Heartsblood (Dark Hollow Wolf Pack 10)

“Marco!” He heard that plainly enough over the rushing sound in his ears and recognized Nicky’s shout in his ear. He could hear the terror in his voice quite clearly, but it didn’t quite touch him. Nicky seemed far away.

“Marco!” Loud enough, and again, right in his ear. He frowned a little to show Nicky he didn’t like it and tried to sit up. It hurt, and he instantly stopped moving, sucking in a deep breath. When he did, the world came rushing back all at once—the bright sun in his face, the water rushing past, the hard rock beneath his head—and Nicky, squeezing his hand so tightly he groaned again and opened one eye.

“Ow,” he tried to say, but it came out as a low, guttural sound in his throat. Something wet was sliding off his lips and hitting his chin. He opened his mouth and a few coppery drops hit his tongue. Blood. Nicky’s wrist was pressed to his mouth and he was giving him blood. The hot liquid slid over his tongue and he managed to swallow a little.

Then Tate was beside them, holding a gun to Logan’s head. “Stop, Nicky, or I’ll shoot your little friend here.”

Nicky glanced up at Logan, frowning but still stubbornly holding his wrist to Marco’s mouth.

“Fuck him, Nicky. Don’t stop,” Logan said and Tate jammed the barrel of the gun into his temple. Logan gave a little grunt of pain.

“Stop giving him blood, Nicky,” Tate repeated and Nicky slowly pulled his wrist away and got to his feet.

“Logan’s right. Fuck you, Tate. I’m not stopping—you’ll have to shoot me first. Get the hell away from all of us or I’ll kill you.”

Tate looked him up and down and smirked. “You might at that, except your friend will die before I do. My men there on the bank behind you will finish you and Marco off.”

Nicky glanced behind him and his jaw tightened. Marco could see and hear everything being said, but it seemed a long way away from him, and happening to someone else. He felt himself fading again while they discussed it. Silver bullet, he thought, and with that he felt a line of pain deep inside going from the entry point to some organ inside his body. It was the path the bullet must have taken. Silver bullets were the only effective weapons against a wolf.

“Hurt either of them and you’ll die, Tate. I promise you that,” Nicky said. “Sooner or later, but it will happen. I’m not the same person you scared and intimidated all those times before, and I’m not the least bit afraid to die. Not so long as I take you with me.”

Marco was aware of a little silence falling between them, and he began to fade away as well. Then Tate gave a sharp bark of a laugh and turned Logan loose, stepping back. “Go ahead then. It won’t hurt to keep him alive a while longer, I suppose. Until I can get him back to the labs.”

Nicky knelt down beside him again and tipped up his head, cradling the back of it in his hand. He spoke soothingly to Marco, nonsense words maybe, or maybe they were just nonsense to Marco. The world had spiraled down to a small dark hole with a shaft of light at the end. Nicky was there and he was trying to get him to swallow his blood. Logan was beside him too, pushing hard at the wound in his side. Trying to stop the bleeding? It was too much to work out, so he let the encroaching darkness cover him as the liquid spilled down his throat and burned a molten path to his chest.

Chapter Seven

Nicky half-carried Marco with an arm around his waist, while Logan supported his weight from the other side. Nicky had refused to let Tate’s goons touch Marco, and when one of them got too close and actually poked Marco in the back with his rifle, Tate himself had to intervene to keep Nicky from ripping out the man’s throat.

Tate had stopped the fight by putting the barrel of his gun against Marco’s head. “Don’t, Nicky. I will kill him.”

Nicky let the Hunter go reluctantly and got back to his feet. For the first time he was realizing how strong he actually was now, and he wondered at how Marco, and all the wolves who were mated to humans, must have had to constantly monitor their own strength to prevent themselves from hurting their humans accidentally. It would be so simple to crush the guard’s head between his hands.

Nicky stepped over to Tate and got right up in his face, so close he could feel Tate’s warm breath on the side of his neck. “Muzzle your guards, Jeremy. I won’t stop next time no matter how much you threaten. And then I’ll come for you.”

Nicky could hear a little hiss of breath and turned his head to smile at him, almost brushing his lips against Tate’s. So Jeremy Tate still responded to his nearness. He stepped back over to sling his arm around Marco’s waist again, pulling him tight against his body. A germ of an idea was growing in his mind, a way he might save both Marco and Logan. It remained to be seen if he could make it work, but mostly it depended on Tate’s ego, which clearly had reached monstrous proportions.

The small group consisting of the three of them, Tate, and four of his Hunters had almost made it to the outer edge of Marco’s northern property lines when they ran across two of Marco’s patrol. Both young men were well known to Nicky and Logan, of course. They were the twin sons of one of the lead gammas and were just under eighteen.

When they yelped in surprise and started to growl and transform, Nicky stepped forward with his hands outstretched. “Stop! They have rifles and they’ll shoot.”

Nicky was actually a little surprised to see that they both stopped for a moment and stared at him, shifting from one foot to the other. They were whining, nervous and anxious, but they recognized his tone of command and were trying to obey. It was still a volatile situation with the armed Hunters behind him and these untried, but eager, young wolves in front of him. Then he heard one of the men behind him make a little noise, and he caught a glimpse of him raising his rifle to his shoulder.

Before Nicky could think it through, his wolf surged forward. He heard a shredding sound and realized it was his bathing trunks ripping to pieces as he transformed. His wolf fell down on all fours and pounced on top of the Hunter. Distantly, he registered shouting and shots being fired, but the shots must have gone up in the air or over his head, because the wolf didn’t feel any bullets ripping into his skin. His only thought was to protect his pack. After disposing of the human and his gun, the wolf sprang back off the body and fell down in front of his pack members to snarl his defiance at the outsiders. The roaring in his ears had lessened a bit and he could hear someone else calling to him.

“Nicky, Nicky, stop! They’ll shoot you!”

The wolf turned his head slightly and saw a human who was a part of his pack—his to protect. He knew that, but didn’t know the human’s name or how he came to belong to him. The human was calling to him again, over and over. “Stop, Nicky! Don’t do this. Marco needs you!”

The wolf shook his head in confusion. Marco was his too—he knew that name and it made him yearn for something, for someone. He wasn’t sure what it all meant, but his adrenalin was draining away as quickly as it had come. Suddenly exhausted and needing to sleep again, he sank back down inside himself and let the human body come to the forefront.

Nicky shook his head fr

om side to side and slowly got back up to his feet. He turned to the young wolves behind him. His voice was harsh and probably hard to understand. “Go back to the lodge. There’s nothing you can do here, and we don’t need any more casualties. I’m handling the situation.”

When they hesitated, looking back and forth at each other, snarling and whining, Nicky heard Tate swear under his breath and a gun cocked behind him. “Go!” Nicky shouted at them, using every bit of steel he could muster to put into his tone. His incisors hadn’t retracted yet and they scraped his lip as he shouted at them. The two young wolves jumped and dove off into the bushes, scrambling for home. He could hear them yipping excitedly to each other as they ran through the trees, headed for the lodge.

Nicky licked the blood from his lips and hoisted Marco closer. Without another word, he turned and continued down the trail. Behind him, he could hear the Hunters dealing with the dead body, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. All his focus had to be on keeping Marco and Logan alive.