The Werewolf Affair [DeWitt's Pack 14] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (11 page)

“Trevor,” Phillip panted, and he threw his head back into the ground. He opened his mouth as he came, and Trevor took advantage of that as he pressed his lips against Phillip’s, ending their tryst with a kiss.

Sex highs could only last so long, and though they hadn’t actually had sex, it was as good as.

“Absence really does make the heart grow fonder,” Trevor said, mirroring Phillip’s thoughts as they both caught their breath.

Phillip smiled at him, taking in Trevor’s naked beauty as they lay in the sunlight. “Yeah, it does.”

He reached over and wiped his hand on the grass. He stood up and offered Trevor his hand, and though he took it, he could sense that the uncertainty was back again for the other man.

“So,” Trevor said, taking his hand back and shifting his feet. He was back to barely glancing at Phillip’s face. “Until next time?”

“Trevor, I don’t want us to be like this.”

Trevor glared at him, but it was halfheartedly. “I don’t either. I’m not interested in sharing you with a ghost, no matter who she is, but I can’t force you to do anything either.”

Phillip thought of the times they’d spent together, watching the old horror movies, and before they even knew they were mated, just sitting quietly by the fire outside, talking about the times they’d gone wild and family they could hardly remember. He recalled the warmth of Trevor’s hand as they touched, and how pliant his lips were when they kissed, and he liked all of those things. He didn’t want to lose them.

“You wouldn’t be forcing me to do anything, and neither is being mated to you making me do any of this either.”

Trevor sent him a look that was both curious and suspicious.

Phillip hesitated again, but this time when he did reach for Trevor, he went through with it and took the man’s cheeks in hand. He brought him forward for a soft kiss.

Trevor’s eyes closed when their mouths made contact, and Phillip allowed his to do the same.

Phillip pulled away, licking his lips. He looked at Trevor, and it was like he was only seeing him for the first time. Something had changed. “I don’t want to deny you anymore. No matter what the reason is. It doesn’t help Helen, and it’s not helping either of us. I want a real chance to be with you. I like you. I like being in your company. You make me feel alive again, like I’m not going insane.”

That happiness returned to Trevor’s glowing eyes. “What about…?” He trailed off, as though not wanting to break the moment by saying her name.

“I’ll find a way to save Helen that’ll be more honorable than what I’ve been doing now. I want to get my life back on track, and I want you there with me.”

Trevor kissed him. It was a happy, sloppy thing that made Phillip’s heart pump wildly in his chest.

He hadn’t fucked this up so much that the man would never forgive him. He could still be happy. They could both still be happy. It wasn’t too late.

“Are you both ready down there?” James’s voice called from somewhere over the hill. “I think we should head out.”

Phillip and Trevor grinned at each other. Their hands touched each other’s cheeks one last time, and then their foreheads touched, before they decided to get back up the hill and out of the field.

Poor James had probably scented what they were doing, if he hadn’t heard it, and he didn’t even want to look down on them just in case they were still tangled up in each other.

That would come later.

Phillip spoke with James quickly before they all had shifted back into wolves to patrol the woods.

Phillip would be brought on alpha duties, pulling his weight with the pack, and he was going to hand his allegiance over to the man.

Might as well make it official. He had been living on the land for over a month now.

The only thing James wouldn’t do for him was give him the same patrolling shifts that Trevor had. They could go out on the same hours, but neither would be allowed to work together. Trevor looked as though he was about to protest, but Phillip took him by the hand and squeezed.

They both looked at each other, and without words, or even using their mental connection, Phillip had been able to tell him not to ask. They would discuss it later.

Trevor closed him mouth and let it go.

Phillip understood James’s decision. As a former leading alpha, he’d had his pack running under similar rules before as well.

Working so closely to a mate in potentially dangerous situations might seem ideal. After all, who better to watch one’s back than a mate? The problem was that mates could become careless with each other. They lost their focus when they believed each other to be in danger, and they stopped thinking properly.

No. This way was better.

All three men were now in wolf form, and since they could find nothing and the sun was starting to set, they decided to head back.

James’s wolf grumbled something to Trevor. Because Phillip still couldn’t listen in on James’s inner thoughts, Trevor had to translate for him.

“I’ll be going out
with Nick tomorrow, and James will be with you. The wind’s funny today, so we’re not going to stop looking until we’re sure there’s no threat.”

Phillip looked up at the sky. The wind had been picking up, and now gray clouds were starting to darken the already navy blue of the coming night.

The scent of rain was in the air, and Phillip had a bad feeling weighing him down.

Then something in the air shifted, and there was the crack of a twig in the distance. He stopped and immediately spun around.

A shrub moved in the distance, as though by the wind or something having run past its branches.

“What is it?”
Trevor asked, looking up at him and then down at the now still shrub several yards away.

James also stopped and came over to see what the holdup was.

“I think something’s there,”
Phillip said, taking a step forward. He carefully sniffed the air, searching for whatever it was that was following them.

James and Trevor both did the same, just in case, but it was Phillip who noticed it first, and he took a shocked step back.

“Phil?”

He shook his head. Hazy memories assaulted him from weeks before when he’d still been wild and every waking moment had only been a terrible dream that needed to be overcome.

There was something familiar in the scent that came to his snout, something that made flashes of angry eyes and sharp teeth pass right before his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was on the ground, his head in Trevor’s human lap. Trevor was speaking to him, but the words came out as though through a tunnel that was very far away. His face was worried, and he was petting Phillip’s ears and face, attempting to rouse him.

Did he actually faint? Christ almighty. And in front of his mate and James, too, all the while he was still trying to convince James that he was capable of coming on rotation.

“I’m fine,”
Phillip said through their link, and he managed to get back onto his paws, though he wobbled. Trevor smiled in apparent relief.

“Thank God,” he said, still holding onto Phillip’s face, petting his ears and pressing their foreheads together. “What happened?”

Phillip didn’t know what happened. He was about to say as much when he caught sight of the large pair of glowing eyes down the path the three of them had just come from.

Phillip looked into them and couldn’t bring himself to look away. They drew him in, hypnotizing him like a moth to a bright light.

He snapped out of it in time to also take note of the size of the animal. It was at least two to three times the size of an alpha, and the curled up black lips revealed fangs that dripped long ropes of drool. A piece of the right ear was missing, and the hackles on the enormous white wolf were raised, and he was crouched low to the ground, about to spring.

Phillip’s fall must’ve distracted Trevor and James, because they only looked up and realized that the giant wolf was there as Phillip stared at it.

It was the man that Phillip had accidentally infected while he’d been wild. Luke, if he remembered the name right. When he’d rescued that hunter, Everett King, and his mate, Cole Dane, a little over four weeks ago, Luke had been one of the hunters that Phillip had taken out.

Phillip had attacked the hunters that had captured the pair and were torturing Cole in front of Everett. He’d killed all but this one, leaving him for dead.

That had been a huge mistake, because Phillip had transformed him, and clearly, being transformed by a wild werewolf had some side effects, because Luke was enormous.

Trevor quickly got to his feet, and James growled back at the large wolf as it placed one paw in front of the other.

The wolf lunged.

No! James couldn’t fight a monster like that on his own, and Trevor was as good as dead until he could get into wolf form and have the chance to fight back.

Phillip sprung ahead, lunging past James and toward the large wolf.

“No!” Trevor yelled.

Phillip clashed with the wolf in midair as they both jumped at each other. He was strong. It was like crashing into an oncoming bus that didn’t bother to stop out of courtesy to the animal it just struck at a hundred miles an hour.

Luke was all teeth and claws and growling rage, and now Phillip was practically in the jaws of the creature.

At least now they all knew what the hunters were looking for. They must’ve tracked Luke here. No one had expected the wild werewolf to come sniffing around DeWitt’s pack. They knew better on that part now.

Phillip was being torn apart like a dog’s chew toy. The burning pain he felt all over his body eventually left him, and he allowed his body to go limp in Luke’s mouth. He wasn’t ready to die, and he still wanted to at least get some good bites in so that Trevor and James could have the head start they needed to get back to the pack and warn everyone that this out-of-control monster was coming.

When his body sagged, the shaking stopped. It still felt like there was some severe rattling going on inside of his skull, and when Luke dropped him out of his mouth, the world beneath him swirled sickeningly.

Trevor’s desperate screams broke through the pain and dizziness he felt.

“No! Get away from him!”

No! The idiot was supposed to make the shift and run for his life. Not stand there while Phillip was getting his ass handed to him.

He didn’t dare look over at his mate, but from what he could hear, James was growling at the man, probably sending him some mental commands, preventing him from jumping into the fight.

Trevor would do that, if his leading alpha wasn’t pulling rank on him.

Phillip felt Luke’s huge nose come down, and the warm breath he felt against his face, followed by the rush of cold air, let him know that his scent was being checked for death.

Might as well make his move now, then.

Phillip opened his mouth and launched himself upright. Luke jerked back in surprise, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting his other ear caught between Phillip’s teeth. He bit down hard, tearing through the skin, and Luke released a loud and pain-filled howl right before he started viciously shaking his head around, and his body, trying to force Phillip off of him.

Phillip locked his jaws. He wouldn’t let this wild animal anywhere near Trevor, or the pack, or his son.

If Luke wanted revenge for being transformed into a wild werewolf, he was going to have to work for it.

Finally Luke managed to shake him off. Phillip’s body was hurled into a tree, and he released a yelp as his back made contact. He thought he heard a pop in his spine, but as he was able to shakily get to his feet, he knew nothing had been broken.

The wolf lunged for him again. Phillip used everything he had, all the energy left in his body, to jump out of the way.

Luke as a wolf was so powerful that he crashed right through the tree, breaking it at the base with the kind of snap that reminded Phillip of a hunter’s gun.

The wolf spun around, spitting out long splinters from between its massive teeth, teeth that were four times the size of the ones in Phillip’s mouth.

“I’m going to kill you,”
Phillip heard inside of his mind.
“Then I’m going to kill that boy who was fucking you.”

Phillip froze, at both the voice he heard as well as the threat.
“We can communicate like this? How?”
Phillip demanded.

The white hackles on top of the wolf’s back rose up higher, until they were practically standing on end.
“How the hell should I know that? I’m a hunter, not a werewolf. When I kill you, my curse will be broken.”

He actually thought that all he had to do was kill the wolf to cure himself. Some hunters still thought that. They believed it because of what they’d seen in the movies, so it wasn’t like he could entirely blame the man for being wrong. It wasn’t like it was his fault that he’d been doing his research in all the wrong places.

Phillip managed to quickly glance behind him before putting his eyes back onto the threat at hand. Trevor and James were both gone. That was good. He didn’t want them here to see him get killed. Phillip was willing to bet that the only reason James had been able to get Trevor to follow his orders to get out of there was because Trevor had seen Phillip get back up.