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

by Marcy Jacks

  There was nothing there. Nothing that he could see, at any rate. He wasn’t exactly making an effort to hide himself, and he couldn’t tell how long he’d been sleeping for. He was starving, he knew that much.

  Maybe that was why the animals left him alone. He looked too wasted and sick to bother eating.

  He was about to put his head back down and try to pass out again. The little shrubs he was wedged between didn’t offer him much protection, but they did shade his face from the morning light.

  He’d had the strangest, loudest dream, and now he had a headache that he didn’t want to deal with. Maybe he would wake up and try hunting for food tomorrow.

  The sound came again, and this time he did more than open his eyes. He lifted his head and stood up.

  Now that he was awake, he recognized that sound.

  Someone was screaming. Someone was being tortured.

  His nostrils flared, and he shot off in the direction of the painful sound.

  Not again. Not again. He couldn’t save his mate. He couldn’t protect Helen as they tortured and skinned her alive, but he was going to do everything in his limited power to make sure that no hunter bastards killed anymore of his kind. It might even be just a bunch of humans who’d kidnapped and were torturing another human, he didn’t care.

  The sound pumped adrenaline through his tired body, and now he wanted to fight.

  It took him five minutes of hard running, and that entire time the scents and sounds became louder and more pronounced, before he made it to the place where the horror was going down.

  He skid to a quick halt at the top of a small hill just before the trees and shrubs cleared.

  The scent of blood hung thickly in the air. Phillip was surprised that no other predators had bothered coming to check out the smell.

  He was the only one at the top of the hill, but not the only werewolf, it seemed.

  There was a broken plastic table sitting in pieces over by a tree. The man who was tied to the ground with pikes had probably broken it in his attempt to escape the men who were inflicting his wounds onto him. The scent of his blood masked his natural scent, but with the way the camp was set up, and how the two men were dressed, it was clear that these were hunters, and they’d just caught themselves a wolf.

  There was a tent as well that had been set up beside a few four-wheelers, one of which looked like it had crashed into a tree or something.

  Under the scent of burning oil, he got the smell of another bleeding person within. The heartbeat pumped slowly. Either sleeping or dying. The wolf must’ve bitten whoever was inside. At least that meant that Phillip wouldn’t have to worry about three hunters. Two was bad enough.

  He turned his attention back to the scene before him. Both hunters were kneeling over their captive, and there was an assortment of tools and liquids lines up next to them. Likely some of that was silver as well, and they’d already started cutting the poor man in several places.

  Death by a thousand cuts. Phillip shivered.

  “Stop that! Fucking stop that!” screamed a hoarse voice.

  Phillip looked over to the other tree that was practically beside the spot where the torture was taking place. He had to cock his head a little at the odd sight.

  The man was clearly dressed as a hunter, what with his camouflaged gear that he was wearing and the heavy-duty hiking boots. He looked like he could even be a member of this team here.

  He was tied up, his hands stretched out behind him with ropes keeping him attached to the tree itself.

  Phillip’s heart went out to him. His face was contorted with rage, and while at first Phillip had assumed that the moisture on his cheeks was sweat, the scent of salt told him that they were tears.

  The man twitching on the ground while two others mechanically sliced him with silver knives must be a loved one. Phillip sympathized entirely. He knew what it was like to scream and scream until his voice left him.

  “I think we made him pass out again,” one of the hunters, the younger, not as muscled one, said.

  “Get the smelling salts then. We’ll get him to shift soon enough.”

  So they could skin him for his pelt. Phillip targeted the hunter with the most muscle. He was likely the leader. Phillip was going to consider him to be the one who was most dangerous and best to take out first.

  He waited for the other hunter to push himself to his feet and walk back toward the tent. The hunter was kneeling with his back to Phillip, and he was touching the werewolf’s face with one hand and holding a knife in the other. It was almost like he was trying to decide what to cut off first.

  Phillip allowed the rage he’d felt for the last several months enter him. It was his fuel to keep his body going, and he was going to need it.

  He charged down the small hill, fast and nearly silent. The hunter must’ve heard him approaching because he turned around.

  The surprise on his face was what he died with when Phillip leapt at his throat and locked his jaws on. The hunter was dead so fast he didn’t even have the chance to lift the knife he’d been holding to defend himself with it.

  Phillip could hardly stay silent after that. Not when the man’s blood squirted in his eyes and not when he became so drunk on his need to violence and revenge that he began to tear into the man, ripping away his flesh, long after he’d died.

  “Look out!”

  Phillip’s rational thinking mind came back to him as the words were shouted at him. He jumped off the body and out of the way just as the gunshot punctured the man he’d just been eating.

  He felt a little green under the gills at that realization. Christ, he’d been chewing on human flesh because he was eating it.

  The rifle that the hunter held made that familiar clicking sound as the human cocked the weapon and pointed it at him again.

  “Luke, don’t!” the tied-up human yelled.

  Excuse me? Phillip was trying to save his sorry ass, and that stupid male was trying to talk some sense into a hunter?

  He didn’t have time to think about it as he started running in a wide circle around the camp. The gun fired on him, but the bullets missed Phillip’s flesh by miles as he ran behind trees, behind the four-wheelers, and then the shots stopped altogether when he ducked behind the tent.

  Wasn’t that something? The hunter didn’t want to risk shooting his injured friend inside.

  Too bad for the both of them. Phillip barreled around the tent in a slingshot motion that caught the hunter off guard as he reloaded his weapon. Phillip lunged just as he lifted the weapon back up to take his shot.

  * * * *

  Everett had to look away when the wolf jumped at Luke and tore his teeth and claws into Luke’s chest and torso. Luke screamed and fought and kicked and shrieked, and all Everett could think about was how this werewolf was going to do the exact same thing to him once he got around to it.

  This was a wild werewolf. He had to be. The thing had swallowed some of the flesh he’d pulled from Dan’s now-gaping neck.

  Now he understood, really and truly understood, what the differences were that Cole had been trying to tell him about. This wolf was nothing like what Cole was. Everett couldn’t believe there was ever a time when he suspected that Cole might go crazy and do something this awful to another person. He couldn’t believe any hunter was stupid enough to think that these werewolves bore any resemblance to normal pack werewolves like Cole.

  Everett stopped acting like a scared little bitch and decided to just look over and see if the wolf was done eating.

  He was covered in blood, Luke’s blood, and he was staring down at the other man strangely before he decided to just walk away.

  For whatever reason, it seemed he didn’t want to eat Luke.

  Then the unknown wolf started walking over to where Cole was still piked to the ground.

  Everett tensed as the wolf came closer and closer. Maybe this wasn’t a werewolf. Maybe this was really just a common gray wolf, and it had smelled all the blood coming
from the area.

  Everett tried to think of what he could do to get the creature away from his bleeding, hopefully still alive, lover before the wolf decided to make a meal out of him as well.

  “Bad dog! Get back! Back!”

  When the wolf ignored him, Everett whistled. He knew how to whistle so that the sound hurt the ears of a normal person. It made the wolf jump back a little before growling at Everett instead.

  He glared back at the thing, still struggling against the ropes to try and escape. All he succeeded in doing was pulling at his skin. “Don’t you fucking touch him.”

  He didn’t care if the wolf was wild. He wanted to scare it away.

  The wolf walked around Cole’s prone body and approached Everett now. Its head was bent, and its hair stood on end. Everett swallowed hard at the sight of those teeth. They sure as hell looked strong.

  Christ. Now what the hell was he supposed to do? He doubted calling to Adam would do anything, even if the man wasn’t unconscious, because he’d had the better part of his arm cut off.

  The wolf then did something that Everett wasn’t entirely expecting, even though he had suspected it to be a werewolf. It shifted into a man.

  The light-brown hair wasn’t long, but the strands fell into the guy’s face. His hazel eyes were intense as he stared at Everett.

  Everett looked at him and out of habit tried to classify what sort of wolf this man could be. An omega wouldn’t have attacked a group of hunters like this and successfully killed two of them, Everett was sure, but the gaunt look to the man suggested anything but alpha.

  Everett swallowed when the man didn’t say anything. “Are you wild?”

  The man’s head jerked back, and then he looked over his shoulder at Cole, as though remembering he was there. “We need to help him.”

  Everett hadn’t expected the man to be able to talk. Could wild werewolves talk? He tried to remember the conversations he and Cole had about the subject, but at the moment his memory was failing him.

  Whatever. He didn’t care. Wild werewolf or not, the guy was offering him help. “Untie me. Get these ropes off my hands.”

  The man looked at him through narrowed eyes as he leaned down to examine Cole’s wounds. “Are you a hunter?”

  He couldn’t get into the specifics of this right now. This man might not even understand, or care, if he tried to explain himself as a former hunter. “No, I’m his partner. His mate. We’re mated,” he said, using the word that the werewolf should know best.

  His eyes didn’t go wide in shock or anything, and Everett was more than happy when the guy accepted that claim without arguing about it.

  “Okay.”

  With a single swipe of his hand, the werewolf was able to get his ropes cut away. It killed Everett a little that the man was able to do it so easily, and all that time Everett had been forced to stand there while Cole was being brutally tortured.

  He rushed to his lover and dropped to his knees. “Baby?”

  He hesitated to touch his face to move his neck at first. Then he remembered that neither Luke nor Dan had actually broken any of Cole’s bones or done anything to that area of his body yet, so he was free to touch the clammy skin and feel the quick pulse beneath.

  “He’s alive,” the other man said from over Everett’s shoulder.

  Everett bit the inside of his lip and clenched his neck. “Thank you. I can see that.”

  “My name is Phillip, by the way.”

  This guy had definitely lost his mind. Everett so didn’t care. “Nice to meet you. And thanks,” he added quickly. He did owe the guy at least that.

  Phillip nodded. “What should I do?”

  Everett was busy trying to pull the pikes out of the ground. They were long and had to be hammered in, and he was having some trouble.

  He pulled back with a huff. “Can you pull this out?”

  Phillip came forward and grabbed the pikes. He had to use some effort on each one, but he managed to get them out of the ground one by one, and the large chain links that had been attached slid right off, freeing Cole.

  With the chains out of the way, it was easier to see the extent of the damage.

  “Jesus Christ,” Everett muttered, shrugging out of his jacket. He used it to give Cole some of his modesty back and to cover up the wounds until some basic first aid supplies could be retrieved for him.

  “The smell of blood is all over the place here. Animals will arrive soon.”

  Great. Everett pushed Cole’s hair out of his face, and then he looked up toward the tent. Adam was in there, but he was still unconscious, as far as Everett knew, and he wanted to put Cole on a bed.

  Stealing the cot of a man who’d recently had his arm chopped off seemed pretty tame compared to what Dan and Luke had been doing a few minutes ago.

  That, and the first aid supplies were in there.

  He gingerly put his hands under Cole’s body and lifted him into the air.

  Cole twitched in his hold, and maybe he wasn’t quite as deeply under as Everett had thought since he started talking in a small, panicking voice. “No…no…”

  “It’s me, baby. I got you. It’s me.”

  Cole wasn’t able to really fight him, and the only movement he made were the shivers and twitches that passed through his body. Likely he was fighting off his attackers in whatever nightmare he was having. Everett just wished Cole could hear his voice so he would know it was over.

  “I’m going to get you some help. Don’t you worry.”

  The three of them entered the tent. It was large enough to fit the lot of them, barely, and they only had to duck down slightly once inside.

  There were actually two cots set up, the one Adam was recovering in and another one two feet away on the other side of the tent. The medical supplies were right in the middle of the cots.

  He didn’t want Adam in here. The guy looked pale as a ghost, but he was still alive. He could tell by the way the man’s chest went up and down. Everett didn’t want to risk that Adam woke up suddenly, grabbed a gun or something, and decided to shoot Everett in the back of the head while he was busy tending to his lover.

  He turned to Phillip. “Can you get him out of here?”

  Phillip nodded and walked around him. He grabbed Adam’s cot with one hand by the metal frame at his feet and then started to easily drag it away. He left the tent with the cot.

  “Don’t kill him!” Everett called after the man.

  Phillip came back in seconds later. “Why not kill him?”

  Why not indeed. Adam would’ve done everything to Cole that Luke and Dan had if given the chance, but somehow he thought there was enough bloodshed today. Two out of three hunters dead was more than enough for him at the moment.

  Phillip was looking at him, still awaiting an answer. “Because he’s unconscious and missing his arm. It wouldn’t be right killing him when he can’t defend himself.”

  Phillip’s face contorted with rage, and his eyes turned gold. “They kill us when we’re helpless.”

  Shit. “I know, I know.”

  “All the time.”

  “I have something else to worry about other than him,” Everett said, unzipping the pack of medical supplies and finding it depressingly near empty. Most of the items had been used up on Adam, it seemed. His stump had been pretty heavily bandaged.

  “Please just stick around here and help me with this. Don’t worry about him for now. He’s probably dying anyway.”

  Phillip’s angry sneer turned into a curious frown as he stepped forward. “What would you like me to do?”

  Everett thought about that for a minute. “Do you know a werewolf named James DeWitt?”

  Chapter Ten

  Cole woke up an hour after Everett convinced Phillip to go to the pack where Cole now lived. Phillip had heard the name of James DeWitt and become oddly guarded, but he still agreed with Everett that more help than this was needed.

  Cole was a werewolf now, and despite how much Everett still did
n’t understand how that worked, he would be needing his pack.

  The only thing Everett would want to know was why they had failed to come and rescue Cole to begin with. That was part of what Everett ultimately didn’t get. Why was he so loyal to a pack that was barely loyal to him?

  Of course, Everett being angry with them wouldn’t change the fact that he was still angry with himself for what he’d done, and for also allowing Cole to get so brutally hurt.

  When Cole’s beautiful red-brown eyes opened and focused on him, and his face didn’t twist around in anger, Everett took him by the cheeks and kissed everywhere on his face.

  Cole let him, and he reached up to pull Everett closer. Then he seemed to realize what he was lying on and nearly jumped up.

  Everett put his hand against Cole’s chest, carefully avoiding the knife slices that were still scabbing there. “Easy, easy baby. You’re on a cot, not on the table.”

  Cole relaxed, and he never took his eyes away from Everett’s face. His voice was hoarse as he asked, “How’d we escape?”

  Everett swallowed around the lump in his own still-hurting throat. All that screaming they’d both done had taken its toll. “Another werewolf came and saved us. I think he was wild, and he killed Dan and Luke and then he let me loose. I brought you in here.”

  Cole’s eyes widened a little, and he started to look around the tent they were both in. “We’re still in their camp?”

  Everett nodded, taking Cole’s hand into his and clutching it tightly. “Yeah. I didn’t want to move you yet. The four-wheelers will still work, but they didn’t look like the right kind of vehicle to move an injured man in.”

  He laughed a little as he spoke. The thought of trying to get Cole’s unconscious body comfortably on one of those things did seem a little laughable now that the immediate danger was out of the way. Had Cole been more severely injured, Everett would’ve done it in a heartbeat.