by Marcy Jacks
Mason Returns to His Mate 105
He came face to face with a pair of golden eyes big enough to be basketballs. Old Maggie had transformed, and she was enormous. Bigger than Mason was, and maybe even bigger than James.
With all that white fur, she could have passed for an arctic wolf had it not been for her size.
Watching him and growling slightly, Old Maggie bent down her magnificent head, opened her jaw, and gently scooped up the supplies she’d placed on the floor. It looked like she was keeping her lips and tongue back to keep them from getting too wet, and was sheltering both bottles and the washcloth behind her massive teeth.
Derek swallowed hard at the sight, and the huge white wolf snorted in what sounded like a laugh and then stuck her nose in the air.
Maggie sniffed deeply, her eyes briefly lowering to the cuts on
Derek’s hands and knees, and then she moved back in the direction of
the kitchen.
“Hey, wait!” She was fast. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said Derek would have a hard time keeping up with her. He got into the kitchen just in time to watch her neatly leap across the broken window sill, not so much as disturbing any of the glass on the tiled floor.
“Damn,” he said then ran for the door. He unlocked it and headed
out to be with Mason.
* * * *
Detective Ryan Miller was having a pretty shitty day. First he had that conversation with Officer Decker, a conversation he didn’t much
feel like thinking about right now, and then he watched Officer Decker get shot in the back of the head.
The poor bastard was currently lying facedown in a muddy pool of his own blood, and even as Miller fought for his life thanks to the gun wound in his own lower abdomen, he couldn’t help but think of
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the time he and Decker spent together. Christ, it was only two days ago that they’d―
Fuck! Miller shot off his gun again, catching one of those kids with a rifle in the neck. The boy couldn’t have been older than twenty, and he dropped his weapon and grabbed at his spurting neck wound. His eyes were wide, but he was still alive and determined.
He was set on taking Miller out before he died, and he pulled a pistol out of a holster at his hip and pointed it straight at Miller.
He prepared for the shot, at least knowing it would take him out of this fucked up alternate universe where people changed into giant wolves and his ex-lover was dead on the ground.
The bullet never came. Another one of those giant wolves leapt
onto the boy with all the speed and grace of a diving hawk picking off
prey.
The boy screamed. At least, Miller assumed that the gurgling cry that came from his mouth a split second before those teeth took his head off was a scream. Either way, he couldn’t help but wince, and though he was a detective and had seen some strange shit, even he had to turn away from the sight of that wolf chomping down on the severed head. The crunching of bone under those massive teeth was enough to make him shiver consistently. His body would not stop. Every crunching sound felt almost like tiny grains of sand popping between his own teeth.
Fuck.
The wolf swallowed the head then belched. Miller looked up at the massive animal, and in turn, it was looking back at him with a fixed expression. Its head was down and bloody mouth was open as it panted.
Miller didn’t want to go like that poor bastard had. He hated using his gun, and had never killed anyone before, but it would have been better if that boy had died by his bullet rather than through those terrible teeth.
The wolf came forward, putting one hesitant paw out, tail
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twitching slightly.
The rest of the gore and chaos vanished as panic overcame him.
He liked to think of himself as an adrenaline junkie. It was part of the
reason why he was able to do his job without going completely insane, but getting his head taken off by that thing was way the fuck out of his comfort zone.
Miller put the barrel of his Glock to his temple. It was hard and cold and just about everything else that was usually described in the novels he read. He was almost disappointed to realize that there was nothing about it that was different. Maybe that was just because this would be the last thing he experienced before he died.
The wolf whined and lunged. Miller pulled back on the trigger.
The fucking thing…the stupid mother fucking piece of shit Glock jammed on him. He couldn’t lower his weapon to get the spent case out of the slider and try again because the wolf transformed and was suddenly a naked human.
The man, wolf, whatever, the guy grabbed him by the wrist that held the gun and pulled his hand away from his head. He squeezed until Miller was forced to release the weapon, dropping it with a dull thud onto the ground next to him.
“What in the bleedin’ fuckin’ hell did you think you were doin’?” he asked, his accent strange and something Miller couldn’t quite place.
That question, and the fact that his head wasn’t being swallowed down the throat of the giant wolf right now, was enough to make Miller feel pretty stupid. “Hoping to keep you from doing that to me,” he said, nodding toward the headless corpse.
The man looked back at his handiwork, as though he could have forgotten about it and then sneered down at the gun, batting it away with his hand as though it were a bothersome toy.
“Bah! Strange weaponry of today. Loud as a bitch in heat. Don’t know why you’d want to put somethin’ like that near yer ear.”
What the hell was this guy talking about?
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Whatever it was, it hardly mattered that the man had saved his life because Miller was intelligent enough to know that he was dying anyway. His body was already cold, and everything on him shivered. No longer because of that disgusting crunching sound, but because his body was trying to produce some heat for him.
He must’ve closed his eyes without realizing it because the next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake.
“Rhyan! Rhyan! Stay awake, man!”
The stranger said his name in an odd manner, rolling the R and drawing out the syllables, but Miller didn’t recall ever telling him his name to begin with. How did he―?
A hard slap on his cheek pulled him out of his drowsy thoughts. “I said keep your wits about you! Stay awake!”
This guy could go and fuck himself for all Ryan cared. He just wanted to clock out already. He was tired. Whatever it was that had been happening here, it had been so much bigger than insurance fraud, and he and Decker hadn’t been even remotely prepared for the shit storm that came onto them.
Suddenly, Ryan felt pretty weightless. That man with the strange accent had picked him up and was taking him somewhere. He couldn’t help but think about how kind it was for him to risk his life like that, but he said nothing. The place where the bullet had pierced into his guts had long since grown hot and throbbed, and he just wanted this over with.
The man spoke to him, stroked him gently, searching for more wounds, but then did something completely strange, considering the warlike situation in the area.
He pulled back the collar of the brown duster Ryan was wearing, as well as the blue collar of his button down shirt, then touched his
neck.
His fingertips felt warm and rough, but they traced over the patch of skin with a sort of hypnotic awe.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
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Get what? Miller could barely keep his eyes open, and it was a struggle to think. “Get … on my neck?”
The man had to shake him again. “Aye, where did this mark come from?”
Oh, his birthmark. Ryan often wondered about it, too, not so much recently, but when he was a kid, he loved it so much, enjoyed showing it off, and thought that it somehow made him special, that he had secret super powers or something stupi
d like that.
It was a little birthmark, circular in shape, and a little spiky along the edges. Strangely enough, if anyone looked closely at it, really observed and studied it, they could see the little speck of regular-looking skin that gave the appearance of a narrowed eye, as well as an open mouth with little fangs.
The birth mark resembled a dragon curled up but roaring in both
warning and rage.
“Was born with it,” he said and then passed out before the man did his strange wolf thing again, transforming and howling into the sky.
For some reason, a word came to him, but maybe it was a name. Whatever it was, it had no meaning at all to him, and yet it came to him before he could completely pass out.
Blasius.
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Chapter Eleven
Derek could hardly believe it when he watched Old Maggie pour the water down Mason’s throat, helping him to swallow the seemingly normal-looking substance, and then clear away the blood on his recently disinfected face to reveal skin that healed right before his
very eyes.
It healed into new skin, too, red and a little swollen at first due to
the injuries Mason had sustained but then clearing up and becoming healthy and pink again. His skin looked better now than it had before he’d taken in the water, and Mason had nice skin to begin with.
When Mason’s eyes fluttered open and he blinked up at Derek, he had to look at the older woman and the bottle in her hand.
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
Old Maggie made sure to shake the last of the drops still in the bottle onto Mason’s face, though he hardly looked like he needed it and blinked and tried to turn away as she got water in his eyes.
“Clean water from the pond. It has healed him quite nicely.”
So it hadn’t just looked like water, and it wasn’t even water with vitamins in it. It was just plain water. Maybe even a little dirty due to the fact that it had come from a pond where people go swimming.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It will heal his wounds, but he will still be slightly feverish unless he is given more right away or time to rest.”
Another gunshot sounded. Resting was definitely out of the question, but they couldn’t stay here either. “Mason, can you walk?” Derek asked, already pulling him to his feet anyway.
“I’m fine,” Mason said, though his reply was a little too drowsy
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for Derek’s comfort.
“We need to bring him back to the house. The other injured alphas will be going there and expecting me,” Old Maggie said.
Derek nodded, as impatient to get the hell out of here as she was. He put Mason’s arm over his shoulder and only managed to take a single step before the cocking sound of a shotgun registered in his
ears.
Derek looked up and froze. It was that other hunter. The kid whose fingers he’d smashed inside the door of his shop.
He held the shotgun against his shoulder pretty well considering the heavy bandages that were wrapped around each of his broken fingers, but his good hand was on the trigger of the gun, and it looked just fine.
The look on the face of the hunter was both furious and
disbelieving as his eyes traveled down to the body of his older leader that was still on the ground. He shook with the range of emotions that he no doubt felt, his eyes wild and angry before scrunching briefly in pain, as though he were about to cry, and his jaw clenched up, a small sound leaving his throat, as though he were fighting back either a
rage-filled scream or a cry of sorrow.
“Please,” Derek said.
Mistake, the kid looked back up at him, hatred in his eyes blazing and the gun held steady in his grip.
Derek wished he could remember the kid’s name. He was sure
he’d heard it somewhere before, and then maybe he could really talk with him instead of just begging for his life.
“He was going to kill us,” Derek said.
“You deserve to die, you fucking supporter. You and all these Goddamn freaks in this fucking inbred camp.”
“These are good people,” Derek insisted, feeling the sweat collecting on his forehead and on the back of his neck as he looked down that barrel hole. “They never wanted to hurt anyone. You came here to them.”
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The boy’s eyes went back down to his dead leader. He wiped his face against his shoulder but still didn’t lower his gun from Derek or Mason.
Then he snarled. “Fuck you, you piece of shit supporter.”
The blast of the gun sounded, but Derek hardly felt any pain at all. That was because Mason had thrown his body over Derek’s, shielding him from most of the shotgun pellets that exploded from the shell of the kids gun.
The sudden dead weight of Mason’s body over his made Derek scream. He grabbed Mason under the arms, trying to keep the both of them up, but then the gun blasted again, and Derek felt like his hands had exploded with fire.
Mason actually smiled at him as they went down.
“It’s okay. It’s all right,” he seemed to say, though he had no voice at all. Maybe Derek just had trouble hearing him through the screams of the hunter who’d shot at them.
Derek looked over Mason’s shoulder. It seemed the kid had either
forgotten about old Maggie or had dismissed her as a threat since she was a nude elderly lady. She’d transformed back into her larger-thanlife arctic wolf and currently had her paws down on the boy’s chest. She was eating his face, tearing away at the flesh on his chest, as well as his hands and arms when he tried to push her off.
He was no match, and eventually his screaming stopped, and the white fur of the arctic wolf was stained and spattered with red blood.
Mason stopped moving on top of Derek, but he could still feel the heartbeat of the man against his chest. He was still alive, but the heartbeat was weak and fluttery.
Derek looked down at his hands. He was still clutching at Mason’s back, but his hands were bloody and gory as all hell. The fingertips on his index finger on the right hand and the pinky on the left were missing, and it looked as though his ring finger was nearly blown away right at the midknuckle. He could see the white of the bone, and it was hanging on by he wasn’t sure what.
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He looked away, refusing to move his hands because he wanted to keep Mason as close to him as possible, and he didn’t want to remind his body that he was supposed to be in severe pain right now.
God, he wished he hadn’t looked down.
There was no doubt in his mind that the pellets were silver, and from what he’d seen of his hands and Mason’s back, they were big pellets, too.
Mason was dying. He could tell with every second his heart delayed.
Derek felt himself drifting off, but wasn’t sure if his wounds were
enough to be killed over. He only saw his hands. Where else had he
been hit?
He closed his eyes, still clinging to his mate, hoping that wherever
Mason went, he would be sure to take Derek along with him.
* * * *
When Derek came to, everything on him throbbed with pain. He clenched his hands without thinking about it and then screamed for the agony that small act had caused him.
It was only then that he realized he couldn’t breathe, and he struggled harder, the thundercracks of pain only encouraging him to fight harder, to get out of the water, to breathe.
He was finally let up for air, and he shot up with a choked gasp, water flying everywhere as he flailed around like a drowning animal, which was probably the most accurate description of himself at the
moment.
Strong hands grabbed hold of his shoulders, helping him to get his footing.
Mason! Derek gripped the arms attached to those hands and held on tight, and one of those hands smacked him on the back, and suddenly, aft
er only a bit more choking, he could breathe again.
He looked up, and the face he saw was not Mason’s. It was James
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who had held him under the water, and his scarred face held worry for him as he gripped his upper arm.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Derek lifted his hands to get another look then wanted to cry. This water, this strange, amazing, wonderful water, had managed to heal his wounds, and while everything was stiff, his middle finger bent properly. The bone hadn’t been compromised.
The water knit skin back together pretty well, but it seemed it did not regrow bones and lost limbs because the tips of two of his fingers were still missing, giving his hands a sort of uneven look about them that he did not like in the least.
“Where else was I shot?” Derek asked.
“Your shoulder took some of the pellets, and so did your leg. We picked them out before putting you under for a swim, though, and we got you in here pretty quick. I don’t think you’ll scar.”
James’s eyes still flickered down to Derek’s hands. He should be grateful he still had them period and that they were practically at a hundred percent mobility, but he couldn’t help but sulk a little at the ugliness of the missing fingertips.
He looked around, expecting to see Mason in the water with him. His heart starting hammering when he didn ’t spot his lover anywhere at all.
“Mason?” he asked. He wanted to know and didn’t at the same
time. Christ, if James told him that Mason had died, Derek was going to have a shit fit. He thought he just might die himself.
If they were mated, shouldn’t Derek be feeling it if Mason had died? Wouldn’t he know? Wouldn’t he have followed the man?
James took away all those questions with a single answer. “He’s alive. He was in the water long before you were, and now he’s back at the house with Maggie.”
The relief Derek felt actually made his legs quake. He’d never felt anything like that before in his entire life.