Authors: Marcy Jacks
Tags: #none
He took in a deep breath to calm himself, having gotten his fit of yelling out of his system. Then, just to make himself feel a little better, he kicked in the metal doors leading into the room until they broke clean off.
“Surrounded by idiots, I swear to Christ,” he muttered.
There were still a couple of hunters left. Deacon hadn’t put all of his eggs in one basket like that by sending them all out on a single search party. For fuck’s sake, the only reason why the hunters bothered with taking orders from him at all was because of the deal he’d struck with them to help lead them to every pack he knew about in the area. All they had to do was help him to take back one omega that was rightfully his, and he would give them the location of the pack that they wanted revenge on for the deaths of so many of their fellow hunters.
Of course, he knew better than to trust them completely. They were hunters, after all. The moment Deacon gave them the right
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location, they would blow his head off and burn his remains. That’s just what hunters did, but he’d been planning for that. He knew that was what they were going to do, and the moment he had what he wanted, Tristan, he would have left them with nothing more than a map with an X on it, marking the spot where James’s pack was located to prevent them from following him.
He hadn’t wanted the hunters dead while he could still use them.
He’d been pissed to come back and find Mick and that human of his missing but still hadn’t panicked much over it. They were chained together, and there was silver on the human’s end, all the silver the hunters could melt together to make those handcuffs. How far could they have gone?
Far enough, apparently.
All was not yet lost, though. James thought he still had Mick, and Deacon still had a couple of hunters to work with.
His plans were going to have to change a little, but that was all right. Everything was going to be okay.
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Chapter Eight
When Jason was feeling up to it, Mick had kept to his word and decided to carry him the rest of the way.
The amazing thing that he totally hadn’t expected was for Mick to transform into a werewolf, haunch down, and for Jason to ride on top of his back.
Unfortunately, the chain remained firmly placed around his paw, and appeared even tighter around the skin now that the arm, paw, whatever that part of a wolf was, had gotten just a little bit thicker.
Mick could still not break free of it, so Jason had climbed on
board.
He felt like he was riding an overly large horse, and with all the extra space, plus all that hair to cling to, it was a little bit easier keeping the silver handcuffs from touching down on Mick’s back. Every once in a while Jason’s arm would get tired, and he’d look down to the smell of burning hair, seeing the way the silver had destroyed it, and he would yank his arm away before any more damage could be done or the burning could reach the skin. Thankfully he’d thought to keep the gray joggers Mick had taken with him after he’d made the transformation, and quickly wrapped the pants around his wrist to keep that from happening again.
Mick seemed much easier on this ride though, despite the burns, and he wasn’t kidding about almost being home. This time, less than two hours after he transformed and started his brisk trot—still feeling
too weak to want to throw all of his energy into running—they came upon a clearing of small cottages, some of which looked to be under construction.
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Jason slid off of Mick’s back as he transformed back into a man,
naked once more until Jason handed him back the joggers.
“Is this where you live?”
“Home sweet home,” Mick said, and clearly the sight was rejuvenating as he started walking, sauntering onto the land like only a man familiar with it could. “I’m starving. We’re going to the main house, and you and I are going to clear out the fridge first, go to my room to have more of that amazing sex. You can nurse my silver burns with the first aid kit,” he said, wolfish smile on his mouth.
“Then, and only then, will I call James to let him know we’re back.”
Jason was okay with the getting food part, and his stomach released a loud rumble in agreement. “I hate to rain down on you, but maybe we should tell your leader that there’s a psycho on the loose before we have sex.”
“You’re right,” Mick said, good mood not dampened in the least. “We’ll just have to make it a short meeting because I don’t think we did the claiming right.”
“What? How could we not have? I mean we…” Jason trailed off
and blushed. He’d been raised to not speak much about any forms of sex, let alone sex between two men, and considering the positions Mick had, had him in just that morning…
“I’m not sure, but there’s no way I could have properly claimed you and still want you this bad. It’s almost like we need to have as much sex as possible every spare minute we have until we get it done right, don’t you think?”
Jason slapped him on the arm, realizing that Mick was messing with him.
“As much sex as possible, hm?” he said. “All right. I could go for that, but right after we tell someone what’s happened.”
“We could even have sex during the tell-all. I could care less at this point.”
“I could. No way.”
Mick grinned at him, and again, Jason realized he was being
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teased, and he smiled back. It was strange. They’d only met last night, and still barely knew anything about each other, but to Jason, he was more comfortable around Mick than he had been with previous friends he’d had his entire life.
It was like he’d been missing a limb and didn’t know it, and Mick was that limb, the missing piece of him that was finally there.
“It’s good to see you’re in a good mood when I ’ve been thinking you might be dead or dying somewhere,” said an irritated male voice.
Jason and Mick’s heads turned toward the sound. A fierce-looking man with a horribly scarred face was standing on the porch, his fists clenching around the wooden rail, of one of the nicer looking houses.
“That him?” Jason asked, almost afraid to move under the stare of
such a harsh-looking man. This guy practically had the word alpha
written on his forehead.
“Yup,” Mick replied then nodded to his leader. “Hi, James.”
James jumped neatly over the rail, walked over the patchy grass to them, and then threw his arms around Mick’s shoulders in a tight hug.
“Son of a bitch,” James muttered. Back-slapping ensued before the two men came apart, and then James turned his deep brown stare onto Jason, and the chain that connected him to his friend.
“Couldn’t break it?”
“I’ve been a little under the weather lately,” Mick shot back, clearly annoyed. “And it’s thick as hell.”
“Yeah, it is,” said James, picking up the chain and testing its durability by gently squeezing his fist around it. The chain links were almost twice the size of his hand, and his hands were big. “Bet I could break it,” he said finally.
“Fuck off,” Mick muttered.
“But I don’t want to make you look like a girl in front of our guests, so we’ll just go and get one of the electric saws Isaac bought.”
“Asshole,” Mick said. “You might just want to be careful, though. His end is silver.”
James looked down at Jason’s hand and stepped back. Jason
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almost stuck his hand behind his back, as though worried the sight of
the silver would cause some offense.
James narrowed his eyes, which scrunched together the deep pockmarked scars on his face. “I see. Well, Isaac and Tristan should be by the shed, if they’re not fucking around. We can get Isaac to cut that thing off. Be safer.”
“Why Isaac?” Jason asked, speaking for the first time to such a huge male.
James looked at him. “He’s the only human here, apart from you. Deacon said he’d chained you to a human. I didn’t know if he was being serious about it at first,” said James, looking at Mick now.
Mick’s eyes widened. “He was here?”
“Yeah. Thought I would just hand over Tristan to him, and that pond he’s been wanting. Isaac hasn’t let Tristan out of his sight since. I think the poor guy is about to blow up on his mate.”
Jason didn’t know whether or not James was talking about Isaac or Tristan with that sentence, but he decided it was none of his
business.
Mick took him by the hand. His touch was warm and gentle. Clearly he was at peace with these people, and Jason decided he had no reason to worry either.
They made it to the shed, which looked brand new by comparison to every other structure on this bit of land, but there were also piles of lumber lying all over the place, and near the shed there was a power saw on top of a work bench. Improvements were being made.
Jason met Isaac and his mate Tristan and shook hands with them
both, though with Tristan he was careful to use the hand that was not
chained.
Both were welcoming enough and sympathetic to his ordeal, but they still greeted him with that slight air of suspicion, watching him closely when they thought he was not looking or distracted with something else James was saying.
That was right. Aside from Isaac, James had said that Jason was
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now the only other human on the land, and Mick had yet to make the announcement that they were…well, together. The word
mate
still just didn’t apply to his regular vocabulary, and he was going to have to get used to hearing and saying it now that he was with Mick.
Isaac gave both Jason and Mick a pair of protective goggles, and then brought out one of his smaller cordless saws. Five minutes and some red sparks later, he and Mick were completely separated.
Then it was just a matter of getting the chains off completely. Isaac worked on Mick first, and Jason watched with hitched breath as
that saw came so close to his skin, but Mick hardly seemed worried over it, and Isaac apparently knew what he was doing, because the heavy metal frame popped open, and Mick rubbed the spot where the chain had been, twisting around his wrist to get the circulation running again.
“Now him,” Mick said, nodding to Jason.
“I can do you one better,” Isaac said, then ran into the shed and came back out with a small bit of flat metal.
“What’s that for?” James asked.
Jason was wondering the same thing.
“There’s a trick to getting handcuffs off. Those things are silver, so you might want to keep them in good shape in case you ever need them.”
“We try not to do stuff like that here, Isaac,” James said, the tone of his voice letting on just how much he would rather have the silver destroyed.
“Yeah, yeah, you and I both know that sometimes, especially with a rival alpha out on the loose who wants to get his paws on my boyfriend, that shit doesn’t matter. Nor do I give a rat’s ass. Hold still.” The last bit was directed at Jason, and Isaac took him by the wrists and inserted the tiny metal strip into the connector part of the cuff, where the metal teeth kept them in place.
Then, like magic, they just popped right off.
“Congratulations, you’re free,” Isaac said, taking the silver cuffs
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away to do God only knew what with them.
Jason rubbed his wrists, much in the same way Mick had done
when his metal shackle came off. Then it dawned on him that he and
Mick were no longer connected. No longer forced to stay within so many feet of each other.
It was welcoming and terrifying at the same time.
A hard clap on his shoulder brought him out of his fearful thoughts. James had that Mr. Universe arm around Jason’s shoulder and was currently walking off with him. “Now, you and I are going to have a little talk about what you saw ”—
“That won’t be necessary, James.”
James stopped. He’d practically had to hunch down just to whisper like he had to Jason, and at Mick’s voice, he straightened. “Oh? Already had the talk, did you?”
What the hell was he talking about?
“Yes, and no,” Mick admitted. The huge grin on his face made Jason’s confidence soar. “He’s not going to tell anyone about our pack, and he wouldn’t try to anyway. We’re mated.”
James’s eyebrows lifted just enough to give the impression that he was a little shocked, and then those dark-chocolate eyes of his came
back to Jason.
Then he turned his head over to look back at the shed, where