He was about to do just that and suggest they pack it in for the night―the storm had blown in quickly, and it was getting dangerous being out like this―when Nick suddenly let out a bark and launched himself down the river bank.
What the―?
Morgan barked to signal he was right behind the other wolf and ran after him. It was scary how quickly Nick vanished in the storm. One second he was there, and the next there was no sign of him.
Thankfully Morgan caught up to him quickly, and he was able to keep pace with the other wolf, keeping him in sight this time.
Morgan’s heart raced, the thrill of a sudden chase coming over him as he wondered what Nick had scented. The other wolf did have a
much more powerful sense of smell than anyone else in the pack, and
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whatever it was that he’d found, Morgan wasn’t even picking it up
yet.
Then, Nick came to a sudden stop, forcing Morgan to skid to a halt behind him, so ungracefully that he kicked up rocks and nearly went into the freezing water of the still-flowing river.
Morgan growled as the other wolf bent down to sniff, but Nick ignored him.
Finally, Morgan’s curiosity got the better of him, and he perked his ears and squinted his eyes, trying to get a feel for what the other wolf was examining with his nose.
Then the scent shot up Morgan’s snout like someone had stuck that wonderful smelling…whatever it was…right under his nostrils.
It was like milk chocolate, something else that was salty and sweet at the same time, but it wasn’t just those things either. The scent was like a something Morgan had only experienced on a sunny day in summer, right after the grass had been freshly cut and still smelled of morning dew. Morgan always scented watermelon whenever he came across a healthy lawn that had been cut, and he was smelling that
now.
Then he was pulled out of the little fantasy that he’d been in and was thrust back into the cold, gray reality that was happening all around him. The wind still howled, the snow still fell in a thick
blanket that was blinding, and Morgan’s paws were starting to become numb because he was still standing in the wet rocks of the river bank.
Morgan had to step around Nick and find out what the deal was with that scent. He had to know what it was that made his body tingle so much, his tail all twitchy, and just every cell in his body excited for
no reason.
He saw it all right, and his heart sank.
It was a young man. A boy, really. The kid had to be somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, if that.
Half his body was in the freezing water, and he was naked. The
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naked part was enough for Morgan to realize that the poor kid was one of the wandering werewolves they were searching for, but Morgan inhaled deeply through his nose and didn’t catch anything familiar from any of the objects he’d scented before coming on out.
James had taken most of Phillip’s wolves back to their pack land to quickly gather their things together. Some of those things belonged to their missing, and before going out on their search party, everyone had been required to get the scent off of all of those objects so they would have an idea of who they were tracking.
The scent of this kid did not belong to any of the missing werewolves from Phillip’s pack that he could tell, though it was possible that being out in the wild for so long had changed his scent. He could be one of the werewolves that Deacon had forcefully transformed. Most of those wolves had gone wild, and that was likely the fate of this poor kid, but that hardly seemed to matter. He was still alive and breathing, despite the gray hue to his skin. Morgan suspected it was blue, but the weather made that hard to know for
sure.
Something in him stopped at the sight of the man. It was a sensation he’d never felt in all of his life, and he was fifty-nine years old, for another two days at least, and he was clinging to those days by the clutches of his fingers.
With a start, he realized what the heart-stopping, cease-to-breathe, organ-failing sensation was.
Morgan Dane was looking down at the naked, and almost dead, body of his mate.
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Chapter Two
The storm had thickened to the point where it was virtually impossible for them to make it back to the pack without getting lost. At first, Morgan had thought that Nick would be able to make the journey with his superior senses and would be able to get some help for them.
Until the wolf had transformed back into a man and told him he
couldn’t smell or hear anything beyond the falling snow and cold, moaning wind.
Fucking perfect.
They had to find shelter. Morgan had picked up the smaller man that they’d found, practically in the water, and carried him bridal style. He hadn’t put the guy down since, even when Nick had offered to take over for him and give his arms a break.
The poor guy had stepped back quickly when Morgan growled at him, and growling at another alpha, unless you were trying to pick a fight, was never a good thing.
Morgan could just barely see the deep frown on Nick’s face through the fog of falling snow, and he quickly apologized.
“Sorry. I didn’t…uh, I didn’t like hearing that I wasn’t strong enough to carry him. We need to get out of here anyway, before the weather gets any worse.”
Nick’s frown didn’t leave his face, though the other man looked much more forgiving for Morgan’s blunder than he had before. “I wasn’t offering because of that, but you’re right. We need to go.”
Nick shifted his feet, the snow making a soft crunching noise. “Snowfall’s getting heavy,” he said. “Soon we won’t be able to move
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at all.”
“And I don’t think there’s any abandoned cabins out here that are conveniently placed for us to use,” Morgan deadpanned, holding his mate closer to his chest when the shivering became more violent.
Shit. His body heat wasn’t helping, and the man’s temperature was dropping even more.
“Actually, I think there is one,” Nick said.
“What?” No way. No effing way were they that lucky.
Nick nodded. “I scented the varnish ten minutes back the other
way. It was fresh, like they’d given the place a coat only a couple weeks ago, right before the snow started to fall. There was way too much of it to be from an open, freezing can somewhere. We’re definitely near a house.”
How they would get to that house, considering they could barely see each other, was a different story. Not to mention the possibility of it already being inhabited by people.
They had no choice. Unless they wanted to find a spot in the trees and dig a hole in the snow for themselves, they would have to try for the house.
The chance of building a small den was possible, and they could keep relatively warm using their body heat, which was probably what the other alphas were doing if they were still out in this shit, too, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to help the man in Morgan’s arms. He would need more than that if he was going to survive.
“We should try for it,” Morgan said, stepping out of the blind wolf’s way. “After you.”
Nick had said the house was only ten minutes back, but they walked for what seemed like thirty. Nick hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that he was having trouble scenting anything. How could he? With the way the wind was pushing everything, they were lucky they hadn’t stumbled into the river.
Morgan shielded the smaller man from the wind and snow as best as he could, but there was only so much protection he could offer with
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his body. The snow still fell onto his pale skin and into that dirty blond hair, melting, becoming wet, and making the poor kid freeze even more than he needed to.
Morgan didn’t think of the kid’s hair as being dirty blond because that was the shade of it, but because, really, there was mud and dirt in that blond hair. Morgan had no doubt in his mind that if he washed it, those strands would glow like yellow gold in the sun.
The sun was a faraway dream in this reality they were in, and just when Morgan was about to give up and suggest they build a den for the night, Nick made a sound of relief and suddenly stopped.
“I’ve got the scent again!” he yelled over his shoulder and over the wind.
Thank God. “Great! Where do we go?”
Morgan was so desperate for some heat, hot water, and shelter from all this fucking wind that he no longer cared if that house, cabin, shed, whatever it was, was occupied.
There were some people who came up here for the summer to get away from the rest of civilization, fish, or even―Morgan shuddered―hunt. But that could still be someone’s year-round home.
“This way!” Nick said, and Morgan had to quickly keep up before he lost his friend in the storm.
Nick vanished in the haze in front of him a few times, and in his
desperation, Morgan nearly tripped and fell over snow-covered roots and sticks frozen into the ground. The worst came when he stubbed his toe against a wooden stair.
He opened his mouth and cursed as loud as he could, and not even the numbness that was seeping into his feet was enough to save him from the pain.
“God fucking damn it! Shit!” He yelled that, and several other pretty bad things he would rather not repeat.
Nick’s hand reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him up the snow-covered stairs, even as he still cursed. It was getting harder to walk, and there was almost four feet of snow covering
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everything.
Then it clicked in Morgan’s mind what had happened. He’d stubbed his toe on a stair, and Nick had pulled him up those stairs. Reaching a hand out, he felt the slightly curved varnished wood of the rail. They had made it to the cabin.
Thank you, Jesus.
Both Nick and Morgan felt along the walls, and Nick kept one hand back on Morgan to keep them from losing each other. Then, finally, Nick called back to him,
“Found the door!”
The next thing Morgan heard through the loud whistling and wailing of the wind was a distinct crack as Nick forced the door open.
The man all but vanished from Morgan’s sight as he fell within the house. Morgan quickly followed.
He had to blink a couple of times to adjust his vision. It was surreal, finally being able to see after spending all that time in a whiteout, and everything inside the cabin looked so comfortable and normal.
Nick forced the door shut behind him before anymore snow or cold air could get in. Morgan noted the strip of wood that had come off of the doorway when Nick had smashed it open. He quickly ran to the nearest couch, put his mate on top of it, then grabbed a chair from the joining kitchen, and went back to Nick.
“Here, I got something to keep it shut,” he said, and Nick moved just enough so that Morgan could position the chair under the door handle, like he’d seen done in the movies. That should keep it shut.
It did, and it held. There was only a little bit of snow on the hardwood floor, and some cold air that leaked through the crack in the door, but that could be covered with a towel or something. This would make sufficient shelter.
Nick leaned against the door, as though hesitant to step away from it lest it blow open on them, but he did lift his nose in the air, sniffing at least three times before he was satisfied.
“I smell people, but the scent is old. They haven’t been here in a
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while.”
“I don’t think they’re coming in this storm.”
Morgan looked out the window and was actually a little scared by the fact that he couldn’t see any of the scenery he knew was there beyond all the white. “Christ, Nick, you should see it.”
“I have a good enough idea.”
Nick finally pushed away from the wall. “Hopefully these people have a phone. I want to call back home and make sure Adam’s okay.”
Despite the fact that Adam wasn’t one of the alphas sent out on a search mission, Morgan understood the other man’s need to worry. Just thinking about someone else’s mate reminded him of his own, and he carefully crept over to the couch and peered over the back, looking down at where his mate slept.
The cottage wasn’t exactly warm, likely because, with the lack of people, there was no need to heat it, but it was a tropical paradise in here, a sauna, by comparison to what was going on outside, and already the guy’s color was showing signs of improvement. He was the most beautiful creature Morgan had ever laid eyes on.
There were plenty of places on him that were suddenly starting to swell and turn red, however.