Page 8 of His Three Wolves
But—and this but was a big one—the whole biology of mating was something that ran in the werewolf population, not in the human population, so while I would have loved nothing better than to share my body heat with our human right now, he… Well, humans didn’t feel a mate bond.And humans, at least those in the Western world, were not raised polyamorous.I hadn’t even considered another but—to wit, that this human mate of ours might not be gay, no matter what text this Stevie person had sent.Stevie wasn’t exactly gender specific either.
With all those thoughts pinballing around my head, I knelt there, closing up the ugly cut on the back of our human’s head, thinking about how fucked the three of us were if he happened to be straight, totally in a relationship with this Stevie, and totally opposed to even considering sharing the three of us.And that wasifhe could accept one other tiny detail, namely that werewolves existed.
Dom looked up at me, clearly scenting some of my anxiety.
“He’ll be fine, I promise.I was just thinking… This might be difficult.”
Linc, meanwhile, had done his thing with the human’s phone.He liked calling himself an entrepreneur, but what he really was was a security specialist, and cyber security was part and parcel of the company he’d built on the other coast.He’d been running it from his home office since moving here to be with us.
“His name’s Marcus.Marcus Waite.”Linc’s eyes were still on the screen.“He rented a car to get to Corpsewood Manor.Apparently a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.Stevie is Steven Bryce, a physicist.It looks like they had a fight, at least judging by Steven’s texts.Marcus didn’t respond to a single one.Steven is his emergency contact.”
The tone of Linc’s voice as he told us all of that about mirrored my own feelings on the matter, which ran along the lines ofOh hell, fuck that,as Dom would have put it.
“We should call him, then.”Those words out of my mouth were a surprise even to me.
Linc turned toward me, his expression hard, and Dom growled.
I sighed.“I don’t disagree with either of you, but put yourselves in…in Marcus’s shoes.Wouldn’t you want your security contact to know that a bunch of strangers picked you up in the woods and that you’re safe?”
I really hated saying that, but it made a lot of sense.It was the right thing to do.It had to be the right thing.I couldn’t think about the list of buts and ifs attached to it.
I cleaned up the wound as best as I could after I cut the last suture, then turned to Linc.“I can do it if you want.”
Dom kept up his growling, actually flashing teeth now.
“No, you’re right, Ell.I’ll do it.”He let out about the weightiest sigh I’d ever heard out of him.“What about Marcus?We can’t keep him on the couch, and his clothes are wet.”
Dom yapped.He still wanted Marcus in his bed, but he wasn’t the only one.Heavens help us.
I sighed.“Let’s change him into some of Dom’s clothes and then put him in the guest room.Dom’s closest to him in size.”
Linc scratched his head.“I guess.”
Dom, of course, was up in a flash, dashing into his room to find some flannel, because he owned far too much flannel.
“What do I tell that Steven person?That we found him out near our property?”Linc asked.
I shrugged.“Sounds good enough.We took him inside, and I took care of his laceration here rather than driving him to the hospital.Tell him he’s still out cold but doesn’t present with anything immediately life-threatening.”Dom came back, still all wolf, clean flannel pj’s in his mouth.“Shift, I need you to help me undress him.”Dom dropped the flannel and shifted back immediately.
Linc forced out a long breath.“Right.I’ll call Mary at Corpsewood as well, let her know her guest won’t show because he showed here.”
“How exactly did he get out into the woods anyway?”I was mostly trying to distract myself while I began carefully working Marcus’s clothes off.Dom was already pulling our human’s shoes off.
Linc’s lips were pressed into a tense line.“I’ll go look for the car after I finish the phone calls.Either it broke down or something else happened that made it impossible for Marcus to use it.Once he wakes up, we can ask him.”
Once he woke up, there was a whole lot more we needed to talk about, not just the car or how he’d ended up in the woods.But that was for then.Right now, I had to focus on remaining as professional as I could while undressing my unconscious mate.Since all three of us were still naked, I could have measured out how well each of our efforts went in that department.I would’ve needed the long kind of ruler to do it.
In Dom’s words, we were very, very fucked indeed.
5
My head hurt, my hip hurt, and so did my right elbow.Among other things.I slipped in and out of consciousness.I was in the woods, and it was cold and damp there.Then it was warm all of a sudden, warmer than when night had fallen and I’d struggled to find my way through the thick underbrush.Right.The ground had just dropped off, and I’d fallen.Hit my head.
I groaned and forced my eyes open.
“Hey there,” said a warm voice that made me jerk fully awake.
I’d been in the woods, and psycho killers used the woods to bury their victims.Had one of them…found me?
