by Odessa Lynne
Rumor said the wolves had technology that enforced that rule.
“What do you know about the prophecy?” Brendan asked.
The hill they were on rose sharply and Cam wedged his boot in a crevice and pushed his way upward. “I’ve heard a few things.”
Ethan followed behind Cam, climbing the difficult terrain easily.
“The prophecy isn’t what you think it is.”
“I don’t think it’s anything. I just said I’d heard a few things.”
Brendan crossed one arm over his chest and rubbed his shoulder, staring at Cam. Cam kept climbing. Brendan turned and resumed his own climb up the hill.
“It’s why we can’t just use their technology to make this easy,” Brendan said a few seconds later. “Too much of a chance we’ll bring attention to ourselves and the den.”
Cam had assumed that much at least; it was why he hadn’t questioned anyone about the way they were going about the search for Luis. He’d also assumed the wolves had come along to help the search because of their tracking abilities. The young one, on the other hand . . .
Halfway to the top, Cam asked, “Why’d you bring Ethan? Isn’t it dangerous to have a kid along?”
Brendan stopped and leaned forward with one hand on his knee and another on the trunk of a thin maple tree. He was breathing hard when he looked back at Cam, but so was Cam.
“We should’ve taken another route,” Cam said.
Brendan exhaled roughly and pointed to the top of the hill. “I forgot how fucking high this thing feels when you’re climbing it.” His gaze shifted to Ethan, behind Cam, and he finally answered Cam’s question. “Since Ethan hasn’t had his first heat, he’s not going to draw attention, but he has heightened senses. He can help us stay away from any other wolves that might be in the area and possibly pinpoint Luis before he has a chance to run away.”
“He’s too young,” Cam said. “I don’t like it.”
“Too young,” Ethan muttered.
Cam fought a smile. If not for the accent, Cam might have thought he was listening to Luis complaining about being treated like a boy instead of a man.
Brendan continued, “They don’t usually see the young ones as a threat during the heat, but he’s old enough to defend himself if something happens. He’s been training. You’ll see, he’s—”
“You hear those birds cawing?”
Brendan frowned.
Cam looked between Brendan and Ethan.
Ethan cocked his head and stared at Cam. A moment later, his eyes widened. His gaze darted to Brendan and then back to Cam, narrowing on him.
“You’re human,” he said, almost as if insulted that Cam had picked up on the sound before he had.
“Something’s disturbing the birds that way. That’s where we should be headed.”
Brendan eyed Cam, then turned his attention back to the hill. He started making his way to the left, and Cam followed. “You didn’t tell anyone your hearing was so acute.”
“I haven’t been hiding it. I didn’t know.”
Brendan scrabbled for a better grip on some loose sandy stone and flattened his front to a narrow stretch of exposed rock. He started easing himself across a ledge no wider than his boots from heel to toe. “Taking a shortcut here. Can you make it?”
Cam grunted and stretched for his own better grip. “Yeah.” He made a point of not looking down past the tops of his boots. The fall wouldn’t be extreme, but enough rock jutted out in the midst of the scraggly pine below that he didn’t doubt it would hurt like hell.
Brendan turned his head to the side, huffing a few times as he stretched to the next ledge. “Swear to God, your implants gave Devon a hard-on when he got his hands on them.”
“They’re mine,” Cam said. “I expect them back.”
“I bet you do. Trey won’t give them back. They’ve been modified with the wolves’ technology. Wonder how that happened.” Brendan’s tone had a mocking edge to it that set Cam’s teeth.
Cam snagged Brendan’s shirt at the collar. “Those are my implants. The alien technology that was added to them was freely given when the wolves first came.”
Brendan yanked his shirt free and moved another few feet out of reach. A handful of rock skittered down between them. “Devon doesn’t think so, and I trust his opinion.”
The last stretch was the hardest, and Cam was too busy scrambling over the top edge of the small ridge of the rock face to challenge Brendan on whether or not Devon’s opinion mattered when Cam knew the damn truth of the matter.
Now that he didn’t need them anymore, he’d already started thinking about selling them. Ava and the boys could use the money, and giving it to them—that would give him options. Their marriage wasn’t typical, and they’d done it for one reason and one reason only—the boys—but it was real in the sense that they were partners. Sexless partners, but who the fuck cared about that anyway? Cam got sex wherever and whenever he wanted and Ava had done the same.
He wouldn’t leave Ava and the boys to fend for themselves just because he’d chosen to accept Rick’s claim on him.
If Rick still wanted him to stay once heat season ended that was.
Rick knew now that Cam had been partly responsible for Henry’s death. Maybe Rick wouldn’t want him as a mate once the heat season ended and his control over his reaction to Cam’s human scent returned.
Cam had to believe that wouldn’t happen. The wolves didn’t mate lightly. If Rick wanted Cam as a temporary mate, he’d have made it known, but he hadn’t. Cam was sure of that.
He had loved once, and he wasn’t sure he was crazy enough to do it again, but Rick had said submission was enough. Cam could give him that.
And there were things Rick had given him that he hadn’t been able to get anywhere else. He liked fucking, but it hadn’t been the same since Henry. Not until Rick. Cam fucked regularly, if only to prove he still controlled that part of himself despite everything that had happened, but it had always seemed to be nothing but a means to an end. A way to an orgasm that didn’t involve his hand. It didn’t feel that way with Rick.
Rick took him to the edge of a cliff and then threw him off it.
It was the most reckless, wild sex Cam had enjoyed since Henry and he didn’t want to give that up. But what he really didn’t want to give up was the way Rick held him afterwards.
Chapter 27
Ethan came up the ridge behind Cam, his dark, sharp claws digging into the dirt at Cam’s feet. He hauled himself over the edge with a lack of effort that made Cam envious. “Humans are so funny.”
Cam frowned.
Ethan flashed his teeth and shook dirt out of his claws. “You get turned on by the weirdest stuff.”
The comment took Cam aback. He glanced at Brendan, who was rubbing one of his forearms and looking over his shoulder at the beginning of the downward side of the small ridge. He turned back to Ethan.
“He can smell it.”
“Smell what?” Cam asked.
“The way we smell when we get excited.”
Cam realized what he meant one second too late. “Ah shit.”
“Hazards of living with them.”
Cam started walking. He reached out and smacked Ethan on the back of the head much the same way he smacked Luis when the moment called for it.
Ethan growled but Cam threw him a look and he hushed quickly.
Brendan snorted a short, sharp laugh.
Ethan growled again, but lower this time and shook out his hair and started following Cam.
This time Cam took the lead. A few minutes into the walk—they were staying to the top of the ridge for the moment—Brendan caught up with him.
“The first time I met Rick, he embarrassed the hell out of me. I won’t go into details, but you should ask him about it sometime. He was so earnest, I thought he just didn’t understand that humans don’t talk seriously about penises in public. But looking back on it, I think he was messing with me. He has a very subtle sense of humor. It t
ook a while for me to figure that out.”
“We should concentrate on walking faster and listening for anything out of place, not swapping stories.”
“Have it your way.”
Brendan fell back a few paces and didn’t speak after that, not until they’d reached what looked like the end to the short ridge and come out on the other side of a thick stand of trees.
Cam looked down into the small hollow formed by the hill they’d just climbed and another less than a hundred feet away. Water trickled along the bottom in a narrow creek, winding through the thinning forest.
“He’ll stay close to the water,” Cam said.
“You sure?”
Cam looked up at the sky, where pink streaked the clouds. “He’s scared of the dark. He won’t feel so lost if he stays near the creek.”
Ethan eased forward, head raised and nose scrunched. He breathed deeply a few times and frowned, but said, “I think I smell him. I’m not sure. There are ahtraesitarishkeille nearby.”
Cam breathed deeply as the wolves’ native name for themselves splashed across his senses. It was a word—or phrase, he’d never been sure, that most humans would never hear the way it was meant to sound. It was proof that although he no longer had his implants, his hearing hadn’t been lessened by the technology that had recreated his human hearing. Of course there was a likely explanation for why, and he’d probably find out once the doctors got their hands on him again, but at that moment, it felt more like a gift from the universe Henry had worshiped.
Cam had always believed miracles existed. His very life seemed to offer proof of that. He’d collected a fortune’s worth of them, but each one still felt special—like a gift.
Someone touched his shoulder. Startled, he opened his eyes, not even realizing until that moment that he’d closed them.
“Something wrong?” Brendan asked.
“No.” Cam clutched an overhanging limb and started down the hill. “We need to hurry if there are wolves nearby.”
“Just how old is Luis anyway?”
“Old enough to attract attention,” Cam said.
Brendan didn’t respond. The look in his eyes said he understood.
The human scent of males in their early twenties created the strongest trigger of the lust craze in the wolves, but anyone who’d reached puberty had enough of the right scent combinations to trigger a wolf given the right circumstances. It was why the shelters were so important. It was something most people didn’t talk about. It was why it was so easy to be fooled into thinking the renegades were doing something good.
They moved faster going down the small ridge, the angle of the slope driving Cam’s breath in and out of his lungs in a series of ragged gasps as he worked to keep his momentum from sending him down headfirst. Brendan struggled somewhere to his left, while Ethan kept up effortlessly.
Cam wasn’t used to feeling old at twenty-five, but damn if he didn’t feel old next to that young wolf.
He staggered to the bottom, grabbing a handful of pine on the last step to slow him down before he pitched forward. The limb snapped back, and the needles tore off in his hand, scraping his palm raw, but he stayed on his feet.
He stopped and breathed hard for a few seconds and then Brendan skidded to a stop on the other side of the tree.
“Fucking—!”
“Burns, don’t it?”
Brendan rubbed his cheek where pine bark and needles had left a raw, bloody scrape.
“It did.” He grinned, wide and excited, his breath still coming hard and fast. “The quick healing is nice, huh?”
Cam looked down at his palm. The stinging had already started fading away. “I guess.”
“You guess? Wait’ll you get a serious injury and see what you think.”
Cam gave Brendan a pointed look. “Somebody stuck a knife in my chest. I don’t think my experiences with the healing tech match up to yours. All I remember is pain.”
Brendan tapped Cam in the chest with the back of his hand. “That’s because it was too busy saving your only working kidney. Among other things. At least that’s what I heard.”
Cam scowled at Brendan. “You seem to know more shit about me than I’ve been told.”
“Aren’t that many humans with the tech yet, and you’re only the second I know of who got it the way you did.”
“Through sex.”
“Unprotected sex is never a good idea.” Brendan dusted off his hands. “Although maybe it did you a favor in this case.”
“I don’t have unprotected sex. Ever.” Then, “Not with humans anyway.”
“You sure about that?”
Brendan started following the creek and Cam splashed his way across the narrow dip. The water didn’t even reach his ankles in most places.
“I’m damn sure.” Cam side-eyed Brendan from the opposite bank less than three feet away. “I caught something once. From Ricco. I got lucky there was a cure for that one and that I could still get hold of it. I don’t do anything without protection.”
Brendan stopped at the edge of the creek, standing there quietly for a moment, watching Cam with eyes that just pissed Cam off.
“I could blame you for that too, but what’s the point?” Cam said.
Brendan swallowed and nodded. “Go ahead, I don’t deny that I deserve it.”
“Yeah,” Cam said. “I’ve got better things to blame you for.”
Another quiet moment passed. Ethan made a soft noise and reminded Cam they weren’t alone. He turned his head and looked into the woods in the direction he thought they should be heading.
“So protection doesn’t stop it from transferring. No one’s going to want to hear that, especially not Devon.”
Cam returned his attention to Brendan. “Why doesn’t he have the healing tech?”
“He can’t. The wolves treated him for something before the first heat when they were using their medical technology to offer cures to anyone willing to risk it. He risked it. They cured him, but what they did made him sensitive to most of their medicines. They say there could be some kind of interaction that would make the tech incompatible with him. Might kill him.”
“Ah.” Cam could see the implications. “He gets infected accidently by one of us who can transfer it . . .”
“Yeah. He’ll have to be careful around all of us now. And shit, Ian’s going to wish he’d held out after all. Just what he needs to think he made a mistake.”
Cam had never forgotten some of the things Henry had told him about submission. He started to bring it up with a question, but at the last second, reconsidered. It wasn’t any of his business who fucked who when it came to Brendan and his betas.
And then suddenly, it was, as an image of Rick flashed through his mind. Rick was an alpha, but he would submit to the first alpha and that meant he would also submit to the first alpha’s mate.
God, how could he stomach it, knowing the things Brendan had been responsible for?
And now, knowing Henry hadn’t died in the first heat but at the hands of some of the men Brendan had recruited?
“Did you tell Rick?” he asked abruptly. “Does he know you knew Ricco and that him and his men were the ones who killed Henry?”
Brendan flinched. “No. He doesn’t know. Not yet.”
“He should know, dammit.”
“I didn’t even know—”
“You don’t get to hide—”
“I’ll tell him,” Brendan interrupted, voice sharp. “I won’t hide the truth. But he knows me. He won’t blame me, not the way you do. They’re not like—”
“Jesus. I know what they’re like!” Cam’s voice sounded like thunder in his ears. “I know he won’t and that just pisses me off even more!”
Ethan’s sudden growl brought Cam up short. He blinked, realizing how close he’d come to losing his temper. “Dammit.”
Ethan had come up beside Brendan and his lips were pulled back, his claws out, and his eyes had gone from bright and carefree to dark and brilliant
under the fading light. They were green. So green they reminded Cam of the brightest spring grass, turned into a jewel. They were Henry’s eyes.
That thought startled the last of his anger out of him. Of course they weren’t Henry’s eyes. Ethan’s father was the wolf named Ash, and Henry was Rick’s son.
He dragged his hand over his face. “Dammit. I should’ve never let them put us together out here.”
“It was my decision. My fault.”
“Everything’s your damn fault, now, huh?”
“Oh, fuck you, Lujan. I don’t want anything to happen to your kid. Trey’s told me that keeping the mated pairs together is always the smartest move during heat season. I’m doing my best here.”
Cam let his arm fall to his side and gestured to Ethan. “You smell anything?”
Ethan slowly settled, his claws retracting, his face losing the tightness that held his lips away from his teeth enough to show those short, sharp eyeteeth he had. He glanced at Brendan as if for direction, and Brendan nodded at him.
He pointed to the southeast, in the same general direction of the earlier sound of birds cawing.
“Let’s go, then,” Cam said.
Ethan started shaking his head. “Ahtraesitarishkeille.”
The lyrical sound slipped across Cam’s nerves and raised gooseflesh on his skin. He tried to shake off the sensation, but a tingle in his ears lingered. “Just say wolves next time, buddy.”
“But—”
“Ethan.”
That one word from Brendan was all it took. Ethan lowered his head. “Yes, Alpha.”
Cam clenched his jaw. “Which way?”
Ethan raised wide-eyes to Cam.
Brendan dug into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out something small, almost invisible inside the palm of his hand. “I’m going to contact Devon. If someone’s monitoring, this could put us in bad shape, but we need to know who’s closest and who has the better chance of getting to your boy before any rogue wolves do.”
“Rogue wolves,” Cam said.
“You met Jay. He works with them.”
