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His heart worked overtime, and his lungs had trouble taking in air.

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“It’s me! Lance! It’s me!” Markus said, somehow managing to  shout the words but keep his voice down enough so only Lance would  hear him.

Markus then immediately removed his hands, and Lance had to force his breathing to calm down enough so he could take in air.

It was especially hard to do because now he was crying. “Jesus  Christ, you’re here!”

“Yeah, I am. You need to keep quiet though. I had to drop you off and run before any of the doctors could start asking questions.”

That was right. Werewolves couldn’t go to hospitals or be questioned by the police. That would make things a little too awkward.

Lance tried to lift his hands to hug the man, but then remembered that they were strapped down when he couldn’t lift them.

“Can you get these off me?”

When Markus hesitated, Lance really started to worry. “Markus?”

“I think it’s best if we just keep our distance for the next little bit.”

Lance’s heart hammered, and then it dropped into his stomach as his throat seized up. “I—no, I mean. Markus, I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with Buddy being at your pack. I swear I didn’t know he was tracking me. I swear!”

“Shh.” Markus lifted his hands as he made the noise. “I believe

you. I’m sorry if I ever did doubt you, but that’s not the reason for

this.”

Lance couldn’t believe it. His tongue felt thick when he swallowed. “Then why?”

Markus seemed to be going through a sort of struggle of his own, but Lance could hardly sympathize with him when the man was ripping his heart out like this.

“Lance,” Markus said, using a tone that suggested he was the one to know best in this situation. “You nearly died. A hunter stabbed you in the stomach because he was trying to get to us.”

“I haven’t told anyone here how that happened,” Lance said

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quickly. He didn’t even get a chance to really speak to any members  of the staff anyway, what with how drugged he’d been. Then there  was his escape attempt. “I won’t tell them how it happened. They  think I fell.”

Markus nodded. “I know. Ryan, one of my pack mates, he used to be a cop, and he was able to sneak in here earlier and read the records they were making on you. The water from the pond healed you, for the most part, but you were still bleeding internally, and that made it even more dangerous because there was no one at the pack who could fix that.”

Lance frowned. For them to be able to treat internal bleeding, the doctors would’ve had to cut him open again. He hadn’t felt any pain or stitches, but that could very well be because of all the medication he was on.

It certainly explained why the staff had been so panicked when he tried to get away and so quick to get him back into bed.

“Who drove me here? They said we were in Beaverbrook.”

“I did,” Markus said, smiling and looking away. When he looked back up at Lance, there was a shine in his eyes. “John held onto you in the passenger seat. You should’ve seen the look on his face. He was so scared we were going to get into an accident.”

For Markus to have gotten here in time for the doctors to save  Lance’s life, he must’ve tore up the car or truck, or whatever it was that he’d been driving.

He couldn’t even imagine the speeds they must’ve been going at.

“I’m glad I wasn’t awake for it, then.”

“Yeah.” Markus laughed a little.

“Don’t go,” Lance said. He wished he could reach out to the man, but his hands were still strapped down, and Markus was making no move to free him.

“Lance, come on. You barely know me.”

“You said we were mated,” Lance retorted. “You said that my

feelings were about more than that, too. I know you love me.

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Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

Markus inhaled and exhaled in deep motions. It reminded Lance of the stubborn way children fought back their tears. “Christ, you told me your asthma wasn’t that bad, but since meeting me I’ve made you stop breathing three times now.”

“It wasn’t that many,” Lance retorted. He’d only had to use his puffer once. “Markus, please get these straps off me. At least so we can talk normally before the nurses make their rounds or something.”

Markus shook his head. “They were already here a couple minutes before you woke up. I don’t scent them nearby either.”

“Can you just let me out anyway? You can strap me back in before they come back.”

Markus bit his lips together, and then he stood up. “I should go.”

“No, Markus, please.” It took everything Lance had to not yell at the man to stop walking toward the window to make his retreat. Lance couldn’t let him go. He knew that if Markus disappeared out that window, Lance would never see him again.

“Come back. At least kiss me before you go.” He’d said that last part out of sheer desperation, and he hadn’t actually expected Markus to stop and turn around.

He did. Markus was a shadow again now that he was on the other side of the room, but Lance could see the way the other man was studying him.

He was thinking about it. Against his better judgement, Markus was considering going back and giving Lance what he wanted. That was exactly the sort of crack in the wall that Lance needed to exploit.

“I just, I need you to do it before you go. Just one more time.”

He heard the deep groan Markus made before the other man crossed the room and was at his bedside.

Markus leaned down, taking Lance’s face into his hands, and their lips came together softly yet needfully.

Despite how cracked Lance’s lips felt, and how dry his mouth was, it was the sweetest kiss Lance had ever had.

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He struggled against the padded straps that held him in place a little more, wanting so much to just put his hands around Markus’s neck. He wanted to feel the other man’s skin beneath his fingers, to touch his hair, his jaw, everything.

He wanted to tell Markus through his touch just how much he didn’t want him to leave him there. There was nothing more frustrating than being confined the way he was.

Though there wasn’t much he could do except kiss back to the best of his ability, Markus’s lips, tongue, and hands did all the talking for him.

He didn’t want to leave Lance lying there anymore than Lance

wanted him to.

His callused fingers were gentle against Lance’s face, and his tongue was practically making love to his mouth. Lance pressed himself closer, as much as he was able, begging for more.

Despite the fact that he was still a little doped up on the painkillers, his body still reacted. His cock throbbed and swelled beneath the hospital sheets. He was going to die of embarrassment if he was making a tent down there.

Maybe Markus scented the change in his body, because he forcefully pulled himself away from Lance’s mouth.

“You don’t want to leave, either,” Lance said quickly, before the other man could turn around and vanish like a ninja out the window.  “I can tell.”

“Christ, it wouldn’t work out anyway. I’m your mate, and I can’t  even protect you. That fucking bastard stabbed you, and there was  nothing I could do about it. You were the one to save the pack.”

“Well, I don’t think I actually saved them.”

“You warned them,” Markus said. “Which was a lot more than

what I did.”

The clicking of heels just down the hall quieted the both of them down, and Markus ducked behind the bed several seconds before one

of the nurses could come into the room.

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Lance shut his eyes just as the shadowy figure appeared in the doorway. When he heard the footsteps walking away, he opened his

eyes.

He breathed a sigh to see that Markus was still there.

He was started to get a little angry with the other man. “If you  want to leave me for that then go ahead, because you’re not leaving  because you think it’s best for me or something. You’re doing it  because you’re ashamed of what you think is failure.”

“I did fail!” Markus seethed.

“No, you didn’t, but if you thinking that you did is enough to  make you want to dump me, then go ahead and leave.”

Lance wished he could walk away or something, his back straight  and his head held high, but he was still strapped down to the fucking  bed.

All he could do was turn his head away. After about a minute or so, he started to think that all Markus was going to do was stare at him. He turned his head back to snap at the other man again.

And found that no one was there.

The knowledge that he was alone, and that Markus really had left him behind in this hospital, stole his breath away.

Lance clenched his teeth, neck, and fists. His whole body went tight until he started to get cramps all over his muscles.

He wanted to kick and scream, but he didn’t dare draw any attention to himself.

Markus really had left him.

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Chapter Fourteen

Cole woke up to the worst sort of stiff pain in his entire body. The stabbing light of the morning sun made him close his eyes again. All he could see before that was that he was still outside. The sounds of

the wind, birds, insects, and all the other creatures were all around as

the wildlife went about its morning routine. The nausea was killer as

well.

He tried to turn over as his stomach churned so that, if he vomited,

it wouldn’t be all over himself.

The covers and blankets over top of him prevented that.

Christ, how weak was he?

“Here.”

Someone gently lifted his head and pressed a cup to his lips. Cole smelled the chicken broth first and gratefully drank down the soup.  Bits of bread were then hand-fed to him, and he started to feel much

better.

He could even open his eyes again without any pain assaulting his retinas or making the headache he had any worse.

What he saw made him want to pass out all over again.

It wasn’t just that the blankets were weighing him down. He was tied down. He was in a small camp, and the guns and knives that were lying around clearly didn’t belong to any pack mate of his.

He could suddenly smell the metal and gunpowder that was in the air as well.

A hand came down onto his forehead, testing his temperature.

“How do you feel?”

The voice was familiar. “Like shit,” Cole said then shook his hand

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away. “Want me healthy for when you skin me, right?”

The person above him didn’t say anything. Despite the trees and  the canopy, they were in a small sort of clearing, and the sun was  directly behind his captor, bathing him in light and making him hard  to see at the same time.

“I’m not going to skin you,” he said quietly.

Cole scoffed. “They told me what you would do to me if you ever  caught me. You’re lying.”

“Are you scared?”

Fuck, no one had ever said the hunters would be having these  weird conversations with him. “A little.”

A lot, more like it.

“Cole, don’t you recognize me?”

The fact that the man knew his name sent off all kinds of alarms

in Cole’s head. He looked back at the guy, his muggy brain suddenly  putting together just why that voice was so familiar to him, and it  made him more scared than ever before.

There was no way. He hadn’t been a hunter. “Everett?”

The sun shifted just enough behind one of the pines so that Cole could finally see that sadly grinning face. “Hey, lover.”

* * * *

Lance made sure to exit the hospital as soon as possible. He didn’t have the money to be staying for too many days, so with instructions to not lift anything more than ten pounds for the next six weeks and a bottle of pain killers than made him inwardly scream when he looked at the bill, he was a free man.

He didn’t feel free. He still felt like shit, and he wanted to curl up into a pathetic ball somewhere and cry out his sorrows.

He shook away the thought. Markus had been right. Despite the mating thing, and despite what he felt for the other man, they had barely known each other. Why was he being so emotional about this?

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Just because he’d practically told Markus that he loved him and  Markus hadn’t replied didn’t mean anything. Just because he now had to go home and find a way to rebuild his life also didn’t mean anything either.