Authors: Marcy Jacks
Tags: #none
“And then it’s back to normal, as though nothing was happening. So I need you to tell me, right now, do you feel this, too? Do you think we’re mated? If the answer is no, then we’re going to wash our hands of each other because I can’t take this anymore.”
A small sobbing sound escaped Adam’s throat as he kept on speaking, and then the scent of salt water wafted through the air once
more.
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Adam was crying again. He was probably hastily wiping at his eyes, hoping Nick wouldn’t notice, and because Nick didn’t want to embarrass him, he didn’t ask about it or point it out.
It was hard to say anything in response to that either.
“I—”
“Fuck, forget it,” Adam said. His footsteps were heavy as he
stomped toward the trail that would take him back to the pack.
Nick reached out and snatched his arm before Adam could make it
past him.
Adam tried to shove him off, but Nick was prepared for it. “Get
the fuck off me!”
Nick kissed him, pushing him into the nearest tree. There must have been a branch there by the way Adam arched and jumped away from it, knocking them both onto the ground.
They fought. The same way they always did, both wrestling for dominance, this time, however, it wasn’t about sex. Nick just didn’t want Adam to leave.
He pinned Adam, as he always managed to do, but for the first time, Adam wouldn’t submit that easily. He wiggled and fought, his fist coming up and catching Nick right in the jaw.
His head flew back, and he saw stars, he actually saw something explode behind his eyes, but he ignored it and pushed away the dizzying lights. He recovered quick enough to throw down all of his weight onto Adam’s chest, keeping him pinned. Then he grabbed Adam’s neck with his teeth.
Adam’s chest shook in defeat. “I hate you,” he sobbed, his body finally relaxing, his muscles going lax under Nick’s ability to dominate him. “I hate you so much,”
“I know.” Nick kissed his jaw, then his cheeks, his eyes, and his lips, tasting the tears over that smooth skin as he went. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He had to tell him. Obviously this was hurting Adam too much, and even if it was way too late, he needed to know the reason why
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Nick left him behind all those years ago.
“Adam, I–I did think you were my mate, too. I mean I do think it,
even now.”
Adam’s breath hitched. “What?”
Nick sat up, pulling his weight off of him. It was a testament to Adam’s good heart that he didn’t immediately start punching Nick’s face in again and just take off.
“I’d just found out I was going blind. It was one thing for you to be with me even with bad eyesight, but I couldn’t stand the thought of you leaving because I couldn’t see at all.”
“You knew—you left me because you knew you were going
blind?”
Nick nodded. “Your face is the last thing I can remember seeing clearly. Almost immediately after I walked away, all I could make out were vague shapes and colors.” It had been like his vision had permanently blurred with tears. “And then one day I woke up and thought it was still nighttime even though it was morning. Everything was black and dark. I couldn’t see at all.”
Adam sat up with him. “Jesus Christ.”
Nick was only barely able to dodge the hands coming at his throat, but that didn’t stop Adam from trying to strangle him.
“You fucking idiot!” Adam yelled. “You left me for that? Because you thought I’d leave you?”
“You would have!” Nick yelled back, grabbing Adam’s fingers and twisting them enough to halt the coming attack.
“That was not for you to decide,” Adam snarled. “I could have been there for you. I could have helped ”—
“How would you have helped?” Nick snapped. “Would you have been able to bring my sight back?”
“Anything! Anything I could have done would have been something!”
“Stop it.” Nick shook Adam off, and Adam didn’t try to strangle him again. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what I was like in the
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beginning. I was a miserable prick. No one wanted to come near me, and I didn’t want them near me. I would have driven you away eventually.”
“You didn’t drive your pack away,” Adam countered.
“Phillip made the decision to not cast me out. That doesn’t mean he was knocking at my door, forcing food into me, or making me socialize. For a while I was no better than a wild wolf.”
“It couldn’t have been—you don’t know that I would have left,” Adam said, being stubborn about it.
“I tried to kill myself. More than once. Whenever anyone came near me I threw things at them, food, glass, it didn’t matter. There are still people in my pack who won’t let their pups near me for how violent I’d been.”
Adam touched his face. His fingers were trembling. “Nick.”
“You would have left me, Adam. You would’ve had to, even if
you were my mate, and even if you didn’t want to, because there’s no way anyone could have stood being emotionally connected to the creature I had been.”
Nick laughed a little. “It’s actually how I learned how to go hunting on my own. When I started to quiet down, I began to hear things that I didn’t know were there. When people got to be too afraid to bring food to me, and I wasn’t much up for suicide anymore, I had to go and try to find it myself.”
“How did that go?” Adam put his arms around Nick’s waist, snuggling closer to him.
“Ran into some trees the first couple of times. The rabbits weren’t too accommodating of me wanting to eat them. Our wise woman eventually figured out what I was doing and offered to teach me how to get around better. She’s as blind as I am.”
“I’m glad you had her.”
“I wasn’t very nice to her in the beginning, either,” Nick said. “Which is why I’m really shocked that Phillip never threw me out.”
“Yeah, no one around here is ever rude to Old Maggie,” Adam
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agreed.
The both stayed quiet for a time. Nick was content to just hold Adam and be held in return. Letting out his frustrations like that was hard work, and Nick didn’t think he’d ever been as emotionally drained since he’d first lost his sight.
“We should head back,” Nick said, remembering the reason why he’d come all the way out here. “It’s too dangerous for us to be this far out.”
“Do you hear anyone nearby? Or smell them?” Adam asked, his hand stroking Nick’s thigh in a clear request, his voice hopeful.
“Even I can get distracted,” Nick said, getting to his feet and pulling Adam up with him. “We can wait until we get back to my room.”
Adam kissed him on that promise, and they both shifted back into
their wolves.
Can you hear me like this?
Adam asked, using the wolf speak that only two mated wolves, or a leading alpha, possessed. It was the first time Nick had ever heard Adam’s voice inside of his head. Maybe sex between two mates wasn’t enough to fully form a connection. Maybe both had to acknowledge that they had claimed each other as well.
Nick was very glad that he did hear it.
Yes. Let’s go running.
It was childish, but also something they hadn’t done since they were both twenty years old. Chasing each other through the trees, essentially having a game of tag.
Nick had never been so happy. The wind in his face, his mate barking and yipping at him to hurry up and catch him. They hadn’t talked boundaries, but Adam also hadn’t told him that it was too late,
either.
This could work. Nick was going to make sure that it worked this
time.
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Chapter Seven
They didn’t make it as far as the cottages, but just inside pack territory. It was close enough, in Nick’s opinion.
They’d stopped briefly for a cool drink at a pond that was just on the inside of the line of land that James owned, and though they were still pretty far out, Nick could not say no when Adam pushed him down, pinning him for a change, and nipped at his ears.
They shifted into men and fucked lazily by the water. Adam sat in Nick’s lap, his breathing hard and moaning quietly as he shifted his hips in a torturously slow rhythm that Nick loved.
Nick had him by the hips, not daring to let him go. “Ride me, Adam,” he said.
Did he ever, but the point of this was to draw out their pleasure, not end it as soon as possible, and they lay there, making love for what seemed like forever, until finally the oncoming release, and the animal need to bring it upon them, got to be too much.
Nick sat up, kissing Adam’s chest as he sped up, bouncing up and down in Nick’s lap.
Adam grabbed his cock and stroked himself until he came with a deep, resounding groan, but he didn’t stop moving, kept on circling and shifting his hips until Nick followed him with a shout.
They kissed until their hearts came back down to a normal rate. Nick wished he could see Adam’s eyes. “I’m sorry I left,” he said.
Adam threaded his fingers through Nick’s hair. “Me, too. We lost ten years.”
They got up. “James knows about us,” Nick said.
He’d been holding on to Adam’s hand and felt the way the other
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man tensed up. “What did he say?”
Nick smiled. “He said it doesn’t matter that I’m blind. We have
his approval if you want to make this official with your pack.”
He heard the way Adam released a laugh at the same time as the breath that he’d been holding. Adam kissed him. “Where will we stay? Your pack or mine?”
Nick had no idea. Decisions like these would have to be made
now that they were going to be together. Wherever Adam was happiest, that’s where Nick would stay.
He opened his mouth to say as much when a scent caught in his nose, the air shifting from just behind the bushes in front of them.
Nick yanked Adam out of the way just as the gunshot cracked through the air like thunder. Fiery-hot pain punched through his chest, right over his heart, and the last thing he heard was Adam screaming as the force of the bullet threw him back into the pond. Even as the water slipped over his head, he could still hear Adam’s voice.
Run, you idiot! Run! he thought, right before he died.
* * * *
Adam screamed as he watched the bullet, almost in slow motion,
punch a hole into Nick’s chest. It just destroyed the healthy muscle
and flesh, making a complete joke of how strong Nick was.
“No! No!” Adam tried to catch him as he fell backward into the
water, the same water that Deacon had been thrown into several
weeks earlier when Jason had torn him apart.
His body sank down, and just as Adam rushed in to get him, another shot sounded, and his ear lit up on fire.
Run, you idiot. Run!
he heard inside of his head. Nick's voice calling to him.
Then he heard nothing more, couldn’t even sense a heartbeat coming from his lover under the water.
He hated himself for it, but he tore his eyes away and ran.
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The hunters were back. They were back, and James would have to be warned before they set up enough traps or wandered farther into pack territory and started shooting people.
Gunshots sounded after him, but he shifted, his body making the transformation faster than he’d even thought possible, and Adam was able to disappear through the trees that provided him with the cover he needed.
As Adam ran, he lifted his neck to release a pained howl. Then he did it again, his heart crying out for what he’d just lost again.
If the others hadn’t heard the sounds of those shots, they would hear this. They would know one of their own had died, and they would prepare for war.
* * * *
When Adam returned, without Nick, James had taken one look
into his face and had known what happened.
Preparations were quickly made. It was too dangerous for the pups or the omegas to stay when everyone knew full well that a battle was to come. James made arrangements for them to stay with Philip, and all of them were to travel in human form by car or truck, passing themselves off as human in case they were to come across any hunters
on the road.
Some of the alphas went with them, for protection, and had been given strict orders to return immediately after the omegas had been safely delivered.