Dell took a step forward; startled out of his frozen state, Corey lunged and grabbed at the alpha’s hand. “Don’t!” he whispered, urgently. “Don’t do this, Dell!”

  Dell yanked his hand away, the separation like a slap. “Run back to the station. Fetch any wolves you can find. Quickly.”

  “But…”

  Several things happened all at once then. Dell became a wolf and lunged toward the panthers, his dark back windblown and rippling like a cape. Ian shapeshifted into a jaguar and leaped to meet him, and they fell down onto the grass in a tangle. A heartbeat later, the rest of the jaguars joined the deadly pile. Shrieks and terrible, pained barking burst up into the still mountain air and silenced all the other little sounds.

  His heart in his throat, terrified and not knowing what else to do except to obey Dale, Corey whipped around and started racing away. Had he really thought that he’d run so fast when he’d shifted that first time? It was nothing compared to this. Before, he had only been running away; now, he was running for his life.

  His ears were full of the sound of ripping flesh and gnashing teeth. He could feel hot breath puffing against the back of his neck, but when he stumbled on a soft patch of soil, he turned back to look at his pursuer and saw nothing. His legs still moved beneath him, regaining their rhythm even as he took in the sight below.

  Dell fought like eight wolves, somehow managing to keep the panthers at bay. He was lightning, leaping and spinning and using everything he had to attack. A lash of his paw here, and a neck-breaking whip from his tail there, all of it perfectly executed and perfectly timed. Yet, as beautiful as his violence was, he clearly didn’t stand a chance. Every blow he landed, three were placed on him in return. Blood sprayed in a mist through the air with every attack, but it also dripped from the ragged lacerations splitting the grey patterns of his fur. The red liquid of his life was so thick in some areas it seemed to be just a continuation of his black markings.

  As Corey watched, Dell slipped in a pool of blood, tried to regain his footing, and slipped again. His shoulder hit the ground and all nine panthers converged on him at once.

  Damn fetching the rest of the police. He wouldn’t make it in time. The cats were going to kill Dell. What did they care if one messenger was gone, as long as the other remained to repeat their words to the pack leader?

  His mind made up, without even knowing that he had made it up at all, Corey spun around and ran back the way he came. His mind cleared of thoughts. Fear threatened to paralyze him, but his legs just kept running, and his heart knew what was right.

  The wolf took over. A howl pulled from his chest, whistling up through his throat. His first howl, thin and reedy, but it felt as good as he imagined sex to be. Back legs bunching at the end of his next pace, the silver wolf propelled himself up into the air and then came down hard again on top of a panther. Though he didn’t know this at the time, the cat in his grasp was none other than Ian Blackwell himself. The identity of his victim hardly seemed important at the time, as he clutched at hard, angular shoulders and used his hind legs to claw at its back. Clumps of fur flew into the air around them as the panther started to buck in an attempt to throw his attacker.

  Jostled around, Corey felt his front legs protest their treatment. His grip weakened and, as he started to slip, he did the other thing he could think of to save himself: he bit.

  Clamping his jaws down on the back of Ian’s neck, Corey was rewarded with a scream of agony. The panther beneath him shook and bucked, tossing his body around like an unbroken stallion desperate to lose its rider. For only a moment, Corey lost his grip and flapped up and down. His jaw hurt so badly he felt it all the way down to the tip of his tail, before he came crashing back down hard against Ian’s back. It was like belly-flopping onto the flat, chlorinated surface of a swimming pool, an activity he suddenly felt certain he had done before and regretted for days. However, his legs automatically wrapped themselves back around the cat when contact was made and then there was nothing in the world that could dislodge him.

  Ian struggled for a few moments longer, during which the other panthers around him started to notice that something was wrong. Their baleful eyes suddenly flickered with blankness before the situation fully registered, and then a whirlwind of confusion filled in the blank. They hadn’t been expecting this. With minds full of the scent of blood, they struggled to comprehend what to do. Continue attacking the true threat, the alpha they had come for, or rescue their leader from the omega who wanted to scar him? Corey registered all that in a second.

  In the end, their loyalty to Ian won out over their common sense. The panthers turned on their leader, bodies converging into a thick, clumsy mass. Pain seared along Corey’s sides and legs as they scored blows on him, but they were bumping into each other and getting in each other’s way.

  The panther beneath him heaved, and Corey felt his grip loosen again. Then, he was tossed through the air and landed roughly so that all the breath was knocked from his lungs. He lay there stunned and watched as the huge black cat stalked toward him with blood dripping from its whiskers.

  Then, his vision was blocked by Dell stepping in front of him… in human form. “Stop,” the alpha rasped. He held one hand over a particularly bad gash on his stomach, scarlet trickling between the gaps in his fingers. “This isn’t fair. You want to be remembered as a bastard who won all his battles by ambush, or do you want to do this the right way?”

  Ian hesitated, tension rippling through his massive form. Corey could only stare, uncomprehendingly, as the panther raised his tail in a signal to back off. As quickly as the attackers had come, they were gone again. It was almost possible to convince himself that the attackers had never been there at all, if not for the torn earth and blood they left behind.

  “Dell!” he cried out, standing up so fast his head spun. He staggered up to the alpha and grabbed onto his shoulders, not knowing if he needed support or if he was trying to give it. “What the hell was that about?”

  “Bad blood,” Dell grunted. He removed his hand from his stomach, examined the way the blood ran and then replaced his hand. “Why did you come back? I told you to get help.”

  “You needed my help,” Corey whispered. He trembled as adrenaline started draining from his system, leaving him empty. “They were going to kill you. And then I… I’d be without somewhere to stay!”

  Despite the fact that he must have been in an extreme amount of pain, Dell let out a short laugh. It was agonized but sincere. “Yeah, that’s the biggest concern here, kid.”

  “We need to get you back to Eureka and to the doctor right away!” Corey bent down and grabbed at Dell’s hand, feeling the tingle in his blood as he tried to urge the other onward. “You’re hurt really bad.”

  The alpha didn’t shake him away, but neither did he seem particularly bothered. “I’m not dying. I didn’t get a chance to tell you that shapeshifters heal really damn fast. I won’t be bleeding anymore by the time we get to town. I won’t even need stitches.”

  How? He wanted so badly to ask the question aloud, but he knew that he would only be answered with a shrug and another talk about how it wasn’t his way to be interested in such things. Dell’s lack of interest in some things was astounding and frustrating as hell sometimes.

  Instead of speaking, he just kept pace with the other and kept a tight grip on his hands.

  They walked along in silence, and it was a true silence. Corey had thought that he would never know quiet again, when he had such strong wolf senses now, but all the birds and the little animals in the grass had gone away at the sound of the fight. Even the wind seemed to have fled.

  Eureka was fully in sight before they spoke again. “I know I need to explain what happened,” Dell said. “I mentioned some of it when I first met you.”

  Corey wracked his brains for the memories of that, though they were fuzzy from the stress he’d been under. “You mean how you wolves settled here.”

  “Right. The rest of it is vague to me but, apparently, we must have chased out a group of panthers and perhaps some other species that were here. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone knows why anymore. They must have just been hiding all this time, plotting their revenge.” Dell sighed. “I don’t know why people can’t just be allowed to live the way they will.”

  Which means that you think the panthers shouldn’t have been chased away in the first place.

  “Our Police Chief, and our pack leader Michael, had a run-in with a panther several months back, when his husband Tim first came into town. That Ian Blackwell is the same panther. He swore he’d return.” Dell’s lips twitched grimly. “He did.”

  Corey held Dell’s hand tighter as they walked into town, and he wondered why he couldn’t get Dell’s lips out of his thoughts. It was hardly the time for that, but for some reason he just couldn’t.

  Chapter 10

  The next few weeks were beyond rough. It wasn’t so much the wounds he had sustained in the fight against the panthers, as those healed within a few days and left no lasting marks. Michael didn’t blame him for his loss, though Jefferson kept making snide remarks about how he would have managed to somehow capture one.

  No, the rough part was being around Corey. It wasn’t that the kid annoyed him. Far from it. Somewhere along the line, something had changed and he had to struggle with that when all his life he hadn’t wanted the responsibility of a relationship. He didn’t want to be tied down, and he certainly never would have imagined the person he wanted to be tied to was Corey. All that was out of his hands now. The wolf in him had chosen his mate and was affecting his thoughts. He was powerless to stop it from happening. All he could do now was accept it and he didn’t want to.

  At the same time as he didn’t want to, he wanted nothing more than to spend all his time with the omega. With no word as to Corey’s identity, no leads turned up by the media or any of their other attempts, it was already considered a given that he was never going to be claimed by anyone. He was alone in the world except for Dell, which neither of them talked about, but which was never far from their thoughts. That was just another reason to spend time with him, to keep him from thinking about it and getting depressed.

  And it really wasn’t all that hard to spend his days with Corey, since he hadn’t been told to do anything else yet. Corey was his job, and so became his life. Every day, they strayed farther and farther from Eureka, even crossing the Canadian border at one point. To simply be wolves was pleasure, as always, but they were wolves together and could frolic and play until the sun sank down and cast long shadows across the ground. He taught Corey how to be a wolf, to hunt and to track and to read the subtle body signals passed from one animal to another.

  The only thing he didn’t teach the omega was the concept of marking. It just never seemed the right time. Corey was, after all, just a kid. It wasn’t right to force such a big decision upon him, especially not when they had just spent hours pushing their bodies together. It was sex without the sex, all contact and pleasure without intercourse. Dell would hate to ruin what they had, and truthfully, he didn’t know how to proceed with the subject himself.

  Then, one day in particular, the same as all the others, Dell awoke to find a curious scent in the air. Sitting up on the couch, he uncurled his body and then flopped to the floor to transform and stand on his own two feet. Spending too much time in a wolf’s body was unsettling, but at least he slept better than when he was cramped on the furniture as a human.

  He continued to smell that strange smell even when not in wolf form, and it made his stomach tremble. Before he knew it, his groin felt hot and tense, and he had the beginnings of an erection. It had been so long since he smelled that, and he had to struggle for a moment to remember what it was before it came to him in a flash.

  Oh. Oh, no, he thought. Then, he thought, oh, yes, and felt guilty for his eagerness.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he left the living room and was down the hall. The smell became stronger, spicy, intoxicating, and musky. It clogged his mind, consumed him. And now as he stood outside his bedroom door, he heard soft little moans. Soft moans, soft thumps, and a rustling of covers; Dell would have known that sound anywhere.

  “Corey?” he called out.

  A moan cut off abruptly into a gasp and the movements halted. He heard Corey breathing rapidly, panting like the wolf inside him. “Go… away.”

  “Corey.”

  “Go away!” came the reply, stronger than before.

  Dell could have laughed, but it lodged in his throat. Life just kept going on without him and he had to go along with it no matter what. What had happened to him? What had happened to his life for it all to come to this, standing outside the bedroom of an omega in heat?

  “I can help you.”

  “I don’t… need help,” Corey moaned. Dell could imagine him, dick in hand, pulling anxiously at his member to try and alleviate the pressure building inside him. It wouldn’t work. It never did.

  “Yes, you do,” Dell murmured. He pressed his palms against the door as if he could reach right through the wood. “I’m a wolf. I know what’s happening to you.”

  “Nothing happening!”

  Dell shuddered. His body was reacting to Corey’s sexual distress, fingers curling against the door so that his nails dragged deep grooves in the surface. “You’re in heat, Corey.”

  Stunned silence. He couldn’t wait any longer and shoved his way into the bedroom.

  The scene before him was exactly what he knew he would see. Corey didn’t even look up, didn’t even seem to notice or care that Dell was in the room with him. He lay flat on his back, both hands wrapped around his dick. His hips bucked as he tried to pleasure himself, thrusting against the ridges of fingers and palm. His face was red as a tomato, and the head of his manhood was the same shade. Between his hands as they moved were glimpses of pale skin with light blue veins just beneath the surface.

  Dell breathed in deeply, closing his eyes to try and get control of himself. Every muscle in his body was drawn tight and tense, but he couldn’t let this get out of hand. “You’re in heat,” he repeated. “It’s something that all omegas go through.”

  “What?” Corey grunted, still uselessly trying to masturbate. His face had gone from red to purple.

  “Because we’re wolves,” he explained. “Omegas go through heat.”

  His hips and hands still worked of their own accord, but now Corey lifted up his head to stare. “Heat… for breeding? Like dogs?”

  “Right.” He dared to take a few steps forward. Corey didn’t particularly seem to mind. The room positively reeked of sex and desperation now. “It lasts for a few days every month. Sometimes a week.”

  “Make it stop,” Corey pleaded. His pale eyes were wide, rimmed with white and bloodshot. “I need to…”

  Dell took a ragged breath. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? There were pills now that omegas could take to lessen their symptoms, helping with their discomfort and to keep them safe from randy alphas, but he hadn’t thought to see if the omega living in his house could be provided with any. “It’ll go away. But until then… you won’t be able to cum.”

  Corey sat up abruptly, balancing himself with one hand on the bed while the other worked furiously at himself. His skin was growing raw and chapped, without lubricant to smooth things over. “What?” he said again, eyes round. “No! This is awful!”

  “You won’t be able to cum… without an alpha.”

  No response.

  Dell pushed on, figuring he might as well get this over with. Nothing would happen if he didn’t, and it was time for him to finally take responsibility. “I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. I… I know that we’re… We haven’t even kissed… I don’t know if you want that.”

  Very smooth. Good job. One would think that I’m not nearly as experienced as I am.

  Despite his stammering, he felt confident enough to approach another few steps. His hips pressed against the mattress, uncomfortably crushing his dick as it struggled to rise.

  “Dell.” His name said in that quaking voice was like fingers stroking down his spine. “I need you.”

  So simple to say, and such a powerful reaction. Dell pulled in a ragged breath and then tore at his clothes with his nails, shoving his shirt to the side and breaking the jeans zipper. He climbed up on the mattress, straddling the other man’s writhing body. He leaned his head down until their noses touched and then brushed their lips together. Such a chaste kiss he hadn’t experienced since his very first all those years ago at thirteen, and it set his blood to boiling and ignited his body on fire. Trails of fire lanced out to his fingertips, making him gasp so that his hot breath rasped against Corey’s lips.

  Corey lifted up both his arms, giving up on his self-pleasure, and wrapped them around Dell’s neck. Their lips touched again, pressing deeper than before. They breathed together, lips moving together between them. Corey’s mouth beneath his was clumsy but eager, and he quickly learned. When Dell flicked out his tongue and lapped at Corey’s lower lip, the omega opened his mouth and let him inside. He drank deeply of the taste, hot and sweet.

  Before he could catch himself, Dell started rubbing his throbbing cock on Corey’s thigh. He couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t resist the urge… but he made himself stop all the same. He wasn’t about to rush this, not when it was their first time together.

  Their lips parted again, both of them breathing deeply. Corey whispered, “You don’t have to do this. I know I’m not anything.”

  He decided not to answer, knowing as he did that Corey was more to him than anyone could ever guess. What was it that Michael had said all those days ago, that Dell would be the last one to notice if he fell in love? It seemed the Chief was right. All this time he had spent feeling so strongly for Corey, in ways he had never felt for anyone before, and he had ignored it until their bodies could be ignored no longer.

  Their mouths crushed together again, harder than before. Dell let his tongue spear through the yielding Cupid’s bow of the other’s lips, thrusting deep inside in a mimic of sex. He held Corey’s face in his hands, holding him still as he claimed his mouth with his tongue. Their teeth clicked together as his tongue slid deeper, reaching for the back of the throat. Corey took it all, yielding and submissive as an omega should be, whimpers and little gasps of breath pulling up from his yearning interior. Dell swallowed each gasp and smothered each whimper in his attempts to claim.

 

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