Mason's Regret

by Odessa Lynne

  “You understand submission, don’t you?”

  The wolf’s words might have sounded like a question, but there was no damn question there.

  Mason nodded, once, and the ache in his chest bloomed into a pressure unlike anything he’d ever felt.

  Was he having a goddamn heart attack? He actually thought he might be.

  The wolf’s head tilted and a strange look came over his face, one Mason had no hope of understanding. “But your alpha has a tight hold on you, I see. Fascinating. What has the false alpha Traesikeille done?” He turned to the other three wolves and addressed his next words to the long-haired wolf that freaked Mason the hell out. “Jetikima will want this one. He is proof that the false alpha has started integrating humans into the packs.”

  “Jetikima won’t be pleased,” the long-haired wolf said. “Traesikeille is trying to turn the prophecy.”

  “He will not succeed.” The wolf turned back to Mason. “And that dilemma is solved. Join us or not, I won’t kill you. But you will come with us and you will submit.”

  Mason stared back, saying nothing.

  “Ah. I see I’ll have to treat you as a beta to be pulled to my will.” The wolf’s hand landed in the middle of Mason’s chest, claws coming out swiftly to prick at Mason’s skin through his t-shirt. Mason’s backward stagger was stopped by the hard clench of the wolf’s other hand at the back of Mason’s neck, claws breaking the skin with a sudden sharp pain.

  “Submit,” the wolf said in his own language, his voice a powerful, physical thing clawing at Mason’s insides.

  Mason pulled at the wolf’s arm, trying to pry the wolf’s hold loose, but the wolf was too strong.

  Those claws dug deeper, the grip tightening until Mason could swear he felt bones creaking. Pressure stabbed at his forehead, stealing his ability to think.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He couldn’t fucking breathe at all.

  “Release him,” someone said, sounding very far away.

  “Paetinishikid,” the wolf holding Mason said. “Do not interfere.”

  “You’ll break his neck. Jetikima will need him if she’s to—”

  “He will submit.”

  “Betas have to choose,” the long-haired wolf snarled. “You forget the warning of the Diviners.”

  “My fate is my own. I’ll deal with it as I please.”

  Dark spots swam across Mason’s vision and the voices of the wolves faded in and out like a cheap veo recording.

  “You are not my alpha,” the long-haired wolf said, “and I’ll deal with you as I please.”

  Mason thought he might have blacked out for a moment, because in the next instant someone had him under the arms and he was halfway to the ground staring up at the sky through the trees.

  The long-haired wolf loomed over him, blood dripping onto Mason’s chest from long, shiny claws. “Drop him.”

  The wolf wasn’t talking to Mason and in the next instant Mason’s breath jolted out of his lungs as his back hit the damp ground.

  He breathed in, the pressure in his chest nowhere near as severe as it had been only moments ago. Someone squatted beside him and patted the side of his face.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  It was Lamar and he was looking down at Mason with a tight furrow between his eyebrows. Mason darted his gaze around, looking for Cecily. He found her, her back to Sebastian’s chest, wrapped tightly in his arms, her mouth stuffed with a piece of fabric Mason couldn’t identify. Sebastian said something into her ear and her expression went flat.

  She was afraid, but she was doing a damn good job hiding it.

  Mason was afraid too, but he wasn’t so sure he was hiding it at all.

  “You’re bleeding,” Lamar said. “Lucky you aren’t dead. Those claws caught you under the chin.”

  Mason blinked up at Lamar. “What?”

  Of course, as soon as he moved his mouth, he felt the flesh beneath his chin pull apart. He reached up, cupping his jaw, then hissed at the sting of pain.

  Lamar winced. “That’s going to be a bitch to stitch up. Those too.” He pointed vaguely toward the back of Mason’s neck. He looked over his shoulder, then back to Mason. “I have a small emergency kit in my bag. They might let me—”

  “Go,” the long-haired wolf said. “He doesn’t need your assistance.”

  Lamar’s eyebrows rose. He looked down at Mason one last time, then rose and moved to cluster with the other humans.

  The long-haired wolf sniffed the air. His eyes narrowed on Mason. “You’ll come with us.”

  Mason sat up. Blood coated his hand, and he could feel it running off his chin and down his neck. He needed pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding. “You got something I can—”

  “Use your shirt.”

  Okay, then.

  Mason wadded up the bottom of his shirt and pressed it to his chin. He jerked his head awkwardly in Cecily’s direction. “It’s not safe to have her with you. She’s infected with a virus.”

  “Is that why she’s dying?”

  Mason glanced again at Cecily. “I have no idea.”

  “Your alpha, who is he?”

  “I mean it, she could infect every—”

  The wolf reached down and dug his fingers into Mason’s hair. He used that grip to tilt Mason’s head back. “Just because I stopped Haeiakim from making a stupid mistake does not mean your situation has changed. Do not talk except to answer my questions. Understood?”

  Mason swallowed hard and nodded.

  The wolf released Mason’s head, then took him by the arm and hauled him upright. Mason swayed on his feet but then stabilized. He didn’t know if he should thank the wolf or pray for mercy from him.

  His gaze strayed to the wolf lying face down on the ground only a few feet away. The back of his shirt was a long streak of bloody slashes.

  “His neck is broken. He might heal.”

  The cold nature of the wolf’s words chilled Mason to the bone.

  “Now,” the wolf said again, “your alpha, who is he?”

  Chapter 27

  Mason dragged his gaze away from the wolf on the ground and looked up. “He, uh—” He released his bloody shirt and let his hand fall to his side. He cleared his throat. He could feel the faintest trickle of blood sliding down his neck but he wasn’t in pain unless he stretched his face.

  Which he wasn’t going to do again, because goddammit, that hurt like a son of a bitch.

  The wolf was waiting, his strange eyes glittering with reflected sunlight and the lines of his face a patient mask.

  Mason wasn’t going to fall for that again, though. “He calls himself Five. I have no idea what you would call him.”

  “Five,” the wolf said, testing the word. He turned his head and looked off into the woods, before he returned his gaze to Mason. “Weketekari ah se Taliskaeiriat, I would think.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  The corner of the wolf’s mouth turned up. “I think you could say without any trouble at all. The rush of your blood and the scent of your worry is giving you away. But it’s an argument for another day.” He turned to Jay. “We’ll take them both. Leave their things. We have a distance to go and very little time. Weketekari and his pack are near.”

  It seemed the wolf knew Five, or at least knew of him, and was familiar enough to recognize a name Five had made up only a few days before. It didn’t make sense and it was just one more question to add to the many Mason already had.

  Not only that, but Five was apparently nearby and that didn’t make sense either.

  Mason took a closer look at his surroundings as the others herded him into a line between Jay and Lamar, Cecily and Sebastian ahead of them.

  The worry he’d been carrying around all day began to morph into the burn of anger. Five had abandoned him for who knew what reason and the whole idea of it was starting to piss him off. Because if Five was here, then he had to have followed—

  Mason clenched his fist as his confus
ion coalesced into something more.

  That son of a bitch.

  It was very possible Five had set Mason loose with Cecily in the hopes that Cecily would lead them right to the people they were looking for—and the weapon.

  Meaning he’d used Mason as the equivalent of a goddamn beacon.

  It made a twisted kind of sense. Five claimed not to trust Mason, so why tell him what he had planned? Five had been clear that he didn’t trust Cecily, so why not assume she had a closer connection to the weapon and the people responsible for it than she claimed?

  Except it still didn’t come close to explaining Five’s reason for leaving the way he had, and all Mason was left with was more confusion as his anger quickly fizzled out.

  The long-haired wolf gestured to one of the remaining two wolves—the one without any injury to his face—and that wolf stepped forward and took the lead. The long-haired wolf fell back to the end as everyone followed the new leader.

  They walked for almost an hour before the wolf in the lead stopped, his head coming around, his expression one that Mason had seen just yesterday on Cord’s face, and Gray’s. His pause lasted for several long moments and during that time, no one spoke.

  Then again, no one had been speaking before that either, so it wasn’t a change. Even Cecily had finally had the cloth removed from her mouth after a harsh warning from Sebastian that she had obviously decided was in her best interest to take seriously.

  After a careful sniff of the air and a slow canvassing of the unusually thick pine canopy overhead, the wolf resumed walking without a word, pushing his way into a dense stand of pine trees.

  And then, with no warning at all, gunshots rang out, a repeating echo that fired Mason’s blood with a sharp, sudden flood of adrenaline.

  There was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to go except forward into the pines.

  The wolf in front of Cecily took several shots in the chest, and Mason yelled, “Get down!” and lunged for her.

  She turned, the look on her face telling him in no uncertain terms that he’d been both right and wrong about her: she couldn’t be trusted and fear had no place in the fiercely determined expression she wore.

  She raised her arm over her head and circled her wrist, finger high in the air.

  Shit. He wheeled away from her and ducked low, not sure if that was going to help or not, his hand on the ground for balance and his gaze scanning every direction but picking out nothing and no one to account for the gunshots.

  Cecily wasn’t watching her back, probably on the assumption that whoever was firing those weapons was doing it for her, and her overconfidence backfired as Jay yanked out a knife from a sheath at his thigh and grabbed her from behind and hauled her backward, putting her body between him and the direction of the gunshots.

  “Into the trees!” the long-haired wolf roared, and in a move that would have put Lake’s powerful moves the day before to shame, he grabbed a branch and hauled himself up, then raced across a branch that cracked under his every step before he jumped and went flying through the air toward a tree twice as tall.

  Mason jerked his attention back to the ground just as Sebastian and Lamar took off toward the protection of the thick pines ahead.

  Mason pushed forward, sprinting toward those same pines. Less than halfway there, a bullet tore through his right shoulder and he let out a startled shout. Pain sparked hot and bright and spread with breath-stealing speed.

  He looked down at the welling blood, a lightheadedness stealing his ability to think. He staggered, realized he had to get down, and dropped to his knees and crawled one-armed toward the nearest tree.

  More shots fired, but he got the tree at his back and tried to breathe, but something was wrong. His arm was on fire, and his body wasn’t responding like it should and the pressure was back in his chest—so sudden and complete that this time—this time he really did think he might be having a heart attack.

  A crippling burn spread through him, and his gritted teeth lost their ability to hold back his whimper as he tried to pull his shirt away from the bleeding injury. His chin burned with sudden pain, and blood gathered at the crease of his neck. On top of everything else, he’d managed to pull the scabbed-over slashes apart and reopen the wounds. But it was his shoulder that—

  Oh God. He shouldn’t have looked.

  His breath was dying in his lungs and his stomach roiled and he couldn’t touch what wasn’t there. He thought about the size of the bullets they’d used against the wolves and knew this was no more than he deserved, but fucking shit, he actually liked having an arm that moved.

  His head hit the back of the tree. He heard voices—someone screaming—and jerked hard when he realized it was him.

  Why wasn’t the fucking gift inside him taking the pain away? What the goddamn hell was wrong? Because something was very, very wrong.

  Steady. Steady. He had to get pressure on the wound. He would bleed out if he didn’t.

  With a shaking hand, he pulled at his t-shirt, thinking he could rip it off the way Five had ripped it off him two days ago. It didn’t happen.

  He clenched his teeth and changed tactics, stretching the shirt up over his left arm and his head, and trying to wedge his—

  “God—” He couldn’t even finish his curse.

  He dragged the shirt back down, breathing heavily, feeling like he was going to pass out. The goddamned shirt wasn’t coming off.

  He rolled his head to the side and felt blood well through the scabs under his chin again. A crackle sounded somewhere in the underbrush to his left and he rolled his head that way. Blood made his throat sticky and every time he moved his head he heard a little squelch.

  He listened—and noticed for the first time how quiet it had gotten. No gunshots, no voices, no major movement at all.

  A wolf roared in the distance, making him jerk.

  He couldn’t help it—he groaned out in pain, reflexively moving his hand toward his shoulder, but stopping before he went so far as to touch anything.

  A breeze flitted past, scattering leaves in every direction across the forest floor. One landed on the laces of his boot and got stuck there.

  Mason tried holding his breath to hear better, but he was in too much pain to keep it up.

  The crackle came again, much too close.

  He couldn’t move. If he did, the sounds of leaves crunching beneath him would give away his position—and that was assuming his position hadn’t already been found by whoever was sneaking through the woods.

  Shit. He was going to have to move. He couldn’t just sit there and wait for some asshole to step out of the woods and take off his head.

  Decided, he tried drawing his leg in slowly, but even that made a quiet crackle in the leaves, so he stopped and waited. Nothing happened.

  Was Five nearby? Would yelling for him help his situation or make it worse? With those wolf senses of his, if he didn’t realize Mason was in trouble… Well, he had to know. And if he knew but hadn’t come to help, then Mason had to assume—

  You’re on your own, that ever-present voice in his head said.

  And fuck you too, Mason thought back.

  He’d be okay. He didn’t need anybody to save him; he could do it himself.

  That goddamned voice came back again: But what if you didn’t have to? Wouldn’t that be worth something?

  You know what, you fucking bastard? You need to pick a side and stick to it.

  A twig cracked somewhere to the other side of the tree he was leaning against and his attention snapped back into focus. Dread coiled tight in his stomach.

  Goddammit, but he was in real trouble here.

  He dug his fingers into the earth, then leaned on his left arm and used it to push himself to his feet. The crackle and crunch of leaves sounded too loud in his ears. Twigs snapped under his boots and the rough pine bark scraped at the side of Mason’s arm. He rested his left shoulder against the tree, waiting impatiently for some sign that whoever was coming for him had he
ard his movements.

  “Found you,” came from behind him and Mason turned quickly, but an arm wound around his throat, and another wrapped around his torso.

  He didn’t even try to fight; the pain in his shoulder was unimaginable. He screamed.

  The sound echoed loud in his ears, reverberating against his own eardrums, but it was nothing compared to the roar of the wolf who jumped from the trees behind them both.

  Mason could hardly believe it, but he would’ve recognized that roar anywhere. Warmth drove away the pressure in his chest, followed by a strange sense of rightness where only wrongness had lived before.

  The man with his arm around Mason’s throat jerked him around, throwing him into the trunk of the tree, his own body smacking into Mason from behind and forcing out another unintended scream through Mason’s gritted teeth. Then the weight was gone, and the roar of wolf accompanied a terrified yell that ended on a gurgle as Mason slid down the tree, bark digging at his left arm the entire way.

  His right shoulder was nothing but a fiery ball of pain shooting sparks through his whole body.

  “I am sorry,” Five said, in a tone of voice that told Mason something bad was coming.

  He was right.

  Five pulled Mason away from the tree, shoved his shoulder into Mason’s belly, and straightened with Mason slung across his back.

  Mason couldn’t even speak. The blood rushed to his head, his vision went tight, and he passed out.

  Chapter 28

  “Wake up, shitbrain, come on.”

  A stinging slap to the side of Mason’s face finally cut through the grogginess in his brain. He lay still for several seconds. Too long, because in the next instant, another stinging slap landed on his cheek and he jolted the rest of the way to consciousness.

  “Oh, thank God.” Marcus got down in his face, the thin, flickering light just enough to illuminate Marcus’s eyes. Mason reached out to push Marcus away so he could have a little breathing room, but his arm wasn’t working.

  “I’m okay,” he tried to say, but even he could hear the slur in his words. Something buzzed against his face.

  He blinked a few times into the dark room and turned his head.