Unlike with that human from the bar, Eli’s wolf was making itselfknown. The mind and soul were willing. The body, not so much.
The were above him seemed to recognize this, and he laughed.
“You can barely keep your eyes open! What do you think you’ll do to me?”
“Hey, Lloyd, you should see this guy right here,” his companion
called.
Shit! That other wolf. Eli damn forgot about him, and he was looking into Chris’s eyes.
“Get the fuck off me!” There was the sound of a scuffle, and the distinct found of flesh smacking against flesh as Chris was slapped.
16 Marcy Jacks
“You hold still now and let me see those peepers one more time.”
Would the sight of those eyes bring out some kind of instinct in these new weres? Eli had always thought that the good-luck thing, and the urge to collect on that luck, was always something that had been taught, passed down through the teachings of older weres and wise women. That other wolf sounded a little too interested, a little
too hypnotized by the colour of Chris’s eyes for Eli’s liking.
There was another scuffle as Chris fought, and this time, the sound of flesh coming down on flesh was harder as that other wolf hit Chris, attempting to make him hold still.
Eli tried to get up. “Don’t you―!”
That booted foot pushed him back down, and the motion of his body coming up and getting shoved back to the pavement was so fast that Eli had to turn over and retch.
At least the boot disappeared off his chest.
“Jesus Christ!” Lloyd cursed, disgust sounding clearly in his voice.
That was fine by him. Eli got to his hands and knees and puked the rest of the alcohol out of him. His mouth tasted like shit, but he
felt surprisingly better when he finished. He was still drunk, but now the world wasn’t spinning around him, and the nausea was gone.
He looked up and watched as that other wolf, that motherfucking asshole, forcefully turned Chris onto his stomach and then pressed his knee down between his shoulder blades as the younger man tried to fight back.
Of course he could do nothing against them. That was a werewolf, and he was just a human, and not even a big human at that.
Something about the eye-color thing must have been instinctual, because the guy on top of Chris started scrambling with the belt of his
pants.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lloyd asked, dismissing Eli
entirely to go and see what his friend was up to.
The scrappy-looking friend swiped his hand out before Lloyd
Eli’s Reluctant Mate 17
could get too close. “Get away from him! He’s mine!”
Lloyd put his hands up, backing off. “All right, all right. Didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”
He turned just as Eli punched him in the jaw, having gotten to his feet when the two dipshits were distracted.
He’d hoped Lloyd would be a good boy and just die or something, but that was the problem with killing other werewolves. A hit like that, that would’ve taken out a human without a problem, would just tickle a were, even young ones like these two.
Lloyd was thrown off his feet though, and Eli transformed, letting the change come over him, so fast, faster than he’d ever been able to do it. His clothes shredded even.
He jumped on top of his prey. Lloyd brought his arm up to defend his face against Eli’s jaws, but that was a mistake, and he screamed as Eli bit down and pierced the flesh, finding the hard bone and crunching onto that, too.
Kill you. I’m gonna kill the both of you.
Another wolf smacked into him, throwing him off of Lloyd’s
struggling body.
Eli still managed to take a long strip of skin away with him, and Lloyd shrieked like a girl.
That only seemed to spur on the friend all the more into avenging his injured companion, and he and Eli rolled, paws and legs kicking, claws trying to dig under the mass of fur that each had to slice skin, teeth biting.
Eventually those dagger-sharp teeth did manage to get around one of his front paws.
Eli yelped and rolled, and somehow he managed to get a lucky shot in on the wolf’s nose.
His attacker immediately shrieked and backed off, melting back into a man and clutching at his face.
Eli saw the damage and nearly puked again. The guy’s nose was hanging from his face by a strip of skin.
18 Marcy Jacks
He went over his friend Lloyd, who had gotten to his feet and was clutching at his shredded arm. The two of them were too occupied with their own wounds to bother with shooting Eli the customary angry glare that the losers sent to the victors. Together they ran off.
Eli didn’t doubt he’d be seeing them around again after they’d healed up. They’d want revenge after what he’d done to them. Their inner wolves wouldn’t allow them to rest until they had it, especially now that that one wolf had gotten a look into Chris’s eyes.
Eli fell onto his side, the ground almost shooting up and smacking him on his furry shoulder. He released a wolf grunt, wondering why everything was becoming all swirly again when he’d puked up all that alcohol.
Had that little bastard gotten him, and Eli had been too hyped up
on adrenaline to notice?
Shit, wouldn’t that just suck. His brother murdered and he hadn’t even gotten the chance to kill the guy who did it, and now he was going to lie here like roadkill and die, right after finding his mate.
Swell.
He let his body shift back into normal, forcing the change and shift into his bones until the rest started to handle itself. If he was
going to die here, he was going to do it as a man. He didn’t want some animal control shit coming to pick up his wolf corpse and throwing his body into a furnace.
Tunnel vision came onto him, and he was pleased to see his bleeding paw shed its thin, short hair and turn
