Callan
Ethan is my wingman as we hunt swamp rabbits today-he’s on one side, I’m on the other. The helpless little bunny has nowhere to go. I lunge and snap, ending his life with one chomp of my canines. When my teeth connect, I shake the soul free from the rabbit. It flies from the prey’s body. Dinner is fucking served.
It’s a perfect day to hunt as my brother and I slink through the edge of the woods in Creebay Preserve. The temperature is warm enough but not too warm, and a breeze kisses the fur on our bodies, stroking it like a lover’s caress.
We stay watchful for Jacksonville pack members-the pack that owns the land and that Axel, the biggest dick on the planet, commands. That bastard would kill us for taking one fucking rabbit. Thinking of Axel makes my hackles stiffen and bristle. I can’t stand the guy, and ever since my brother Warrick challenged him for the Alpha position, the feeling is mutual.
As a result of that little scuffle, we were all banished from the pack. Nah, who am I kidding? That’s straight up bullshit.
Warrick broke from the pack as is customary when a challenger loses. Ethan and I were too loyal to let our triplet go it alone while we remained under pack rule. No fucking way. Lone wolves are all but doomed. So, we all broke from the Jacksonville assholes and went our own way. But we didn’t go far. We’ve never lived anywhere else, and risking the wrath of some other pack is a lot less appealing than fucking with Axel.
We live outside pack territory, but we hunt in the territory that he claims as his pack’s. We could hunt elsewhere or just go buy a fucking steak at the grocery store. But we like to chase prey here on the regular just to keep the pack on their toes and give a middle finger to their fucking Alpha.
Living on our own isn’t bad. Sure, we miss protection of the group. But we’ve got each other, a revolving carousel of pussy down at the shifter bar, and we’re not exactly the kind of men people dare to fuck with. We protect ourselves just fucking fine.
As I pad through the boggy land, soft and cool to my paws, and out toward the swamp, I catch the scent of another werewolf. I yip to the others and trot toward it, even though it’s off pack land and therefore not as fun as hunting. We bound along from one hillock to the next, avoiding the water when possible. You never know when a gator is down there just waiting to snap you in half.
At last, the smell of a she-wolf grows stronger, and I spot a tamped- down gap in some reeds. I leap into the reeds and stop when I spot the body. A waif of a young woman is lying in the weeds with her bottom half submerged in murky water. She’ll be covered in leeches, but at least a gator hasn’t found her. I snuffle around her body and sense life sluggishly trickling through her veins. Immediately, I shift into human form.
Warrick and Ethan, having caught up, do the same.
“What the fuck?” Warrick says as I shove my hands beneath the woman’s armpits and tug her out of the saltmarsh.
“She’s alive,” I say. “If just barely.” “Leave her,” Warrick snaps.
“She obviously needs help,” I say. “She’s a wolf. Maybe she’s trying to escape the pack.”
“You always do this, brother,” he says with annoyance. “You bring back every bird with a broken wing, and we all have to live with their plaintive cries until they die.”
“This isn’t a bird. She’s a human.” Having freed her from the marsh, I reach out and push her messy, matted hair away from her face. Her skin is cool to the touch like she’s barely hanging onto life.
Ethan tips his head back and sniffs. “She’s a wolf, dipshit.”
I bat Ethan’s head. “I know she’s a wolf. Do you think you’re the only one with a nose?”
“Cut it out, you two,” Warrick grumbles, and we both fall silent.
Warrick may not have bested Axel, but he’s powerful, and he’s the most dominant of us all. He needs to be someone’s Alpha, and since he doesn’t have a pack, he leads us.
“I’m surprised she made it this far,” Ethan muses. “A cute little female like that…”
A male lone wolf might make it a few years, but a female? She’s as much prey as the bunny.
“What, you want to fuck her?” I demand, suddenly protective of the female.
“I might,” Ethan says with a shrug. “If she’s close enough to legal and dumb enough to let me.”
Not that Ethan’s afraid of the law. Humans don’t govern supernaturals, and without a pack to keep us in line, we live like outlaws. Our bodies are hard from hard work. Our skin is inked all over and scarred from the many fights we’ve been in over the years. Locals fear us and hate us in equal measure, and the Jacksonville pack’s got orders to kill us if we’re ever caught in their territory. They’ve tried, and we’ve got the battle scars to prove it. But they just can’t shake us for good because Axel’s all
about law and order, and he won’t break werewolf law and come attack us outside of his territory no matter how many times we cross him. Man’s got principles, whatever those are.
I give Ethan a shove. “Don’t fucking touch her.”
“Leave her and let’s go on home,” Warrick says. “Dinner’s waiting.” “What?” I ask, twisting around to glare up at him. “We can’t just leave her. She needs help.”
“Who’s going to take care of her? You?” Warrick sneers at me.
“Why not me?” I demand. Warrick may be out Alpha, but we aren’t afraid of him. We’re each equally important, even if he’s most dominant.
“We could all use a little female company,” Ethan says. “Imagine how easy it would be if we didn’t have to go down to the bar to find a piece of ass every time our balls get full.”
“You mean every night?” I ask with a sour look at our most promiscuous brother.
He grabs his balls. “These bad boys need relief after a hard day’s work.”
“If she belongs to them…” Warrick jabs a thumb over his shoulder.
“Those sons of bitches will be crawling all over our place if we take a she- wolf from the pack.”
“If she belongs to the J-ville crew, we get to mess with them a little,” Ethan says, with a sly grin that shows off one of his missing molars, courtesy of a bar fight with a fae.
“They already want us dead, asshole. You’re not banging her even if she is of mating age.” I start to slap the back of Ethan’s head again, but Warrick snags my hand.
“Enough. Let me consider this,” he says, scowling.
Ethan and I wait, silent, as our brother thinks. I might argue and make my case, but in the end, he has the final word. Always.
Which means this is my only chance to persuade his stubborn ass.
“She’ll die for sure if we leave her out here,” I say. “She’s barely alive now. She’s probably not from the Jacksonville pack. Look how skinny she is. She must be a runaway, and fuck only knows what she’s been through before she collapsed.”
“He’s right,” Ethan says, eyefucking her tender little body like he wants to put his dick in it right here and now. “If she doesn’t belong to the pack, they can’t miss her. A gift is what this is. And it just fell into our laps. Are we really going to toss it to the gators?”
“Maybe she was looking for the pack, and she almost made it before her strength gave out,” I continue. “Now, we have a defenseless little she-
wolf on our hands. One of our own kind. Are we really going to leave a fellow lone wolf to die?”
“Or send her into the arms of our enemies?” Ethan asks. At last, Warrick grunts before turning to leave.
I look at Ethan and smile.
Ethan doesn’t need any more pussy. Women love his outlaw charm. They see his tats and they want to ride him like a motorcycle. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have a certain… Reputation around town. Sometime in the last ten or fifteen years, word got around that we’re always good for a few multiple orgasms.
I’m not much better, but sometimes I want more than I let on. Sometimes I’d rather one of those women stick around a little longer. But they always head home to the comfort of their stable lives after a wild weekend with us. As I toss the girl’s body over my shoulder and start back toward our cabin, I think maybe we’re due for one who sticks around a while.