Jacks, Marcy - The Alpha Wolf Kidnaps a Mate [DeWitt's Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (4 page)

He jumped. He actually jumped out of the van.

It took a hair of a second for his brain to catch up with what his eyes were seeing, but when he finally got with the program, he was nearly too late.

Corey, apparently, knew how to protect himself while leaping out of a quickly moving vehicle. His head went down, protecting his neck and skull, and he rolled along the hard pavement, pavement that could scrape the skin off a human like him like a cheese grater at the speed he was going.

Then that human boyfriend he’d been riding with slammed on his own brakes, making tire tracks along the road that smoked with the heat and strain.

James was out of the truck before the human could get out of the van. Despite how quickly he and the other driver had stopped, Corey was now behind them, picking himself up and limping away as quickly as his injured body could take him.

“Hey, wait!” James called, running to catch up with him.

He  stopped and turned at James’s call. “Stay away from me.”

James stopped. What? Uh, he was the one trying to help. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, his hands lifting a little, showing that he carried no

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weapons, and then stepping closer anyway, despite the demand.

Corey didn’t scream at him to stay back, but neither did he hold  still for James to come to him. He kept right on limping backward.  “Call the police. He’s out of his mind, and he’s got guns and knives  he keeps in his van.”

And the only reason in the world a sane person would jump out of  a van going that fast was because he was being threatened with just  those weapons.

It made James see red, made him want to break that puny human’s  spine for ever daring to threaten the man in front of him, to ever make  him scared enough to fling himself out of a moving vehicle.

He knew he could get Corey to come to him. He was James’s  mate, and that meant that, on some baser level, he felt the same

connection that James did.

“All right, I’ll get the police here. Just calm  down. Stop trying to

run. You’re hurt.”

Despite his calm words, Corey still looked at him like he was about to turn into an axe murderer and give chase. God, If only he knew what the hell he and that human had been saying in the van.  Whatever it was, it was overriding Corey’s natural instincts to let  James come to him and help him.

Finally, Corey seemed to settle, but as the adrenaline that had fueled him simmered down, he began to tremble. James noted the way he cradled his arm, protecting the injured limb.

If it was broken, James would kill the driver of the van.

James lifted his hands to beckon Corey to come closer so that  James could wrap his arms around him, protect him, and inspect his injured arm. They were nearly within reach of each other when a piercing scream sounded from behind.

“
James!
”

He looked over just as an exploding, fiery pain lanced through his shoulder, punching in one side and popping out the other. He caught himself before he could fall to his knees, but the force of the bullet

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had him stumbling forward, and he fell right on top of Corey.

At least I was the one to take the bullet,
 
James thought,  recognizing the burning and weakening sensation brought on by  silver, even through his agony. Next he was aware of a mild  annoyance as he realized that his favorite leather jacket now had a  bullet-sized hole in it, and that he was ruining it further by bleeding  all over the inside of it.

The sounds of breaking bones and wild growls told him Mick had gone on the offensive and transformed to exact  his revenge for the attack on his alpha, and James smiled through his pain.

That smile left him when he realized that Corey was making no attempt to push James off of him. He was sure he hadn’t landed on  Corey’s injured arm. He never would’ve allowed himself to do that.

Using his good arm, James lifted himself up enough to get a look at the man beneath him.

Formerly tanned skin was now a pale green from the pain. James immediately saw why.

The silver bullet that had gotten him, shot straight through his

shoulder, had also struck Corey. The terrifying difference was that, on  Corey, the bullet wound was not on some harmless place, like his  shoulder, safely away from his major artery, but smack dab in the  middle of his chest.

He was bleeding heavily, James realized, now knowing that the majority of the blood he’d thought had been coming out of him was really coming from his injured mate.

He saw red. He couldn’t help himself. That motherfucker was going to pay for this!

Corey was no longer clutching at his injured arm, but his palm was putting pressure on the hole in his chest, bright, thick red blood squeezing through his fingers.

He wasn’t looking at James. His head was tilted down just enough to look at the violent fight between Mickey and the human with the

gun.

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Two more loud shots fired, then the crunching, ripping sound of tearing metal and wolf growls. Sounded like Mick was tearing apart the van, trying to get at the human inside.

James hated it, and he wanted to tear out the throat of that human

himself, but neither he nor Mickey could have that privilege just yet,  not with Corey bleeding to death beneath him.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he said, getting to his knees and  putting his hands under the other man.

Corey’s eyes shot to his. They were bright green in contrast to his  pale, bloodless face. “Don’t kill me.”

The words were weak, wheezing, and bubbled in his mouth. Shit,  blood was pooling into his lungs.

James picked him up and was already moving back to his truck. A  quick glance behind him said enough. The human was alive, trying to  fight off Mick’s dagger-sharp jaws with a machete of all things. The  gun, a revolver, was crunched up like a piece of tinfoil on the  pavement. Corey hadn’t been lying. The guy was loaded up with

weapons.

He also wouldn’t be following them any time soon. Mick had  made hamburger meat out of the van’s engine, and currently it was  smoking, trashed, and worthless in the middle of the road.

James let out a high-pitched whistle from between his teeth as he  climbed inside the truck, keeping Corey on his lap.

Mick picked his bloody nose up and away from where he’d been  chewing off the door of the van, his ears perking at the sound.

“Come on, Mick, we’re going!”

Mick took one last longing look at his prey, who stared back at  him with  wide-eyed, wild hatred, and then ran back to the truck,  leaping through the open window of the passenger side and sitting  down. Pretty impressive considering the size of Mick’s wolf.

He took one look at Corey and made a whining noise.
 
Lot of  blood.

“I know,” James said, putting the truck in gear and all but flying

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down the road, passed that human in his wrecked van, and back to  James’s pack, the only place that could save Corey’s life at this point.

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Chapter Five

Corey woke up to a strange burning in  his chest. It was different from the fire that the bullet had caused though. This was a tingling burn, almost pleasant, and the reason why he was pulled from unconsciousness. Had it been the painful hellfire he’d passed out to, no way would Corey have come back into wakefulness for it.

His eyes were heavy, but he opened them. The sun had been shining brightly against his face, he could tell even before he cracked open his lazy lids.

Please, God, let that have been a nightmare
.

He looked around and groaned.
 
Shit, it isn’t
.

That man, the one from the bar, with the black hair that gleamed blue in the light, James, was there, leaning over him. Those large fingers pushed back strands of Corey’s hair from his face.

Panic seized him as memories of what had happened on the road came back. The one man had turned into a wolf. A
 
werewolf.
 
Dean had been right. After Corey had been shot, James had flown on top of him, had hovered over him, preventing escape, and his eyes had turned gold, the black pupils shrinking to dangerous diamond-shaped slits.

He’d looked as though he’d wanted to tear out Corey’s throat.

Corey jumped up, slapping James’s hand away and scrambling across the bed. He was in a bed?

James hands came up again, mirroring the gesture he’d made on the road, as though Corey was some kind of helpless, scared animal.

From the perspective of a werewolf, he probably was.

“No one here is going to hurt you,” James said.

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Corey’s tense muscles instantly relaxed, and then they bunched up again as he realized how stupid  it was of him to blindly trust a man he didn’t know, let alone a werewolf.

“Where am I?” he demanded, and then he looked down at himself.  It didn’t hurt when he spoke. Breathing was all right, too, and the pain  in his chest from where he’d been shot was barely a tickle compared

to what he should have felt.

The T-shirt he wore was a loose, burgundy thing. Not his own. It was an easy thing to grab the neck hole and pull it down enough to see the place on his chest where there should have been a life-threatening hole.

There was still a puncture wound, about the size of a dime, but it was scabbing over, healing. His skin around the small wound was perfectly smooth, strong, and healthy in color. His pecs, while still small, were just a bit bigger than he knew they should have been. He gave them a test flex, marveling at the muscles he felt there. He felt everything. It was like someone had taken his body to the gym for the last several weeks and no one had told Corey about it.

Those hadn’t been there before he got shot. Neither were the three long scratch marks on his forearm.

He turned his gaze back to James. The guy looked like he was waiting for a bomb to go off in his face.

Depending on his answer, that just might be true. “What did you do to me?”

James clenched his jaw. “You were shot in the chest with a silver bullet. To a human, the silver means nothing, but he got one of your lungs.”

He paused, taking a breath. He reminded Corey of a kid about to confess to petty theft to his parents. Didn’t want to do it, but the confession couldn’t be helped.

“What did you do to me?” Corey demanded again, panic taking over. His fists clenched and the new muscles in his body tightened up, readying for a fight.

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“You were so badly injured…you would have died if I hadn’t. I–I

transformed into my wolf and scratched you, infecting you with the  poison from my claws. As a werewolf, your new regenerative abilities  saved you from death.”

Corey stopped listening after the words
 
infecting you
 
were  spoken. A loud ringing sounded in his ears, and he couldn’t think  straight, couldn’t think of anything coherent except for one important  little thing.

Monster. He was an evil monster now. James, the nice guy with  the gorgeous smile from the bar, new to the town, had been the one to  do it.

Corey ran. He tried to. James had, apparently, still been speaking and was thrown off by Corey’s sudden movements, but he quickly caught Corey around the waist and locked on.

Corey threw back his elbows into the man’s face, hoping he broke some of those pretty  teeth out of James’s mouth, but despite his new strength, it still felt like he was throwing his arm back into a brick wall.

“Get off me, you freak!”

“Stop struggling!” James yelled back, ignoring the outburst.

Corey didn’t listen. Out. He needed out!

More people ran into the bedroom where he and James struggled,  Corey to get away and James to keep him here. Large hands latched  onto his wrists, preventing him from punching, and more hands took  hold of his ankles, keeping him from kicking.

They had him. They weren’t going to let him go. A roar sounded,  but it hadn’t come from Corey, who had the most reason to scream.

“Let him go! Don’t touch him!”

James. That was his voice screaming at the other werewolves. He  was defending Corey? Was he a prisoner here, too?

Prisoners weren’t obeyed the way James was. The hands that had  confined him like shackles fell away, and the men in the room stepped  away from them.

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Corey flung himself out of James’s arms, spinning to look at him, to see the faces of everyone who surrounded them in the room.