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Clearly it didn’t hurt him that much to be making the change, and Robert looked forward to the day when he could change without it being painful.

  Together they ran off, following the scents of their prey.

  Hunted and on the Run

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  Chapter Nine

  They ate everything they could, even the chicken dinner John had ordered from that little place across the street.

  Storm could’ve gone on eating, but he was satisfied and didn’t want to ask for more. John had explained that too many men delivering food would look suspicious if it happened that the hunters had made it into town and someone was watching for odd things like that, and Storm agreed with him.

  He didn’t want to bloat himself to the point where he couldn’t run if he needed to anyway. His stomach was satisfied, and neither he nor John was about to pass out from starvation. That was all that mattered.

  They lay in bed after that, both tired from all the food and traveling, but neither willing to sleep anymore. They watched the clock instead, counting down to when John’s pack would arrive to help them and bring them back…home.

  Storm supposed that John’s home was his home now. The other man had said all he could, and after taking a bullet for him, and the both of them caring for each other during their ordeal, Storm couldn’t deny it any longer.

  There was definitely more going on between them than lust. He still thought it was odd that two males could mate with each other, but perhaps this was the true reason for the sudden decrease in werecats over the last couple of decades and why werecats were so against homosexuality.

  He’d thought about this earlier, but only now did he start to give it some serious thought. Maybe too many werecats had mated with their 98

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  own sex, producing too few kittens, and soon it got to the point where elder werecats started policing the younger ones, forcing them to mate with shifters of the opposite sex to keep producing more shifters and prevent extinction.

  He told this theory to John, who listened patiently.

  “That could be it,” he said. “I mean, only about a year ago no one in our pack had seen two mated males until James came home with Corey. He had to kidnap the man after they’d both been shot. It was a total mess, but that was the first time it happened. Ever since then, it’s been going on like clockwork. Males mating with males.”

  “Do you think this could be the reason werecats are becoming so rare?” Storm asked.

  John shrugged. “Hard to say. Even if this was happening with werewolves, you don’t have to be born a werewolf. We have venom in our teeth and claws. We can just make other werewolves like that.”

  “Yes, but what if―”

  John’s grip on him suddenly became tight, his eyes widening so much that Storm could see the whites all the way around them.

  “What is it?” Storm mouthed.

  John’s eyes suddenly went to the door. The chain was in place, and it was bolted shut, but there were footsteps lurking. Too close for someone to be just casually passing by.

  They both slipped off the bed and landed on the other side, looking at the door like they were children or something, waiting for the boogeyman to come in and get them.

  It wasn’t until the door handle rattled that they both sprung up as one and headed to the bathroom.

  Their room was on the second story of the motel, and there was a window in there. When they’d come in here for the first time and scoped the place out for possible hiding places and escape routes, that was the only place for them to go to.

  “They don’t give up, do they?” John said.

  “Not until they have their catch or we kill them,” Storm replied, Hunted and on the Run

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  flipping the little locking switch and sliding the rectangular window to the side.

  It would be a tight squeeze for the both of them, but they could do it.

  “Here,” John said, grabbing one of the little complimentary conditioner bottles from the tub. Apparently he’d also been thinking about how tight a fit it would be as he dumped the stuff onto his palm and started smearing it along the window pane. Conditioner made a good lubricant in a pinch, after all.

  The banging on the front door got louder, and the tiny lock in the bathroom with its weak-ass door wouldn’t hold them off for long either.

  “Hurry up and go,” John said, pushing Storm toward the window.

  This was not the time to argue over who should be going out to safety first, so when John linked his fingers together to give Storm something to step on and get to the window easier, he took the offering and shimmied himself through the window.

  The conditioner made his skin a little slimy, but he managed to get through with only a few red marks along his shoulders and sides. He landed on his feet in the back parking lot, right beside one of those large garbage disposal units. He looked up to see John poking his head to make sure Storm had landed well.

  “Now you, come on,” Storm said. They needed to hurry before the hunters figured out that he and John were taking the back exit.

  The door to their motel room crashed in. John jumped easily up to the window and had half his body through when another crash sounded and something grabbed him from behind and tried pulling him back in.

  He screamed from the pain of being pulled so hard through such a small space.

  “No!” Storm yelled. He leaped on top of the garbage bin and jumped as high as he could. He reached out and grabbed John’s arms, but he couldn’t hold on because that goddamn conditioner made his 100

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  skin slick.

  “John!” he yelled when his mate slipped through his fingers. He grabbed hold of the window pane before he could fall back down again.

  The oddest sight in the world met Storm’s eyes when he jumped up to have a look at what was happening inside.

  It wasn’t a hunter. It was a werewolf. A large gray wolf with angry golden eyes had its teeth around John’s ankle. John struggled and tried to kick it off of him, but the wolf was determined, and the thing dragged John back through the destroyed bathroom door and into their motel room.

  “John!” Storm screamed again.

  There was no way he could fit back through the window quickly enough at this height. He let go of the window pane, landing again on his feet, and he ran with everything he had inside him back around to the front of the motel room.

  Just as he came around to the side and made it to the stairs, a naked man standing above on the second floor pointed his shotgun at him and fired.

  The boom was loud, but the pellets only splintered the side of the motel, missing Storm by just barely as he ducked to the side before he could get hit in the face or chest.

  The hunter yelled for his…werewolf friend? Was the whole world suddenly insane?

  “Robert! Hurry your ass up! We’ve gotta go!”

  Storm stopped breathing at that second. That voice. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the naked shooter because he’d been forced to move so quickly, but he could never forget that voice.

  “Tatum? That you?” he called.

  The click of the shotgun being cocked, as well as the little empty shell being ejected from the cartridge, was the only answer Storm got.

  He heard the sound of the wolf next, along with John’s pained scream. That stupid animal was going to take his foot off if he wasn’t Hunted and on the Run

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  careful!

  “Tatum, please don’t hurt him. I’ll―I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Just don’t take him,” Storm begged.

  “You’ll do as I say anyway, you fucking traitor,” Tatum said, then he started talking to the wolf again. “Hurry up and get him into the truck! Someone’s bound to have called the police by now.”

  “Yes, sir,” called the werewolf, who had apparently transformed into his human form by now.

  He worked fast.

  Storm had heard all about hunters who had been chased
by police in the middle of kidnapping a werewolf in human form. Their anger and desperation usually caused them to kill the werewolf, even in that human form, rather than allow them to escape.

  Storm couldn’t let that happen.

  Raising his hands, he stepped out from his hiding place.

  Tatum immediately noticed and had his gun pointed at Storm’s face.

  John’s face was twisted with pain, and Storm could smell the blood on him, but that that didn’t stop John’s pale features from changing into horror as he watched Storm slowly walk up the stairs.

  “Storm, what are you doing! Run! Get out of here!”

  John was cut off when that other naked werewolf, or hunter, or whatever he was, gagged him with a twisted up piece of the bedsheets.

  “I’ll do a trade. Myself for him. Tony and I betrayed you. We didn’t tell you what I was, and that cost you a lot.”

  How Tatum had found out about it, Storm wasn’t sure. He’d been positive that Tatum had escaped before it could be revealed what Storm was. Perhaps he’d found out through other sources as he’d hunted Storm down. It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that Storm got John to safety so his pack could pick him up.

  Preferably alive and with his skin still on him.

  Tatum looked between Storm and John, and Storm felt his hope 102

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  rising as the other man seemed to think it over. John continued to fight and struggle against the bonds that held him, so much so that the other hunter was forced to put the entire weight of his body on top of him, just to keep him still.

  “Fuck you,” the other hunter sneered. He grabbed John’s head and held it up, as though he meant to break his neck. “This motherfucker killed my family. I’m going to skin him alive. Actually, yeah, I’ll skin him alive, and then you can have what’s left.”

  Rage clouded Storm’s vision.

  Tatum pulled the gun just a little higher. “I can see those claws of yours about to come out. Put them away.”

  Storm hadn’t even noticed he was doing that. He also had no choice in the matter. He did as he was told, allowing his claws to shift back into normal human fingers.

  “Don’t hurt him. I’ll go with you. You’ll have your revenge.”

  “I’m getting my revenge anyway. This filthy fucking werewolf is part of that pack that turned me into this goddamn freak. And you, well, I could give a shit about your pelt at this point so long as I can still take his.”

  The shot came so unexpectedly and so loud that Storm hadn’t even had a chance to jump out of the way like he’d done before. His body flew backward, like it was dead weight or something. He remained awake and aware, but he couldn’t move after landing on the hard concrete.

  He heard John’s frantic screaming through the gag as both men gathered him up and put him in a truck, the tires squealing as they drove away with Storm’s mate.

  * * * *

  “We should’ve taken him, too. Could’ve gotten the pelt and sold it for more money. Do you have any idea how much a cougar pelt goes for?”

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  Tatum was getting really sick of the guy’s bitching, but he had to put up with it. Tatum still needed someone for backup, and there was no way he was driving this truck and leaving that werewolf back there unattended.

  “We have one. Don’t be greedy. That kills more hunters than you think.” It also didn’t matter anyway because Tatum had Robert’s pelt as well. He got his revenge by killing Storm, and now he had the wolf from that pack he wanted destroyed lying in the back of the van they’d stolen. He had everything he needed.

  For now. He would use Robert for however long he needed the man, and then when the time was right or he found he needed the money, he would wait for him to shift and skin him, too.

  “We’re not even real hunters anymore. We’re one of them.”

  “No, we’re different,” Tatum lied. He hated what he was. Being in this werewolf body and changing into that disgusting skin made him want to be sick. “We have more control than they do. Otherwise we would have killed civilians and eaten them already.”

  Tatum would never tell the man about the time when he’d done just that. Best Robert didn’t know that for now.

  Robert nodded. “Right, but we can’t tell other hunters.”

  “Obviously. They wouldn’t understand. We can just use our new abilities and hunt down as many wolves as we can. We can even get in good with some of their packs now and lead other hunters to them.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Robert said, finally coming around to the plan.

  The werewolf that Robert had tied up with those bedsheets started fighting and squirming again. His yelling and screaming was really starting to get on Tatum’s nerves, and he was glad when Robert started kicking him in the stomach.

  “Shut up, you fucking monster! You did this to yourself!”

  That he did, and Tatum was going to send that pack a message for what they’d done to him, transforming him like this. He was going to have hours of fun with this one.

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  Chapter Ten

  Storm woke up with the world swimming around him, and red colored his vision.

  That wasn’t the only color flashing in front of his eyes.

  “He’s waking up!”

  The sound of a man’s voice, a voice Storm did not recognize, sounded in his ears right before a bright light blinded him in his one good eye. He tried to close his eye and turn away, but there was something holding onto his neck, and some fingers came and forced his lids back open so that the light could stab him again.

  “You’re lucky to be alive. Can you tell me your name?”

  “What?”

  “Your name. Tell me your name. Do you remember it?”

  These questions were all way too clinical for Storm’s liking.

  “No,” he lied, and the light vanished.

  As his vision cleared, his worst nightmare was realized as he saw several men in uniform. Some were police, and others paramedics.

  The lights on top of their vehicles flashed in reds and blues, and Storm’s stomach dropped when he was lifted onto a gurney.

  “We’ll get you out of here. Don’t you worry. Don’t―hey!”

  All of Storm’s strength came pounding back into him. He couldn’t go to a hospital, and he wasn’t about to be questioned by the police either. He had to get out of here. He had to find John!

  “Stop him! Come back here!” the paramedic yelled. The poor guy had probably never seen anyone with a shotgun blast to their face and neck leap out of a gurney and start running for the woods before they could even get him into the ambulance.

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  He half expected the cops to start shooting at him, but they held their fire. They were smart enough to realize that they didn’t want to kill a patient, no matter how deluded that patient likely was.

  They were fast runners as they gave chase, though. Really fast.

  Storm had trouble losing them until he finally made it into the trees.

  He lost speed while trying to kick off his pants, but he got them off and was on all fours in the fastest transformation he’d ever managed. All while keeping enough of a distance to prevent the cops behind him from seeing the show.

  He could still hear their feet clumsily crunching through the twigs and leaves and such. Storm sat down suddenly in a small clearing, and he faced the direction they were going to arrive in.

  The two officers burst through the shrubs and smaller trees, just to skid to a halt at the sight of the cougar, sitting there, staring at them.

  Storm was confident they wouldn’t put together who he was, despite the still missing eye and how bloody his face and chest was.

  The one cop actually tried to stop so quickly that he ended up falling onto his ass.

  Storm licked his lips as he stared at the officers. Their hands had gone to the
ir guns, but they didn’t draw weapons.

  Storm decided this was sufficient enough to keep them from following him, and he got up and calmly walked away.

  He needed to get to the town entrance where the welcome sign was. John’s pack would be coming through from that direction, and Storm was going to need every one of them to help him track the van and find out where they’d taken John before they decided to skin him alive.

  * * * *

  James rode with Mick, his beta, in his piece-of-shit truck. He was pushing the pedal down as far as it would go, and so were the trucks behind him, all filled with angry alphas and one gun-toting human.

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  If a cop tried stopping them for speeding, only James would get stopped because he was the one in the front of the line. One highway cop couldn’t stop that many trucks on his own. It was a good way to make sure the others made it to that little town as quickly as possible to get John and his new mate before the hunters got to them, and so far, no one had stopped them.

  “We’re making it in record time,” Mick remarked, his hand up and on the latch on the roof.

  James nodded. That they were. “I’m still getting a bad feeling about all this,” he said.

  As they approached the town sign that said Welcome to Brockview! Population 1,100, James started to slow down his truck, the others behind him doing the same with their vehicles. A man could get away with going crazy speeds on the highway, but not in an actual town, no matter how few people lived in it.

  He was forced to slam on the brakes with full force when a bloody cougar walked out from behind the upcoming sign and sat right in the middle of the two-lane highway.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Mick yelled when the truck finally came to a screeching halt just in front of the animal. By then it had fishtailed and made brand-new black tire marks on the road.

  James looked behind him to the other trucks, and the same could pretty much be said for all of them.

  Mick shoved open the door and stepped outside, his face completely pissed off as he marched to the cougar. He almost looked like he was going to pick a fight with another driver over some road rage or something, not for sitting in the middle of the road.