Jacks, Marcy - Handcuffed to the Werewolf [DeWitt's Pack 3] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (10 page)

“Stay away from me,” Jason said, lifting his hand just enough so

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that Deacon could see the knife he held.

Deacon snorted. “You’re going to hurt me? With that?”

“I’m warning you.”

“Why am I not afraid?” Deacon pulled against the bars, and slowly, they warped under his strength. He stopped for a breather, shaking his head. “Phew! This is always much easier when I’m in my true form, let me assure you.”

“What do you want?”

Deacon stopped pulling the bars apart. He almost had it so that he could fit his body through. His eyes scanned around the room, like a bored shopper browsing a store’s selection. “Mostly, I was hoping my  Tristan would be in here with you.  Hiding with the other omegas would be too obvious a place for him to be, so I searched you out, and he’s still not here.”

Deacon licked his lips and smiled encouragingly at Jason, returning to his task of breaking apart the bars on the window. “That’s all  right, though, you’ll do.”

One of the bars finally popped off, and Jason rushed forward and sliced the Swiss Army knife across Deacon’s knuckles.

Deacon yelped, and with a speed Jason should have been prepared for, he reached forth, snatching Jason by the  green T-shirt he wore, and pulled him so hard and fast that his forehead banged against one of the bars with a bell-like ding.

Jason saw white, then black, and felt only pain. He fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the hardwood floor, and pain exploded in the back of his head, too.

The knife had dropped out of his hand, and he heard Deacon picking it up. He managed to open his eyes just long enough to watch him toss it out the window. “Stupid thing,” he muttered, sucking on the hand that Jason had cut.

Then he glared down at him and kicked him in the ribs.

Jason yelped and curled onto his side, trying to protect anything and everything on him that could be damaged, though he knew

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realistically that it was no good.

Deacon knew that, too, as he booted him in the lower spine.

As Jason screamed, something soft entered his mouth that muffled

the sound.

Deacon was tearing apart the bed sheets and stuffing them into his mouth. Jason spat them out. Deacon grabbed him by his hair and smashed his face down into the hardwood floor.

Jason cried out at the crunch he felt in his nose, and tears pooled from his eyes.

“Don’t move or I’ll do that again,” Deacon commanded. He didn’t release Jason’s hair until he nodded in agreement. Everything on him hurt so badly he could barely speak.

“Good.”

The strange thing was how Deacon then started to pet the back of his head, almost as though he were trying to offer comfort. “Didn’t want to do that. I’m sorry. You and I will get along better when we get away from all this fighting. Those hunters will kill as many of  DeWitt’s pack as they can, and the pack will kill off every hunter.”

DeWitt’s pack? James?

“And you and I,” Deacon said, and Jason felt a long, hot, stinging slice run down his back, and it took everything inside of him to not struggle against it, potentially making it worse. “You and I are going to make a brand new pack. Can’t have pups with you, of course, but we can still have some fun while we’re out recruiting.”

Deacon returned to tying Jason up with the strips of cloth he’d made from the bed. He’d tied one around the back of Jason’s head

and through his teeth to keep him from spitting out the cloth he was  practically choking on inside, then drew his arms painfully behind his  back.

It wasn’t enough to just tie his hands together, Deacon had to make sure that Jason couldn’t so much as shift his arms around by tying more longer strips of the bedsheets around his chest. Then  Deacon gripped him by the back of his neck and pulled him up.

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“Now then,” he said, still running his hands through Jason’s hair

in a way he was coming to despise. “Let’s go.”

* * * *

The fucking hunters were like fleas that just couldn’t be killed.  They were constantly jumping around, hiding, coming out to attack, and right before you could scratch them out of existence, they vanished within the trees.

They were getting better at what they did. It was annoying as hell.

Because of the guerrilla warfare tactic, it was difficult to count precisely how many there were of them, but not impossible.

It was only three.

That was a low number of hunters to be on the attack like this. No

wonder they resorted to such desperate fighting.

It also made their eventual defeat inevitable.

As far as hunter battles went, this was a glowing success. Every hunter dead, and as far as injuries went for the pack, Adam had been sliced down the arm with a knife and was currently gripping the wound to keep from bleeding out until his regeneration abilities would kick in, and Morgan had taken a silver bullet in the hip and

would need a day in bed to go through the poison that had seeped into  his body. The twins, Eli and Eric, the lucky bastards, had barely more  than a bleeding nose on the one and a cut lip on the other. Currently,  they were goofing off.

Mick had only broken a  sweat, and while the hunter body he  carried stunk unbelievably, he was still glad he was going to be going  home to his mate.

Maybe Jason would go easy on him for locking him inside their room if Mick pretended he’d hurt his foot or something.

Though they had their wounded to tend to, and three dead hunter bodies to dispose of, the alphas and Isaac returned from their hunt smiling and feeling chatty. The omegas came out of the houses they’d

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locked themselves into to greet them.

James and Isaac were met with  kisses and gentle, inquiring  touches to their bruises, and Mick felt a longing inside of him for his  mate, no matter how pissed off he would be when Mick let him out of  the room.

Before he could go back to the main house, Tristan tensed up and started looking around. “Does anyone smell that?”

Mick frowned, as did James and the other alphas. All they smelled was blood and fresh corpses, but that’s what tended to happen when there were three dead bodies within feet of you.

The thing that had him and James back on alert was how scared  Tristan looked.

Isaac pulled his gun out, unable to scent what his mate had picked up on. “What do you smell, baby?”

Tristan was still searching around, his eyes wide and panicked.  Unconsciously, he reached up and touched he bite  mark on his neck.  “Deacon. He was here. I can smell him. He was here.”

The omegas looked amongst themselves and also cast their eyes about, as though they were trying to decide whether or not an enemy alpha who may or may not still be on the land was worth their running back into the houses to hide.

Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman, was the one to decide for them as she shooed them away and back to their rooms. She was barely half the size of some of the wolves here, but no one would ever dare to argue with her.

Mick dropped the body he’d been holding, which landed with a smack and a crunch, but he didn’t care. He searched around, using his eyes, ears, and nose, hoping to pick up on any scent that was lurking beneath the rank of the bodies to tell him what  that fucker was up to

now.

When he caught Jason’s scent, fresh and outside, too fresh to be from when they first arrived back on pack territory, Mick’s insides froze up.

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“Mick?” He heard James call to him as he ran to the main house,  but he didn’t stop. He had an idea of what he would find, and please,  please, God, let it be wrong.

Mick ran to the side of the house. It was faster than just going  inside and upstairs to see for himself.

Besides, Deacon’s scent was strong over this way.

He stopped, fisted his  hands into his hair, and nearly fell down to  his knees with the scream he released.

The bars on the top floor windows were all the same as they had been left save for one. Those bars had been warped, and in the case of some, torn out altogether.

He felt a  hand touch his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and jumped clean onto the porch roof, then walked to the window.

The faint scent of blood became stronger as he approached. He had to remind himself that it was not strong enough to mean a dead body, nor did  the scent of a corpse radiate from the space.

But neither did Jason's scent.

He stepped inside his bedroom. It was a wreck. The bed was shredded, clothes all over the floor. There was a spot of blood in the middle of the hardwood. Mick bent down to sniff it. Definitely

Jason’s.

He growled. That spineless fucking—

“He’s not dead. We can still find them,” James said.

Mick rounded on him. “He distracted us! He distracted us and

came and took him!”

“I know.” James’s words were comforting and striking at the same  time, reminding Mick who exactly was the alpha in charge in this  room. “He took him, but he hasn’t been gone long. We can still catch  them.”

Mick recalled the way James had been when that hunter had taken  Corey, how James had feared Corey would have been tortured so badly that he would be required to kill his mate just to put him out of his misery.

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It must have taken some killer bravery to even contemplate thoughts like that. Mick couldn’t even stomach the idea of what  Deacon might be doing to Jason at that very minute.

“Let’s find them then.”

* * * *

Jason had no idea where he was. He wasn’t the least bit familiar

with the land he was on to have any clue to their whereabouts, and he  was sure he’d blacked out there for a minute, so his location was a

mystery.

They couldn’t have gone that far from the pack already. Could  they? Every step he stumbled on, every rock he passed was like  another drop in the heavy bucket of despair he was carrying around.

This guy was actually kidnapping him and taking him away  from  Mick, and unless Jason learned how to fight back ninja style using  only his legs, there was nothing he could do to fight back. Whenever  he’d stopped, pretending to stumble or be too hurt to keep going,  Deacon had just carried him.

He was just glad they finally stopped at a pond. It looked like it  was being fed by a small waterfall. The water must be coming from  the river, and it was so clear that Jason could see straight to the little  minnows and frogs chasing each other around at the bottom.

Deacon bent his head into the water to drink. He didn’t offer Jason

any water, but that was all right. Despite the raging fire on his skin,  his main concern was getting the gag out of his mouth. He’d been  pushing and prodding at the ball of shredded cotton in his mouth, but  the gag tied around his head kept it in place no matter what he did.

It was getting too dangerous keeping it in there, and he was  having trouble breathing. He needed to get it out. Something in his  nose must have collapsed, or maybe it was just the buildup of drying  blood, but it was getting increasingly difficult to breathe through his  nose, and he had to force the air in and out, and always with a loud

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whistling sound to accompany his efforts.

“Wish you would stop making that sound,” Deacon said, raising

his head from the water to look at him. “It’s not attractive.”

Jason tried telling him that he couldn’t breathe right, but Deacon didn’t understand him and went on splashing the water over his face and neck. The effort only took up more Jason’s air and left him out of breath, so he stopped trying, hoping Deacon would just take the gag out when he was about ready to let Jason drink from the spring.

Deacon lifted himself up about a minute later, wiping his hands on his pants. “Don’t know if DeWitt finished off the hunters or not, so I think it’s best we leave now, just in case.”

No! He had to take the gag out!

“Yes, yes, I know you’re impatient to get gone,” Deacon said, grabbing him by his T-shirt and yanking him up again.

Jason made an effort to struggle out of Deacon’s grip, but Deacon just wrapped his huge muscled arm around Jason’s chest, bent down to grab his legs, and then hurled him over his shoulder.

The knock against his stomach pushed all the air right out of his lungs, and Jason struggled  violently, unable to breathe, to think.

He was going to die!

“Hey there, quit your struggling now.”

“Put him down, now!”