Page 3 of Destined Prey (Wild Ones #1)

Benjamin Akers watched the sexy-scented man. The second he saw that the human was safely inside the house, where Ben had left Rhett—at least he assumed it’d been Rhett he’d carried into the home—Ben darted back into the fray.

Pack wars were becoming more common, and he hated that.

The wolves didn’t want his kind, and the coyotes hated them, too.

Coywolves weren’t popular with anyone in the shifter or native beast world.

And they existed in both, since wolf shifters had, at some point, done the forbidden and bred with coyote shifters, just as wolves had done with coyotes and created a new species.

And it was wreaking havoc in the shifter packs, at least, because no one wanted the coywolves around. Add in the pissed-off ranchers with their deadly weapons, and Ben feared his kind wouldn’t be a species for long.

It was a good thing coywolves were proving to be hard to kill. They were, he believed, made of the best parts of both wolves and coyotes.

But tonight, the fight didn’t settle the way it usually did.

Every slash of claws, every snap of teeth, his mind kept drifting back to that man.

To the scent that clung to him, sharp with fear but edged with something warmer, sweeter.

Something Ben had no business noticing when blood and dirt coated his own muzzle.

He shut off his human mind and leapt at the two wolves trying to take down his younger brother, Emil. The first, he caught at the nape, and was able to eliminate quickly. Emil handled the second one.

The third and fourth wolves were more difficult for them both. Ben scampered back to avoid having his nose bitten off at the very least when the big gray male snarled and snapped at him.

The copper tang of blood mixed with the musky bite of wolf-sweat and torn earth.

Ben’s muscles ached, his lungs burned, but the coywolf in him thrived on it.

Survival was a song in his veins. Still, somewhere under all of that, the image of a wide-eyed human with trembling hands haunted him.

He shook it off with a growl and clamped down harder on the gray wolf’s throat.

Somewhere in the brawl, his oldest brother, Casey, was fighting the wolf pack alpha. Ben didn’t know where his other three siblings were, not specifically, except that they were also battling off attackers. He could hear their growls behind him, and at least knew they were still alive.

Ben focused on his own battle as the gray wolf leapt at him again.

Ben dropped and rolled, not a particularly dignified move, but an effective one.

He sprang up onto his paws and charged at his prey, head down, teeth bared.

Ben hit him hard, hard enough to stun them both, though he recovered quickly.

Before the gray could come at him again, Ben was on him, gripping the furry throat with deadly teeth.

He growled, low, mean, and gave the wolf a warning shake.

Cut this shit out and leave us alone, he willed the beast. Another shake, and the wolf whined.

A wolf’s word was more trustworthy than a man’s. Ben loosened his grip and stepped back, snapping his teeth at his defeated opponent. Not every animal fought to the death. The wolf scrambled up and ran away, then Ben turned and tried to decide which packmate to help.

Only, there was no need for him to help anyone. Whatever wolves weren’t dead had abandoned the fight once their alpha had gone down.

Casey stepped away from the dead alpha and howled, proclaiming his victory. Ben and the rest of the pack joined him for a brief song, very brief as they knew there were two men in the house, and they likely had more guns in there.

Before the last note was sung, they were running, paws making a rhythmic sound against the dirt and grass. Ben didn’t want to leave, but he had no choice. He couldn’t just show up at the door in the middle of the night and it not seem suspicious.

Whoever the sexy, Not-Rhett—and injured, Ben hadn’t missed that—man was, something about him called to Ben.

It wasn’t just scent, it wasn’t just the way the man had stood frozen with a gun he clearly didn’t know how to use. It was something deeper, gnawing at Ben’s chest like hunger. And hunger, he knew, could make a man reckless.

And there was no way Ben would stay away from him for very long.

“What the fuck just happened out there?” Jack asked, helping Rhett to sit up on the couch. “How’d you get this bump?” He touched the goose-egg-sized lump by Rhett’s right temple.

“I don’t know,” Rhett said, almost whining.

Jack bit his tongue to keep from asking more questions.

Seeing Rhett pale and listing made his stomach knot tighter than the fight outside had.

Wolves, glowing eyes—he could handle fear.

But seeing his brother weak? That gutted him.

If Rhett was on the verge of whining, something Jack had never heard him do before, then Rhett had to be hurting quite a bit.

“Okay. Let me look at it again.”

Rhett hissed and tipped his head to the left. Jack carefully parted Rhett’s hair and examined his scalp. “There’s not even a scratch. Where’d the blood on the side of your face come from?”

“Dunno. Fuck!” Rhett listed to the left and would have fallen over if Jack hadn’t grabbed him and tugged him upright.

Saving Rhett caused Jack’s side to ache like a motherfucker. His legs almost gave out on him before he plopped gracelessly onto the coffee table.

Rhett closed his eyes. “Goddamn, but we are a pair, aren’t we?”

“A pair of what?” Jack wondered, trying to keep his breaths shallow and still get enough air into his lungs.

“There were wolves,” Rhett muttered. “Too damn many. Tried to shoot ’em, but something hit me. Figured I was dead meat.”

“Don’t say that,” Jack snapped, forgetting his own physical pain as an emotional one drowned it out. “Don’t say that!”

Rhett opened his eyes and held a hand out to him. “Jack. I’m here. I’m not dead.”

Jack was trembling, shaking hard enough that his teeth chattered.

He shook his head, unable to get another word out.

The weight of it hit him—he couldn’t lose Rhett, not after Mom and Dad, not when Rhett was the only anchor left in a world that kept chewing him up.

The tears broke loose before he could stop them, humiliating in their intensity, but unstoppable.

“You haven’t lost me, little brother,” Rhett assured him in a quiet voice, the same one he’d used when Jack would have a meltdown after their mom’s death. And their dad’s. “I’m too ornery to die just yet.”

To Jack’s horror, he sobbed, the sound torn from him before he had an inkling it was coming. He slapped his hands over his mouth and tried to get to his feet, only to have Rhett grab him and pull him down onto the couch.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Rhett said. He wrapped his arms around Jack in a gentle hug. “It’s okay. Whatever’s eating at you, Jack, you can tell me.”

Jack didn’t know how Rhett did it, that big-brother magic of knowing when something just wasn’t right with him.

It was one of the reasons why Jack had left home in the first place.

He’d been afraid of what Rhett would see in him, about him, afraid it’d put an end to the last familial relationship Jack had.

Rhett touched Jack’s side. “Does it have to do with this?”

Jack swiped at his cheeks. His lips trembled. He hated it when that happened.

“Jackie, tell me.” Rhett hadn’t called him by that in ages.

The word cracked something open in him, like being ten years old again and crawling into Rhett’s bed after a nightmare.

He wanted to confess everything, the accident, Alex, the gnawing emptiness that made him run.

Instead, the lump in his throat only swelled.

It undid Jack in a way he couldn’t quite grasp, and he found himself wanting, so badly, to confide in his brother.

“If it’s the gay thing, I already figured that out,” Rhett said.

“W-what?” Jack tried to scoot back, but Rhett didn’t release him from the hug. “I-I—” He couldn’t lie, didn’t want to.

Rhett tucked a finger under his chin, and Jack had to look him in the eyes.

Rhett gave him a crooked grin. “Aw, come on. We never discussed sex or…or stuff like that, but I figured… I mean, you would get boners when we watched Supernatural and either of the brothers were on. I’m not blind or stupid.”

Jack sputtered. Embarrassment flushed hot under his skin, but beneath it was something else—relief. Relief that he didn’t have to carry the weight alone anymore. Relief that maybe, just maybe, Rhett saw him and still cared anyway.

It seemed that nothing but consonants were escaping him.

“Probably, I should have given you one of those safe-sex talks, but I’d seen the browsing history and—”

“Stop!” Jack yelped, his face hot with his embarrassment. “Oh my God!”

Rhett shrugged. “Wasn’t trying to make you feel bad, Jack, just telling you I knew years back. It made it easier for me to understand why you didn’t want to live in a place like this. Equality might be happening, but out here, well, I understand how hard it is, being different.”

Jack froze. Did Rhett just…did he…what? “What?” he managed to get out, though he didn’t know how. His tongue felt thick and he just knew he had to be misunderstanding.

But Rhett gave him a bashful smile and a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s not like we ever talk—talked—about this kind of thing.” His cheeks were splotched with pink. “Um. Sex, and I guess… I guess, sexuality. I didn’t ever see a need to. Did you?”

“You’re gay?” Jack finally asked.

Rhett nodded. “Not that it matters. I’m out here, by myself. This isn’t a hub of homosexuality.”

Jack giggled, and it sounded kind of hysterical. He thought he should be mad, maybe, that Rhett had never mentioned it before, but then again, neither had Jack.

“I wish I’d been able to tell Mom and Dad,” Rhett continued, finally letting go of Jack. “I wanted to. Was scared Dad would be done with me, and I wasn’t sure about Mom.”

Jack had thought about this many times. “Mom would have been okay with it. Maybe she’d have been upset at first, but only because she’d worry about us. Dad would have come around, too. Not as fast as Mom. She wouldn’t have let him be mean about it, though.”

Rhett seemed to consider that for a minute before he said, “Yeah, I think you’re right, but it haunts me sometimes, wondering. Regretting. Makes no sense that I kept it from you, then, but I did. You didn’t tell me, either.”

“Well,” Jack drawled, doing his best cowboy impression. “You coulda been wrong.”

Rhett laughed. “But I wasn’t.” Then he winced and touched the bump on his head. “Aw, hell. I need some ibuprofen and a shower, then maybe you can help me figure out what the fuck happened out there.”

Jack had a flashback to hands on him, hands that didn’t belong to Rhett and weren’t brotherly in the least, not with the way arousal tried to warm him up, down south of his belt.

The memory jolted through him, unwanted and confusing.

That voice outside—deep, rough, inhuman—had curled around him and left heat where there should have been only terror.

Jack swallowed hard, shaking his head as if that could rid him of it.

“I can try, but I swear to God, I don’t think I have a clue.”