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the door. All right.

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Chapter Eight

Lance was still seething, long after he’d wiped away his angry, and hurt, tears. The worst part about it was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried like this, and that humiliation only made the situation that much worse.

Thank God he’d gotten Markus out of the motel room before he could start bawling. For the man who had been making fun of him once he’d had his conquest to see something like that would have been too much.

He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.

Lance showered, pulled off the sheets they had both ruined from the bed, and threw them onto the floor in a corner. He righted the table he’d knocked over and then started setting up his MacBook.

This had always calmed him. Even when he was a kid and the other kids had been making fun of him because his parents were putting him through therapy, flipping through the pictures of wolves he’d collected throughout the years or even reading the saved documents he had always lifted his spirits.

Sometimes he thought that the boy who had saved him had never left. The wolf had protected him then, and just looking at the images of normal wolves brought him some comfort now.

He wrote a quick post on his progress in Brampton and posted it to his blog.

Markus he wouldn’t mention, even as a guide. He didn’t even want to think about that asshole.

How could he have believed that someone as normal and

gorgeous and nice and…well, he still could hardly believe he’d been

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taken in. Lance should’ve known better than to think anyone would  understand him enough to think he wasn’t crazy with his beliefs. He  would never make that mistake again.

His one-night stands would stay one-night stands from now on.

After more than an hour, his cell phone rang.

He picked it up, keeping his eyes still on the screen as he reread  the stories of the changelings from the days of old Scotland.

“Hello?”

“Lance! How’ve you been?”

Lance groaned and rolled his eyes, right before covering them  with his hand and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Fine, Buddy, how are you?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Buddy. He did. But sometimes the guy  was just a little too cheerful for Lance’s liking. Now was one of those  times.

“Doing great. I might have some more pictures for you. How’s  your trip going? Did you find out anything?”

Yeah. He was pretty enthusiastic.

“A little. I had a guide but had to let him go. He had something he  needed to deal with, so I’ll have to find another.”

“Bummer. Did he at least get to take you around?”

Lance thought about the wolves they’d seen. “Yeah, and we saw  some pretty big wolves, but they always scattered before I could get  any pictures.”

“How big were they?” Buddy asked.

The wolves had always been at a distance or an angle, but if he  had to guess, he would say fairly large. “I’m thinking that the wolves  around here definitely get bigger than normal. I was also able to talk  to that kid from the paper.”

“The one who saw a man turn into a wolf?”

“Yeah. The paper painted him as a drunk teen, but he told me he  was sober enough to know what he saw, and I checked out behind the  bar one night, too. The lighting sucks, but if someone were to take

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their clothes off and turn into a wolf in front of me, I’m pretty sure I’d  know I wasn’t just seeing things.”

The tone of Buddy’s voice got all the more excited. “That’s  amazing. There has to be werewolf activity there.”

Lance had met Buddy in person a couple of times. Buddy was  apparently the president of his own paranormal club, and he and his  friends all talked werewolves and vampires and other shifters all the  time. He frequented Lance’s website and blog, and now that he knew  Lance was actually out in the field trying to prove werewolves  existed, Buddy had taken to calling him every now and again to hear  about his progress. Lance had even managed to get him to volunteer  to maintain the website for those times when Lance was away for too  long.

“Well, I haven’t proved anything yet,” Lance said, trying to calm  him.

“I should come down there and help you out a bit. You said you  were in Brampton?”

Shit, he didn’t want Buddy here. “No, look, really I’m okay. I’ve  got my equipment and some research, and there’s a few more stories I  want to read up on in their library.”

“A tiny-ass town like that has a library?” Buddy asked, sounding  incredulous.

“Sort of. It’s more of a one-room museum on nature, hunting, the

local animals, and the founder of the town. There’s a wall devoted to

books, and if there’s anything related to the wildlife in the local paper,  which is pretty damn thin already, they save it in their archives.”

“A tiny-ass town like that has a
 
museum
?” Buddy’s voice was  even more disbelieving than before.

Lance sighed. “Good-bye, Buddy.”

He clicked the end call button on his screen, and he put the phone  back down and sighed. He really had too much shit going on right  now. He needed a break.

Lance closed his computer and decided to head out to the local

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restaurant. He was starving and couldn’t think, and something in his  stomach might help with that, as well as take his mind off of Markus  Lane.

* * * *

“He’s sexually attracted to you, obviously, but that doesn’t mean  he loves you or will want to keep the pack a secret to himself once he  discovers us.”

Markus clenched his jaw as James spoke. “I know, I’ll ease him into it. I’ll tell him about the hunters, too. He’s a good guy, James. He won’t want to put us in any danger.”

“No, but being proven right after so many years of trying to expose us and then being asked to not lift the curtain on our secret anyway would be a tough pill for anyone to swallow.”

James, Markus, and the rest of the pack alphas, along with their wise woman, had all spoken to each other around a crackling fire back on pack land. After mostly everyone had followed Markus and Lance that day on their hike and listened in on the man’s story, everyone had come to the decision that it was time for Markus to reveal himself as a

werewolf.

He would still have to be careful about it, however. Lance’s

profession still left many on edge, and he was constantly being

warned to not scare the other man.

Markus couldn’t have Lance running away to write a quick post on his computer or something.

Cole, one of the newer alphas to become part of the pack, piped up. “I didn’t realize that taking a mate was so complicated. I thought when you found them, that was it.”

James smiled at him. Cole was not their youngest alpha, but he was a recently changed one.

He had been forcibly transformed by another rival werewolf,  Deacon, but instead of following Deacon or becoming wild and

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dangerous, Cole had somehow managed to survive with the omegas  and other alphas that had also been forcibly turned.

Markus had overheard James speaking to his beta on the odd  occasion, and it was clear that James suspected that the survival of  those omegas, out in the wild, had a lot to do with Cole protecting  them and hunting for them. Though there had been two other alphas  with him, they had mostly gone wild and likely would also have died  had Cole not stepped up for them.

“Even when werewolves mate, it can get complicated,” James  said.

Isaac had to throw his two cents in there as well. “This guy will most likely be more scared of me than Markus. Lance wants to prove that werewolves exist, he wants to see one, but I’m the one with the

guns.”

Yes, he was, but Markus knew he didn’t have anything to worry  about. Isaac was a former hunter, and he was going with his guns  holstered to him for educational reasons. Isaac might no longer be a  hunter, and he might regret some of the things he’d done, but he was a  living, breathing, and very real reason for Lance to not go to the  media or post any kind of proof to the existence of shifters online.

Isaac had offered to do this. The hope was that Lance would see  him and then realize how important the secrecy was.

Markus’s hope was that Lance would even want to look at him  after what happened earlier today.

“Okay, we’re basically in town now. Where is he?” James said.

Brampton was a one-street town that the pack was hidden just  outside of. It was easy to sneak in and out for certain things, and aside  from the truckers and other travelers passing through, there wouldn’t  be that many people to sniff through.

Markus already had that scent imprinted into his brain anyway. He  wouldn’t be hard to find.

He straightened his back, sticking his nose just a little bit into the air, and he inhaled deeply and then several other short breaths through

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his nose.

The usual scents were there, pine, dirt, pets, as well as the scent of cooking that was coming from the restaurant. He smiled when he caught hold of Lance’s scent.

Markus and the others weren’t that far away from the motel.  Lance’s scent came just past them and moved in the direction of the delicious scent of food.

Markus smiled. “Went to get supper, I guess.”

James looked up at the sky. “You said he didn’t like crowds. He’ll be finishing up and leaving there before the regulars can sit at the bar.  We’ll catch him as he’s leaving and bring him around back.”

Markus immediately knew how James was thinking this would go down, and though his alpha wasn’t trying to be cruel about it, Markus couldn’t let that happen.

“He’s got asthma, James. If we just grab him and cart him off, it’ll scare him and he might have an attack. Let me talk to him first.”

“You really think the guy will trust you enough to follow you into the dark forest at night?”

Fucking Isaac had to be an asshole about it.

Markus clenched his jaw. “Probably not, but if he sees me first, I don’t know…” Markus struggled to think about what could be done.  Lance was already mad as hell at him, and if Markus accidentally killed the man while trying to explain himself, well, it would certainly be a few steps backward to say the least.

James briefly squeezed Markus’s shoulder. “We’ll do it your way.  In the beginning. If you can’t make him follow you somewhere private, we’ll have to force him. But I doubt it will come to that,”  James added.

Markus hoped he was right.

“I am right,”
 
James assured him, using the telepathy that all leading alphas had with their packs to read his mind.

Only rarely did Markus hate that ability. That he wasn’t always careful with his thoughts was a big reason for that.

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“He’s your chosen mate. I’m sure he’ll see reason and not expose  us.” James hesitated here, which was a rarity for the alpha of an entire  pack. “My main concern is you, to be honest.”

“Me?” Markus said, completely taken aback.

Cole and Isaac both walked ahead a couple of steps, clearly  pretending they couldn’t hear what was being said, the bastards.

James clenched his jaw. “What troubles me is that he will keep the  secret out of respect for what he has loved all of these years, and he  might even feel like it was a repayment of a debt.”

“But?”

“But, I want you to prepare yourself in case he decides that he  can’t handle what he’s been looking for all this time. I don’t want to  see you get hurt.”

Markus didn’t want to get hurt either. He’d damn near forgotten  about this part. Telling Lance that he was a werewolf would be one  thing, but explaining they were mated was on a whole other level.

“Let’s just go and get him,” Markus said. He wanted to get this  confession part over with as soon as possible.

* * * *

Lance exited the restaurant after the third table walked in and lit

up. He had nothing against people who enjoyed their cigarettes. He  just wished he didn’t have to be listed in the group of people who  were so sensitive to it that he couldn’t even stay to finish his coffee.

Whatever, he had to get back to the motel anyway.

He’d just started walking when he heard Markus’s voice. “Lance.”

He spun around, his heart hammering at the shock. He hadn’t  expected Markus to be standing there under the yellow light of the  street lamp. He hadn’t expected Markus at all.