Matthew's Chance Page 16

  Jay dropped down to his knees on the scrubby ground, his arms caging Matthew to the wet grass. Matthew jerked his head to the side, trying to see where he’d been moved.

  No.

  A few feet away, water lapped at the side of one of the glimmering pools. He could see mosquitoes hopping across the water’s surface and hear the water’s ripple.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “What you are—”

  Jay pinched Matthew’s cheeks, forcing Matthew’s head around, and stared down at him. “Shut the fuck up unless you’re answering my questions.”

  Matthew glared.

  As soon as Jay released him, he spit in Jay’s face.

  Jay backhanded him, hard enough that Matthew’s ears rang and he could taste the bright tang of blood on his tongue and in the back of his throat. Jay’s blow had busted his nose and he could feel a warm trickle on his upper lip, trailing into the corner of his mouth.

  So he spit blood in Jay’s face.

  Jay hit him again. “You goddamn prick. That’s it.”

  He grabbed Matthew’s hands by the rope, yanking hard enough that Matthew gasped, harsh and loud, as his arms twisted and his shoulders wrenched.

  Don’t fight your fate, the Diviner had said, eyes as black as the deepest, darkest pool could ever be.

  Jay’s boots splashed in the overflow of the pool, sinking into the soft ground.

  Matthew could hardly breathe his lungs had seized so tight. His back slid along the wet grass and brush tangled in his hair.

  Sebastian yelled, “She wanted him alive!”

  “I don’t fucking care,” Jay said. “Nobody’ll ever find his goddamned body.”

  Jay grunted as he kicked Matthew between the shoulders and Matthew gasped a harsh breath, trying to hook his elbows on the side of the pool, but the grass was slick and what had once been strong crumbled beneath his arms and his weight pulled him down.

  “Goddammit, Jay! Don’t do this.”

  Jay reached into the back of his pants and pulled out a pistol. He squatted and shoved the end of the barrel against Matthew’s temple. “You can either let go, or I put a bullet in you right now. Either way, you’re going in that water.”

  Matthew swallowed back a plea, looking into Jay’s cold eyes. Jay would do it, without a moment’s hesitation. A bullet might have been quicker, but the Diviner’s words wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Don’t fight your fate, he’d said, or your heart will know no peace and your pain no comfort.

  Before Matthew could second guess himself, he forced himself to let go.

  He struggled for longer than he should’ve been able to stay afloat kicking his bound legs, his waterlogged boots and jeans dragging him down, and Jay squatted there at the edge of the pool, watching with a cold-eyed gaze as Matthew tired himself out.

  A leaf blew across the pond in front of him to land on the splashing water.

  God, he was so goddamn tired.

  “Let’s go,” Sebastian hollered. “Lujan’s still out cold. They won’t even know we were here if we get out while we’ve got the signal block working.”

  “Just another few seconds,” Jay said, as if he knew Matthew’s time was up.

  “You … goddamn … asshole,” Matthew said, taking in several mouthfuls of water in his effort to speak.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jay said. “You should’ve stayed out of things this time. Goodbye, Matthew. I don’t think you’re going to come out of this one.”

  Matthew ignored him and looked up and saw the gray clouds scudding across the sky. He smelled the scent of decaying leaves and bruised grass and stagnant water and felt the breeze on his cheeks.

  The water will be cold and the sky gray but the day will feel full and bright as you take your last breath.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Ash and stopped fighting.

  Chapter 22

  He wasn’t sure when he became aware of voices, of a roaring crescendo of noise and the rush of water sliding across his skin. He ached, and his thoughts splashed through his head like boots through a creek.

  He couldn’t think, because thinking hurt in a way he’d never experienced.

  Nevertheless, his thoughts slowly coalesced and the voices turned into words and the words even started to make a sort of sense.

  “…Ashikid won’t…”

  “…fucking crazy…”

  “…too slow…”

  And then a fiery burn started in his midsection and spread outward to the very tips of his fingers and to the soles of his feet and his whole body came alive as he started choking on the water in his lungs.

  The voices got louder and the burn got worse, and he remembered how to breathe between one second and the next and as soon as he did, his lungs seized and he starting coughing water out of his mouth and nose and gasping for breath that didn’t want to come.

  “Goddamn,” he heard.

  “Get his—”

  “Matthew!”

  “Matthew.”

  And warm hands touched his cold skin and he felt a strong grip haul him upright and hold him until the coughing stopped and tremors coursed through his body.

  “He was dead, I’m telling you.”

  His body shook so hard his teeth clacked together, but he managed to grate out, “Ash.”

  “I’m here,” Ash said, and his warm breath breezed across the back of Matthew’s neck. “I’m here.”

  Matthew sagged against the arms across his chest, his weight dragging him down, but Ash was there and that was all he needed to know.

  He coughed and breathed and then did it all over again, until his lungs stopped burning and he could hardly keep his eyes open. A stiff breeze cut through his wet shirt and an uncontrollable shiver swept through him.

  Ash shook him, his arms tightening. “Matthew.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, and he could tell he was slurring his words but his head pounded and when he dragged his eyes open, the world was nothing but a painful blur of color and light. “I’m okay. Don’t let me go.”

  The warmth of Ash’s face pressed hard to the side of Matthew’s neck. “I have you. I have you.”

  He sat there for a while, just breathing, healing, and his thoughts started to skip around, his memories flitting from one to the next, until—

  “Cam,” he said, his voice raspy but sharp. “Cam Lujan—”

  “Lujan will face Alpha for what he did to you,” Ash said. “He will submit or he will fight, but he will face the consequences of his actions.”

  Someone behind him said, “Paetarikeille is tracking him.”

  Alpha Craig’s voice. Talking about… Alpha Rick?

  “No. No,” Matthew said, struggling against the weight of his own body to sit upright. He pushed back into Ash’s chest. “Cam didn’t do this. That was Jay. Jay was here. Jay and a couple of his guys—Sebastian, Sebastian’s still with him.”

  “Jay?” Alpha Craig came around Ash and Matthew and crouched in front of them, hands on his knees. “He was here?”

  Matthew closed his eyes for a brief moment, making an effort to make sense of his memories. “He didn’t know where the bullets came from,” he said. “And neither did Cam, and shit, he’s with the States. Jay said he was with the States.”

  Craig’s gaze didn’t waver as he said, quietly, “Cam Lujan is with the States? Are you sure?”

  Matthew shook his head. “I remember… Sebastian said something about a signal block. They couldn’t have gone far.”

  Craig’s gaze slid past Matthew to Ash and then returned. “We searched for you for several hours before we found you, Matthew. Jay and his men are likely long gone by now. There was only one scent in the area and Paetarikeille picked it up as soon as we arrived. No other human scents lingered. Not even yours. That’s why it took us so long to find you.”

  Leaves fluttered by on the breeze.

  Not even his scent had lingered, because—

  Several hours.

  He’d been at the bottom of that pool f
or hours and Ash hadn’t known where he was.

  He should’ve been dead.

  Or maybe he had been, but—no, he hadn’t been dead, because the wolves’ technology couldn’t bring people back from the dead—it only seemed that way. If the biotech had kept trying to heal him as he drowned, maybe it had kept him alive long enough for him to be found and rescued.

  Because he couldn’t have been dead.

  But… resuscitation wasn’t out of the question when he had alien technology inside him that could heal his injuries from the inside out.

  Matthew shook off those thoughts and tried to focus because Craig was speaking again, but he’d lost all sense of the conversation and his expression must have shown that.

  He didn’t want to remember that moment when the burn in his lungs had been too much for him to resist, when he’d recognized that he was about to pass out from a lack of oxygen, that he was going to suck water into his lungs whether he wanted to or not, and the panic he’d felt when he knew he couldn’t hold out even one more second—

  But he couldn’t stop those thoughts from racing through his head and distracting him from what was going on around him.

  Only Ash’s arms around him comforted him and reminded him that he wasn’t alone any longer.

  Craig hesitated, glanced again at Ash, and said, “We’ll discuss this later.”

  He pushed to his feet, and stepped away, and Matthew noticed for the first time that the only people standing around him were Ian and Fletcher, and that although several of Alpha Craig’s—or Rick’s—wolves had obviously accompanied them, none of those wolves had strayed close.

  Matthew sank back into Ash’s warm embrace, stretching out his stiff legs. When he moved, his waterlogged boots squelched and one leg of his jeans twisted uncomfortably tight at the groin. He didn’t care. He was alive. “I told you the Diviners didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.”

  Ash huffed a breath against Matthew’s neck. “You’re injured,” Ash said, “and you aren’t thinking clearly.”

  “I’m not dead. I’d know if I was dead.” Matthew dropped his head back on Ash’s shoulder and looked up at the sky. “You know what?” he said. “That sky might be gray, but by God, this is a beautiful day.”

  Ash hugged him tight and close and Matthew hoped he never let go.

  * * *

  Of course, Ash had to let go at some point, but it wasn’t when they started back to the ship they’d left concealed in a natural depression in the woods, miles from the water recycling facility, under the cloud-darkened sky.

  Evening was almost on them and the whipping wind promised a coming storm.

  Ash’s hand never left Matthew’s back and Matthew was grateful for the support as they walked.

  Alpha Craig had a habit of reaching up and dragging his hand down the back of Ian’s neck, sometimes letting his hand linger, guiding Ian through the densest brush.

  Ian’s and Craig’s conversation remained hushed but Matthew could tell by the way Ian’s shoulders moved that whatever they were discussing was serious business. Matthew caught Ian glancing back at him a time or two, watching, studying, and Craig’s face was as hard to read as ever, a mask of indifference that clearly wasn’t indifferent at all.

  Fletcher and Kem walked side by side somewhere to the rear of the group, and Matthew could hear Fletcher’s strident bitching from where he walked, and he snorted at one particularly loud, “Goddammit, Kem!”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Ash said.

  “We’re never going to be friends,” Matthew said.

  “You’re pack. Friendship means very little next to the bonds of a pack.” Ash looked at him pointedly and added, “Someday he’ll be First Alpha’s mate.”

  Matthew choked out a laugh, his thoughts going to the one place they probably shouldn’t go. “I’m not sucking his dick in a show of submission, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Ash’s head turned in his direction, even as he pushed aside a thick, low limb that blocked their path.

  Matthew started to laugh, but then took another look at Ash’s face. “Someday I’m gonna have to suck his dick. Goddammit. I don’t even like him.”

  The corner of Ash’s mouth turned up and it was as close to a smart-ass smile as Matthew had ever seen from him. “Once we mate, the expectation that we would want to show our submission in that way is gone. There are other ways to show submission.”

  “So you thought it was funny to make me think—You shithead. That wasn’t funny at all.”

  “I respectfully disagree.”

  “You respectfully—ha ha.”

  “You’re more like your not-friend Devon than you realize.”

  “I’m nothing like that asshole.”

  Fletcher’s voice cut through the trees behind them. “Hey asshole, I heard that!”

  Matthew threw a glare over his shoulder and then turned back to Ash. “I’m not sure I like this sense of humor you seem to be developing now that we’re mated.”

  Ash’s gaze softened on Matthew and he stopped in the middle of the woods, pulling Matthew closer. “My fate has finally found me, after I fought it for longer than I should have. The years that have passed since I met you have been a trial I didn’t think I was going to endure.”

  “God,” Matthew said. “I wish—” He couldn’t glance away from Ash’s warm amber eyes but he hated knowing what it must’ve done to Ash to know he was off fucking other people. “I would’ve waited if I’d thought—”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” Ash said. “I haven’t taken a mate since I met you, but I’ve found release in other ways.” His gaze flickered toward the front of the group and Matthew’s gaze followed.

  “Fuck,” Matthew muttered, the burn of jealousy stronger than he expected. “You really have been fucking around with Craig and Ian, haven’t you?”

  “My alpha and his mate have encouraged me to show my submission.”

  Matthew glared at Craig’s back. Son of a bitch.

  “But I’m mated now.”

  “And?”

  “And my submission as a mate belongs to you first.”

  Matthew rubbed his shoulder and studied Ash’s earnest expression. “I don’t want you fucking around with them anymore.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  “Well, unless—” He glanced quickly away and then back to Ash and cleared his throat. “Maybe someday. I’ll at least try it. Once. A guy should get to try something like that at least once in his life.”

  Ash’s eyebrows rose.

  “What?” Matthew said, trying not to sound guilty for the thoughts skimming through his head and making his balls tingle.

  Ash’s eyes darkened at the edges and Matthew was sure Ash had caught his scent. “You’re excited by the prospect.”

  They were being left behind as the others walked on. The stiff breeze chilled Matthew through his wet clothes, but he couldn’t stop staring at Ash.

  He cleared his throat again. “Maybe.”

  “More than maybe.” Ash cupped the side of Matthew’s face. “I enjoy showing submission to my alpha—but I enjoy showing submission to you even more. I won’t deny you anything. You are my life. Remember that the next time you contemplate the prospect.”

  “Okay.” The breathy sound of his voice made him flush, hot and embarrassed. He couldn’t help wanting to see Ash on his knees again.

  A thought intruded, something he’d been thinking about off and on ever since that morning, something that felt important. “What happened with Sal? Why’d you go crazy on him?”

  Ash blinked down at him. “He had your smell all over him. I thought—he smelled like you’d mated him.”

  Matthew blanched and his heart thudded painfully hard. “You know I fucked him. But that didn’t mean anything. As soon as I realized he thought it was something more than two guys getting off together—and—and I fucked Lujan too. You should know.”

  Ash pressed his finger to Matthew’s lips, cu
tting him off. “Hush. We just discussed this. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But it feels like I did.”

  “You didn’t. But the gift we gave you appears to have already become transmissible through your bodily fluids. The chance of that happening this soon seemed small enough to be insignificant, but apparently the biological agent is adapting more quickly than our scientists believed it would.”

  “Shit.” Matthew made a leap of logic. “Sal asked if it was okay not to use a condom when he sucked me off and I knew it wouldn’t hurt me so—fuck.” A knot settled in his stomach. “I just became patient zero in a possible future epidemic of alien origin because I didn’t use a condom for a couple of blowjobs.”

  “The technology shouldn’t hurt him.”

  “It almost killed me.”

  “The same shouldn’t happen now that the biological agent has adapted to the human body.”

  “Still—”

  The sudden sound of an alpha howl whipped through the trees. A shiver raced up Matthew’s spine and Ash stilled abruptly, his head coming up.

  The silence lingered only a moment, and another challenging howl rose, and then one came from somewhere ahead of Ash and Matthew.

  “Alpha Paetarikeille has found Lujan—”

  “Shit.”

  “—and his heat’s on him.”

  Ash grasped Matthew’s hand and tugged. “We need to go. Unless you want to fuck here in the woods. My heat cycle could return at any time and the drugs won’t wear off slowly. Not these. I’ll need at least another dose so you have time to rest before it comes again.”

  Matthew couldn’t dispute that, because he was exhausted and shivering, so he hiked off into the woods with Ash and left Cam to his fate.

  Chapter 23

  “I had sex with Cam Lujan,” Matthew said, staring across the table at Brendan and Ian.

  Fletcher was late. He’d sent a message to Matthew’s new phone saying he was coming by whether Matthew wanted him to or not, but then he hadn’t shown up with the others.

  The visit wasn’t supposed to last long—not because Matthew wasn’t healed, because he’d healed just as fast as he’d ever healed. In fact, he’d been almost his normal self by the time they’d made it to the den—except for the part where he’d fallen asleep and no one could wake him for nearly six hours.