Bad Blood (7 page)

Kerrick stepped up behind Carlson, pulled back his arm and slapped the flogger against the older man’s back. He flinched and stiffened, but didn’t cry out. Blaine could hear the sobs of his wife from somewhere in the crowd, though, and it fueled his anger. Blaine struck Carlson again across his back, a bit lower this time. Carlson was taking it well and showing no real signs of distress, but Blaine was barely able to stand there and watch it. This was his pack member, not Kerrick’s. And the idea that he would soon be taking Carlson’s place at the tree while his entire pack watched was totally unacceptable.

The other young Dire who was to be flogged stood next to Blaine, with a guard on his other side. Both men’s attention was on the spectacle in front of them, and the guard’s handgun was holstered next to Blaine’s hand.

Before he even thought about what he was doing or took time to think it over, his hand snaked out and pulled the gun from its holster while he threw an arm around the Dire’s neck and put him in a headlock. Pressing the gun to the man’s temple, he backed him up a few steps and growled to the other Dire who had made an instinctive lunge toward them.

“Try it and I’ll blow his fucking head off.”

Someone in the crowd screamed, and chaos broke out behind him as the pack realized what was happening. Turning to keep the crowd before him with the woods at his back, he glanced over at Kerrick, whose face had turned an alarming shade of red.

“Damn it, Blaine,” he said softly, almost resignedly. “Put the gun down and let him go.”

Still backing toward the woods with his hostage, Blaine barked out a laugh. “Not fucking likely.” He jammed the gun harder against the Dire’s temple as Kerrick took a step toward them. “I’ll kill him, Kerrick. Don’t push it.”

“If you kill him, my pack will be on you before you take another step. I wouldn’t be able to stop them, Blaine.”

“Really? What about your oh-so-strong discipline? You mean there’s something you can’t control? I’m shocked.”

“Blaine, please put down the gun and let’s talk about it.”

“Nothing to talk about, chief. I’m leaving, and you’re not stopping me. I’ll take this one along for insurance. If you follow us, I’ll kill him. If you’re smart and stay here, I’ll let him go unhurt somewhere up the mountain where you can find him. Your choice.”

Kerrick’s mouth was a grim white line. He nodded once, his expression angry yet strangely fearful. Kerrick afraid? Hard to imagine anything that could scare him. A funny little pang in his chest surprised Blaine. He had the weirdest notion of wanting to go to him and comfort him, to pull his head down on his chest and tell him everything would be okay. Where the hell was
that
coming from?

Shaking it off, he quickly moved back to the tree line, only releasing the Dire from the headlock when they reached the thicker woods. Still holding the gun on him, Blaine motioned for him to climb the hill behind him and stayed close to him while he scrambled up the rise. When they reached a small patch of level ground that Blaine knew led to the main trail, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was following.

So far, everything was silent behind him—it seemed as if no one below them in the yard was even breathing. Unsure how long Kerrick would be able to resist coming after him, he urged the Dire forward toward the trail. “Don’t try anything stupid, or try to be a hero. I meant what I said about letting you go when we get farther up the mountain—
if
you do as I say.”

The young Dire turned and bared his teeth at Blaine, and Blaine bared his own right back with a vicious growl, gratified to see the young man lower his head after a moment. He was a gamma, strong and even brave, but with an instinctive need to follow the orders of a more dominant wolf, even, it seemed, a Gray. Blaine pushed him forward, snarling at him to make him go faster, and soon they were on the main trail and headed toward the stream where he’d first met Kerrick. It was only a quarter of a mile or so from the lodge.

If he could make it there, he could run upstream and perhaps lose his scent in the water the same way that Kerrick had when Blaine had tracked him that first day. Could it have only been two weeks or so ago? So much had changed in such a short time. It was as if the whole world had been made anew.

At least using the stream to hide his trail would slow Kerrick down when he came for him. Blaine figured he might give him fifteen or twenty minutes before he came after him, and he meant to make the most of it. He wouldn’t think about any of the rest of it now. Not the betrayal, nor the heartbreak of leaving his home and his pack behind—not even the sharp pain he couldn’t deny at the thought of leaving Kerrick.

He ran faster through the trees, shoving the young Dire ahead of him, branches whipping past their heads as they dodged through the underbrush. He wouldn’t permit himself to look back at his home, the place where he was leaving his heart and maybe his mind and spirit forever.

****

When he reached the stream, he motioned the Dire to a stop. “Take off your clothes,” he ordered.

The Dire raised his eyebrows, looking alarmed and Blaine laughed derisively. “Not on your best day, boy, or my worst. Take them off and the shoes too.”

Sullenly, the young man stripped, and when he’d taken off the last of his clothing, Blaine gestured toward the undershirt. “Tear that up in strips.”

He frowned, but did as he was told, and when he finished, Blaine used the strips to tie his hands behind his back. He sat him on the ground and tore his shorts in similar strips, wrapping that material around his ankles.

He put on the big boy’s shirt and jeans. They were too large, of course, but he rolled the pants legs up and made it work. The shoes weren’t too bad, as the Dire had surprisingly small feet for his size. Tying them around his neck by their strings, he left the boy on his side by the stream and took off down the mountain, wading out in the middle of the creek. It was fast running, but not deep, though the icy water made his feet numb almost immediately. He started moving downstream, knowing the boy was watching. He would travel this way only until he was out of sight, then get out of the water and double back up the mountain before getting back in again. He hoped he could confuse the trail for a few minutes anyway and buy a little more time.

He thought he might go over the mountain and find a highway, maybe hitch a ride. Kerrick would lose his trail for sure then, and once Blaine was out of the area, he could think about what to do next. The boy’s wallet was in his pants, and a quick check showed a few twenties inside. It would have to do until he could find a way to get more.

A tingling at the back of his neck started up, over the still-healing wound. Kerrick must have started after him. He moved as quickly as he could down the creek, dodging the rocks. It was slower going than he would have liked, because of the fast moving current. The last thing he needed to do was twist an ankle in the uneven footing of the stream.

By the time he’d gone far enough down the mountain to help him evade tracking, the tingling in his neck had turned to a steady ache. Blaine had never heard of anything like it before. His Grays gave a mating bite, of course, but it was largely symbolic in nature. It was just a love bite that healed over quickly and was mostly given in the throes of passion. Obviously the bite of the Dire Wolf had far greater significance and power. The farther away he moved from Kerrick, the more it ached and throbbed, reminding him of his mate.

His mind was being probed too. It was gentle and tentative at this point, but there was definitely an alien presence there. He’d felt this intrusion before, during the bonfire when Kerrick first bit him and declared him to be his mate.
“From this moment on, you belong to me, mind, body and spirit. And make no mistake, you’ll be my bitch.”
The words Kerrick spoke that night came back clearly to him as he climbed out of the stream and ran back up the mountain, careful to make as little noise as possible. His bitch—Kerrick had certainly made that prediction come true.

The boy was next to the fast-running stream so the noise of that should help disguise the sound of Blaine doubling back. Blaine wondered if there was any way to block the probing, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might even be projecting thoughts, like radio waves. Maybe Kerrick could pick him up no matter what he did to resist him. That was a daunting idea, and it made him quicken his pace up the mountain. He dodged back into the stream, wincing again at the coldness of the water. He traveled for a while up the stream and then climbed out again to make better time.

Trying not to think about the fact that Kerrick was closing in on him with his incredible speed, he jammed his feet in the shoes and took off at a dead run up the trail. He ran until he was panting for breath, and his lungs burned with the effort. He tried to keep his mind clear, but it was difficult. The probing continued and was becoming more and more insistent.

When he reached a small clearing near an outcrop of rock just below the mountain’s crest, he stopped for a moment to rest. He looked out over the blue vista stretching out as far as he could see, the mountains partially covered by wispy, misty white clouds, so much like smoke. This area of the Blue Ridge had been called
shaconage
, or “place of the blue smoke” by the Cherokee Indians long ago. These mountains were his home, and the idea of leaving them caused his eyes to fill with stinging tears. He fell down the boulder in exhaustion and let his mind drift back to thoughts of Kerrick.

“The strongest in any pack is always the alpha. You’ll be my second now—and my mate.”
Kerrick’s second, his beta—was that what Kerrick would reduce him to? Funny that the idea was not as hateful to him as it should be. It wasn’t what his grandfather had trained him for all those years, so why did the idea actually even appeal to him? Blaine had never wanted Colby to be alpha, after all. He didn’t trust Colby to make good decisions, so he’d had to hang onto the reins tightly, fighting Colby every step of the way for years. He was so tired of the fight.

Kerrick had dealt with Colby in one afternoon, sending him away from the pack.
“He resents you. It’s best that I made him leave here and start his own pack. Your grandfather should have done it years ago, and you should have too. He’d only cause trouble if he stayed around here.”

Could Blaine be a beta for Kerrick? He thought he might actually make a good beta, maybe better than he could ever have been as alpha. He liked to solve problems and work on the books, taking care of his pack financially. Discipline had never been his strong suit, so he’d avoided issues mostly, hoping personal problems would resolve themselves and only stepping in as a last resort. His pack loved him, but the lack of strong discipline in the pack showed when they came under attack by the Dires. They had split into bickering factions and were unable to present a united front.

The probing started again, even more insistent this time, and without making a conscious decision to do it, Blaine let go and allowed it to crowd into his mind. Once his guards were down, his head was filled with frantic images of Kerrick.
“Where are you?”
The words came as clearly into his brain as if Kerrick were standing beside him. When he hesitated, images of their lovemaking earlier that day flooded his mind. They were all from Kerrick’s point of view, of course, so Blaine saw his own face thrown back in passion, his eyes tightly closed as his head thrashed back and forth on the pillow. He felt his face grow red and pushed the image firmly away.
“Where are you?”
The question came again, and this time, Blaine allowed the beautiful vista in front of him to fill his mind.

An answering, triumphant howl sounded so clearly in his head that he turned around to look behind him, but the trail was empty for as far as he could see. His neck was back to tingling again, though. He wondered if that meant Kerrick was closing in on him. The damn Dires were so fast, their movements through the forest unlike anything Blaine had ever seen before, but he’d known that all along, hadn’t he?

Had he really hoped that Kerrick would come after him? That he would catch up to him and demand that he come back? Because that would take the guilt off his shoulders, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t feel shame at letting down his grandfather and his entire pack by giving in meekly and allowing the Dires—allowing Kerrick—to take over. If he was forced to go back, forced to be the beta and Kerrick’s mate, then no one could blame him, right?

He wondered what life would be like for the rest of his old pack if he didn’t go back, and felt a strong sense of shame for leaving them behind. Especially considering what Kerrick had said about them choosing to stay with him out of loyalty. Yet he’d run from them the first chance he got, because of his pride. He buried his face in his hands and took a deep, shuddering breath. What the hell was he doing?

He’d put his own self-regard and anger before the good of his pack. And they
were
his pack, no matter who the alpha was now and no matter what his role would be in the future. He should have tried to stay to help them through this difficult transition. Maybe he could have found a way to work things out with Kerrick. Maybe he still could.

Dry scrubbing his face, he stood up and looked down at the valley below him. If Kerrick was looking for him, maybe it would be best to put aside his ego and let him find him. If Kerrick stopped pushing the issue of punishment—and was sincere about respecting his feelings more in the future—maybe they could find a way to work things out between them. He owed it to his pack to try.

“We
can
work things out, Blaine, and you
are
coming back with me.”

Blaine whirled around and almost stumbled backward when he saw Kerrick standing not fifteen feet away from him. Kerrick was beside him in an instant, steadying him. “Be careful. You almost fell.”

He pulled Blaine into his arms, refusing to let him go until he’d pulled him some little distance away from the edge. He released him then, reluctantly, from the look on his face, and regarded Blaine steadily.