Ryker knew better than that. Her lack of a mate and desire for children showed through in her affection for all pups. Because of that, she was also more or less a teacher and child-minder. He wasn’t particularly close to her, not any more or less than any other wolf, but now he found that he was incredibly glad to see her in particular.
A woman like Merissa never would have fallen for the lies that were used to overthrow him. He hadn’t seen her at the ambush.
Then again, he supposed she could have simply been watching the children like she always did, but he wouldn’t have been greeted so warmly if she hated him.
“I can’t stay away,” Ryker said truthfully. “What happened was wrong. The pack is mine. All of you should have known from the start that I would never stand for this—I won’t back down.”
Merissa sighed and crossed her arms again, leaning once more against the building behind her. He wished she would show her eyes, so that he could know what she was thinking. “I didn’t have any part in that mess. Less of us had a part in all that than you think.”
“Am I supposed to think that Zeke brainwashed all of you?” Ryker snarled. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with his anger. Memories of what happened filled him with fury and shame, but he refused to confront them. The past was in the past. He needed to focus on the here and now.
And now it was Merissa who looked ashamed, as well. “I didn’t say that,” she mumbled. “I mean, you know how packs are, Ryker. Especially packs like ours. No elders. Even I’m not an elder yet, you know?”
He grunted a little at that. “Getting close.”
“And maybe I’ll be the first elder,” she fired back. “But you know how our pack is. Full of young wolves who ride motorcycles. We’re all dangerous. We all want to be on top. Hell, that’s why you made the challenge and made it out on top. It’s just that Jeriko manipulated a lot of us into thinking this was the best way, that he was the best for our future now.”
Ryker snarled. Jeriko. That bastard who overthrew him. Jeriko was a jerk, albeit a handsome jerk, with white-blonde hair and emerald eyes that were reflected in the paleness of his wolf form. It wasn’t the first time he’d faced a challenge from other males. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that Jeriko organized what was essentially a coup, gathering others of the pack into his own small sect. Against Jeriko alone, he wouldn’t have had a problem. Against fifteen wolves? He hadn’t stood a chance.
“And now what do those traitors think?” Ryker growled. He shook his head and squared his jaw. “Those bastards. What do they think now?”
Merissa looked guarded. “Why should I tell you any of that? What if I know of...plans? I would put myself at risk by telling you anything.”
“Does loyalty mean nothing to you?”
And now Merissa snarled, baring her sharp teeth. “I should be loyal to my pack above all else.”
“But the pack is wrong!” Ryker roared, his frustration getting the better of him.
“I know that!” Merissa jabbed her finger at his chest. “But that isn’t any of your concern now! Why are you doing this? Why care? Seattle doesn’t belong to you now. It belongs to Jeriko! We betrayed you and stabbed you in the back after all you did to make us stronger, after all you did to make sure we lived the best life we could. Hell, we didn’t even have a home before you found that old factory building! But we betrayed you. Cut your losses. Go away. Run. Before anything happens.”
But Ryker stood his ground. He just shook his head, his spine tense with frustration and anger. Yet, at the same time, he sensed a breaking point being reached. Merissa was shaking, and not just from her own anger.
“I can’t run,” he said, voice ragged.
“You have to!” Merissa snapped, shaking harder.
What would Bo do? Dammit. He has more tact than I do.
Perhaps tact wasn’t the right thing for this. Hell, that was for omegas, who were always going to be smarter. Merissa was a beta. She needed directness.
Ryker repeated, “I can’t run. It’s impossible. I have a mate here.”
Instantly, her shaking paused and she stood completely and utterly still. It was as though she’d become a statue. “A mate?” she repeated, almost wonderingly. There was jealousy in her voice as well. “But the overthrow only happened just a few days ago.”
Ryker felt a wry grin twist on his lips. “Would you believe that he was one of the paramedics who came to get me when I crashed my bike because of you assholes?”
Though he still couldn’t see her eyes, Ryker knew that Merissa winced. Oh, yes, he had known all along what the true reason was that he wrecked. The pack chased him away from the building where they had made their home, but they hadn’t caused him to crash because of that. No, that came before, when they screwed with the engine. The engine and maybe some other parts—he wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was that he could tell something was wrong almost immediately. The engine hitched and the handling was all wrong, but he thought that he might simply be too hurt and shaken up to be riding perfectly. Operator error, in a way.
Until the bike started shaking, until it was bucking, and then gave out on him entirely.
“You’re kidding.” Merissa barked out a short, bitter laugh. “Maybe I should go jump off a roof and some cute paramedic will come sweep me off my feet. Damn. I thought you seemed different, too.”
“Do I? Does change really happen so fast?”
“Do you have to ask?”
No, he supposed he didn’t. Sighing, he ran one hand through his hair and looked up at the clouded sky. “The thing is, the kid has a life here. I haven’t told him anything. I don’t want to tell him anything. But I can’t just ask him to uproot himself for me and honestly, I never even considered that.”
“And a man like you wouldn’t go into hiding anyway.”
“Right,” Ryker agreed darkly, narrowing his eyes. “But if I stay here, I bring danger to my mate. That means I need to finish this business.”
“But, they’ll kill you. Just like they...” Merissa trailed away, shaking again.
Reaching out, Ryker knocked the hood back away from her face and found her eyes full of tears. Wetness streaked her cheeks like rain against a windowpane. “Who have they killed?” he whispered.
For a moment, he wondered if the gesture was enough to break through to her, if she would trust him now.
And then a slender brown wolf was racing away through the alley, evading him with ease. With a flick of her tail, she disappeared around a corner.
Growling, Ryker dropped down to his paws and gave chase. For a few moments, he caught a glimpse of her again and thought he might have a chance at catching up, but when he reached the next turn, he saw Merissa slip her smaller body through a gap at the bottom of a chain link fence and knew he wouldn’t be able to follow.
Dammit. All of this had been pointless. He hadn’t learned a single damn thing, except to have it reiterated to him in no uncertain terms that this situation was very, very wrong.
And he had far too much time left to wander now, but that was his own fault. Still, if he could run into one or two others...
He caught glimpses of other wolves in the shadows on his long walk, but they were either unfamiliar to him or traitors to which he had no desire to speak. No doubt they would report his presence to Jeriko.
He only hoped that the mutinous traitor wouldn’t catch wind of Merissa’s talk with him. He rather liked the woman and it was nice to know that all were not blind to their new leader’s evil.
Eventually, hunger shoved him back to the main streets and he was about to buy something from a gas station when he realized once again that he had no money to his name now. Swearing again, he bypassed the food and pretended that a trip to the restroom was all he wanted.
He was leaving when a voice nearby suddenly let out a startled yelp.
He recognized the sound.
He turned and saw that bastard, the one who gave him and Bo a hard time when they were leaving
the hospital. What had his name been?
“Clancy, was it?” Ryker growled.
The other man’s eyes widened, the whites around the irises huge. “Fuck, it is you. The dog-man.”
“Dog?” Ryker raised an eyebrow. “I’m a wolf.”
“Whatever you are, you’re a freak!” Clancy balled his hands into fists.
Ryker sighed. This was really the last thing he wanted to deal with today but maybe, just maybe, this would be the one thing he could bring to an end.
“And you need to stay away from Bo. He’s mine.”
“Oh, he’s yours?” Ryker laughed. He couldn’t help it. “He didn’t feel like he was anybody’s when I had sex with him.”
Clancy’s dark face went even darker with rage. “I’ve been hitting on him for months and he sleeps with you? That stupid little twink. He has no idea what he’s doing.”
“Do any of us?”
“Don’t get philosophical! Bo is mine, you freak!”
The alpha wolf would have been happy leaving this as simply a show of dominance, but then a fist came swinging towards his face. All his anger and frustration and worry surged over him in that moment, and he threw himself at the other man. Despite the fact that there were witnesses, and despite the fact that this could only reflect badly on him, he transformed mid-leap and grabbed Clancy’s hand in his jaws. They both collapsed to the ground.
Ryker twisted his body around and pounced on Clancy, spreading his toes wide and digging his rough claws into the nurse’s shirt and into his skin. Snarling and slavering, saliva dripping from his open maw, he gnashed his teeth at the side of the other’s head and bit his earlobe in half.
Clancy squealed and arched his back, and now there were answering screams as other people in the vicinity started to realize what was going on.
Fingers pulled at handfuls of his fur, pummeled his chest, but the blows were too wild and glancing to do any damage. Ryker dug his claws in and then suddenly shoved himself away from the human beneath him, making sure to drag his claws through Clancy’s flesh in the process.
Shifting momentarily human, just enough to reclaim his voice, Ryker spat, “Stay. Away. From. My. Mate!”
The last few syllables burst up into a howl as he shifted once more into a wolf and faced away, skirting through the alleyways as fast as he could maneuver his bulk until the terrified sounds at the gas station were gone.
He spent the rest of the day in hiding, and arrived back at the apartment only seconds after Bo.
His mate looked at him a little skeptically. “You...look pretty rough there, Ryker.”
Ryker sighed. “I feel rough. I’m tired. And I think I’d best tell you about it.”
Bo frowned, a troubled look shadowing his features. Oh, how Ryker hated that look. It made him want to kill everyone and everything that even looked at Bo the wrong way. He wanted to change the whole world around to keep his mate safe. If only he was part of that problem...
They got back to the apartment and Bo headed into the bedroom to change, while Ryker observed and tried to ignore the throbbing in his lower abdomen.
“I was thinking about making spaghetti for dinner tonight,” Bo said, a little nervously.
“Sounds fine,” Ryker replied; he really didn’t care what food was so long as he was able to get something to eat finally. “But first, you probably want to sit down while I tell you this.”
Bo perched on the edge of the bed. Much to Ryker’s puzzlement, he saw that he looked...eager.
“Is this where I get to find out about your past?”
Ryker groaned a little. “Uh, no. It isn’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“Not yet?”
“I’ve only known you for a few days,” the alpha pointed out haughtily. “We don’t have anything figured out.”
“Well, we would if you would tell me.”
“Not the time for that,” Ryker grunted. “Soon, I promise. Okay?”
Bo hesitated but then reluctantly agreed. “Fine. So what do you have to tell me today, then?”
No point in holding back on this.
“I ran into your buddy while I was out. That Clancy shit.”
“Oh, god,” Bo groaned. “Really?”
“Really,” Ryker said. “And I wouldn’t have done anything, but he hit me.”
Bo snorted and folded his arms, smiling a little skeptically. “He hit you? You?”
“Well, he hit the inside of my mouth when I bit his fist.” He could tell that the omega didn’t want to laugh, but he did anyway. “And then I might have bit his ear in half and scratched his chest, and told him to stay away from you.”
All traces of amusement were gone. Now Bo was staring at him with something that bordered on horror. “Are you kidding me? You hurt him that bad? That’s awful! You could have just given him a warning!”
Ryker growled deep in his chest. Approaching the bed, he placed his hands on either side of the mattress and leaned his face in very close to Bo’s. Their lips touched, although what followed wasn’t exactly a kiss. “But I couldn’t,” Ryker mumbled, lips moving against Bo’s as he spoke. “Not after he dared to say that you belonged to him. I couldn’t stand for that.”
One small finger trailed through his hair, and it was the best thing he had ever felt in his entire life. In some ways, it was even better than sex.
“Fine,” Bo murmured. “I guess I can forgive you for that. But don’t do it again. I’m an EMT, remember? I can’t have you going around and hurting people.”
I can’t promise anything, Ryker thought, but he didn’t say anything out loud. It wasn’t time for that yet.
Chapter 8
A month passed. A whole month. In some ways, it was the best month Bo ever had in his entire life. There was nothing about it that was overly wrong, and a great deal of things that were just right.
Work continued on as a constant, undeniable and variable as always. Sometimes he thought how strange it was to have a pattern made out of randomness, but maybe that was just how the universe worked now. He wasn’t sure of anything, except that he continued to work twelve-hour shifts with a variety of others who worked for Envision Healthcare. The days continued to be either stressful, or rather lenient.
And when work was over, or just before work was about to begin, that was when the fun happened. That was when he got to spend time with Ryker.
Sure, the alpha was an annoying jerk who didn’t know how to share, or rely on anyone, or have anything less than a huge overreaction, but Bo had come to expect that. Those were all things that made Ryker...Ryker. Nothing the alpha ever did was small. Even when it just came to eating, or walking, or just how he expressed himself; he ate with gusto and in great quantities, and he walked at jogging speed, and never spoke in anything softer than a husky growl.
That was Ryker. And Bo loved his qualities as they were and found them amusing to no end, simply because the alpha took himself so seriously with everything and didn’t realize how funny that made him.
But, at the same time, Bo couldn’t love Ryker. How could you love someone who kept their past hidden from you? But that was the only thing holding him back, the only thing standing in their way.
Everything else was beautiful and right, everything that anyone could have ever asked for in a relationship.
They ate together every day, always breakfast and lunch. At first, Ryker always stayed in the living room but then he slowly gravitated to sitting on the counter or leaning back against the wall while Bo cooked. He even seemed to be taking a bit of interest in cooking himself, although he just ended up getting in the way more often than not. Bo didn’t really mind, though. It was during those meandering conversations that he started to learn about the man who was his mate. And the things he learned were often not very important at all, such as the fact that the alpha insisted mushrooms tasted like feet and his favorite types of cloud were the thin wispy ones so rare in the Seattle sky; however, they were pieces of Ryker, and Bo cherished each one.
&
nbsp; In the very beginning hours of the day, or very late in the waning hours of the evening before sleep, Ryker occasionally dropped puzzle pieces of his life. Bo collected them, following the fractured thoughts like breadcrumbs through the forest to wherever they might lead him. Eventually, he had enough to make up most of the picture of the alpha’s rough childhood where he lived mostly lawless due to simply being stronger than those around him who were trying to make the rules.
He learned of Ryker’s early struggles with school subjects, and how he had preferred sports instead.
“But not to play the sport,” Ryker said one night as they got ready for bed. “I could have cared less. I just wanted to compete. To run. To fight.”
Which led to him being banned from every sport he ever could have tried out for, as each league slowly discovered his aggression. By the time he was nine, people avoided Ryker like he was a convicted criminal wandering the streets.
That probably contributed to him joining a gang, Bo thought.
However, Ryker didn’t talk about that, and Bo knew better than to force him to.
He supposed it was only fair to share about himself in return, so Bo began to talk about his own life when the atmosphere wasn’t so serious. He skirted around much of his own childhood, wincing as he thought of all Ryker missed out on, but the alpha didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he talked about his parents and the elders, and the pack dynamic, which Ryker found fascinating.
“True equality,” he murmured, but that was all. Maybe it was just taking him some time to get used to the idea, since his gang was presumably very rigorously structured. Most tended to be. At least, that was what Bo had always been taught by the elders.
“I can’t wait for you to meet them,” Bo said quietly one night, two weeks into their time living together. Ryker hadn’t said anything, although the tension in his muscles made it quite apparent that he was not as enthusiastic about the idea as Bo was. That was another thing he had learned during their time together—Ryker could be surprisingly resistant to change, to the point of aggressiveness that was almost frightening. At least, it would have been frightening if Bo hadn’t been able to sense the reason for it: a deeply-ingrained hesitation that was almost fearful.
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 8
