by Marcy Jacks
Mason launched himself at the man with a roar, knocking him onto his side, the gun firing as Mason threw them both down to roll onto the ground, each fighting for the weapon.
Mason was strong, but for a human and someone who looked like they could qualify for the senior’s menu at the local diner, he was also pretty tough. Perhaps the sloppy nature of Mason’s attack had something to do with it, as well as the loud ringing in his ears brought on by the blast of the rifle, but all he was concerned about was putting this hunter out of his misery before he hurt Derek or any member of
Mason’s family.
More gunshots sounded, and for a split second Mason thought that they, too, were coming from the rifle that he and the hunter battled
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for.
No, the barrel didn’t get hot again, and the shots sounded far away, even to his damaged ears.
The shots could be coming from the cops or the other hunters that this man supposedly had waiting around the pack land.
The gunfire continued, and Mason realized that so much shooting couldn’t come from only two men. The hunters were attacking.
Suddenly, the older hunter slammed his knuckles into Mason’s face, and he felt the white-hot burn of liquid fire against his skin. The human did it again, and again, until Mason’s strength was so sapped that the human was able to roll them over, putting Mason beneath him as he straddled Mason’s hips.
There was blood on his knuckles, but something was also gleaming there as well. Mason squinted up at it to see what it was through the blood, and then he could have kicked himself for not having expected this.
Silver rings. The cheating bastard. Mason guessed that a hunter didn’t get to be that age by playing fair with his game.
He was going to get him for this, but the silver not only wounded him, it sapped his strength so completely and utterly that, by the time the tenth blow came down upon his face, he was so weak that he could barely lift his hands to deflect the attacks.
The hunter had full control of the weapon now, but he seemed more interested in teaching Mason a hard lesson.
The attack stopped, suddenly and without warning. His hair was grabbed into a hard fist, however, and his face lifted up so that the blur in his eyes cleared, and he could see the righteous gleam in the man’s eyes as he stared down at his beaten opponent.
“Gonna keep you alive, wolf. I’m gonna wait until your wolf comes out, and then I’m gonna skin you alive.”
He wasn’t done with that either. He had to announce his plans like an evil cartoon villain or something. “I saw the way you and that little
queer were holding hands. I’m gonna kill him in front of you. I’m
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gonna carve my son’s name into every inch of his skin and make him ask for me to kill him. Think I’ll skin him, too, make a leather jacket out of him or something.”
Mason growled, and that heavy fist with the silver rings on it came down on him again, and then a meaty finger was pointed at his
nose.
“Don’t you dare growl at―”
Fast footsteps shot through the shrubs to stand directly where both Mason and the hunter were currently entangled. The hunter took his eyes away from Mason for just a second before his head flew back, blood and hair and bone and other things exploding out the side of his head after the gunshot sounded.
Ouch, more pain in the ears. If Mason lived through this, he was setting up a quiet room for himself and would never leave it.
He wondered about the man who’d saved him and had thought it might be one of those cops before Derek’s face appeared before him.
Mason couldn’t believe it. Derek had really…
No, it did make sense. He remembered Derek taking a gun with him from the pawn shop when he was escaping from the hunters. He knew how to use the weapon and had foolishly come back for his
mate.
That didn’t stop Mason from wanting to kick his ass for being that stupid. He was supposed to be hiding somewhere, not rushing to Mason’s rescue. Even then, his alpha pride would take a long time to heal after he was the one who needed rescuing by his mate instead of being the protector he was supposed to be.
The worry and horror on Derek’s expression as he surveyed Mason’s face didn’t help anything either.
“Jesus Christ, what did he do to you?” Derek asked, glaring down at the body of the man he’d killed then gently lifting Mason into his
arms.
Mason groaned, his entire body stiff and sore, even though he was
only taking shots to the face.
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Perfect. He had silver poisoning. If he remembered it right, Old Maggie kept some antibiotics for that in her room. Not just her room, the whole main house was loaded with medical supplies.
It was nothing special, just basic alcohol, disinfectants, and swabs. That was usually more than enough to fight off the infection brought on by silver.
There was just one problem, those were all in the main house, and to get there, he and Derek would somehow have to get through the gun fighting and mini werewolf war being waged on the front lawn.
It was better if he just didn’t tell Derek about it. The infection could take him, and if he died, so be it. He didn’t want to risk the life
of his mate any more than he needed to.
Derek’s hand on his forehead was cool to the touch. His gasp over the temperature was clear and filled with concern.
Mason hadn’t thought he would be that warm.
“Jesus Christ, you’re burning up!” he said. His fingertips gently touched down on the mash that was Mason’s face, and then he
reached over to grab at something.
“These rings…Christ! Is this silver?”
Derek had a bad habit of cursing. Mason wasn’t exactly religious, but considering their circumstances, it was best not to piss anyone upstairs off.
Then Derek spoke the words that had Mason as scared as all hell.
“Maggie, that wise woman who lives here, I heard she keeps medicine for this kind of thing.”
No. No. No. Fucking no! Mason tried to tell Derek not to risk it, that he was unlikely to even sneak through the trees to get to the house without being spotted by someone or shot by a stray bullet.
You’re safe here. Don’t go.
They were mated, but Derek was not a werewolf, and so Mason’s mental plea when unheard as Derek pulled his T-shirt over his head.
He gently wiped away some of the blood with it before folding it up into a square and gingerly placing it under Mason’s head to use as
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a pillow.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, kissing Mason’s hands since his face was too fucked up for any man to put his lips on. “I promise.”
If Mason had been able to move, he would have flipped out shrieking as Derek ran away.
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Chapter Ten
Derek’s heart pounded as he ran through the trees, coming around full circle on the pack land.
As he did this, for the first time he realized how big the land was as he was soon out of breath. He hadn’t even made it halfway to the main house yet.
He hadn’t been doing his exercises for the last little while, ever since he’d come to this pack, really. Was that enough to account for his sudden lack of strength?
He shook his head, cursing himself for being so weak when his lover, his mate, was probably dying back there where Derek had found that man getting ready to kill him.
He would not let that happen. He was getting into that house and
getting that medicine if it was the last thing Derek ever did.
Derek straightened and shot off again, thoughts of Mason renewing his strength. He came to an abrupt halt, though, when the loud shot and fast zoom of a bullet buzzed by directly in front of his face.
Derek’s heart pounded as he
brought his hands up to make sure his nose was where it was supposed to be.
It was attached securely, not hanging off by a thread of flesh, and there was no warm, wet blood on his face either. The bullet had
missed. It had sounded so close.
He kept right on going before he could find out if that bullet had been a stray or if someone saw him and was aiming for him right
now.
Derek didn’t think he’d ever run so fast in his life, and soon he
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was right across from the main house. All he had to do was leave the safety of the trees and rush out past the two cottages between him and James’s cabin, and he would be there. He might even be able to sneak in through the back door.
A hairy body slamming in front of him, knocking back one of the trees Derek was hiding behind, had him screaming and leaping back before he could get crushed.
The pine was thin but tall, and the fact that the body of one of these werewolves simply falling back into it was enough to make it come crashing down was just insane. The base of the pine snapped, and the crack that pierced the air was like the banging of thunder.
The wolf picked himself up just fine, however, and leapt back onto his paws, his―her?―hind hair up in a show of dominance and anger, before those amazing claws dug into the earth and the wolf launched itself at the hunter who’d come after it with a rifle.
Derek felt no need to jump in and help. He never said he was the honorable sort, and right now, his only loyalty was to the man he loved.
Using the giant wolf in front of him as a distraction, Derek was able to easily maneuver between the cabins, all of which had shotgun holes punched into the walls, and get to the main cabin.
He grabbed the side door and tried to turn the handle. It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Fucking perfect.
Derek ran to the back. There seemed to be no fighting at all going on back here. It was almost as though the hunters and werewolves had decided to stick it out in the group that they were in once Derek had blown the cover of the hunters.
They were going to have one more reason to come after him for that one, he figured.
He grabbed the handle for the door, and it wouldn’t budge either. He pounded his fist into the door, but that didn’t do anything except make a loud, and painful, popping sound in his knuckles that hurt like a motherfucker.
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The door was new, it seemed. It felt strong when he busted his hand against it, and there wasn’t a window he could break to unlock the door and get inside either.
Running to the front would be suicide, even if that door did magically turn out to be unlocked, which he doubted.
The omegas who were unable to fight, elderly, and children were all locked into the relative safety of their homes. That included the wise woman, it seemed.
Derek needed that disinfectant and that medicine.
There was no window on the door he could bust open, but there
was a pretty big window that led into the kitchen that he could climb through if he found something to break it with―
Bingo. Potted plant.
It was heavy. The pot was a red-brown ceramic, not one of those plastic cheap things, not to mention the weight of the earth and plant inside the thing.
Derek hurled it at the window. The glass shattered in a satisfying symphony of sparkling glass.
He was already running around bare chested in his boxers, so there was no way he could climb inside without slicing himself open on the shards of glass that hadn’t neatly broken free from the frame.
There was a shoe matt just in front of the back door. He picked it up. The bottom was a rubbery plastic, and the top had that thick, rough carpet-like material that usually came on things like these.
It would have to be enough.
He used it to punch out whatever big bits of glass where left over, and then folded the matt over the sill of the broken window before
climbing inside.
He didn’t do too badly at all, and with his weight pressing down
onto the matt, the glass that cut through only managed to get his hands and legs just a little. Enough to cut and bleed, but not enough that he was overly worried about it, and he would be able to walk out the door when he left instead of going through the window again.
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He was careful to avoid the rest of the glass shards that had broken and flown inside, along with the now-busted potted plant, as he hurried down the hall. He’d never been inside this cabin before.
James had always come to see him, so he didn’t know where the medical supplies were kept.
He was assuming that most of them would be kept inside a first aid kit in one of the bathrooms in this place, but he didn’t know where the bathrooms were either, and he found himself opening doors at random just to see where they led.
Garage, sitting room, bedroom, bed―
“Ahhgg!” Derek screamed when he opened the door to another room just to have acid sprayed into his eyes.
It burned! Fucking Christ, it burned like hell! He was blind!
Derek fell to the floor and curled up onto his back, clutching at his eyes and screaming his pain, hardly caring if his attacker got him again or kicked him when he was down. He just wanted the pain to end.
“Serves you right for coming into my home, you dirty, filthy―”
The elderly female voice stopped with the name calling, and Derek thought that she was going to leave him to his fate on the floor, but after enough tears had left his eyes, washing them out, Derek was able to take his fists away to look up into the blurry and curious face of Old Maggie.
Her eyes widened at him when he looked at her, as though she were able to really recognize him now that he wasn’t hiding his face behind his fists.
“Oh dear, you’re that young boy!”
Derek looked down into her left hand and noticed the little pink
bottle in her hand.
She’d gotten him with pepper spray. It had sure as shit felt like
acid to him.
“Uh-huh,” was all he was able to say. He flinched when she
reached down for him, but she didn’t spray him in the face again with
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any of Satan’s liquid pain like before. Instead, she helped him to his feet and pulled him into her bedroom before sitting him down on the bed.
“What in the world are you doing breaking in here? You should have stayed in the forest. That’s where you were all night, wasn’t it?”
Damn, did every werewolf in the pack have to always know about Derek’s sex life?
“I need your help. Mason was poisoned with silver, and now I think he’s dying out in the trees.”
Maggie looked at him sharply. “Come again? Silver poisoning?”
She didn’t say it as though she were hard of hearing or anything like that, but rather because she was shocked to the possibility of it even happening.
Maybe that was actually horror on her face. Derek was still having a hard time seeing.
“He was shot with a silver bullet?” Her footsteps sounded as she
walked away from him.
Derek heard a tap running. She had a connecting bathroom in
here, it seemed, and then she handed him a cool wet cloth. He
gratefully put it over his eyes.
Wait! A bathroom! The first aid kit must be in there somewhere!
“No. A hunter held him down and punched him with silver rings on his fingers. Mason’s face is pretty messed up. I barely recognized him.
“We must go to him right away. Is he near here?”
No, he wasn’t. Not with that crowd fighting out there. From what Derek had seen when he ran out to James and that cop, right before the hunters jumped out of the trees to attack, the werewolves outnumbered the hunters at least five to one.
The hunters were skilled, however, and they had gadgets and gu
ns
on them, and they’d been planning for this, whereas the werewolves could only fight at close range, with the exception of Jason, Isaac, and the one cop who was still alive last time Derek had checked on him.
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They could use guns, too, but did they carry those kinds of weapons on them all the time? Derek had had to run into the cabin where he’d been staying to get his from under the mattress before he was able to go back to Mason.
Regardless, the fight was still happening, which meant it would be hard getting back to Mason. He told all this to Maggie, including where he’d left his lover.
Her lips thinned and eyes squinted in thought, and then she went back into her bathroom. Derek’s eyes were starting to feel better already, even if he was still blinking a lot. She had to of put more than just water on this cloth.
She came back from the bathroom with another dry cloth, one of those brown bottles of disinfectant, and what looked like just a plain bottle of water.
“Will those help?” Derek asked, looking at the supplies and realizing that they didn’t look like much for what Mason was suffering from.
“This will be more than enough to save him,” Old Maggie said, surprisingly lifting up the water bottle instead of the disinfectant.
He knew almost nothing about werewolves and their medicine, so he was just going to have to trust her on this one. He got to his feet and held out his hand to take the bottle.
She slapped it away. “Do not be an idiot. I’m going with you.”
Derek watched her walk slowly and carefully out the bedroom door, her pace clearly showing off her age.
“Really, I can get it to him faster.”
She spun around and glared at him. “You, young man, are rude and ignorant. I am a wise woman and a werewolf. You will likely be the one to have a hard time keeping up with me.”
Derek sincerely doubted that, but before he could utter a word, Old Maggie vanished around the door, and in the hallway, Derek heard a terrible ripping sound.
He rushed out to help, thinking that maybe she’d been attacked.