Microsoft Word - Jacks-Marcy-Hunted-and-on-the-Run.doc (12 page)

“There’s two hunters stalking us, and we’re both injured. I was shot with a silver bullet, and that slowed us down.”

“Where are you?”

John had caught a glimpse of the town sign when he and Storm had run in, and he told his alpha.

“I can be there in four hours by truck, maybe less if there’s no traffic. Can you hold out for that long?”

There was the very good chance that those hunters were still after them, but as far as John was aware, neither had seen his or Storm’s faces yet. “I think we can. We can hang out just outside of town until you get here. We’ll be hiding in the trees.”

“Do you have any money left to get a motel room? There’s nowhere you can stay until we get there?”

John was looking inside his wallet now, and he was disappointed with the amount of money had had left. He had no credit cards, and
92

Marcy Jacks

only five dollars cash, and maybe there was another twenty inside his account.

“I don’t think I have enough to get us a room, but I’m pretty sure the hunters haven’t seen our faces or anything.”

That was him trying to show James he had it under control again.

That had nearly gotten him and his mate killed. He couldn’t be doing that if he wanted to be a real, responsible alpha.

“But the shelter would do us some good. Can you put anything in my account?”

“Hang on a second,” James said, and through the line he could hear his alpha tapping on some keyboards.

The alpha of every pack was required to have the bank numbers of all his members on file for situations just like these, and no pack member was permitted to own a credit card unless it was the pack alpha himself.

With how poor most werewolf packs were, it was too easy to land deep into debt, and werewolves couldn’t have humans calling them night and day or digging around their personal information because payments were late or never made.

James was never stingy on what he gave to members that needed money, and had one time even secretly put five thousand into the account of one of his omegas, and that was when the omega had been trying to run away from the pack. It wasn’t until recently that the pack had come into even more money when a former hunter mated with one of the omega wolves, and to make amends, was currently pouring a lot of his fortune into repairing the cabins or building new ones.

“There’s a grand in your account now. That should be more than enough for you to get a safe room to stay in and food to eat until we pick you up.”

A grand. James must’ve heard John’s stomach growling through the phone line. After several hours of running, he was starving again.

An alpha wolf and a fully grown cougar shifter with a couple hundred dollars to spend in food would be more than well off for four hours.

Hunted and on the Run

93

“Thank you, sir,” John said.

“I’m heading out the door now. I’ll meet you at the motel. Try not to have too many delivery guys coming to your room. That’ll look suspicious to any hunters on your tail.”

“Yes, sir.”

John hung up the phone, and the first thing he did before running back to Storm was go into the McDonald’s and order at least half the menu.

He would get the rest of what he wanted delivered. That way he wouldn’t bring suspicion onto his motel room with only one delivery guy instead of five.

“Storm, look, I’ve got food for us,” John said, placing the warm, delicious smelling bags onto the dry patch of grass he found, and letting their scent wake Storm from the exhausted sleep he’d fallen into.

The cougar groaned and opened its one eye, shifting a little to see what exactly it was that John had brought.

John unwrapped a double pounder with bacon and cheese and put it to Storm’s mouth. “Eat this before shifting,” he said. His mate would need the energy before he could even attempt to make a shift.

Storm ate, and then John uncapped a water bottle and poured it into that large mouth. Someone had once told him that soda would only dehydrate the body more. He wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but considering their situation, he hadn’t wanted to risk it, so he’d bought at least ten water bottles.

Storm finished the bottle, another burger, and then drank another whole bottle before he was feeling well enough to shift into his human form. “You should eat, too,” he said, still sounding weak, but at least he had some of his strength back.

“I will, but you need to get dressed first. James put some money in my account, so we’re going to have a real bed until he gets here.”

John had never seen such a relieved look on Storm’s face before, especially concerning the coming of John’s pack. “Thank God. When
94

Marcy Jacks

will they all get here?”

“Little less than four hours if there’s no traffic. We just have to lie low until then.”

Storm put on his T-shirt, and with another burger in his mouth, he was also putting on his pants.

When he was fully dressed and the third burger gone, he smiled at John. “I can do that. Let’s go.”

* * * *

Tatum had been right. This was better. This was so much better.

They could hunt down those shifters and kill them without any problems at all like this.

Robert had never felt so much wild energy running through his body in all his life. Every scent and sound from what felt like several miles in each direction came at him, and he knew what they all represented as well.

He spotted a hummingbird fluttering around in the trees, and he could make out the individual colors on its wings and count the feathers as well.

The one thing he couldn’t do, which he thought was an ability all werewolves had, was speak to Tatum telepathically. No matter how hard he thought or tried to project what he wanted to the other wolf, no response came to him.

That was a good piece of information to have. Not all werewolves could communicate in their wolf forms. Did that mean that the two shifters they hunted were vulnerable like this as well?

A twig snapped in the distance, and Robert spotted a rabbit darting through the trees. His first instinct was to chase it, but Tatum’s teeth came crashing down quickly over his scruff, stopping him in his tracks.

Tatum was most definitely the more powerful wolf between the two of them.

Hunted and on the Run

95

Tatum shook him a little, letting Robert know that he wouldn’t tolerate his running off to catch small game.

When he was sure that Robert wouldn’t rush off after a squirrel, Tatum shifted back into a naked male. He got down on one knee in front of him, holding his face in both hands and looking him in the eyes.

“Now you listen to me, you’re still a little wild from your first transformation, but I know you can understand me. You don’t go running after little things like that. Stick with me and we’ll find those shifters. You’ll get your revenge, and we’ll both turn a profit, but you need to learn some self-control and real quick now, because as far as other hunters are concerned, we’re the enemy. You learn some goddamn self-control and fast because if I think for one second you will give me away to other hunters, even by accident, I will skin you alive, just like I’ll do to them. You understand?”

Tatum’s eyes became more and more manic with every word he spoke, and Robert understood. He nodded.

“Good. I can smell them. They went east, and the trail is still relatively fresh.”

Robert put his nose in the air and sniffed. There was definitely the scent of another pair of animals in the air, and it wasn’t exactly as old as he thought it would be.

He’d made his first painful shift almost immediately after Tatum had scratched his face. Tatum had to spend the next hour, or maybe it was more, chasing Robert around, trying to teach him some control over himself.

Robert thought he was doing pretty well, considering he’d only had a few hours to learn. If all werewolves put in even half the time Robert was now to try and learn some control, then there would be less killing and hunters wouldn’t be after them.

Maybe it was just in their nature to be stupid like that. He and Tatum knew better, and they were going to do everything in their power to keep hold of their humanity while they were like this.

96

Marcy Jacks

“You follow me,” Tatum said, shifting back into his large black wolf. He did it quickly, despite the sounds of his snapping bones.

Clearly it didn’t hurt him that much to be making the change, and Robert looked forward to the day when he could change without it being painful.

Together they ran off, following the scents of their prey.

Hunted and on the Run

97

They ate everything they could, even the chicken dinner John had ordered from that little place across the street.

Storm could’ve gone on eating, but he was satisfied and didn’t want to ask for more. John had explained that too many men delivering food would look suspicious if it happened that the hunters had made it into town and someone was watching for odd things like that, and Storm agreed with him.

He didn’t want to bloat himself to the point where he couldn’t run if he needed to anyway. His stomach was satisfied, and neither he nor John was about to pass out from starvation. That was all that mattered.

They lay in bed after that, both tired from all the food and traveling, but neither willing to sleep anymore. They watched the clock instead, counting down to when John’s pack would arrive to help them and bring them back…home.

Storm supposed that John’s home was his home now. The other man had said all he could, and after taking a bullet for him, and the both of them caring for each other during their ordeal, Storm couldn’t deny it any longer.

There was definitely more going on between them than lust. He still thought it was odd that two males could mate with each other, but perhaps this was the true reason for the sudden decrease in werecats over the last couple of decades and why werecats were so against homosexuality.

He’d thought about this earlier, but only now did he start to give it some serious thought. Maybe too many werecats had mated with their
98

Marcy Jacks

own sex, producing too few kittens, and soon it got to the point where elder werecats started policing the younger ones, forcing them to mate with shifters of the opposite sex to keep producing more shifters and prevent extinction.

He told this theory to John, who listened patiently.

“That could be it,” he said. “I mean, only about a year ago no one in our pack had seen two mated males until James came home with Corey. He had to kidnap the man after they’d both been shot. It was a total mess, but that was the first time it happened. Ever since then, it’s been going on like clockwork. Males mating with males.”

“Do you think this could be the reason werecats are becoming so rare?” Storm asked.

John shrugged. “Hard to say. Even if this was happening with werewolves, you don’t have to be born a werewolf. We have venom in our teeth and claws. We can just make other werewolves like that.”

“Yes, but what if―”

John’s grip on him suddenly became tight, his eyes widening so much that Storm could see the whites all the way around them.

“What is it?” Storm mouthed.

John’s eyes suddenly went to the door. The chain was in place, and it was bolted shut, but there were footsteps lurking. Too close for someone to be just casually passing by.

They both slipped off the bed and landed on the other side, looking at the door like they were children or something, waiting for the boogeyman to come in and get them.

It wasn’t until the door handle rattled that they both sprung up as one and headed to the bathroom.

Their room was on the second story of the motel, and there was a window in there. When they’d come in here for the first time and scoped the place out for possible hiding places and escape routes, that was the only place for them to go to.

“They don’t give up, do they?” John said.

“Not until they have their catch or we kill them,” Storm replied,
Hunted and on the Run

99

flipping the little locking switch and sliding the rectangular window to the side.

It would be a tight squeeze for the both of them, but they could do it.

“Here,” John said, grabbing one of the little complimentary conditioner bottles from the tub. Apparently he’d also been thinking about how tight a fit it would be as he dumped the stuff onto his palm and started smearing it along the window pane. Conditioner made a good lubricant in a pinch, after all.

The banging on the front door got louder, and the tiny lock in the bathroom with its weak-ass door wouldn’t hold them off for long either.

“Hurry up and go,” John said, pushing Storm toward the window.

This was not the time to argue over who should be going out to safety first, so when John linked his fingers together to give Storm something to step on and get to the window easier, he took the offering and shimmied himself through the window.

The conditioner made his skin a little slimy, but he managed to get through with only a few red marks along his shoulders and sides. He landed on his feet in the back parking lot, right beside one of those large garbage disposal units. He looked up to see John poking his head to make sure Storm had landed well.

“Now you, come on,” Storm said. They needed to hurry before the hunters figured out that he and John were taking the back exit.

The door to their motel room crashed in. John jumped easily up to the window and had half his body through when another crash sounded and something grabbed him from behind and tried pulling him back in.

He screamed from the pain of being pulled so hard through such a small space.

“No!” Storm yelled. He leaped on top of the garbage bin and jumped as high as he could. He reached out and grabbed John’s arms, but he couldn’t hold on because that goddamn conditioner made his
100

Marcy Jacks

skin slick.

“John!” he yelled when his mate slipped through his fingers. He grabbed hold of the window pane before he could fall back down again.