“If you think for one second that means I’ll go easy on you, you fucking piece of wolf shit, you’re out of your mind. I still need to pay you back for this.” Tatum held up his bandaged hand, as though Morgan could’ve forgotten it.
He pulled out a small, black case from the inside pocket of his winter jacket. It looked like it might be the kind of thing that would contain some reading glasses, but then he opened it up, and Morgan cringed.
“Yeah, you know what this is, don’t you?” Tatum said, holding up the opened case for Morgan to better see the needles inside.
Adrenaline. They were going to pump him full of it and try to
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force a transformation. He’d heard horror stories about this kind of
thing, usually second hand from relatives of the few to survive or fight against the effects long enough to be rescued.
“Why don’t you just get it over with?” Morgan asked.
“So you can go wolf while my backup is gone?” Tatum let out a small laugh. “No thanks. But just in case you get any ideas about getting away, we’re going to do this the second they get back. I’m going to personally rip the skin off your body, and then I’m going to wear it around as a trophy.”
Morgan shivered. Even the toughest of alphas could be brought down with ideas of being skinned alive.
He wriggled his wrists harder behind his back, and that act had apparently not gone unnoticed by Tatum. “Don’t get your hopes up trying to break through that, either.” His grin was toothy. “I was a Boy Scout. Got my badge in tying knots and everything.”
Morgan couldn’t resist. “Thought they didn’t let fags into the scouts?”
That earned him a punch in the nose. The pain blinded him for a
second, and the crunch was the worst sound he’d ever heard.
He groaned but managed to keep from making any other pained
sounds.
Tatum must’ve punched Morgan with his injured hand because when his vision cleared and he looked at the man, he was shaking his hand out and sucking on the blood that had started to flow again. He was cursing something awful, too.
If Old Maggie, the pack’s wise woman, had ever heard that kind of language, she would’ve torn his head off.
“Filthy, stinking, motherfucking―”
“Sir!”
Tatum looked up, and Morgan did, too, when Storm called out. The man was standing up straight, his one eye focused as he stared off in the distance.
“What?” Tatum snapped, looking in the direction Storm stared in.
Mated to the Wild Omega 107
His face blanched when he caught sight of the younger member of their team, Chance, if Morgan remembered the name right.
He was walking back to the campsite, shifting his legs through the high snow, pushing through.
Morgan couldn’t smell it because of how clogged with blood his nose was, but now that he was looking in that direction, he could see the way he left a dark trail of red behind him.
Something had attacked the guy, and now Chance was trying to get back to the camp.
It was the perfect way to find out exactly where the enemy was hiding when one couldn’t count on the wind to be with them.
Storm and Tatum knew this, too. Tatum was the first to act,
jumping up and grabbing for a rifle from the inside of one of the long bags he carried around. It was filled with other weapons.
Storm spoke up when Tatum took aim.
“Sir, he’s already brought them this close. Maybe we can still use him to help us fight when they arrive.”
Tatum whirled on him, pointing the barrel of his gun at Storm’s face.
Storm lifted his hands and backed away a step.
Tatum seethed at him. “You were the one who said they wouldn’t be tracking us for him. I should kill you, too!”
Morgan had to give the man credit, he recovered quickly. “Then you will kill Chance, and Tony is missing. You’ll be all alone to fight the werewolves.”
Tatum actually shook with anger. He bared his clenched teeth to the other man, but must have seen the logic in his words because he swore loudly and turned away.
“God fucking damn it! Just grab a gun, and radio Tony. See if that asshole’s―”
The little black walkie-talkie at Storm’s hip crackled. No voices sounded. Nothing human, at any rate, but there were some angry growls coming from the other end.
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Storm took the thing in his hand and pressed the button on the side. “Whoever this is, is the hunter you took alive?”
Why was he even worrying about him? Clearly this man wasn’t a human. Morgan could smell it all over him. Why did he bother working for the hunters?
Another loud growl sounded, and then the loud screech of the signals getting crossed somewhere, and then nothing.
Storm looked down at the radio and then put it back in the little holster at his hip.
“Just you and me then,” Tatum said. “Him, too, I guess, but he looks pretty worthless,” Tatum nodded toward their bleeding comrade, who was almost upon them by now.
“So long as the possibility exists that Tony is still alive, I’ll stay with you.”
Morgan’s first thought at those words was how much this man must love that hunter to be doing the things he was doing against other paranormal creatures. Strange, especially considering how dead his tone was.
Despite himself, Morgan began to relax a little. Help had come, and he wasn’t going to be a wolf skin rug any time soon.
He almost breathed a sigh of relief, until he saw one particular wolf off in the distance.
It was a common gray wolf, of regular size, for an omega. Morgan
didn’t need his sense of smell to know who that was.
He screamed when Tatum pointed his rifle and fired.
The blast might as well have shot straight into Morgan’s heart. The jolt he got was so strong, he thought he would pass out or have a heart
