He shook away the old memories and the gag, once Everett loosened it. He had to spit out a few fibers, but his jaw hurt a lot less, and he definitely felt better with it off.
“Sorry about that,” Everett said when Cole finished spitting away the bits of the cloth gag he’d gotten stuck in his mouth while biting on it. “Here.”
Everett offered him his water canteen, and after quickly sniffing the contents to make sure there was nothing in there other than water, Cole took his drink.
He sighed when the cold liquid made its way down his burning throat. “Thanks.”
Everett nodded and looked away from his eyes. Everett’s eyes were as dark as Cole remembered. “You’re welcome.”
He couldn’t take any more of this idle chitchat while he was chained to a fucking tree. “Why are you doing this?”
Everett’s head snapped up to him. “Huh?”
It was super pushing his luck, but he was still confident that Everett wasn’t going to hurt him. At least not today. There was no telling where the man intended to take him and what was going to happen to Cole when they got there.
“Why haven’t you skinned me yet? Or tortured me for information?”
The skinning thing could be explained by the fact that Cole hadn’t shifted into a wolf yet. The only purpose to skinning a werewolf was to collect on their pelts. Cole didn’t know all the details, but from what he understood, the pelts were sold to rich humans, or sometimes even vampires, for high prices. Sometimes the hunters kept the pelts as trophies and wore them around while they went out on their hunts.
Everett hadn’t tortured him for information on possible other pack locations, either. Sometimes if a shifter was tortured enough, it would also force a transformation, but Everett hadn’t done any of those things.
Cole had seen the tools shortly after waking up for the first time, so he knew Everett had them, but he hadn’t force-fed Cole any poisons, he hadn’t ripped out his eyes or fingernails, and he hadn’t pressed silver all over his body. It had been three days now since Cole had been taken. If Everett was going to do something to him, now would be the perfect opportunity.
Everett wet his lips and shifted a little on his feet. He was still crouching, putting them at eye level. His strong jaw clenched under the three days’ worth of stubble he had growing there. “I’ll admit that I thought about it a couple of times.”
That got Cole’s heart racing. Nick, one of the werewolves in Cole’s pack, had once told him about the condition some of the captured alphas had been found in after hunters had taken them.
Usually their bodies were so mutilated after a session with an angry hunter that the alphas had been reduced to blubbering masses, shadows of their former selves. Cutting off body parts and skinning them alive would do that. Usually, Nick would say, the damage was so bad that the rescued wolf would need to be put out of his misery anyway.
Cole shivered every time he thought about that, but those stories only made him want to protect his new pack, the kind people who’d taken him in and the children they had living with them, all the more.
It had also made Cole fear the thought of any of his new friends, or himself, being caught. Despite his questions, he didn’t want to be tortured and cut apart until he was begging for someone to kill him.
“What’s stopping you?”
Everett lifted a brow at him. “Do you want to be tortured and skinned alive?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Cole snapped. He was getting beyond the point of caring about the fact that Everett was holding Cole’s life in his hands. Cole just wanted some answers. He was tired of waiting around like this, watching the other man to see what he would do. “I want to know what you’re going to do with me. I haven’t seen any other hunters around since I woke up. It’s just been you and me all this time, and so far all we’ve done is travel.”
Cole didn’t know how far they’d gone. Everett had been careful to keep him mostly drugged up on something for those parts.
Whatever it was that Everett was sticking into Cole’s system, his body was developing a tolerance to it. Soon he would be able to remain strong and focused enough to escape, no matter what Everett was injecting him with.
The problem was that Cole was beginning to think that he was running out of time. None of the other members of his pack had come for him yet, which meant he was probably on his own.
Oddly enough, Everett seemed to hesitate some more. He had this big problem of not being able to look Cole in the eyes. “I can’t.”
Cole blinked at him. “You can’t? So, someone else will?”
Everett wet his lips and rolled his eyes. “I mean I can’t kill you. I don’t want anyone to kill you.”
Everett got up and walked back to the fire. He took a long stick in hand and used it to move about the logs, giving the fire more air and allowing it to rise a little. Cole had barely noticed how far down the sun had set, but now it seemed that the fire was the only thing lighting up their little space.
Everett then pulled out some of his cooking equipment and packaged foods as though he hadn’t just told Cole something like that.
“You can kidnap me from my pack, force me to go with you to wherever it is you’re going, but you don’t want anyone to torture and kill me?”
“No, Colby, I don’t want anyone to torture or kill you,” Everett said, throwing down the little spears he had that were used to cook hot dogs with. “Fuck,” he muttered when they landed in the dirt.
“What am I doing with you then?” Cole asked. He decided to ignore the
