Kidnapped by the Werewolf Hunter [DeWitt's Pack 13] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (2 page)

Everett got up and walked back to the fire. He took a long stick in hand and used it to move about the logs, giving the fire more air and allowing it to rise a little. Cole had barely noticed how far down the sun had set, but now it seemed that the fire was the only thing lighting up their little space.

Everett then pulled out some of his cooking equipment and packaged foods as though he hadn’t just told Cole something like that.

“You can kidnap me from my pack, force me to go with you to wherever it is you’re going, but you don’t want anyone to torture and kill me?”

“No, Colby, I don’t want anyone to torture or kill you,” Everett said, throwing down the little spears he had that were used to cook hot dogs with. “Fuck,” he muttered when they landed in the dirt.

“What am I doing with you then?” Cole asked. He decided to ignore the part where Everett had called him Colby. That was a pet name the other man had used on him whenever they were in bed together. Cole never expected to hear anyone calling him that ever again.

Lover. The first time Cole had woken up and noticed he was alone and with Everett, the other man had called him “lover.” He’d assumed, at the time, that maybe Everett had only said it to be a jerk and to make fun of what they used to have together.

Cole was severely starting to doubt that such was the case.

“They would’ve killed you if I hadn’t taken you,” Everett said. His voice was so quiet, but with Cole’s new werewolf hearing, he had no trouble making out the words.

“Hunters tend to want to do that,” Cole said. “I didn’t even know you were a hunter.”

“I wasn’t until several months ago,” Everett said.

“What?” Cole tried to remember where he could possibly have been when Everett decided to throw in the towel on his sanity and go chasing after paranormal creatures. They had broken up, and it had been at least seven weeks later when Deacon, that crazed prick, had broken into his house and attacked him.

Deacon was the former leading alpha of a bit of land near Brampton, and a sick fuck he was, too. After he’d been defeated by James DeWitt and his pack, the werewolf had lost everything and decided he was going to try and get it all back. The only way to do that, however, was to create a new pack.

Deacon’s pack had all either abandoned him or been killed, so Deacon went about searching for people he thought would make good followers. He picked the homeless ones, the ones with no family, people who were financially ruined or depressed.

Cole fell into the category of no family, and after Everett had broken things off with him, no lover or friends either.

Cole had always preferred to keep his circle of friends small, but in this case, it had been too small. Deacon attacked him one night, biting him and forcing him to become a werewolf before dragging him off into the night.

Cole had followed the other man for maybe a week before he was able to get control of himself and realize what an insane asshole Deacon really was.

He’d left, and he’d successfully managed to take many of the omegas and even one more wild alpha with him.

That hadn’t stopped Deacon from attempting to attack the DeWitt pack anyway. He would later die to get his revenge, and Cole was left with nearly wild werewolves to take care of. Some of them had learned control, but they were slowing starving to death. No one had any money, and with almost everyone unable to control their transformations, they couldn’t go back into the real world either.

So Cole and the other alpha had searched for Deacon, not knowing he was dead. They’d found James and his pack instead, and the man had graciously taken them all in.

Cole loved those people like they were his real family, and he didn’t want them to get hurt.

That wasn’t exactly a long time ago, but still long enough for the two of them to have been together when Everett decided to become a hunter.

Maybe. Or maybe he’d done it after Cole had vanished?

“Was that why you broke it off? You wanted to become a werewolf hunter and didn’t want anyone to hold you back?” Cole asked.

Everett had his back to him now. Someone really should teach him that doing that around a werewolf, even a bound one, wasn’t a good idea. “No, that wasn’t why I became a hunter.”

There was only one other reason that made sense, but it was too surreal. They had been broken up! Why would Everett care enough about Cole to want to go on a revenge mission like that?

Okay
. “What about your new career? Being a hunter? Was it because of me? Because I’d disappeared?” Cole asked carefully.

Everett looked over his shoulder at him. He bit his lips together and then nodded. “Yeah. That was it.”

Cole exhaled deeply as his heart made these strange little thumps in his chest that made it difficult to focus. “Jesus Christ.”

Everett clenched his neck in frustration. “We lived down the street from each other. I found out by the next day what had happened. It’s hard not to notice when ten police cars are parked outside your boyfriend’s house.”

Cole had never found out what had happened in town after he vanished. He didn’t know what the official story was. “Ex-boyfriend. You broke things off, and what did the police say happened? Because clearly I’m not dead.”

He was surprised when Everett managed to crack a smile. “Yeah, I see that.” He sighed and actually managed to look at Cole full on. “They said it was an animal attack. A bear or something huge. I didn’t get to see it personally, but I stuck around long enough to hear some of the forensics people talking about all the blood that had been left behind in your bedroom.”

Cole had a flash of memory from that night. Of himself fighting for his life against a giant furred creature. He couldn’t even see what it was at the time because everything had been dark in his bedroom. He’d been awoken to what had looked and sounded like a monster grabbing his leg into its teeth. His entire room had been trashed as he fought to be free.

“I didn’t see inside your room, but the police couldn’t block off the heavy trail of blood that led from out of your window and into the bushes.”

Cole had been bitten several times, his body dragged back out the window, the glass cutting into him even more. He remembered screaming for help, but his voice had deserted him. The last thing he recalled seeing before the shrubs and trees cut off the outside world was the glowing light coming from Everett’s kitchen down the road.

“No one could find your body, but everyone said you had been killed. People started looking for any kind of large animal, or even animals, that would’ve broken into a human house and dragged someone away.”

Cole didn’t need to hear the rest to know that they’d found nothing.

He had to ask, “So, where in all of that did you decide it made sense to become a hunter?”

Everett glared a little at Cole, but he continued on with the story. “I was like everyone else at first. I thought some animal had attacked you. Your house was on the very end of the street, just beside the woods, so it wasn’t like it had to go far or anything to get you. Then some other people come into town. A group of hunters, and they looked normal enough, just a bunch of guys out to shoot a buck or something. They had their licenses to hunt, so it wasn’t like I could stop them.”

That was right. Everett had worked for the town, keeping the trails clean of debris and making sure campers didn’t leave behind anything that would cause fires. It occurred to Cole that Everett might’ve even been one of the men to search the forest for him after Deacon had taken him. He briefly wondered how shitty that experience had been before deciding he didn’t care.

“And then?”

He shrugged. “Not much to say. Came across them one day, a lot farther in the woods than they said they were going to be when I spoke to them, but they had something caught in a bear trap.”

Everett rubbed his face at the memory. “It was the biggest wolf I’d ever seen in my life. It had to be twice the size of a regular wolf, and it was snarling and fighting like it had rabies or something. I was starting to think that even if those guys weren’t supposed to be hunting wolves, it was probably best that they put it out of its misery.”

“It shifted into a person?” Cole asked.

“Tried to,” Everett said. “It looked more like a monster than a person, though. It stood up on its hind legs, got tall and skinny for a second, and the hair was starting to shed off. Finally one of the hunters just shot it, and the others bitched and yelled at him about its pelt. I didn’t know at the time that those men were planning on skinning it and selling the fur.”

Cole shivered. He didn’t know who that wolf was, but it had been lucky, as far as deaths went. A quick bullet was considered much more preferable to being tied down, cut in certain spots on the body, and having one’s skin ripped off.

“I think I can put together the rest. They saw you watching and let you join their little club.”

Everett’s face went tight. He seemed to be having reactions like that a lot lately. “Something like that. I went down to them and asked what it was. Looking back, I’m surprised they didn’t just kill me, too, but they didn’t. They told me they’d heard about the shifter attack and that they were here to find and skin the bastards.”

Everett started walking around, as though he couldn’t bear to hold still any longer. He started picking up supplies and putting them away, pulling things to eat out of the little cooler he had with them, and then he just paced. “That was the first time I’d ever heard that something unnatural might’ve killed you, and when I looked down into the face of that dead thing, and I thought maybe this was what had dragged you off…” Everett trailed off, unable to finish.

“Instead I find out that you’re one of them.”

The betrayed sound in Everett’s voice only served to piss off Cole, more so than he already was, considering he was a hostage and tied to a tree.

Everett broke up with him. Everett was the one going around town with his new boyfriend for everyone else in that small place to see. Did he really think he was going to guilt Cole for being a werewolf?

“You fucking prick,” he snarled.

Cole had never seen a more confused look on the man’s face. “What?”

“You left me. You broke things off with me. Not the other way around. So when I get attacked and turned, that’s the time you decide you care so much about me and want to avenge my death or whatever, and now you’re going to act like I betrayed you or something.”

“You’re a werewolf!”

“I was attacked by a werewolf, you asshole! Getting turned into one tends to be the result!”

They were both breathing heavily. Everett looked like he wanted to punch Cole in the face for all the yelling he was doing. At the very least, he expected the gag to come back on, but instead, Everett dropped his fists and turned back to their cooking dinner.

“Whatever. Just keep your mouth shut while we’re here anyway. I don’t want anyone to hear us.”

“I would like it for someone to hear us so they can get me out of here. Psycho,” Cole added as an afterthought.

“I’m serious, Cole. The people we’re running from are dangerous.”

Christ. Cole had been told stories about how hunters brainwashed both their recruits, and themselves, but he’d never thought he would actually have to deal with this shit himself.

“Everett. My pack is made up of good people. If they are hunting you, just don’t fight back and let me go to them. They won’t hurt us. I promise you they won’t.”

The problem was that if his pack did find them and rescue him, he wasn’t sure he wanted James to release Everett that easily.

It hadn’t been something he allowed himself to admit that first night under Everett’s care, but Cole was still attracted to him. Even though Everett had broken his heart and might still have someone else waiting for him to come home, Cole still wanted the other man.

It was something he hated to admit, but it was the truth. Not only that, there was something different about the other man that didn’t have much to do with his new hunter gear. He looked different somehow, even though he was exactly the same. There was something that made him even more beautiful now than he had been the last time Cole had seen him. That enhanced beauty even affected his eyes, his deep, dark eyes, and his scent.

If James came and rescued Cole, he decided that he was going to kidnap Everett, much like Everett was doing to him now, and drag the man back to his pack to keep him. Maybe he would make the guy into his own personal servant. That would be amazing.

He had to shake himself a little and remind himself that this was not the best time in the world to be having these thoughts.

“I never said I was running away from your pack,” Everett said.

That actually threw Cole for a loop. “Uh, who are we running from then?”

Everett looked over his shoulder at him, and then he plated their hotdogs and went back to sit beside Cole, this time on a small stool. “My team.”

Cole’s eyes widened, and he didn’t know why, but his face suddenly went extremely cold as well.

“Relax, all the color just left your skin.” Everett pierced one of the sausages with a fork and lifted it to his mouth, taking a bite. Then he offered it to Cole.