He pulled out a small, black case from the inside pocket of his winter jacket. It looked like it might be the kind of thing that would contain some reading glasses, but then he opened it up, and Morgan cringed.
“Yeah, you know what this is, don’t you?” Tatum said, holding up the opened case for Morgan to better see the needles inside.
Adrenaline. They were going to pump him full of it and try to
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force a transformation. He’d heard horror stories about this kind of
thing, usually second hand from relatives of the few to survive or fight against the effects long enough to be rescued.
“Why don’t you just get it over with?” Morgan asked.
“So you can go wolf while my backup is gone?” Tatum let out a small laugh. “No thanks. But just in case you get any ideas about getting away, we’re going to do this the second they get back. I’m going to personally rip the skin off your body, and then I’m going to wear it around as a trophy.”
Morgan shivered. Even the toughest of alphas could be brought down with ideas of being skinned alive.
He wriggled his wrists harder behind his back, and that act had apparently not gone unnoticed by Tatum. “Don’t get your hopes up trying to break through that, either.” His grin was toothy. “I was a Boy Scout. Got my badge in tying knots and everything.”
Morgan couldn’t resist. “Thought they didn’t let fags into the scouts?”
That earned him a punch in the nose. The pain blinded him for a
second, and the crunch was the worst sound he’d ever heard.
He groaned but managed to keep from making any other pained
sounds.
Tatum must’ve punched Morgan with his injured hand because when his vision cleared and he looked at the man, he was shaking his hand out and sucking on the blood that had started to flow again. He was cursing something awful, too.
If Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman, had ever heard that kind of language, she would’ve torn his head off.
“Filthy, stinking, motherfucking―”
“Sir!”
Tatum looked up, and Morgan did, too, when Storm called out. The man was standing up straight, his one eye focused as he stared off in the distance.
“What?” Tatum snapped, looking in the direction Storm stared in.
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His face blanched when he caught sight of the younger member of their team, Chance, if Morgan remembered the name right.
He was walking back to the campsite, shifting his legs through the high snow, pushing through.
Morgan couldn’t smell it because of how clogged with blood his nose was, but now that he was looking in that direction, he could see the way he left a dark trail of red behind him.
Something had attacked the guy, and now Chance was trying to get back to the camp.
It was the perfect way to find out exactly where the enemy was hiding when one couldn’t count on the wind to be with them.
Storm and Tatum knew this, too. Tatum was the first to act,
jumping up and grabbing for a rifle from the inside of one of the long bags he carried around. It was filled with other weapons.
Storm spoke up when Tatum took aim.
“Sir, he’s already brought them this close. Maybe we can still use him to help us fight when they arrive.”
Tatum whirled on him, pointing the barrel of his gun at Storm’s face.
Storm lifted his hands and backed away a step.
Tatum seethed at him. “You were the one who said they wouldn’t be tracking us for him. I should kill you, too!”
Morgan had to give the man credit, he recovered quickly. “Then you will kill Chance, and Tony is missing. You’ll be all alone to fight the werewolves.”
Tatum actually shook with anger. He bared his clenched teeth to the other man, but must have seen the logic in his words because he swore loudly and turned away.
“God fucking damn it! Just grab a gun, and radio Tony. See if that asshole’s―”
The little black walkie-talkie at Storm’s hip crackled. No voices sounded. Nothing human, at any rate, but there were some angry growls coming from the other end.
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Storm took the thing in his hand and pressed the button on the side. “Whoever this is, is the hunter you took alive?”
Why was he even worrying about him? Clearly this man wasn’t a human. Morgan could smell it all over him. Why did he bother working for the hunters?
Another loud growl sounded, and then the loud screech of the signals getting crossed somewhere, and then nothing.
Storm looked down at the radio and then put it back in the little holster at his hip.
“Just you and me then,” Tatum said. “Him, too, I guess, but he looks pretty worthless,” Tatum nodded toward their bleeding comrade, who was almost upon them by now.
“So long as the possibility exists that Tony is still alive, I’ll stay with you.”
Morgan’s first thought at those words was how much this man must love that hunter to be doing the things he was doing against other paranormal creatures. Strange, especially considering how dead his tone was.
Despite himself, Morgan began to relax a little. Help had come, and he wasn’t going to be a wolf skin rug any time soon.
He almost breathed a sigh of relief, until he saw one particular wolf off in the distance.
It was a common gray wolf, of regular size, for an omega. Morgan
didn’t need his sense of smell to know who that was.
He screamed when Tatum pointed his rifle and fired.
The blast might as well have shot straight into Morgan’s heart. The jolt he got was so strong, he thought he would pass out or have a heart attack.
But then that deathlike grip on his insides released when he noted how Terry had skittered out of the way of the blast. Snow exploded up and around the area that was shot, but Terry had not been hit.
“Fucking wolf, hold still!” Tatum said, aiming and firing again. Storm held a gun in his hands, a black Glock that Morgan suspected
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was loaded, but he just stood there, watching as Tatum took his shots.
Again, he missed as Terry leaped out of the way. Now, that other hunter was running for his life, running and sobbing, waving his arms around for help.
No, not help. Morgan realized. He was trying to warn Tatum.
Terry hadn’t come here by himself. He was acting as the distraction.
Storm must have realized this because he ran to where Morgan was still tied to the tree and put a gun to his head just as James, Nick, John, and even a few of the newer alphas to the pack jumped over the shrubs that had been hiding them, claws out, jaws open, and anger in every pair of golden eyes.
Tatum didn’t turn around until it was too late, and the rifle was
knocked out of his hands with one last blast that clipped a black walnut tree, sending splinters of bark and wood flying all over the place.
He screamed as John locked his teeth around his arm, but he was
quick to pull out that hunting knife of his and stab the young alpha
with it before John could take his whole arm off.
He cried out and flew off the man. The other alphas abandoned their prey and came forward to make sure John was okay, giving Tatum enough time to grab his rifle, the bag of weapons he’d had with him, and run to the snow mobile he had waiting for him.
Any one of the other wolves could have picked him off. It wouldn’t have been hard with the clumsy, panicked way he ran. He was practically tripping over his own feet.
No, it seemed that after John had been seen to, everyone looked up and noticed that Storm had a gun to Morgan’s temple. Now there was only one man here they really wanted to kill.
Chance saw that his leader was getting ready to abandon them, and he screamed as he attempted to force his body to obey and run faster. “Wait!”
He’d almost made it. Morgan was even starting to inwardly cheer
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for the kid. He always did enjoy the underdog.
Tatum had the engine started and sped away just as the bloodied kid reached out to touch the snow mobile, leaving a streak of blood from where his hands had made contact.
He fell to his knees and screamed after his former leader, then
broke down sobbing in the snow.
Some of the other alphas surrounded him, a few even cocking their heads as they watched him. Likely they were wondering whether or not to just put him out of his misery or leave him alone considering how pathetic he looked.
Hell, it was so pathetic that even with a gun to his head, Morgan still saw all the details.
James shifted onto two legs. With how scarred his face was, it was difficult for him to look anything other than threatening, but he held his hands palm out, kept his distance, and spoke in a soft tone.
“You don’t want to do that, son.”
Terry trotted over, widely circling around the crying figure in the snow, and then he spotted Morgan, as well as the weapon pointed at him.
He whined and tried to charge forth, but Nick quickly stepped in and grabbed him by the scruff, forcing him down on his belly.
Good man. The last thing Morgan wanted was for Terry to get himself shot. Why the hell had James even allowed an omega to come to a battle anyway? Granted, it had been a short battle, but still…
He stared at his pack leader, knowing the man was hearing his thoughts because he was projecting them so loudly.
James’s lips thinned, but he kept his eyes firmly focused on Storm. “If you kill him, then you’ll have lost all your leverage. What will you do after that?”
Terry growled at Storm, but Nick held him in place. John shifted on two feet and went to stand beside James. There was a strange sort of horror on his expression that Morgan had never seen before.
Morgan read the situation as best as he could. Storm wasn’t going
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to kill him, not after he let Nick and Terry go. He was just keeping James and the others from ripping him to pieces. For now.
“What did you do with the other hunter?” Storm demanded. “The one that didn’t come back.”
“He’s dead,” John said.
James glared at the younger alpha. He didn’t like being answered for, and if that had been the wrong answer to give, then he could only make things worse.
Storm’s expression dropped, and so did the gun. “You killed him?”
“Don’t do anything stupid, now,” James said, his scarred expression becoming all the more severe as he glared at Storm.
The gun was quickly lifted back to Morgan’s head when the alphas stepped forward.
As one, they backed away again when the danger to Morgan’s life was back.
“Don’t kill him,” John begged. He seemed the most fearful for Morgan’s life.
That was funny. He wasn’t aware the kid cared so much.
Storm faced Morgan, his one eye dark and hard. “You owe me.”
With a start, and an inward sigh of relief, Morgan understood. “James, let him run away.”
“What?”
“No way!”
James and John replied at the same time. James finally lost his patience and snapped at the other alpha to go and watch the perimeter.
John left the immediate circle, but he still stayed close, still watching Morgan and Storm.
“Why am I letting him go after he helped kidnap you and is currently pointing a gun at your head?” James asked, trying for patience but failing miserably.
Morgan looked at Storm pointedly there, and the other man hesitantly lowered the gun. He even started untying Morgan’s wrists.
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“When the hunters caught me, he was the one to convince the others to let Terry and Nick go. Said they wouldn’t risk coming back for one caught wolf.”
Morgan grunted when his hands were freed, and he frowned at the deep-red indents the ropes had left in his skin. Then he started to rub the circulation back into them.
He nodded at Storm and got to his feet. His muscles were stiff from kneeling in that position for so long, and there wasn’t enough on him that was numb to keep the pain at bay.
Terry finally managed to get out from Nick’s grasp, and with an eager whine, he ran over to Morgan.
The wolf rubbed himself along Morgan’s legs like a cat happy to see its owner. Morgan patted his side, just as happy to see that his mate was in good health.
“What are you?” James asked, apparently noticing the odd scent coming from the other man.
“I’m a werecat. I shift into a mountain lion.”