Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (9 page)

“What’s the difference?” Chris asked, genuinely curious.

“When you mate with someone, there is no divorce.”

Great.

James laughed at him. “You just went pale there for a second.

Don’t worry, though, it isn’t all that bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look.” James approached him and put his arm around Chris’s  shoulder, all  best-buddy-like. “Corey was a human when I found him.  The species hardly matters.”

That threw Chris off. “Seriously?”

“Well, no one is ever going to mate with the elephant at the zoo,  but the humanoid species, as far as I know, won’t matter.”

“Humanoid…there’s more like you?”

“We’ll just stick with werewolves for now, and as far as  werewolves go, when we sniff out our mates, we tend to lose a little  of our control.”

Chris recalled the way Eli had kissed him and the hard press of the other man’s body as he pushed Chris down onto the ground, grinding their cocks together. Eli hadn’t been the only one to lose a little control.
 
Please, don’t let me be blushing
. “Yeah, I got that.”

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“Well, just so you know, I’m sure he didn’t mean to scare you.  For a werewolf, the urge to complete the bonding is strong.  Sometimes it can even impact the health of the wolf in question if  they ignore it too long.”

“It can?” Chris shouldn’t be caring about this. He shouldn’t be  allowing James to butter him up the way he was, but he couldn’t help  but be worried for Eli, especially with the way the other man had  hobbled off to be alone once they’d returned to clearing of houses.

“Well, nothing too severe ever happened to me aside from having  the sweats at night,” James said. “But for Corey it was different. He  was human when I met him, but, ah, let’s just say that he wasn’t when  I brought him here. Don’t worry. No one will transform you if you  don’t want them to, but Corey was a special case.”

“Okay.”

James cleared his throat. “Anyway, I wanted to give him some  time to get used to me, and the fact that we were mated, because, like  you, he was under the human impression that something like that just  wasn’t possible. Little did I know that it was affecting his ability to  learn how to shift into his wolf, and that wasn’t good for him.”

Chris looked up at James’s face, and he really looked at the  scarring that was there, and he thought about the scarring on Corey’s  hand. James’s scars looked like deep pockmarks, like someone had  gone after his face with an ice chipper or something, while Corey’s  hand looked like he’d dipped it into a deep fryer. Were those the  products of not mating? Could that happen to him or Eli if he didn’t  just admit that he found the other man attractive and spent the night with him?

“I can see you’re still hesitating,” James said, gripping Chris by  the shoulders so that they had to look each other dead-on. “I don’t  know who it was that hurt you.”

Chris stiffened.

“But I promise you, Eli isn’t like that.”

“I can’t just jump  into bed with him,” Chris said.

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“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to just give him a chance,  get to know him a little bit. Maybe because of your eyes, just being  around him will be enough, and he won’t be…”

James didn’t finish. He looked like he was struggling for the right

word, and Chris didn’t want to help him find it.

Maybe if he was around Eli a little more, his lucky eyes would see  to it that Eli didn’t get insane blue balls and expire from lust.

Right, Chris’s magical lucky eyes. “Are you sure my eyes are  supposed to bring luck? I haven’t been feeling too lucky lately.”

James chuckled. “I doubt they bring much more luck than any  lucky rabbit’s foot would. I think it’s really just part of the allure.  Your eyes attract werewolves, so whoever mates  with you is  considered the luckiest wolf on the planet.”

And according to everyone, that was Eli.

He still wasn’t too sure about this, but Eli did save his life again,

so…

“Do you know where he is?”

James sighed. “From what I was told, he was seen stomping off to  his cabin. You might want to give him the night alone, unless you  want to see him in one of his less than better moments.”

Considering Chris had met Eli while he was drunk and about to get his ass kicked in a bar, he had an idea of what James was talking about.

Poor guy had lost his brother and was mated to a chicken like  Chris. That would drive anyone to drink.

He nodded and agreed to speak with Eli the first thing in the morning. Whatever it was that was happening between them, they would need to  find some way of settling it.

“Oh, and uh, sir?” Chris said before he left. Calling James by his first name seemed a little too informal, considering they weren’t actually friends, but he didn’t look that much older than Chris for him to be addressing him  as Mr. DeWitt.

Sir didn’t sound much better, but there was no taking that back

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now.

“Yes?” James looked up from a small stack of papers, looked like  legal stuff, on an old wooden desk that was in a bad need for  varnishing.

“I was going to ask Eli about this, but all things considered…”

“What can I do for you?”

He asked it so casually, as though doing Chris any sort of favor  wasn’t a problem for him at all. Chris relaxed.

“My brother. He’s gone, too. I think he might be in trouble, or  dead, considering some  of the things he was into. Usually he would  call or something to check up on me, let me know he was fine, once  every couple of weeks or something, and I haven’t heard back from  him in several months.”

“All right. He was last seen around this area?” James asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t think I would find anything at first, especially  since he usually moved around a lot, but now that I know there are  wild werewolves around…” Chris let James finish that one off for

himself.

“Right, you want to know if we’ve heard anything.”

Chris nodded.

“All right, what was his name?”

“Dean Lefroy. My older brother.”

James’s neck seemed to get a little tighter than it had been before.

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Really?” Chris hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “Do you know

what happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

The words were like a blunt object ramming into his gut. “You’re not one for candy-coating it are you?”

“Are you going to be okay?” James asked.

No. Chris had suspected all this time, but the actual realization was having more of an effect on him than he thought it should have.  “What happened? When?”

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James wet his lips. “Were you aware that he was a hunter?”

“What? Well, yeah, sure. He had his license and went out all the time to catch things. We did that as kids.”

“I don’t mean the kind of guy who hunts rabbits or buck. I mean he hunted werewolves. My kind.”

James pointed at his mean-looking face. “He gave me these scars, and he tried to kill Corey.”

Chris was frozen in sudden fear. “Did you―?”

“I was the one to kill him, yes.” That chummy air that James had about him was entirely gone now as he and Chris looked at each other.

Chris swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”

“You haven’t done anything to purposely harm my pack, so no.  You’re mated to one of my alphas, whether you like that or not. If I meant you any harm I’d have to go through Eli first to get to you. If I were to kill you right now, he would just try to kill me later.

“I won’t hurt you, or try to,” James said. “But seeing as you’re related to one of the worst hunters I’ve ever met, I will have to keep a strict eye on you from now on. No more walks out into the trees with my omegas.”

“Right,” Chris was only too happy to agree so long as it meant he was able to leave. He practically ran out of the small office and bolted out of the cottage.

It was stupid, but he wished he knew which one of these houses belonged to Eli. If he was one of the main reasons James was going to give Chris some slack, then, drunk or not, desperate to have sex or not, Chris would stay as close to him as  possible.

As it was, the only remotely safe place he could return to was that tiny little one-bedroom cabin that had been offered to him. He locked the doors and prepared to wait out a long night of making sure that no one busted inside to exact any revenge for a crime his brother had supposedly committed.

He and Dean had never been close enough for Chris to think it

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was worth putting up with all of this shit.

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Chapter Eight

For the second time in his life, Eli was jerked awake by the horrible sensation of melty ice splashing down on his head.

He came up in a rush, still partly asleep and thinking that he’d fallen into the Arctic Ocean and was drowning or something.

The sight of James’s enraged face made him wish that that had been the reality he was waking up to.

James pointed his finger into Eli’s face. “You swore to me.”

The light coming in through the window pierced his eyelids and went straight through his skull, giving him the worst sort of pulsing headache.

He’d finally managed to pass out on the  couch, but only after depleting the last of his stock of booze. He pulled the thin sheet he’d been using over his head with a groan, but that barely did anything to shut out the painful light.

James wasn’t having any of that, and he snatched the sheet out  of  Eli’s grasp and threw it away. “I’m speaking to you. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Eli kept his eyes shut, holding his hands over the lids to keep all that awful fucking sunlight away from him. “That you told me you would banish me if I went down to the bars, not if I drank from what I

still have here.”

Another set of soft footprints came into the room, followed by heavier ones. “They all look empty. That should be the last of what he was hiding.”

“I didn’t find anything either.”

Old Maggie. The pack’s wise woman. Eli still had enough sense

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in him to be ashamed of her having to see him like he was. As for  Andrew, well, he didn’t much care.

Eli sat up, and he managed to do it well enough on his own. Most  of the alcohol must have gone through his liver already. He needed to  take a piss something awful though.

“Ma’am,” he said.

She pointed a wrinkled finger at him. “You do not speak to me in that condition,” she said, her aged face looking almost as mean as  James’s.

Then she pointed to the bathroom.  “Go wash yourself. How do you expect to make a good impression on a human mate if you look like filth?”

He needed a shower. He definitely agreed with her there. He

nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

She made a hmph sound and walked away, wrinkling her nose at every single dirty dish that he had laying around. Old pizza boxes on the floor from back when he was still trusted enough to go into town to order food. Ants and small vermin scattered as she kicked the

box―Andrew jumped when a mouse scurried beneath his feet―and  then she turned to glare one more time at Eli.

His face heated, and he had to look away. He turned to James real  quick. “Am I banished?”

James looked like he was struggling for patience. Or that maybe  he was struggling to not just throw Eli’s ass out. This was the first  time James had seen the inside of Eli’s cottage, and now the other  man had a good idea of why none of the omegas wanted to be his

roommate.

“I did give you a pretty wide loophole, so no. But I want you  sober. If you need an escape or need to forget about the shit that’s  bothering you lately, either take up a book or go running, find a  hobby, anything. You are not getting drunk anymore while I’m in  command, period, and you’re never having anything with even the  least bit of alcohol in it for a year. Got it?”

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Eli nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” James motioned to the general area surrounding them.  “Clean this place up and open some windows. Your mate’s been asking to see you all morning.”

Eli was stunned. “He has?”

“Yes. He’s Dean Lefroy’s brother.”

“Dean―” It took Eli longer than it should have to put together  exactly who that was. When it clicked, his eyes went wide. “Shit.”