Jacks, Marcy - Mason Returns to His Mate [DeWitt's Pack 8] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (16 page)

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, after 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.

“How is he? Is he awake?” Already Derek was wading out of the

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water. His legs were sore as hell, but he needed to get out of here and  see Mason. He needed to look at him with his own eyes to confirm he  was all right and breathing. The fact that Mason wasn’t here with  Derek right now could only mean that, despite the healing power of  the water, he hadn’t woken up, so he wasn’t really sure why he’d  bothered with asking.

“He’s still unconscious last time I checked, but we’ll be expecting  him to wake up soon enough. You should know that the damage to his  skin was pretty severe before we put him in the water. Most of his  body was healed just fine, but there will be scarring.”

Derek stopped and looked at James’s face, his scarred face. Derek  had seen the healing powers of the water when Old Maggie made an  unconscious Mason drink from that water bottle, but despite how  carefully they’d cleaned his wounds, his face had still healed up a  little roughly, with a few indents here and there in the skin from  where Mason had taken a particularly hard punch with one of those  silver rings.

This time, however, his pack mates, anyone with any skills with a  needle, really, would’ve needed to pick out the silver pellets before  they could do too much harm to him then put him in the water, and  Mason had already been feeling weak because of his last encounter  with silver. Did that mean that his body wouldn’t have healed so well  the  second time around?

“Just take me to him. Please,” he asked.

James nodded and led the way.

They walked carefully at first, Derek limping along until he was able to walk out the stiffness and hurry up. He and James were practically running the rest of the way back when he was able to.

The area where the cottages were was strangely quiet. Alphas and omegas worked together to clean up the mess left behind by the hunters. There were no bodies that Derek could see, meaning they’d all been cleared away by now. There were still bloody patches in the dirt, and Derek did his best to not look at them, especially the larger

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ones that had dried into the brown dirt.

He didn’t know how many members of the pack had died, but judging by the quiet nature everyone worked in,  the way they all kept their heads down as they hosed blood off their walls or racked up bloody grass, there had been some casualties on their side.

James opened the front door to his house, and Derek was glad they didn’t have to go through the back. He wondered if the other man knew or not yet that Derek was responsible for the broken glass and blood all over the place.

He was more concerned with just getting to Mason.

“Where―?”

“Upstairs, second door on the right,” James replied.

Derek bolted up, knowing James was slowly following him, but  he didn’t mind. The closer he got to his lover, the better he could feel  the other man, the more he knew that what had happened to him  wouldn’t seriously affect him for the rest of his life.

He opened the door, and there  he was. He was lying on the bed,  the covers pulled up to his chest but under his hands. Derek had never  seen anyone tucked into bed like that in real life before.

The blue covers weren’t exactly thick, though, and Derek could  clearly see the easy way in which Mason’s chest rose and fell. No  trouble breathing, that was good.