Bitten By Mistake (3 page)

Nathan and Alec’s mutual dislike was well known throughout the pack. The thought of having to deal with Alec and the mess surrounding them wasn’t something Nathan was looking forward to. He relaxed and let his body morph back, stretching out his hands and flexing his jaw to ease the ache. “Wonderful.”

The bones in his wrist knit back together as he stood there, but the dull throb would remain for a day or so yet.

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, the two shifters left alive decided to make a run for it. Healed enough to shove Nathan out of the way as they rushed past, they half stumbled, half ran down the street.

Bollocks.

Alec would go crazy if they let them get away; they needed to find out which pack was behind the attack. Alec would take special delight in blaming Nathan for it.

“Go.” Daryl hissed as the doors to the van started to open. “I’ll take care of this.”

Nathan shot off like a rocket, the pain in his back forgotten as the thrill of the chase set in.

Nathan swerved through the crowds as he ran, careful to avoid bumping into anyone as he raced after them. The runaway shifters might be out of sight, but their laboured breathing and heavy footsteps were still easy enough to pick out. And he was gaining on them.

People stopped to gawk as he ran past, and Nathan wondered what he must look like to them—shirt ripped to shreds and his back covered with blood. The sound of sirens in the distance wasn’t much of a surprise, more than likely heading to where Daryl and Alec were. It wasn’t the first time they’d dealt with the police, and it wouldn’t be the last. A shifter fight resulting in death would more than likely be handed over for the pack to deal with.

If they didn’t recognise the pack scent, and no one owned up about the attack, the crime would go uncontested and unpunished. That was just how it was.

Nathan turned the corner into a side alley at full speed, not expecting a body to be lying in his path. He went flying, and landed on the pavement, stripping the skin from his hands and pulling at the wounds on his back. Cursing under his breath, he scrabbled to his feet and spared the slumped form a quick glance. The missing eye and battered body stopped him in his tracks.

The shifter’s throat was slit, torn open, resulting in almost immediate death.

Who the fuck killed him?

Nathan hadn’t scented any other shifters nearby, so that meant the other one must have done it.
Jesus.
With no time to dwell on it, Nathan turned and ran down the alley after the fading footsteps.

Whoever that guy was, he was leading Nathan back to the clubs and bars of Soho, and it would be far too easy to lose him in the crowds. Nathan needed to get to him before that.

At the end of the alley, he stopped, listening. The footsteps had stopped too, but he could still hear the rapid, short breaths of someone close by. The back street he’d ended up on was almost deserted; the smell of shifter was faint but definitely there. Nathan recognised it as one from the fight and flexed his hands, tamping down the urge to shift until they were face-to-face. The scent led him to a dark alley opposite, a perfect place to fight with no interruptions.

Nathan hesitated before going down it.

No lights lit the way, but his eyesight was good enough to see it was deserted. So much for face-to-face. He took a step forward and stopped again. More footsteps coming his way, fast, as though they were being chased—and human.

Shit.

The last thing Nathan needed was to get a human injured. He flattened himself against the wall, hoping they would run right past without seeing him.

Seconds later the footsteps skidded outside the alley and a skinny guy rounded the corner, racing past Nathan without so much as a sideways glance. Breathing a sigh of relief, Nathan relaxed against the brickwork.

The momentary lapse in concentration meant he wasn’t prepared for the second set of footsteps and the unmistakable scent of shifter that came with them—the shifter Nathan was after.

What the fuck is he doing coming from that direction?

Nathan glanced down the alley again, definitely empty now, and the footsteps were almost upon him. No way was that bastard getting the drop on him.

Nathan shifted a split second before a shadow fell over him. The familiar scent filled his nose; controlling himself, he bit back a roar. This wasn’t going to be a fight to the death. Nathan and his pack wanted answers, and he was going to fucking well get them. The ease with which he took the guy down should have thrown up a red flag, but Nathan was too focused on the task at hand to recognise the warning signs.

The scent of an enemy had invaded his senses, and with a snarl he buried his claws in the guy’s shoulder, halting him in his tracks. The best way to subdue a shifter, like most things, was to threaten them with death, and nothing screamed
permanent
like a ripped out throat. Pulling the guy roughly back against his chest, Nathan pinned him in place with his forearm, bared his teeth and bit down on his neck.

He didn’t go deep enough to cause much damage, but the intent was clear. One wrong move and Nathan would end him.

Predictably the guy went limp in his arms. The adrenaline from the chase slowly ebbed away.

And that was when everything went horribly wrong. With his nose pressed into the guy’s throat, Nathan got a good strong whiff of him as he breathed in—and promptly froze.

A litany of
oh-shit oh-shit oh-shit
ran through his head. Under the scent of shifter was the much stronger scent of human. Retracting his teeth, Nathan dropped the guy to the floor and plastered himself against the brick wall.

Fucking hell.

His heart raced and his breath came in short, sharp gasps as he fought not to panic.

A human. I’ve bitten a fucking
human
. Jesus Christ, I could die for this.

The metallic tang of blood clung to his tongue and the back of his throat, and he swallowed to get rid of it. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Nathan glanced down at the body slumped by his feet. Something about him seemed familiar—white-blond hair with black underneath, and that scent…

Oh no.

Nathan knelt down and carefully turned him over.

Shit.

Delicate features and pale skin. Nathan had been looking at that face earlier, what felt like an age ago.

Not only had he bitten a human, he’d bitten the smartarse guy from the club. The one who apparently hated all shifters.

“Fuck!” Nathan spat, fisting at his hair as he struggled to formulate anything resembling a plan.

If he left the guy there to die, they would trace it back to him. His DNA was all over the guy, and Nathan was on the register.

If he took him to a hospital, then the odds were Blondie would have him killed or imprisoned. No way did he want to be put to death, and prison wasn’t much more appealing.

Sliding his phone out of his pocket, Nathan picked it up and stared at it, turned it over in his palm. Who could he call? The crime he’d just committed was about the worst a shifter could commit short of outright killing someone. The pack would have no choice but to turn him in or be implicated. Nathan wouldn’t do that to them. They were his family.

He thought of Alec and scoffed. Well, most of them were.

Blondie moaned and twisted onto his side, one hand coming up to the wound on his neck. Blood still oozed out of it, but the flow had slowed considerably. Nathan was pretty sure the guy wasn’t going to die if he got it looked at. Whatever Nathan intended to do, he needed to decide quickly. Anyone could walk down there and find them, and if Nathan didn’t report in soon, a member of his own pack could come looking for him. Not to mention the other shifter, his attacker, was still out there somewhere. Shit, he would have to explain how he managed to lose him.

For fuck’s sake, can this get any worse?

The options as he saw them were: take him to hospital and risk death; leave him to die and face almost certain death; or kill him, hide the body and possibly get away with it.

The third option was his best bet if he wanted to live to see twenty-nine.

With a heavy sigh, Nathan put his head in his hands. Number three wasn’t really an option at all. He wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Killing someone who was trying to kill him was different; that was self-defence. No matter the consequences, Nathan couldn’t bring himself to kill someone because of his own fucking awful mistake. The whole mess was on Nathan’s head, and he wouldn’t take an innocent man’s life to get out of it.

The guy moaned again, jolting Nathan out of his thoughts, and he glanced down at him. Maybe he could persuade the man not to have him killed? Nathan wasn’t a bad guy—an arsehole some of the time, but who wasn’t.

An idea formed in the back of his mind—a crazy, dangerous, bad idea, but what choice did he have?

Praying that no one was looking for him yet, Nathan used the remains of the guy's shirt to clean him the best he could. Dragging him back to his car would be tricky enough without him bleeding all over the place as he went.

The walk back took Nathan far longer than he would have liked. No blood was visible to passers-by as luckily the guy had on a black T-shirt under his shirt. With the way Nathan held him, no one would see the bite marks or the cuts on his shoulder from Nathan’s claws. To all intents and purposes, the guy looked drunk and on the verge of passing out. He couldn’t do anything about his own shirt or the dried blood on his own back, but hopefully his size would put people off asking questions.

No one gave them a second look.

If they encountered any shifters, it would be a different matter entirely.

Nathan took nearly all Blondie’s weight, thankful he was conscious enough to put one foot in front of the other, although that was about it. Every now and again, he moaned or mumbled something, but that only added to the impression he was wasted.

Finally, Nathan turned onto the street where he’d left his van. Parking in London wasn’t the most fun thing to do, but Nathan and his unit had designated parking spots. One of the perks of pack life—keep them away from the humans as much as possible. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of their privileged parking. Two other cars sat in their spaces, and he recognised them both. He swallowed down the rising panic. If either of them were nearby, they’d have smelled the blood and come running.

Nathan listened and scented the air.

Nothing. Thank fuck.

After opening the back doors to the van, Nathan dumped the guy onto an old blanket on the floor. Shit, everything was going to smell of human. It would take days to get rid of it, and Nathan had deliveries tomorrow.

Not that he hadn’t fucked a few humans in the back of his van, but they hadn’t been covered in blood at the time. And their scents were usually accompanied by other scents that put his fellow shifters off investigating too closely.

To explain the blood, he could say he’d got a little rough, but then it would also need to smell like sex… Nathan groaned, climbed into the back of the van, and closed the doors behind him.

This was going to be the least fun wank he’d ever had.

Thirty minutes later, Nathan parked down the street from his flat. He sat there for a moment, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel. His van smelled like blood, sweat, and come, with an underlying scent of human. Nathan could easily explain that away, but getting his new charge inside the flat posed different problems.

The whole building was owned by the pack, as were four similar ones along the street. The other apartments in his building housed the members of his unit and their beta. Not only did Nathan have to get inside without being seen by anyone, he had to disguise Blondie’s smell. They didn’t invite humans back to pack houses without clearance. Bringing a stranger in without asking permission would get him in some serious shit.

That rule had always pissed him off. Yes, he understood the necessity to restrict who had access to pack member’s homes, but not being able to come and go as he pleased, with whomever he pleased, made him feel like a child all over again.

Right then it was a huge pain in the arse. How the fuck was he going to mask the smell of human when the people inside had such an enhanced sense of smell?

He also needed to piss. The three drinks he’d had in the club were starting to make themselves known, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Glancing at the side street next to him, he shook his head. Even if no one saw him, his pack would know and be none too impressed—the street ran alongside the pack house, and piss had that distinctive, rank smell that was ten times worse for shifters. It overrode everything else until it was all they could smell….

No, I can’t. Can I?

Nathan looked over his shoulder at the unconscious body in the back of his van. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound needed to be cleaned to prevent infection.

What the hell, I already jizzed on him.

With a grimace, Nathan climbed into the back of his van—which was about to become a casualty of this awful fucking plan—and unzipped his jeans. He hunched over, unable to stand fully upright, and sighed.

Controlling one’s piss was a lot harder than he’d expected. For starters, he had stage fright and stood there staring at his cock, willing it to just start already. To make his story believable, Nathan would need to wet himself and Blondie enough to mask the scent of humans.

How much was enough? He had no fucking idea, so when he was finally able to go, Nathan aimed at the legs of his jeans—he’d have to claim drunken clumsiness—it was easy enough for shifters to get drunk if you downed enough tequila or other high-proof liquor, but difficult to maintain the buzz for any length of time.

After wetting himself, which was so gross he almost gagged, Nathan aimed at Blondie and gave him a thorough dousing from head to toe. Then he had to scrabble for something to piss into, because he might be done with his scent masking, but no way could he stop midstream. An old litre water bottle did the trick, but not before splashing all over the side of his van. Christ, it was going to take days to air it out.