thought Rowan was smelling him, but as Rowan moved his nose around, rubbing his cheek on the top of Dillon’s head as well, Dillon started thinking of it more along the lines of being wolf kissed.
“You were right about that. Sort of,” Dillon said. “Someone was waiting outside my window in case I did try to get away.”
“And you handled him perfectly,” Rowan said. “You have a warrior inside of you, whether you know it or not, and I couldn’t be happier.”
“There’s a shower waiting for you when you want it,” Roarke said. “We’ll give you some time alone with your mate after that if you want it. To talk,” he said.
Dillon noticed something right then that he hadn’t before. There was this sort of nervous anticipation that was coming off of Rowan in waves, and it had the other werewolves antsy. They shifted their feet and cleared their throats, like this was the last place they wanted to be or something.
Dillon wasn’t even going to pretend that he didn’t know what it was about. It was about him.
That was confirmed when Rowan gently took him by the shoulders and pushed him back a little, looking down into his eyes.
Rowan’s gold eyes seemed a little sad when the man leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “I will go and clean up, then we can speak in private. It will give us both a chance to think.”
Dillon so badly wanted to take all that sadness out of Rowan’s voice. He wanted to assure the man that there was nothing they needed to think about, but that wasn’t true, and they both knew it.
“You’re right,” Dillon said, nodding and stepping away from the man.
Rowan heaved a heavy sigh, and he walked right past Dillon and toward the houses where Roarke’s werewolves lived.
Dillon watched as some of the alphas put their hands on Rowan’s shoulder as he walked by, like they were trying to offer the man some comfort, as if Dillon’s decision was already made or something.
That just made him want to crawl into a hole and die.
Rowan’s brother, the blue wolf, what was his name? Brishen? Yeah, that was it. Brishen walked up beside Dillon instead of going to his brother.
Dillon flinched.
“I’m not standing here to make you feel guilty,” the man said. “But I would like to speak with you while Rowan is gathering his thoughts.”
“I thought he was going to take a shower,” Dillon said.
Brishen waved that off. “That’s just an excuse for him to build up his courage, and think about what he’s going to say, and how he’s going to react, should you decide to leave. He’s a beta, a natural-born beta, not an alpha or an omega who was just given the status. He doesn’t do things the same way the rest of us do.”
“That makes sense,” Dillon said. He’d done a lot of thinking when he was given their shower to use as well. Like whether or not he could stay with a man he’d only known for a little over a day, risking his life for a feeling that might fade away with time.
“What if…what if it turns out we really hate each other?” Dillon said. “We barely know each other. I thought Mark was the greatest guy in the world the first few days I knew him, and then he turned out to be something completely different.”
Brishen sighed. “You know perfectly well that I cannot make any decisions for you. It would be the worst thing in the world if I was to try and influence you, even if that influence was to my brother’s benefit. He would kill me if he knew that I was attempting to sway your mind.”
“Then why are you here?” Dillon asked.
Brishen turned to look down at him, and that was when Dillon realized how blue the man’s eyes were when he had a serious expression on his face. “I’m here to tell you that, no matter what your decision is, no one will hurt you for it. But you need to be very careful about it as well. If you choose to stay, you will be putting yourself in the kind of danger that you just experienced today. It doesn’t happen every day, or even every month, but it does happen and it will never go away. There is no such thing as peace for our kind.”
“That’s great to hear. Thanks. Are you sure you’re not trying to influence me?” Dillon asked.
“Be silent and just listen,” Brishen said, and the man even lifted a finger and pointed it at him. “You need to have your eyes wide open for this decision. That’s all we ask. My brother is gathering his thoughts and preparing himself. You need to do the same. If you stay, then you must live by the rules and laws of the wolf. If you leave, then you had better pray that you never have a change of heart, because you can never come back as well.”
Dillon swallowed, and he was starting to think this conversation would have been so much easier if Brishen had just come over here
to threaten his life if he broke Rowan’s heart or something.
That was the problem with freedom of choice. He had no one else to blame but himself if he didn’t like what he did. “I get it,” he said.
“Good,” Brishen replied. “Rowan will be back soon. Gather your thoughts and have your decision ready by then.”
“Hey, wait,” Dillon said when Rowan was about to walk away. The large man turned and looked at him. “My family…I think I could handle my decision better if I just knew they’d stay safe. Hunters wouldn’t go after them, would they?”
Brishen eyed him. “I have the feeling that my brother would have already answered that question for you.”
“I want you to answer it,” Dillon said. “Will they be in danger if I decide to do this?”
“Of course they would,” Brishen said, not at all sugarcoating it. “In my time, when two clans went to war with each other, when one was taken out, no one in the opposing clan was spared, not even the babes in their baskets. Just because they are your family, and you love them, does not mean that some hunters would not be more than willing to use that against you to hurt you. Or to trap you.”
Brishen didn’t say anything else, he just walked away and left Dillon feeling very alone.
It left Dillon with the incredible urge to speak to his dad. He wanted to hear his voice, just to know that he and his mother were okay. His sister didn’t live with them anymore and was out of state for college, so he wasn’t as concerned for her. How would they find her, after all?
Dillon had to go inside and beg for a cell phone to use, and even though he told Westley up front that it was going to be for a long-distance call, the man had given the phone without a second thought.
His dad picked up, and it was enough to make Dillon sigh with relief. He damn near cried and had to wipe his face, even though the other man couldn’t see him.
“Everything all right?” the older man asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Dillon lied. “I had a run-in with Mark, that was all.”