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  Morgan shielded the smaller man from the wind and snow as best as he could, but there was only so much protection he could offer with

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  his body. The snow still fell onto his pale skin and into that dirty blond hair, melting, becoming wet, and making the poor kid freeze even more than he needed to.

  Morgan didn’t think of the kid’s hair as being dirty blond because that was the shade of it, but because, really, there was mud and dirt in that blond hair. Morgan had no doubt in his mind that if he washed it, those strands would glow like yellow gold in the sun.

  The sun was a faraway dream in this reality they were in, and just when Morgan was about to give up and suggest they build a den for the night, Nick made a sound of relief and suddenly stopped.

  “I’ve got the scent again!” he yelled over his shoulder and over the wind.

  Thank God. “Great! Where do we go?”

  Morgan was so desperate for some heat, hot water, and shelter from all this fucking wind that he no longer cared if that house, cabin, shed, whatever it was, was occupied.

  There were some people who came up here for the summer to get away from the rest of civilization, fish, or even―Morgan shuddered―hunt. But that could still be someone’s year-round home.

  “This way!” Nick said, and Morgan had to quickly keep up before he lost his friend in the storm.

  Nick vanished in the haze in front of him a few times, and in his

  desperation, Morgan nearly tripped and fell over snow-covered roots and sticks frozen into the ground. The worst came when he stubbed his toe against a wooden stair.

  He opened his mouth and cursed as loud as he could, and not even the numbness that was seeping into his feet was enough to save him from the pain.

  “God fucking damn it! Shit!” He yelled that, and several other pretty bad things he would rather not repeat.

  Nick’s hand reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him up the snow-covered stairs, even as he still cursed. It was getting harder to walk, and there was almost four feet of snow covering

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  everything.

  Then it clicked in Morgan’s mind what had happened. He’d stubbed his toe on a stair, and Nick had pulled him up those stairs. Reaching a hand out, he felt the slightly curved varnished wood of the rail. They had made it to the cabin. Thank you, Jesus.

  Both Nick and Morgan felt along the walls, and Nick kept one hand back on Morgan to keep them from losing each other. Then, finally, Nick called back to him,

  “Found the door!”

  The next thing Morgan heard through the loud whistling and wailing of the wind was a distinct crack as Nick forced the door open.

  The man all but vanished from Morgan’s sight as he fell within the house. Morgan quickly followed.

  He had to blink a couple of times to adjust his vision. It was surreal, finally being able to see after spending all that time in a whiteout, and everything inside the cabin looked so comfortable and normal.

  Nick forced the door shut behind him before anymore snow or cold air could get in. Morgan noted the strip of wood that had come off of the doorway when Nick had smashed it open. He quickly ran to the nearest couch, put his mate on top of it, then grabbed a chair from the joining kitchen, and went back to Nick.

  “Here, I got something to keep it shut,” he said, and Nick moved just enough so that Morgan could position the chair under the door handle, like he’d seen done in the movies. That should keep it shut.

  It did, and it held. There was only a little bit of snow on the hardwood floor, and some cold air that leaked through the crack in the door, but that could be covered with a towel or something. This would make sufficient shelter.

  Nick leaned against the door, as though hesitant to step away from it lest it blow open on them, but he did lift his nose in the air, sniffing at least three times before he was satisfied.

  “I smell people, but the scent is old. They haven’t been here in a

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  while.”

  “I don’t think they’re coming in this storm.”

  Morgan looked out the window and was actually a little scared by the fact that he couldn’t see any of the scenery he knew was there beyond all the white. “Christ, Nick, you should see it.”

  “I have a good enough idea.”

  Nick finally pushed away from the wall. “Hopefully these people have a phone. I want to call back home and make sure Adam’s okay.”

  Despite the fact that Adam wasn’t one of the alphas sent out on a search mission, Morgan understood the other man’s need to worry. Just thinking about someone else’s mate reminded him of his own, and he carefully crept over to the couch and peered over the back, looking down at where his mate slept.

  The cottage wasn’t exactly warm, likely because, with the lack of people, there was no need to heat it, but it was a tropical paradise in here, a sauna, by comparison to what was going on outside, and already the guy’s color was showing signs of improvement. He was the most beautiful creature Morgan had ever laid eyes on.

  There were plenty of places on him that were suddenly starting to swell and turn red, however.

  Frostbite. Morgan didn’t know the first thing about treating

  frostbite.

  He picked the smaller man up off the couch, doing his best not to stare down at the man and enjoy the view while he was unconscious. It was easy to keep the man’s scent from arousing him, considering he smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in weeks.

  That was even weirder. The arousing, earthy scent of his mate was conflicting with the more rancid scent of unwashed body.

  Hopefully Morgan would be able to rectify that in a minute. He clicked on a lamp and was uplifted when it actually turned on. Maybe there was some hot water to be had here as well.

  He passed by a bedroom, overhearing a few words of Nick’s

  conversation with Adam on the phone as he did.

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  “Fine…here until the storm passes…”

  He didn’t catch anymore because he was moving like a man on a

  mission to the door at the end of the hall.

  Ninety percent of the time, a man could count on the door at the end of the hall being the bathroom.

  It was, but there was only a toilet and a sink inside. No tub.

  There was a second bathroom in here, and likely it was up the stairs.

  Quickly as he could without jarring his cargo too much, Morgan backtracked to the front of the cabin. There was a small staircase

  leading up just behind the TV. Even a cottage away from all the hustle and bustle of life had to have a flat screen TV available, it

  seemed.

  The staircase was so small that Morgan could barely fit up them without adjusting the man in his arms, but he made it without scraping anything, and after passing by another two bedrooms, he finally found the bathroom.

  It was spacious, at least four times the size of that small piece of

  shit downstairs, and had a claw-footed soaker tub.

  He reserved judgement until he got down on his knees, turned the metal dial with the red ring on it, stuck his hand under the water and…

  Steam rose up, and he smiled before dropping the plug into the tub to clog the hole. Next he kicked shut the door.

  As the steam filled the air, the kid in Morgan’s arms began to shiver again, only to a more violent extent. Maybe now that some hot air was in the room, his body was starting to react to it? Was this part of him thawing out?

  Either way, Morgan quickly adjusted the water so that it wouldn’t be scalding, and then set his mate down inside the water. It took several minutes before he stopped shivering and before the water reached his neck. The whole time, Morgan kept his hands on the other man’s shoulders, keeping him from sinking under.

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  When he was satisfied that he wouldn’t slip beneath the wate
r and drown, Morgan got up and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet, and those drawers and cupboards under the sink, pulling out towels and creams, anything he could find, really. There wasn’t even any shampoo in this bathroom, though there was a boxed bar of Irish

  soap.

  Guess these people didn’t leave a while lot of supplies lying

  around.

  That likely meant there wouldn’t be any food in this place either.

  Morgan thought about that and then about the flat screen downstairs, and he shook his head. Fucking people and their priorities.

  He cleaned off his mate as best he could, soaping down his chest and arms, and blushing when he made it to his legs.

  When his hand ghosted over the other man’s dick by mistake, causing it to twitch and harden, and in return causing Morgan’s cock to stand up and throb, well, he yanked his hand out of the water.

  Jesus fucking…what the hell was the matter with him? He was mated to this guy, yes, but they hadn’t even officially met yet. He didn’t even know the boy’s name.

  Morgan looked down at him, and then felt sick to his stomach. He also didn’t know if this young man was of age.

  Please God, let him be over twenty. Please, please, God.

  Morgan shook himself and then got back to work, ignoring his body and doing his best to ignore the body he was tending to. Kind of difficult when he was soaping the other man up, but it also allowed Morgan to really examine him. When his hands traveled across that chest, those arms and legs, he was able to really tell that the guy wasn’t just small, he was gaunt. This guy had been going hungry. For a while.

  Unless there was some non-perishable stuff downstairs, he might have to wait a little longer. There was no way Morgan could catch anything for them to eat out in this. What kind of stupid creatures

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  would even be roaming around in a storm like…?

  Morgan stopped before he could finish that thought.

  Oh. Right.

  He focused instead of cleaning off his mate. He rinsed out the shoulder-length hair with a cup he’d found beside the sink until most of the mud and dirt came loose. He rinsed the hair a few more times

  until satisfied, and then gently scrubbed the dirt off that beautiful face.

  Morgan wasn’t exactly old by the standard of how werewolves aged, but he was a little beyond his quarter life span. He’d never taken a mate before, and after a while, he suspected that he never would.

  He wasn’t much interested in females, but he wasn’t exactly attracted to males either. At least, any males other than the sleeping handsome in the tub right now. It was just something that had never appealed to him, and the only times when he ever bothered with sex was to relieve a building tension or stress.

  Even James, who was older than Morgan was and had only found his mate the previous spring, had still taken his fair share of lovers before that event had occurred.

  To suddenly, and completely out of the blue, find his mate, in the condition he’d found him in, was baffling.

  Morgan figured he’d better empty the tub, and then maybe fill it up one more time just to rinse away all the filth and grime that had come off the young man and was now floating around in the water.

  He did just that, pulling the plug and listening to the gurgle of the water as it drained. The sound wasn’t exactly pleasant, but while Morgan had only his thoughts, and the sight of his beautiful mate in front of him for company, it was strangely soothing.

  The water was almost entirely drained by now, leaving behind a dark trail of dirt on the bottom of the tub, and Morgan was just getting ready to start filling it back up again when the young man he held shivered once more.

  That put Morgan on high alert, and he stared hard at the young

  man’s face, searching for any signs of distress.

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  Then, with a slight groan and a twitch in his body, Morgan’s

  mystery mate opened his eyes and looked right at him.

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  Chapter Three

  He had green eyes with flecks of light brown closer to the irises. It reminded Morgan of earth colors. He liked it. He would probably like everything about this man.

  It took him a couple of seconds to note how they were still staring at each other, neither speaking, and how cloudy those earth-colored

  eyes were.

  Morgan reached out his hand to push some of that golden hair out of his eyes when the other man flinched away.

  Morgan pulled his hand back quickly. Right. The poor kid was freezing and naked in a bathtub with a complete stranger kneeling next to him. That was definitely the opening to a horror story somewhere.

  Morgan cleared his throat. “My name is Morgan Dane. A friend and I found you just along the river. Your body was half in that freezing water. We brought you here to warm up.”

  The kid still didn’t say anything. He just looked at Morgan with those glazed eyes, as though he were hypnotized by something.

  “Can you understand me?” Morgan asked. He didn’t ask it slowly, since he didn’t think there was anything mentally wrong with the guy, but he didn’t exactly speak at the normal speed he otherwise would have used. “Did you come from Phillip’s pack?”

  Again, he just stared and blinked. Yeah, he was definitely a wild wolf. The only question was, how wild was he?

  “Can you speak?” Morgan asked.

  The boy swallowed then wet his lips. “I…” His voice came out cracked and raspy, and he had to try again. “No one’s spoken to

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  me…in a long time,” he finally said.

  This was good. It meant that he wasn’t so far gone to the wild side that he couldn’t be brought back to the land of almost civilization along with the rest of the werewolves who lived on DeWitt’s pack.

  “Did you understand everything I just told you?” Morgan asked.

  Another swallow that looked pained, and then a nod.

  “What were you doing in the water?” Morgan had to ask.

  “Fish,” the boy replied simply.

  Morgan looked back down at that sunken stomach. Oh. Right.

  “I’ll make sure you get something to eat, but right now I’m going to fill the tub back up with water.”

  The kid panicked and tried to get out of the tub, but there were still traces of soap from when Morgan had washed him, and he did little else but slip and slide around awkwardly.

  “Warm water. Warm water,” Morgan assured him, keeping one hand on the young man’s chest, holding him down, while he turned the water taps back on with the other.

  “No more!” the kid yelled.

  Morgan would have liked nothing better than to give in to the shout that was half-demanding and half-pleading, but he couldn’t. The were’s temperature was still low, he was back to shivering and shaking, and he was still dirty.

  He needed to warm up and get clean.

  “Not the water! I hate it!”

  “You’ll be okay. I won’t let it hurt you,” Morgan said.

  The kid thrashed harder when the water poured from the spout, but then, thankfully, he started to relax when it touched down on his feet, and he realized that the water was indeed warm on his toes and

  legs.

  He relaxed, his entire body practically melting as the water filled the tub. His eyes began to sink shut again. He looked like he was being tucked in with a warm blanket in a soft bed, not like he was sitting in a stranger’s bathtub.

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  Morgan started cleaning him again, showing those half-open eyes the soap and washcloth and, this time, asking permission to use them.

  He nodded and let Morgan do pretty much whatever he wanted with him.

  It looked like he was about to fall asleep, and Morgan really wanted a name to put with the face, so before he could drift off, he had to ask him.

  “What’s your name?”

 
Morgan shook his shoulder gently when he didn’t answer.

  The kid blinked owlishly at him. “Hmm?”

  “Your name? Tell me your name?” Maybe that would help him to figure out where he came from. He was going to have to ask Nick if he recognized the guy’s scent.

  The kid thought about it for so long it made Morgan’s heart bleed a little for him, but then he finally came up with an answer. “Terry.”

  “Okay, good, that’s very nice,” Morgan said, meaning it. He liked the name Terry. It kind of suited him. “Do you have a surname? What’s your last name?”

  Terry thought about it again, this time for much longer than he had when asked for his first name.

  Finally, he released a breath. “Don’t know.”

  Now Morgan’s heart really did bleed for him.

  “How old are you? Can you tell me that?”

  Again with the thinking, then Terry lifted both of his hands out of the water. He held up a few fingers on one hand and a couple on the other, which, unless Terry just lost the ability to speak or something, meant absolutely nothing to Morgan.

  “We’ll work on that one later.”

  “Someone’s outside,” Terry said, his eyes suddenly going wide. His hands gripped the tub, as though he was going to try and get out. His head turning this way and that as he searched for the exit. “They’re coming!”

  “Relax! Relax!” Morgan said, grabbing him by the shoulders, but

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  it seemed to only freak out the younger man all the more. Maybe it was the way Morgan was trying to get him to sit back down in the tub. He probably thought that Morgan was trying to drown him.

  “No!”

  He was only making this worse, but he couldn’t let Terry jump out of the tub and run out of the house and back into that storm, soaking wet as he was. He would die.