Jacks, Marcy - The Alpha Wolf Kidnaps a Mate [DeWitt's Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (5 page)

“He looks like a deer in a lion’s path,” someone remarked.

“Not helping, Mickey,” another person said.

“Shut up, Eric.”

Corey kept his eyes on James. The larger man, werewolf, was just looking at him, staring into his eyes. Corey’s heart rate slowed back to normal, and the trembling in his muscles stopped as he found himself calming.

“Nice, James, now he’s better,” Mickey said.

Corey didn’t like the sound of that. “You’re doing this?” He was still a little out of breath from his earlier fight, and it sounded in his

voice.

James’s feet shifted, but not in the
 
aw shucks, caught
 
kind of way.  If anything, his back straightened, as though he were proud and preparing to defend that feeling of pride. “You and I are connected. I can’t control you anymore than you can control me, but if you stop to allow it, my presence will relax your body and mind.”

Connected. He was saying they were connected. “Because you…changed me?” he asked, trying to swallow the bile rising in his throat.

“No,” James said, simply.

“Will you let me leave?” Corey asked, thinking he already knew  what the answer would be anyway.

James opened his mouth to give his reply, but then a loud knock  sounded on the floor behind him.

Corey turned just as the rest of the men parted down the middle, allowing an old woman with a gnarled wooden walking stick to enter.  She was plump, wearing a blue flower sundress with a purple poncho over top and a pair of black ballet flats on her feet. Her straight, steel-gray hair was loose and barely touched her shoulders. She had a severe hunch in her back, but she walked in the room with the speed and grace of a twenty-year-old, despite her appearance and the use of

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her cane.

Respected whispers of “Wise Woman” were uttered as she passed, and every man  bent his head down as she walked to the centre of the small room, right where Corey stood.

He stared at her as she stopped before him. She looked up at him, and he was able to see how clear her blue eyes were, despite her many wrinkles and age spots. There was a great deal of wiry white hair growing from the bottom of her chin and upper lip as well.

He had no idea how to greet her. The werewolves in the room obviously treated her with a great deal of respect, and if he wanted to get out of here, alive, logic told Corey that he needed to as well.

He cleared his throat. “Ma’am,” he said.

She looked him up and down with curious eyes then turned her questioning gaze to James. “Is this the one?”

He nodded. “It is.”

The wise woman waved her hand in a shooing motion to the men behind her, and without a word and barely any sound from their boots, they made a line and walked out the door.

With the room less crowded, Corey had to admit he felt better, but there was still a problem that needed addressing. “I’m grateful  to you for saving my life,” he said, looking at James and feeling anything but gratitude if what the man told him was true. “But I have a home to go to, and people who will miss me if I don’t come back. I’d like to leave now. If that’s all right,” he added when the wise woman raised a brow at him.

The home to go to part was true, the people who missed him bit, not so much. They didn’t need to know that.

She turned back to James. “He doesn’t seem too keen on staying, are you quite sure…?”

“I am more than positive, Maggie,” James said. “I infected him. I had to. He’d been shot with a silver bullet in the chest,” he added

when her look became a glare.

Just the reminder that James had infected him made Corey shiver.

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“Will I turn into a werewolf?”

The wise woman  looked up at him. She couldn’t have been taller than four eleven, and she must have seen the fear on his face. “Yes,”

she said.

Corey wanted to curl into a ball and die. Instead, his equilibrium went off kilter as the floor came up to meet his face.

He hadn’t fainted. Not really, his legs just kind of gave out on him, and now he was on the floor, and James’s hand was cradling the back of his head again. Just like before.

“It’s okay, babe, you’re going to be okay.”

“Don’t call me that,” Corey said, fighting  against the painful swelling in his throat. “I don’t know you.”

James nodded. “Fair enough.”

“You should let him go,” said the wise woman.

“What?” James snapped. It was odd how he stared at the old lady as though she had all the power in the world to crush him into a thousand tiny pieces.

Corey didn’t like that James was being hurt, and he didn’t like that he didn’t like it either, but still, at that moment, he loved the old girl.

“If he leaves, that hunter will be on his trail in no time. He hasn’t

even had his first transformation yet. How’s he going―”

The wise woman put her hand up, and James, with visible

reluctance, closed his mouth.

Corey had never seen anyone raise their hand for silence before, had only ever read about people using the gesture in books, and then thought those fictional people were full of themselves for actually doing it. Really, come on, raising their hands like they thought they were royalty or something? But James was as quiet as a mouse, even if his neck looked like it was about to pop a vein.

This woman must be really important to James’s pack, and she was on Corey’s side.

“You’ll let me leave?” he asked, hope and terror filling him.

James’s head whipped over to him, his eyes begging. Did the man

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actually think Corey would want to stay amongst a pack of

werewolves?

The wise woman nodded. “Despite what you are thinking, and I

know
 
what you’re thinking, we are not a violent pack. We defend  ourselves when necessary, and we keep no hostages. You have been a  guest of this house until your wounds could heal, and they have. You

are more than free to go.”

That sounded way too easy, and for a split second Corey imagined  he was being played, but then she stepped out of the way of the door,  which had been left open behind the other exiting wolves, and pointed  the way out with her hand.

Corey got up.

“No.”

James’s tight grip on his elbow stopped him, and that heart-thumping adrenaline came back into Corey’s blood in waves.

“Wise woman, Maggie, please, he’s the one, I know he is. I need him.”

“Let go of me,
 
now
,” Corey said, the whole, he’s  the one, and I  need him was really too stalkerish for his tastes, and he’d barely just  gotten out of one bad relationship, not even in one piece, thank you  very much.

“We keep no prisoners here, James DeWitt. Release that boy,  now.”

James’s hand fell away  from Corey’s arm, leaving his skin cold where James was no longer touching him.

He ran out the door.

* * * *

James watched his mate run away from him with clenching fists.  He had to keep his arms steel straight and held tightly at his sides, otherwise he knew he would tear down a wall in his despair.

But there had been something in Old Maggie’s voice that last time

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she told him to let Corey go, and now he was curious, and praying,  that whatever it was she had in mind would eventually bring Corey  back to him unharmed and more willing to stay.

There was nothing in werewolf lore that stated two mated wolves  had to keep within a certain distance of each other, but just the idea  that Corey would leave and never come back to him created a hollow  sort of cold space in his chest, making it almost hard to breathe.

“All right,” he said, barely keeping his temper in check with a  woman more than twice his age. At two hundred, she had seniority  over everyone in James’s pack. “What are we doing?”

She looked up at him calmly, as though he hadn’t just let his mate  run scared out the door. “If you let him go and he comes back…” She  trailed off.

He smiled as he understood, relief flooding him. “It’s meant to

be.”

And it was meant to be. They were mated, and sooner or later

Corey would start to feel that same emptiness that James was, and his instincts would ensure that he turned around and came back.

James left the room. He’d grab a cold drink and wait on the deck for Corey to return. Considering his new senses and abilities,  James didn’t expect that would take too long.

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Chapter Six

The sights and smells were too much. They were an overload to his senses. He reacted to every shadow, and he jumped at every loud sound of a branch breaking under his borrowed―okay, stolen―shoes. Corey could hear, smell, and taste everything in the air, and the onslaught of information was killing him, he was sure of it.

He stumbled around the woods for a while. No one offered him a

ride back into town, and he didn’t dare ask. He didn’t even bother  asking any of the curious faces where he was. He’d asked already,  and James hadn’t told him. Just that he was getting away would have  to be enough for now.

Really, he was making great time, even though he had no idea  where he was or where he was going. He felt so strong. So alive. He  wished it were something he could enjoy, like waking up and  discovering he’d developed Superman powers instead of being  infected with the werewolf virus.

Dean had been right. Corey hated the bastard for what he’d tried

to do, but he’d been right, and on the next full moon, Corey was going  to make the painful change into a werewolf and he was going to…if  someone got in the way of that…

He stumbled, his legs giving out mid run, and Corey fell into the  soft foliage beneath him. He got dirt up his nose and in his face, but  otherwise, the fall hadn’t hurt him. Nothing on him hurt. Even his  arm, now that he realized it. It had twisted awkwardly when he threw  himself out of Dean’s van, and he’d feared it was broken, but now it

felt fine. The only pain he felt came from the mild burning on that

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same arm from where James had infected him. From where he had

raked his claws over Corey’s flesh, passing on the werewolf venom.

Now that he was alone, Corey allowed himself to break down. No one was going to see it, so it was all right. He wiped at his eyes all the  same, smudging grainy earth and pine needles along his face.

On purpose. James had transformed him on purpose. Even had  Dean not become some jealous psychopath, there was no way Corey  could go back to him for help. Dean hunted werewolves, and Corey  could now officially count himself as being part of that race that Dean  hunted and hated.

A bird twittered and swooped, ducking and diving between the stretching branches of the thick trees. Corey looked up at the sound and then gaped as he saw with his own eyes how far away the bird really was.

At least a good fifty yards, yet Corey could make out all the little shapes of its ruffled brown feathers. He could count them, even. It was a robin. He sniffed the air and detected the faintest whiff of

something that was dying. A small something.

It was the helpless worm trapped inside the robin’s beak.

His senses were heightened. For when it came time for him to kill

someone?

Corey felt as helpless as that worm, but ending it all was not an option. Corey very much wanted to live. Strangely enough, something about being able to hear every sound within a hundred yards―he was guessing—seeing colors and details he’d never seen before, and listening to the soft sounds of the wind swirling through the leaves above him, made that need even stronger.

It was  beautiful, what he was experiencing. He was practically kneeling in muck, but Corey had never experienced nature like this before.

He certainly didn’t feel like a cold-blooded killer. What was it that wise woman had said about her pack? They were peaceful, or they tried to be. No one had hurt Corey, even when they were trying to

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restrain him. James didn’t want to let Corey leave, something about  needing him, whatever that was about, yet he’d done it anyway, after  he’d saved Corey from Dean, and again from the silver bullet.

Though his wounds as nearly healed, the spot where he’d been  shot throbbed at the memory of the pain. Fucking Dean.

He sat kneeling in the pinecones, earth, and twigs a little longer,  contemplating his new situation.