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Mick nodded. “Thank you, but it won’t be me you’ll have to say those words to. James leads this pack, and you’ll have to say them to him. I’m pretty sure he won’t hold anything against you, though.

Isaac used to be a hunter, and now that puny human is practically one of us.”

Storm was worried for when that event came, humbling himself in front of the leader of this pack, but he tried to tell himself to be calm.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I shouldn't be telling you this, but James and I have already spoken. You're good to stay here so long as you want to, and given the fact that you mated with John, that makes you one of us now, too.”

Storm inhaled slow and deep. “Do you mean that?”

Mick nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

Storm hardly knew what to think. This did not erase his need to make amends, but the fact that he would be given permission to stay and he would not have to leave John’s side made his heart flutter in his chest. He’d never had that happen to him before.

“That was everything,” Mick said, clearing his throat and standing up quickly, looking like he was very much out of place. “I’ll, uh, let you get back to it.”

He vaguely pointed at his own face, signaling that Storm still needed some work done, but Storm wasn’t ready to have both men leave just yet.

116

Marcy Jacks

“May I ask you a question?”

Mick blinked down at him. “All right. Shoot.”

Storm cleared his throat. John had already had this discussion with him, but now he needed to hear it from someone else.

“John has told me that your leading alpha, and you as well, have both mated with males? Is that true?”

Now Mick really blinked down at him. His face turned a little red as well.

He cleared his throat before responding, and Storm worried that he may have overstepped his boundaries with the question.

“Yeah, uh, it’s been happening an awful lot with the alpha males around here. The unmated females are admittedly starting to get a little worried, but Ariel recently came out, claiming she was mated to Meg, and they’ve been making it work.”

Storm relaxed a little. So this was a natural occurrence here.

Maybe he should tell James about what was going on with the werecats and how they were slowly going extinct.

That could wait until after he’d seen John. “Thank you. I was just curious.”

Mick nodded. “Yeah, that’s natural. I’ll leave you to it and let the omegas come back in to see you.”

Mick left him alone, and Storm was a little surprised to note how Markus did not follow the older alpha.

He seemed to be struggling with something just as much as Mick had when he’d apologized. He wouldn’t even look Storm in the face.

“You…you take care of him. You got that? I don’t care if you’re mated to John, you ever hurt him again, even on accident, and I’ll make you wish you were never born.”

Storm should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. There would still be those who were protective of their friends. Still, he nodded anyway. As far as punishments went, this was the least he deserved.

“I won’t hurt him.”

Markus snorted and left the room.

Hunted and on the Run

117

The omegas hustled back in, and they all quickly worked together to pick out the last of the shotgun pellets. They bandaged him up, claiming he was lucky that none of the shotgun pellets had struck his good eye, and that because his injuries had been small and because of his healing abilities, scarring would likely be minimal, and not anywhere near the extent of what their leading alpha was carrying around.

By the time they bandaged him up, he felt like a wrapped mummy. They offered him some pain pills, but he refused to take anything that would make him feel drowsy. He gladly accepted the creams and lotions they offered for swelling and itching, thanked them for their work, and then left the cabin.

One of the omegas, Tristan, who had been the one to complain the loudest about being kicked out of the room when he’d been working on a patient, had pointed the way to where John would be.

Storm was new to the land, and all the sights and smells he did not recognize put him on edge. The omega took pity on him and guided him toward the cabin where John lived.

He knocked before entering and then led Storm to where John’s room was located.

“We share the cabins here,” Tristan explained. “My mate wants to build some more, and James is working with him on that, but for now most of us have roommates.”

Storm didn’t mind that at all.

Tristan left him alone when they came upon the door that belonged to his lover, quietly wishing him luck.

Storm thought he may have found a friend in that omega.

He inhaled a deep breath and opened it slowly. John was lying in bed, resting, but his eyes were open. James was in the room with him, and from the look of them, it seemed that Storm had interrupted a conversation of sorts.

James saw him and then nodded to John. “I’ll let you get your rest now. We can finish this in the morning.”

118

Marcy Jacks

John nodded to his alpha. Storm stepped out of the man’s way as he exited the room. Storm couldn’t help but look at him as he left.

The omegas said that his scarring wouldn’t be as bad as James’s, apparently because James had been shot in the face with silver pellets, but would Storm’s face resemble that? He never thought of himself as a vain man before, but now with his eye lost in a battle for his life and the likelihood of having his face scarred as well, it worried him that John might lose his interest in Storm. Physically, at any