Authors: Marcy Jacks
Tags: #none
The resounding boom of a gunshot made Corey wince, even through his drugged haze. The heavy thud of a limp body landing just above his head told him that Dean had hit his mark. Blood and
gunpowder filled the air.
Warm tears made slow tracks down his cheeks, and before he
completely fell into the dark void he was sinking into, Dean’s face
came into his line of sight, and his hands smothered everything else out.
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Chapter Nine
James was lucky to be alive, but he felt anything but. Having what felt like a thousand silver balls, which that soon-to-be-dead mother
fucker had loaded his shotgun with, picked from his face, neck, and chest with tweezers by Old Maggie was not his idea of luck.
She just kept on shaking her head, ignoring his swearing and telling him how Romulus and Remus must have been smiling down at him. His eyes hasn’t been compromised, and the scarring to his face was mostly isolated to his lower left jaw and cheek, with some other little holes speckled across his chin, nose, and forehead, and his body was fighting the silver poisoning very well considering how much of it he’d had pumped into him. He’d only puked twice.
Yeah, he so didn’t feel lucky, and Maggie said nothing of any possible good luck Corey might be having.
“I didn’t find him in the clearing, which means he took him,” Mick said. He handed a bloody towel to Tristan, who took it away in silence.
An attack on the pack’s alpha and kidnapping of his mate was enough to sink the spirits of everyone, even those still suspicious of Corey.
“It would almost have been better if the man had killed him
outright,” James seethed, sliding into a sitting position from the table where he’d been operated on. He didn’t look into the bowl of bloody water where Maggie disposed of all the pellets, nor did he want to look into a mirror and see his grotesque face.
Silver wounds would heal, eventually, but he would have scars after this. Lots and lots of them.
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“You don’t mean that,” Mick said.
“Look at my face!” James yelled, pointing his thumb at himself, as though Mick could somehow have missed it. “He did this to me and left me for dead. What do you think he’s going to do to Corey? A recently transformed werewolf?”
James had been fortunate that, during his entire reign as alpha, no member of his pack had ever been captured and questioned by hunters. But he had gone on expeditions with neighbouring packs, offering his aid when some of their members had been.
He’d seen what the hunters had done in their quest for information. Sometimes it had simply been a power trip, and the torturing had merely gotten out of hand before James and his men could find the stolen werewolf and put him, or her, out of their
misery.
Sometimes they were never found, either.
Eyes sliced out with silver blades, words cut into the skin, skin ripped away, silver burns, tongues removed, fingers snapped off, faces mutilated.
And Corey was currently with a man who had meant him severe
harm whilst he’d still been human.
No, James had failed him, and now the best he could hope for was a quick death for his mate before he suffered too much.
The local vampire nest had apparently contacted James’s pack, asking for information on one of their missing females. Mick had been the one to take that call, and he’d recognized it for what it was.
If a female vampire did not return to her nest for the day, that could only mean a hunter was looking for information, and right now there was only one hunter the pack had to worry about.
Mick had run outside to warn James, not expecting the scent of blood or to find James shot, alone, and bleeding from his wounds.
Mick had taken him back, and now James was here, pissed off at himself and everyone in general.
“James, I caught his scent. He went on the highway, so it’ll be
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difficult to track, but―”
“Then let’s go,” James said, pulling on the nearest shirt he could grab, which was a white undershirt that soaked up the blood from his chest and speckled the cotton within seconds.
Both Maggie and Mick seemed to look at him, knowing he wouldn’t wait for bandages or any other medical care after the chore it had been for him to lay still long enough to remove the silver pellets.
And that was even with the tiny minuscule chance that he could find Corey alive.
“I’ll take you to where the scent weakens, and we can go from there,” Mick said.
James nodded and gave information to Maggie to pass down to the pack. While both the leading alpha and the beta were gone, he wanted Eli and Andrew to take their place should neither of them return. James transformed, and doing so while still suffering from the holes on his face and chest was a bitch, but he was on all fours and
running full speed before he even got out of the house, his best friend
right beside him.
* * * *
Corey woke up to bright sunlight streaming through his eyelids, and when he opened them, he was damn near blind from the light in his face.
By the time his eyes adjusted, he wished he really was blind so he wouldn’t have to look at all Dean’s toys, especially while he was helpless and strapped half-naked to a table.
Dean loved finding old work benches and making these kinds of adjustments to them, maybe it was karma that Corey, for all the times he said nothing, allowed such horrible things to happen under his nose, would then later suffer the same fate as those he’d failed to
defend.
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“You’re awake.” Dean must have been standing above him and noticed that Corey’s eyes had opened, because Corey felt the distinct sensation of fingers caressing his hair. Dean’s face then appeared in his line of vision. “How do you feel?”
Corey tried to move but found that he couldn’t, and that had nothing to do with the buckles that held his waist, wrists, and ankles down on the table. Mud seemed to be flowing through his veins, weighing him down. “What did you do to me?”
“The sedative must still be in your system. There was enough to kill a normal man.” Dean’s voice was accusing as he said it.
“When you shot me in the chest with a silver bullet, James didn’t have much choice but to change me,” Corey replied, as much accusation in his voice as Dean had used. No goddamn way was he letting Dean shame him for becoming a werewolf. It was hardly Corey’s fault, and if he had the chance to go back and redo things, he would let James transform him. He wouldn’t change a thing.
Dean just looked enraged at Corey’s words.
Though he knew it was dangerous, he could hardly help the next words that came out of his mouth. “They’re not evil creatures, y’know. They’re people like you and me―”
Dean grabbed him by the throat. “Shut up,” he snarled.
Corey had no choice but to comply, what with that hand squeezing his neck, crushing his airways. Corey wanted to throw the other man off him, but he could only twitch helplessly against the buckles holding him down. His lungs burned and throat constricted, his body’s natural reaction to force air down into his lungs, but Dean didn’t loosen his hold.
He was going to die now. Dean was killing him!
Just as the black cloud came to swim around his vision, it
vanished altogether. Dean’s hands went from murderous and cold on his neck, to gentle and caressing on his cheeks. Then he was kissing him. Kissing him and crying.
Corey had to pull his head away, a difficult task considering he
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had such trouble moving and so little space to do it. “Dean, I was with them for only a couple of days. I don’t know anything about them that can help you,” he said, voice rasping due to Dean’s choke hold.
Dean sniffed, turned around, wiped his face with his shirt, then looked back down at him. He reached for something above Corey’s head. “I already know where they are and killed their alpha. There’s nothing I need on them now.”
Corey’s heart fluttered at the reminder of James, who was now dead, who he barely had the chance to be with. He swallowed hard and forced his throat to work through the welling tears.
Maybe it was normal for Corey to have fallen in love with the other man so quickly, considering they were mated. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that Corey had genuinely liked James, had enjoyed his company and running through the woods with him.
Now he was gone in what seemed like a blink, nothing more than a memory for Corey to carry around, for however much longer he would live, that is.
Dean was going to kill him, but that wasn’t why he cried. He’d fallen in love with James, so suddenly and unexpectedly, and now he was gone forever. The suddenness of it stole away the oxygen from his lungs.
With James gone, the rest of the pack would be in chaos with no leader, and others fighting amongst themselves to become that leader. Eventually a new alpha would be elected, but until then, Dean would have more than enough time to go back and pick off the others in the following confusion.
“Dean, please, they’re good people. They were good to me. Don’t hurt them.”
Dean’s eyes flashed in that maniacal way that made Corey shiver
with fear.
“How long?”
The question threw him for a loop. “What?”
Dean pulled back the things he had grabbed for. Looked like a
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glass of water and some ball bearings.
“How long have the two of you been fucking?”
Uh-oh
. “That didn’t start until after you and I ended,” Corey snapped, his eyes drying with the sudden anger. “Don’t even think about trying to accuse me of cheating on you. I never did.”
“The strange thing is that I don’t ever recall us ending.” Dean dropped the ball bearings into the water and began swirling them around.
“Have you lost your
mind?
” Corey yelled. “It ended when you
shot me in the chest.”
Dean touched the little puckered scar where the bullet had made impact, his fingers tracing the indent, caressing it. It had healed, but was still pink and sensitive. “I was aiming for the werewolf approaching you. Had I known, really known, you were already involved with him, you would have been dead.”
Not reassuring words. Corey’s eyes kept on moving toward the glass that Dean was swirling around in his other hand, the hypnotic motion and the sound of metal on glass making him nervous.
“What are you doing?”
Dean leaned in close, their noses nearly touching. “I love you, Corey, I really do. I think you’re the only person in the world I ever did love.”
“Dean.”
“But you betrayed me. You’re a werewolf now. I can’t forgive that.” Dean looked ready to started crying again, but instead, he poured the water over Corey’s bound hand, and Corey understood what those ball bearings were made of when the liquid made contact with his skin.
Silver. He’d contaminated the water with silver. Corey screamed
as the sensation of acid burning through his flesh consumed him.
* * * *
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Of course, James and Mick had lost the trail on the highway. It was virtually impossible to follow someone going so fast on the road, in a vehicle with the windows up, where other scents and exhaust fumes would mask that of the person James wanted to track the most.
Despite that, for the next hour, he and Mickey continued on, following the road and stopping to sniff at the unpaved smaller back roads where a car could have turned off.
James hadn’t wanted to give up, but with no scent to follow, and the clock ticking, his despair built inside of him like a cancerous tumour, destroying him from the inside.
Then his ears twitched, the sound of a distant wail catching his attention.
You hear that?
Mick asked.
James was already running in the direction of the sound, his leg muscles pumping, the trees a blur as he passed them.
The sound grew louder, another scream, and then it was cut off, but James already knew which direction to follow.
He was still alive. Corey was still alive, whether he was in one or a hundred pieces was another story. Then the scream had been stopped. Had his tongue been cut out?
Please God, please God, please God
, James inwardly chanted. He wasn’t even really a believer in God.
Mick called for him to wait, but James barely heard the other wolf. He’d been going so fast that when he finally burst through the trees and into a clearing he didn’t recognize, it disoriented him.