Kidnapped by the Werewolf Hunter [DeWitt's Pack 13] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (9 page)

BOOK: Kidnapped by the Werewolf Hunter [DeWitt's Pack 13] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)
2.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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“Yeah, me, too,” Everett said.

“So, no boyfriend?”

Everett shook his head, still carrying that defeated look with a small mix of hope underneath. “No boyfriend.”

Cole couldn’t punish him anymore than he was punishing himself. He reached out and grabbed his hand. “Rhett.”

Cole counted it as a small victory when the light returned to his eyes.

“We won’t be able to sleep for very long tonight. A couple of hours at most, and then we should get up before dawn.”

Everett nodded, back to his planning mode. “Agreed. It’s not going to be fun sleeping without a fire, but those boys I worked with will have the equipment to locate us just from that alone.”

They could share body heat for that, but it wouldn’t be in the fun way.

“Well, I did get knocked out pretty early in that last attack,” Cole said, noting the way Everett kept his eyes firmly on the fire. “You didn’t happen to see if any of your hunter friends were, uh, killed in battle, did you?”

He shook his head. “No. I bailed too early. Owen’s the only one dead as far as I know.”

“How many more are there?”

“Including myself and Owen, there were five of us, so there will be at least three others on their way. They probably already found Owen’s body by now.”

This was bothering Cole way too much. “Were you and that hunter, Owen, friends?” He really hoped they weren’t. Cole hadn’t been personally involved in any hunter killings before that, and he didn’t like the idea that the first person he was involved in killing might’ve been someone Everett was close to.

Again, Everett shook his head, only this time he actually looked at Cole when he did it. “It’s strange, but for a bunch of men all fighting for the same thing, they all kind of work against each other. Everyone has their own revenge agenda. They’re all suspicious of each other at least most of the time. There was no clear leader in our group, and half the time we were fighting with each other on the best way to proceed.”

He rubbed his face with his palm. “I’d already been thinking about leaving before I found you.”

“But you stayed with them,” Cole said.

Everett frowned. “Yeah, I did. I guess I kept on thinking that they might be a little crazy, but I also thought it was for the right reasons. I thought werewolves were more dangerous.”

Cole tried to remember back to their earlier conversations that they’d had in the last couple of days. “You said, or I think you did, I was a little angry at the time to be paying too much attention.”

Everett snorted a laugh.

“You said that you weren’t involved in any werewolf killings?” He wanted to tread lightly here. He needed this confirmation. He needed Everett to tell him once and for all that he hadn’t killed anyone.

If it had been in self-defense, like how Cole suspected, and what had happened with that hunter, then Cole could easily forgive him. Even if that was the case, however, he wasn’t too sure about the forgiveness that his pack would offer to him.

There was a former hunter in his pack, and while most of the pack members didn’t have any sort of problem with Isaac, the newer members tended to steer clear of the man, and more than once, James DeWitt, their pack leader, had been forced to wrestle an angry alpha or disrespectful omega onto their backs to put them back in line.

“No, I told you that. But there were things I did do,” Everett said.

Cole’s heart thumped loudly. The fire was dying in front of them due to lack of attention, but all his focus was on Everett. “Like what?”

Everett’s eyes sank shut, as though he were attempting to hide from the memory. “I was a hunter, Cole. I helped them track down werewolves. I set up traps, I prepared the tables they used to torture them, and there were times when I woke up in the morning and walked across the camp to see a wolf skin stretched out and drying on a rack.”

Cole shivered. Suddenly, the whole not actively killing anyone didn’t look so much better.

“Were they wild werewolves?”

“Does it matter?” Everett asked.

“Actually, it does. Wild werewolves can be as dangerous as the hunters paint us to be. They’re the reason why hunters even exist. A wild werewolf will attack someone’s farm and rip everyone to pieces in a blind rage, and the farmer who survived will blame all werewolves for that. They’ll go out killing normal werewolves for revenge, thinking they’re all the same when they’re not.”

He gave Everett a minute to let that sink in. He did seem to be thinking very deeply about it.

“Did you notice if any of the shifters you captured, while they were in human form, did any of them appear normal to you?”

Everett shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. You said that you were forcibly changed by a werewolf. I doubt that left you exactly normal in the beginning either.”

Cole had to give him that. He had nearly gone wild and was at least half-crazed by the time he and the others finally managed to track down James DeWitt and his pack of werewolves.

“See? What does it matter if the shifters we killed were wild when they could’ve had the chance to recover?”

“Some don’t want to recover. That’s part of the thing about being wild. Some shifters genuinely do go on a power trip, and they hurt people because they like it. I’m not saying that all the shifters you captured would’ve deserved to die, but if they were wild, then at least it wouldn’t’ve been like you had someone screaming at you that they didn’t do anything wrong. If the wolves you killed were wild, then the chances are you saved more lives than you helped to take.”

Everett still looked unconvinced. Maybe that was a testament to his character, that he wouldn’t so easily release himself from any blame.

“You’re not going to forgive yourself, are you?” Cole asked.

“I think that would be the least amount of punishment I could get for the things I’ve done.”

There was more that Cole wanted to ask, but he became silent. This one conversation alone was depressing enough, and the fire had burned down to smoking embers. They were both cold, and the stars were out.

“Maybe we should get some sleep,” he said, unable to bring himself to say anything else.

“Yeah, we need the early start.”

Everett started kicking sand over their fire, putting it out with little smoke.

They’d found some dry grass and leaves and managed to make a somewhat decent bed for themselves out of them.

“We’ll have to get up extra early to keep the morning dew from soaking us,” Everett said as he got down on their bed.

Likely the other man was thinking about how uncomfortable his clothes had been earlier today when Cole had pressed him down into the damp soil and grass and kissed him.

He didn’t want his clothes getting wet before travel either. “Agreed.”

“Right, good night,” Everett said.

Cole could hardly believe him as he turned onto his side, folded his arms, and shut his eyes.

Seriously? Was Everett that upset about their conversation that he thought Cole wouldn’t want to sleep with him? He would freeze lying there all alone.

He was going to have to put a stop to that way of thinking.

Cole lay down and shifted himself closer to the other man. Everett didn’t show any outward signs of surprise, but Cole felt the way his heart picked up when Cole spooned up behind him.

Cole wrapped his arms around his lover and pressed a kiss to his neck. He felt it when Everett reached his hand down to take hold of Cole’s, and their fingers interlocked together before they both fell asleep.

 

* * * *

 

Everett woke up to the darkness and someone gently shaking his shoulder.

He’d gotten used to sleeping lightly lately, so it was easy for him to come out of his daze and realize that it was Cole next to him, right where he should be, who was doing that.

He woke up and tried to look at him, but there was no moon in the sky, and his night vision was shit. “What is it?” he whispered.

“Hunters,” Cole whispered back. “I can hear their footsteps.”

Everett quickly, and as silently as he could, got to his feet, along with Cole. They’d purposely kept everything packed in their bags in case this would happen and they needed to make a fast escape.

Now was the time for that.

Once he was up, he could see the beams of light from flashlights through the trees, and they were getting closer.

“Come on.” Cole grabbed his hand after Everett strapped their bag of supplies to his back, and they started the awkward process of ducking and running at the same time down the rocky beach.

The smooth stones crunched under their feet, but there was nothing they could do about that except hope the others wouldn’t hear them. That wouldn’t matter in a minute when those men found the bed of leaves that he and Cole had been sleeping on, as well as the fire pit they’d made.

Luke, Adam, and Dan, the men Everett used to work with, who were all after his and Cole’s head at this point, would see all of that and know their prey wasn’t too far ahead.

They just kept on ducking and running until they were far enough away from the campsite, and the men closing in on it, to get back into the trees.

Those men didn’t have hunting dogs with them, but they would still be expecting Everett and Cole to be running in the water to slow down any tracking.

Getting back into the woods was the only way. It would offer them cover and more places to hide. They just had to stay ahead of their enemy.

Everett had liked to think he was in shape, and after being recruited to join the hunters, he especially thought that to be true. Running behind Cole, however, was a whole new league that Everett could barely keep up with, and soon the other man was dragging him along, keeping him from falling behind.

After twenty straight minutes of running, his legs finally gave out on him and he collapsed, falling facedown onto the ground.

“Jesus Christ! Everett!” Cole yelled, rushing to his knees to help him back up.

Everett was as good as dead weight for all the help he was getting himself back to his feet. His entire body tingled, and he couldn’t seem to get any air into his lungs. It made him feel pretty damn pathetic considering Cole had even slowed his pace to allow Everett to conserve his energy.

“Here, drink this.” Cole tilted Everett’s head back and put the cool metal lip of the water canteen to his mouth.

Everett had to force himself to drink slowly before finally pushing the canteen away. “We can’t stop here. They were way too close to us.”

Much closer than either of them had thought. The hunters must’ve parked their four-wheelers somewhere before getting back on foot to track them. Likely that was how they’d managed to get so close before Cole scented them and woke up.

Thank God his lover was a light sleeper.

“Still are coming, too,” Cole said. Now that Everett’s night vision had improved, he could vaguely see the faraway look that came over Cole’s eyes as he used his other senses to track the whereabouts of the hunters.

“Where are they?” Everett asked, trying to force his heart to return to a normal rhythm.

“I think they must’ve found our camp because it sounds like they went back to get their four-wheelers. I can kind of hear the engines now. It’s getting closer.”

Not good. Not good at all.

“And we’re still four days away from your pack,” Everett said. He wished with everything inside of him that he hadn’t been so stupid. He wished he’d had the good sense to leave Cole with his pack instead of taking him from it because now they were alone out here being chased by hunters, who were definitely going to catch up to them and kill them because Everett couldn’t go as fast as Cole.

“You should leave me here.”

Cole’s head flew back in shock. “What?”

“Seriously. Go on ahead without me. You can run faster and get your pack. You can be safe with them.”

Everett doubted that Cole’s pack would want to do anything to help Everett from getting his head cut off by his old allies, but so long as Cole was safe, Everett would be fine. He was a hunter, too. Maybe he could even hide himself while covertly making his way back to Cole’s new home, making sure that none of his old buddies would find him before he made it to what would hopefully be safety.

Or maybe the werewolves would cut his head off in revenge before he had a chance to explain himself. He was still a little nervous on that part.

Cole grabbed him around the collar and pulled him close. Everett thought the man meant to kiss him until he heard the snarl in his voice. “Don’t you ever tell me to do something as stupid as that ever again, do you understand me? I will knock your ass unconscious and drag you behind me if I have to.”

Everett tried pushing him away, but Cole’s body was like a brick wall. More and more Everett was being reminded that he was no longer human, and that Everett was no longer the stronger of the two of them.

“They will catch you, torture you, and skin you alive if you stay with me. This way you can run back to your pack faster and maybe come back and find me if I don’t make it back. They must be looking for you within a certain radius. You might not even need to get all the way back before you can find some help.”

BOOK: Kidnapped by the Werewolf Hunter [DeWitt's Pack 13] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)
2.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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