I nodded, helpless – and my body took over. I started rocking with him, prolonging the contact between my pussy and his cock, and it was like we were dancing on the bed, moving as one amazing creature, friction building inside and out.
“Sam,” he whispered hoarsely, bowing his head in concentration near my ear. “Your pussy – I’m going to –“ he warned between panting breaths.
“Go. Go-go-go,” I whispered back, and with a strangled gasp he came. I watched his orgasm ride him as he rode me – and then his knot took, and it was my turn to sound wild. My hands clawed his shoulders as he spread me thick and deep, feeling myself stretched all over again, deliciously sore from the prior night. “Oh Max –“ I whispered, and he growled and kept fucking me, rubbing his hips against me hard until I came around him and beneath him in a series of gasps and shivers.
At the end of it I lay under him, trapped, his sweat dripping onto me, mine dripping onto his mattress. I moved a little – and he moved with me, his cock sealing us tight.
“Are you okay?” he asked, holding himself up over me with his well-muscled arms.
I nodded. I linked my feet behind his waist, since there was nowhere else to go.
He gave me a half-smile. “It’s a little embarrassing. Sorry.”
“Or, charming. I mean, I’ve seen some dicks in my day, but I can genuinely say that yours is something else.” I tried to give him a cheerful smile back. It was hard to ignore that every second that passed now was one less we had to prepare.
He rolled over a little and I went with him, until we were side by side, one of my legs tossed over him. He reached out for me with a gentle hand and smoothed away a wrinkle on my forehead.
I wanted him to say that it was going to be okay, that of course we’d succeed, because I’d mated his wolf, hadn’t I? But he either didn’t know that, or didn’t want to lie. The latter seemed more likely.
“You know, Vincent and I always had a back-up plan.” Or rather, I thought we had a plan. “We always said if we got separated, we’d meet up at the Bica Museum coffee shop the next day. That we’d do anything we could to get down there in time.”
Max pulled away from me, even though our hips were still connected. “Sam, you still need to get out of town –“ he made a rumbling sound, half a growl, deep in his chest. “I’m only clearing out the pack. Not the family.”
“I know. But the family isn’t everywhere. They don’t have eyes on every corner. I’ll wear the wig –“
He reached for me, and pulled me close, burying me in him, his skin, his sweat, his scent. Whatever words I was going to say next were lost against his neck. He held me like he might never get to again, until his flaccid cock slipped out.
“Okay,” he said, pushing back. “I have to go back –“ he jerked his head toward the door.
“How can I help?” I asked as he stood. He reached into his jeans and tossed a closed knife, which I caught.
“You can start cutting the top of that mattress into four by four squares.”
I worked while he did, leaving with bundles of traps over his shoulder, his pockets stuffed with things that smelled like me – like us. He said it’d infuriate the pack, and I believed him. I knew Syd’s temper was dark, I’d seen him take it out on people often enough before.
Halfway through the day he returned and the cabin was empty, except for the few last guns he was going to set up in here. I knew it was time for me to go, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it.
He stood in the doorway, the keys to the truck in his palm, offered out to me.
“These are for you.”
By then I was wearing another outfit cobbled together from his clothes, a plaid flannel that swallowed me whole and jeans I’d been forced to create a belt for to keep up. I wanted nothing more than to take all of it off again and just be with him, one last time.
But instead I nodded, picked up my bag with the book, IDs, and cash, and walked up to him.
If I kissed him now, one or the other of us might break and lose resolve. But I was his mate, because I was strong enough to be one, just like he was strong enough to be an alpha. And people like us – we did what we had to do.
“The coffee shop. Tomorrow morning,” I said as I took the keys from his hand.
“I’ll be there,” he said with a nod.
I carefully stepped around him and walked out, and I didn’t have to look back to know he was watching me.
Chapter Twenty
She had to be the strongest woman I’d ever met – that I ever even knew. The way I could fuck her with abandon, the way her pussy clenched my cock – every moment in her presence made me hard. I would never tire of seeing her, tasting her, smelling her, touching her – and I was watching her walk away.
Almost-alpha, my wolf growled, our gaze following the sway of her hips.
That’s right, I agreed with him. Back to business.
Tonight was going to work. It had to.
I had to do my thinking as a man, and my construction around a wolf. How would the pack enter the forest? How many trails would they go down, into what groups would they divide? Could I lure some of them far enough away that no one would hear them get shot? What if they howled in pain – would the pack stop? Keep coming more slowly? Or faster, in anger?
I set traps, making sure some of them smelled like her, and some of them didn’t, hiding them among the low shrubs and leaf litter that scattered the forest floor. At strategic locations – the trail into the creek and back out again – I mounted loaded shotguns, spinning out the thin tripwires that would set them off.
I’d rubbed fabric with her scent over so many trees – they’d have to know it was a trap after the first wolf got maimed or killed. But I knew just how angry my pack members were – they sharpened their anger like some men sharpened knives – and they all thought they were smarter than me, and smarter than one another too. I’d probably be able to kill three or four of them before they realized the danger they were in was real.
After that though, it would require cunning.
I knew they’d wind up here. I nailed up boards over windows, so that the only way into or out of the cabin was the front door. And then I strung up trip wires for that, too, mounting shotguns to point across the doorway at wolf-height, and for one gun to point back out the door itself, hoping I would get whichever wolf’d hung back.
Then I mounted a third from the stove, I’d quenched its fire this morning.
If they made it through all the silver-poisoned traps and the silver-laced shotgun shells, I would be right here behind it, waiting for them.
It was hard not to test the wires again once I’d gotten all of the guns properly set up. Inside me, my wolf paced in circles, ready for his chance to be in charge. I was half-scared he’d go running after Sam, but knew he understood the gravity of becoming alpha, first. If we managed that – if somehow we killed Syd tonight – then after that, anything else was possible.
I paced across the small stretch of non-tripwired ground the cabin had left, until the light breaking through the boards over the windows faded and I felt the moon coming up.
Yes, my wolf hissed.
I changed, and then he was in charge.
I was trapped in the glass room again, inside my wolf but not a part of him, not like the night before when we’d been sharing my body. He had the wisdom to sit on his haunches and breathed deep, listening for the pack. They usually came up as a group and parked their cars a few miles in before abandoning them for the change – wouldn’t want a tourist coming across empty cars full of mysterious clothing in the dark. I knew they’d howl shortly though, their wolves triumphing at finally being in control again.
There. One lonely sound, instantly joined by others, all baying at the moon. None of them would even notice my absence – I usually only skulked in after a kill, to show my head and my fealty, strained as it was, to Syd. They would be stretching out, each wolf to his own devices as they started off through the forest, spreading out until
someone scented something worth chasing down and called the others over.
This time, instead of a deer or a bear or a mountain lion, they’d scent her – and me.
And Syd would know.
Blood sunk into my balls just thinking about her, my wolf and I both aching for release. But we sat still and waited until –
One high sharp bark. The sound of a curious wolf. Georgie. I imagined him, his brindle fur matching in with the forest behind him, as he trotted down the southeastern trail I’d set up. It wouldn’t be long now, if everything went according to plan –
A screeching sound of pain. Normal traps wouldn’t hurt a were, but ones coated in silver – the more the wolf struggled, the more of the silver that’d rub against his skin. Blisters would rise and burst as more of the silver got in -- Georgie howled in anger and embarrassment, and then desperation as he realized the trap would be impossible to pull off. Silver would be coursing through his bloodstream – the others wouldn’t be able to help him without also poisoning themselves, and none of them would have opposable thumbs until dawn. Judging from the sounds he was making, he didn’t have that long.
I’d heard tell that silver poisoning was an awful way to go. My wolf looked down at our chest, where Sam’s locket had scarred us, and mixed with the sounds Georgie was making now, we believed.
Other wolves picked up the sounds he made, sounding mournful and frustrated. And then one final long howl of warning. Syd’s wolf, threatening me.
It’d begun.
Now we paced. The safe width of the cabin was barely twice as long as we were, so we walked in tight circles, always listening, our sheathed cock swaying between our legs. The rest of my pack talked amongst themselves in the language of our kind, howls and barks – come here, go there, scent this!, now! -- and I knew from being so intimate with our forest which scent they had found. JD howled in triumph at evading a trap – only to whine when the first of the springguns got him. The other wolves yipped in horror, and I imagined JD, seeds of poisonous silver boiling underneath his skin. He bayed like he was dying, because he was.
Part of me roiled at hearing his pain. The pack had been all I had for the majority of my life, except for my fleeting time with Vincent. But what had they ever done for me, once my propensities were known? Had they ever treated me with kindness since? And what they’d done to Vincent – what they wanted to do to Sam – a growl started low in our belly and it chased away all our doubt.
The woods went silent – no doubt as the other wolves spread out to more carefully look for me. JD had died.
Two down, seven to go.
Thirty minutes passed in silence. I had to assume they were being more careful now, canvassing the forest with more concern. They knew I was trapped in here as a wolf, just like them – and they wanted to reach me by dawn so that they would be allowed to tear me apart.
At last, sharp yips and howling in abject fear. A trap had gotten Mike – the howling was immediately cut off.
Had the silver really killed Mike that quickly?
Or had Syd torn out his throat to shut him up? Asserting himself before anyone could get scared and back down?
I assumed the latter was more likely.
Two gunshots, close together – whoever’d gotten shot going into the creek, had gotten shot again running back out of it. Damn.
Four, I counted inside my wolf.
A high squeal from behind the cabin – someone’d been trying to circle around to surprise me, and a trap had gotten them.
Three.
Instead of howling, the last wolf growled. I’d know that sound anywhere. Karl.
The growling came closer, louder, more frustrated. He was in the clearing in front of the cabin now, sounding rabid. He clambered up the porch stairs slowly and I could see him by the moonlight, he had three paws free, and the last one was dragging a silver-covered trap. He lifted his lips and snarled at me, gnashing his teeth, daring me to come out and fight him.
Feelings in me surged, wanting to answer his anger with my own, to punish him for all the times he’d brutalized me in the past, the times he’d made me lick him low, but I held back as he came forward. He shambled into the cabin, going slower still as the poison burned him from the inside out, and I snarled –
In one final fuck you, Karl lunged, with the last of his strength – and set off two out of the three springguns.
Shit!
The rounds made his body jerk and spasm, but the shots were wasted, he was already dead.
My wolf howled out his frustration, and Syd’s chattered back from outside, taunting me.
Karl hadn’t told Syd anything before he’d died, though – which meant my last trap was still in place. I stepped carefully on a piece of wood taped to hit a button on my phone, and Sam’s voice came out of it.
“Is it over, Maxie?” a recording of her asked, breathless, frightened.
Syd’s wolf appeared in the doorway. His eyes narrowed when he saw me, and he stepped in just as far as Karl had. No more – no less.
It didn’t matter that he still had backup outside -- if he figured out that Sam wasn’t here – my wolf sprung into action, jumping over the final tripwire.
Syd reared up to meet me halfway. His teeth went for my throat but I twisted and smacked his jaws away with a forepaw, hard. His head twisted with the blow and came back up, snarling, teeth going for the side of my head, hoping to catch the soft part underneath my jaw or eye. I twisted to meet his teeth with mine, our fangs clashing together, I tasted the blood of a ripped tongue, and felt teeth penetrating my gums. We growled and snarled, causing one another even pain, and then he tried to push me back.
I knew where the tripwire was. I had to reverse our positions so that it was him moving backwards, not me. I reared back and spun around him, like I was aiming to clip his hamstrings with my teeth. He whirled, crouching low to give me less to aim for, and then it was his turn to be pressed back. He didn’t want to give no matter how fast I harried him, snapping at his muzzle, neck, and feet. I had him on the defensive though – sooner or later, he would mess up – when he snarled again, this time a command, and Tony came through the open door behind my back.
I angled myself to try to hide my flank – it was clear from Tony’s actions that he did not want to be here, his head was low, subservient, perhaps sensing that Syd’s time would soon be at an end – but in the time it took for me to assess him, Syd had leapt back, and in one lucky move – the kind of luck that I never got – had missed the final tripwire entirely. Instead, his right rear paw fell onto the wooden stylus I’d used to operate the phone.
“Is it over, Maxie?” Sam asked again.
Syd stiffened, realizing my deception. And if Sam wasn’t here – without a pack to lead he didn’t need to fight me, as much as he needed to find her. He leapt for the open door past Tony, missing the goddamned tripwire yet again, racing off into the night.
Tony watched him go and then looked at me, plainly torn. I’d been besting Syd, and we three were the only wolves left. He could still side with his old master – or show fealty to his new one.
The way that it was always done was to show your belly and throat, exposing your most tender parts, a sign of utter trust.
Instead, Tony turned and sat down on all fours, curling his tail out of the way – offering to let me take him, as the others had taken me in the past.
I howled in irritation, and raced past him out the door.
Chapter Twenty-one
At eleven thirty I put the truck in park and hopped out. The side street I’d parked on was bathed in moonlight. Was Max done fighting for his life? Had it worked? I wished the moon could give me a sign.
I pulled on my backpack, and walked over to the Rider park fence.
Rider Plaza was in the middle of the park. Family members weren’t known for their appreciation of the outdoors, especially not past nightfall. They had streetcorners to run, clubs to bounce, whores to bully – which wasn’t to say the plaza was s
afe. The dregs of town wound up here, people who weren’t straight enough to get into a shelter for the night and those who preyed on them, scrabbling over one another’s scraps.
I hunched over with my bag as the chain fence rattled too loudly behind me. The book was in the back pocket of Max’s jeans, the folding knife in the front pocket, and both were covered by my sweater. If someone held me up, I’d gladly give them all the cash the bag held, but if they tried to get the book, they’d get cut for it.
With the moon out, navigating wasn’t too hard – I’d chosen this back part because it was closest to the plaza as the crow flies. I saw a guy nodding off under a tree, and gave him a wide berth.
What was Max doing right now? I knew he knew the forest inside and out – but I’d seen what the pack had done to him, I couldn’t not worry. One wrong step – hell, he could get shot by one of his own guns – the sound of someone getting beaten or roughly fucked inside a nearby grove startled me. I had to keep myself safe, for now. I cast one more glance up at the moon, and walked on.
The path was demarcated by sharp little metal posts that’d had their bronze caps stolen for scrap. I angled around a shadowed corner, and heard someone whisper. “What’re you doing here?” and jumped back, landing softly. Recognized so soon? Shit shit shit -- “What’re you doing here, man, what’re you doing here?”
I saw the speaker. He pawed at one ear like a dog and I realized he wasn’t talking to me, yet. I made a wide circle, staying in the shadows of the trees on the path’s other side until he was far behind.
The path widened until the plaza was visible. If it were a safer place, it’d have been gorgeous underneath the moonlight. I had no problem seeing the men and women huddled in sleeping bags and cardboard boxes, arranged in an oddly specific geometry around the perimeter. There was safety in numbers here, even if you didn’t want anyone else to get too close.
I walked out to the fountain in the center, and sat down on its edge like I was waiting for a date, being watched by twenty sets of cautious eyes.
Seconds later I heard the click of a fearless heel atop cement. I wasn’t sure what the difference between a cop and a marshall was – and Marshall Bren looked like a cop. Sharp shoulders, a paunch, and a general air of righteousness. Instincts from my former life rose up in me -- how many times had I had to blow cops for free, so they wouldn’t bust me? How many times had I been busted afterwards, just because they could? I grit my teeth, trapping words, and allowing no entry.
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