17. Hunter
SEVENTEEN
HUNTER
“I need to think on it some more.” Odell was remarkably calm, considering what I’d revealed and how he’d been catatonic in the car. “How about you get some sleep and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”
He checked his watch and held out his wrist. “It’s after midnight, so technically it is morning.” He said we should do it now, so I grabbed two notepads and pens from the desk drawer.
Where to start? “A list of characters should be our first step.”
Odell tapped the pen on the side table. “How about we do a timeline. You know, like in the detective shows. They have a… not sure of the name… like a vision board. But we’ll use text rather than pics.”
“Good thinking.”
He grinned, and the lamp filtered its yellowing light over his cheek. To distract myself from his presence and scent, I scrabbled in the desk for tape or thumbtacks and found both, along with string.
Hoping Uncle Arnie wouldn’t yell at me for sticking pins on his wall, I wrote “Draven” on a piece of paper, and beside it, one with my name, and in between my nemesis and me, I added Odell’s.
The three protagonists. My mate’s pen hovered above his notebook, and he wrote, “ Draven knows I’m your mate .”
I pinned that note below Odell’s name and stretched string between Draven and my mate’s names, and again from my mate to me.
“How?” I wrote in big letters and stuck that on the wall.
“Yes, how?” Odell rubbed the end of his pen over his scalp. If it was itchy I’d have gladly massaged it. Picturing me with coconut oil on my fingers, gliding them over his head and him moaning, sent a message to my cock. It reacted and engorged, and I turned my back on my mate so he wouldn’t see my arousal.
Pretending I was studying the wall, I explained to Odell that throughout our history there were myths and legends about seers who could detect when an alpha and omega were destined to mate.
“Before they realized it and often before they met.” That was what the elders in the pack passed down from previous generations, but not everyone believed the tales, Flint being one of them.
“That sounds more like magic.” I gave him a look, one that he held just a tad longer than expected, and he grinned. “But before meeting your wolf, I would have said the same about shifters.”
My beast was impressed by how well we were getting along and thought we’d jump one another in the next few minutes. But that wasn’t happening.
“I suspect it’s done through scent.”
“That’s how you recognized me, so let’s assume the seer exists.” Odell picked up the end of the quilt and twisted it. “But unless I met the seer and didn’t know it, they must have had something of yours and mine, right? Or been with us.”
I nodded and wrote scent on the paper and tacked that to the wall with more string.
Being an amateur detective was thirsty work, and I asked Odell if he wanted a soda.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite him, I sipped my drink. We hadn’t solved the mystery, and we were still in danger, but us working together, tossing ideas at one another, was what people did who didn’t hate one another. Maybe, just maybe, we were inching closer together. Not literally, as I was on the floor and he was curled up on the couch.
Getting something of mine wouldn’t have been difficult. Someone could have slipped into the club as a customer and grabbed a napkin. It cemented the idea that Draven was on a mission to hurt me, my brothers, the family, and the pack.
But how would they have known to get something of Odell’s? They couldn’t have plucked his name out of the air and then tracked him down to steal one of his possessions.
When I relayed that to my mate, we both looked at one another, our eyes open wide and spoke at the same time.
“Your uncle.”
“Uncle Stan.”
You’re thinking alike . My wolf saw that as a positive sign.
Odell’s uncle had gambled, gotten into debt, and gone to Draven for a loan. He must have scented of Odell, and the seer was there and picked up on it. Was that a leap? Not so much. My mate’s uncle had to have been in the same room as Draven at some point.
My mate chugged his soda, and my mind swept from our predicament to how focused and determined he was. But I understood that he had a purpose: to solve how we got into this situation. Once that danger was removed, the darkness could crawl in, and I might not be there to look after him.
We have to . My beast was adamant we stay in Odell’s life.
“I’m dripping.”
Huh? His words brought me back to the present. Was he talking about slick?
“You are?” I waited, squeeing inside that we’d reached a turning point and I hadn’t been paying attention.
“The soda.” He brushed the droplets off the quilt.
“Oh. Is that all?”
He gave me a look. “You sound disappointed?”
I was, but I wasn’t telling him that. “Nah, I was miles away, thinking of this.” I waved a hand between him and me. In order to break up the awkward moment, I got up and put another note and more string on the wall.
“If this is close to what happened, the resentment and hate for me and our family festered in Draven for years. He had to have been planning revenge for a good chunk of his life.”
“More than possible. What a waste.” Odell shuffled his notes, and when he looked up, his eyes were filled with pain. “So Uncle didn’t offer me as a husband so much as he was given no choice?”
He could have refused, but a frail human couldn’t say no to a vengeful shifter.
“Yeah.” After hesitating a moment, I sat beside him, wanting to console him. His scent surrounded and filled me, but I expected him to shuffle sideways. He did move, but toward me, and our thighs touched, though his was under the quilt. It was a simple gesture, but maybe he needed me, just for now, as I needed him.
“Draven may have threatened to kill you or your aunt if your uncle didn’t agree.”The guy had patience. I had to give him that. Not sure I could have waited years until I could get retribution.But if Odell was hurt, I’d wait a lifetime to get back at someone.
“The seer must have picked up on your scent on your uncle’s clothes and informed Draven you were my mate.”
I got up and inspected the wall, crisscrossed with text and string. But instead of returning to the couch, I was overcome with shyness, an emotion I’d rarely experienced. The uncertainty of how he regarded me made me self-conscious, an emotion that was new to me, and I plonked myself on the floor again.
“What if you hadn’t entered the registry office?” Odell spun the pen around his fingers.
“Did you leave anything outside? I picked up a scent but didn’t know it was you.”
“I had a tissue in my hand, one Aunt Louisa had used to wipe away my tears. Draven tossed it in the garbage.”
That might prove that his aim was to have me meet Odell, and then he’d do away with my mate so I would never enjoy the life fate had dangled before me. I contemplated the black hole that would have been my existence, having been so close to true happiness and having it snatched away. Cruelty was the purpose.
“It’s obvious having put all this together that I was the target in the alley.” His monotone worried me, the lack of emotion.
I heaved myself halfway up, wanting to comfort him, but he stuck out a foot from under the quilt. Not sure what I was supposed to do until he wriggled it and nudged my own, I sank back to the floor, took hold of it, and massaged the sole.
“What are you doing?”
“What I thought you wanted. Do you have a cramp?”
“No!” He pulled the quilt over his mouth, but his eyes danced in the dim lamplight. “I needed contact with you. Sole to sole.”
Not soul to soul, but he wanted to brush his foot on mine. Could be worse. He might have wanted to chop it off.
I released him, but he told me I could keep going. I longed to have him in my arms, but maybe this was enough for him at the moment, just having me holding a part of him.
We both sat with our thoughts until Odell dragged himself and the quilt onto the floor.
“The floor’s hard. You’d be more comfortable on the couch.” My head was demanding I cuddle him, but I allowed him to set the pace.
“You’re here.” He tilted his head to the side. “Aren’t you cold? You’re not wearing a shirt.”
I gave him a short lesson on how shifters ran hotter than humans, but he shuffled closer and offered me part of the quilt. We sat in a little circle of two, the quilt trapping the heat from our bodies, his scent almost overpowering me. It took all my strength to not lunge at him and capture his mouth with mine.
“Those guys shooting at us… how did they find us?”
“It had to have been Stefan.” As a human, his only use to Draven was his job. But me being the fool I was, had brought him into our midst and treated him kindly.I had to learn to think first and act later.
“Unless it was Uncle.” Odell tossed a screwed-up ball of paper into the trash basket.
Wow! He had great aim, almost as good as a shifter. His reflexes might never match ours, but combined with his superior evasive skills, I'd consider hiring Odell if he wasn’t my mate.
“Your uncle? No way.” He’d been in one of the bedrooms with no phone, and unless he’d been putting on an act, he was a shell of a person.
Odell took a swig of soda and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In that moment, just for a split second, he was almost carefree, just a guy hanging with a buddy—not that I wanted to be only a friend.
Placing a hand beside him, I waited, hoping he might put his on mine, that he needed more physical contact. He picked it up and examined the mating mark. My skin sizzled, but I stayed motionless, not wanting to scare him away. But I had to say what was in my heart.
“Ending your life would have caused me immeasurable pain, and my life would be over too. My heart would beat, but I’d never again experience joy.” Was that too much? I didn’t want to make this about me, though that was sorta my pattern, my MO. Placing guilt on him along with everything else might break him.
He twisted around. “You love me.” I nodded, the L word on his lips sending shivers up my spine. “Adore me with every fiber of your being and would do anything for me?”
“Yes.”
“If we get out of this alive and go back to our normal lives, maybe we could be… I don’t know… friends. Good friends.”
“Of course.” A tiny fragment of my heart chipped off, and I hoped it wouldn’t cause an aneurysm.
My wolf complained that we were mates, not friends. But I ignored him. He was part of me, but he couldn’t dictate how Odell felt.
“How do we stop Draven and end this feud?”
There was only one way, but my mate couldn’t be involved.
I couldn’t rely on Flint and Ranger because they weren’t supposed to have anything to do with me.
It would be me.
And me!
“Oh, really? No! I can see the answer written on your face.”
“I should wipe it off.” I swished my hand left and right like windscreen wipers over my cheeks and brow. Odell giggle-snorted.
“You plan to kill him, and you’ll need a wingman.”
“There’s no we. It’ll be me. You stay put. There’s plenty of food, and if I don’t return in three days, you take that heap of trash called a car, drive to the closest town, and call Flint.”I’d need the phone so Odell would have to tie it to my wolf before I left.
“What? No. I’m not staying here by myself. Are you bonkers?”
Quite possibly.
“No one knows about the cabin. It wasn’t mentioned in my grandfather’s will.” It had been in the family for generations. Even if Stefan was brilliant at his job, he’d never find the paperwork at City Hall.
“You don’t understand, Hunter. You need me. I’m your driver.”
It’d been my intention to shift and have my wolf race back to the city.
He can’t come. My wolf was against the idea. It’s too dangerous for a human .
“We may not be mates in the romantic sense, but who else will have your back?” He peeked under the sofa. “No one else but me.”
I was about to end the life of a shifter intent on killing me, and my sidekicks were an ancient car and my human mate.
What could go wrong?