Devon's Gamble (Wolves' Heat)

by Odessa Lynne

  He looked over his shoulder to see the quiet guy staring at him, and Lennie, at the bottom of the stairs, watching him with a gaze that said he wasn’t sure what was going on but that he knew something was up.

  Lennie had obviously decided Devon was a better bet than the quiet guy and he’d followed behind Devon from the bathroom to the stairs but hadn’t seemed eager to go any further than that. Didn’t matter though. Devon recognized that Lennie wouldn’t be useful in a fight with the quiet guy even if Lennie didn’t realize it.

  If the wolves didn’t let him out of here, he’d have to do something or the guy would probably try to kill him at the first opportunity. If Devon got any sicker, he’d probably succeed too.

  He raised his fist to bang on the door again, but the door opened, and he almost fell into the arms of the wolf on the other side.

  “Where’s Kem?” he demanded.

  The wolf jumped back and turned his head away from Devon. “You shouldn’t—your scent—what are you doing?”

  Devon stepped out of the basement and slammed the door. His heart raced in a way that was more than just nerves.

  The wolf’s nostrils flared. He turned his head abruptly toward Devon. “You’re sick.”

  Devon felt jittery, the aftereffects of adrenaline and worry. Why had Kem put him in the basement? What had happened after he passed out? “I need to talk to Kem.”

  The wolf’s brow furrowed and he glanced across the room. They were in a small alcove off the kitchen, opposite the doorway that led into the hall that led to the room where Devon and Kem had been sleeping—and fucking.

  “Look,” Devon said roughly, gesturing abruptly to get the wolf’s attention, but the move set off a sharp hot pain in his neck, the burn intense enough to steal his breath for a moment.

  Another wolf walked into the kitchen area but then stopped abruptly. “What are you doing? Get him—”

  “No!” Devon said.

  A wash of dizzy disorientation caught Devon by surprise. He grabbed at the wall beside him and tried to focus on staying upright. “You don’t understand. You’re in danger here. We all are. I need to talk to Kem.”

  The wolf near him reached out and took his arm.

  “Don’t touch him!” the other wolf demanded.

  “He’s sick. He belongs to Wentarki.” Or that’s what it sounded like to Devon, a collection of alien syllables that he couldn’t translate into anything meaningful. “I can—”

  The wolf stopped speaking and closed his eyes for a moment and Devon realized in a flash of insight that this wolf was trying and failing to resist Devon’s human scent. The wolf’s head tilted toward Devon, and between one moment and the next, the wolf had buried his nose against Devon’s shoulder.

  Devon backed into the wall between the door and the corner. The wolf kept sniffing, trailing his nose and mouth down over the black t-shirt Devon wore. The wolf’s fingers tightened on his arm.

  The wolf at the other end of the kitchen looked back over his shoulder and then again at the wolf currently making every muscle in Devon’s body sing with tension. This wasn’t going to end well. Why had he let himself forget just what the human scent did to these people during their heat season?

  Because of Kem. Because Kem had been so controlled that Devon had put the precariousness of his situation out of his mind.

  “Wentarki…” the wolf mumbled, the word vibrating hotly through the fabric of Devon’s shirt.

  “He’s Wentarki’s mate,” the other wolf said, voice taut. “Alpha will kill you if you hurt him while Wentarki’s healing.”

  Devon looked between the wolves and tried to replay the words he’d heard. If that sound in the wolves’ language was Kem’s real name—

  “What do you mean ‘healing?’ Healing from what? Has something happened to Kem?” His voice strained on the words.

  Another wolf rounded the corner of the doorway. His eyes widened and he grabbed the neck of the wolf at the door and jerked him back and they disappeared around the corner.

  He felt the hard nudge of the wolf’s nose trailing down his stomach and he froze in place. Hands gripped his waist, then lower.

  “Kem,” he said, and then he made a sound as close to “Wentarki” as he could get his human vocal chords to make and then held his breath as the wolf in front of him seemed to pause and take note of the word.

  “Wentarki,” the wolf said again and his hot breath soaked right through Devon’s t-shirt to tickle his belly. But then he lowered his head to nuzzle his face in tight to Devon’s crotch.

  Devon sucked in his breath. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  He had been drawn to Kem from the beginning, but this guy? Kem had never failed to seem at least somewhat in control of himself, whereas this wolf’s mind seemed to be completely clouded with the effects of Devon’s scent. All Devon knew for sure was that he wanted this wolf to get the hell off him and stop pressing his face against his dick.

  Devon threaded his hand through the wolf’s hair and tugged, as gently as he could. The wolf growled and squeezed Devon’s ass tight, pressing harder to Devon’s dick and Devon rose on his tiptoes, his spine scraping against the wall behind him.

  “Get away from him,” someone ordered sharply from the doorway.

  Devon jerked his head up to see that a different wolf stood there now, his voice tight and controlled, eyes a glittering brown. He had the stance of someone who expected to be obeyed, and his simple phrase got a low growl out of the wolf sniffing Devon.

  “Submit!”

  The wolf looked up and over, and then back at Devon, and his eyes glimmered glassy and hot.

  Devon mashed his lips together and gritted his teeth to keep from saying anything as the wolf yanked him closer and his thighs brushed the wolf’s shoulders. Too many wolves in the room, too much of a chance that this wolf would have him on the floor before he could do more than suck in a breath.

  “Submit!” Brown-eyes said again, a hard, controlled demand for obedience that caused the wolf holding Devon to turn his head away, this time with a groan.

  Claws extended from beneath his dark fingernails.

  God Almighty, what he wouldn’t have given to have Kem there right then.

  “Submit!” Brown-eyes said again, and then followed with another word in the wolves’ language, probably a name.

  The wolf holding him responded by shoving himself away from Devon, hard, knocking Devon up against the wall again and damn near knocking his breath from his lungs at the force of the shove.

  Devon groped behind him, felt the doorknob, and then wrenched the door open and stumbled around it just as the wolf reached a hand out for his leg.

  He slammed the door and put his weight behind it.

  He heard scuffling sounds coming from the other side of the door and he yelled through the wood, “I’m telling you, I need to see Kem!”

  But he knew they might not know who he was talking about, if they were even paying attention to him. Something heavy smacked into the door with a loud thump, jarring Devon, and he grabbed for the railing and flung himself down three stairs, then pounded down the rest of them. But the door didn’t open and the noise coming from the other side faded.

  “Goddamn idiot,” Lennie muttered as Devon stopped beside him.

  Devon was running on adrenaline, he could feel the high of it rushing through his blood, firing him with purpose and determination. He looked at the door near the bathroom, chained and locked, then he looked up at the ceiling and tried to place the location of the stairs and the hallway and the room he’d been in. He’d bet whatever was on the other side of that door was the part of the basement not quite completely underground. Maybe a way out.

  Devon pointed his finger at the quiet guy staring at him like he was imagining just how he was going to kill Devon. “Whatever you’re part of, keep me out of it. You got it?”

  The guy stared at Devon a moment and then turned his head away, his snub deliberate.

  “Looks more like you’r
e the one going to get the wolves down here on us,” Lennie said. “If you get them riled up—”

  “What? I might get a dick up the ass? Where the hell you think I’ve been? Up there playing with myself?”

  Lennie scowled but Devon saw more than anger in the way his eyes flickered over Devon. “They hurt people.”

  “No,” Devon said, but then he felt foolish. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He started to touch his bandage but dropped his arm. “It was an accident.”

  “It’s always a goddamn accident,” Lennie said. “Don’t you know that?”

  Devon turned away.

  He looked at the door with the chain again and decided that was his only real choice if he didn’t want to try to get the attention of the wolves again. After what had almost happened…not a good bet.

  If he could get back before Brendan did anything stupid maybe he could stop the inevitable slaughter that was coming.

  He glanced at Lamar and Sebastian sitting at the table, and then the quiet guy—he really wished he had a name for him, but he hadn’t met any of Brendan’s newest “friends” because he and Ian had been staying out of Brendan’s business as much as possible, except when Brendan paid him to use his skills, such as configuring those trackers. Devon scraped his hand through his hair, sucking in his breath when the move set off a stinging pain at his neck.

  He’d been a fool to even think of doing anything else for Brendan. He knew better, but—Geoff was at risk and he had let that blind him to Brendan’s probable use for the trackers.

  Now fate was conspiring against him to make him pay for getting a second shot at a long life. He’d known since he was eleven years old that he was going to die young; medical science had progressed enough to tell his mother what fate awaited him as soon as she was diagnosed and had him tested for the disease, but no one could fix him—not until the wolves came. If not for them, he’d be looking at ten, maybe fifteen more years before his disease would have started paralyzing him the way it had done his mother, and then a few years after that it would have all been over. She’d died in a bed, not even able to breathe on her own, her gentle soul and sharp mind trapped in a body that wouldn’t respond to her commands.

  Gran had messaged him when she heard he’d let the wolves use their medical knowledge on him, one of the first batch of humans to allow themselves to be treated, almost a year before the first heat season had ruined everything. Her message had been short and to the point.

  You’re still going to hell, boy. Family don’t turn on each other.

  He’d broken that phone. He still had the long thin scar on the palm of his hand as a reminder.

  The bitch hated him. He didn’t even know why, but he had no other explanation for why she treated him the way she did. But then again, she hadn’t treated his mother or Aunt Lucille and Priya much better.

  He walked to the door, slower than he’d been moving before, but the throb in his neck had intensified as the adrenaline flooding him dissipated. He jangled the chain a few times, looking at the thick lock and the bar that had been screwed to the door, along with the bar screwed to the wall. The chain was short and heavy but the screws weren’t anything special. The wolves had probably assumed that none of them would be willing to risk breaking through the door, knowing the wolves would inevitably be able to track their scent even if they managed to get away.

  But Devon also realized there was probably more on the other side of the door than just an escape route. Something had to store the power from the solar panels lining the roof—those he’d seen the night he’d been dragged into the house, and then there would be the system controls that allowed for efficient recycling of water. If this house had been built after the quake, there had to be a full-fledged water recycler somewhere on these premises. The water conservation laws had gone into effect many years before the wolves came and a house as large as this would need a big system and that system wouldn’t operate properly without a computer to run it.

  “Get me one of those chairs,” Devon said, looking over his shoulder at Lennie.

  Lennie opened his mouth—probably to object—and Devon cut him off. “Come on. You want out of here, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want a pack of wolves chasing me through the woods,” Lennie said.

  “I’ll keep them occupied while you get away.”

  Lennie’s eyebrows rose. Someone at the table snickered.

  Devon pointed at Sebastian, who still had the corners of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “What the fuck’s so funny, asshole?”

  “Just wondering how you think you’re going to do that. At least one of them’s already got tired of you, wouldn’t you say?”

  Devon narrowed his eyes and thought about the white hot rush of pleasure he’d get from bloodying up Sebastian’s face, but he didn’t have time for that. Brendan’s guy wouldn’t have mentioned the plan if it wasn’t getting close to time for something to happen.

  He began to suspect that Sebastian and Brendan’s guy knew each other from outside this basement, maybe Lamar too.

  Lennie scowled and rolled his shoulders. “Goddamn,” he muttered. But then, in a move that made Devon raise his own eyebrows, Lennie stomped over to the nearest chair, a few feet away from Brendan’s guy and hauled it up off the floor and then carried it back to Devon.

  Devon took the chair and then brought it down hard on the concrete.

  Lennie jumped back as pieces of wood splintered apart and clattered across the floor.

  “Grab that one.” Devon pointed at one of the legs and reached down to prize apart another.

  When he was done, he had three legs long enough to lever into the bar screwed to the wall, with just enough space between the wall and the door for him to fit his forearm. He wrapped his arm around the extended wood, folded his other arm around his forearm and gripped his elbow tight, jammed his foot up against the wall and put every bit of muscle he had into his effort.

  A groan tore from his throat and his neck felt like it was tearing open and his breath wedged behind his gritted teeth.

  Nothing happened the first time. Or the second. He hopped on one foot for a second and then managed to get both feet up on the wall and he knew when the first bolt popped he was about to land hard on his ass and it was going to hurt like a—

  A screw plinged against the concrete.

  “Son of a—” One of the wood legs cracked with a loud pop and knocked into his chin and when he fell he couldn’t catch his breath for a few seconds.

  He groaned and rolled over, curling up against the pain in his chest. He’d had the breath knocked out of him before, but it was never pleasant.

  Lennie offered him a hand and when Devon gripped his fingers, he pulled Devon to his feet.

  “You’re bleeding,” Lennie said.

  “Thanks,” Devon muttered. His chin was numb but his hand came away slick with blood. Another screw still held the bar in place and it took a few minutes of prizing to get it away from the wall on one side enough to slip the chain out from around it. The entire time, he could feel Brendan’s guys watching him. A cold burn had spread across the back of his neck and his bandage felt sticky and wet. Hopefully it wasn’t bad enough that he was going to bleed to death for his effort.

  “How do you know they’re planning something?” Lennie asked, almost a whisper. “How would they? No clocks down here. They didn’t let us keep anything.”

  “Not sure,” Devon said, just as he shoved the door open and looked into a moonlit room half the length of the one he was standing in.

  Shapes loomed in the dark along the far wall and light from two narrow windows glinted off metal and spilled over the shadowed gray of thin cables and narrow pipes.

  Devon looked around on the wall and found the switch. Bright light flooded the room.

  He whistled.

  “That looks expensive,” Lennie said. “Why the hell do they get all the best equipment while I have to scrape by with twenty year old garbage?”

  “T
hey’re aliens who came to Earth in space ships. I heard they offered good barter to anyone willing to move off the land around here. What the hell were you thinking when you said no?”

  “That was family land.” Lennie managed to sound both affronted and disgruntled. “I’m not letting the goddamn wolves run me off my own property.”

  “I can see that’s working out well for you.”

  “There’s a reason I don’t like you. You’re an asshole.”

  “Yeah. I am.” Devon went straight for the power supply.

  Chapter 12

  Brendan’s guy didn’t leave him and Lennie alone for long. He came through the door, Sebastian and Lamar at his back.

  “Stop whatever you’re doing, Fletcher.”

  Devon didn’t stop. He was configuring the power setup. Tap, tap, tap. Swipe. Each movement of his fingers over the smooth screen brought him closer to where he wanted to be. The safety systems warning light blinked green then red and then shut down.

  “I’d be heading out now, Lennie. Door’s locked from in here.”

  Lennie hesitated.

  “Go on. They’ll be too busy to come after you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure enough.” Devon yanked a wire loose and a spark popped in the air.

  Brendan’s guy approached him. “You do what I think you’re about to do and they’re going to think—”

  “Yeah, I know what they’re going to think, that they’re under attack.”

  That was what he wanted, because it was common knowledge that the wolves always ran. Devon had heard that a hundred times from Brendan. The leader of the wolves claimed it was to protect the peace between them and the human governments. Brendan said they were just biding their time until there were enough of them to overrun them all.

  Brendan’s guy grabbed Devon’s arm. “That’s enough.”

  Devon swung around and grabbed the guy’s shirt and flung him to the side. The guy skidded across the floor on his ass and Devon could see the determination and anger in his eyes as he got to his feet, gaze locked on Devon.

  “Go on Lennie. This is gonna happen fast.”