Jacks, Marcy - The Alpha Wolf Kidnaps a Mate [DeWitt's Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (12 page)

Then he noticed the camper, and for a hair of  a second, feared he’d burst in on someone and their family. Next his vision landed on the table, the hunter and his tools beside it and the prone figure, still as the dead, on the table.

It seemed he’d surprised the hunter as much as James himself had been surprised. The man had been bent over Corey’s still form, kissing him.

The hairs on James’s back instantly came up, his head bent, lips

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and nose scrunching to reveal the teeth that he planned to rip this

hunter’s throat out with.

Before he could charge, the man put a silver blade to Corey’s throat, and James froze.

“Came for him, did you?” he asked, licking his lips, his body emanating nervous energy and adrenaline. “Didn’t think you would find me so quickly without your alpha.”

Just to give him another surprise, James lifted to his hind legs, transforming back into a man.

The hunter blanched at the sight of his disfigured face. “You.”

“Yes, me. Let him go.” James could smell burned flesh and blood, but he couldn’t take stock of Corey’s injuries while his mate was on that table.

He looked in better shape than James expected to find him in, definitely no missing fingers or toes on the side he could see, but that didn’t mean his other hand and foot were all right, or that his tongue was still where it was supposed to be, or even his right ear. There was a heavy rope gagging his mouth. Was that a funnel on the side table?  Was this son of a bitch putting something in Corey’s body?  Something he couldn’t see?

He growled and stepped forward.

The hunter tensed up. “That’s as far as you go.”

James clenched his jaw and cracked his neck. He needed to alleviate some of his tension if he was going to do this. “What do you want for him?”

The hunter seethed. “I want you both to go to hell for what you

did to me!”

“Did to you?”

“He betrayed me with you, you fucking piece of wolf shit.”

Definitely not how James recalled it happening, but he didn’t dare  say that in case the man decided to slit Corey’s throat out of spite.  Corey’s heart was still beating, a weak little thing, but it was there. He  was a fighter, and he wouldn’t die lying there. James just had to keep

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the hunter’s attention on himself.

“You’re right, he did betray you, but it wasn’t his fault,” he added  hastily as the hunter’s knife hand tensed up. “He had no choice. I  mated with him and forced him. Everything he did, he did because I  wanted him to do it.”

The hunter, Dean, looked down into Corey’s face with the most bewildered expression James had ever seen. “You―you did this?”

He nodded. “Yup. You should have been there when he spoke about you, too. Real pathetic, crying like a girl when I tied him to my bed and fucked him.  ‘
Dean, save me from the bad werewolf!
’” he mocked. If Corey could hear James speaking like that in the voice he was using, he would be given so much hell over it.

If he lived through this.

“Shut up!” Dean stepped around the table his entire body trembling with rage. James could hear the frantic pounding of his heart as he contemplated all the things James had done to the man he loved. It was his  own strange, twisted sort of love, but now that he was thinking of Corey as some kind of victim, forced to be with  James against his will, it was messing with the his mind.

Dean raised his blade, positioning it accordingly in his fist for a coming fight. “I’ll make sure I kill you this time, and then I’ll put him out of his misery.”

Mick’s furry form tackling Dean to the ground, jaws against his throat, was so sudden it nearly surprised James.

The hunter screamed and fought back, and though James would have liked nothing better than to get in there and tear the guy a new one, his first instinct was to run to Corey.

He undid the buckles that held him in place, noting the black ash that dusted the table—so the vampire was definitely dead―and how

his right hand looked when James took the buckle off. He hissed at  the sight, handling it gently. The skin was loose, withered, and the  fingernails pink, brittle, and some cases, no longer there. It looked  like a squashed prune. It would be scarred for the rest of his life.

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Next he removed the rope from Corey’s mouth. To James’s relief, his tongue was still firmly connected inside, and there appeared to be no inward scarring or bleeding of his gums. Maybe Dean had yet to use the funnel and whatever poison he kept with him on Corey.

Because Corey was still half-naked, it was easy for James to finish his examination. Aside from the hand, everything looked in proper order, nothing missing, and everything but his right hand looked as normal.

James couldn’t believe his luck. Remus and Romulus really were smiling down on him. Corey was alive and in better shape than James could ever have hoped for him to be in.

He was still going to make sure Maggie looked him over in case there was something internal, but at the moment he doubted it.

“Baby? Can you hear me?” he asked, caressing Corey’s hair and holding the back of his neck. The words that left his mouth were cracked as he nearly cried in relief.

Get a grip. Now’s not the time.

He wasn’t sure he expected any sort of reaction. Corey must have passed out from the pain on his hand, but remarkably, his eyes slowly opened.

Then he inhaled a sharp gasp and struggled in James’s hold, crying out when he tried using his other hand to get away.

“Corey, stop! It’s me. Baby, it’s me.”

Corey must have recognized James’s voice, because those beautiful emerald green eyes widened and then squinted, and he put his good arm around James’s back, hugging him close.

“Thought you were dead,” he said against James’s shoulder. He must have noticed the still-open pockmarks along his chest and neck, because then he looked into James’s face, squinted, and started to cry.

“What did he do to you?”

It pleased James that Corey was more worried about him at the moment. It meant that Dean hadn’t scared him or tortured him enough

to break him. Corey was going to be all right.

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“I’ll live,” he said, smiling and making the wounds on his face  sting. “Takes more than that to kill me. They’re already healing. I’ll  just have lots of nice, new, sexy war scars to tell all the ladies about.”

Well, they wouldn’t be sexy, but as long as Corey was all right,  he’d still be able to look himself in the mirror every morning and be  happy.

A growl, a pained cry, and a wolfy yelp reminded James that  Mick was still dealing with the main problem.

He all but flew away from the table and jumped into the frying  pan. There was blood on Mick’s grey coat, but his fur had kept his  wounds from the blade superficial. He would survive. Once James got  his human hands into the game and grabbed Dean by  the wrists, it was  all over. He bent them backward until he heard a snap, two of them to  be precise. Dean screamed and dropped his long silver dagger.

James released him. There was no need to restrain him now,

considering how helpless he was. The hunter was on his back,  twisting and curling in on himself in pain. Even James made a face at  the impossible angle his wrists were at.

He almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“You sons of bitches,” Dean shrieked. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking  kill you for this!”

James didn’t doubt that he meant every word of it, too, but also  that screaming at them was just as much to keep himself from  screaming in pain as it was to voice his hatred.

“Corey!”

James turned away from his prisoner, a mistake, yes, but again, it  wasn’t like Dean could pull any fast ones in his current condition.  Corey had gingerly lifted himself into a sitting position on the table,  cradling his injured hand in his lap.

He looked down at Dean, his former lover, and then turned his

head away.

Only then did Dean really shriek his despair.

It was too much for James to handle, for Mick as well,

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considering the way he hid that snout of his under his large paw, as  though attempting to shield himself from the noise. Either way, it was  enough, and James approached him, gripping him by his jaw with  both hands.

“You made an attempt on my life and kidnapped and tortured my

mate. My sentence is death.”

Before he could make the twists that would deliver another

satisfying crunch of bones, Dean began to laugh.

“My death won’t be for nothing. You people really think I would  attack a group of werewolves without telling other hunters there was a  pack in the area?”

Mick tensed up at those words. James glared down at him. He had  no choice but to believe him, but that still wouldn’t save his life.

“Thanks for the warning. We’ll deal with anyone stupid enough to

take us on.”

Now Dean was the one to freeze up. He died with that stunned

expression on his face as James twisted his neck around.

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Chapter Ten

James kept his distance from Corey for the next several days, and it wasn’t just because he had to prepare his pack for a potential attack, getting word out to other nests of creatures within a hundred mile radius that there might be hunters coming.

That took some work, but if  he’d really wanted to, he could have stayed with the other man. Whenever he came too close to him, however, he turned into a coward and walked away.

He felt guilty. Corey’s hand had become infected after his rescue due to all the silver contamination, and  his new werewolf blood had trouble fighting the coming fever. He’d spent two days in bed with ice packs all over his body, vomiting into a bowl beside his bed. Only now was he finally beginning to come out of it.

James’s wounds had already healed, but his  blood was pure, stronger. He had no fever to overcome, and he had healed faster.  Despite that, the scars remained.

But Corey was better now, Maggie had said. Mostly, anyway. He was even venturing outside for walks, to transform and, carefully, as his front right paw was still as tender as his human hand, trot around

the trees.

It would be a while before they could go out running together again, if Corey even wanted to do that with him. James had once seen him coming back to the house after Corey had gone running through the woods in his wolf form. He’d come back walking only on his three legs, favoring the injured one.

James had seen that and had to walk away before Corey could spot him. He wouldn’t have been able to handle it had Corey looked

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at him with blame in his eyes.

Sure, the other man had clung to him during the rescue, but now  that the immediate danger was gone, with the possible threat of more  to come, it didn’t mean Corey would be so appreciative of James

now.

Still, Corey was his mate, and James  was growing restless without him, not just for the sex either. They’d barely had any bonding time together before Corey had been taken and James shot. James wanted to be close to his mate, to continue that process, or if Corey still wanted out, then James  would need to let him go, getting that painful part over with as quickly as possible before he went mad with the urges running through him.

Avoiding any possibly bad outcomes was no longer an option.  James finally decided to grow some balls and speak to the other man, even if the conversation meant he would have to give Corey up.  Corey was learning how to control his transformations now, so there would be no reason to force him to stay.

James stood in front of Corey’s door, his fist raised, but he didn’t

do anything with it. He just stood there, like a punk. Corey was inside,  and James could hear the healthy beating of his heart.

He stopped listening like some sort of stalker and just got it over  with. He inhaled deeply for courage and knocked on Corey’s door,  and unlike the last time he came in here, he waited for an invitation to

enter.

When Corey’s voice answered on the other side, James clenched his jaw and let himself in.

Corey had been sitting, legs folded on his bed and a magazine in his lap. In human  form, he still kept his right hand wrapped, and the antibiotics and creams were still available on his nightstand.

He froze at the sight of James.

James’s insides quivered. “I just came to see how you were doing,” he said. He never felt more awkward in his skin in his entire life.