by Owner
Whereas before he would have thought it was cold in here, now that his body was coming back to a regular temperature, he was comfortable.
The storm was still pretty bad outside, and he didn’t dare crack open the window, but it wasn’t nearly the white out it had been before. Terry could see that there were at least three men out there, shotguns in hand, bundled up against the cold with their orange vests and leather mitts with fur trim, hats, boots, the whole deal.
He was partly shocked that he could remember what those items were even called. There had been more than one occasion when he
ran and hunted by himself that no human thought passed through his head at all. Everything had been instinct. All Terry had wanted to do was eat and survive. Now, it was like the more human aspect to his brain was starting to work again, and all because Morgan had spoken to him and bathed him.
Maybe a hot bath, calm conversation, and good sex were some of the key ingredients that made up a human. Either way, his eyes narrowed at the sight of them.
They looked exactly like the hunters Terry had been running from, but all hunters looked the same, even the ones who hunted regular animals as opposed to werewolves and vampires.
They whispered amongst each other, and Terry couldn’t make out what they were saying, but then the back door opened and that other werewolf stepped outside and called to them.
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This time, Terry could hear him. That probably had more to do with the volume the other man spoke with, though. “You folks all right?”
The hunters looked amongst each other. “Fine,” said the man in the middle, apparently taking the lead. “Just out on a hunting trip.”
The other werewolf, the friend of Morgan’s, must have found something to wear in one of the rooms, or maybe it was just a spare snowsuit and boots. Either way, he kept on talking with those men as though it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Bad weather for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” he asked.
“We’re good,” said the leader, nodding to him. “Sorry to have bothered you, sir. Didn’t know anyone was home.”
“That’s all right. We just got here today. You all be careful now out in this weather. It’s dangerous, and you don’t want to be getting lost.”
The hunters nodded, turned, and walked away.
The other werewolf seemed to watch them from the porch for a long while, even after the hunters vanished into the whiteout, before he turned to come back into the house.
From his place upstairs, Terry heard the murmuring voices of Morgan and his other werewolf friend.
“Think they bought it?”
“Have to assume so, but I got a weird vibe from one of those men right before they turned to leave.”
“Shit,” Morgan said.
“I know. We might have to make a break for it and risk the storm sooner than we thought.”
Terry hoped that they would. He didn’t want to be caught by any other alpha werewolves, or hunters, ever again.
* * * *
“What do you think, Tony?” Chance asked. He was the youngest
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in their group, and the easiest to scare, as noted by the way he gripped his shotgun. His leather mitts dangled by long strings of yarn from the sleeves of his winter coat, like he was some sort of four-year-old.
Tony scratched his chin. “Hard to say. Didn’t see a car or truck for that one guy to get here in, but that could’ve been in the garage and all this snowfall could’ve covered the tracks. I think we should still
tell Tatum about it. I think he was right. People around here are strange.”
“Yeah, and did you see that guy’s eyes? They were all blank and shit. Creeps me out.”
“You think they’re werewolves?” Storm asked.
Tony had once before asked Storm what his real name was since no one outside of Hollywood would ever give their only son a name like that. Storm had growled at him, the one eye that was not covered with a black pirate-looking eye patch glaring, and Tony had dropped it completely.
“Might be, but I never heard about any werewolves living in this area, only that the wild ones were sometimes seen here, but yeah, we should go and let Tatum know the place is occupied. That guy said there were others in that house, and we didn’t get a look at them.”
“And he seemed a little too calm considering we were on his property with these in our hands,” Chance said, holding out the shotgun he held, as though Tony could’ve missed it.
Kid was going to end up shooting himself before this mission was over, he just knew it.
“Right. Let’s move on out. I’m freezing my dick off, here,” Tony said, looking over at Storm when the words left his mouth. He had a good idea of how he wanted to warm up that part of his anatomy. He hoped the other man had caught onto the hint and would be willing tonight. He hated having to persuade him.
“Yeah, I’m freezing my dick off, too,” Chance said, hurrying ahead of them.
Tony was wrong. The kid wasn’t going to accidentally shoot
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himself. Tony was going to shoot him on purpose before this was all
over.
* * * *
Terry was on edge by the time Morgan came back into the room. He jumped up from where he’d been sitting on the bed, and even that took a lot of effort considering how he would’ve preferred to be pacing around the room.
That was more of the wild animal in him, and he was trying to suppress that part of himself now. So instead, he looked at Morgan and demanded to know what the plan was.
Morgan looked out the window. The storm had set in once more, and it was easy to see that it would only take another couple of minutes before it was a complete white out once more.
That made Terry all the more jumpy. He felt like he was being caged, and the urge to run out of this cabin and out into the open space was all consuming.
The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that it would kill him if he went.
“We need to stay here, at least until morning. It’s starting to get dark out, and the storm’s picking up. I doubt it will last through the night, so the second it’s safe to do so, we’ll be going.”
Now that Terry was up, and actually, he had started to pace around without realizing it, he couldn’t sit back down or stop his body from shaking.
“They were hunters. They were hunters, and they want to strap us down to tables and do things to us, and we need to get out of here right now.”
“Shh, baby, shh,” Morgan said, stepping forward to grab onto his shoulders and pull Terry against his chest. “You’re getting yourself worked up. I know they’re likely a threat, and it sucks, but there’s nothing that can be done for it now. We just have to stay here for the
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night, keep ourselves quiet, and the first thing we’ll do in the morning is get out of here.”
“They want to skin us. They want to hurt us,” Terry said, unable to stop talking, so he just squeezed Morgan even tighter, as though protecting the alpha from all the things the hunters would do to him when they caught them, as well as taking in the comfort.
“I know, but they’re not going to. I won’t let them.”
“That’s what the last alpha said,” Terry said, his body shaking all over. “And he’s gone.”
“The last…?” Morgan said, his mouth dropping. “Terry, did you come from Phillip’s pack?”
There were flashes passing through his mind now, images that he couldn’t stop but couldn’t make sense of either.
First, everything was fine. The sun was shining and the pups were playing. Terry was actually playing around with one of the other omegas, but in the haze, he couldn’t remember exactly who it had been, or what the guy’s name was. It didn’t matter. They had been laughing and joking as they chopped up firewood and collected other small sticks to bring back to the pack. Then the scene swirled, and that same imag
e turned bloody red. The noise in the background changed from birds twittering in their nests to screams. Screams that were close and far away.
Terry could recall running through the trees, covered in blood, and shouts behind him. He could see the men, one on each side, always in pairs as they did it, skinning wolves alive. It made Terry cry and cover his eyes, but the images were still there as those humans took turns grabbing his friends by their hind legs, slicing into the skin, and…
“Terry? Terry! Look at me, babe. Come on out of it.”
Morgan was snapping his fingers in front of Terry’s face, and it worked to pull Terry out of the nightmare he’d just been in. Kind of.
Suddenly, he couldn’t recall where he was or how he’d gotten there, and he realized he was in the arms of a naked someone, and he
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flew across the bed.
“Shit, Terry.”
The voice was calm, despite how out of control Terry felt. He had a case of the jitters all over his body, and again, all he could think about was escape.
“Morgan? You okay?”
There was someone else here, too. That was right, another wolf. That other male werewolf was outside the door was part of this group. Maybe Terry could go to him, make him see reason, and then the three of them could get out of here before they were all skinned alive like the others.
The fear and terror Terry felt vanished. Like the channel had been changed inside his mind, there were no longer any frightening images for him to look at. Only Morgan’s calm and patient face. He was beautiful, Terry realized. He’d known it from the second he first laid eyes on the man, but only now did he allow himself to really think it.
He wished his mind would stop playing tricks on him and that his memories would straighten out. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
“Terry, it’s okay. I’m the only one in this room with you. I swear I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Morgan?” the voice behind the door called again.
“I’m okay, Nick. We’re doing just fine.”
Nick. So that was the name of the other werewolf Terry had heard about.
“You don’t know what they did…” Terry said, reaching up to scratch the itch on his face, but his fingers came away wet. He used the back of his hands next to wipe away the tears and clear the itching the trailing moisture had caused.
Morgan bit his bottom lip, staring down at Terry like he felt sorry for him. Terry didn’t like that at all, but then he supposed the fact that he was balancing on the edge of a blade as to whether he would suddenly go wild or not would bring out that sort of reaction.
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“I’m almost sixty years old, Terry, and I’ve been lucky enough to have never seen the things you saw. I’m sorry that happened to you, and I’m sorry the hunters…did those things to your friends. But Nick and I are here now. We’re prepared for attack. They can’t sneak up on us if we’re expecting them. One of us will stand guard all night, and the second we’re able, we’ll head back to my pack.”
“Your pack?” Terry asked.
Morgan shook his head, smiling, as though realizing his blunder. “Well, the pack isn’t mine. I’m not the leading alpha, but I live there. You’re a wandering omega now, and my mate, so I’ll claim you for DeWitt’s pack. You’re perfectly safe with me and Nick, and you’ll be better protected when I take you home.”
“They attacked my pack…” Terry said.
He almost slipped back into that strange world where he was awake but still had nightmares about what he saw, but Morgan gripped him by the shoulders, not allowing him to go into that place.
“I know. Mine has been attacked before, too. By wild wolves, hunters, all of it. Those things happen, and we are prepared for them. There’s so many new werewolves back at the pack that we’re running out of space to put them all in. We had to start building new houses.”
“Really?” Terry asked.
Morgan nodded. “Yeah. We recently got a benefactor who’s been funding a lot of the repairs.”
There was a twitch in Morgan’s mouth when he said the word benefactor, and Terry got the idea that there was something about this mysterious person that Morgan didn’t want him to know.
He let it go for now. His human mind was back, and mostly in control. He didn’t want to give that up again by flipping out.
“Anyway, Nick said that he found a bag of rice in one of the downstairs cupboards. So with the soup over there that you still have, we can make a good supper if you wanted to come downstairs.”
Terry thought about it for a minute, and he didn’t need to think for long. “Okay.”
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Morgan smiled at him, reached out, and took his hand, leading
him toward the door.
Terry planted his feet and stopped before Morgan could touch the
handle.
Morgan looked back at him, worry in his eyes. “What is it?”
Terry looked down at himself, as though only just noticing it, which was strange, considering he’d spent the last couple of months completely naked.
“I…Do you think there’s any clothes around here for me to wear?”
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Chapter Seven
The fact that he wanted to wear clothing was a good sign. It meant that the more animal side to him was starting to merge once again with his human side.
It kind of made Morgan yearn for some clothes as well. The only thing for clothing that he and Nick had found when those hunters came on the property was the winter jacket, snow pants, and boots. They hadn’t really bothered to search for anything else. Now, Morgan went through the drawers with Terry.
They did find some clothing in the mostly empty drawers. The problem was that, whoever owned this cabin was much wider than either Morgan or Terry.
Morgan had suspected as much when Nick put on the winter jacket, but that could be excused because people often wore layers and needed to buy jackets that were bigger than what they’d usually
wear.
The jeans Terry pulled from the cheap IKEA-looking dresser looked like they were tailored to fit a man three times his size. Morgan couldn’t help but laugh when Terry compared the faded jeans to his own smaller hips by putting them side to side.
“You look like you could get lost in those,” Morgan said.
The fact that Terry didn’t smile back or even acknowledge that Morgan was joking around with him suggested that maybe the wolf still had some control after all. Terry just reached back into the drawer and pulled out a long, heavy-looking belt.
“This will make it fit,” he said with a smile.
Morgan smiled back and went to have a look in the drawer for
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himself. There was another pair of jeans in there that was way too big, even for Morgan’s body, and a maroon T-shirt with a neck hole so stretched he suspected it might go right over his shoulders, and the whole thing would fall down his body and crumple at his feet.
“There another belt in there?” he asked.
He never felt so ridiculous coming downstairs, wearing a pair of jeans so huge. He was sure he looked like one of those ridiculous-looking kids from the TV, wearing pants or shorts so big that they slid down the ass. He didn’t understand that fad at all.
He wouldn’t mind seeing it on Terry, however.
Either way, the belts kept them decent.
Nick sensed there was something off in Morgan’s mood, but because he couldn’t see the jeans, he could only cock his head and return to what he was doing.
“I got the water boiling and in a couple of minutes the rice will be ready to go in. I’ll just need you to watch it for me.”
Morgan decided that now was not the time to poke fun at Nick for his hatred of cooking. Sometimes he couldn’t tell whether Nick just couldn’t do it because of his blindness or because of a real lack of
talent in a kitchen. He knew Adam, Nick’s mate, made him take turns
with him, but that was about it.
Maybe the guy only hated cooking when his mate wasn’t around to enjoy it with him.
“Sure thing.”
Because they now had the rice, on top of the cereal that they’d found earlier for snacking, Morgan made sure that Terry ate what was left of his soup after he’d heated it up in the microwave. The first floor of the cabin was really starting to warm up thanks to the stove, and the goose bumps on Nick’s arms soon vanished.
The rice wasn’t exactly instant, so they had to wait twenty minutes before it was ready. Morgan knew how to cook, but rice wasn’t his thing either. It was ready, but the texture was a little too soggy to have been done properly.
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Still, he was starving, and it was the best damn rice he’d had in his
life.
Terry certainly made no complaints as he scarfed down what was on his plate. Morgan quickly scooped more for him to eat, occasionally reminding him to slow down, but otherwise, they had a good meal.
It had gone dark outside, but because of their fear of using too much power and somehow being found out by the owner, they searched out some candles and lit them for the night. Terry actually found a children’s board game for them to play with.
Something to do with catching mice in some strange elaborate trap with all sorts of pieces and parts. Morgan had no clue how a child was supposed to put the stupid thing together. The strange thing was how the three of them seemed to have the most fun just trying to figure out how to assemble it.
They tired themselves out after enough attempts and jokes at themselves, but it had been definitely more than an hour before they gave up and just sat down to talk.
Morgan and Nick kept the conversations light and on safe topics, both fully aware that the omega currently sitting in Morgan’s lap was still fighting to keep control of his inner wolf.
