Mason's Regret

by Odessa Lynne

  “I can’t eat that.” But instead of pushing Five away, Mason eased Five’s hand closer so he could sniff the food on offer. He hadn’t even gotten his nose close enough before his stomach clenched alarmingly. He dug his head back against the tree, shaking his head. “No way.”

  “It is necessary,” Five said. He gestured to Mason’s right hand where it rested on Mason’s thigh. “The healing will take a lot of energy. You have to have sleep or food. Sleep isn’t possible, not for a while. Food is the alternative.”

  “I just lost my breakfast, Five. I can’t eat this right now.”

  “Mason…”

  “I’m telling you, I can’t do it.”

  “Submit,” Five said, with a quiet power that tugged at Mason’s insides.

  He didn’t want to give in, even though it made a lot of sense, what Five had said. He needed energy; he couldn’t go all day without anything else to eat. But part of him resisted for the sheer, stubborn reason that he wanted to know he could.

  Five brought his hand closer to Mason’s mouth. A sweet, tangy scent wafted under his nose.

  Before he thought about it too hard, he let his tongue flick out and take a small taste.

  Whatever Five was offering him reminded him vaguely of a gooey desert his mother used to make, back when luxuries were affordable. He leaned forward and let Five’s fingers slide into his mouth.

  He didn’t just eat a little of it. He let Five feed him the whole pouch. He wasn’t sure what it was—he’d never tasted anything quite like it before, but it triggered his sweet tooth and by the time his stomach was full, he was licking the last of it off Five’s fingers.

  Warmth flared to life inside him, and his blood rushed. He slid his tongue along the tight ridge of skin covering Five’s knuckles, seeking out the last of the sweet tang.

  Five’s soft growl brought his eyes up, those fingers still trapped between his teeth.

  He quickly backed off, not sure what the hell he’d been doing. His face heated, but he doubted it was going to be noticed considering how flushed he already felt.

  “We can’t fuck here,” Five said, “but if we were anywhere else, I would already have you on your knees.”

  The vision those words created unsettled Mason. He would’ve put some distance between them if he’d been able, but he was already backed up against the tree. So he just sat there, wondering if he could trust anything Five had told him about his thoughts being his own despite the gift inside him, because it didn’t make sense that his insides quivered and his jeans felt too tight and his dick too interested.

  He wasn’t attracted to Five. He didn’t want to have sex with him. Everything he’d done, he’d done because he needed to—to survive, to protect his brother, to get through heat season. Because that’s what you had to do. Submit… or die.

  Maybe the wolves hadn’t just managed to crack the world—maybe they’d cracked him too.

  He sucked in a shaky breath, but the image in his head remained: of him, bending over for Five and letting him do whatever he wanted, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

  And once that thought took root, it was goddamned impossible to get rid of.

  Chapter 23

  Her name was Cecily. She wasn’t what Mason expected. Thirty, she said, but she looked younger. If he’d met her in different circumstances, he’d have been attracted enough by her looks to want to get to know her better. She was dark, with dark eyes and long dark hair, and he’d always had a thing for girls who could look at you like they owned you.

  She had that look down pat.

  Funny how he hadn’t realized until then just how often Five looked at him in that exact same way.

  Five’s warning came back to him and he refocused his attention on the night-shrouded landscape in front of him and made a point of thinking about what he’d seen back in that biolab to get his mind off her looks—and the way her breasts mashed up against his back.

  Not that he was interested, but there was no point tempting fate.

  “The human scent is the strongest trigger of our mating instincts we’ve ever faced, and it takes hold quickly and mercilessly. The drugs are working well for the moment but it’s inevitable that we’ll develop a resistance to them. How long that takes varies from season to season with the change in drugs, but it will happen. Don’t allow yourself to get too comfortable with the human. If my heat cycles resume or my instincts begin to cloud my judgment and I begin to see her as a threat, the fact that we haven’t mated could put both of you into a very dangerous situation.”

  The ATV he drove tilted to the left as the terrain shifted and he began a cautious climb up a steep ridge. The wolves were somewhere ahead, with Francis guiding them, and Five off doing whatever alphas did.

  Warm arms slid up his chest as Cecily clung to him. Her quiet gasp left a tingle at his ear as her breath tickled his ear canal.

  He was unpleasantly aware of how close she was at his back and the feelings her presence brought to the surface could be laid directly at the feet of his last girlfriend. Jeri had spent a lot of time with him on his ATV, since it was the easiest way to get from job to job, and they’d both been interested in conserving their power supplies by sharing a ride whenever possible. She’d always enjoyed teasing him by rubbing her hand over his cock while they were riding on the ATV, so every time Cecily’s hands moved over his chest, he felt a little jolt of memory that got him a little too close to “comfortable” for his peace of mind.

  He took the next turn as carefully as he could but it still ended with them going downhill and her squishing up to his back even tighter than before.

  “I’m so glad I’m not alone with the wolves,” she said into this ear. “I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was when they showed up.”

  “Five’s a pretty good guy,” Mason said, not taking his eyes off the ground ahead of them. One wrong turn and a wheel could end up in a hole that sent them both flying. He’d been there just a few days ago and he wasn’t ready to do that again.

  “That’s the one that saved me. I’m talking about the others. Do you know who they were?”

  “Other wolves?” Mason squeezed the handles a little tighter, his shoulders tensing as he tried to catch a glimpse of Cord through the trees.

  “They came with the humans who were going through the labs.”

  She’d already confessed that she’d come looking for her brother, but hadn’t found him. Mason had made no mention of the dead, because if one of the men inside that room had been her brother, he sure didn’t want to be the one to tell her.

  “Did you catch any names?”

  “Not real—” Her response got cut off when the ATV jolted over a fallen log. Her gasp this time was a lot louder than the last and she clutched frantically at him.

  “Sorry.”

  Glowing eyes appeared in the distance. Mason leaned forward, aiming the vehicle in that direction.

  “You were saying,” he prodded.

  “The guys were weird. That’s really all I can tell you.”

  Mason remembered Jay saying something about coming back later to search the place. “Was one of them skinny but kind of wiry?”

  “I can’t really—Oh.” She rubbed up against him again, her hand sliding under the edge of his shirt.

  Goddammit. Jeri had done a good job training him to react like a horny bastard. Five was not going to be happy about this shit.

  Honestly, Mason wasn’t that happy about it either. He wasn’t exactly turned on, but he couldn’t seem to stop the awareness he had of her at his back.

  He was half-convinced she was doing it on purpose.

  But that really didn’t make any sense, because she seemed like a perfectly normal, nice girl who didn’t know what she’d gotten herself mixed up in.

  Who also just happened to know how to look at a man like he was hers for the taking.

  Something about that just wasn’t sitting right with him, and he couldn’t even say why. Jeri had
been able to look at him like that and the only thing it had done was make him hot as hell for her.

  But Jeri had gone and fallen in love with her sister’s ex and dumped Mason so fast his head had spun. That had been it for him for a while. He’d needed a break from getting his heart broken by girls that just wanted to fuck a hot guy until someone better came along. He didn’t like thinking about himself as the hot guy in that scenario, because he sure as hell didn’t see it when he looked in a mirror—or at Marcus who just happened to be his mirror image, but Gillie had told him that denying it made him look like a shitbrain and that self-deprecation didn’t suit him.

  Gillie was a fucking nuisance, but like Marcus, she was usually right.

  He had to slow down so he could reach up and push aside a thick vine that there was no way around. His shirt rode up and a warm palm landed right at the center of his abdomen. He sucked in his breath and just kept from jerking.

  “Hey,” he said, hoping she’d take the hint.

  “What’s your story?” she asked. “Those wolves—are you helping them or just stuck, like me?”

  Before he answered, he goosed the vehicle’s engine and got them past the vines, letting them fall behind them. The headlights worked to illuminate the moonlit forest, and luckily the controls were modern enough that he’d been able to adjust the brightness with a single slide of his finger on the ATV’s control panel to conserve the battery.

  A straight stretch of well-worn trail appeared in front of him and he relaxed for the first time in half an hour or more.

  He caught sight of Cord ahead and sped up.

  “One of them wants me for a mate,” he finally said.

  “And you went along with it,” she said. “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Because it’s heat season and you don’t have a choice.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Don’t they scare you?”

  He thought about where she might be leading him, then said, “Enough to know it would be a bad idea to run.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He wondered what she meant by that. “So you’re not going to try anything that stupid, right?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment, and whether that was because he started slowing or because she’d finally realized they were coming up quickly on Cord, he couldn’t say.

  “I know how dangerous they are,” she finally said. “I know you’re not supposed to run.”

  A tight knot of dread settled in his stomach. She was going to run. He knew it.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said. “I swear to God, I’ll lay you out if you do, and I don’t care what my momma taught me. I’m not watching you get us all in trouble.”

  She rested her face on his back and spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear her over the hum and rev of the engine. “I’m not staying here. You do what you want, but I’m not staying here.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed.” And for some reason the only thing he could think about was the pressure in his chest that he could feel coming back at him, like an echo in a link he didn’t know how to tap.

  “They’re on the drugs,” he said, “but if you take off running who knows what the fuck could happen. You know the kind of stories you hear. It could get ugly, quick.”

  Her chin dug into his spine and her whisper echoed into his bones. “Coward.”

  With that, she locked her arms around his throat started trying to choke him.

  “God—dammit!” He slammed the brake and released the steering, nearly sending them into a tree.

  It was a dirty little fight. Cecily clawed his neck with her human fingernails and dug her knee into his back, but he yanked her forward and threw her at the ground with enough force that he could hear her “umph” despite the deafening sound of blood rushing in his head.

  He caught her foot before her heel could catch him in the groin, then yanked her hard, dragging her backside across the well-packed earth. Leaves crackled under them and she just about managed to pull him off-balance, but he recovered before his knee fully buckled.

  “Stop it!” he said. “I’m saving you a world of hurt here, you fucking idiot.”

  She didn’t waste her breath responding, just kicked out wildly with her other leg.

  “Goddammit,” he snarled, before practically falling on top of her and jabbing his forearm against her throat and his knee into her belly. He tried not to hurt her but her furious fight continued until he was ready to do exactly what he’d told her he’d do.

  Only he really didn’t want to knock her unconscious just to put a stop to her clawing and fighting, because part of him completely understood her fear. If one of the wolves decided she was mate material, her choices were going to be as limited as his had been.

  “Get off me!” Tears had started to streak across her cheeks, and that was really what got to him.

  He didn’t know what the fuck to do with her. “I can’t let you go. But calm down, for God’s sake. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “They will. I know they will.” She hiccupped, so hard it sounded downright painful. “Let me go. Please.” Then she looked up at him and past his shoulder and started crying again, hard, giant sobs that tensed every muscle in Mason’s body.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Get off me. You’re going to hurt my baby.”

  Mason stared down at her, then jerked almost as if he’d been slapped. He took his knee off her stomach and pushed to his feet as quickly as possible.

  “Goddammit,” he breathed out. He raked his hands through his hair, turned, and saw that Five had come up on them, his eyes glowing in the bright moonlight.

  “She’s pregnant,” Mason said, because that was the only thing he could think about.

  “I heard.” The calm in Five’s voice was a salve to Mason’s taut nerves.

  Cecily rolled over, still crying, and rose on her knees. “I’m not staying. You have to let me go. I’ve seen the video, I’ve had the training. If any of these wolves try to have sex with me, they’re going to kill my baby.”

  Mason tried to offer her his hand but she shoved his arm away. He looked around at Five, expecting to see compassion there. Maybe it was the play of shadows across his face, stark and gray, everything washed out by the moonlight and the backwash from the ATV’s headlights, but the only thing Mason saw on Five’s face as he stared down at Cecily was a hard jaw and a mouth carved of stone and glowing eyes that sent a shiver down Mason’s spine.

  Cecily clambered to her feet, limping upright.

  Mason winced. He might have hurt her, twisted her knee. He remembered that hard yank he’d given her leg when he’d been trying to keep her from running off.

  To Five, he asked, “What’s going on?”

  “She has antibodies for the virus.”

  “What?”

  “She’s infected.”

  Cecily looked between them, settling on Five. “What virus? What are you taking about?”

  “And she is not pregnant.” Five took an obvious sniff of the air. “Human females have a very distinct scent when they are pregnant.”

  “You can’t know that for sure,” Mason said, giving Cecily another searching look, “not from a goddamn sniff of the air.”

  A soft growl cut through the air, raising the hair on Mason’s arms with a tingle. His gaze quickly returned to Five and he realized immediately he’d fucked up. The tight lines of discontent in Five’s expression were enough to tell him just how badly. He shouldn’t have questioned Five, not here, not now.

  “If that isn’t definitive enough for you,” Five said, his gaze never leaving Cecily and her gaze never leaving him, “the sample of blood we tested for the antibodies did not indicate pregnancy.”

  Her cheeks were wet and she reached up and swiped the tear tracks away. “Where’d you get the sample?”

  “It was convenient that you left one in the woods before we left the vicinity of the laboratory.”

 
“Fucking period.” She sniffed deeply and rubbed her nose. “You’d think we’d have figured out how to end them by now, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well if she’s on her damn period, she definitely ain’t pregnant. Even I know it doesn’t work like that.” Mason shook his head, glaring at Cecily. “You wanted me to think I could’ve hurt you.”

  Her glare wasn’t pretty. “It was worth a try.”

  A cold fury rose through Mason but he kept a tight control over it.

  Cecily covered her face with her hands. She started crying again. Behind her, across the trail and a short way into the woods, Mason caught a glimpse of movement.

  “Hey,” he said, clenching his hands, not sure what to do with them. He wanted to offer some kind of comfort but didn’t know what kind would be welcome.

  She didn’t respond.

  Five pulled something out of his back pocket. “Has she shown any symptoms of the infection?”

  “Not that I’ve—hey, I’m not going to—”

  “Submit!”

  The forcefulness of the command shut Mason up. Tension coursed through him, and adrenaline spiked his blood, but something in his chest pulled at him, and he stared with rigid attention at Five for several seconds before he realized…

  He had a choice.

  He exhaled, letting the fight drain out of him, and opened his hand to take the deceptively thin pair of cuffs from Five. He hadn’t seen anything like them before, but their purpose was obvious.

  “I’m sorry this is necessary,” Five said, “but she’s infected, and if she escapes, your entire species could pay the price.”

  Cecily raised her head at that. “What virus? What are you talking about?”

  Mason reached for her.

  She backed up.

  Right into Lake. She screamed, and he snagged her by the arms, lifting her so that only her toes touched the ground, stealing all her leverage when she started thrashing in his hold.

  “Let me go! Let go! Stop!”

  She tried to kick Mason but he blocked her and crowded close enough that it was impossible for her to get her legs up between them.