Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (4 page)

“What are you doing?”

Eli looked up. Chris’s eyes had come open, and his body was very  much alert and awake now as he looked at Eli and the handiwork he’d

just  done, strewn about the bed.

Eli looked down at the bandages and bits of thread on the mattress

then back at Chris. Eli was naked. Chris was only wearing a pair of

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jeans. Never in all his life had Eli ever felt the urge to have sex with  another man, but this was his mate, and the instinct to claim, mate,

fuck, however you wanted to call it, was there, and it was strong.

He shifted his legs, trying to will down his penis and hoping that  Chris wouldn’t notice. At least he was a human. That meant he

wouldn’t easily smell the change in Eli’s body.

“I heal quickly. The stitches helped close the wound a little faster,  but I don’t need them anymore, and it was starting to itch.” Eli held  his arm out so that Chris could see for himself.

Chris leaned forward, his eyes glued to the pink line. “That’s impossible,” he said.

He’d seen Eli transform. He’d watched as Eli fought off those other werewolves, and then he brought him here to nurse him back to health. He knew it was possible, but Eli decided not to push it.

“Does  anyone else know I’m here?”

Chris hesitated and then shook his head. “No. I tried to make sure

no one would see use when we came in,”

Eli nodded. “Thank you for that.”

“What are you?”

The inevitable question that usually came when humans discovered there were things in the world they thought had only been the product of some twisted writer’s nightmares.

This man was his mate, Eli reminded himself. If he revealed what

he really was, he would have the law of his pack on his side. “A

werewolf.”

Chris seemed taken aback by that. “But I thought werewolves only changed under the full moon and were all ferocious and couldn’t control themselves when they did transform.”

Eli shook his head. “That’s the odd case. Wild werewolves are

usually like that, and most of the  time they can’t even control

themselves when in their human forms.”

“Wild―?”

“Shh!” Eli raised his hand for silence, his ears picking up a sound

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Marcy Jacks

from just outside their door. Sounded like an empty can or something

being kicked around.

“When you brought me  here, did you travel along the streams?”

“What streams?” Chris asked.

Right. He was new in town, and that response certainly answered  Eli’s question.

He slunk over to the door, still naked and trying not to notice the way Chris blushed and hid his eyes under his hand as he passed. Eli looked through the peephole. He saw nothing.

That didn’t guarantee that Lloyd and his man hadn’t gone back to their pack and decided to return with some reinforcements.

Eli didn’t smell the men, and he had their scent for sure. He would

never forget it. Maybe it was just some soda can blowing in the wind.

He didn’t want to take the risk. “Where’s the phone?”

“On the nightstand. Did you want me to go out and, I don’t know,  find you some clothes or something?”

Just the way he said it let Eli know how uncomfortable Chris was  over Eli’s nudity. The rise in his heartbeat also told him that it wasn’t  because he found the male body repulsive. Not by a long shot.

“Probably best you don’t leave here after what happened. At least

not yet,” he added quickly, finding the phone and picking up the

receiver.

Chris swallowed. “Because of those other men?”

Eli looked at him straight on, remembering the way that one slimy fuck had tried to rape Chris. “Yes.”

“But I have nothing to do with any of this!” Chris said. “I’m not a werewolf.”

“No, but you have the night-and-day eyes,”

“The what?”

Eli could barely concentrate on dialing the number he needed to.  Instead, he walked over to Chris and got down on his knees in front of him. “Night,” he said, pointing at the one chocolate-colored eye, so dark it was nearly black, then at the bright blue one. “Day. The weird

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thing about the name is that, even if you had one eye that same dark  brown and the other hazel instead of sky blue, it would still be called  day-and-night eyes by my people. Having dual-colored eyes is a good  luck symbol for werewolves. It means you’re blessed by Romulus and  Remus. Maybe it’s more instinctual than I thought, too. Either way,  any wild wolf without morals is going to want a piece of you.”

Chris reached up with his hand, touching the skin just under his  lower lash. “But…”

“Don’t think about it right now,” Eli said, getting back to his feet  and moving toward the phone. “I need to make a call so we can safely  get out of here.”

“You’re a werewolf,” Chris said, and Eli heard him getting to his  feet. “Do you want a piece of me, too?”

His voice was defensive. Not good.

Eli looked at him then noted where Chris’s eyes were pointed, and  he shifted around to keep him from staring too long at  Eli’s erection.  “Yes, but I won’t hurt you. I would never do that.”

“Why?”

Jesus Christ! Eli wet his lips. “Because I’m not like that, and  neither are my friends. You traveled in a way that those other wolves  can follow our scents here and bring reinforcements if they want. I  need to call my pack alpha and tell him to come and get us.”

Eli had the phone in his hand again when that kicked can sound  came again. This time they both heard it, because Chris’s head  whipped toward the door.

“There’s someone out there,” he said. Those mismatched eyes of  his were alert, and he looked to Eli as though asking,
 
What should I  do?

“Stay there,” Eli whispered. “Don’t make a sound.”

Chris swallowed and nodded.

Eli walked naked over to the door again. He looked out the little peephole, and this time, a shuffle in the bushes, just on the outskirts of the parking lot, caught his eye.

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Marcy Jacks

The sun was setting, however, and the shadows were long, making it difficult to see who exactly was out there.

Goddamn it. He was still hungover.  Whose scent was that?

“Who’s there?” Chris whispered.

Eli signalled him for silence then motioned to the door lock. Chris nodded, getting the message loud and clear.

Lock the door behind me
.

Eli stepped out. He wasn’t too worried about giving some old ladya heart attack or anything with his nudity, because, despite how shitty his nose was working at the moment, he couldn’t smell any humans nearby, but he was definitely catching that distinct dog smell that came with being a werewolf.

As to the individuals, however, he had no idea who they were.

Eli quietly shut the door behind him, and he heard the click of the bolt sliding home as Chris locked himself inside.

Not that it would help him if Eli couldn’t stop whoever these wolves were from getting to him, but it would buy him some time to call for help, and hopefully that would be enough.

Eli kept his eyes on the prize, those shifting shrubs just over there, where he knew his enemies were hiding. They would see him coming, but he marched over with his back straight, itching to transform and

attack.

When he made it over, he lifted his hand, his fingers clawlike, ready to bring it down in a killing swipe.

Someone popped out and jumped back, putting his hands up to keep Eli from attacking. “Hey! Hey! Relax, it’s me!”

Eli couldn’t believe it. “Isaac?”

“No shit! Put your claws away!”

Oh. Right.

He lowered his hands. The second he did, a heavy fist punched  him on the back of his shoulder. “You prick!” It was Adam, and he  didn’t look very happy. “Where the hell were you all this time? We  thought you were kidnapped or something.”

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Eli stiffened. “We?”

He looked over, and it seemed that nearly the whole pack of alphas appeared, all of whom had been hiding in various places around the parking lot. Andrew, Gordon, Lyle, Nick. Everyone was dressed in their regular clothes, meaning they hadn’t shifted and run here but had stayed in their human forms.

Even James. Out of everyone, he looked the least pleased. His scarred face was turned down in a frown. “We came looking for you

and scented your blood and the blood of other werewolves minutes  from our road. We followed it here and have been trying to get your  attention. We were just about to charge in there and get you. What the  fuck is going on?” James paused then leaned forward and sniffed. His  nose crinkled. “You smell like you’ve got alcohol leaking from your  pores.”

All things considered, his alpha had a reason to be pissed. He  might as well tell the truth, seeing as he couldn’t hide the fact that  he’d been at a bar.

“I had a couple of drinks and was just heading home when two of  those new werewolves Deacon turned found me. I fought them off  and came here to heal up.”

Eli didn’t bother with lifting his arm so that James could see the  healing scar. His eyes were already looking down at it, and the  bandage on Eli’s face was still pretty noticeable.

“I smell a human in there,” James said, nodding his head toward  the motel. “Should I ask what you’re doing with him?”

James, as tactfully as he could, merely glanced down at Eli’s still  half-hard cock, before turning his eyes back up and looking at Eli’s  face.

Eli cleared his throat. “He’s my mate. I haven’t told him yet though. Christ, I don’t think I even told him my name yet.”

Mentioning that he’d found his mate and using the word
 
he
 
in the same sentence, didn’t bring about much of a reaction, except all the men seemed to look at each other.

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Marcy Jacks

When James found his mate in Corey, he’d had to go and speak to their wise woman to see if something like that was even possible.  Two male mates was just such a rare occurrence, especially when, up until recently, it had been assumed that one only found their mate because nature was telling them it was time to have pups.

Currently, there were four male couples in James DeWitt’s pack who were mated.

Eli and Chris would make the fifth mated couple, once he told

Chris about them. He wondered how the other man would take it.

James sighed. “All right, there’s nothing I can do about it if he’s your mate. I’m assuming he’s also the one who gave you that?”

James pointed to the bandage on Eli’s face, and he nodded.  “Right. I was getting ready to call you, and because he’s human, he wasn’t sure what I was or what attacked us until I told him, and when

he brought me here, he left our scent open to be hunted.”

“How do you think we found you?” Adam asked.

“Christ, even I was able to track you, and I don’t have a

werewolf’s nose,” Isaac said.

“Your scent was all over the place,” Andrew said. The guy rarely  spoke about anything, so for him to point that out was just too much  for Eli.

Irritation bubbled inside him at their comments. “Yes, well, he

was never trained to hide like we were. James,” Eli said, turning to his  pack alpha. “One of those weres that attacked us, they saw his face.  They have his scent and they know what he looks like. They’ll be  sniffing him out.”

James nodded, understanding immediately. “He won’t fight if we  take him with us?”

Eli shook his head. He would make sure that Chris understood

perfectly what was at stake here. Chris needed to hide now, or those  other wolves would track him down, rape him, and kill him, maybe  not even in that order. “I’ll explain to him that it’s important he comes  with us. I’ll make sure he understands.”

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Eli had never done that thing before that some mates could do to each other, where one could gently manipulate the emotions of the other.

Now would be a good time to learn, however, if Chris did decide he didn’t want to travel with a group of dangerous creatures he didn’t understand. Eli wasn’t ready to part with him just yet.

“All right. Go in, get him, and come back home. I’ll have a talk with you privately there.”

Of course. Eli wasn’t out of the woods yet for going back to drinking in the bar.

“There’s one more thing, James.”