Kidnapped by the Werewolf Hunter [DeWitt's Pack 13] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove), Marcy Jacks [book recommendations for teens .TXT] 📗

He was going to pass out. He was going to pass out, and Cole was going to kill him.

In the deep haze that clouded his brain, a recollection suddenly poked out from the smog that covered his rational thinking. Everett remembered the silver rings in his pockets.

He reached down and grabbed for them. He couldn’t get them on in the position he was in now, but the second he had them in hand, he pressed them against Cole’s face.

There were ten of them. One ring for each of his fingers and thumbs. Cole shrieked an awful sound that Everett had never heard him make before once the metal touched his skin.

Cole’s hands flew away from his neck, and he went down clutching at his face. Everett dropped some of the rings, but he had to act quickly. He took one of the shackles in his hand and quickly clamped it back over Cole’s wrist. Cole was too busy writhing in his agony on the ground that he barely seemed to notice.

He kept Cole’s other hand free as he chained his hand to the tree. Now he was chained from the waist and one hand. Everett felt a little better about this now. He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do about Cole’s injuries, though.

Finally, Cole tugged against the chains holding him and screamed. There was blood on his face. Everett could still smell the burning from where he’d shoved the silver rings. Great, now he had to find the ones he’d dropped.

“Let me go! Let me go!” Cole screamed.

He yanked against his chains, and he tugged and whipped around the chain that was reattached to his wrist.

To Everett’s sick horror, he watched as Cole bit down on his hand, just around the swell at the base of the thumb.

He was going to bite his thumb off!

Everett did the only thing he could think of doing at that point. He grabbed Cole around the neck, looping his arm just under the man’s chin, and pried his mouth away.

He hadn’t been in time to keep Cole from biting through some of the skin, and while there was a little blood, his thumb was still in place.

“Get off me!”

“Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!”

Cole shook and smashed the both of them against the tree, hard enough that Everett released him.

Everett stepped away until he was out of Cole’s reach. At least he’d stopped trying to bite himself.

“I’m going to kill you!” Cole snarled.

His golden eyes were back, and his fingers extended into those horrible claws that Everett had seen on other shifters. He’d seen claws like that rip through thick metal.

It was just the werewolf speaking, Everett told himself. This wasn’t the real Cole talking here.

That was right. Cole was sick. This reaction he was having was not his fault. The animal inside of him wanted out. It wanted to escape and defend itself against what it perceived as an attack.

Everett raised his hands and took a cautious step forward. He tried to bring to mind all the time he lay in bed with this man. How often he and Cole would sit on the couch together, snuggling after a hard day’s work for the both of them. He remembered the soft feel of his mouth and how gentle Cole had been with the world around him.

The guy couldn’t hurt a fly, and he would’ve been a vegetarian had he not loved bacon so much.

“Colby, come on, baby. It’s me. You don’t want to do this.”

That only seemed to make him flip out even more. “Stop calling me that! I am not your baby! You fucking kidnapping hunter lunatic.”

“Cole, for God’s sake, you nearly bit through your thumb to get out of the shackle,” Everett said, pointing with his hand to the damage he spoke of.

Cole’s hand was now dripping blood onto the foliage at his feet, not to mention the blood and swelling on his cheek. Everett was going to have to clean that up and quickly. They’d been lucky enough to not attract any wildlife on their journey. He didn’t want something coming after them now.

Cole looked down at the wound, and seemed to realize what he’d done and how much it was now hurting. He shook his hand out and crouched to his knees. He made sure to keep his back to Everett, hiding his wounds.

“Cole, if I want to take a look, will you try and kill me again?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, asshole,” Cole said, glaring over his shoulder. The wound on his face made the snarl that much more ferocious.

Everett lifted a brow, hardly believing it, but he decided to ask anyway. “You weren’t?”

“No! I was trying to knock your dumb ass out so I could get out of here. If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve grabbed your gun.”

It was stupid, but he believed him. His gun had been in the holster the entire time, and Cole hadn’t once made a play for it. Still, the sensation of being choked hadn’t been a pleasant one, and he never wanted to go through that again.

From the look of it, Cole didn’t want silver shoved against his face ever again either.

“Christ, Cole. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Yes, you did!” Cole rounded on him, those golden eyes as bright as ever. “If you really wanted to do me any favors, you would let me go!”

“I will let you go,” Everett said.

That actually made Cole take a step back. “What?”

Everett sighed. He grabbed his bag of supplies and pulled out the bandages and creams he would be needing. Anything bloody would have to be buried. “Let me clean you up first. You made everything worse so—”

“Wait!” Cole snapped, holding his injured hand out.

Everett stopped what he was doing to look up at him, suddenly alert. He didn’t hear anything, but from the way Cole was standing, staring out into the distance, he