Cam's Fortune

by Odessa Lynne

  Rick’s fingers were warm around Cam’s wrist, and he pulled Cam’s arm in close while closing the distance between them, coming so close to Cam’s face that Cam’s breathing turned shallow and heavy in his chest.

  For several seconds, Rick did nothing but stare into Cam’s eyes. “Ah,” he said softly. He raised his head. “You have technology assisted vision.”

  Cam licked his bottom lip and forced himself to breathe easier. It was damn hard work. “The eye color usually gives it away.”

  “Why have you removed one of your implants?”

  “I had to make a bargain to get us away from that house.”

  “A bargain.”

  Cam couldn’t pin down the emotion behind Rick’s blunt statement, so he just said, “Something like that.”

  “I didn’t protect you from danger.”

  “Not your job. I take care of myself.”

  “It is my job,” Rick said, his tone quiet and soft. “Until my heat ends, your safety and care is my most important obligation. I failed to fulfill that obligation.”

  Cam could’ve let it go. He didn’t want any obligations between himself and this wolf. They weren’t mates. They weren’t even friends. He wanted to keep it that way. But instead, he found himself saying, “You’re right. I was counting on you to get us out of there and you didn’t.” He clenched his fist over his chest. “You failed me back there. You failed both of us.”

  Rick’s head bent forward, and his gaze locked with Cam’s. “Forgive me.”

  Not an order, or a demand for submission. A softly worded plea.

  The breeze stiffened and a rush of cool air seemed to cut straight through the fabric of Cam’s clothing. The torn fabric of his t-shirt fluttered, exposing more skin to the chill air. He opened his hand to keep the fabric in place, but he didn’t take his eyes off Rick.

  Leaves rustled across the forest floor, scattering in the face of the wind.

  “The heat,” he said, “it probably affected your mind, distracted you.”

  Rick breathed deeply, his chest rising against Cam’s. “I won’t fail you again.” He released Cam’s wrist to smooth his thumb across Cam’s eyebrow. “I can offer you my people’s technology to replace what you’ve sacrificed. I have standing with Traesikeille. He’ll grant my request. I’m certain we can recreate and improve upon the technology you’ve been using.”

  “I can get my implant back, thanks. I saved your life. They would have killed you if I’d left you behind, and I didn’t. I want something else.”

  Rick stilled. “What would you ask for?”

  “I want to know everything you can tell me about the healing technology you say is inside me. How I got it, how I can pass it on, everything.”

  Rick’s silent stare went on too long and Cam already knew the answer before Rick spoke. “I can’t give you what you ask.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “If I could answer your questions, I would. You have a right to understand what’s happening to you. You’ll return to the den with me. I have betas there who can give us both answers.”

  Cam gritted his teeth, clenching his fists tight for a moment, then releasing them. He watched Rick watch him and all he could think was that Rick might be telling the truth, but it wasn’t good enough. He exhaled roughly and said, “I can’t be in two places at once.”

  Rick’s eyes flickered at the seemingly abrupt change of subject.

  “I can’t be your heat mate,” Cam continued, his voice hard. “I have things to do, people who are depending on me.” Ava, the boys, James, Lane, and now Liam. Too many ways he could fuck everything up if he didn’t finish what he’d started, sooner rather than later. He was going to find out who in the government was still supplying the damn renegades if he had to die doing it.

  “I also have people who depend on me. I can’t allow you to break your promise.”

  “I know what I promised. It wasn’t to be your heat mate, buddy. It was a promise made in desperate circumstances. You can’t expect—”

  “You’ll keep your promise,” Rick said.

  The words pulled at Cam with unexpected force. He sucked in his breath, barely controlling the urge to nod in agreement.

  What the fuck?

  “Listen—” Cam started.

  Rick spoke softly, dangerously, “Submit.”

  Cam wasn’t prepared for the strength of his reaction to that word. His urge to yield to Rick’s demand hit him square in the gut. He stared at Rick for several seconds before he could bring himself to speak.

  “You can’t expect me to abandon my family,” Cam bit out.

  Rick’s hand rested heavily on Cam’s chest. “The choice to make such a promise was yours. As your mate, it’s my responsibility to help you when you’re weak. I won’t let you turn your words to lies.”

  “Listen,” Cam said again, the last of his self-control slipping. He shoved himself up on his elbow and although Rick didn’t move his hand off Cam’s chest, he allowed Cam to rise. Cam gripped Rick’s wrist tight in his fist. “I don’t care what promise I made. I won’t be going with you.”

  Rick tensed, his nostrils flaring and his eyes narrowing, while his claws jutted abruptly from beneath his alien fingernails and pricked at Cam’s chest with a sudden fierceness that made Cam twitch. There was no way for Cam to misinterpret Rick’s reaction.

  Rick was pissed. More important though, his control was slipping.

  Might as well get it all out there.

  “I have a wife and kids to watch out for,” Cam said through clenched teeth. “I won’t leave them to wonder what the hell’s happened to me while I go off with you and fuck for a month.”

  “You’re mated,” Rick said. He’d slipped into the wolves’ language, his tone flat and hard.

  “I’m mated,” Cam said, “and I’m not looking for a replacement.”

  Cam had never found it hard to twist the truth to his needs. It was why he’d been so successful at his job, how he’d managed to fool an entire group of the renegades into believing he was not only one of them, but that he had the ability to get them what they wanted if they just followed his lead.

  It wasn’t hard to sound like he was telling the truth when the lies he told weren’t really lies at all.

  Rick stared at him with molten eyes, his breath coming faster and harder than before. His stillness didn’t hide the agitation Cam’s confession had caused him, but he made no outward move to reject Cam’s statement.

  Abruptly Rick’s fingers curled against Cam’s chest, his claws drawing in as suddenly as they’d appeared.

  Cam tensed.

  “I’ll return with you to meet your mate and your children. I’ll give them the choice to return to the den with us. If they care for you, they’ll want to be at your side when you answer for your crimes.”

  Cam tried not to react, but the unpleasant churn in his gut told him he’d failed. “You don’t need to be around my family right now. It won’t be safe.”

  “I can’t allow you to escape your fate.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “I see no problem. I’m sure your wife and children will be glad to see you reach them safely.”

  “I don’t need you for that.”

  “Ah,” Rick said. His pointed eyeteeth appeared as his lips pulled back in what Cam thought might be his version of a sharp smile. Henry hadn’t had one; he hadn’t ever made Cam’s insides clench with the kind of disquiet Cam felt when he watched Rick. “But I have need of you. You promised to be my heat mate, and I intend to see you keep that promise.”

  Cam scowled. “That’s not what I promised.”

  “That was the implication of your promise.” Rick’s narrow gaze raked Cam from head to foot before settling on Cam’s face with a perceptiveness that chilled him. “I didn’t allow my heat to overtake me while you were so severely injured, and now I have the right to mate with you for as long as I want. Those were your words, weren’t they?”

  Ca
m’s jaw ached from the tight clench of his teeth.

  “I appreciate the shame you feel for your lies. You can seek forgiveness through submission.”

  “You fucking—”

  Rick applied pressure to Cam’s chest with his hand, pushing Cam back until his elbow gave way and he fell flat to the blanket. “We can either sleep or mate again. The choice is yours. If you challenge me, you’ll lose the opportunity to choose.”

  Cam clenched his teeth and shut his mouth. He rolled over on his side and made himself close his eyes.

  Chapter 12

  “You never answered my question,” Rick said, his voice cutting through the early morning sounds of the forest and the quiet huff of Cam’s own breathing as he gripped another prickly pine branch and used it as leverage to haul himself another few feet up the steep incline.

  They’d been walking for about half an hour after waking up to the first bright spill of sunlight onto the forest floor. They’d left most of the supplies behind in favor of moving faster. Neither of them had revisited their earlier conversation. What would have been the point? Rick expected Cam to cooperate and Cam wasn’t foolish enough to think he could get away with not cooperating.

  Cam paused and glanced back over his shoulder, taking a moment to catch his breath. “What question?”

  “Why were you crying this morning?”

  Ah fuck.

  Cam used the back of his forearm to wipe the sweat off his brow. He’d already discovered his right eye was especially sensitive to the sting of sweat right now. “I wasn’t crying.”

  “It might not have been my intention to mate you, but you are my mate, and it’s my duty to offer whatever help I can.”

  Irritation surged through Cam. “It was nothing.”

  He turned back to his walk and started forward again. He was still sore from his injuries, even though he was healing remarkably fast, and he couldn’t count on escape even if he used the drug Eli and Liam had given him and made a run for it. Especially not over this terrain.

  He had ignored the voice in his head telling him he wouldn’t normally let that stop him from trying.

  He ducked under a low branch stretched across the path he was following that was barely visible on the forest floor. If he’d been on horseback, he’d have taken the longer way around, but he was starting to feel the crunch of time. Ava would be getting worried about his long absence, if she wasn’t already, and the boys might start to cause trouble.

  He didn’t have to go far before the ground finally started leveling out. Brush and pine needles crunched under his feet and he didn’t hear Rick come up behind him. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, Rick’s grip firm enough to stop Cam in his tracks.

  Rick had made a remarkable recovery over the course of the night and although Cam didn’t know if Rick had fully regained his strength, he certainly had enough of it to make things difficult for Cam.

  Cam turned. “We’re not going to talk about this, buddy, so let’s just move on, okay?”

  “Did I hurt you when we mated?”

  “No.”

  “My memories of the last hours are more vague than they should be. If I hurt you—”

  “Jesus, just let it go. You didn’t hurt me, not enough to matter anyway. I’ve been hurt worse, that’s for damn sure.”

  A dark frown settled across Rick’s face. “So I did hurt you.”

  Cam let out a burst of air and grabbed for the back of Rick’s neck.

  Rick closed his hand around Cam’s wrist so fast Cam didn’t even have time to react. Rick’s grip was hard and tight and his claws had come out, not by much, but enough for Cam to feel their sharp edges prick at his skin.

  Cam’s heart thudded wildly in his chest. He’d let himself forget how on edge Rick would be because of his heat. He was lucky he hadn’t gotten a slash across the arm instead of a bruising grip on his wrist.

  Rick’s gold eyes had a glassy shine to them that Cam hadn’t noticed earlier and Rick held onto Cam’s arm for several seconds before his grip eased and his claws fully retracted.

  Relief whispered along Cam’s nerves and he sighed, then carefully cupped the back of Rick’s neck in his hand. He leaned in. “I don’t even remember if we’ve kissed. If you’re determined to fix something, you can fix that.”

  Rick allowed Cam to join their mouths, but almost as quickly as the kiss started, Rick pulled away. He reached around and pulled Cam’s hand off his neck.

  The knowledge in that gaze tightened Cam’s stomach.

  “Your upset had something to do with the one you called Henry, didn’t it?”

  “Don’t,” Cam said. He’d known better than to bring up Henry in that damn cellar. He had no idea what had driven him to do it anyway. He fisted a handful of Rick’s blood-stiffened t-shirt. “This topic is off-limits.”

  Rick covered Cam’s hand with his. “I want to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help. Not with this.”

  “Submit,” Rick said gently.

  The word twisted through Cam, churning his gut, tightening every muscle in his body. Breathing became a chore. He stared into Rick’s gold eyes and knew something unexpected was going on but he couldn’t explain what it might be.

  He licked his bottom lip. “Go to hell.”

  He’d never had a harder time getting words out, not even when he’d stolen one of his dad’s gold cards and spent the money on a weekend binge at fifteen, and then had to admit he’d wrecked his dad’s favorite car because he’d been so drunk his implants hadn’t been able to make the connections with his brain and for a few crucial seconds he’d lost both his sight and hearing. The only thing that’d saved him from killing himself was the updated technology his dad had been testing to stop head on collisions.

  Five weeks later, while Cam was still suffering the punishment for destroying a half a million gold ten-dollars worth of car and tech, the wolves had arrived and Cam had met Henry.

  The wolves’ arrival had changed the world; the arrival of Henry had changed Cam.

  Rick let out a soft huff of breath and his gold eyes glimmered. “I won’t demand your submission on this, but you will eventually tell me.”

  Cam swallowed and tried to ignore the feeling he had that Rick was also going to change him in ways he couldn’t predict.

  He’d rather not know.

  * * *

  They were approaching the spot where Cam would have to let Ava know he was on his way in or fall victim to one of his own traps.

  “There,” he said, pointing toward a dead tree. “There’s an entrance to a bunker on the other side, but if we don’t want an electric shock I’ve got to do something first.”

  Rick studied the area to which Cam had pointed while Cam squatted and started digging under the leaves that covered the ground. He found the box quickly enough and removed the key card he kept stashed inside.

  He could feel Rick’s eyes on him as he stood and moved through the woods, past several thick oaks and a couple of stunted pine trees. He found the tree he wanted and went around to the back side and started the slow climb up the strategically placed spikes he’d put into the tree five months or so ago. He wasn’t worried about the spikes being discovered; they looked like nothing more than a couple of old tree stand steps that had been twisted into the oak’s trunk and left behind by a hunter a long time ago.

  His arms were weaker than he was used to, so he had to work harder than usual to haul himself up high enough to reach the box he had stashed on the upper side of a sturdy limb. He detached it and climbed back down until he could hop off the climbing steps.

  He landed with an oomph and a groan as the impact with the ground jarred his damaged insides. He bent forward, rested his empty hand on his knee and breathed in a few shallow breaths until the dull ache subsided.

  Rick still hadn’t moved and Cam eyed him surreptitiously around his shoulder. Rick had to suspect Cam was up to something, but he sure didn’t look like he was worried about it. Cam should pr
obably take that as a warning, but . . .

  He had too much at stake to start giving in to caution now.

  Cam straightened and carefully raised the lid of the box. Inside, he found the card reader.

  He slid the card into place and waited. The edges of the card lit up, blinked twice, and flickered out.

  Rick’s head tilted, then turned abruptly toward Cam. “What are you doing?”

  Cam wiped his hands on his pants, shuffling the box from one hand to the other, and turned. “Deactivating a trap that would’ve been triggered when—”

  Rick cut him off with a hard-voiced, “You’re lying again.”

  “Fuck you,” Cam said, just as hard.

  Rick’s eyes narrowed on him.

  Cam’s mouth went dry.

  The moment Rick took a step in Cam’s direction, Cam knew he was in trouble. He dropped the box, flexing his fingers. Unfortunately, he had no knife to grip or gun to pull and he had to force his muscles to relax.

  Rick stalked over to him, while Cam fought the urge to take a step back. He would if he had to, if it came to that, but only then and not before.

  He couldn’t control the speed of his heartbeat, though, as Rick stopped directly in front of him. His stomach lurched as Rick curled his hand around the back of Cam’s neck, so fast Cam’s gasp hadn’t even fully left his chest when those claws jabbed at his skin.

  Rick’s head tilted again, his eyes narrow and his lips a firm line. “You wouldn’t know how to be cautious if an entire pack of wolves were bearing down on you, would you?” The question was rhetorical, because Rick didn’t leave Cam time to answer. “How have you survived as long as you have?”

  Cam raised his head despite the pressure at the back of his neck. A sharp prick of pain stabbed at the muscle running alongside his spine. He had to breathe before he could speak. “I have no fucking idea.”

  “I’m not sure you care that you have.”

  “You don’t know shit about me other than the fact that I like to fuck.”