by Owner
DeWitt's Pack 11
Hunted and on the Run
John Platt has been searching for his mate for months now. When he finally finds the cougar shifter, Storm, it's just in the nick of time to save his life before hunters can kill him.
Storm has been running away from John because he believes John wants revenge on him for his actions as a hunter's slave. He doesn't realize that he's been running from his mate, and he won't believe it when John tells him about it either. Two men can't be mated. That's impossible! But that doesn't stop the fact that now Storm owes John a life debt, and he is to be the man's servant for the rest of his life now, assuming they both survive.
The hunters are back on their tails, and with John so far away from his pack, it's just the two of them, on their own being hunted, having to work together to survive and protect their fragile, growing love.
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 35,559 words
HUNTED AND ON THE RUN
DeWitt’s Pack 11
Marcy Jacks
EVERLASTING CLASSIC
MANLOVE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic ManLove
HUNTED AND ON THE RUN
Copyright © 2012 by Marcy Jacks
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-934-0
First E-book Publication: December 2012
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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HUNTED AND ON THE RUN
DeWitt’s Pack 11
MARCY JACKS
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
John stopped along the side of a pine tree and bent his head to sniff. His tail twitched in anticipation, and his hair rose up as a shiver passed along under his gray coat.
That cougar had passed through here all right. He was getting sloppy, tired, and John was catching up to him.
He was half-worried for the shifter’s well-being and half-eager to hurry up and catch him. As a werecat, a strong, adult werecat who shifted into a northern cougar, Storm was well equipped to take care of himself out in the wild. Werecats weren’t exactly known for staying in packs, so they had to be tough.
Despite that, Storm had been running away from John for far too long. He still couldn’t figure out why. There was no way the other shifter had been oblivious to the sensations passing through them that day they met.
Maybe he thought John was tracking him down for revenge.
Storm did put a gun to Morgan’s head, after all.
He’d been brainwashed by hunters, that hadn’t been his fault, and when John finally caught up to him, he was going to make sure that no one held it against him either.
The scent was getting stronger. John pawed at a spot of pressed-8
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down leaves between a couple of shrubs. His scent was strong here, and the shrubs would have kept him hidden.
He’d slept in this spot, maybe no more than a couple of hours ago.
Why not go into the trees? John didn’t really know much about cougars, but he was pretty sure Storm would have preferred to get up into the branches of a tall tree instead of sleeping on the ground where other predators lurked, especially if he thought he was being hunted.
He just had to keep looking. Christmas had come and gone, and spring was finally here, but that still left some patches of snow for the green grass to peek through, and the ground was consistently wet as it melted.
John had only just recently gotten permission to start searching for Storm. With the hard winter, his pack leader, James DeWitt, couldn’t allow it before. Winter had come early that year, and as quick and unforgiving as it had come, it had thankfully decided to leave early and with little fuss.
That hadn’t kept John from spending all winter with his stomach twisting around in knots. Cougar-shifters were rare, and they weren’t exactly known for hanging around the Eastern states. Real cougars could be found all up and down North and South America. Storm could’ve have gone anywhere without anyone really noticing him.
But he hadn’t. John had checked in with a couple local wildlife organizations about possible cougar sightings and had followed the only one that had been documented. A mountain lion wandering around this area, even with all the forest, and carrying human clothes in its mouth was pretty damn suspicious.
It had been so suspicious that no one was taking it seriously.
If a nature photographer were to show up and see the bag John had strapped around his neck, he might think that was a little odd and dismiss it as the mind playing tricks, too. They might even assume he was a crossbreed and was carrying his owner's pack. It was exactly the sort of thing that made being seen by humans, even in wolf form, so easy to get away with, and probably why regular humans hadn’t Hunted and on the Run
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figured out that all the things they thought weren’t real were actually out there.
Thankfully, Storm hadn’t left the s
tate, and now John was on his trail. Maybe he’d found it too hard to travel during the harsh winter and had holed up somewhere. John would have to ask him when he found him.
He would also have to ask why the man was doing his best to run away from him. John was an alpha, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t that scary.
He walked some more, following the scent. It got stronger and stronger the farther he went.
Then another scent hit his nose that made every neuron, every nerve, every hair he had stand at attention.
Blood. There was blood in the air. Not a lot of it, but enough to mean that, for a time, Storm had been freely bleeding as he traveled.
He was injured.
John picked up the pace, following the scent of his mate until the also came across the burnt-charcoal, semisweet smell of metal.
Gunpowder.
Hunters had been in this area. Whether they were normal humans with a big game license or hunters out to get the pelt of a shifter was something John couldn’t tell off the bat.
He dug his claws into the earth, kicking up mud as he launched himself down the trail he was using.
Someone was hunting Storm. Storm was injured. He had to find him.
* * * *
Storm stopped to rest and lick his wounds. They weren’t bad, considering the hunters had caught him off guard and had been shooting from Storm’s blind spot.
It was a pain in the ass having only one eye, sometimes.
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He should be thankful that whoever had shot at him apparently didn’t know how to handle a gun for shit.
The bullet had only grazed his side. It was deep enough to cause him to bleed, and it stung like a bitch for every step he took and every lick of his tongue, but he was going to live. Already the bleeding had stopped.
He was pretty sure he’d lost the hunters by now, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to find him again if he kept sitting around on his ass right here. He had to keep moving.
Thank God he hadn’t lost the bag he’d been carrying around. It contained his spare clothes, human ID, and whatever cash he’d been able to quickly take from Tatum’s, Chance’s, and Tony’s wallets before he’d escaped.
Hunters, the three of them, and only Tony knew of Storm’s secret, and he’d held it above Storm’s head like a prize, using the life-debt that Storm owed him to keep them together.
Tony got off on it, the idea that one of the dangerous creatures he hunted had to do everything he said, even fuck him whenever he wanted. The big bad hunter putting an evil shifter on his knees, Tony had definitely liked it.
Storm kind of liked it, too. He hated to admit it, but he’d had a love-hate relationship with the man. Where exactly that line was drawn, Storm couldn’t even say, but Tony had never raped him.
Storm had wanted to do those things. In a weird way, it was freeing to be told to take his clothes off and be fucked to within an inch of his life.
Maybe that was the only thing he’d loved about their strange relationship, that Storm actually got to experience a sexual encounter with another man. Cougar-shifters were only as rare as they were because, unlike with a werewolf, one couldn’t transform another person into a cougar shifter with just a bite. They had to be born.
Why that way, he had no idea, but it made taking a cougar wife and having a litter of kittens a top priority to all cougar-shifters Hunted and on the Run
11
everywhere, and God help anyone if who decided they didn’t want to get married or have kids.
Cougar-shifters were almost cult-like in their views, and they could be as relentless as any hunter.
Maybe that was the reason why Storm had liked Tony, even when the other man was being a prick. Storm was being hunted by other cougars the first time he and Tony had met.
Storm had thought he was being careful and was so sure that no one in his family could possibly know about the things he liked to fantasize about at night when he was alone. He’d never even kissed another man before and didn’t so much as keep a dirty magazine under his mattress, but somehow they’d found out.
Two cougars had been sent to hunt him down. Tony had recognized them for what they were and killed them with his rifle.
He’d always been a decent shot.
Storm could have gotten away scot-free after that, but the one-track mindedness of his kind demanded that he honor the debt he was in, even though his people had just thoroughly tried to kill him or beat him to within an inch of his life and drag him back home where he could be forced to mate with some of the females, all of which were his blood relatives.
At the time, Storm had genuinely thought that Tony was a regular hunter, a human who had no idea that shifters existed and not the kind who hunted paranormal creatures like him. He’d thought that Tony had only shot at the other cougars because of the way they were attacking a smaller, injured cougar like him, and maybe Tony had thought they’d attack him too once they noticed him. The three cougars had pretty much stumbled into his camp as Storm ran and the other two chased.
Storm’s mistake likely had more to do with the string of rabbits and pheasants Tony carried at his hip, as well as the fact that he was completely alone.
Hunters liked traveling in groups for safety reasons. It was a good 12
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idea, considering the big game they hunted.
Storm had presented himself to Tony, shifted, and then explained what he was and what he now owed the other man. Then he waited.
He’d expected to be shot on the spot like the others, and naturally, Tony didn’t believe him at first about any kind of honor debt.
Not until he’d told Storm to suck his dick, and Storm had done it without question. Hell, he’d been glad to do it.
Only then, by the way Tony spoke afterward, gloating about having his very own shifter servant, did Storm realize what kind of hunter Tony was, and it was way too late for him to do anything about it.
Tony refused to be separated from Storm ever since then. The man probably thought he’d hit the jackpot with his new shifter bodyguard. The only thing he couldn’t get Storm to do was kill other shifters. Storm tracked them when ordered and made Tony happy with lots of sex, which made the man forget all about what a worthless killer his bodyguard was, and that was it.
Until last November when a werewolf of all things killed Tony, freeing him from his debt.
He could still remember the look in that kid’s green eyes when they first met. It was a hard sort of look that was both eager and hungry.
The werewolf wanted him. For lust or revenge for Storm’s part in his friend’s kidnapping, or both, he couldn’t say, but Storm wanted no part in it.
It had been bad enough that Storm had worked with hunters, betraying his own kind while tricking himself into thinking that so long as he let Tony fuck him, he was keeping the man from being crueler to the creatures than he needed to be, but he didn’t want to become another punching bag for an angry shifter.
It was depressing when Storm realized that the kid had probably earned the right to take a few shots at him. Hell, even after he finally got out from under Tony’s thumb, he still couldn’t stop himself from Hunted and on the Run
13
feeling a sexual pull toward the younger were that made him completely uncomfortable and feel the worst sort of shame imaginable.
How sick in the head was he? Had he really allowed himself to be so brainwashed that now he would just jump into bed with anyone and fantasize about fucking anyone?
“Found him, boys,” said a masculine voice, the owner of which stepped through the shrubs with the kind of grace that Frankenstein’s monster might have.
The man was middle aged, with short salt-and-pepper hair on top of his head and a wide belly that Santa Claus might have. The guy certainly looked jolly enough. He just didn’t have the beard.
Three more men, all of whom were of similar age, except for one, who looked closer to Stor
m’s age at twenty-nine, stepped through the shrubs with a lot more grace than their leader did.
“Jesus, you’re good at tracking,” said the youngest man, looking down at Storm with wide, curious eyes.
“That I am,” the older man admitted. “To be fair, this one looks tired and haggard. Probably too old to be running. Maybe that’s why his pack abandoned him.”
Okay, these men were definitely not hunters of the innocent variety. They were out to kill him for some religious reasons or personal revenge for a wrong some other shifter committed against their family.
They must be new to this. Otherwise they would know that cougar-shifters didn’t stay in packs. They stayed near family members and other cougar-shifters who were related for the protection, but it wasn’t the same dynamic as how werewolves worked, and there was no alpha leader to answer to.
One of the hunters actually walked right up to Storm and nudged him in the side with his boot.
Storm groaned, but he didn’t move.
“Shit, he’s already half-dead.”
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Marcy Jacks
Good, kill me.
In another show of bravery, the hunter came forward and took the bag of clothing and money that Storm had been carrying around. It had been right near Storm’s mouth, too. If he’d had the energy, or the will, he could’ve easily bitten the man. He could’ve taken a good chunk right out of him in retaliation, but he didn’t, and the hunter knew he wasn’t going to.
Storm must really look like roadkill.
“What happened to his eye? Did you shoot it, Dad?” asked the youngest of them.
He would only think that if there was blood on the place where his eye used to be. Storm hadn’t thought he was that injured.
