Chapter Two
Dustin
Oh Damn. Not Again
“Boss, you gonna open the barn door or what? Time is ticking away.”
Dustin had spaced out for most of their walk across the field.
He rubbed his palm over the center of his chest and took a deep breath to clear the vivid memories from his mind.
He couldn’t allow himself to get lost in the past when he had storm preparations to oversee.
Dustin stuck the key in the padlock to the tool shed that held their most expensive equipment and ushered the guys in before him.
“Looks like the eye of this damn storm won’t hit us dead-on, but we’re gonna get a lot of the outer bands, boss. The wind gusts have surged to over a hundred and forty-five miles per hour, putting the storm at a category four,” Jerry rumbled. “Damn near the opposite of what was first predicted.”
Dustin patted Jerry on his shoulder as he walked past. The young wolf was vibrating with nervous energy, and Dustin knew that one firm touch from his own beast had the ability to appease his friend’s meek animal. “Stop acting defeated already. What do I always say?”
Jerry practically sagged into his grip. “I know, I know. Panic causes tunnel vision.”
“Exactly.” Dustin gave them all a serious glare. “Stay focused.”
Mark—his second—clapped his big hands together as if to rile up the others. “Come on, fellas, we got this. Let’s make our alphas proud.”
Dustin got to business and began to issue his instructions. “Alright, we know what to do to protect the more sensitive crops, and we’ll stack the weighted hay bales around the corn and wheat fields. Jerry, you find Macy and the rest of the hands and start to board up the greenhouses.”
His crew was already looking tired, and Dustin was also feeling the fatigue from working all day and now having to work through the night as well, but he put on a brave front regardless of how he truly felt.
It was going to take them until dawn to get to every single field, but they would work until they couldn’t move another muscle if that’s what it took to protect the pack’s primary food source.
By the time Dustin and his guys had all of the equipment pulled out of the storage sheds and sorted, more shifters had come to volunteer and offer help to the farmhands and the stable managers.
Surviving off the land wasn’t easy, and it came with its challenges, the elements being the greatest one.
Living high up in the White Mountain Forest, Dustin had battled his fair share of hurricanes, lightning storms, and blizzards to last him his entire lifetime, and it never got easier.
Each disaster was just as terrifying as the last and came with its own wave of dread.
By the next morning, Dustin and his crew had erected the sturdiest fortress they could and secured every field and greenhouse to the best of their abilities.
At six forty-five, all of them were dragging ass, including Dustin, but he kept it well hidden.
With his dirty face and hands caked with grime, Dustin tilted his head toward the sky, hoping to see the fall sun rising over the ridge of the Oreck Mountains, but instead, dark, angry clouds thundered toward them from the south.
The betas of the pack ordered everyone back to their cabins to hunker down with their families and ride out the storm.
But Dustin didn’t have a mate or children to protect, only his crops, so he made himself a thick pallet on the dusty, wood floor of the barn closest to his delicate muskmelon patch.
He was so exhausted every muscle in his back and legs was screaming for relief or maybe for a soak in a hot tub, but the unforgiving floor would have to do.
The dawn transitioned to midmorning, and Dustin could feel it in his bones that the worst of the storm was approaching.
Animals howled in warning as the storm thundered along the mountain slopes and rustled the trees, hurtling twigs and brown, rain-soaked leaves across the property.
Overhanging tree branches scraped the roof of his shelter as the wind escalated to a frightening speed that made him too restless to lie still.
The rushing pattering of rain on the roof soon morphed into tiny hailstones that clattered to the ground like marbles spilling from a box.
The barn roof creaked and popped like the wood wasn’t going to hold much longer as Dustin glanced up, hoping that it stayed put.
He stared transfixed out the small window at the true force of nature, praying the gods spared them.
It sounded like they were getting more than just the outer bands of this thing as the barriers around the property struggled to hold up.
Even the mighty trees bowed and revered against the onslaught.
Streaks of lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the black clouds with a sliver of radiance a split second before it plunged the lands back into darkness.
Dustin wanted to cover his ears as the wind gusts sang a strange song, wishing the chaotic howling had a calmer melody.
Time crept by at a snail’s pace, the dangers of the storm making each second feel like a disastrous eternity.
Two of the barriers around his gourd pasture were down now, and Dustin knew that soon the other four would blow over as well, leaving his babies defenseless.
Dustin refused to sit and watch his hard work be destroyed as he cursed and raged angrily at the weather.
And regardless that the alphas and betas commanded that no one go outside to be a hero, they weren’t there to watch, and Dustin refused to let the pack suffer if he could help it.
So, he put on his heavy poncho, grabbed a canvas bag of ten-inch spikes and a hammer, and slid open the barn door.
Rain, hail, and wind slapped him in his face so hard he had to put his arm up as a shield to block the worst of it so he could take a breath.
What in the actual hell? Fear passed under his skin before he stepped from under the protection of his shelter to brave the elements.
Small branches, sticks, and debris from the nearby woods were falling harder than the hail pelting his head and shoulders.
Dustin flinched up at the stretch of lightning that streaked too close to the trees for his comfort.
It was so dark that even with his enhanced sight, it was difficult to see, and the cabins in the distance were even darker, some with plumes of smoke billowing from their chimneys.
Dustin just needed to get to the fall harvest fields since the reinforced structure of the greenhouses seemed to be holding up okay.
He gritted his teeth and trudged through the four-inch-deep mud with all of the strength his thigh muscles could stand.
It took too long and more energy than he had, but he made it to his newly ripened fall fruit that sat unprotected and at the mercy of the hail.
Dustin had just reached the field when the last two corners of the tarp covering the field snapped, and the wind caught underneath and propelled it into the air.
Fuckin’ hell! Dustin ran to catch one of the ends, his body taking a beating while he fought through the torrential rains.
He gripped the edge of the thick cover and hauled it down to the ground, fighting against 120-mile-per-hour gusts, a greater opponent than any he’d ever battled.
If he wasn’t as strong a shifter as he was, he’d be blown away by now.
Dustin managed to keep one edge of the tarp under his boot while he dug blindly in his bag for the nails.
Squatting on the soaked earth, he pounded the metal stake through the hole rings as deep as the flooded ground would allow, feeling little hope that it would stay put.
He moved down the line as quickly as he could, desperately hammering and spitting as rain and soggy leaves smacked him in the face.
Dustin was down on one knee, his full concentration on his task and trying to be careful not to hit his fingers with the steel hammer slipping in his grip.
It was because of the thunder and howling winds raging around him that he barely heard the tree fall or the heavy debris that was hefted into the air and hurled in his direction.
Dustin squinted and pulled back the hood on his heavy poncho, trying to see where the danger was, when he was struck in his back so hard that it knocked the air out of his lungs and sent his large body tumbling into the wet field.
The wind forced him over scattered branches and other objects that flew by him in a sloshing blur.
“Ungh!” Dustin landed flat on his back as sparks of pain flamed behind his closed eyelids.
He tried to turn over and get to his feet, but within seconds, the ache in his back changed from a dull warmth to red-hot needles.
He bowed forward, clutching his stomach and wondering if he’d actually cracked a few ribs. “Fuck!”
He squinted in the darkness, trying to see what it was that knocked him on his ass, and cursed when he noticed a wood bench seat from the community yard lying a few feet away from him.
Dustin struggled to inhale as the storm refused to show mercy.
Lying there on his back, Dustin felt as if he was being tortured, like nature was waterboarding and slowly suffocating him.
Dustin wanted to yell, to cry out for help, but he knew it’d be a colossal waste of his last bit of energy to be heard over the wind’s battle cry.
Get up, come on, get up. Even the thought of moving made raw agony tear at every fiber of his being.
Dustin needed help—he needed his wolf—but the pain and fear was too much for him to shift.
What if he’d done some permanent damage and needed medical attention?
God, why did I risk his life? Dustin beat himself mentally while he lay there alone and terrified.
Gasping on silent screams, Dustin swore that he would not die like this.
In a melon field, wearing a poncho and clutching a hammer to his chest. This would not be his legacy; it wasn’t how he was going to be remembered.
What would his alphas or his friends—well, his farmhands—say about him?
That he was a skilled rancher and he loved his crops and they loved him, and that’s why he died alongside them in a savage, unyielding storm.
No! Please! Dustin’s head pounded like someone was kicking him in the back of his skull, and he couldn’t think clearly because of the lack of oxygen to his brain.
Don’t let this be my end… please… I’m not done yet.
Dustin still wanted a chance to find a mate, no matter what bullshit he’d used to convince himself otherwise.
He still wanted the opportunity to lie in a man’s warmth again, feel his strength and muscles as he rested beside him after a long day in the fields.
One memory, one man, rushed to the forefront of his mind as Dustin’s natural instinct to survive kicked in.
His once orderly land was now littered with garbage and wreckage as the storm continued to relocate roofs and parts of cabins with no signs of stopping, and he knew if he continued to lie there stuck in the mud, he was as good as dead. No one was coming for him.
Dustin grunted painfully and turned his head to the south just as a bolt of lightning struck a tree branch over his head. With the minuscule amount of breath circulating in his lungs, he parted his trembling lips and whispered into the wind with sheer desperation.
Notalus. Help me!