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Markus was going to have to speak with his mate about it at some point, but overall, he wasn’t worried.

They were alone now. Attacks from rival werewolves and hunters had been nonexistent in the last several weeks, so he felt pretty safe in bringing Lance off the property to show him one more thing.

“Where are we going?” Lance asked. He’d finally lost patience after about an hour of texts and messages coming in and just shut off his phone.

Markus took his mate by the hand. “There’s one more pond you need to see. Not for that,” Markus said when Lance grinned at him.

“No?”

“Well, maybe, but seriously, you need to see this. It’s a very  special place.”

“Okay.” Lance followed him along the path. Summer was just  around the corner, but the air was still cool without being overly  chilly, and all the plants and flowers were out from their winter-long  hibernation.

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Lance eyes widened a little bit at the sight of the pond. “Wow. It’s

beautiful.”

Markus looked at the water fondly. The pond was being fed by a small waterfall that came from a stream, which in turn came from

Salmon River.

“That other pond where you and I…” Lance trailed off, looked at  him, and then blushed. “Well, that place will always have a soft spot  in my heart, but this is just…wow,” he said again.

Markus led him over to the water. There were minnows and frogs  swimming about in the clear water. Some lily pads and other flowers  that Markus couldn’t name were also growing there.

“This water is pretty special. Believe it or not, it has healing  powers.”

“What?”

Markus smiled at the disbelief on Lance’s face. “Yeah.”

“No way, you’re having me on.” Lance came down to kneel by

the water. He stuck his hand in and the minnows scattered.

“No, really. It doesn’t always work, and we can’t exactly figure  out how it happened, but there’ve been people who’ve been close to  death, and the water would bring them back.”

Markus briefly thought about the people who hadn’t come back,  members of the pack who had died in battle. Eric, for one, as well as  Lyle and Derek. There was another Derek now in the pack, mated to  James’s brother, but Markus still missed his friend who had been

killed last summer.

He didn’t say that to Lance. Maybe he would share that with him, and his former love of John, at a later time when they both were more comfortable with each other. Right now he just wanted to enjoy the company of his mate, without anything hanging over their heads.

“Or pups don’t walk around with quite as many cuts or scrapes anymore from when they play because whenever they go swimming the water heals them.”

Lance was looking down at the water with an amazed expression.

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“That’s so interesting.”

Markus loved that he could teach Lance these things. He reached

out and took his hand.

“Hey, Lance! There you are.”

Markus spun around at the unfamiliar voice. He’d been so focused  on romancing his mate that he hadn’t even heard the footsteps  approaching them.

Lance stood up. “Buddy?”

The man with the black buzz-cut hair and square face stepped  forward with all the familiarity as though he was an invited guest.

Markus smelled metal and gunpowder on him. His hunter senses  were tingling.

Buddy held up his smartphone. “Got the message you sent me.  You didn’t say you would be bringing a wolf along.” His eyes went  up and down Markus’s body. “Nice catch.”

Markus snapped his gaze over to Lance. The look he gave the  other man must not have been too trusting because Lance stepped  forward, toward his hunter friend.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but this is my

friend Markus, and he’s not a wolf. I took the website down. There’s

nothing here.”

Markus growled when Buddy reached behind him, putting his  phone away and pulling out a gun instead. “You can drop the act.  We’ve got him surrounded. He can’t hurt us.”

“What?” Markus looked around as the trees around them ruffled

and several other hunters, all dressed in their camouflaged gear, came  out from hiding. Every single one of them pointed a gun in Markus’s  direction.

“What’s going on, Lance?” Markus didn’t want to believe it. He  didn’t want to believe that Lance was helping these hunters, even  though that man claimed he’d sent them all messages, and Lance had  been on his phone all morning.

Lance appeared to be lost. “I—” He looked back to Buddy.

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“You’re a hunter?”

“Come on. Don’t pretend like you never knew it. All those talks  we had, how we were both so interested in finding the werewolves.  That story you even told me. You knew they existed, and that wolf  might not have eaten anyone in your family, but just seeing it still  fucked you up.”

“No, it didn’t!” Lance yelled.

Buddy scoffed. “Right, because Mommy and Daddy sticking their  kid into therapy is so normal.” He then nodded to his hunter friends.  “Take the wolf. We heard all we needed to. Lance can take us to the

others. They’ve seen him and made friends with him, so he can get us  in the pack.”

Markus roared and charged at the first hunter to take a step toward  him. There was a shout and a shot fired, muffled through the barrel of  a suppresser, but he ignored it. He was banking on the hope that, if  they did shoot him, they would kill him outright, saving him the  trouble of being tortured until he transformed so they could skin him.

It didn’t matter because the bullet missed him, and he latched onto

the hunter with every ounce of strength he possessed.

His goal was to break the man’s neck, but he was surprisingly  difficult to get a hold of. Another shot fired, and Lance screamed.

No. Markus took his eyes away from the hunter he was trying to  kill, thinking that maybe Lance had been shot.

Whether or not the man accidentally gave away the location to the  pack, he didn’t want those motherfuckers to kill him.

He wasn’t dead. He didn’t even look hurt, which made Markus

breathe a sigh of relief. Lance was struggling with one of the hunters,  both of them fighting over a gun.

That idiot! What if it went off and he accidentally shot himself?

Markus tried to go to him, but the hunter grabbed him by the hair  and pulled him back. The fist against his cheek was so strong that it  was surprising again. Was this guy in steroids or something?

“Aren’t so tough now, are you?” Another fist against his eye sent

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Markus flying backward. “Piece of wolf shit,” said the hunter, who wiped his mouth and spat, as though the word put a foul taste in his mouth.

Only then, when Markus fell over, did he feel a sharp pain in his

shoulder.

He tried to look over, and then reached with his hand when his

head was too heavy for that and then felt them against his already  numb fingertips.

Darts. The cheating sons of bitches had drugged him.

The hunters swarmed him, bringing down their ropes and chains  on him. They tied him up so thoroughly that he could hardly move a  muscle. He was as good as a worm on the ground with how tightly his  arms and legs were bound. Next came the duct tape, which someone  wrapped around his mouth and the back of his head several times. It  was like they were afraid he would bite through it.

Markus couldn’t bite through a marshmallow at this point. He  barely knew which way was up and which was down.

He could still vaguely hear Lance’s voice, and when he looked up,  the blurred images he saw were disturbing.

His mate was arguing with the other man, about what, he couldn’t  even remember anymore. When Buddy tried to put his hand on  Lance’s shoulder, Lance shoved him away, but then the hunter  suddenly pulled him closer, and for a second Markus had the horrible  thought that they were kissing.

Then the scent of blood invaded his senses, and Markus knew

what happened. Buddy had stabbed Lance in the stomach.

His heart swelled and shattered as he watched his mate stumble

away and then fall to the ground, clutching at his stomach. The scent  of blood became thicker, and Markus had no doubt in his mind that he

wouldn’t survive that kind of wound.

The hunters spoke amongst each other quickly, but Markus was too drugged up to make out their words. The ground vanished beneath him as he was picked up, slung over the shoulder of one of the

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hunters, most likely, and then carted away.

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Chapter Twelve

Lance could only watch helplessly as the man he used to think of as a friend casually refilled his water canteen from the pond, smiled at him, and stole Markus away. Lance wanted to scream. He was off to do every horrible thing that Isaac had said hunters do to werewolves to Markus, and to every other member of that pack.

His stomach hurt so much. He clamped his hand over it, but the blood wouldn’t stop coming. His fingers were sticky with it, and the smell made him want to puke.

He couldn’t do that, however. All he could think about was

Markus, and those children back at the pack, as well as the little baby that Corey had fed while they were at the picnic table enjoying the barbeque.

Buddy was going to kill all of them if Lance didn’t do something.

They were werewolves, and most of them had a good chance of surviving, but Lance didn’t want a single death to be on his hands.  Not one.

That boy had saved his life when he was younger. If he could, he would at least try to warn the pack that those hunters were on their

way.

Buddy thought he was so clever. Apparently, up until Lance had  shut his phone off, Buddy had done something technical and traced  which tower Lance had been closest to by using the texts they’d been  sending to each other. That was how he’d managed to find them.

It seemed he’d gotten a little suspicious when the website and  blog were removed from the Web.

The stupid asshole hadn’t noticed when Lance had reached for his

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handgun when he’d pulled Lance closer to stab him with the biggest  hunting knife Lance had ever seen.

He looked at the weapon now. It was a revolver, the type of thing  that looked like it belonged in an old Western movie. He didn’t know  much about those. He’d never even held a real gun before in his life.

He quickly looked around for any sign of a safety switch, and he  saw none. After fiddling with it for a bit, he was able to figure out  how to get the chamber out.

All the bullets spilled around his head when he did that stupid

move.

At least now he knew he had something to work with.

He tried as best he could to wipe the blood off his hands on the grass and sand around him. His fingers shook as he located the bullets and reloaded them into the chamber. It took him a couple of tries before he managed to get the thing snapped properly back into place.

Lance would love nothing better than to run after those pricks with the gun in his hand and take down every last one of them for what they had done, and what they had planned to do, but that wasn’t going to happen. He could barely move.

There was one thing he could do with this gun, however.

If all the Western movies he’d ever seen in his life were right, this sort of weapon made one hell of a noise, unlike those other dart guns with the suppressors on them that the hunters had used on Markus.

The werewolves were suspicious of sounds like these so close to their pack. Markus had told him so at one point in their conversation.

Lance rolled onto his back, pointed the weapon into the air, prayed it would actually work for him, and squeezed the trigger.

* * * *

The echoing shots sounded, startling Buddy and every single one of those dirty werewolves they were observing. They all stopped what they were doing and looked toward the sound.

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Another shot fired, and the pups, as well as the omegas with any children, ran for the safety of their houses while the alphas stood straight and started sniffing. They all looked right in the direction where Buddy and his men were hiding.

He reached down suddenly, searching for the revolver that he always kept on him, and found it gone.