Jacks, Marcy - The Alpha Wolf Kidnaps a Mate [DeWitt's Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (9 page)

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Chapter Eight

Dean cleaned the blade of his knife by wiping it in the grass. The patch of grass he could find that wasn’t oily black with the heavy puddle of blood, that is.

He’d gotten all the information he could out of the gurgling, soon-

to-be fiery corpse on the table he’d set up, and now he was sure he  had the right pack.

He’d had to leave the house he’d rented after setting fire to Corey  Black’s house, but it hardly mattered. In Dean’s line of business, he  needed to keep things light. Packing up what little he had laying  around that was of value took less than a half an hour, and every bit of  furniture in the place he’d gotten free or cheap from people getting rid  of their own stuff online.

He’d gone out, bought an RV he’d also found online from somecamper looking to upgrade to a model that wasn’t from the eighties, and set up his new shop in the woods just outside of Brampton.

It hadn’t taken him long before he’d stumbled across a vampire.

Not a werewolf, but vampires were known to keep tabs on any packs nearby so they could avoid them, being as that vampires and werewolves didn’t exactly get along during the best of times.

She’d been a hooker, and that made his next move easy. All Dean had to do was drive up to the curb she worked, pretend he was interested, offer her the money to get into his new piece-of-shit RV, and then drive away to someplace private.

He’d taken her to his chosen campsite and brought her outside the  RV to where he’d already set up his table, which confused her, but she went along with it anyway. Then he fucked her, because he was

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still furious as hell and needed an outlet for that. Plus, it would have  looked suspicious to her if he hadn’t. He had the silver shackles on  her before she knew he was pulling them out or realized what  they

were.

The funny thing was her reaction. She spat and kicked and hissed at him as he chained her to a post he’d set up in the ground, but she didn’t go nearly as insane with anger until she watched him go into her purse and take his money back.

Whatever, it wasn’t like she would be using it where she was going anyway, and if anything, she was more the predator than he was. She was a vampire, for God’s sake. She probably had plans to bite into Dean’s neck the second his back was turned and suck him

dry for the blood she required to survive.

Didn’t matter anyway. The female didn’t start to get scared until  he strapped her onto his nice new work table and pulled out his  knives. They’d been recently sharpened, and they gleamed in the  yellow light coming from his RV.

She fought all the harder but couldn’t break free. Dean’s table was  the sort of heavy-duty thing most construction workers kept for their  work plans or other projects, and it hadn’t taken Dean much effort to  modify it to his particular needs.

She  hadn’t talked at first, her attempt at spiting him for tying her  down like he was, and then she tried to negotiate with him, pretending  he was simply playing some sort of sexual game, though her eyes had  told him she knew better. By then it had gotten more than obvious to  her that he was a hunter, and he was serious about obtaining his  information.

After just a few cuts and slits to her skin with one of his silver blades, she started to speak of what she knew of the local werewolf population. He could tell  that his questions confused her. As a vampire, it was expected that, if you ever had the misfortune to be caught and questioned, the hunter who had you would want information on the nest you came from, not a pack from another

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species altogether.

Her confusion made his job easier. It was simply a matter of  convincing her that what he wanted had nothing to do with her or the  vampire nest she came from, poor as it must be considering she was  hooking. After that, she sang like a songbird, and he cut her anyway.

Fuck her. The whore was planning on sucking his blood after  she’d let him take her on her hands and knees like some kind of

frigging dog. He’d been careful to take her like that, not wanting her  facing him during the act.

Not because he was ashamed to be  having sex with a vampire, no,  he just didn’t want to give those fangs of hers the chance to sink into  his neck while he was sinking into her.

The gurgling on the table stopped, and the hooker’s body went  limp. Then it burst into blue, red, and orange flames. The natural  reaction that came after a vampire died.

That was fine. He’d been done with her hours ago, and he was still  just agitated when he’d started cutting her open. Dean had all the  information he needed, and he didn’t even need to pack up his

campsite.

There was a pack of werewolves living in the area, and

apparently, their alpha had just taken a mate.

* * * *

“Mate?” Corey repeated.

James nodded, his arms crossed, stretching the leather over that  massive chest of his. He was leaning his back against the base of a  thick oak, one leg up just enough so that his foot could rest on a root  curving out of the ground, and he wasn’t looking at Corey.

He looked more like he was waiting for a fight.

Corey wasn’t sure how he should be reacting. James had basically  just told him that he and Corey were…well, married. That was the  human way of putting it, wasn’t it?

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“We’re not married,” James said, looking at him and using that  ability that he had to listen in on Corey’s thoughts. Apparently it  wasn’t just a werewolf thing. Werewolves could do it, listen in on  each other’ s thoughts―Corey had already figured out that much―but  that was only when they were in their wolf forms, so they could  communicate with each other while hunting.

James, however, could do it with Corey while they were both in  their human skins because of the way they were connected.

“You need to stop thinking of yourself as human. Those days are  gone.”

“I can’t just change my way of thinking about myself in only a  couple of days,” Corey said.

James sighed. “All right, but you will have to get used to it soon.  You’re one of us now, part of this pack, and I don’t like putting this  on you so quickly, but there are some rules we all have to face as  werewolves for the safety of everyone in our group. That includes  you, mated to the alpha or not.”

Mates. He was going to need some time to get used to that. It  sounded too much like something out of a trashy romance novel.

“Corey, please focus.”

Corey shifted. “Is there any way to keep you from hearing my  every thought? I don’t particularly like this.”

James had that grin on his face that he got whenever he knew  something Corey did not and was enjoying the knowledge. “Yes,  you’re just too undisciplined right now. You’ll learn how to keep your  privacy eventually.”

“Is that why I can’t hear all your thoughts?”

“Yup.”

Bastard has one up on me.

James nodded. “I do. That’ll change though, don’t worry.”

Corey hoped it would, and soon. He liked James, thought he was  attractive as all hell, but that didn’t mean he wanted the other man

having access to his every thought. Sometimes he had real dodgy

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things pass through his head at random, and he didn’t want to be  sharing any of those embarrassing thoughts with anyone, not even a  husband.

Or a mate.

“So what do I need to know?”

James looked at him, tilting his head a little as he did. “You’re taking all this in pretty well, considering what I just told you.”

Corey hooked his fingers into the pockets of his new borrowed jeans, and then he found a rock to kick around in the dirt. Like yesterday, they were in the same place that James and he had  been, both naked with James trying to teach Corey how to have his first transformation.

It seemed that part of why he couldn’t let his wolf out really was his own fault. By denying the attraction he felt toward his mate, he’d inadvertently denied his wolf. James had figured it out and rectified the situation by coming into Corey’s room last night.

“I guess, after everything that happened so far, I’m not really surprised anymore.”

Their time together still made him blush. Memories of their wolves running, chasing squirrels together—though Corey hadn’t been in control, he’d still remembered it—made him smile.

Going back to the main cabin this morning though, listening to all the cat calls and howls coming from James’s pack, all thirty or so members of them having heard them having sex, even from the separate cabins, had made him want to melt into a puddle of humiliation.

The worst had been when Old Maggie, the one lady everyone seemed to respect so much, had looked at him with shrewd eyes, and said that if he and James wished to have sex anymore, it was far more polite to move the bed frame away from the wall where it wouldn’t make as much noise.

Only then had Corey remembered that their rooms were right next to each other, and he was sure his face could be no other color but a

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bright, traffic-light red.

But maybe the headboard banging the wall wouldn’t be an issue  anymore. Would he be expected to share a room with James now?  They were mated after all, and now that Corey was in on the secret  that everyone but him had known about since day one, it seemed like  the logical thing to do.

Except that Corey didn’t know what the proper etiquette was for  this situation, if there was any at all. He wasn’t even sure he wanted  to have sex with James again after all  this.

Well, scratch that,
 
yeah
, he wanted to have sex with him, but he  still had a choice here, damn it. He wasn’t a mindless, horny robot.

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” James said.

It took a second for Corey to realize that James was responding  to  his earlier words and not his recent thoughts. “Should I be happy?”  Corey asked, looking at him, agitated now. “In the last four days I  was shot by my ex-boyfriend, kidnapped by werewolves, turned into  one myself, had my house torched, made sick with the wolf inside me  wanting out, and then told that I was mated to their alpha. These  things keep happening, and no one has ever asked me if I wanted any  of this. I had a life before I came here, you know. It wasn’t a lot, but it  was there, and it was mine.”

James nodded, all patience and understanding. “I know.”

“How could you know?” Corey demanded. “You’re the alpha here, the one in charge. Everyone here does what you say, and now me, too, according to you.”

James’s neck clenched up. Maybe it was Corey’s new senses, but the way the hairs on the back of his neck went up also warned him that he was severely agitating the man in front of him.

James didn’t move. He made no demeaning comments, no threats, and he didn’t throw anything. He took in a deep breath, and seemed to calm himself down on his own, the way normal adults were supposed

to.

This was not Dean standing in front of him. Corey didn’t have to

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worry.

“You came back to us. We offered to let you leave, and you  stayed. Coming back was your decision. You’re still free to go  whenever you like. Just because we’re mated doesn’t mean we won’t  survive without the other.”

Corey didn’t like the tone James used as he said that.

“As far as mating with you, I had about as much say in that department as you did.”

Corey couldn’t contain his shock. “What?”

James shook his head. “You’re still new to this, so it’s not like I

can blame you for not knowing better. Werewolves don’t choose their  mates. We just kind of find them.”

“Find them?” Corey repeated stupidly.

“Yes, we  find them. There’s no rhyme or reason to it either. Until  I met you, I had no doubt in my mind that when I found my mate, she  would be the most gorgeous thing on long legs the world had ever  seen.”

Corey swallowed over the boulder in his throat, panic seizing him.

“She?”

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not straight, exactly, but I did  always prefer the company of women to men.”

“You’re bisexual?” Corey asked.

James shrugged again. “I guess so. I’ve been with men before and  had some pretty good times, so, I guess, yeah.”

Corey was still having a hard time taking it in. “But you wanted to  mate with a woman?”

“Wasn’t really a matter of wanting, I just expected it. When a  werewolf mates, it’s not just because he’s found a life partner, but  also because it’s time to increase the pack, have pups, that kind of  thing. You can’t really do that with two male mates. I had to ask  Maggie if it was even possible.
 
She’s
 
never even seen it before, and  she’s been around for a while.”