DeWitt
’s Pack 9
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
After being separated by death for over a thousand years, alpha
werewolf Blasius has found his mate, reincarnated into the body of
Detective Ryan Miller.
Ryan was injured in the last battle between hunters and
werewolves, and Blasius has no choice but to force him out of his
human life and turn him into a werewolf to keep death from
separating them once more.
As a new werewolf, living by the laws of the pack is entirely
different from the laws of a human, and Ryan doesn't know if he
can adjust to this new way of life.
Blasius must convince Ryan, a down-to-earth man, that his place
is at Blasius's side with the rest of the pack, before a new group of
hunters arrives to finish what they started.
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal,
Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 36,459 words
TAKEN BY THE ALPHA WOLF
DeWitt’s Pack 9
Marcy Jacks
EVERLASTING CLASSIC
MANLOVE
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic ManLove
TAKEN BY THE ALPHA WOLF
Copyright © 2012 by Marcy Jacks
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-809-1
First E-book Publication: December 2012
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be
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PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
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TAKEN BY THE ALPHA
WOLF
DeWitt’s Pack 9
MARCY JACKS
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
Detective Ryan Miller couldn’t take it anymore. He was going
insane stuck here in this fucking cage, and he wanted out. Now.
He slammed his whole body against the bars and threw the books
he’d been given through them and against the basement walls of his
prison. He yelled and kicked and raged with everything he had, but
the fucking bars wouldn’t break. It hurt just touching them, but he
didn’t give a shit about that or about the burning welts his skin
produced whenever he punched the bars or gripped them with his
fingers either. He was done caring.
One of the men had told him the bars were made out of silver and
that they would keep him in place, preventing him from tearing away
at the round and thin strips of metal.
Silver. Yeah fucking right. More likely someone had just coated
the bars with some kind of acid. He had no idea what it was on the
periodic table that would burn human skin without eating through the
metal bars of this overly large dog cage he was in, but that was hardly
the main topic on his mind.
He just wanted out.
It had been more than three weeks since he’d come to this land
8
Marcy Jacks
owned by James DeWitt and had seen all those fucked up things,
including watching his former lover and the officer on duty with him,
Decker, get shot in the back of the head.
He’d been shot, too. Ryan had taken a slug in the gut, and he’d
gone down, but he kept on shooting his gun, emptying all the bullets
he had into the things that had wanted to attack him.
Some of them had been other people with guns, and then there had
been the giant wolves.
They were enormous. Ryan hadn’t known wolves could become
that size, some of which were about the same size as, or maybe even
bigger than, a standard grizzly bear.
He would never believe those creatures were werewolves, though.
He was an intelligent man, educated, and definitely not superstitious.
That was a hallucination if he ever saw one. And that man who’d
seemingly changed from wolf to naked male right in front of him?
That had to be a hallucination as well.
Maybe there was something in the air around this place. Maybe
these people were part of some kind of cult, and maybe they also
believed the things they saw around here to be real.
Whatever it was, Ryan had watched as they’d all, with grim faces,
collected the bodies of their dead, along with the dead bodies of the
men who’d attacked them, and quietly took them away into the woods
somewhere. Ryan assumed it was bury them and hide the evidence of
what had happened.
He had already been halfway out of it by that time. Watching
through the window, lying on a bed, while that same naked man from
before had worked to take Ryan’s clothes off.
Nothing sexual had happened, that Ryan could recall, but his mind
was hardly with him while that man cut him with something. He’d
only taken his eyes away from the goings on outside to look for the
cause of the stinging on his arms and legs, and when he looked, he’d
wished that he hadn’t.
It had to be another hallucination. Either that or the guy was
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
9
wearing some kind of gloves.
His hands had become large, the skin leathery and darker than
what was on his arms, chest, and face. They were brown compared to
the rest of his tanned skin, and the knuckles were gnarled and huge.
What was even stranger was the hair. A patch of black hair, fur,
really, on the top of his hand, and at the very end of his brown fingers
were sharp black claws. The points were so profound they could have
been needles.
And this guy was using them to make long scratches all up and
down his legs, arms, neck, and chest.
Then, in a strange act of kindness, the man put his hand under
Ryan’s neck and gently lifted him. A cool glass was put to his lips,
and Ryan drank.
In that strange accent that was not quite English or Scottish, or
anything else from Europe that Ryan could identify, the man had said,
“Take all that ye be needin’. Yer body will need the liquid for the next
part.”
Ryan hadn’t liked the sound of that at all. Then he understood
why as he screamed at the burning fire that plunged into his stomach.
He arched his back, trying to get away from the sensation, but the
bastard put his hand down on Ryan’s chest and forced him to endure
the torture.
Ryan didn’t think he was so kind after that.
Then it was over, and Ryan looked down again at the hand, or
glove, or whatever it was, and saw how bloody it was, as well as the
bullet between his dripping fingers.
“Could’ve taken me to a hospital for that part,” Ryan said.
“What is a hospital?” the man asked.
Ryan supposed it was a good thing that he’d passed out right then
because otherwise he might’ve screamed again.
He hadn’t woken up for what he would later discover would be
another two days.
They were lying to him though. They had to be. When he looked
10
Marcy Jacks
down at his stomach, his strangely not hurting or burning stomach,
and then removed the bandages, he found that his wound was almost
entirely healed. New skin had grown over the bullet hole and was still
incredibly pink and fresh, but there was no way something like that
could have grown in only two days. Even the long scratches that
strange man had make over his arms and legs were gone, as though
they’d never been there to begin with.
Then that man came into the room where he’d been sleeping all
that time.
The guy froze, as though he hadn’t expected Ryan to be awake
right then. Ryan was not sorry to disappoint, and he immediately
jumped up from his bed, putting it between them.
Instead of being alarmed, the man smiled at him, as though he
were glad that Ryan had woken up.
“Rhyan,” he said, rolling the R in Ryan’s name and taking a step
inside. Ryan had forgotten that this man had known his name without
Ryan telling him what it was.
“It’s good to see you.”
He was feeling well enough that he wasn’t about to put up with
this bullshit. “Tell me who you are, where we are, and what the fuck
happened, now,” he commanded.
The guy frowned, as though he didn’t enjoy being ordered around
or was confused at Ryan’s hard response.
Tough shit.
The man stepped into the room. He was so heavy that each step he
took actually caused the floorboards to groan under the strain of his
weight.
“Do you not recognize me?” he asked. He still rolled his Rs, but
his accent wasn’t quite so heavy now.
“You’re the man who…” He couldn’t bring himself to say what
he’d seen, what he’d thought he’d seen, but his almost-answer was
enough for the guy.
“Perhaps it is normal for you to have no memories of us,
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
11
considering this strange new life you live.”
What the fuck was he talking about?
“I am Blasius,” the guy said, pounding a fist over his chest like a
warrior of old. He then grinned at Ryan. “I would give you my clan
name and where I hail from, but I can hardly recall any of that.”
What? Who was this guy? And what the hell kind of name was
Blasius? Sounded like something the man might’ve named himself.
Speaking of things that couldn’t be recalled. “Where’s my
partner? Officer Decker, the man in uniform?”
Blasius’s face fell just slightly. His voice rumbled as he spoke, his
accent becoming heavier once more at the emotion that was there.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but yer friend did not survive the
battle.”
He already knew that. He’d seen him lying facedown in a puddle
of his own blood, the back of his head blown off. “I meant, what did
you do with his body?”
“Buried him,” Blasius said simply.
A rock had swelled into Ryan’s throat. He remembered the pain of
it, of the absolute failure he’d felt.
It should’ve been him. He should’ve been the one to get shot
while his back was turned, but no. Decker had wanted to go check out
the surrounding area with the landowner, so Ryan had let him, even
though he had the superior rank. He’d stayed by the car to survey the
scene.
It should have been him.
“Ah, did ye love ’im then?” Blasius had asked.
Ryan glared at him. He hadn’t loved Decker, despite their fling,
but he’d liked the other man, and he would carry the weight of his
death with him for as long as he lived.
“That’s not your fucking business.”
Blasius nodded.
For the first time, Ryan noted how his hands were now normal.
He didn’t comment on it, though.
12
Marcy Jacks
Blasius offered to take him out of the room, and surprised, Ryan
had gotten dressed and had gone with him.
Then he’d tried to run.
That had been stupid of him. Completely and utterly fucking
stupid. Of course he wouldn’t have been able to outrun these men.
They all looked to be in the best shape of their lives, and Ryan had
just woken up from being shot in the stomach. He was lucky to be
alive.
The men who’d chased him down hadn’t seemed too worried
about his injuries, however, as they tackled him football-style into the
ground. Ryan had tried to fight them off him, and it had taken four
men to subdue him, but subdue him they did.
They brought him back to the house, one man barking orders to
the others to keep watch over the bedroom. Ryan was to have guards
now, it seemed.
Definitely some sort of organization, though whether it was
religious or not, Ryan still couldn’t be sure.
The men did as they were told, however, until Blasius came in and
started making a scene.
Another huge man with a heavily scarred face came in next,
attempting to talk Blasius down, and when that didn’t work, the guy
grabbed him by the neck and threw him down onto the carpet as
though Blasius were a ninety-pound kid and not some hulking guy.
Ryan let them tie him down to the bed after that, not wanting the
other man to get punished further for what Ryan had done. For all he
knew, Blasius could be a prisoner here, too.
Then the other man got up and offered his apologies of all things
and promised to be the man who would guard Ryan carefully, making
sure he never escaped.
“I’ll be dead before I let that happen,” Blasius had said, pounding
his chest like before. “You can count on me.”
The fucking bastard.
The man with the scarred face just nodded, glanced down at Ryan
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
13
on the bed, and then walked out of the room.
Ryan swore he would get out of here. He swore he was going to
get backup and come back here and arrest every single one of these
bastards for what they were doing to him.
Blasius had been true to his word, however. He would not let
Ryan escape, and Ryan had done everything he could think of to get
the man to release him.
He’d started with complaining that he needed to use the bathroom
to get his wrists and ankles untied. Blasius had untied him, and then
he’d found Ryan climbing through the window in the bathroom and
had pulled him back in.
Ever since then, Ryan had not been allowed to be in the washroom
by himself. That humiliation was enough to get his blood boiling.
Blasius tried speaking with him, had tried making nice and being
friends, bringing Ryan books to read and any small desserts he could
find from inside the house.
Ryan hadn’t spoken back unless it was to ask to be released, and
always the answer was no.
He hadn’t been put in the cage until he’d tried fighting Blasius.
They’d gone to fists over it, and two more men needed to rush into the
room just to pry him off the other man.
It was Blasius’s own fault anyway for kissing him like that. Ryan
had been behaving himself, as much as any hostage was expected to,
completely ignoring his captor and wondering why in the hell this had
to happen to him on the day he and Decker decided to go and check
out these people living off the land here, looking into a missing
person’s case connected with insurance fraud, without telling anyone
else where they were going.
He’d been thinking over the chances of someone from the precinct
wandering over here to ask questions and maybe finding him here
when Blasius’s giant hands cupped his cheeks and pulled his face
forward.
Ryan had been so shocked it took him a half second to realize he
14
Marcy Jacks
wasn’t being attacked, not really, and when he did get a hold of
himself, the first thing he did was slam his fist into Blasius’s nose.
Stupid bastard was lucky to be alive after that, and the man with
the scarred face had come in, seen all the blood on the carpet, and had
ordered Ryan to be put into this dog kennel that burned his hands
every time he touched it.
Being inside it was degrading enough if he ignored the fact that
they’d taken most of his clothing away before putting him in here.
He’d been patient the first few days. He’d sat there, thinking of
anything he could do to escape. He’d faked an illness, and they’d
ignored it. He did the bathroom thing again, and they brought him a
bucket.
Now he was doing the raging against the bars thing. He wanted
out. This place was making everything inside of him itch and tingle,
and he needed out right now because as of now he knew he was no
longer faking the illness thing. Something was definitely wrong with
him.
Whether or not it had been these people to do it to him, he wasn’t
sure, but Blasius was definitely on his shit list. He was the one to
make all those strange marks on Ryan’s skin.
Ryan hated even thinking about the man, but he was all Ryan
could think about. His shame, besides being in this place, was that,
whenever he did think of him, he usually wound up with an erection.
It was only because he was angry, he told himself. An erection
was normal considering he was filled to the brim with spitting rage
and had nowhere to turn it to.
The fact that Blasius kept on coming down here, as naked as Ryan
was, and continually telling him that they were mated had nothing to
do with it.
If anything, the fact that Ryan was starting to think that maybe
there was some truth to Blasius’s words was proof enough that
Stockholm syndrome was starting to take effect.
He needed out. His legs were killing him. This cramped space was
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
15
too much.
He punched at the bars again, and this time they bent a little under
the strength of his fists.
Blood also flew out and landed on the concrete floor, but he
barely felt that.
“Let me out of here!” Ryan roared.
After another five minutes of ranting and raging, of punching and
kicking, he was starting to think that he might be able to just break
down the bars that held him in here and get out that way. Then maybe
he could bust that small window that was up there near the ceiling,
and then he could―
Ryan jumped as the door to the basement was flung open so hard
the hinges broke.
The door was now only just barely hanging by one of the bent
hinges, and in the doorway stood Blasius, his face serious, his
muscled body tight and fists clenched.
Ryan could hardly bring himself to be worried about that, or to
care about the fact that the guy’s dick was standing at attention or the
way Blasius looked at Ryan as though he were a feast.
He didn’t care anymore.
“The full moon is tonight,” Blasius said.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, that brought a fearful chill
down Ryan’s spine, and he looked toward the window once more.
“I want…I need…” He didn’t know what he wanted or what he
needed, other than it involved him getting out of here.
“I know what ye be needin’,” Blasius said, his eyes shining and
accent heavy once more. He stepped farther into the basement. He
picked up the heavy door and propped it in front of the open doorway,
giving them some semblance of privacy.
Ryan’s heart picked up, anticipation running through him as
Blasius turned to look at him. “And I intend to give it to ye, whether
ye be likin’ it or not.”
16
Marcy Jacks
Chapter Two
This was not exactly how Blasius would have liked to do this, but
considering the full moon was only hours away, and Rhyan had been
fighting his first transformation for an ungodly amount of time, there
was nothing to be done for it. Their time was out.
There would be no convincing his Rhyan before the
transformation came, and he could not have his mate running around
like a wild beast. He could hurt himself, or others, or never be seen
again.
Blasius’s only concern was if Rhyan brought harm upon himself
or anyone else in the pack. Everyone else in the world could all go
hang for all he cared for them. The only person he wanted safe and
sound was the man in the cage before him.
It had galled him to have to put his mate inside such a thing,
especially since it was coated with silver, but there was nothing to be
done for it. Rhyan would not stop fighting them, nor would he
remember his dragon clan or that he and Blasius had been mated, and
every day that passed made him more violent.
He stepped farther into the wet-smelling chamber. He did not like
it down here. It reminded him of when he’d been killed. Not the
killing itself. That had been a glorious warrior’s death, and he’d been
glad for it. No, this particular smell had come after, and it had been all
he’d known in the centuries his spirit had wandered the earth.
Then a miracle had happened. He’d come back to life through the
sacrifice of a man wishing to be possessed by the spirits of Romulus
and Remus.
The poor fool had been too presumptuous, and many, many spirits
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
17
had come to take the offering.
Blasius had come out of that battle as the victor, and now he lived
once more. Then another gift had come to him. Rhyan, his lover
reincarnated into the body of a human, was presented to him.
He’d been wounded in the last battle, however, and Blasius had no
choice but to transform him into a werewolf.
Such a strange thing. Rhyan had been a dragon-shifter in their
previous life together and then, after well over a thousand years of
death, was brought back as a mortal man, and now was about to make
his first true transformation into a wolf.
If only the man could remember their lives together. He might just
find the situation as amusing as Blasius did.
There were other things on Blasius’s mind at the moment,
however, and that was to make certain that Rhyan’s first
transformation would not leave him wild. A man needed to become
one with his wolf once in a while, and the longer that passed without a
proper change, the worse it was for the werewolf in question.
There had been several times when he’d nearly made the change
in his anger and his need to violently fight back, but never had
anything come to full fruition.
The day Blasius kissed him, foolishly hoping that the touch of
their mouths would bring back Rhyan’s memories, Rhyan’s hands had
become lycan claws, and he would have taken out Blasius’s eyes had
not the warrior alphas named Mick and Adam come into the room to
pull the man off of him.
He was becoming much too dangerous. They may have been
properly mated in their former lives, but not anymore, and now that
Rhyan had a transformation looming, it was imperative that they
finish this.
Blasius would have rather the man remember him, but that was
not to be done, it seemed. He could only pray that Rhyan forgive him
for this when it ended.
He approached the cage. Rhyan gripped the bars tightly in his
18
Marcy Jacks
fists. Blasius wondered if the man was aware that his hands had
become claws again. He had been rather insistent that all that he had
seen had been what he had called a hallucination, as though Blasius
had drugged him with some magical substance. Ridiculous.
“Let me out,” Rhyan said, his voice hoarse, teeth becoming long
and pointed. Blasius noted the way the coarse brown hairs began to
poke out through his skin.
Rhyan hardly seemed to notice either the hairs or the blood that
was sliding down the silver bars due to the ferocity of his grip.
According to one of the men upstairs with that strange electronic
thing―Blasius was certain witchcraft had something to do with
it―the moon would be entirely full in less than an hour.
He’d tried, God help him for the sin he was about to commit, but
he had tried, and now they had to do it this way. They had to complete
their mating. It was the last thing Blasius could think of that would
allow Rhyan to more easily accept his wolf.
Blasius went to the cage and, using the small flat key and cloth he
had been given, removed the lock and opened the door.
There hardly seemed a point as Rhyan had very nearly taken the
door off on his own strength.
Rhyan lunged for him, his claws pointed at Blasius’s neck.
Blasius acted fast, taking hold of Rhyan’s bloody hands and flipping
him down onto his back.
He actually grunted with the effort of that. Rhyan was becoming
stronger.
Faster as well, because the man was already on his feet and
attacking once more. This time he managed to swipe his claws down
Blasius’s chest, and the sting was hot.
They could not be fighting like this. Not if Blasius was to claim
Rhyan without either of them harming the other. They would have
complete privacy here. Blasius had spoken to James, and the orders
were that no other alpha was to disturb them, regardless of what they
might hear.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
19
They were only to interfere if Rhyan were to somehow get by
Blasius and escape the house. Then they were to stop him.
If Rhyan transformed into a wild werewolf, they were to kill him
to prevent him from running wild in the nearby village. Blasius could
not allow that.
When Rhyan attacked again, Blasius grabbed him by the forearms
and once again flipped him down onto his back, but this time he did
not release the man. He held Rhyan’s arms crossed over his chest,
keeping the other man from attacking him.
“I’ll kill you!” Rhyan screamed, thrashing beneath him.
Blasius could not help that his cock throbbed. He could only hope
that the mating went well, and that, if Rhyan were to ever forgive
him, then the two of them might perhaps spar together, allow their
hearts to pump and blood to rush with the effort of their good-natured
battle, and then they would take each other.
It had been a fantasy the two had carried out in their former lives.
Blasius would like to have it happen again.
“Do not fight me,” he said and climbed on top of his mate.
Rhyan’s eyes widened as another one of his bodily thrashes
brought their hips together.
Blasius moaned at the fire that was suddenly in his cock, burning
his entire body with the need for the man beneath him, but he could
not go on, not while Rhyan still fought him. He thought he could, but
he couldn’t force him. He was not that sort of warrior. He wanted the
consent. He needed it.
“Argh! Rhyan! I canna do this if you insist on fighting me!
Please,” he begged, looking down into the golden eyes of his mate.
Rhyan’s eyes were supposed to be the dark color of deep earth.
They had been that way in his former life as well as in this one. The
color of his eyes could only mean that the wolf was nearly here.
“Rhyan! Stop!”
But he wouldn’t. Rhyan continued to thrash and cry out beneath
him.
20
Marcy Jacks
A spike of fear lodged itself in Blasius’s chest. He’d failed. He
had waited too long to claim his mate, and now the transformation
was on him. Rhyan would become a wild werewolf, and James
DeWitt and the rest of his pack were going to hunt him down and kill
him.
“Rhyan!”
Rhyan’s arms slipped free from Blasius’s hold on him, and he
flipped the both of them around until Blasius was the one with his
back on the cold concrete floor and Rhyan was on top of him.
Blasius expected another attack. He thought for certain that Rhyan
would thrust those claws of his deep into Blasius’s neck, killing him
and sending him back to that awful spirit world.
Rhyan’s teeth came down, and Blasius braced himself for the
coming bite.
Those sharp teeth came down on his neck, they bit him, but Rhyan
did not bite into him. The bites were loving nips, and his lips suckled
on the places where his teeth had touched. Rhyan groaned, his hips
moving against Blasius’s cock, and Blasius released a small, relieved
moan as he was pleasured.
He gripped Rhyan’s hips as his mate humped against him,
searching for friction for his own aching prick.
Rhyan had not been about to make the shift. He’d been excited for
the mating, and his body was now taking control.
“Oh, that’s it,” Blasius moaned, lifting his knees and pushing his
hips back against Rhyan’s thrusting cock. He turned Rhyan’s head,
forcing the other man to look at him as they rutted against each other.
His eyes were still golden, but they contained traces of human
thought. He knew what he was doing. He wanted it.
“What did you do to me?” Rhyan asked, his voice a barely audible
gasp.
“Nothing. Ye are doing it.”
Blasius brought Rhyan’s mouth down onto his, kissing the other
man, thrusting his tongue inside Rhyan’s hot cavern and unconcerned
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
21
about the teeth. Rhyan wanted to mate with him. He would not harm
Blasius.
The soft bite his tongue received told him otherwise, and he
pulled back with a groan, just to have his own mouth invaded by
Rhyan’s slick, searching tongue.
Rhyan had not been an omega in their previous life together. It
seemed that now he was not one either. Blasius should have predicted
this.
Rhyan groaned and moaned with wanton abandon, his hips
thrusting quickly against Blasius’s, and Blasius entirely forgot their
surroundings as he threw his head back with a moan. The smack of
his skull against the concrete floor was a painful one, but the pulsing
pleasure against his prick more than took his mind away from any
pain he felt.
He would not be the one to perform the claiming this night. Good.
He’d hoped for that much.
“Rhyan,” Blasius said, managing to separate their mouths for only
a second before Rhyan took command of his lips once more.
Blasius put his hands in Rhyan’s hair, less than eager to separate
them again now that his mate was finally, willingly, kissing him after
so many years apart.
Blasius could die like this and be a perfectly happy werewolf. He
wrapped his arms around Rhyan’s back, clutching the other man
tightly to him, not releasing him even when he heard the small grunt
of pain that Rhyan released.
How could he release him? His mate was in his arms once more,
and they were fucking as passionately as they had done over a
thousand years ago. Blasius had never felt so much happiness before.
He would never allow anyone to harm this man again.
Blasius gripped Rhyan’s dark hair in his fingers and forced his
head back so that they were separated once more. It forced Rhyan to
open his eyes and look at Blasius, at least.
“Let me get to my knees, and then fuck me,” Blasius commanded.
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Marcy Jacks
Rhyan’s only response was a low growl, but he lifted himself off
of Blasius, allowing him to get onto his knees as he’d said.
Blasius did so quickly, thrusting his bum out for Rhyan to take.
He couldn’t recall if they had ever mated like this before. In all of the
memories Blasius had retained from their previous life, it had always
been Blasius to take the role of the seducer, but now that he was in
this position, the bones of his knees in pain from the hard flooring, he
knew that they must have come together like this before. It felt too
natural for them to not have done this.
Rhyan gripped his hips and then spat into one of his hands.
Blasius looked over his shoulder in time to watch the other man
stroking himself, his face contorted in pleasure as he spread his saliva
over his cock.
Blasius appreciated that Rhyan was able to think of even that
much, but Blasius had also taken precautions of his own. He’d made
sure to grease himself with a substance he’d found upstairs before
coming down here. He was more than ready for this.
This those golden eyes of his then opened, and Rhyan growled
again, a possessive sound, and he plunged into Blasius’s hole.
Blasius’s entire body became tight as a bowstring at the intrusion.
“Ah! Motherfuckin’ Christ!” he cursed, squeezing his eyes shut. His
fingers became claws as he dug his nails into the concrete, chipping it
away and creating holes.
It seemed Rhyan was a little too far gone to bother with proper
preparation, despite what Blasius had thought. It hurt more than he
expected as well. Thank God he’d prepared himself.
Rhyan hardly seemed to notice Blasius’s discomfort as he
plundered Blasius’s hole with quick, sharp thrusts.
Then, no, he did take notice. Though Blasius was still scratching
long holes into the floor, his eyes tearing with the effort to hold back
his pain, he felt the gentle kisses and nips against his neck as Rhyan’s
thrusting became more and more gentle.
He was warmed by the act. He had hardly expected such things
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
23
from Rhyan in his current state, and to him at least, it was proof
enough that his lover was there. Somewhere within him, Rhyan’s
instincts were telling him that this was proper. This was exactly as it
should be, the two of them together like this.
Blasius’s body gradually opened up for him, and soon the pain
dulled into a manageable burn.
24
Marcy Jacks
Chapter Three
Blasius moaned as his lover plundered him. The delightful push
and pull of that cock inside of him, filling him up, even with the harsh
pain of it, was everything he’d been missing ever since Rhyan had
been killed over a thousand years ago.
No, he would not think on that. They were together now, and
Rhyan was claiming him, fucking him, marking Blasius as his
forever.
Eventually, the softly moving hips pumped faster and harder, and
now Blasius was able to better take it. His moans became pleasured
instead of pained. He straightened his arms and dug his claws into the
concrete beneath him to keep from being fucked across the floor.
He squeezed his eyes shut, threw his head back, and moaned loud
as Rhyan nudged that spot deep within him with his cock, and then
did it again and again.
“Argh! Just. Like. That,” Blasius gasped, feeling the connection
within them becoming stronger, tighter, binding them together forever
with each thrust of Rhyan’s hips. Blasius could feel the other man’s
balls slapping against the back of his thighs, and he delighted in the
deep moans his lover released as they made contact with his flesh.
Flesh in my flesh. My beating heart.
Then, Rhyan’s impossibly fast hips thrust faster, harder, and
Blasius had little choice but to come under the onslaught. He could
not so much as reach down to stroke himself for fear that he could
lose his balance and land on his face should he take away one of his
hands.
Blasius’s pleasure shot out from his bollocks and straight through
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
25
his cock and onto the pebbled rock and dust of the concrete beneath
him as he came with a hard shout. His entire body pulsed afterward
with the satisfaction he felt.
That had been just the thing he’d needed, and so much better than
using his hand and much more pleasurable than what he remembered
it being.
Rhyan had not quite finished. Blasius could feel the way the other
man’s body went tight with his coming release, but he continued to
thrust his hips in quick succession, milking out Blasius’s pleasure.
Blasius looked over his shoulder in time to see Rhyan shutting
those golden eyes of his, throwing back his head, exposing his lovely
neck, and shouting as he came. Blasius felt the warm fluids of his
lover’s seed filling him, and he felt a great peace within him as that
signaled their claiming had been complete.
Rhyan was not quite satisfied enough to stop there, it seemed, as
he removed himself from Blasius’s arse and flipped him around.
Blasius grunted as his back landed on the bits of splintered rock
and rubble that his fingers and claws had dug free from the hard
ground beneath him, but when he tried to move to adjust himself,
Rhyan pressed his hand flat down on the expanse of muscle on
Blasius’s chest, keeping him down.
Rhyan growled a warning at him, and Blasius remained still,
regardless of any discomfort he might feel. Rhyan’s eyes were
becoming a darker shade of that gold color. They were returning to
the brown color that Blasius knew and loved, but this new animal side
to him was not finished claiming him, it seemed.
Rhyan was momentarily distracted by his hand touching Blasius’s
chest, just over his heart.
Blasius put his hand on top of Rhyan’s, holding it tightly. “Do you
remember us? We used to lie like this often, and you were always
stroking me after, petting me like you thought I was a real dog or
some such thing.”
There was little that Blasius could recall of a life he’d lived well
26
Marcy Jacks
over a thousand years ago, but he did recall the way Rhyan would
stroke his hair and chest after they’d satisfied their carnal hunger for
each other.
Blasius would tease the other man, saying that Rhyan truly
thought him to be some sort of animal that enjoyed being stroked by a
master.
That teasing was hardly enough to stop Rhyan from his continued
petting or Blasius from enjoying it, despite his words.
Rhyan looked at him, his eyes flashing bright gold once more, and
Blasius knew that the wolf was back. Rhyan’s cock was as hard as
though he hadn’t just fucked his mate, and Blasius was in very much
the same state of arousal.
He reached down to stroke himself, delighting in the little jealous
growl Rhyan released at the sight of another hand on Blasius’s prick.
The stamina of a werewolf was a gift. Blasius could not wait for
Rhyan to become completely in control of himself so that they could
properly enjoy themselves.
Rhyan swatted Blasius’s hand away, lifted Blasius’s large legs
over his shoulders, and then proceeded to fuck him again.
It took slightly longer for them to both come to their pleasure this
time, as they had both just pleasured each other one minute ago, but
that was the beauty of it, that this time what they were doing lasted.
Blasius could feel those little rocks digging into his back as Rhyan
violently thrust into him, but the pulsing in his cock overpowered any
pain he felt.
“Oh God, Rhyan!” Blasius shouted, noting how the sound of the
other man’s name brought out more of the brown in Rhyan’s eyes. He
blinked and shook himself, but continued on, hard gasps escaping his
throat.
Rhyan nearly bent him in half when he reached down to place
more of those biting kisses along Blasius’s neck, jaw, and lips, and
Blasius kissed back, using as much teeth and force as Rhyan dared to
use.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
27
Blasius brought his hands up, knowing he was taking a slight risk
with Rhyan in this state, but he allowed both of his hands to land on
Rhyan’s neck.
Rhyan growled a warning at him but did not attack, and Blasius
did not remove his fingers.
“I’m only touching,” Blasius said, having only a slight hard time
of speaking as his body was bouncing along the ground. “You used to
like that.”
Rhyan enjoyed being petted and stroked as much as Blasius did,
during sex and after, it hardly mattered, but Blasius was more
interested in playing with the little circular dragon birthmark on his
lover’s neck. It saddened him that he would never see that dragon
again. It had been a magnificent beast. His only hope was that Rhyan
would make peace with his new form and not mourn the dragon part
of him too deeply when the time came for that.
Then Rhyan fell on top of him with a deep, satisfied groan, his
hips jerking hard, signaling that he was nearing the end.
Blasius wanted to come at the same time as his lover, he wanted
to reach that peak with him, so he reached down and fisted his cock,
biting his bottom lip as the pleasure of Rhyan’s cock in his ass was
coupled with his own hand around his thick, pulsing prick. He
humped against his hand and against the thrusting organ inside of him
with wild abandon. The act served its purpose, and he was reaching
the end of his journey.
He could not help himself for what came next. He squeezed his
eyes shut, threw back his head, and shouted as his dick spurted his
seed across his belly. The sudden clenching of his anus made Rhyan
shout before he bit down on Blasius’s neck, muffling his cry.
Blasius’s arm began to hurt from the exertion of stroking himself,
but he did not stop until he was completely satisfied, and both he and
Rhyan turned into piles of slop on top of each other.
Blasius lay there, breathing deeply and enjoying the feeling of his
lover’s warm skin against his chest, of Rhyan’s beating heart, strong
28
Marcy Jacks
and proud, thumping between them.
He smiled and turned his head, kissing the man’s ear. He reached
down with his hand, searching for Rhyan’s so that he might intertwine
their fingers together, when Rhyan suddenly and unexpectedly leapt
off of him and ran for the door.
Bloody hell! “Rhyan!”
Blasius gave chase, listening to the banging of the door at the top
of the stairs to the cellar as Rhyan burst through them.
There were shouts from above, and that only served to increase
the panic Blasius felt in his chest.
No! The other wolves would think that Rhyan was still wild! They
would hunt him and kill him, thinking he would be trying to run for
the village!
He burst through the already-broken door in his wolf form, having
transformed quickly during his run to the top of the stairs.
There was the leading alpha’s omega mate already there, standing
against the table and looking with startled eyes in the direction Rhyan
had run off in.
The door leading to the outside of the large cabin had also been
taken off its hinges as Rhyan burst free from the house.
Blasius made it outside in time to watch his mate lift his head to
the sky and howl. Several alpha wolves surrounded him as Rhyan fell
to his hands and knees and shifted into the glorious form of his wolf.
He still seemed to be having trouble, though not with the
transformation itself.
Rhyan shifted into his wolf as smooth and clean as water flowing
over a river bed of rocks, but Blasius could see the confusion in the
eyes of the wolf as he surveyed his surroundings, turning this way and
that, a whine escaping his throat.
One of the alphas stepped toward him, and Blasius released a
sharp bark before jumping in the middle of their circle. He growled at
all who dared to step near his mate. He did not care how kind these
wolves had been to him when Blasius first came here. He would skin
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
29
alive the lot of them if they attempted to harm Rhyan.
“What is this? What’s going on?”
Blasius’s ears twitched, even though the words had been spoken
on the inside of his head.
He, and every other alpha surrounding him, jerked their heads up
as one of the larger wolves in the pack approached them, dark brown
in color and standing proud over the rest. The one with the scarred
face. James DeWitt, leading alpha over this pack.
The abilities werewolves had to listen in on the thoughts of other
wolves was complicated and not quite as simply performed as most
mortal humans would think.
Only the leading alpha could communicate in such a fashion with
every member of his pack, and only werewolves who were mated
could perform the ability with each other.
That meant that Blasius would be able to hear the words James
spoke, and eventually, Rhyan as well, once his human mind merged
properly with his wolf, but no one else.
James looked around Blasius to the other gray wolf behind him,
his ears twitching but not moving back, and the hair on his spine did
not rise with any sort of ire either.
“Your mate looks frightened.”
Blasius turned. That he did. Rhyan’s tail was between his legs, his
paws trembling and his body down and crouched, as though preparing
to run.
Blasius went to him, licking him behind the ears, willing his calm
nature to flood into the other wolf until Rhyan was no longer
trembling, but he still looked at the other wolves with suspicion and
fear.
Blasius could hardly blame him. He searched deep inside of
Rhyan’s mind for the source of this and was not surprised when he
could hardly find a thing.
“He is confused,” Blasius replied. “He does not know these
alphas who mean to attack him.”
30
Marcy Jacks
Sometimes it bothered Blasius that he was no longer the lord over
his own pack. Had he still been in control, he would not be required to
have this conversation, and the wolves would simply leave Rhyan
alone on his orders instead of waiting on the word of another.
He was grateful that James was a fair alpha, however, even if he
did sometimes behave like an omega himself by conversing with his
wolves rather than taking them by the necks and throwing them down.
James jerked his head at the others, and, as one, they dispersed
from the circle that surrounded them. Though many did still leave
parting looks of curiosity in Rhyan’s direction.
“He doesn’t look wild. Everything went well?”
Blasius nodded. His arse still burned from how well it had gone.
“Yes.”
“Good. Take him out running, keep an eye on him, and come back
when it looks like he’s run out of energy. Maybe he’ll be more willing
to talk after that.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Blasius replied.
James gave him that look that he often did whenever Blasius
referred to him as a lord, but it could not be helped. Blasius was still
adjusting to the fact that alphas who led their packs were no longer
addressed as such. To him, James DeWitt was a landowner and in
command of his own pack. That made him a lord, the same way
Blasius himself used to be a lord, and damn anyone who said
otherwise.
Instead of arguing with him about it again, James simply nodded
and, with a parting glance at Rhyan, walked away.
Blasius waited until it looked as though they were both alone but
for the other omegas wandering around, completing their chores and
such.
Blasius trotted over to his mate. Rhyan had stood straight now that
the other wolves had left, and then he looked down at himself, his
snout lowering onto his body as he sniffed himself, circled around,
and in general, seemed to be testing out his new limits.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
31
Blasius watched him for a moment. The wolf was always the one
that had the most control for the first few transformations, but could it
somehow be possible that Rhyan’s mind, his former one anyway, was
still deeply buried in there?
Could that be what would cause an alpha wolf to fear the presence
of other alphas? Rhyan had been killed by werewolves in his former
life, quite savagely, in fact.
Of the few memories Blasius had taken with him of his former
life, that day had been one of them, and he would never forget it.
Finally, Rhyan looked up at him, gray head cocking to the side.
Blasius was most pleased when Rhyan came to him of his own
free will and then began sniffing at him. Blasius allowed him to,
knowing his scent would calm the other wolf.
Finally, he yipped at his mate and ran toward the tree line that
surrounded the houses of James’s pack. Rhyan waited a beat and then
took the hint and followed him into the trees to run and play.
32
Marcy Jacks
Chapter Four
Corey stirred the sugar in his coffee, but mostly he just stared
down at his reflection in the dark liquid. “Would you really have
killed him?”
James sighed quietly and pulled out the chair next to him, taking a
seat. Corey looked at him, and the scarred face of his lover, his mate,
was saddened.
“Yes,” he replied.
Corey looked away from him and back down into his coffee.
“I wouldn’t’ve wanted to do it,” James said quickly, seeming to
take the movement as a sort of dismissal. “If he’d gone wild, there
wouldn’t have been any choice. You’ve seen what wild werewolves
do when they have some control over themselves. That guy wouldn’t
have had any.”
“I nearly went wild,” Corey reminded him.
“That’s…” James ran his hand through his hair. “That’s
different.”
“Because I’m mated to you?”
“Yes, and no.”
Corey looked at him, not understanding at all. He knew things like
this happened within a pack of wolves, but in the months that he’d
lived here and been a werewolf himself, he’d been fortunate in that
he’d never had to see or experience any of the harder decisions that
had to be made for the survival of the pack.
“I would’ve protected you even if you had gone on a rampage.
Even if you’d run into Brampton and started eating people alive, I
wouldn’t have let anyone hurt you.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
33
“It wouldn’t have come to that anyway,” James continued. “You
only fought your transformation for a couple of days, and that was
bad enough. That guy downstairs, Detective Miller, he was struggling
against his new instincts for weeks. If you had gone wild, I would
have been able to restrain you until you calmed down. If he had lost
it, there was no telling what he could’ve done.”
Which meant that the man downstairs had been extremely lucky
that he’d finally allowed himself to properly mate with Blasius.
Corey could still recall the feelings of being sick, of struggling
with the thing inside of him because it wanted out so badly, but he
had neither the knowledge nor the courage to let it out.
For him, mating with James had helped. There was something
about fully bonding with a mate that allowed the inner wolf to calm
down enough to prevent it from tearing its way out of the host. The
same seemed to be true for Blasius and his mate.
James reached out and then seemed to hesitate before he put his
hand on Corey’s shoulder. “I wish I could keep these things from
happening, but for werewolves, there are no laws that we can follow
except for the ones we made. There’s no system of justice for us
unless we make it ourselves.”
Corey knew that, and he knew what he’d basically married into, if
mating counted as being married, and Corey kind of believed that it
did.
He reached up and put his hand on top of James’s. The facial
features of his mate visibly relaxed with that small act.
Corey smiled at him, a weak little thing, but it was there. “Thank
God Blasius got through to the guy, right?”
“Yeah,” James said.
There was a twitch in James’s cheek when he said it, but Corey
didn’t comment on it. It told him enough. It said to Corey that Blasius
and the detective might have a few more things to work out before
they could have their happy ending.
“Could you just do one thing for me?” Corey asked, unable to let
34
Marcy Jacks
it go.
James’s eyes widened a bit. “Anything.”
Corey didn’t know if he would regret this later or not, but he had
to ask. “If another werewolf goes wild, can you at least give him a
chance before killing him? Not all wild werewolves hurt people,” he
said, thinking of himself in his nearly wild state, as well as the newest
member of their pack.
James clenched his jaw, and then he nodded. “I’ll try.”
* * * *
When Ryan woke up, everything on his body hurt. He was pretty
sure that even the strands of hair on his head were aching, and he
groaned as he got up, little pine needles and tiny pebbles falling away
from where they’d been pressed into his skin from when he slept.
He brushed them away. He was naked and had no clue where the
hell he was.
One thing was certain, though. He did feel better. He was out in
the fresh air, looking up at the bright morning light coming down
through the canopy of pines, oaks, and cedars. He could say that he
felt great, like he’d just come out of a spa or something.
Not that he’d ever been in a spa, but he assumed the feeling in his
body would be roughly the same.
A couple of birds twittered somewhere. Ryan’s head twisted
around, trying to see where it was. He could hear the fast and feathery
flapping of wings, so he assumed the little creatures were fighting
somewhere near his head, and he even swatted his hands just to scare
them away from him.
Then he saw them, in a tree at least twenty yards away.
His jaw dropped, and Ryan rubbed his ears, expecting something
to pop inside so that his hearing could go back to normal.
If anything, it got worse.
He could hear insects buzzing around under the bark of the trees,
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
35
smell those flowers blooming out of a patch of weeds just beyond that
shrub beneath the birds, and when he squinted, he could make out
details and colors he’d never seen before in, well, anything.
“It’s somethin’, isn’t it?”
Ryan spun around and then shot to his feet. That man, Blasius,
stood not five feet away from him, a couple of dead rabbits in one
hand and a small cluster of twigs in the other.
“How come I didn’t hear you coming?” Ryan asked.
Blasius grinned at him, approaching as though they were friends
or something. “I’ve been a werewolf longer than you have.”
His accent was soft again and almost playful.
Sudden memories from the night before came back to him. Him
pounding inside of Blasius with an ungraceful lust, of him running
outside, his body cracking, changing…
Then there were the other memories, things that blurred in his
mind to the point where it could have been just a dream.
No, it was not a dream. He’d been running on all fours. His hands
and legs becoming hairy paws, and he and another wolf chasing each
other through the trees, hunting anything that moved and chasing
those down, too.
He knew that the other wolf had been Blasius, and he felt his
stomach twist as the ground beneath him swirled.
“Easy, man, easy,” Blasius grabbed him by the arm, easing him
back down to his ass for him to sit.
“Breathe deep. That’s it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ryan said on a gasp. It hadn’t been a lie, none of
it, and he hadn’t been hallucinating that night of the attack either.
Werewolves. Fucking werewolves, of all things, they were real, and
he could now consider himself a member of their race.
He was going to be sick.
“Can’t say that I well recollect the transformations of any human
into a wolf or what they felt,” Blasius said. “But I imagine what
you’re feelin’ is normal.”
36
Marcy Jacks
“There’s nothing normal about this,” Ryan said then stared up at
Blasius. He grabbed the other man by the arms, panic seizing
everything inside him in a tight grip. “Am I dangerous? Will I hurt
anyone?”
Blasius touched his face with comfort and ease, as though he were
touching a lover. “You need not worry about that. You’re no longer a
danger to anything unless you want to be.”
No longer? “Was I ever a danger?”
Blasius looked at him pointedly. “Aye. That’s what the cage had
been for. Luckily you finally managed to let out your new beast
before he could really get angry. Otherwise you would have been
somethin’ of a nightmare to the first poor soul you came across.”
Ryan thought about that, and what had happened between them
last night. He couldn’t recall thinking too much about it as he’d
flipped the other man onto his back and forcefully fucked him. He
couldn’t remember anything other than the fact that he felt if he didn’t
do it he would have gone out of his mind.
Ryan buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Christ.”
Blasius slapped him good-naturedly on the back. “Ah, don’t you
be worrying none. You’re as fine and healthy as any good horse now.
A couple more transformations and you and the wolf will be fully
merged.”
“Jesus, how can you talk like that? I raped you.”
That statement clearly threw the other man for a loop, and he
threw his head back and laughed. “Don’t be a fool. Ye did nothing of
the sort. Now come, we will eat.”
Blasius held up the rabbits for him to see, as if he could have
missed them, and though they were raw and just recently dead, the
sight of them strangely made his mouth water.
He got up and watched as Blasius cleared away a small space with
his hands, shoving away clumps of dead leaves and such before
placing down some stones. Ryan watched, fascinated, as the other
man actually managed to start a fire with just the sticks and twigs he
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
37
had with him. This guy was clearly a Boy Scout as a kid.
“I see the way you’re eyeing them rabbits, but you need to be
patient,” Blasius said. “Your wolf might want to eat them as is, but in
this form, your stomach might not approve.”
Ryan’s face heated, and he turned away. It seemed an eternity
before the rabbits were skinned, put over the fire, and cooked properly
enough to eat. Ryan hadn’t expected them to taste so good
considering the lack of any sort of seasoning, but he sucked the meat
off the bones, and Blasius even gave him a leg out of his share to
finish off as well.
“Good appetite,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”
“I need to go back,” Ryan said after swallowing the last of his
meal, and then he wiped his hand across his mouth. “I need to make a
report. Decker is dead, and his family’s going to want to know where
he is.”
Ryan didn’t like the way the other man wouldn’t look at him
when he spoke. “Keep speaking like that, and you’ll never be allowed
to leave.”
“Why? I thought you said I wasn’t a danger to anyone.”
“As the wolf, no, but you still pose a threat to the lives of every
man, woman, and child in this pack should ye decide to run off and
tell the world that there are werewolves here.”
“I wouldn’t―” Ryan had to stop himself, his mind working to fill
in the things Blasius was not telling him.
Ryan wouldn’t tell anyone. Who the hell could he trust with
something like this? And if he did reveal his secret and proved it by
somehow managing to transform on his own―and he was still having
a hard time figuring out how he was going to do that―he would be
the one getting locked away, to be studied like an animal. Then the
authorities would come for the people here.
Even if he didn’t let the world know about this strange secret that
it had yet to discover, he would be reporting the murder of an officer,
an officer that Blasius had admitted they had already buried
38
Marcy Jacks
somewhere on the land. There would be police, detectives, forensics,
reporters, and everything in between snooping around here for
months. Someone would find something that would place the blame
on the people here. Or worse, someone would become a wolf, right
when a news camera or something was pointed at them.
Ryan couldn’t tell anyone anything. So what the hell was he
expected to say when he got back home? Decker was dead, and he’d
been missing for weeks. If he showed up with no explanation…
Suddenly, Ryan realized the thing that Blasius had been trying to
gently tell him.
He was stuck here. There was no going back. Ryan was officially
a supernatural outlaw.
Ryan shot to his feet. “I can’t stay here.”
Blasius stared into the fire, his fingers laced together. “There are
other packs that will have ye, if that is yer wish, but there’ll be no
going back to the human world for ye.”
He’d just gotten out of that cage. Being told what to do now was
not something that Ryan wanted to deal with. “Fuck you. I’m going.”
“Rhyan,” Blasius said, rolling the R in his name like he usually
did.
“No! I’m leaving!” And he did. Ryan turned around and shot out
of there before the other man could so much as jump to his feet.
“Rhyan!” he heard screamed behind him.
Yeah right, like he was going to turn around. He didn’t care if
they hunted him down and killed him, didn’t care that he wasn’t being
rational. He needed to get away, back to where everything in the
world was normal again.
Even though he was running naked and barefoot, that didn’t
hinder his speed. It was like there were no rocks or twigs beneath him
as he ran. No pine needles stabbing him or pinecones crunching under
his feet.
They were there, he felt them, but they did not hurt him or pierce
his skin, and Ryan pumped his arms and legs, going as fast as he
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
39
could, faster than the wind, until the trees were a blur as he whipped
by them.
Even though he could still hear Blasius calling behind him,
meaning that he was hardly outrunning the other man, Ryan began
to―dare he say it?―enjoy himself. The run became less about escape
and more about the wind in his face.
He had to shake himself, and that cost him. He stumbled over the
root of a tree protruding out of the ground, quickly caught himself,
and then started running full force again.
“Rhyan! Come back!”
The pain he heard in the other man’s voice was nearly enough to
make him stop, and again, he had to fight against the urges within him
that practically commanded him to do just that.
What the hell was wrong with him? He wanted to get out of here.
He didn’t want to take a cleansing run, and he didn’t want to go back
to Blasius, no matter how much his legs fought him on that one.
He scented water and then began running toward it. There was a
river near here. It ran along the town of Brampton. If he found it and
followed it, eventually Blasius would be forced to stop and let him go,
or else be forced to follow him naked into town, and wouldn’t that
make a sight?
Actually, Blasius might very well do just that, if he was as
determined as Ryan thought he was to protect the secret of his
werewolf friends.
Ryan came upon the water, but it was not from the flowing river.
The sound of running water caught his ears, and he skid to a stop
when he entered the clearing.
It was a pond, a crystal-clear pond, as picturesque as though it had
been painted there. The running water came from a small waterfall in
the center that fed the pond from a stream.
It was so beautiful and peaceful here compared to what he’d seen
and experienced in the last two weeks that he forgot he was running
away from Blasius.
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Marcy Jacks
He was harshly reminded when the other man burst through the
shrubs and trees, tackling Ryan around the waist and sending them
both crashing into the water.
Ryan gasped as he fell, and he inhaled the water without intending
to. He thrashed and kicked beneath the other man, fighting to come up
for air, but even when they did, even when Blasius began pounding
him on the back to help him cough up the water, he continued to
choke.
His face became hot as he coughed out some of the water, but not
enough to take in a full breath. He wanted to tell the man behind him
to stop hitting him on the back and to give him the Heimlich or
something, but clearly this man didn’t know what to do, and Ryan
was going to choke to death because of it.
With a roar, Blasius threw his open palm down on Ryan’s back
one more time, and finally he managed to cough up the water that had
been killing him.
He hadn’t realized that Blasius had dragged him to the shallower
area of the pond until he laid Ryan down on his back and the water
was still gently sloshing beneath him.
Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was Blasius’s worried
face staring down at him. He was saying something, shouting it,
actually, but Ryan couldn’t make out the words. The other man was in
a blind panic, Ryan had seen that look on his face once before, but he
couldn’t for the life of him recall where it had been.
He vaguely thought it might have been when Ryan had attacked
him before he’d been put in that cage, and then everything went black
around him.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
41
Chapter Five
Ryan had no idea where the hell he was. He kept waking up to
find himself in strange places, and it was really starting to annoy him.
He was still naked, which didn’t bother him, but Blasius was
nowhere to be seen, which did.
Whether Ryan liked it or not, the man had been his protector since
Ryan had been shot in the gut. He’d been a constant, patient presence
even when Ryan had to be locked up, and now that he was no longer
around, something inside him twisted with worry.
He got to his feet and started looking around. Blasius wouldn’t
abandon him in this strange place, would he? Ryan had tried to run,
yes, but come on, couldn’t he be forgiven for that considering
everything he’d just learned?
His hearing was back to normal. Ryan could no longer make out
the distant sounds and smells of the things around him.
In fact, he couldn’t smell anything at all, and that was strange
considering the damp fog that was covering the area he was in.
It was hardly the kind of thing that he couldn’t see through, but
the air and sky were gray, and the trees and plants were the dull colors
of wet greens and browns. His toes squished in the earth beneath him.
Likely, it had just rained.
A growl and the ruffling of leaves and branches behind him
alerted him to the fact that he was being watched.
His spine went stiff. That was something he did hear, and every
muscle in his body bunched up.
Slowly, his heart thumping hard and heavy in his chest, Ryan
turned his head.
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Marcy Jacks
The sight of the huge wolf head, bent down, ears back, in the
rough shape of a gray arrowhead, slowly emerged from the shrub. The
end result was a wolf that was more than twice the size of any regular
wolf. This had to be a werewolf.
Something was wrong here. Logically he knew he had nothing to
fear, he was a werewolf now after all, one of them, kind of, but he
couldn’t help the feeling of fear that flooded him.
This was not right. Something was off.
Ryan backed away as the wolf approached. The hair on its back
stood up straight. Its lips were up, revealing sharp and powerful teeth.
Then he figured it out. The werewolves were mad at him because
he’d tried to run. Did they already get rid of Blasius? Was that why
the other man wasn’t around?
He lifted his hands, tried to speak, to say that he would never do it
again, but all that came out of his throat was a strange language he’d
never heard before and didn’t understand.
The wolf barked at him as he spoke, effectively shutting him up. It
was as though the language itself were an insult to the wolf’s ears
because its golden eyes only seemed to become even meaner.
It crouched, getting ready to leap and attack.
Ryan turned around and bolted through the trees. The wolf howled
and gave chase.
He wouldn’t get away. He didn’t know how he knew, but there
was something inside of him that told him there was no hope for him.
The knowledge solidified when he turned his head and saw two
other wolves flanking his right, and they looked back at him. Ryan
turned to his left, and there was another giant black wolf.
They were hunting him, and they were going to kill him.
Ryan burst through the trees just as the black wolf lunged,
grabbing hold of his arm and throwing him off his feet.
Ryan expected those jaws to take his whole arm away, quick and
deadly like any bite from a great white.
The wolf continued to bite down on his arm and shake, as though
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
43
he couldn’t get a good grip on it and was trying to do just that. Take
the arm clean off.
Ryan didn’t understand. He felt pain, but that barely registered in
his mind when he looked down and saw why the wolf was having
such a hard time ripping him to pieces.
Instead of the healthy pink color of his arm, gleaming green scales
protected him, like armor. The scales were huge. Each of them had to
be the size of a paperback. His whole arm was huge, actually, as
though he were growing.
Or shifting into something that wasn’t a werewolf.
Despite that, the scales weren’t entirely impenetrable to those
wolf teeth because the next thing he knew, the wolf crunched down
harder, cracking the scales, and Ryan screamed.
The other wolves shot through the trees like missiles, coming
down onto Ryan and each one putting their teeth around his legs, his
free arm, and his torso.
Jesus, they were really going to rip him apart.
Someone yelled something in English. It was that same strange
accent that Blasius had, only it wasn’t Blasius’s calming voice that he
heard. “He’s tryin’ to make the shift! Stop him before he gets away!”
Jesus.
Then Blasius’s voice did penetrate the loud growls and angry
commands, and Ryan’s relief was indescribable.
“Rhyan! No!”
Ryan managed to turn his head. He was in pain, and he figured he
was dying because there was no way he could survive this kind of
blood loss, and was that gray wolf chewing on a piece of him?
Somehow, all that didn’t matter. He looked toward Blasius. The
man had a short, clipped beard that was a little darker than the rest of
his hair, and he was dressed in some sort of animal skin as he rushed
with a mad panic through the trees, his feet stamping down on the
rocks as he ran to him.
Ryan felt himself relaxing, his eyes burning with happy tears as he
44
Marcy Jacks
watched his lover rush through the trees to his rescue. Why he was
crying and why he was thinking about Blasius in such sentimental
terms, he didn’t know.
Blasius never made it to him. Several other men rushed forward
and grabbed him by the arms, practically lifting him off the ground in
their struggle to contain him.
Blasius roared, his hands becoming claws as he swiped at his
attackers. He actually managed to free himself for a moment, and he
desperately raked his claws across the face of one of the men.
The warrior screamed, clutching at his face and eyes as he fell
backward onto the bed of rocks. Another man charged at Blasius, and
Blasius’s fist came out so fast and strong that when it made contact
with the man’s face, his feet flew up and over his head. He actually
looped around in a circle before landing hard on his chest.
One of the wolves that had been chewing―eating―him, left
Ryan’s side and joined the fight with the men who were trying to keep
Blasius at bay.
Someone threw out a rope, catching Blasius around the neck. He
snapped it quickly, managing to get another ten feet closer to where
Ryan lay with the other wolves, but then another rope came out, and
then another. They caught him again around the neck and then also
around his left wrist.
This time, before he could snap them, more men came to him, and
the two that Blasius had put down got up and grabbed at his legs.
“Tie him down! Get him down!” yelled one of the larger men.
They were werewolves, too, Ryan realized. Their leader wore an
animal skin similar to Blasius’s, but he also had the fur of another
animal draped around his back. Ryan couldn’t tell if it was wolf hair
or not.
It seemed kind of strange for a werewolf to be wearing the pelt of
a wolf.
Unless it had come from a defeated enemy, he realized.
Blasius went down, but he continued to kick and rage against the
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
45
men holding him. His eyes found Ryan’s, and Ryan was comforted by
them, even though they held that same panic that Ryan had seen when
he was choking on the water from the pond.
Ryan felt no pain anymore, or panic. All he felt was calm,
knowing that his end was going to be near and that, at the very least,
his mate, the man he loved, would be with him when it happened.
He wouldn’t be alone.
Blasius spoke to him. “I’m here, Rhyan. Stay with me. I will free
you.”
“Look into his eyes, my lord. He is already dying,” said the leader
of this gang.
Blasius raged and snarled all the more, fighting with everything he
had in him to get free of the hands and ropes that restrained him.
Ryan wished he would stop. He tried to tell him to stop, that he
was only making his own suffering worse, but again, his words came
out in that strange language he didn’t understand, and they were
barely audible at that, even to his own ears.
“I will kill ye all!” Blasius screamed. “I will peel the skin from
yer bones! Ye will never have peace again! Do ye hear me! Do ye
hear me?” Blasius raged.
The leader of the other clan of wolves sneered at Blasius. “You
were the one to break our bargain with a dragon.”
Somehow, Ryan knew what they were talking about. This man,
the one who was so angry with Blasius that he was willing to hunt
down and kill Ryan for it, had offered one of his females to Blasius
for them to produce pups with, but Blasius had refused after meeting
and mating with Ryan, and that had severely angered the werewolf
who was glaring down at Blasius right now.
The man nodded his head toward the wolves who were standing
guard over Ryan’s body, and Ryan looked up just in time to see an
open mouth and long jaws come down on his face. The last sound he
heard was Blasius’s screams.
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Marcy Jacks
* * * *
Ryan jumped awake with a gasp. He clutched at his chest and his
face, scrambling away from the spot where he’d just woken up. He
searched around, expecting to see the werewolves who’d hunted and
tortured him until he’d…died?
Yes, in that dream he’d died, and whatever strange calmness he’d
felt when death was taking him away was gone. Now his heart was
thumping, and not in a good way.
“Rhyan!” Blasius was there, still naked, and he ran around the
crackling fire and came down to Ryan’s eye level, holding his face in
those massive hands of his. “Calm yourself, man, it was a dream.”
Ryan looked up at him, and then he threw his arms around the
other man’s shoulders, holding onto him tightly, and only then, when
the feeling of safety came over him from being enveloped by
Blasius’s arms, did his body start to relax and realize that, yes, he was
indeed safe and not being eaten alive by werewolves.
Ryan figured his days of being an adrenaline junkie were
officially over. That had been way too much. “Jesus Christ,” he
rasped. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Blasius pet his hair and held him close. “I’m sorry for nearly
drownin’ you. Was not my intention.”
“Not that,” Ryan said, still gripping Blasius as though his life
depended on it. His brain was thinking about what he’d just seen in
that dream and everything that was happening to him now, putting it
all together as neatly as a children’s puzzle.
It hadn’t been a dream. Not really. That had been a memory he’d
seen. It was crazy for him to even be thinking it, but he knew with
every bone in his body that everything he’d seen had happened.
“Fuck, they were eating me alive,” Ryan gasped, and then he
pulled away from Blasius’s arms, his hands trailing down his sides,
searching for any scars, bite marks, blood, anything.
There was nothing. The memories had been just that. Memories.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
47
From when?
Blasius had gone still at his words. “What did you see?” he asked,
his voice cool even though they were discussing Ryan’s death from
whenever that had been.
Despite the sound of his voice, Ryan could tell the other man was
bothered, and it wasn’t just the body language that gave that away to
him either. Somehow, he could sense it from the other man.
“I saw you.” Ryan frowned. “Kind of. It looked like you and that
one guy in the skins called you by your name, but you looked a little
different.”
Ryan looked up at Blasius. Now that he thought about it, there
was a difference between how Blasius looked now compared to then.
His hair was about the same length, to the shoulders. His eyes
were no longer green but a dark blue, and his hair color was now a
light blond compared to the dark blond, nearly brown it had been
before. There had also been a small scar running across Blasius’s
nose, but that too was gone.
Aside from those differences, the basic shape of Blasius’s face
and body remained the same.
“What happened to you? Why do you look different now
compared to then?”
“Over a thousand years will cause such differences, I’m afraid.”
A thousand years? The number was like a punch in the stomach.
“Do…do I look different?”
Blasius put his fingers into Ryan’s dark hair. “No. You look
exactly the same.”
“Is this…I mean, we were reincarnated? They said I was a dragon,
but I can’t…”
“Be at ease, Rhyan. You were reborn, I am more than certain of
it,” he said, his fingers now touching down on the dragon birthmark
on Ryan’s neck.
“What happened to me, on the other hand, is a little too
complicated to explain at the moment. Tell me, what else do you
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Marcy Jacks
remember? Do you remember us?”
Blasius seemed more concerned with that one than anything. His
eyes held that slight trace of desperation that Ryan was getting used to
seeing on his face.
“I remember they killed me because you wouldn’t take one of
their females,” Ryan said.
Blasius’s eyes became pained, and he pulled his hands away from
Ryan’s body. It was almost as though he were expected Ryan to push
him away.
“I made a bargain with the lord of a neighboring pack of
werewolves. One of their females and myself would come together to
produce pups. We would not mate, something of that nature cannot be
forced, but exchanges between unmated alphas such as that were not
uncommon. Then I met you.”
Ryan waited for him to continue.
Blasius sat back on his haunches. “I do not recall much of it, other
than I was injured and you appeared before me. Dragons are a solitary
species, from what I understand. I never expected to find my mate
with one, or even a male mate for that matter. In my time, such things
were hardly common, but it seems to happen rather frequently in this
pack.”
Ryan wouldn’t know anything about that since he never had the
chance to really meet anyone in this pack. He waited for Blasius to
continue.
“I could not lay with the female after that, not if it meant
betraying my lover, and I did love you. You were my sunlight on dark
mornings, a warrior who could match even my foul moods, battle
friendly matches with me, and hunt the hunters that preyed upon both
of our clans.”
“Do dragon people still exist?” Ryan asked. Werewolves were one
thing, but he got the impression that when a dragon-shifter
transformed, from what he could recall of that dream of his, they got
big. Really big.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
49
If anyone with a camera were to see a transformed werewolf, a
sight like that could easily be passed off as an overly large wolf. If the
same thing were to happen with a dragon, Ryan doubted the sight of
something like that could be shrugged off so easily.
Blasius shook his head. “I was quite heartbroken to learn that
dragons are extinct now. The hunters drove them into the mountains
and killed all that they could find. I’ve had this confirmed with the
pack leader, Lord DeWitt. There has not been a dragon sighting, even
among our own kind, in hundreds of years.”
Ryan reached up to touch the dragon birthmark on his neck.
Blasius reached for him as well. “But you are alive now,” he said,
smiling. “That is all I care about.”
Ryan wasn’t done with his questions. There were still so many
things he wanted to know. Things that didn’t make sense. “If we were
mated, then why did that one werewolf want to kill me? He must’ve
known that it wouldn’t make you want to have babies with that
female.”
“It was for the honor of his pack,” Blasius said. “He did not
believe for a moment that it was possible for two men to mate like
that. If warriors came together in lust, it was only because there were
no females to cater to them. He thought I spoke an untruth when I
explained. He was further insulted when he demanded to know who
this supposed male I had mated with was, and I explained that you
were of the dragon clan.
“I did not tell him your name or which clan of dragons you haled
from, but he must have been stalking me after that, waiting until you
and I met in one of our locations. Then he had you hunted and
murdered before my eyes.”
Blasius choked on his words after that, and Ryan’s heart lurched
for him.
Because he only knew of these events through Blasius’s words
and that strange vision of the past he’d had, all of this still felt surreal
to him. Almost like it was still happening to someone else.
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Marcy Jacks
He didn’t believe for a second that everything he’d seen and felt
in that vision was the full force of what had happened to him. Those
wolves had been eating him for God’s sake. There was no way he
hadn’t suffered more than what he’d felt in that dream. He was glad
he couldn’t remember those parts.
“I sent my pack after them, of course. It was a glorious war, made
all the sweeter when I took off the head of the wolf who had ordered
you dead. Of course, he had thrown his claws into my chest, and that
was what killed me, but I got revenge for you and died happy for it.”
“How is it that you have more memories of this than I do?” Ryan
asked. “If we were both reincarnated, then what makes you
different?”
Blasius scratched the back of his head. “Perhaps that is a story
better for another time. We must be heading back now. We are much
too far away from the pack for my liking, and if we do not return
soon, Lord DeWitt shall be forced to send his wolves out searching
for us. We do not want that.”
Just the way he looked at Ryan as he said it let him know that, no,
being hunted by werewolves was definitely not something that Ryan
wanted. The memories of the last time he’d been hunted by wolves
was enough to cause a spidery shiver to run up his spine.
He got up, and Blasius snuffed out the fire by picking up clumps
of sand and dropping it over the flames.
“Will I ever be able to go back to my life?” Ryan asked.
Blasius would not look at him. “No.”
“Would you let me even if I could?”
This time the other man did look at him. “Do not ask such
questions of me. You will not get an honest answer.”
Ryan shivered again, and his eyes couldn’t help but wander when
Blasius stood up before him, still naked, his erection in plain sight and
curved toward his belly.
Did Ryan want him because they were mates? Because of this
strange bond they shared? He was still trying to decide whether or not
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
51
he liked the way they were now apparently connected.
He was attracted to Blasius, very much so if the reaction if his
body was anything to go by, but attraction was not reason enough for
him to give up his life to be here, and neither were these memories of
the two of them in a past life. That was then, this is now.
“I can see in your eyes that you are thinking,” Blasius said,
approaching Ryan.
He expected the other man to kiss him, maybe to get him to stop
thinking so much like he was.
Ryan squawked when Blasius reached down, scooped his arms
around Ryan’s knees, and lifted him into the air, over Blasius’s
shoulder, fireman style.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.
“Keeping you from running again, and I’ll not be putting you back
on your feet until we return to the pack together.
Ryan struggled briefly before giving up, his face heating in
mortification at the position. His ass exposed to the air, about to be
seen by everyone who lived at the pack.
“I won’t run, I promise. Put me down,” Ryan said, hoping that his
calm words would be enough to convince this huge alpha male to do
what he wanted.
One of Blasius’s hands came down in a hard yet painful smack
across his ass cheeks, and Ryan jumped.
Blasius laughed. “I rather enjoy your new position too much to
want to part with you. Besides,” he added before Ryan could start
yelling and struggling again, “I don’t believe you for a moment.”
Now Ryan started to really struggle, but that hardly seemed to
matter as Blasius was more than happy to keep him on his shoulder as
they walked back to the pack.
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Marcy Jacks
Chapter Six
“Where’d you bury Decker?”
Blasius thought for a moment. He and Rhyan were sitting at one
of the wooden benches and tables outside. Blasius had so far refused
to leave his mate alone, even to change into some clothing.
“Who?” Blasius finally asked.
“The man who was with me, the other human that died when
those people attacked,” Rhyan snapped.
Now Blasius recalled the man. Poor soul, to have the back of his
head blown off was a bad way to go. No honor in being taken when
the back was turned.
“I was not of the men charged with disposing of the dead, but I
believe they were taken into the hills.”
He did not understand the reason for Rhyan’s blanching face.
“All of them?” he asked. “He was buried together with the rest of
those people? They killed him! Why would you put them together?”
“They weren’t put in the same grave.”
Blasius turned at the new voice that had unexpectedly added itself
to their conversation.
Tristan, that omega werewolf that Blasius had seen around on the
odd occasion, was practically hiding half of his body behind the side
of one of the cottages, as though attempting to keep out of Blasius’s
sight.
Blasius understood his fear. He had to be told the story from
another werewolf after his confusion continued to mount over the
behavior of the young wolf.
The body that Blasius currently inhabited, an alpha wolf formerly
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53
named Deacon, had once attempted to force the omega into becoming
a part of his harem, and would have succeeded had the boy’s mate, a
hunter of all people, not come to his rescue before the initiation could
commence.
Before Blasius had been annoyed when the omega had avoided
him, even after nearly every other werewolf on the land had begun to
warm up to Blasius’s presence. Then he heard that and understood.
He’d left the omega alone, not so much as coming to him to make
innocent conversation.
Blasius would not wish to be near a man who looked so much like
an alpha who had attempted to do such things to him either. If he ever
met another wolf, human, hunter, or any such creature who resembled
the alpha responsible for Rhyan’s death, he knew without any doubt
that he would kill the man.
Yet now Tristan was here, attempting to help Blasius as he
struggled with the odd moods of his mate.
“What do you know of this?” Blasius asked.
“I was one of the men put in charge of burying the bodies,”
Tristan replied, hesitantly stepping out for them to see.
Blasius’s brows came together. “And odd activity for an omega.”
“Who cares?” Rhyan said, stepping closer to Tristan. “Can you
take me to where he is?”
Tristan nodded. “Yeah, follow me.”
Tristan turned and began walking toward the northern side of the
land and then behind the alpha’s house.
Blasius had no need for any sort of invitation to go along with
them. He was Rhyan’s mate, and in charge of his safety in these
dangerous times, so of course he would follow as well.
That did not stop him from being angered that Rhyan had not so
much as asked for Blasius to accompany him.
They walked into the trees, the hill sloping as they traveled.
Blasius could hear the steady thump of Rhyan’s heart, especially as
the sound got to be louder and louder.
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Marcy Jacks
Something was making his mate act this way. The closer it was
they came to the grave of the human, the more frantic Rhyan’s heart
became.
Then they were on the spot. There was naught there to give away
that any bodies were buried in this area aside from the scent of
recently turned earth. Even new small plants had been placed to give
the illusion that there was nothing amiss.
To human eyes, anyway. Blasius could still tell the difference.
Rhyan’s senses were still improving, and he searched around the
area, inhaling deeply through his nose. He could smell the turned
earth but could not see that the graves were right at his feet, it seemed.
“Where is he?” Rhyan demanded.
“That’s the grave of the hunters, right there,” Tristan said,
pointing to the spot just in front of Rhyan’s feet in the center of the
clearing.
Rhyan stepped back when he realized was he was nearly standing
upon. “Jesus Christ!” he cursed.
Then he stepped forward again, staring at the place where Tristan
had pointed, the ferns and small shrubs and new weeds poking out of
the earth hiding the grave quit well without making it too obvious that
someone was attempting to hide something.
“You said Decker’s not in there,” Rhyan reminded the omega.
“Where is he?”
“Over there,” Tristan said, nodding his head toward the foot of an
oak tree.
Blasius looked at the same time as his lover, and he could not help
but think that it was a fine place to be buried, even if a little too close
to one’s enemies. The oak was tall, thick, and strong. The branches
seemingly reaching out to protect the grave itself, hiding it from view,
but now that he and Rhyan knew what they were looking at, it was
impossible to miss.
Rhyan approached the grave and moved one of the low hanging
branches out of the way. Small purple and white blossoms grew from
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
55
out of the little vines that sprouted from the earth where his friend was
buried.
Again, Blasius thought it was a fine resting place.
He did not fully begin to understand that there was more wrong
here than he knew until Rhyan fell to his knees, his spine and head
bending in despair.
He did not weep. He did not need to. Blasius understood.
He went to stand behind Rhyan, and he put his hand on the man’s
shoulder. “Were you lovers, then?” he asked.
Rhyan nodded, and then he lifted his head, as though he’d just
thought of something. “Ex-lovers, actually, but we were still friends. I
liked him, and even though we were at different places in our careers,
we still got along like friends.”
Blasius did not enjoy the way Rhyan’s chin trembled toward the
end of his speech. He did not enjoy the knowledge that Rhyan had
had lovers before Blasius either, though he would never admit to
being jealous of a dead man.
“I hate that he’s so close to them,” Rhyan said, barely casting a
glance toward the other unmarked and nearly invisible grave. “But
I’m glad he’s not sharing a space with them.”
Rhyan looked up at Tristan. “Thank you.”
“I never said I had anything to do with keeping them apart,”
Tristan said.
“No, but I’m pretty sure you did. It would’ve been easier for you
all to just dump them in the same grave. Someone had to dig the
second hole.”
Tristan’s face heated, and he looked away from Rhyan’s grateful
gaze. “He was wearing a police uniform. Didn’t seem right putting
him with the people who killed him.”
Rhyan nodded then put his hands on the earth, as though he could
somehow touch the spirit of the man within the grave.
Blasius knew all about wandering spirits, as well as how they
enjoyed the attentions of the living. He was simply glad that there
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Marcy Jacks
were no spirits here to disturb them.
It had been something he had not spoken to anyone about since
taking possession of this body and returning to life. He could still see
the dead, much the same way the vampire Ivan could.
Perhaps it was because he was still, at least partially, connected to
the spirit world. There was one spirit in particular who wandered this
pack, and that was the ghost of Eric Martin, Ivan’s mate. He managed
to keep all other spirits away from the land, and though Blasius was
certain that the man suspected Blasius could see him, Blasius
continued to pretend ignorance of his presence, as well as the
presence of any other spirit he happened to see while he was on the
edge of pack land.
The spirit of Rhyan’s former lover, as well as the ghosts of the
hunters who had killed him, were not here. Perhaps they’d moved on,
to heaven, hell, wherever it was that spirits went when the left the
earth. Blasius did not know.
He was simply glad that the man his lover mourned was not here.
Blasius would no doubt shame himself if he had to confront such a
specter.
“Were they all killed?” Rhyan asked, glaring down at the other
grave.
“Don’t know,” Tristan said, becoming more and more at ease in
Blasius’s presence. Perhaps that had more to do with the fact that he
was not required to speak to Blasius.
“There are five people buried here, including your…partner,”
Tristan said.
“Five,” Rhyan said, frowning at nothing in particular. “So only
four of those other men, those hunters, were killed?”
“Yes,” Tristan nodded.
“I counted at least five of them. One of them got away before you
could finish him off,” Rhyan said, jumping to his feet and walking
away from the graves.
Blasius quickly followed him. “Where are you going?”
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
57
“To tell your leader or alpha or whatever that someone else might
be coming back here with backup,” Rhyan said, not looking back at
them as he hurried back down the hill.
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Marcy Jacks
Chapter Seven
Now that Ryan knew there might be one of those motherfuckers
alive who was responsible for Decker’s death, he found himself a
little less torn between staying and attempting another escape.
His connection to Blasius was one thing, but now that there was a
killer out there, who very well might’ve been the one to pull the
trigger that blew off the back of Decker’s head, he was a lot more
interested in what being a werewolf could do for him in terms of
hunting the man down and killing him.
James, the alpha with the scarred face, had rubbed his hand over
his forehead, most notably over the eyebrow that was half missing. He
didn’t look tired by any stretch of the imagination, but he did look
like the constant news of hunters coming to kill him and his pack was
really starting to annoy him.
Ryan could hardly blame him. As much as he loved the cat-and-
mouse chase involved in a crime spree, there were those times when
he had to stop and wonder when it would all stop.
“Everything was pretty chaotic that day,” James had said when
they had their meeting. “It was nearly impossible for us to know just
how many other hunters their leader called in for backup. You sure
about this?”
“I can’t be sure about exactly how many there were,” Ryan was
forced to admit. “But Tristan said you only buried four hunters and
Decker. I counted at least five men shooting at your pack that day.”
Based only on what Ryan had been able to count, the fact that
there could be more of them out there than what he’d seen was left
unsaid.
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59
James was the kind of guy who didn’t need Ryan to spell things
out for him. He liked that about the other man.
“Mick?” James had asked, and another large male stepped closer
to their group.
“Yes?”
“How many men do we have on sentry?”
Mick told him, and James cursed.
“Almost all our alphas,” he said.
Mick nodded. “Including Isaac. Even the vampires have started
helping out by doing night rounds.”
That made Ryan sit a little straighter in his chair. Vampires? Did
he just say frickin’ vampires?
James drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t want a repeat of
what happened the last time. It’s not in their nature, but the omegas
are going to have to learn to defend themselves so that the alphas
won’t have as much to worry about.”
“But they’re already learning how to use firearms with Isaac and
Jason,” Mick said.
“That’s not exactly good enough when there aren’t enough guns
for even half the omegas here to use. I don’t want that many firearms
on my land anyway,” James said. “The last thing I want is for one of
the pups to get their hands on them and hurt someone, or themselves.”
Mick nodded. “I can gather a few omegas up who will be willing
to learn. Tristan will probably be the most interested, and with Isaac
to help him, the both of them can better convince the omegas that this
is the way to go.”
“They don’t need convincing,” James said, lacing his fingers
together. “They’re going to do it whether they like it or not.”
Ryan suddenly got a good idea of just why this was the man in
charge around here. People did what he said, period.
“You were a cop, too, right?” James then asked, turning his hard
stare onto Ryan.
Ryan felt the way Blasius had tensed up beside him and was
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forced to ignore it. “Detective, but you don’t get to that position
without doing some street work first. I’ll do whatever you want me to
do if it means getting the guy who killed Decker.”
“Would you kill him? If you caught the man and knew without a
shadow of a doubt that he was the one who killed your friend, would
you end his life?”
It was strange how Ryan didn’t even need to think about it. His
conviction was that strong. “Yes.”
“You must know that if you do that, you won’t ever be able to go
back to living with the humans.”
Ryan had almost forgotten all about that, and his insides froze up.
That was right. What the hell had he been thinking? If he decided
to go after these hunters with these werewolves, he could never go
home again. He would be forced to stay here, forever a member of
this pack, taking orders from a man he didn’t know.
He would be a murderer and an outlaw.
But he could be with Blasius, another man he barely knew.
“I don’t want to make things worse for you,” said James, and
Ryan’s guts sank further anyway. “But the likelihood of you returning
so soon after becoming a werewolf is pretty much nonexistent
anyway. You still need to learn to control your wolf at a hundred
percent before you can start interacting safely with humans, and since
I’m pretty sure being a detective is a stressful job that involves a lot of
human interaction, you wouldn’t be able to go to work while you’re
like this either.”
“Will I ever be able to go back?” Ryan asked.
James leaned back in his chair, and Ryan noted the way the man’s
eyes would dart over to Blasius. He was at least taking the other
man’s feelings into consideration. Unlike Ryan, ungrateful bastard
that he was.
“Some wolves have been known to make lives for themselves
outside of packs and with humans. These wolves were usually born
werewolves, though, and keeping control of their wolves and
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61
emotions is second nature to them. I’ve met werewolves who were
able to go months without a transformation, lessening their chances of
being found out or putting humans in danger, and that’s a skill no one
in this pack has mastered yet.”
Great.
After Ryan had heard all he wanted to hear and was let in on the
planning stages of hunting down any other hunters who might still be
in the area, Ryan got up from his chair and left the main house.
Aside from the few hours he’d spent in the forest and back here
with Blasius, Ryan had spent most of his time caged up in James’s
basement. Now he just wanted some fresh air and a chance to think.
He wanted to kill the men responsible for Decker’s death so
badly, but that would force him to stay here even should he learn to
control his transformations to the extent that James spoke of.
If he left, he would never see Blasius again, but he hardly knew
the man and was still coming to terms with the idea that he was
something other than a newly transformed werewolf.
Staying, however, was damn near out of the question. He was a
stranger on this land, and he never liked being the new guy, putting up
with all those stares. It wasn’t his thing.
“Where are you going?” Blasius asked.
Ryan stopped walking, clenching his fists. He half turned to look
at the man who was his…mate. “If I wanted to walk into the woods
by myself, would you let me go?”
He already knew what the answer would be, so he didn’t know
why he was bothering with picking this fight.
Blasius folded his arms across that massive chest of his. “Wild
werewolves are lurking about, you want to escape the safety of the
pack, and you think I’ll allow you to leave?”
Annoyance trailed its way up Ryan’s spine. “I do not belong to
you, you fucking cock.”
Blasius shook his head, his eyes taking on that angry golden color,
his heavy brows coming down, and his accent becoming just a little
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Marcy Jacks
thicker as he spoke. “No, ye are hardly one of my daggers or a piece
of cloth for me to lay a claim to, but ye are a newly transformed
werewolf. Ye are my responsibility to keep safe, and if ye think I will
lose ye again simply because ye wish to satisfy yer anger, ye’re sorely
mistaken.”
Ryan thrust his hands into his hair and gripped tight. Why did
Blasius have to talk like that? It was driving him insane.
Blasius walked up to him before he could start a rampage against
him. He surprised Ryan by gripping him by the neck and pushing him
into the wall of one of the cabins.
He didn’t squeeze his fingers and choke him, but when Ryan
looked behind the other man, he could still see the way the omegas in
the pack quickly turned their heads away and scattered at the sight of
them.
“Now listen to me, ye blasted dragon,” Blasius seethed. The
blasted dragon part of his words was enough to let Ryan know they’d
had words like this before in their previous life.
“Do not test my patience on this. I feel not a speck of sympathy
for yer plight, so do not ask me to feel it, not at the expense of my
happiness for having ye returned. I am sorry ye lost yer lover, but I do
not feel sorry that he is gone. Had he survived the attack, I might very
well have killed him myself.”
“You’re sick,” Ryan said, pushing against Blasius’s chest. “Get
off me!”
Blasius would not be moved, and despite the way Ryan tried to
fight him off, Blasius still came forward, grabbed Ryan by the back of
the head, and pressed his mouth against Ryan’s.
Ryan fought for another couple of seconds before his body started
to react. Maybe it was the kiss itself, the wanting and needing that
Ryan sensed in it, or the fact that they were mated and connected by
more than a thousand years, but his muscles seemed to just melt.
Instead of pushing Blasius away, Ryan was gripping his large
shoulders, pulling the other man against him.
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63
He hated that he was being manipulated like this, but he loved the
feeling of having the other man on him. He liked the possessiveness.
No one had ever been possessive of Ryan before, not Decker, not
anyone, and when he thought about it, Ryan didn’t much like the
thought of Blasius being with anyone else either. He thought about
the possibility of the other man having lovers after Ryan was killed,
and he didn’t like it at all, even though that was ridiculous.
Of course Blasius would’ve taken lovers. No one could remain
chaste for that long, but if Ryan had to meet any of them, he might’ve
threatened to kill someone, too.
Blasius thrust his hips against Ryan’s, pressing him harder against
the wall. Blasius’s erection rubbed against Ryan’s thigh, and they
both groaned.
“Oh, my heart,” Blasius said.
Ryan’s face went hotter than he’d ever felt it go in his life. Did
Blasius really just call him that?
That wasn’t the only thing he was doing either. Blasius’s hands
had gone from massaging Ryan’s neck and shoulders to down
between them. He was trying to get his jeans off and seemed to be
having a bit of difficulty with it.
“Bloody things,” he muttered, his teeth showing as he glared
down at his button and fly, the bulge between his legs an indication of
his lust.
Ryan could actually smell the lust coming off of the man in
waves, and though he was tempted to just let it happen right here, the
knowledge that Blasius would fuck him right here, out in the open in
front of everyone, was just too much, and the act itself was something
that Ryan wanted to avoid.
He grabbed Blasius’s hands and had to quickly explain himself
when the man looked at him with horror in his eyes.
“I don’t want to stop,” Ryan said. “But we can’t do this here.”
Blasius’s grin showed off his canines. “Let them see my lust for
ye. Then all will know that we are mated and none other shall have ye
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Marcy Jacks
but me.”
More of that kind of speech with that strange accent. Blasius
talked like he never grew up in modern times at all. Would Ryan
speak and think the way Blasius did when more of his memories from
his past life came back to him?
He decided he would worry about it after he had Blasius’s cock
inside of him.
Now that was a thought to throw him off kilter. Ryan enjoyed sex
as much as the next guy did, but in all the encounters he’d ever had,
he was always the one to take the top position. He liked it when his
lovers took charge and all, but Ryan had never had the urge to have
another man’s dick in his ass. Now he did, and he only wanted it from
Blasius.
“They can hear us and know just fine,” Ryan said, pulling Blasius
away from the cabin and looking around. “Where can we go?”
“That one,” Blasius said, pointing to the smallest cabin on the
land.
He didn’t bother to think about it as he and Blasius practically ran
for the little house. The door hadn’t been locked, and really, why
would it be? Everyone on this land seemed to trust everyone else, so
unless there was a hunter attack coming, there was no need to keep
anyone out.
Ryan led the way inside. The bedroom was easy to find, because
aside from the bathroom and sliding closet doors, it seemed to be the
only other door in the small house.
The bed was small, too. It was only a single size, but Ryan looked
at it and saw more than enough room for what he wanted to do.
Just as Blasius slid his hands around Ryan’s waist, Ryan spun
around, grabbed him by the arms, and threw him down on the small
mattress.
The whole bed groaned under the sudden weight landing on it, but
Ryan paid no attention as he climbed on top of Blasius’s body and sat
down on his thighs. He got to work on Blasius’s fly and zipper,
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65
getting them down a whole lot faster and easier than Blasius had
managed to do.
“I must say, I greatly enjoy when you take possession of my body
like this,” Blasius said.
Ryan did, too. He was so fucking horny he could start humping
against Blasius’s legs right now and have no problem coming. He just
wanted the other man to fuck him. He wanted to forget about
everything that was happening, all the decisions that were being made
for him.
When Blasius’s cock sprang free, Ryan grabbed hold of it,
shivering at the moan Blasius released.
Though he’d already had sex with Blasius, now it was different. It
was different because Ryan wasn’t blind with rage or drunk on the
urges running through his body. He was perfectly sober and aware of
himself this time. If he did this, there would be no excuse he could
give for his actions. It would prove to himself and the man beneath
him that he wanted him, and that, in some small place in the back of
his mind, he wanted to be here as well.
“Tell me you plan to do more than just stare at it,” Blasius hissed,
pulling Ryan out of his musings.
He did indeed. Ryan kept a firm grip on Blasius’s cock, rubbing
his fingers and thumb along the base.
Blasius was uncut, his cock was thick and slightly larger than
average. Ryan could feel the pulse of the man’s heart through the
blood pumping to his prick, and he showed some mercy and stroked
again.
Blasius fisted his hands into his hair, humping into Ryan’s hand.
“Ye are evil,” he gasped.
Ryan’s mind became clouded with lust once more as he watched
the man beneath him writhe and listened to him moan. The sights and
sounds went straight to his cock and balls, and his dick pressed
uncomfortably against his own borrowed jeans.
“Tell me you keep lube in here,” Ryan said.
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Marcy Jacks
Blasius’s lust glazed eyes became confused. “Keep what?”
Again, it was almost as though he hadn’t lived in this century.
Ryan couldn’t think about that right now. His horny thoughts blocked
out every strange thing Blasius had ever said as he searched around
the bedroom. He reached over and pulled a drawer out of the
nightstand, and his heart jumped at the sight of a bottle of sunscreen.
That would do perfectly.
Blasius got up onto his elbows to watch as Ryan opened the cap
and smeared a dollop into his hand.
“What be that you’re playing around with?”
“Something to make it better,” Ryan said, then he thought of
something. “What did you use the last time we were together?”
Blasius finally seemed to understand what he was talking about.
“Grease I found on a shelf in the kitchen.”
Ryan tried to remember what it had felt like when he pushed
himself inside the other man. Christ, for all he knew Blasius had
prepared himself with canola oil or something.
“Rhyan, get on with it,” Blasius said, his eyes becoming golden.
Ryan looked down at Blasius as he fisted the man’s dick once
more. The organ jumped in his hand, and Blasius’s eyes popped wide
open, his mouth falling as he fell back on the bed with a long and loud
moan of approval.
“Fuckin’ Christ!” he shouted, and Ryan had to grab Blasius’s hip
with his free hand to keep him from humping too hard into Ryan’s
hand.
“That…that…”
“I know,” Ryan said then briefly let go of Blasius’s cock to get
out of his jeans. He kicked them away, and because neither of them
wore any shirts or underwear, they were now both gloriously naked in
front of each other.
Blasius looked like a contender for the Mr. Universe contest. His
body downright dwarfed Ryan’s, and Ryan had never thought of
himself as being a small man.
Taken by the Alpha Wolf
67
It kind of made him wonder what Blasius had ever seen in him to
begin with. From what he could put together, he didn’t look any
different in his previous life compared to now, unlike Blasius, who
did have a couple of subtle differences about him.
Because of the hand job with the lotion, Blasius hardly seemed to
notice the way Ryan was thinking again, but Ryan was having no
doubts. Looking down on the other man, he wanted him. His cock
throbbed, practically begging for some sort of attention.
“Here,” Ryan said, putting the still-open bottle in Blasius’s hand.
Blasius looked down at it like he didn’t know what to do with it.
Ryan expected that was because he was still too far gone from being
stroked by Ryan’s hand.
Ryan had to help him out. He opened the bottle and put a couple
of drops onto Blasius’s fingers, thoroughly coating them.
Blasius grinned, understanding finally dawning on him. “So this is
how two men are expected to fuck. I must say I look forward to trying
it.”
“Well, sunscreen isn’t sold for that reason, but there are other
things you can get to make it even better.” Ryan shivered at his own
words, and his eyes met Blasius’s.
Ryan let himself fall back to the foot of the bed, pulling Blasius
on top of him.
Despite acting like he didn’t know any better, Blasius took it from
there like a pro. He grabbed Ryan’s leg and hooked it over his
shoulder, and then Ryan felt the tip of one of his blunt fingers
prodding against his hole.
Blasius was quick about it. There was no asking him if he was all
right, slowing down, or hesitation. None of that stuff that Ryan
thought had been expected of him whenever he took a lover.
None of it was needed, either. If Blasius had stopped or slowed
down to ask him what he was thinking, of if he was comfortable,
Ryan might’ve panicked and called the whole thing off.
It kind of made Ryan wonder how he had ever gotten laid to begin
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Marcy Jacks
with.
Ryan did all the things he knew he was supposed to do when
being prepared for sex. He eased his breathing, pushed out when
Blasius added another finger to his hole, scissoring them to further
stretch out the muscle, and then reminded himself that the burn was
only going to get better when―
Ryan’s body went tight, his fingers gripping the blankets beneath
him as he moaned at the sudden onslaught of pleasure that shot
through his body with the speed of a bullet.
His back arched, and he would’ve come right off the bed had
Blasius not placed his large hand in the middle of Ryan’s chest and
held him down.
“There it is,” he heard the other man mutter.
Ryan looked down to try and see what was happening, but of
course he couldn’t see the fingers in his ass.
He could, however, see the way Blasius’s arm moved in that back
and forth rhythmic pattern as he fucked Ryan with his fingers, as well
as the concentration on his face as he was so focused on what he was
doing.
That didn’t make the other man any less desperate to get inside of
him, considering the color his prick had turned while it waited to be
pleasured.
Ryan bit down on his bottom lip as Blasius found his prostate
again and continued to tease it.
He grabbed for Blasius’s arms when he could take no more and
tried to yank the man on top of him, but it was like trying to move a
thousand-pound statue.
“I thought I was supposed to be stronger as a werewolf?” Ryan
snarled, his impatience getting the better of him.
He reached down to grab hold of his prick.
Blasius slapped his hands away, and when he tried again, he
grabbed Ryan by the fingers and held both of his hands down on his
chest.
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69
“You are, but I am still stronger,” Blasius said, his grin showing
off his teeth.
Ryan couldn’t take it anymore. “Fuck me already.”
He needed it. He needed Blasius to take him.
Blasius must have seen that desperation in Ryan’s eyes because he
became serious again, removed his fingers, and lined up the head of
his dick with Ryan’s pucker.
Ryan’s breath caught in his throat when Blasius thrust inside, and
his entire body tensed with the pain he felt.
For the first time, Blasius actually hesitated to look down at him,
almost as though he were making certain that Ryan was okay.
He didn’t ask him, though. Probably because he knew that if he
did, Ryan would tell him that, no, this was not okay. This fucking
hurt, and he’d changed his mind.
Blasius just waited for him to adjust instead.
Ryan hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, but when he let
his out, his face became several degrees cooler, and his body managed
to relax just a little. Then the pain faded into a dull burn.
“Move,” he said.
Blasius nodded, seeming to let out a breath of his own as he
slowly began thrusting his hips.
Ryan held still at the push and pull he felt inside of him, still very
much painful but lessening by increments with each thrust of
Blasius’s cock inside of him. Ryan focused on that feeling instead,
and it helped.
It was nothing that he’d ever felt before, yet so right. As his body
began to better accept the intrusion, Ryan found himself participating,
thrusting back against Blasius’s cock and enjoying the harsh breathing
and moans that came from his lover.
And they were lovers, he realized, and not just because of that one
time they’d had together when Ryan was getting sick or because of
what had happened to them over a thousand years ago. They were
lovers.
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Marcy Jacks
Finally, what Ryan had been yearning for suddenly happened. The
terrible thoughts and memories were taken away from him as Blasius
sped up the motions of his body. The pain faded away as though a fog
had dispersed, and when Blasius’s cock brushed against Ryan’s
prostate, he shouted out his pleasure.
“Oh, fuck! Right there!” Ryan yelled, tightening his legs around
Blasius’s hips and shoulder, his hands gripping the man’s back, nails
dragging down as he tried to pull Blasius closer to him and deeper
inside of him.
Blasius’s neck tightened as he groaned through his teeth. His body
jerked quickly, pelvis thrusting until their bodies were punching
against each other. Ryan felt the weight of Blasius’s balls rocking
against his thighs, and he loved it.
“Tell me ye’re mine, dragon.”
Ryan moaned, but he had no idea what it was that Blasius just
said.
“Tell me that ye are mine,” Blasius demanded, his gold eyes
turning even brighter as he practically glared down at Ryan.
Now he understood. He also understood the way Blasius had
slowed down, as though he meant to stop.
“I’m yours! I’m yours! Don’t stop!”
How is it that Ryan went his whole life without ever letting
anyone do this to him? This was the most amazing feeling he’d ever
experienced, and whether or not he decided to leave this place, he was
going to make sure that he and Blasius fucked like this a lot more
often.
Blasius complied with the demand, his already quickly moving
hips pumping even faster, harder, until Ryan realized that his head
was poking off the foot of the bed.
If Blasius kept this up, he was going to fuck Ryan clear off the
bed.
It wasn’t until the wooden bed frame was pushing against Ryan’s
lower back that he was able to reach out and grab hold of it to keep
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71
himself from falling off.
Blasius groaned at the sight, his hand finding Ryan’s hair as he
pulled them together for another kiss. Ryan was going to be squished
if they kept this up.
He wanted to wrap his arms around Blasius’s shoulders, to feel his
warm skin under his hands, but he didn’t dare let go of the bed in case
they were to both fall off.
Then Blasius released a deep groan, the sudden movement of his
hips slowing only a little but the force of his thrusts becoming
stronger, the groans leaving his mouth a little more ragged.
“Coming for me?” Ryan asked.
Blasius made a noise that Ryan took to be an affirmative.
They weren’t done with this yet. Ryan had told Blasius that he
was his, and now he wanted the other man to return the favor before
they were both thrown over the edge.
There was nothing Ryan could do to get his attention or make him
stop, so he had to settle with grabbing some of that blond hair of his
and yanking down until Blasius was looking him in the eyes. They
were clouded with lust.
“You are mine,” Ryan said.
Blasius’s face was flushed a nice pink color, but he still
understood and nodded.
Ryan tightened the grip on his fingers. “Tell me. Tell me that
you’re mine,” he snarled, hardly knowing where this was coming
from.
“I’m yours,” Blasius said, and then he squeezed his eyes shut, his
mouth falling open as he looped his arms around Ryan’s torso and
came hard inside of him.
Ryan was forced to wait until Blasius’s body stilled. He trembled
roughly, but when he stopped milking himself inside of Ryan’s body,
Ryan was finally able to lower his leg from Blasius’s shoulder and
nudge the both of them back onto the bed.
Only then did Blasius seem to notice how close to the edge they
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both had been, as well as Ryan’s now-painful erection, and he
laughed.
His laugh was a booming sound that filled the whole room. Ryan
found that he liked it.
“Allow me to handle that for you,” Blasius said, and the both of
them had to maneuver around a bit before Blasius had Ryan’s legs
over the side of the mattress, and Blasius’s lips went around Ryan’s
dick.
Ryan put his hand into Blasius’s hair, the strong feeling of déjà vu
coming over him as he watched Blasius’s head bob up and down,
working his cock, and soon Ryan was gasping again.
“Suck me harder,” he commanded, shifting his hips and fucking
Blasius’s mouth.
Blasius complied with the demand as best as he was able to, using
his fist to stroke the part of Ryan’s cock that his mouth could not
quite reach.
Ryan didn’t mind. All he cared about was the warm buzz filling
inside of him and the building pleasure.
His ass moved quickly against the mattress as he shifted his hips
to better thrust into that hot mouth. Blasius’s lips had gone so pink,
the way he tightened his cheeks, and―
Ryan threw his head back as he came, shooting himself down
Blasius’s throat, but the man didn’t stop sucking on him until Ryan
stopped trembling.
Ryan collapsed onto the bed when Blasius’s mouth released his
prick. He found himself drawn to the other man when Blasius climbed
into bed with him. Like an insect to a bright light, he had no control
over his body as he lazily rolled over, his hand sliding across
Blasius’s chest and his head coming to rest on the other man’s large
shoulder.
They were quiet for the moment, except for the sounds of their
breathing, which was only just starting to return to normal.
Ryan wasn’t the kind of guy to immediately fall asleep after sex,
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73
but it did make him pretty tired.
Still, he was curious. Maybe that was just a product of all the
experience he’d had as a detective.
“What just happened?”
Blasius was running his fingers through Ryan’s hair, stroking him
like he was a newly tamed animal. Ryan kind of liked that feeling. It
also made him sleepier.
The other werewolf made a noise as though he was thinking. “I
imagine we just completed our bond.”
“I thought we already did that?”
Blasius nodded. “We have, but the first time is not always a
complete process, and even if it was, renewing it is always
recommended.”
He could almost hear the grin in Blasius’s words. Since Ryan had
no inside knowledge on how werewolf mating worked, he was going
to have to take Blasius’s word on it.
Maybe he was right, considering how lulled Ryan felt. He’d never
been so relaxed before in his life, not even when he’d been in college.
He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t stressed about
something and losing sleep over it, and yet there he was, lying in
Blasius’s arms, trailing his fingers across the man’s neck and chest in
a similar way to what Blasius was doing with his hair.
When his fingers made it up to the smooth skin on Blasius’s jaw,
Ryan frowned, recalling something from the vision he’d had when he
went into the water back at the pond.
“Blasius?”
“Mmm?” It sounded like the man was fighting to no fall asleep.
“Where’s your beard?”
Blasius continued to lazily stroke Ryan until he drifted off, but
Ryan still caught the odd reply.
“This body can’t grow a beard.”
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Chapter Eight
“I want to go hunting with you.”
Blasius rubbed his eyes, praying to Romulus and Remus for
patience. The spirits had given Blasius a second chance at life, and
had also apparently brought back his lover from the dead as well, so
surely they must be listening to his plight.
Perhaps not, as that stubborn set to Rhyan’s jaw remained
precisely where it was. The man would not back down.
“I know you are an alpha―”
“Then let me hunt with you,” Rhyan insisted.
“You do not yet have the skills for hunting,” Blasius told him,
ignoring the bothersome outburst of his mate. “You could become
enraged and make the shift by accident, and that will put every other
alpha near you in danger should you do it at the wrong time.”
If there was a hunter around, for instance, and Rhyan needed his
human mind in control. It could be dangerous if Rhyan’s wolf spotted
the others and panicked like before, and the others were forced to
protect him while he ran about.
Blasius was more than certain that Rhyan’s wolf would not be so
fearful of hunters or people, but there was no telling how the wolf
would react to these things. At least until the man had some proper
training or was able to socialize with the other werewolves some more
and lose his fear of them.
Rhyan’s budding friendship with that omega Tristan could hardly
be counted on for that.
“What better way to teach me how to control my wolf than to take
me out hunting with the rest of you?” Rhyan insisted.
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He thought Blasius was being stubborn and purposely attempting
to keep him out of danger, as though he were an omega.
Blasius told himself that over and over again to keep his anger at
being challenged in place. “You do not recall how you were on your
first transformation. The very sight of the other alphas frightened you.
You could hardly move as they advanced. Perhaps it was memories of
the end of your previous life that caused it, but we cannot risk it
happening again. If it did, you would be useless on any battlefield and
would be no good as a hunting companion to anyone.”
Rhyan flinched as though Blasius had struck him. He wished the
other man would not do that.
Blasius put his hands on his mate’s shoulders. He did not speak
again until Rhyan looked at him.
“I do not say these things to be cruel. They are truths that no new
member of any werewolf family can deny. You have only had one
transformation as well. You are not ready.”
“Then let it just be you and me,” Rhyan said, not willing to give
up.
It had been that stubborn insistence that had won Blasius’s heart
over a thousand years ago.
Blasius could only look at him, but Rhyan continued to speak
before he could make his decision.
“My wolf isn’t afraid of you. You told me that yourself. Take me
out there with you, train me to do what I need to do.”
“Is this so that you can have your revenge for your…friend?”
Blasius asked. He and Rhyan had recently argued over the fact that
Blasius continued to call the human named Decker a lover of
Rhyan’s.
Though Rhyan and the human had shared a bed, Rhyan was
insistent that he and Decker were only good comrades and that he
wished to exact justice for the man.
“Yes, it’s exactly that. I want to find the man responsible for his
death, and I want him…”
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“Dead?” Blasius finished.
“Of course I want him dead,” Rhyan snapped then clapped his
teeth shut, his entire body trembling with rage as he and Blasius
argued outside the door to their shared cottage.
Just looking at him now made it clear to Blasius that the man was
in need of another transformation, and soon. Perhaps Blasius really
should stay with Rhyan to ensure that the shift went smoothly.
“I want him behind bars more,” Rhyan said eventually.
“And how will you do such a thing? I know not about the
dungeons or sentencings of criminals today, but I do know that we
cannot simply bring in humans to handle this for us.”
That, and last time he checked, and he had checked with James on
this, there was no law stating that killing werewolves was illegal, and
no pack was willing to expose themselves to the humans just yet
either.
“I can do it with this,” Rhyan said, holding up the little black
weapon in both of his hands for Blasius to see.
He jumped at the sight of it. “Do not point that thing at me!”
Rhyan looked at him like he’d gone mad. “I’m not pointing it at
you. This is the barrel right here. See? And it’s not loaded either. I
have the clip in my pocket.”
Rhyan pointed at the place where the bit of metal, a bullet, was to
come out of the weapon. Blasius continued to stare down at it with
distrust.
“Well, what do you plan to do with the thing, then?”
“I’m going to find that last of the hunters who killed Decker, and
I’m going to plant the gun in their things. This is Decker’s Glock. It
was registered to him. If the police find a man packing the kind of
weapons that James and Isaac said these hunters are carrying, and one
of them happens to be the gun belonging to a missing officer, he’ll get
taken in, I know he will.”
Blasius would rather wring the necks of his enemies, but the
revenge was Rhyan’s to properly take, not his. If his mate wished to
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do this, then Blasius could see no harm in aiding him.
“Ah, what about the lack of a body?” Blasius asked. “Will that not
make a difference to your police?”
Rhyan bit the inside of his cheek, putting the Glock back in the
leather holster he wore around his shoulders.
“The lack of a body will cause some problems, but there have
been murder cases that have gone through without one.”
“And, should the hunter tell your police that we buried the body
on the hill behind James’s house?”
Rhyan looked away from him, his lips and jaw becoming tight.
Clearly, he’d hoped that Blasius would not point that out.
“There’s a chance that he won’t say anything. He doesn’t even
know where you guys buried those bodies.”
“No, but he could simply decide to point the humans toward the
pack to be spiteful. He does not need to tell them that a group of
werewolves live here for them to come searching, I’ll wager.”
Again, Blasius was willing to bet that Rhyan already thought
about this and was simply taking the risk that the hunter would say
nothing, or if he did, any search done by humans would turn up
nothing.
One of Blasius’s memories from his previous life had been
frightening the dogs trained by humans to hunt werewolves or other
smaller prey that his pack had required in order to survive for the
winter. If any humans came here with dogs trained to search for dead
and buried flesh, he could easily transform into his wolf and sit back
somewhere in the shrubs, allowing his scent to throw the dogs into a
panic and make them lead the humans into a completely different
direction.
He would do such a thing if forced to, but he would not risk the
safety of this pack, no matter what his capabilities.
“Rhyan,” Blasius said, wishing he had the proper words to make
the man see…to make him understand. “The justice of a werewolf, or
of a vampire, as well as the dragons, back when they still lived, is
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entirely different from what the humans bestow on each other. You
are no longer a human, and you must stop thinking like one. If we
find the hunter, the best thing to do would be to kill him. Should I find
him first, I would even spare his life and bring him to you to deliver
your own justice if that is your wish.”
“I just…” Rhyan appeared more lost than Blasius had ever seen
him. “I wish I could send him to prison.”
Blasius inhaled a deep breath, a decision coming over him, and he
was resolved to carry it out.
He gripped Rhyan’s shoulders tightly. “Do your friend one better
than that and send the bastard to hell. Come with me. You need to let
your wolf out, and I will stay with you until both your minds merge.
We hunt the dishonorable bastards together, just like before.”
Rhyan actually managed to smile at him, and that made Blasius
feel all the better as he took off the leather holsters and his clothes and
walked out into the woods with him.
Blasius was eager for the hunt and was glad when Rhyan’s
transformation came over him quickly. His blood hummed with the
urge to run and chase his prey, and he wished to take that energy out
of him as quickly as possible.
Blasius shifted into his wolf, and he and Rhyan ran through the
trees. Rhyan’s wolf was still very much in command, and Blasius
doubted he would recall much of anything when he finally
transformed back into the man.
So long as Blasius was able to keep an eye on him and have
Rhyan follow him, it was simply a matter of waiting for their minds to
come together, and then they would hunt the hunters.
In truth, as Blasius ran and Rhyan chased him through the trees,
there were some worries he held in the back of his mind.
It was not that he had not been reincarnated. No, there was a
deeper reason for his hiding his rebirth from his mate.
He was fearful of what Rhyan would do should he ever discover
that Blasius had had to kill the former owner of this body in order to
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come back to life, and that he had killed, many times, happily in cold
blood, all in the name of revenge for Rhyan’s death.
Rhyan very much believed in the human version of justice, and
though he longed to avenge his friend, Blasius could sense it that
Rhyan did not wish to kill the man responsible.
For that, Blasius feared Rhyan would leave him should Blasius
ever tell him his secrets.
* * * *
Tatum watched the werewolves, keeping as still as he possibly
could while hiding in the trees. Masking his scent had been a simple
matter of watching the wind, keeping up with his hygiene by using
scent-eliminating soaps and avoiding restaurants and smoke.
He’d had to smack one of the hunters he’d hired pretty hard when
that idiot had been about to light one up. The people Tatum had
managed to get here were nothing but a bunch of amateurs, and
nothing at all like the men Tatum had lost when he first arrived in
Brampton, thanks to the call from that old man he’d gotten.
He knew that worthless piece of shit couldn’t be counted on to
lead them, and that was why Tatum had tried taking control.
Not soon enough. He’d still had to rely on the man for information
on the pack’s whereabouts since he’d been here first. That had been a
mistake, and the men Tatum had worked with ever since he’d become
a hunter were now gone, tossed away and buried in some unmarked
grave like they were garbage or something.
He swore he would avenge his friends for that one alone, but first
he needed to study his prey and figure out what it was about this pack
in particular that made them so much stronger and well prepared
compared to other packs of werewolves.
He figured it out when he pulled the recording from one of the
little bugs he’d planted in the trees. He had at least fifty of the things
scattered around these woods, as close to the pack as he could get
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them without it becoming too dangerous.
He hadn’t expected to get any conversation out of them. The bugs
weren’t powerful enough to pick anything up of that nature. Tatum
had only planted them to listen in on the sounds of any passing
wolves or animals and hopefully get an idea of where these wolves
spent the majority of their time hunting.
Two member of that pack had actually sat right beneath the bug,
unaware that it was only a couple of branches above their heads, as
they spoke to each other.
It was seriously Tatum’s lucky day when he played back that
recording.
And oh, did he ever learn so much. Not only were there two
vampires staying with that pack, mated to some of the wolves within,
but there was also a former hunter in their ranks. A fucking traitor
who was teaching their omegas how to do basic hand-to-hand combat,
as well as teaching them how to use the handguns that most hunters
traveled with.
Tatum didn’t know which of the men he’d seen walking around
was the traitor, but he swore that if he ever captured any member of
that pack and discovered one of them was human, he was going to
make the son of a bitch swear he’d never turned into a filthy fucking
supporter.
At least he had his answers. This pack was powerful because they
had the benefit of having another species within their ranks, as well as
a former hunter giving away tips on how the hunters worked.
It meant that Tatum was going to have to rethink his strategy.
There was another pack living nearby, just an hour away from
Brampton. He was going to have to start there before he could bring
down this pack, that was for sure.
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Chapter Nine
Phillip Keyes shifted back into his human form and spat out the
catch he’d managed to snag for the day.
He looked down on them, a happy swell building in his chest.
Two pheasants and one of the biggest hares he’d ever seen this
season.
Normally something like this was no big deal, the catch wouldn’t
even last a day, but Phillip hadn’t even gone out to hunt. He’d been
on sentry duty with the other alphas. Because of the recent threat of so
many hunters in the area, Phillip never wanted to take any chances,
and for every hour of every day until he was satisfied, he was going to
have a group of his alphas out guard duty, prowling the land and
searching for any strange scents.
The first pheasant had flown right at him and practically suicide
dived right into his face. It had been a simple matter of opening and
shutting his jaws when it was within sight. The second pheasant likely
hadn’t noticed that Phillip was there when it landed on a branch next
to his snout, and because Phillip had been bored, he lunged and took
the head off the bird before it even knew he was hiding there.
The rabbit, well, he’d had the misfortune to have been injured by
something, and as he limped along, right into Phillips line of sight, it
had been a simple matter of chasing the creature down and putting it
out of its misery.
Food never just fell into a wolf’s lap like this, so Phillip was
thinking that today would be a good day. He could bring it in and
present the meat to his wife, they could pull something out of the
garden, and they and their new young one would have a nice meal
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with more than enough to share with the pups.
That was until he picked up his catch, walked through the tree line
that cleared up and revealed the cottages and trailers where his pack
lived, and found it completely empty.
He dropped his catch and ran to the center of the clearing. No, not
empty, his nose was as strong as ever even when he wasn’t in wolf
form, and he picked up the scents of a few of his alphas who’d had to
stay behind, as well as the odd omega here and there.
There were a few other scents that almost scared the piss out of
him. One of them being the chemical smell that coated everything
from the dirt at his feet to the picnic tables under the gazebo he’d
built.
The other scent? His wife and child. The fact that their scents
were missing entirely.
He ran for his house. It was larger than the others, but not by
much. The door handle was loose, and the wood along the doorframe
was splintered, as though someone had kicked it in.
“Helen?” he yelled, hearing nothing and still not getting any fresh
scent of here. His nose picked up the faint almond soap she used, but
it was faded, as though she were no longer…
No.
Phillip ran past the kitchen and into their shared room, not finding
her. He then hurled himself into the adjoining baby’s room where his
son slept, not finding his child in the worn crib or hearing the sounds
of his cries.
Phillip grabbed the lamp from off the dresser and launched it at
the wall where it smashed into a dozen pieces, but the crash was not
enough for him to satisfy his rage.
He’d been about to grab something else when the voice of one of
his omegas called out to him.
“Phillip? Where are you?”
He rubbed his hands over his face, raking his nails across the skin
and using the pain the center himself. Get a grip. Now’s not the time.
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Phillip strode out of his son’s room, his back straight, his pace
brisk, and keeping his face as stoic as though it were normal to come
home and find the land had been ambushed with some sort of drug
and more than half the pack were missing, his wife and child
included.
Zack, Phillip’s beta, was standing in the doorway, clearly hesitant
to enter the home of his alpha without permission, yet there was clear
panic on his face.
“I saw the wise woman out back,” he said, hardly able to hide the
shock on his face. “She’s dead.”
Phillip had been so focused on sniffing out his mate and child that
he hadn’t noticed. “Are there others?”
Zack shook his head, and Phillip could feel the man becoming the
calm soldier he needed to be as he and Phillip spoke. “Everyone else
seems to be out cold. Looks like the hunters came in and did a snatch
and run before we got back, so they couldn’t take everyone. Her body
isn’t…I mean she doesn’t look like they hurt her. I think the attack
itself startled her and she had a heart attack.”
Zack swallowed hard when he finished, doing his best to keep a
brave face.
Even alphas had hearts. They certainly couldn’t have the
emotional depth of a rock all the time. Phillip’s earlier reaction was
proof enough of that, and Wise Woman Beatrice had been Zack’s
great-grandmother.
Phillip put his hand on Zack’s shoulder. “They took my pup and
Helen.”
Zack stiffened, his eyes becoming gold and angry at the added
insult to his pack. The wise woman dead, and the mate of their alpha
and a pup only a few months old taken.
“Make the shift,” Phillip commanded. “Then send out a howl. I
want every available alpha back here. We’re going to go to James for
help, and then we’re going hunting. I don’t want Helen or Sammy
spending a single night with those motherfuckers.”
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* * * *
Though Ryan was a werewolf, he didn’t need to be a detective to
know that he still wasn’t considered a real member of the pack. Likely
that had something to do with his hesitation of being here, but the
biggest hint came when the other alphas had their meeting, and he
hadn’t been invited to join in.
He wasn’t angry about it. Blasius told him what the situation was
when they got out, and James was with him. That was the one thing
Blasius didn’t look too happy about.
“How could they have taken ten people?” Ryan asked.
“Some kind of nerve gas they use,” James said. “Hunters don’t
use it too often because it can leave the scent of chemicals on them,
making them easier for us to track down, and you need to have a guy
who knows how to make those kinds of things.
“I would imagine my pack is too big for someone to just toss a
ball of that stuff in here and expect it to work the way they want,” he
continued, though his mouth twisted downward as he said it. “Philip’s
pack is small, and the majority of pack members are omegas, so it’s
difficult to defend.”
He was pretty sure he didn’t need to ask, judging by the look on
Blasius’s face, but Ryan wanted the confirmation of his hunch
anyway. “Why are you telling me about this now? You wouldn’t let
me hear it with the others.”
“Indeed,” Blasius grouched. “He’s better off here defending the
pack should those cowardly bastards―”
James actually snapped his teeth and growled at Blasius,
effectively shutting him up.
Blasius’s face remained twisted with anger, but he relented and
stopped his argument.
Ryan couldn’t help the angry growl that worked its way from the
inside his chest and out his throat. Watching Blasius get treated as
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such angered him. He couldn’t explain the strong need to punch
James in his scarred face and put the man down on his back, but it
was there.
James snapped his hard glare at Ryan before he could so much as
come to Blasius’s defense. “If you start with me, I won’t hesitate to
bring you out on the front lawn and show you a thing or two in front
of every member of my pack. I am alpha here, and the both of you
will watch your tones.”
James’s eyes turned golden when he said that last part, and just as
quickly as the anger had flooded him, it vanished. The need to
challenge James’s authority was replaced with the reluctant need to
follow.
Alpha wolf thing, he supposed. “Fine, but what do you need me
for?” Ryan said, still unwilling to give up some of his defensiveness
for Blasius.
James’s eyebrow, the one that was half missing, lifted as he
looked Ryan over from head to toe. “I can see that if we’re going to
keep you, I’m going to have to beat you a couple times in front of the
others.”
“It won’t come to that,” Blasius said quickly, his look to Ryan
practically screaming for him to let it go.
“Regardless, I’m telling you just in case you might have
something to offer to this. From what I understand you’re still
merging with your wolf.”
“I can almost control it now,” Ryan assured him, though he still
felt far away from being in total control.
Of the last three times he’d gone running with Blasius, he now
retained memories of all of them, and that last run in particular gave
him some of the control he’d been searching for. Only it wasn’t
exactly control so much as he felt that he and the wolf were coming to
an agreement and they were making peace with sharing the body they
both inhabited.
Sometimes Ryan even found himself making decisions, moving
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his paws and twitching his tail without realizing it, moving this way
and that, sniffing this pine tree and that shrub while Blasius
supervised him.
Just to lose control to the inner wolf in him and run and like a wild
animal at the sight of a squirrel. What was it with the squirrels and his
need to put their heads in his jaws and shake the life out of them?
“There is no control,” James said. “You just become one with
each other. That’s all. But that’s not what I’m hoping to ask you
about. You have connections with the human world, even better, with
human law enforcement.”
Ryan straightened, and he looked at Blasius, hardly able to
contain his excitement at being right. James was going to ask him
how they could bring the police in on this. Those ten people had been
kidnapped, and so it was now a missing persons’ case and that needed
to be handled by the law.
“Isaac can help us with learning the moves of the average hunter,
figuring out how they work, where they get their weapons, and where
they sell the…pelts,” James said, that last word making his already
warped lips twist around, as though it put a sour taste in his mouth.
“But you have information on how the police work. You can help us
by keeping them off our backs.”
“What?” Ryan yelled then looked at the way Blasius tightened up,
and he lowered his tone.
“You want to keep them out of this? Those are people who were
kidnapped. The police can help you.”
“No. They can’t,” James said, his voice letting Ryan know that he
was not about to argue with him.
Ryan argued anyway. “Those people were kidnapped by a group
that you yourself said are serial killers. You need a team out here,
forensics, helicopters, anything that will help track them down.”
“Nothing can track a hunter better than a whole pack of alpha
wolves,” James said, his scarred face becoming even grimmer.
“Besides, they’ve already started killing some of the hostages.”
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“That’s an even bigger reason to get the police in on this.”
“The police aren’t interested in hunters with permits who are
thinning out a pack of wolves.”
That threw Ryan for a loop. “What?”
Blasius was the one to answer him. “These humans that you wish
to have help us will be able to do nothing. The hunters are already
skinning some of the men they’ve taken. They’re either waiting for
them to transform in an attempt to escape or they were the bodies of
the already transformed wolves they’ve taken. The hunters are leaving
their bodies for us to find.
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Blasius said, putting
his hands on Ryan’s shoulders, his dark-blue eyes the most serious
and pleading Ryan had ever seen. “We can not let the humans know
of our existence, and even if there was a way to bring them in while
still hiding what we are, that is impossible as well. The hunters will
not kill any of those wolves until they have made the change so that
they can skin them and take their pelts.”
When Ryan had nothing to argue back with, he knew it was
finally starting to sink in.
Blasius and James were right. There was no way to involve
humans into this mess, even being careful to keep their secret from
them because, like Ryan, not every werewolf was capable of
controlling their inner wolf, especially under stress, and the hunters
had apparently already thought of what to do in case any member of
the law were to come across them while they worked.
Keeping their catch in animal form would probably get them
slapped with a case of animal cruelty, but nothing more, and
disposing of dead wolf bodies wouldn’t bring about a life sentence in
prison either.
But if those hunters had some more people, who were not yet in
wolf form, then they were taking a risk by simply having them. They
would be trying to get them to make a transformation as soon as
possible so they could skin them and dispose of them.
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Ryan had just wasted all that time arguing with these people who
knew better than he did. “What do you want me to do?”
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Chapter Ten
Because of Isaac’s former occupation as a hunter, he was asked to
go along for the journey to rescue the missing werewolves.
The alpha of the neighboring pack was rather suspicious of him,
Blasius noted, and more than once he’d growled at James if he was
certain the man could be trusted.
“He can,” James had grunted. “His knowledge on hunters has
helped us on more than one occasion.”
“I don’t like how he came about that knowledge,” Phillip said,
shooting Isaac another distrustful glare.
Blasius could hardly blame the man, considering his mate and
child had been taken from him. Blasius had fathered some pups after
Rhyan had been taken from him, mostly to further aggravate the male
who had ordered the killing. It had been Blasius’s way of showing the
man that not only would he not be producing pups with any female
from his pack, but he would produce as many as he possibly could
and that bastard alpha would have access to none of them.
Though Blasius could not recall the faces, or even the names of
any of the pups he’d sired, he could recall that he’d cared for them.
Had any hunters come for them, then Blasius would surely be in the
same state as the alpha before him.
That was the only reason why he did not come to Isaac’s defense.
Let the alpha be angry. He’d earned it, all things considered, and Isaac
was not so weak of heart and spirit that he would not handle the angry
growls that were directed at him.
“They’re watching their scent,” Isaac told the group. “More so
than usual, they aren’t just staying in the right side of the wind to you.
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They’re hiding their scent, and very well. Stop using your noses and
start looking to the ground. You’re all trackers, so you’ll know what
to look for.”
That they did. Broken twigs and pressed in earth, mostly. It was
slow going compared to their usual way, but if it brought them closer
to the remaining omegas and alphas, and hopefully they would still be
alive, then they would use this route.
Blasius thought of Rhyan, whom he’d left back at DeWitt’s pack
to guard the strange little black box. A radio, James and Rhyan had
called it. Voices came out of it, apparently belonging to the very
police the werewolves were attempting to avoid. Rhyan’s mission was
to listen in and make certain that none of those humans came to close
to the battle that was about to be had, and if they did, he was to
contact Isaac through the radio that he carried with him and warn him
of the trouble.
Strange times these were.
Though it seemed a rather boring sort of mission to have, Blasius
could hardly deny that it would be useful to their hunt.
Mostly, he was just grateful that Rhyan would be kept out of
danger when everything finally happened.
Before they could take so much as another step in the direction of
their prey, a lone wolf stepped into their path, blocking them.
It was a werewolf. Phillip growled at it. “Get out of our way.”
The wolf returned that growl, lifting his lips and showing its teeth.
Then no less than ten other werewolves, all transformed into their
wolf shapes, stepped out from the shadows of the shrubs, directly
behind their leader.
Male voices appeared in Blasius’s head.
“That’s him.”
“The leader is here!”
“Could he be a prisoner?”
“We could win this battle if we choose.”
Blasius blinked. He had not heard the voices of so many other
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werewolves inside of his mind since…
“What do you want?” James said, stepping forward. When the
wolves continued to growl at him, baring their teeth, he continued on,
clenching his neck and fists at the challenge that he could not yet
accept. “If we have stumbled onto your territory, then we apologize.
Hunters have taken the omegas and pups from another pack, and we
go to save them before any more of them can be skinned. If you wish
to fight, I will come back and do so, but we must save the others
first.”
That did get the attention of some of the wolves. Many of their
heads cocked to the side as they listened to James’s words.
Then it dawned on Blasius. These were the wild werewolves that
Deacon had transformed. From what Blasius knew of that story, some
had been forcefully changed, while others had wanted the infection
and the power it would give them.
This was not nearly the number of wild werewolves that Blasius
had heard had been transformed. Either the others were dead,
captured by hunters, or had gone their separate ways.
This small group, however, was together, and they were looking
for their leading alpha.
He knew that they wanted him as their eyes darted between
Blasius and James. They were trying to decide whether or not to
release the pack without any sort of struggle.
“Does he speak the truth?”
“We need our leader!”
“We should allow them to pass.”
“Yes! And then we will follow them so he will take us with him.”
Blasius made the decision for them.
He marched to the front of the line where the wolves stood, and he
barked at them. “Get the bloody hell out of our way, you idiot
mongrels! Did you not hear a word he said? We go to rescue pups
from a skinning!”
The wolves whined, their heads bending under the verbal assault.
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Some tails bent between legs, and that was when Blasius knew that
not every member in this small pack was an alpha. Were any of them
alphas? Or had they all been faking it in order to survive?
Out in the wild, even omegas had to become hunters if they
wanted to eat.
One of the wolves shifted into a man. Despite the darker color of
his wolf, his hair was blond, and his eyes were such a glowing shade
of hazel that for a moment, Blasius thought they were still the eyes of
the wolf.
His eyes held sorrow for the way they held up the search party,
but he still approached Blasius.
Then he got to his knees before him, bending his head to the side
just enough to expose his neck. “Deacon, we’re lost without you.
Please, sometimes we can’t control ourselves. Most of the alphas have
left or were killed and now it’s just me and Cole and we don’t know
what to do anymore.”
“I am not Deacon,” Blasius said, stunning the wild werewolves.
It would seem, from the way the pack of alphas from James’s and
Phillip’s pack stared at him, that he had a captivated audience all
around.
“But…but,” the frightened alpha on his knees sputtered. “You
have to be. You are! I can tell.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Phillip said, marching on ahead.
“I’m going without you. Fix your personal problems later!”
A good idea if there ever was one.
Oddly enough, the man at Blasius’s feet turned his stare to Phillip
after he heard the other man’s voice. His bright eyes went wide, and
he hardly dared to blink or look away from the angry alpha.
Blasius reached down and helped the man to his feet. “I’m sorry
for what Deacon did to you, but I am not him, even if I did steal his
body.”
The werewolves stiffened.
“But you are more than free to come with us and help if that is
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your wish.”
“We need our leader,” the man said stubbornly, his back
becoming stiff and straight.
“Then you shall have one, but I take my orders from him,” Blasius
pointed at James, who watched the exchange curiously. The Blasius
pointed his finger back at the alpha’s nose, projecting to the man his
sincerity with his hard voice. “You shall obey him, too.”
“I…yes, anything.” The alpha looked to James. “Anything you
want. My name is Trevor, and we’ll all do whatever you want if
you’ll help us.”
Blasius wondered what these poor souls had gone through to so
quickly agree to following another alpha from a pack that was not
their own. Clearly they were a least partially wild, otherwise the man
wouldn’t be speaking with such uncertainty in his voice.
He would think on that later. James accepted their help and
offered them all a task, and they moved on out.
“You’re close to their camp,” Trevor said, walking as closely to
Blasius as he could, though he was still shooting glances at Phillip.
Blasius looked down at the smaller man and noted the light blush
on the boy’s face as they walked closely. He was perhaps in his early
or middle twenties. Phillip was a decent sort of fellow to look at but
he was mated, and his mate was missing. Blasius would have to set
the boy straight on this as soon as he was able. Most mated males did
not always appreciate attention received from another.
“Have you seen them?” James asked. “The hunters, I mean?”
Trevor looked away from Phillip and shook his head, that
multicolored blond hair swirling about his shoulders. “No, but we
scented the blood and heard the screams, so we ran. There are only
three alphas out of the lot of us. We never would’ve won a challenge
against a group of hunters.”
James nodded. “Understandable, but now I want you to take us to
where you heard those screams.”
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* * * *
Ryan tapped his pencil on the table as he listened to the police
scanner then marked on the map with it the spot where the cruiser
announced he was.
So far, from the updates Isaac had been sending him, none were
going near where James’s pack and those other alphas were traveling.
That was a good thing, he told himself. But then the pack had
apparently come across another dead, skinless wolf.
That was not a good thing.
It made him angry, that he had to stay here and couldn’t join in
with the others, which was stupid because he’d done this sort of work
before. Surveillance, paperwork, being at the desk. None of it was
very stimulating, but he’d done it before and still been glad for it,
knowing that it led to something bigger.
Right now, he couldn’t explain the itch to get out there and
participate in ways that didn’t involve sitting here listening to the
scanner.
“Why the scowl on your face?”
Ryan jumped at the voice of Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman.
He quickly turned down the volume on the scanner as she entered the
office where Ryan was working.
He was in James’s house and sitting at the man’s desk. Ryan had
been told by the other members of the pack that their wise woman
also lived in this house, so he should’ve known she’d be coming to
pay him a visit.
Ryan couldn’t recall if he’d ever seen her before while he’d been
spending the first two weeks of his time at this pack in that cage,
almost insane with anger as well as fighting off his wolf from trying
to rip its way out of his body. Maybe she’d come to see him then and
he couldn’t remember it.
Having her look at him right now, as though she were studying
him, he really hoped that it wasn’t the case.
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Ryan cleared his throat. “Was just thinking, ma’am,” he said. He
wasn’t sure how he should be addressing her. She was clearly
respected by the other members of the pack, as well as their leader,
yet she wasn’t in charge. Not really. Should he stand up from his seat
for her as she came into the office?
He was halfway up when she waved him back down impatiently
and then took one of the chairs in front of James’s desk and arranged
it so that she was sitting on the same side of the desk as he was, facing
him.
She did all that quickly as well, considering the large hump in her
back and the cane she carried. It made Ryan think that the cane might
just be for show.
“Will you be all right to speak with me for a moment?” she asked,
her blue eyes darting down to the scanner.
Ryan looked down at it. It wold be highly unprofessional for him
to just turn it off to have a chat, but she held the position she did not
just for her age.
“I can’t turn it off and will still keep an ear open to it, but if you’d
like to talk, I think we can.”
The old woman nodded, seemingly pleased with his answer. “I
hear you’ve been having some issues with James.”
Ryan clenched his fists under the desk. He hadn’t known they
would be talking about this, and if he had, he probably would’ve told
the woman that he was too busy for her.
Too late for that now. He had to eat a little crow at this point and
show her that he wouldn’t be a threat to her way of life. “Not
anymore, ma’am,” he said. “Not really.”
“Not really hardly sounds like there will be no problems for the
pack when this is all over.”
He’d been stupid to think an answer like that would be enough to
pacify her. He wet his lips. “I understand why you do it, hide away
from normal people, I mean,” he said. “And in this case, with what
the hunters are doing to those captured werewolves, I understand even
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more the need to act quickly and exact your own justice.”
“But?” she prompted.
Ryan’s whole body clenched. He hated this. “But I feel that if you
were to have access to some of the things humans did, all of this could
go a lot smoother. Those men would go to prison for what they were
doing instead of being killed.”
“Is it the killing that upsets you?”
No. Ryan was a believer in capital punishment. He believed that
there were people in the world who should not be there, and if a man
or woman killed someone, or several someones, in cold blood, then
that person needed to go.
“The thing that upsets me is that they’re not really being punished.
Death can be slow, but it can also be quick, over in a flash. A lot of
the people responsible for those kidnappings, as well as the man
responsible for Decker’s murder, could have their heads taken off
before they knew what hit them. There’s no real punishment in that
because there’s no…” He couldn’t think of the word.
“Suffering?” Old Maggie prompted.
“I wouldn’t have used that word, but yes. For the people who are
doing life, being in prison is a form of suffering. That’s a real
punishment, making them regret what they did.”
“But you do know why we can’t allow the humans to handle this
issue, yes?” she asked, her blue eyes intense as they locked onto
Ryan’s.
Ryan clenched his jaw. “This is the part where I have to concede,
because yes, I do get it. I’m a werewolf now, too, whether I like or
not, and I don’t want anyone strapping me to a table, drugging me,
and opening me up to see what’s inside.”
Ryan hoped that everything inside of him was the way it was
supposed to be. Sometimes he still felt like there was something that
was off, not right, and he didn’t know how to approach anyone about
this. He hadn’t so much as breathed a word to Blasius.
He was still trying to figure out what their relationship was
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beyond the heavy attraction and all-star sex.
The police in their cruisers continued to speak to each other, and a
dispatcher called one of them down to the local park just to do a quick
sweep of the area, and Ryan marked it off on the map, still tracking
where each cruiser was.
It seemed everything in the Brampton area was as peaceful as
could be, aside from the war between werewolves and hunters that
was about to go down.
“How is your relationship with Blasius coming along?” the old
wise woman asked. “I understand the both of you have claimed each
other, but there is the disturbing gossip circulating that neither of you
have made any sort of commitment.”
Holy God, she certainly wasn’t shy. Then again, she was probably
used to being the one to ask these kinds of questions.
Oddly enough, Ryan found himself answering her, even though he
knew full well that what went down in his sex life was none of her
business.
“We’re still working on that part,” Ryan said, totally lying to her.
All he and Blasius did was run around through the woods, trying to
get Ryan’s mind to merge with his inner wolf, and anytime they
weren’t doing that? They were fucking, hard and raw.
Ryan now understood his need for the other man, but there was
still a part of him that was rejecting the idea that his life partner…a
mate, was being chosen for him. Okay, so they’d chosen each other in
a past life, but that hardly seemed to matter when Ryan couldn’t even
remember anything about that life.
What was it that caused them to fall in love to begin with? They
were from a completely differing species that had almost nothing in
common besides the fact that hunters were after the both of them. And
Ryan had been in love with Blasius. He’d felt the emotion running
through him during his memories. He just wished he had more of
those memories to guide him.
Blasius didn’t recall much of his own former life, but he still knew
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so much more than Ryan did, and Ryan was jealous for that.
Old Maggie was still staring at him, but now her eyes were
shrewd. “Are you certain it is something the both of you need to work
on, or that you need to work on?”
Ryan stiffened. “What?”
“I don’t mean to pry,” she said, though Ryan was sure that was
exactly what she meant to do. “But more than once I’ve seen mated
couples tearing each other apart because they struggled and fought
against the very thing that has allowed our species to survive and
thrive since the beginning of time. Fighting yourself will only put you
off balance. It will anger your wolf and make it difficult for you to
merge with him.
“Even should you make the choice to not love Blasius, you must
come to accept that you are both connected by something so much
deeper than even love itself. Otherwise you will never find peace.”
Having Old Maggie say those words to him was hardly
comforting. It was disturbing. He did like being with Blasius, he
really did, and though he’d still been fighting it, he’d also been
entertaining ideas of the two of them being together, sharing the little
cabin Ryan had been given as his living space or even finding a house
of their own to occupy nearby. He’d never been in love, not really,
but the lancing pain through his chest at the thought that he and
Blasius might be tied together with no love at all…
No. He wasn’t going to think that. Blasius clearly loved him. He
was sure. So that really meant that the only problematic factor in this
equation really was…Ryan. Ryan and his need to overanalyze
everything. That was exactly why none of his relationships worked,
and Ryan didn’t want that to happen to him and Blasius.
“What should I do?” Ryan asked, making another quick note on
the map as one of the officers announced his next destination.
Old Maggie smiled at him, took his hand, and patted it gently like
she was his elderly grandmother or something.
“Just allow your new body and instincts to be. Don’t fight it, and
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everything will be better than you had hoped.”
Ryan wanted better. He wanted this new part of him to work out
because the last thing he wanted to be a part of was ruining this
amazing pack of people.
He nodded. “All right, but I can’t just disappear from the world.
I’ll go back, I’ll say that I can’t remember the fight that happened, I’ll
do whatever it takes to make sure that this pack stays out of the
interest of the police, and then I’ll resign due to trauma.”
It wouldn’t be hard. If he’d watched a man that he’d been friends
with get killed and then lost his memory because of that, then it was
more than likely they’d let him go with little fuss and the suggestion
of some therapy.
Old Maggie nodded again, but he got the impression that telling
her about it wasn’t enough. He was still going to have to go through
James and Blasius with that one, but he was certain they would at
least allow him to do this.
It would probably be better for the pack to have an ex-detective
with them rather than a presumed-dead one. Made fewer questions
that needed answering if someone ever found out Ryan was alive.
When Blasius got back, they were going to have a talk, and Ryan
was going to have to finally make his feelings for the other man
known and hope that he hadn’t put this off so long that it would no
longer matter to him.
Ryan suddenly looked at the older woman in front of him in a new
light. Then he smiled. “Thanks for the talk.”
“You’re very welcome, young man,” she said, getting to her feet
and walking toward the door.
Before her hand could even touch down on the brass handle, a
small explosion rattled the whole house.
Ryan shot to his feet and ran to the other woman, but amazingly,
she kept her own balance without any help from him.
“Are you all right?” he asked anyway.
Her hand was on her chest as she inhaled deeply. “Yes, go,” she
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commanded him.
Without thinking about it, Ryan went, but not before he went back
to James’s desk, to the locked drawer where he’d shown Ryan where
he kept his Glock. Ryan took it out, grabbed a clip, and slid it into the
magazine.
“You won’t need that,” Maggie said, growling at the sight of the
gun.
“I know you want me to better accept my wolf and all that,” Ryan
said. “But if they’re at any kind of distance from me, all the sharp
teeth, claws, and strength won’t save me if they’re picking me off
with rifles.”
He ran around her and barrelled down the hallway just as Corey
appeared around the corner in the kitchen.
“What happened?” the blond man asked, though, by the look in
his eyes, Ryan could guess that he already knew, especially when the
shouting and gunfire sounded outside.
It was like that day all over again, the day that Ryan and Decker
were suddenly attacked without warning by those hunters, all because
of their desperation to kill some werewolves.
Only now, the big difference was that James had taken almost
every alpha with him when he went hunting with Phillip.
It had been a trick, Ryan realized. The hunters had planned this,
knowing that James would do just that as he went on the search for
those missing omegas, and now, aside from Ryan himself―and he
could barely control his own transformations―it was just him and a
few other alphas to defend an entire pack of omegas and children.
“Stay there,” Ryan commanded, and holding the weapon in both
hands, keeping it steady, he ran to the front door.
He opened fire when it burst open before he could reach it, and a
man, a human from the smell of him, thank God, dropped down with
shock on his face and a machete in his hand.
Ryan ran outside, pulled the man away from the door, locked it
from the inside, and then shut it.
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He briefly looked around. There weren’t many men that he could
see, or smell, but they were attacking from a distance, keeping within
the bushes.
It was their gunfire that gave away their locations. Ryan knew
where to aim based on the way the leaves in the trees and shrubs tore
apart and flashed as their booming weapons went off.
He pointed his gun, making his best guess on how the hunter
would be positioning his body to fire that kind of weapon, put his
finger on the trigger and squeezed.
The scream from the bushes told him that he’d hit his mark.
It also brought the attention of the other hunters onto him, and he
jumped as the wooden rail next to him exploded as a cloud of silver
pellets from a shotgun tore it apart.
Fuck! Ryan jumped over the other rail, fell into the bed of flowers
there, destroying them, and took off running. He needed to find a
better spot for him to attack.
Omegas were running everywhere, but there were still some
alphas around to help him.
Nick was blind, and the first time Ryan had met him, he didn’t
know how it was possible for James to allow a blind man to hunt with
his pack, but now that he watched the man, or wolf as he now was, in
action, he got it perfectly.
The guy was practically a ninja. Ryan only caught the blurred
sight of him as he rushed through the trees and shrubs, picking off the
hunters who were attempting to hide themselves.
Ryan couldn’t sniff them all out and therefore didn’t have a
number on how many attackers there were, but Nick worked and
hunted, not only as though he could smell them all, but could see
them all as well.
He couldn’t get everyone, however. Ryan looked up, by some
miracle spotting a lone hunter sitting high in one of the branches of a
tall oak, pointing his rifle down at the wolf who was currently tearing
apart one of his comrades.
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Ryan pointed his own weapon and picked the guy off before he
could make the shot. He didn’t get a head shot, so the bullet didn’t kill
him. The man did scream, however, and he was hurled out of his
perch by the force of the bullet that struck him, and he fell.
The landing was what killed him.
Nick actually managed to jump out of the way before the body
could land on him. Again, it was like he’d seen it about to fall on him.
The wolf then turned his dull eyes over to where Ryan stood, the
large nostrils flaring, taking in his scent, and Nick nodded at him.
Remembering that, despite how well the wolf was working, he
still couldn’t see, Ryan verbally replied.
“You’re welcome.”
The wolf growled and ran off to find another hunter.
Ryan only had eight bullets left in the clip. He needed to use them
wisely.
A loud shriek sounded behind him, and Ryan turned in time to
watch one of the hunters make a long swipe with his machete at a
female omega who’d been running away from him.
He nicked her spine, and she went down, still crawling to get
away from him. In a panic, her body began to change as she started to
transform in her effort to escape.
Ryan fired his weapon before the man could raise his blade and
bring it down on the female again. This time it was a head shot. He
rushed forward before the dead hunter’s body, and the huge machete
he’d been carrying, could fall on the female.
He pushed it away and took the blade, then thought better of it and
put it back down. When he ran out of bullets, he’d be using his claws
and teeth, not a machete.
The female was by now fully transformed into a wolf, and the
sundress she’d been wearing had torn into shreds around her body.
Only then did Ryan take note of the way her body shape was different
from the other female wolves he’d seen on the property. This female
omega was pregnant.
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She whined when his hand gently touched down on her back,
checking the injury. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
When he pulled his hand back, it was covered with blood. He
wasn’t a doctor and didn’t know if anything had been compromised,
but she couldn’t see a physician like this anyway.
“Stay here and stay down,” he told her. He didn’t want to move
her with that kind of slice on her back in case he made it worse. Old
Maggie might know what to do. She was the one who―
“Look out!”
Ryan spun around, his gun pointed just as one of the werewolves,
a smaller one―an omega?―jumped onto the hunter that had been
approaching Ryan from behind, knocking the man down and latching
his jaws onto the guy’s face before he could shove the wolf off of him
or start stabbing him with the hunting knife.
Not that it seemed to matter. In his panic the hunter had dropped
the knife and was using his hands to try and fight off the wolf that was
currently tearing his head off. He screamed and kicked and rolled, but
then his movements got weaker, until he stopped moving altogether.
It had been a white wolf that had saved him, and now the fur was
almost entirely painted red from the blood that had spattered from the
man.
The body twitched on the ground as the wolf got up, but Ryan
could smell the scent of death come over the guy. He was definitely
gone.
The wolf shifted back into a person, and Ryan was stunned to see
that he was a kid, probably no older than twenty.
“You need to watch yourself better,” he said.
Not the words of an alpha. This was an omega, one who was too
young for James to have taken with him.
Ryan agreed with him, unable to help the way his eyes kept on
going down to the twitching body. “Yeah. What’s your name?”
“John,” he said, not offering a surname.
Ryan wasn’t much interested in it at the moment, all things
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considered. “Good, watch over her until I can get your wise woman
over here.”
He expected the kid to argue with him about it, and was glad
when John nodded and shifted back into his wolf form, standing
guard over the whimpering, pregnant female.
Ryan ran back to the main house, ran up the porch stairs, and,
shit! He’d forgotten that he’d locked the door. He was about to break
it down when animal growls and human screams filled the air. Ryan
ran around the side of the house, racing to the back, afraid of what he
might find.
Corey and Maggie were in their wolf forms, he didn’t know how
he could tell that it was them, but it was definitely them, and they
were attacking the hunters that were trying to form a circle around
them with all the ferocity of any alpha. There was a third omega with
them, someone Ryan had not yet been introduced to, but he battled
just as ferociously, snapping his jaws whenever a cocky hunter came
too close for comfort.
With them was a group of no less than seven children, all under
the age of twelve, and all of whom were crying, and more than one
was clutching something on them that was bleeding.
With no alphas, the three omegas had no choice but to be the
defenders of the pups. There was a slice across Corey’s forehead that
bled into his eyes.
There were more hunters than Ryan had bullets for, but he needed
to even out these odds.
He lifted his weapon, preparing to take out the only hunter who
had a gun that was visible on him, until a bright light and a sharp pain
got him from the back of the head.
Ryan crumpled, dropping his weapon and clutching the back of
his head. He felt the warmth flowing between his fingers and then
smelled his own blood.
Fucking perfect.
A hard, steel-toed boot came and shot up like a rocket under his
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ribs, kicking him hard and knocking the wind out of him. Luckily he
didn’t feel anything crack, but that didn’t make him feel any better for
it.
“Got us another one!” the hunter hooted, grabbing Ryan by his
hair and hauling him up. A blade was pressed to his throat as his head
was pulled back and neck was exposed.
“Don’t kill him,” a voice called.
“Wasn’t gonna,” the hunter whined. Seriously? Was this guy
behind Ryan whining?
He opened his eyes, his vision double for the moment as he tried
to figure out just what exactly was going on.
A face was right in front of him, but it took Ryan a minute to
figure out who this man was, and he growled.
“You.”
Ryan didn’t know any of the men responsible for the previous
attack on James’s pack, but he had gotten a look at them. The man
standing before him had been one of the attackers, and therefore he
was the one who’d survived that bloody battle, and maybe even killed
Decker.
The man’s lips lifted in a brief smile. “You’re that other cop.
Thought you were dead for sure.”
“They had to change me to save my life,” Ryan seethed.
Everything inside of him shifted, his skin tingled and itched, and
Ryan recognized those feelings as the transformation that was coming
over him. His wolf wanted out. It wanted to rip the head off the man
for what he’d done, and Ryan couldn’t agree more.
Screw prison. He was going to make this man beg him to kill him.
The hunter just looked him over as the hairs grew out from his
pores, as though that was the most natural thing in the world.
“In a few hours, you’ll wish they hadn’t,” he said then looked at
the other hunter holding Ryan by the hair. “Drug him and wait for
him to make the shift. Then take the pelt. We need to get out of here
before those other wolves figure out what we’re doing and get back
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here.”
Ryan fought against his transformation, as well as the man behind
him still holding his hair. The man was wearing some kind of thick
gloves, and no matter how much Ryan clawed, he couldn’t make the
guy let him go, and he watched helplessly as those other hunters
who’d been circling around Corey, Maggie, and the rest of their group
started pulling out pistols and harnesses. They began shooting the
werewolves with them and the children, too.
The pups screamed when they were shot with the darts, but they
went down quickly and quietly. Corey was the last wolf to remain
standing, though he wobbled protectively over the pups, as though he
was intoxicated, and he’d needed another dart shot into him before his
body would go down.
“Will we have time to skin them before the others get here?”
The question made Ryan blanch, and he wanted to vomit. They
were actually going to do it, skin them alive and then leave them all
for dead.
The leading hunter looked around at all the chaos and seemed to
agree that there were too many wolves here to skin for the limited
amount of time that they had.
“Fine. We’ll take them with us. Just be quick about it,” he
snapped.
Ryan opened his ears, his hearing becoming better now that he
was almost completely a wolf, and soon another hunter was forced to
come along and help the one holding onto Ryan’s hair.
When he changed completely into a wolf, they had to wrestle him
down onto his side, and then the duct tape came around his paws and
snout, keeping him from scratching or from biting.
He heard the sounds and cries of the other wolves as they tried to
defend themselves, but it sounded like they were also losing the
battle.
Ryan thought of the pregnant female and the young alpha he’d left
her in the care of. Ryan could only pray that the boy was the
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disobedient kind and had taken off the second he realized everything
was going to hell, otherwise they were sitting ducks.
When Ryan saw the long needle one of the hunters pulled out and
they started walking toward him with it in hand, he really began to
struggle, so much that he stretched the duct tape that was about his
paws. Three more hunters had to jump on him to keep him steady, and
more duct tape was pulled out.
Instead of thinking of ways he could possibly escape, trying to
work out anything that could be used to his advantage, all Ryan could
think about was Blasius and how much Ryan wished he’d handled
everything between them differently. His only comfort was that, at
least this time, Blasius would not be here to watch Ryan be murdered
with his own eyes.
Just as they managed to get him down and stop his struggles, the
hunters then screamed and scattered. Shots were fired, the booms of
shotguns and the loud pops of handguns, as though the battle for
James’s pack had suddenly started up all over again.
Then there was a foreign hand on Ryan’s neck, belonging to a
werewolf he did not recognize with…
White hair? He certainly didn’t look old enough for it, but, no, he
was wrong, it was just an incredibly light shade of blond. He could
see the contrasting colors in the light.
“Easy friend,” the man said when Ryan began struggling again.
“You have the smell of our leading alpha on you. His mate is ours
to protect.”
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Chapter Eleven
Ryan lurched to his feet, his paws really, the second the duct tape
had been cut away, and he shook himself off, loose hairs and grass
coming free from his body.
The other man looked around at all the bodies lying about, his
eyes wide for a split second before he inhaled deeply through his
nose. Then he sighed with relief.
“They are not dead?” he asked, though he obviously already knew
the answer.
Ryan shook his head. He wanted to ask where Blasius was,
because there was no one else that this new werewolf could be talking
about, but he couldn’t communicate with words to this other wolf.
They weren’t joined the way Ryan and Blasius were.
Luckily for him, the other werewolf already knew that Ryan
would be wanting to join his mate. “Come, I will take you to him.
We’ve just gotten back and…”
Ryan ran off before the man could finish. He would sniff out
Blasius himself so he could be with him during any fighting that
happened, and that new werewolf could take care of the fallen
omegas.
And fighting there was. The hunters were trying to retreat, some
with unconscious omegas slung over their shoulders, but James,
Andrew, Nick, John, and basically every other alpha that was still
standing were hunting them all down, knocking them over, or ganging
up on them in threes, forcing the hunters to drop their cargo to either
run for it or defend themselves.
None fought with more ferocity than Phillip, the alpha whose pack
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109
was the one to be attacked in the first place. He was in human form,
but barely. His fingers had become claws, hair sprouted from his
neck, chest, and arms. A bushy tail had grown out from the bottom of
his spine and even his legs had the sort of look of the hind legs of a
wolf, only he was still standing on them.
Ryan could only imagine what had happened to put him in that in
between state and to make him tear through the hunters the way he
did.
It made him yearn to see Blasius all the more, to confirm with his
own eyes that the other man was safe.
Ryan didn’t want a repeat of history. More than that, he didn’t
want Blasius to be killed while Ryan watched in some sort of strange
twist with fate.
He jumped through each small battle, no longer focusing on
finding that one hunter or with joining in with any of the other
werewolves. All he wanted was…
There he was!
Blasius was in his human form, and naked, as though he’d just
transformed so that he could use his bare hands in this battle instead
of simply latching his teeth around any part of that hunter that could
be grabbed onto and ripping it out.
Ryan didn’t call to him. He wouldn’t dare distract the other man
from a fight with an armed opponent.
He slunk around their own personal battlefield. Ryan didn’t
recognize this hunter, but he was skilled and eager to keep on
fighting, despite the many slashes on his face and body that seeped
blood through his clothing.
Even if this hunter survived, he would become a werewolf, but
that didn’t seem to faze the other man, or maybe he just wasn’t fully
aware of his injuries yet. Then he charged at Blasius with his
machete.
Blasius practically danced out of the way, that was how fast he
was. The hunter roared with anger while Blasius played with him.
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“I don’t fucking care about your pelt!” the hunter screamed. “I’m
gonna cut you up and put your fucking head on my wall.”
Blasius snorted at him, smiling at the threat. “I’ve been told that
on more than one occasion, boy,” he said. “Ye should know that every
man who has ever told me such a thing wound up buried on my land,
their graves danced on by the pups.”
That made the hunter lose it altogether, and he charged again.
Ryan wasn’t the sort who would challenge a crazed, and armed,
individual like that, but he was not the expert on hunters, here. Blasius
had been fighting these men off since before Ryan knew they existed.
Ryan’s only concern was making sure that no hunters tried
sneaking up on his lover while he was occupied with the hunter he
battled.
Eventually, he did see another hunter trying to make a play for it.
Someone ran up, though he stayed a safe twenty feet away, got down
on his knees, his eyes totally focused on Blasius’s back, and then
started loading shells into his shotgun.
With a growl, Ryan launched himself at Blasius’s would-be
attacker.
When the man snapped the break-open shotgun back together and
pointed it, Ryan’s heart jumped. He wasn’t going to make it!
His claws dug into the earth, kicking up chunks of dirt as he
pushed himself to go faster than he ever had in his life. He jumped,
his claws outstretched and his mouth open, teeth ready to sink into the
hunter’s neck.
The gun went off just as Ryan landed on him. He’d been so quick,
however that the two of them actually rolled in the dirt, and Ryan fell
off of him.
Ryan shook himself off, found his prey, and then jumped on him
again with another animal snarl just before the now-injured hunter
could pull out a blade to fight him off with.
Kill him! Ryan was going to fucking kill this man for ever trying
to get Blasius when his back was turned!
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And he did kill him. While fully aware of his actions, Ryan
clamped his teeth around the man’s head and bit down until he heard
a crunch, until the body beneath him stopped twitching.
He let go and stared at it, the stinking scent of death now wafting
from the man.
Ryan’s nose crinkled in disgust as he stepped away.
He had no excuse for what he’d just done. He couldn’t blame it on
the wolf within him, he was completely in control, and he couldn’t
blame it on the anger and rage he felt either because, again, he was
entirely in control of himself.
He made the decision to kill this man, and in doing so, he’d as
good as decided to leave the human world behind.
Ryan looked up, the feeling of eyes on him making him suddenly
aware of his surroundings again.
Blasius was watching him. There was blood, sweat, and long
slices crisscrossing over his chest, but he smiled at Ryan.
“You defend me?” he asked through that bond that they shared.
The answer was obvious. “Of course I do. I―”
He didn’t get the chance to finish as Blasius’s eyes flew wide, and
he ran to Ryan with all the speed and panic that Ryan had when he’d
run for the hunter.
He understood what was happening much too late, and Blasius
was faster than Ryan would ever be.
Blasius threw his arms around Ryan’s furred chest, shielding him
from the next loud boom to crack the air.
Blasius cried out, taking the majority of silver pellets to his back,
while only some struck Ryan, and most of those very few didn’t even
penetrate his thick coat of hair.
Ryan’s heart dropped when Blasius fell forward, unable to hold
his weight any longer.
Ryan looked up and saw the hunter, the leader of this attack and
the man who’d been a part of the team that killed Decker, look back at
him, smile, and then disappear into the shrubs.
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No!
Ryan shifted back into a man without intending to. He called out
for help but didn’t know what help could be had since every other
alpha was busy tending to their own wounds. The remaining hunters
had either escaped or were captured by the werewolves now carting
them off kicking and screaming.
“Blasius? Hey, wake up.” Ryan gently, but quickly, smacked his
face until he groaned and opened his eyes.
He couldn’t even sigh with relief that his lover was awake because
his face had started to sweat even more profusely than before, and the
color of his skin was changing to a faint greenish sort of hue.
Ryan felt under Blasius’s back, the same way he did to the
pregnant female.
Coated with blood. His skin was slick with it. Likely it had more
to do with the fact that he had a hundred silver pellets spread out
along his back than any deep injury, but he was still losing blood, and
the silver was slowly starting to poison him.
Blasius just smiled up at him. “I’m glad it will be me this time,”
he reached up to touch Ryan’s face. “Even if…”
Ryan grabbed his hand, knowing the thing that Blasius could not
say. “No, no! Don’t you dare talk like that. I do love you. I do.” His
voice cracked when he finally said it, and he wished he’d said it
sooner, wished he’d accepted it sooner and just stopped being an idiot
about all of this and accepted his mate. “You’re going to be all right.
Okay? I promise nothing will happen to you.”
Blasius nodded in agreement, but Ryan knew the other man was
only doing that to shut him up. Even when he was dying, Blasius was
still seeing to Ryan’s feelings.
“D’ye mean that? Ye love me?” Blasius asked.
“Yes.” Ryan was crying now, full on bawling his eyes out until it
got to be hard to see the man beneath him, but he couldn’t stop.
Blasius never stopped smiling, even after he closed his eyes and
stopped breathing, his body going lax in Ryan’s arms.
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Ryan entire body went rigid tight, and his eyes flew wide open.
He listened for the sound of his heart but heard nothing. He kept on
waiting for it to start up again, but there was no sound coming from
inside him.
Ryan shook Blasius a little, as though that would get some kind of
response out of the man.
It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. Ryan wasn’t a child. He knew what
had just happened. He wouldn’t say it, though. He wouldn’t. He
couldn’t admit that this had happened.
“Blasius! Wake up! Get up!” he screamed.
Ryan became aware that the other members of James’s pack were
surrounding him and Blasius, even those other werewolves that Ryan
didn’t recognize. Out of everyone, they looked the most heartbroken
at the sight.
Ryan looked around at them, unable to believe that they were all
just standing there.
“Someone help him! Do something!” he yelled.
James stepped forward, knelt down, and put his hand on Ryan’s
shoulder. His scarred face was saddened as he looked Ryan in the
eyes. “He’s gone. You know this.”
Ryan shrugged out of James’s grip. “No!”
Ryan lost track of everything else after that. His brain wouldn’t
put any coherent thought inside of his head. There was nothing but
animal instinct inside of him, so much so that, when the others tried to
come and take Blasius’s body away from him, Ryan went wild.
He swiped his green claws out at them, roared until they backed
away with fear. Some of them pointed their fingers at him. Others
stared with unmasked horror.
Ryan didn’t care. He looked down into Blasius’s face and kissed
his cold lips, and then everything inside of him burst open, his body
exploding with size, or maybe just exploding.
Screams sounded, he could hear the shouts of the alphas as they
backed away from them, but the last thing Ryan heard before he lost
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his mind to the things churning inside of him was the beating of
Blasius’s heart.
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Chapter Twelve
Ryan woke up in a bed with the sun in his face, and his lover,
Blasius, lying alongside of him, sprawled out on his side, staring
down at Ryan as though waiting for him to get his ass up already.
“Och, you slept for long enough. It’s about time you woke up,”
Blasius said in that strange, beautiful accent of his. His warm,
callused hands slid across Ryan’s cheek, cupping it, and then his
mouth descended on Ryan’s.
Ryan could feel that he was definitely several days overdue for a
shave. He wondered how he looked for Blasius to be smiling at him
like that.
Then he frowned, his eyes going wide as he looked around the
room then back at Blasius.
Everything appeared normal enough, with the exception that a
dead man was practically spooning him, kissing him, and touching
him as though everything was normal as could be.
“What―?”
Ryan didn’t even know what to ask. Clearly they weren’t dead, so
how was any of this possible?
Blasius stroked Ryan’s hair. “You healed me.”
“What?” Now he was even more confused. “How could…? I can’t
do that.”
Blasius nodded, and it almost looked like the bastard was having
the time of his life in contradicting Ryan. “You can. At least, you
used to be able to. Still can, I suppose. That was the power of your
dragon. I could not recall it before, but after I woke up and saw the
magnificent green beast you had become, part of my memory
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returned. Do you remember it as well?”
Ryan’s first answer would have been a solid no, and he opened his
mouth to give that response.
Then he stopped. Last night’s memory was entirely gone to him
since the dragon he’d become had taken full control over his mind
and body. He might be merged with the wolf now, but apparently,
there was one more entity living within him, and it had been there his
entire life. Nothing had bitten or infected him with it. The dragon had
always been there. Maybe it had been sleeping all this time, Ryan
couldn’t be sure, but it was definitely there now, waiting to come out.
Something else came out of him, too. No, not out. It did rise up
through his subconscious, shooting all the way to the forefront of his
mind.
He saw himself, sort of. It was another memory of the time so
long ago with both him and Blasius.
Blasius was injured. He’d been in his wolf form. A beautiful
animal, Ryan could remember thinking, even though he knew it was
going to die. A hunter had speared him through the shoulder. The
spear was still there, sticking out of the flesh, and now the creature
limped along the smooth, round stones that were just on the bank of a
flowing river.
Ryan watched the animal move along from his hiding place in a
great tree, and he was camouflaging himself to keep from being seen.
Despite this, the wolf had smelled him, looked right up at him, and
growled, a low warning of what was to come should Ryan―or
Rhyan, as he’d been called back then, because the R had been
rolled―decide to come near him to finish the job and attempt to eat
him or something.
As though he would ever wish to do something like that,
especially after getting a look into those beautiful golden eyes.
Ryan had been entranced. The gold was lovelier than anything
Ryan kept hidden away inside the cave where he’d lived, more lovely
than any gem, and he knew, at that moment, that he had to save the
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creature with the golden eyes and then keep him for his own.
Ryan had then left the tree and approached the wolf. The bleeding
had become so profound that the wolf dropped along the water’s
edge, the red blood trickling into the river and flowing away. It had
looked like a ribbon in the wind.
The wolf didn’t even growl at him when he approached this time.
Ryan had reached out his claws and pulled the spear out, and this
time the wolf did cry out, but then Ryan began licking the wound,
letting his saliva heal the injury.
The wolf remained still, but Ryan could see in those eyes that, if
possible, became all the more clear, more golden even, that the wolf
was becoming aware again, and it was staring up at Ryan with an odd
expression.
The wolf had then shifted into a man when Ryan finished. Ryan
did the same, until they were both naked and Ryan was holding the
man he now considered to be his prize in his arms.
“What is your name?” he’d asked.
“Blasius. Lord of the gray mountains and its wolves,” the lord had
said then reached up and took a lock of Ryan’s hair into his fingers.
“And yours?”
“Rhyan. I have no title or surname,” he’d replied.
Blasius shook his head. “That hardly matters. You are mine from
this day on.”
Ryan had been more than happy with that.
Ryan came out of the memory, blinking rapidly, just to see the
wide smile that was still on Blasius’s face right before the man
grabbed his cheeks and kissed him.
Ryan couldn’t believe it, but he was actually crying again. He
hated it and wished it would stop, but again, he couldn’t help the
flood of emotion that he was drowning in. Those memories, of the
two of them together, they had revealed everything that Ryan had
been missing since he woke up to discover he’d been transformed into
a werewolf.
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Blasius hadn’t simply seen Ryan and claimed him for a mate.
Ryan had done the same thing to him. So many years they were apart
for, but now they were together again, and Ryan was never going to
let the man go.
Blasius seemed to be on the same wavelength as he pulled the
covers from Ryan’s body, climbed on top of him, and hooked his leg
over until he was straddling Ryan.
He was naked except for the loose boxers he wore, and Ryan was
dressed exactly the same.
But for the thin bit of fabric that separated them, they were
entirely skin to skin. Blasius humped against him, slow but hard, and
Ryan’s cock immediately responded.
He groaned, and Blasius captured his lips in the sweetest of kisses.
“I must have you,” Blasius breathed against his mouth, his hands
already pulling down the elastic of Ryan’s boxers, exposing his hard
cock.
It practically jumped free, and Ryan gasped at the cold air on his
skin, but then he became hot again when Blasius threw away his own
boxers and the dry humping continued.
Ryan gripped him all the tighter. He didn’t want to let him go.
Without even realizing it, he was digging his fingers into the skin of
Blasius’s back.
It wasn’t until Blasius released a long moan that Ryan yanked his
hands away, recalling that Blasius had been shot in just that place.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, but then, as Blasius grinned at him,
Ryan allowed his fingers to gently slide over the smooth skin of
Blasius’s back.
There was nothing there, no holes, no scabs, not even bandages.
The only thing Ryan felt under his fingertips was smooth skin and
healthy muscle.
“The healing is powerful,” Blasius said, sliding his hand under
Ryan’s head. “And you are beautiful. My heart.”
No one had ever described him as beautiful before. He’d gotten
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compliments over the years, sure, but never that one. His first thought
was that it sounded too feminine, but his next one was that he liked it
so long as it was coming from Blasius’s mouth.
Ryan kissed him, Blasius’s lips were soft and full, and he couldn’t
get enough of them. Their lips massaged each other in gentle, loving
caresses.
They were making love. It shocked Ryan to realize it, but that was
what they were doing. This wasn’t a hard claiming or a spontaneous
fuck. Blasius was making love to him.
And that was exactly what it was. Despite Blasius’s desperate
claim to need him, he took his time, seemingly satisfied so long as
Ryan was on board for the ride. He found a bottle of cream, and Ryan
spread his legs and lifted his ass for the other man to take.
Blasius positioned a pillow under his hips, and then Ryan felt his
slick fingers entering him, preparing him for what was to come.
It took entirely too long, in Ryan’s opinion, and by the time
Blasius finally positioned his cock at Ryan’s pucker, he slammed
himself down quickly so that Blasius was inside of him.
The other man moaned in pleasure and surprise, but then started
canting his hips, pumping in hard, deep thrusts, and Ryan gripped him
tightly and just allowed the pleasure to consume him. He tried to keep
himself quiet, though. He had no idea which cabin he was in because
the room didn’t look like the one that he and Blasius had been
sharing, and he didn’t want anyone to hear him having sex.
Holding back like that, biting his lips shut against any of the
sounds he wanted to make, and trying to prolong his orgasm only
made it that much better when it came over him. It was so strong and
satisfying that every bone in his body turned into Jell-O, yet much too
soon in his opinion.
They were going to have to do that again.
Blasius was still moving within him, having not quite reached that
high peak that Ryan had already leaped off of.
Then his hips started moving faster, his eyes squeezed shut, and
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his mouth opened in a throaty moan that he muffled by biting down
on one of the pillows.
His body became stiff then just as pliant as Ryan’s.
Ryan held his lover close, keeping his legs firmly locked around
Blasius’s hips, enjoying the weight and warmth of the other man.
He would stay like this forever if he could. He could fall asleep
right here and never wake up.
Ryan kissed Blasius’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
Blasius lifted his face to look up at him, concern all over his
features. “For what?”
Then he frowned. “What have ye done?”
Ryan wanted to laugh at the mock suspicion in Blasius’s tone, but
he had to do this. “For fighting you on this, on everything. You were
right.” Ryan laced his fingers through Blasius’s so they were holding
hands. “This is where I need to be.”
Blasius’s eyes suddenly became guilty. “Before you make that
decision, you should know that I have killed many people during my
lifetime, Rhyan. I know you do not like that, but I did, and I killed
many more for revenge after you were taken from me. I was not
reincarnated like you. I was a wandering spirit for all those years,
until I took the possession of the body of the man you see before you,
killing him as well so that I might live.”
Ryan smoothed out his hair. “Well, as you’ve seen by the way I
handled that hunter, I can hardly hold it against you for killing any of
these people. Was he a good man?” Ryan asked, looking Blasius up
and down.
The knowledge that Blasius had spent more than a thousand years
as, well, as a ghost was shocking, but he could handle that. There was
nothing that he wouldn’t believe at this point. He just hoped that the
man Blasius had killed to come back to life wasn’t some upstanding
citizen.
Blasius shook his head. “No. It as the reason why Tristan would
avoid me. This body belonged to the man who had attempted to force
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a claim onto him. The rest of the pack here hardly misses him.”
“Then there’s nothing for you to worry about.” Ryan didn’t know
what he would have done if Blasius had told him something different,
just then. He would have strongly wished to stay with Blasius, no
matter how many innocents he had killed. Thankfully, there was no
innocent blood on Blasius’s hands, and Ryan would not have to make
any hard choices today.
“What happened with the battle? Your battle, I mean,” Ryan said,
thinking about when James and Phillip took all the alphas to go and
find the hunters and the stolen omegas.
Blasius’s face fell. “Many were dead, skinned. There are about
half left alive though, and they are mostly injured, which is why you
and I find ourselves in this strange room. Someone used our cabin for
a private room for healing before I could tell them that I lived there.”
“Oh,” Ryan said. “And Phillip?”
Blasius squeezed Ryan tightly. “I feel for the poor man. His
woman is dead, one of the skinned. Bleeding gruesome way to go, but
we found his pup alive and healthy. The man will be wanting some
alone time for the next several weeks to mourn, no one knows where
he went, and James has taken over caring for his wolves.
“We have even more werewolves on the land now as well. Seems
that several of the men that had been transformed by the former
owner of this body came to me, sniffed me out, and are now
demanding that I take leadership of them.”
“Will you?” Ryan asked.
Blasius shook his head. “No. Let James take them. There is only
one particular werewolf-and-dragon hybrid who I want to give my
attentions to.”
Ryan felt the way Blasius became hard again, considering the man
was still inside of him, and he was more than willing to continue on
with what they were doing.
The rest of the world, Ryan’s life outside of this pack, the other
werewolves, all of that could wait. He and Blasius were too busy
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celebrating their own personal victory over fate and their reunion,
which would last until the end of both of their lives this time.
THE END
MARCYJACKS.COM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcy Jacks lives and works in Ontario, Canada, where she is
fervently pursuing the writer’s life while writing about lots of
gorgeous guys. She loves hearing from readers, and you can reach her
at authormarcyjacks@gmail.com.
For all titles by Marcy Jacks, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/marcy-jacks
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com