Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)

by Marcy Jacks

  He’d be dreaming about his mate tonight, he knew that much.

  Of course it couldn’t be that simple.

  Something with the power of a moving train smashed into them, knocking them off their feet, and Eli slid across the rough pavement with all the grace of a rag doll.

  He heard Chris’s shocked yell, and he tried to get up before a grimy boot pressed down on his chest.

  He looked up, blinking against the sun that was behind the figure attacking him, and he scented wild werewolf all over him, along with at least one other.

  “Well, well, look what we have here. Didn’t I kill you already?”

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 15

  Chapter Two

  “Didn’t I kill you already?”

  The words had Eli sucking back a sharp breath, especially when the man leaned down to squint into Eli’s face, and Eli recognized him as one of the wolves that had attacked his pack all those weeks ago. Two months. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “It is you!” The wolf hooted, slapping his knee. “Christ, I was sure I’d sliced your neck clean off!”

  “That was my brother,” Eli seethed through his teeth.

  The man frowned at that and adjusted the cap on his head. “That’s disappointing. Was hoping it meant we could survive things like that.”

  That’s right. These guys were new wolves, transformed only for the sake of becoming peons in Deacon’s new pack.

  They must still be learning about their new abilities.

  “I can teach you about all the ways you can die,” Eli said.

  Unlike with that human from the bar, Eli’s wolf was making itselfknown. The mind and soul were willing. The body, not so much.

  The were above him seemed to recognize this, and he laughed.

  “You can barely keep your eyes open! What do you think you’ll do to me?”

  “Hey, Lloyd, you should see this guy right here,” his companion

  called.

  Shit! That other wolf. Eli damn forgot about him, and he was looking into Chris’s eyes.

  “Get the fuck off me!” There was the sound of a scuffle, and the distinct found of flesh smacking against flesh as Chris was slapped.

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  “You hold still now and let me see those peepers one more time.”

  Would the sight of those eyes bring out some kind of instinct in these new weres? Eli had always thought that the good-luck thing, and the urge to collect on that luck, was always something that had been taught, passed down through the teachings of older weres and wise women. That other wolf sounded a little too interested, a little

  too hypnotized by the colour of Chris’s eyes for Eli’s liking.

  There was another scuffle as Chris fought, and this time, the sound of flesh coming down on flesh was harder as that other wolf hit Chris, attempting to make him hold still.

  Eli tried to get up. “Don’t you―!”

  That booted foot pushed him back down, and the motion of his body coming up and getting shoved back to the pavement was so fast that Eli had to turn over and retch.

  At least the boot disappeared off his chest.

  “Jesus Christ!” Lloyd cursed, disgust sounding clearly in his voice.

  That was fine by him. Eli got to his hands and knees and puked the rest of the alcohol out of him. His mouth tasted like shit, but he

  felt surprisingly better when he finished. He was still drunk, but now the world wasn’t spinning around him, and the nausea was gone.

  He looked up and watched as that other wolf, that motherfucking asshole, forcefully turned Chris onto his stomach and then pressed his knee down between his shoulder blades as the younger man tried to fight back.

  Of course he could do nothing against them. That was a werewolf, and he was just a human, and not even a big human at that.

  Something about the eye-color thing must have been instinctual, because the guy on top of Chris started scrambling with the belt of his

  pants.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lloyd asked, dismissing Eli

  entirely to go and see what his friend was up to.

  The scrappy-looking friend swiped his hand out before Lloyd

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 17

  could get too close. “Get away from him! He’s mine!”

  Lloyd put his hands up, backing off. “All right, all right. Didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”

  He turned just as Eli punched him in the jaw, having gotten to his feet when the two dipshits were distracted.

  He’d hoped Lloyd would be a good boy and just die or something, but that was the problem with killing other werewolves. A hit like that, that would’ve taken out a human without a problem, would just tickle a were, even young ones like these two.

  Lloyd was thrown off his feet though, and Eli transformed, letting the change come over him, so fast, faster than he’d ever been able to do it. His clothes shredded even.

  He jumped on top of his prey. Lloyd brought his arm up to defend his face against Eli’s jaws, but that was a mistake, and he screamed as Eli bit down and pierced the flesh, finding the hard bone and crunching onto that, too.

  Kill you. I’m gonna kill the both of you.

  Another wolf smacked into him, throwing him off of Lloyd’s

  struggling body.

  Eli still managed to take a long strip of skin away with him, and Lloyd shrieked like a girl.

  That only seemed to spur on the friend all the more into avenging his injured companion, and he and Eli rolled, paws and legs kicking, claws trying to dig under the mass of fur that each had to slice skin, teeth biting.

  Eventually those dagger-sharp teeth did manage to get around one of his front paws.

  Eli yelped and rolled, and somehow he managed to get a lucky shot in on the wolf’s nose.

  His attacker immediately shrieked and backed off, melting back into a man and clutching at his face.

  Eli saw the damage and nearly puked again. The guy’s nose was hanging from his face by a strip of skin.

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  He went over his friend Lloyd, who had gotten to his feet and was clutching at his shredded arm. The two of them were too occupied with their own wounds to bother with shooting Eli the customary angry glare that the losers sent to the victors. Together they ran off.

  Eli didn’t doubt he’d be seeing them around again after they’d healed up. They’d want revenge after what he’d done to them. Their inner wolves wouldn’t allow them to rest until they had it, especially now that that one wolf had gotten a look into Chris’s eyes.

  Eli fell onto his side, the ground almost shooting up and smacking him on his furry shoulder. He released a wolf grunt, wondering why everything was becoming all swirly again when he’d puked up all that alcohol.

  Had that little bastard gotten him, and Eli had been too hyped up

  on adrenaline to notice?

  Shit, wouldn’t that just suck. His brother murdered and he hadn’t even gotten the chance to kill the guy who did it, and now he was going to lie here like roadkill and die, right after finding his mate.

  Swell.

  He let his body shift back into normal, forcing the change and shift into his bones until the rest started to handle itself. If he was

  going to die here, he was going to do it as a man. He didn’t want some animal control shit coming to pick up his wolf corpse and throwing his body into a furnace.

  Tunnel vision came onto him, and he was pleased to see his bleeding paw shed its thin, short hair and turn back into a bleeding human arm, but right before the black completely took over his vision, a pair of sneakered feet, crunching on the rocks and dirt on the pavement, came into his line of sight.

  * * * *

  Chris ran when that guy trying to take his pants off finally jumped off of him and transformed―transformed!―into an enormous wolf,

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 19

  and then started attacking that other huge wolf that was rip
ping the living hell out of their other attacker. Chris didn’t catch sight of that man, the big, handsome, if extremely drunk man who he’d been trying to help get home.

  He couldn’t just run down the street, though. What he saw, people changing into animals, was the most amazing, most frightening thing, he’d ever seen.

  Chris ran to the nearest set of shrubs he could find and got behind

  them.

  It was like watching a dog fight, and Chris had seen YouTube videos on animal sites for preventing abuse, so he knew what it looked like.

  For a few seconds, it was hard for him to tell the difference

  between the two gray wolves rolling around, biting and clawing and snarling at each other, until the one wolf nearly had his nose chopped off and turned back into that fucking prick who had been pawing at Chris.

  He couldn’t help but watch as the guy handled his severely bleeding face and think, Good. Chris had zero sympathy for the guy.

  He and the other man, whom Chris could only assume was also a werewolf, ran off together after having their asses handed to them. Chris was amazed they could walk at all. The blood loss alone should have been enough to put them down.

  Then the only wolf left behind just keeled over. Chris worried that he’d died until he saw the hair slowly shed away, leaving only pink human skin behind, and that man, the one Chris had been trying to help, appeared in the wolf’s place.

  He got out from his hiding place to go and make sure he was okay.

  He definitely wasn’t. The man’s eyes were bleary and barely open, and he groaned in what was definite pain and confusion. There was a long slash mark that bled freely down his face. It began at the right side of his forehead before ending on his left cheek. There were

  20 Marcy Jacks

  also several huge puncture marks along his arm, and they were bleeding even more than that.

  Chris couldn’t leave him here. It may or may not have been intended, but this man had saved Chris from rape at the least and

  death at worst.

  He lifted his T-shirt off of his shoulders and wrapped the thin material around the man’s arms. Hopefully that would stanch the blood flow. There wasn’t much he could do about his face, not until

  Chris took him back to his room.

  Somehow he doubted that there were hospitals for people like this, and he put his hands under the man’s armpits, and using all of his strength, Chris hauled him to his feet.

  “Don’t die on me.”

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 21

  Chapter Three

  Getting that man back to the motel room Chris had rented had been absolute hell. If Chris thought the guy weighed a lot back when he was still carrying himself―barely―on his own two feet, it was nothing compared to how heavy he was when completely unconscious.

  That, and it was the middle of the day, and Chris didn’t want anyone to catch him dragging a naked man around. The locals probably wouldn’t look too kindly on that.

  He had to drag this guy through the bushes and trees, keeping off the roads and any trail that looked like a person might walk on.

  He was sweating clear through his clothes by the time he returned to the motel. He already had his key, and the parking lot wasn’t exactly a ghost town, but there was only one other truck there apart from his own shitty vehicle. He had to risk it.

  Chris wiped his brow free of the building moisture, bent over to grab his heavy load, and dragged him across the lot as quickly as he could.

  Please don’t let anyone see me. Please don’t let anyone see me.

  He had his key out, in the lock, struggled with it for a few too many seconds that nearly gave him a heart attack, and then was finally inside.

  He dropped his two-hundred-pound cargo with a loud bang against the carpet, and Chris was too busy wheezing for breath to do anything about it as he slid down the door. He wasn’t much sure he cared at this point either.

  No. He did care. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken a complete

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  stranger with abnormal powers back to his motel room. The safest thing would have been to have left the guy on the side of the road.

  The trickle of blood pooling on his carpet, and Chris’s bloody neck and shoulder from where the guy’s cut-up face had rested, made him ashamed for even thinking such things.

  First things first if Chris was going to have the energy to nurse this guy back to health.

  He ran into the tiny adjoining bathroom, grabbed one of the stained towels, wet it, and started scrubbing his neck and shoulders, removing the blood. The cold water felt so good on his hot skin that he decided fuck it and turned on the cold water tap from the shower and got under the icy spray, not bothering with taking off his pants and barely taking the time to kick off his shoes.

  He only allowed himself ten seconds in there, if that, letting the water rush over him, cooling off his body, and rinsing out his mouth. At least now he wouldn’t pass out from heat exhaustion.

  He jumped out, dried off as best he could, and then went to see to his patient.

  Christ, this guy had seen better days, and he was going to have a couple of nasty-ass scars after all his wounds healed several months down the line.

  He found the first aid kit, took the blankets and sheets off the bed,

  and heaved the guy onto the mattress.

  Despite his injuries, his breathing and heartbeat were still strong. He thought once more about calling an ambulance but again pushed the thought away.

  He owed this guy his life. Chris doubted he would want to go to a hospital, considering what he was.

  Chris tended to the wounds and stitched up his arm. For the face, he didn’t think the slash there was deep enough to warrant stitches, so he just cleaned it out with some alcohol. Then he applied more bandages and creams and decided that would be that.

  Chris sat back in the chair he’d pulled up, exhausted and hot

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 23

  again. He heaved a sigh at the work it took him more than an hour to

  accomplish, and then he ran his hands through his hair.

  God, he was tired.

  The bed was out of the question, so it was better to just sleep where he was. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter of

  where he slept. His eyelids were as heavy as though there were rocks

  tied to them, and they just kept right on falling shut.

  Before he drifted off, it occurred to him that this man was a real,

  live werewolf. Or maybe he was a shapeshifter. Didn’t werewolves only transform under a full moon? Whatever. He definitely wasn’t normal.

  Dean had said he was going to be in this area, right before Chris lost contact with him forever. Dean always had been into dangerous things since their parents and sister had been killed by those wild animals. Maybe this man might be able to help Chris in finding out what happened to him.

  * * * *

  Eli had no idea how long he’d been out for, but he did know that he had a killer headache. He brought his hand up to his head, hoping to dull the pounding, and then he noticed the wrap around his arm as well as the pulling sensation on his skin beneath.

  What the hell?

  There was also a bandage on his face. He could feel it there and even see bits of the white stuff at the very corners of his vision if he looked down enough.

  Chris, his mate, was sleeping in the most ugly-looking brown chair Eli had ever seen. His neck looked like it was in a painful angle, but his chest was rising and falling in that hypnotic way that could only mean he was just resting.

  This place he was in, Eli looked around, definitely a motel room. And since this highway town was so small, there was only one motel

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  this could possibly be.

  Chris had brought him here and tended to his wounds.

  Still, that pulling feeling was getting on his nerves. Eli unwrapped the bandage from around his arms and found the culpri
t. Stitches.

  Well, fuck. The good news? He’d been passed out when they were being administered, otherwise he would have flipped out at the sight of the needle.

  The bad news? He now had stitches he needed to try and pull out.

  He got to working on them. He was naked on top of the bed. There were no blankets, or even sheets covering him, which, considering the heat, had probably been a good thing. Had Chris been looking at him while he’d been out of it?

  Eli looked over at the sleeping man, and then down at the stitches he was doing his best to tear apart. Maybe he hadn’t been looking. This work looked a little too well done for Chris to have been

  distracted by anything else.

  He picked at the thread with his fingernails and then with his teeth. They weren’t the kind of stitches that a normal doctor or nurse would apply. This looked like the kind of thread someone would use if they were sewing a hole in a pair of jeans. Eli knew the difference because the pack’s wise woman, Old Maggie, was always on hand with some good quality stitching. Both for the flesh and for any ripped up clothes that inevitably occurred in a pack of werewolves.

  Finally he got the stitches out. His wound had already closed, leaving a pink line with those tiny pinprick holes. Even that sort of healing was a little bit too fast. Maybe he should be a little more grateful for the stitching.

  “What are you doing?”

  Eli looked up. Chris’s eyes had come open, and his body was very much alert and awake now as he looked at Eli and the handiwork he’d

  just done, strewn about the bed.

  Eli looked down at the bandages and bits of thread on the mattress

  then back at Chris. Eli was naked. Chris was only wearing a pair of

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  jeans. Never in all his life had Eli ever felt the urge to have sex with another man, but this was his mate, and the instinct to claim, mate,