Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) by Marcy Jacks (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📗

a little too informal, considering they weren’t actually friends, but he didn’t look that much older than Chris for him to be addressing him  as Mr. DeWitt.

Sir didn’t sound much better, but there was no taking that back

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now.

“Yes?” James looked up from a small stack of papers, looked like  legal stuff, on an old wooden desk that was in a bad need for  varnishing.

“I was going to ask Eli about this, but all things considered…”

“What can I do for you?”

He asked it so casually, as though doing Chris any sort of favor  wasn’t a problem for him at all. Chris relaxed.

“My brother. He’s gone, too. I think he might be in trouble, or  dead, considering some  of the things he was into. Usually he would  call or something to check up on me, let me know he was fine, once  every couple of weeks or something, and I haven’t heard back from  him in several months.”

“All right. He was last seen around this area?” James asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t think I would find anything at first, especially  since he usually moved around a lot, but now that I know there are  wild werewolves around…” Chris let James finish that one off for

himself.

“Right, you want to know if we’ve heard anything.”

Chris nodded.

“All right, what was his name?”

“Dean Lefroy. My older brother.”

James’s neck seemed to get a little tighter than it had been before.

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Really?” Chris hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “Do you know

what happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

The words were like a blunt object ramming into his gut. “You’re not one for candy-coating it are you?”

“Are you going to be okay?” James asked.

No. Chris had suspected all this time, but the actual realization was having more of an effect on him than he thought it should have.  “What happened? When?”

64                          Marcy Jacks

James wet his lips. “Were you aware that he was a hunter?”

“What? Well, yeah, sure. He had his license and went out all the time to catch things. We did that as kids.”

“I don’t mean the kind of guy who hunts rabbits or buck. I mean he hunted werewolves. My kind.”

James pointed at his mean-looking face. “He gave me these scars, and he tried to kill Corey.”

Chris was frozen in sudden fear. “Did you―?”

“I was the one to kill him, yes.” That chummy air that James had about him was entirely gone now as he and Chris looked at each other.

Chris swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”

“You haven’t done anything to purposely harm my pack, so no.  You’re mated to one of my alphas, whether you like that or not. If I meant you any harm I’d have to go through Eli first to get to you. If I were to kill you right now, he would just try to kill me later.

“I won’t hurt you, or try to,” James said. “But seeing as you’re related to one of the worst hunters I’ve ever met, I will have to keep a strict eye on you from now on. No more walks out into the trees with my omegas.”

“Right,” Chris was only too happy to agree so long as it meant he was able to leave. He practically ran out of the small office and bolted out of the cottage.

It was stupid, but he wished he knew which one of these houses belonged to Eli. If he was one of the main reasons James was going to give Chris some slack, then, drunk or not, desperate to have sex or not, Chris would stay as close to him as  possible.

As it was, the only remotely safe place he could return to was that tiny little one-bedroom cabin that had been offered to him. He locked the doors and prepared to wait out a long night of making sure that no one busted inside to exact any revenge for a crime his brother had supposedly committed.

He and Dean had never been close enough for Chris to think it

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was worth putting up with all of this shit.

66                          Marcy Jacks

Chapter Eight

For the second time in his life, Eli was jerked awake by the horrible sensation of melty ice splashing down on his head.

He came up in a rush, still partly asleep and thinking that he’d fallen into the Arctic Ocean and was drowning or something.

The sight of James’s enraged face made him wish that that had been the reality he was waking up to.

James pointed his finger into Eli’s face. “You swore to me.”

The light coming in through the window pierced his eyelids and went straight through his skull, giving him the worst sort of pulsing headache.

He’d finally managed to pass out on the  couch, but only after depleting the last of his stock of booze. He pulled the thin sheet he’d been using over his head with a groan, but that barely did anything to shut out the painful light.

James wasn’t having any of that, and he snatched the sheet out  of  Eli’s grasp and threw it away. “I’m speaking to you. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Eli kept his eyes shut, holding his hands over the lids to keep all that awful fucking sunlight away from him. “That you told me you would banish me if I went down to the bars, not if I drank from what I

still have here.”

Another set of soft footprints came into the room, followed by heavier ones. “They all look empty. That should be the last of what he was hiding.”

“I didn’t find anything either.”

Old Maggie. The pack’s wise woman. Eli still had enough sense

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in him to be ashamed of her having to see him like he was. As for  Andrew, well, he didn’t much care.

Eli sat up, and he managed to do it well enough on his own. Most  of the alcohol must have gone through his liver already. He needed to  take a piss something awful though.

“Ma’am,” he said.

She pointed a wrinkled finger at him. “You do not speak to me in that condition,”