Revenge couldn’t even be his, so he would take out his frustrations and end his own existence, joining Chris with Romulus and Remus, all in one shot.
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It was actually very perfect.
The first wolf was easy to find. The mindless fight they had all gotten into, eating one of their own allies, had brought out more of the animal than the man in all of them. They would be stuck in that state for some time to come, and they would be sticking around DeWitt’s pack land, still mourning the loss of creature they had fought so hard for a piece of.
Eli kicked off his jeans, shifted, and charged. The idiot never knew what hit him, even though Eli was still healing from the attack in his bedroom, and the scent of his blood should have been a
giveaway. It was too easy, and Eli had his neck twisted around before the other wolf was able to do more scratch him across the nose, and it
wasn’t even a good scratch at that.
He would have to give them more of a warning the next time.
He did. The next wolf bit down on his ear and clawed his chest
before he was down for good.
The third wolf winded Eli more than hurt him, and Eli killed him
with little trouble at all.
Why were these wolves so easy to kill? Even as Eli gave them chances to fight back, he still put them down with minimal effort.
Maybe it was the adrenaline inside of him. Maybe he just wanted to kill the werewolves responsible for Chris’s death a whole lot more than he wanted to die.
For now at least.
Eli was tired, hot with sweat, and he needed something cold to drink more than anything. He shifted back into a man and let himself fall back against the base of a tree.
He chuckled to himself. Maybe he could just sit here and waste away. He could die of thirst, and the effect would be just as good as the one he’d been after to begin with. Death.
He even thought he heard Chris calling his name a couple of times during his fights. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Unless Chris had decided he was going to haunt Eli for his own part in
106 Marcy Jacks
Chris’s murder.
It would certainly serve him right.
Maybe he did die. He wasn’t sure, but there was a period there where everything seemed like a hallucination, reminding him of the first time he’d ever gotten drunk or tried smoking the green leaf.
Another wolf entered his hallucination. It growled at him, and Eli
grunted back.
Could it be the spirit of Romulus or Remus, here to punish him for not protecting his mate? Or was it a wild wolf out to avenge his friends? Not likely. Wild wolves weren’t known to have much pack loyalty, if any at all.
This one had probably scented the blood and was just looking for a fight.
The wolf barked at him, and Eli blinked dreamily at it, coming fully awake. Not a ghost, this was an actual werewolf.
It came closer, and Eli didn’t move.
The face of the smaller wolf shifted from angry and defensive to a cautious curiosity as it approached.
Not an alpha then. An alpha would have come to Eli as though he were its own personal meal. The size of the wolf also suggested that this was an omega.
Strange. Omega werewolves didn’t usually survive after going wild. Who was this?
The wolf came way too close, getting all up in Eli’s personal space, and he pushed the head of the animal away when it dipped its head to sniff at his crotch.
“Do you mind?” Eli snapped.
That light brown head came up, ears pulled back, the eyes both
offended and hurt.
The eyes were what made Eli sit up straight, despite the searing pain in his back. He grabbed the wolf by the scruff and pulled it closer until they were nose to nose. Eli’s vision was still hazy, and though he couldn’t blink it away, no matter how much he tried, there was no
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mistaking the color of those eyes.
“One dark brown, the other blue.” Eli barely dared to hope.
“Chris?”
The wolf twitched his tail and licked Eli across the nose. Eli
laughed and sobbed at the same time, throwing his arms around the hairy shoulders of the wolf lest he disappear on him.
Eli’s chest hurt as he wept. He couldn’t seem to properly catch a breath as his happiness consumed every part of him, even his lungs, leaving little room for air.
He ran his fingers through the coarse wolf fur of Chris’s hair, kissed his perfect ears and the top of his head.
Chris wagged his tail like a puppy who had found his master, and he knocked Eli onto the ground, licking his face and neck.
Eli finally caught his breath and managed to laugh. He grabbed the fur around Chris’s neck and yanked the new wolf off of him. Chris’s mouth was open, tongue lolling in a dog smile.
“Can you understand me?” Eli asked. It was common that a first transformation put the werewolf in more of an animal state of mind, rather than human, but Chris yipped at him.
That could mean anything.
Eli looked him in the eyes and concentrated. He needed to communicate with Chris, get him out of this form. Do you understand me? he asked again, using the link that all mated werewolves had.
Chris’s ears perked, and he cocked his head to the side, as though attempting to understand what that sound had been inside his head.
Then his body shifted.
He was changing back. Eli held on to him tightly as Chris whined and lay down on soft grass. The shift went through him relatively quickly. After twenty seconds all his fur had either been shed completely off or had shrunk back
