Chapter Fifteen
Caleb set his makeshift broom down against the trunk of a tree. Asher had gone as promised, leaving Caleb sometime in the night. Surprisingly, Caleb slept through his departure, but he didn't think he slept for long after. He woke up alone and cold, like Asher had taken all his body heat with him.
If he had only left Caleb alone so he wouldn't get sick, Asher would be disappointed. Caleb felt worse now without him. And he felt disgusted with himself.
He could go a few measly hours without that man. Clingy had never been a word anyone would use to describe him and he wasn't going to start acting that way now.
Since staying inside the cabin felt like torture, he started work outside, brushing off the paths from the cabin to the work area and the cabin to the garden. It looked as though Asher had made the paths some time ago, but had not continued with the upkeep.
Using a shovel first, Caleb had dug the edges, redefining the paths. Then he had cleared them of weeds, sticks and rocks and finally, had swept the dirt down to a smooth shine. Of course, that would all be mud in a few months' time.
A few months. How quickly he had gone from needing to get back to his pack to not imagining ever leaving this place.
He'd grown to love the homestead, a term he had affectionately begun calling the cabin and the small amount of land around it. He wondered if Asher had tried bringing up any livestock, at least a handful of chickens.
Even though he was beginning to plan a farmyard family, he still couldn't quite grasp the concept of forever up here. Surely, they would go down to The Den at least once? Maybe he could convince Asher to make The Den one of the two trips he made down into civilization in a year. At least there, Caleb wouldn't have to worry about any old flames rearing up.
A now familiar pang of jealousy flared up inside of him accompanied by a clenching pain in his stomach. Caleb doubled over and the female wolf in the pack approached him from the shadows, whining softly. Caleb had come to consider her the alpha of the trio, mostly because she was the largest and the best at hunting. Of her brothers, one was nearly the same size as her and the other was smaller. Asher affectionately referred to that one as the runt.
"I'm okay," Caleb said. "Probably just hungry."
After clearing the path, he had plans to go down to the lake and really perfect his fishing technique. He couldn't stop imagining the pride and shock that would be on Asher's face when Caleb showed him a whole bucket of fish that he'd caught. But now, he felt as if he actually was coming down with something. And fast.
Prickles of pain blossomed over his body, like the feeling of stepping on a foot after the blood has been cut off for a while. His stomach clenched in on itself and he would have simply thought himself hungry if the spasms weren't so low down.
To say he hadn't thought about the possibility of pregnancy was incorrect. He was a shifter, he knew Asher was his mate. If there had been any doubt, the knotting had proven that.
Ultimately, he trusted Asher to know if he was and he wouldn't have left Caleb if he were pregnant. Caleb knew that with absolute certainty. None of that helped him now though. Needles shot through his skin. Caleb had no choice but to endure it. There was nothing he could do about whatever that pain was now, so he just needed to be strong.
Back in the cabin, he found some biscuits that Asher had made with dinner the night before. If they had a cow he could have some butter right now. Caleb wondered if the wolves would eat the cow. They seemed too civilized for something like that.
The moment the first bite of food hit his stomach, his entire body convulsed, rejecting the food. He thought he might throw it up, but his body didn't seem so much repelled by the food as it was angry. Even his inner wolf snarled at Caleb as if to ask how he could possibly dare to do such a thing. The biscuits had been good enough last night with Asher.
Caleb's mouth popped open in an "O" of surprise. With Asher... It wasn't the biscuit or any cold coming on, he was having Asher withdrawals.
I'm in a mating heat, he thought, a little scared. He'd heard stories of shifters and humans in heat. If they didn't get their needs met, the heat got worse. He didn't know how long he had until he would be reduced to nothing more than a shivering pile of desire, but he hoped it was around thirty-six hours. Less now, since Asher had left a while ago.
Caleb grit his teeth. He knew he should have gone with Asher and planned to rub that I told you so in his face as soon as Asher fucked him for at least a day.
Thinking about sex with Asher made it worse and Caleb cried out through the intensity. Down in civilization a cry like the one he just gave out might have drawn some attention. People would have stopped and stared. Some might have asked if he needed help, more would have pretended not to see him. Out here, there was nothing, no reaction from the outside world, other than the wolves sitting in the doorway staring at him soulfully. They might be able to tell, though Caleb didn't know how well wild wolves sensed things like this.
"You three need names," Caleb said, trying to distract himself. "How about Larry, Curly and Moe?" There was no response. The wolves were way too young to know who the Three Stooges were anyway. Caleb should have been way too young but his pack mate Glenn had a fondness for slapstick and had invited Caleb to a few marathons.
A rolling wave of lust, so intense it felt like pain traveled through him, starting at his head, it went downward. Sad to think that all it would take to stop this was Asher's cock. Caleb cringed, his body spasming now at the memory of Asher's cock.
"I know what to call you three," he said through pants. "How about I'mgoing, Tokill and Asher?"
The runt whined, laying down, he put his head between his front legs.
"Fine."
Caleb wasn't going to just sit there and cry. He'd distract himself. Finding something to do until he could fall asleep and then when he woke up he would endure one more day and Asher would be there as promised.
He stomped past the wolves. The inside of their cabin was bare. There was the bed. He couldn't even look at that piece of furniture right now. The fire burned low in the fireplace and the small food prep area Asher had installed was already clean. His eyes fell on the backpack that the dead coyote had been carrying. Caleb wondered what a guy like that was carrying. Maybe food. Maybe chocolate. Stella often said that chocolate was as good as sex.
He grabbed the pack with shaking hands and hauled it outside where he could see better. It was heavy which Caleb appreciated since that hopefully meant it was full of more things for him to examine, thus taking up more time. With his luck, it would contain a single rock.
The contents jostled as he set them down, confirming that it wasn't a single rock. He unzipped the bag and began pulling items out. On top was an open bottle of booze. Caleb set that aside quickly. He knew from talking to his friend, Finn, how much worse alcohol made the mating heat.
After that, the contents of the bag were like the back counter at a convenience store. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, a handful of lighters and an adult magazine featuring busty blond bimbos. Caleb rolled his eyes. That would go in the kindling later. He had no issue with women working in the adult industry, but he despised that they were reduced to bimbos. Why can't they be busty blond business execs who are as smart and respected as they are attractive?
There was also a hunting knife, long rope and a bag of zip ties. He looked at those items grimly. They'd been meant for him and Asher.
Caleb found a quarter gallon of water, most likely the reason why the bag was so heavy and then on the bottom there was a menagerie of odds and ends and trash. He was about to set the bag aside when he saw something flash, catching the sun. Caleb reached down past the gum wrappers and dirt and grabbed hold of a gold ring. He held it up and his heart began to race as he recognized the large opal stone on top. If this wasn't Lena's it was an exact replica. But hadn't she said it was the only of its kind? She'd also said it was engraved.
Caleb twisted the ring so he could see inside the band. He prayed for it to be empty, solid and smooth gold.
To our beautiful daughter. The moon is yours.
Caleb clenched his hand around the ring as his mind whirled with thoughts. He tried to remember the last time he saw Lena wearing the ring. She'd had it on for most of the hike. Had she been wearing it when they started to play that game? Those memories were so foggy they felt like they had happened during a different life. He tried to picture the kids, what they had been wearing when they'd ran off. In each of his mind's imaginings, she was wearing that ring.
Asher had said that he'd seen them safely to the street. He had said they had been picked up by a park ranger. What if the ranger had been a coyote in disguise? That seemed like quite the coincidence.
A second explanation tickled the back of his mind. So dark that he didn't even want to think it because to think of it and to believe in it, would mean a shift in his glowing dreamlike relationship.
Asher had told him that story in the beginning, before he had known what kind of person Caleb was, that Caleb would fall for him so fast. What if it had been a lie to get him to stay?
Caleb stood, angry with himself for even thinking such a thing. But, now that the thought was there, it wouldn't leave. If it had been a lie, then the coyotes may have gotten the children. Would they still be alive this long after?
Caleb doubled over and threw up everything he had eaten. He needed to know if the coyotes had the kids. If they did, he needed to save them. As much as he didn't like it, he couldn't do it alone. But he couldn't wait either.
Caleb made his choice in a split second. He pulled his shirt off and then his pants. He bundled them together and tied them loosely to his leg so he wouldn't have to save the kids naked. He shifted, falling on all fours, he stretched. Amazingly, the symptoms of mating heat seemed to soothe while in this form. They were still there, like a nagging itch on the middle of his back, but they weren't all encompassing as they'd been in human form.
Caleb put his nose in the air and began trotting in the general direction that Asher had pointed when he talked about Riverside. He found Asher's scent quickly and began to follow it. He'd gone maybe a half of a mile when he heard the soft patter of paws behind him. The wolves had followed him but they were staying back, like always. He found comfort in the fact that he wasn't alone, but feared for them. They wouldn't fare well against a coyote shifter. He didn't have time to stop and try to communicate that they should stay. Besides, Asher had always said that ultimately, they did what they wanted.
When he was certain he had Asher's most recent scent trail and not simply a trail he'd traveled in the past, Caleb began to run. Traversing the forest on all fours felt great. He stretched his front legs out, gripping the terrain with his claws and then pushed as his back legs did the same. At this rate, he felt like he could run forever and did run well into the day. He paused for water and because his body was beginning to feel as it had when he'd been in human form. The harder he pushed his wolf, the worse he felt. The sane part of him told him that if the kids had been taken so long ago, that him taking an extra thirty minutes now would hardly make a difference, but then he thought of Ruthie—who reminded him very much of the runt of the wild wolves--and how frightened she'd been of that Skineater story and of Zeke when he talked about everything he had planned to do for the rest of his summer. They were people with dreams and goals and those dreams and goals had been put in Caleb's care. It was his job to protect them. He'd been a selfish idiot to simply trust another person's word.
Not another person. Asher.
Caleb shook his wolf head, taking Asher out of the equation in his mind. He should have demanded to see that they were safe.
He calculated the distance already traveled with how far Asher had said Riverside was from the homestead. While Asher could undoubtedly run faster than him, he had to be either just finishing it up in Riverside or already on his way back. Caleb would intercept him and demand to be taken to the coyotes' lair.
He saw a rock in his path up ahead and leapt over it but when his paws hit the ground, his forward momentum was disrupted by a rope that tightened around his foot. It snapped back, yanking Caleb by the leg with a sickening crack and before he knew it, he was hanging upside down next to a tree. He snarled and howled before forcing himself to calm down.
This was just like the trap Ruthie had found herself in and if Caleb wasn't careful, coyotes were likely to show up any minute. He kept his cool, looking around him to get his bearings. The world looked greener from this angle.
He was still swinging from the momentum of being pulled and yanked back and he began transferring his body weight back and forth in time with the swings. Each time, his body swung a little further. A few more and he'd land against the tree. He rotated in the air, swinging his weight with all his might once more before slamming against the tree trunk. There, he scrambled to bend his body up--thanking the inverted sit-ups he used to do with his pack mate Oscar--he was able to hold his body up and sink his front claws into the bark of the tree.
Remaining that way for a few seconds, he caught his breath. His leg hanging from a rope draped over a branch. His body was at a weird angle now as he held himself up a little with his front claws. He moved his right paw up first, sinking his claws back into the bark but at a level a little higher than the left. Then, he did the same with his left paw, bringing it up to join the right. He repeated those steps again and again as he painstakingly climbed up the tree. When his upper half was a little higher than his foot circled with rope, he took another rest. He would have only one chance at his next move and if he failed it meant trying to crawl up again from the bottom. His muscles already screamed. He doubted they could do it all again any time soon.
With a growl and a mighty push, he propelled his body from the tree toward the rope. He snapped at the rope and felt the threads tear under his teeth. He had enough time for one more bite with his jaws before gravity forced him back down into a hanging position. He hadn't bitten completely through the rope, but he had split a fair amount of threads. The rope groaned and then made a cracking noise right before Caleb felt his body fall on the ground. He shifted as he gulped for air. Wiped out after exerting himself so much.
"That was impressive," a voice said as a large man stepped out of the trees. He wore dirty jeans and a dirtier t-shirt. He had on a faded blue ball cap. He looked huge, as wide as the tree Caleb had just climbed up and just as sturdy. "Didn't that look impressive?" the man asked another man coming out of the brush behind him.
Caleb tried to growl and tell the coyote to stand back but he didn't have the air. Instead, he shifted back into a wolf and got to his shaky feet. He cursed his bad luck. He had to be within miles Riverside. At that thought, he threw his head back and howled into the air. The man didn't bother shifting, he stomped forward and punched Caleb's muzzle. Caleb snapped at his hand and the man jumped back, chuckling. "You're going to be fun," he said.
Caleb tensed his muscles, ready to leap when there was movement from either side of the large man. A handful of other coyotes came out of the brush. "Is this the one that killed our brothers?" the coyote at the end asked.
"Look at him, he's a runt," another said.
Caleb snarled at that.
"But feisty. Why are wolf shifters always feisty?"
Caleb wanted to shift and ask him about the other shifters he had met, if any of them were the children, if any of them were alive.
"Do you smell that?" a dark voice asked from the back of the line of coyotes.
Caleb's hair rose at his voice, as immediately repulsed by the man as he had been attracted to Asher. The owner of the voice stepped forward and while the man didn't look impressive size wise, it was clear he was their leader. He moved like oil over water, somehow finding every shadow on his way so that Caleb could never quite get a good look at him.
"Do you reckon he knows what happened to your brother? This ain't the shifter that lives up the mountain. He might be from that pack that took him."
Caleb paid close attention, sensing they were talking about The Den. Talking about the coyote, now in prison, who had attacked Farley.
"My brother was stupid and got himself caught. Coyotes don't venture so far down and not for as long as he did. He thought he had found a new way of surviving when all he did was remind us all why we stay to ourselves."
Caleb wondered why the coyotes were saying so much in his presence. He took a step back and noticed the line of coyotes behind him. He understood then why they weren't censoring themselves. They didn't think Caleb had a chance of escaping.
"What do you want us to do with our catch?" the first, large coyote asked. "Is he the one that killed our brothers or not?"
The leader appraised him. Caleb couldn't see his expression clearly, but he could feel the man's eyes crawling over his body like hairy spiders. "This boy does not know death. He is claimed and in heat. Killing him will enrage someone greatly."
Caleb felt a sense of hope.
"The lone wolf?"
"Yes. He is the one I believe is responsible for killing our brothers. If I am not mistaken, this is his mate. Bind him."
Any hope flew up into the sky. So stupid. If someone were reading the story of his life, this would be about the point that they threw the book across the room. How had he thought running into the forest was a safe idea? Because you weren't running through the forest in your mind. You were running to Asher, who is always safe to you. That much was true. In his head, Asher equaled safety. He'd just failed to account for everything between him and his mate.
Caleb scratched the rope from his back foot and sunk low to the ground. He knew one thing, if they bound him, he was dead. He wasn't dying now that he'd just started having sex. There was no way in hell he was dying before he had a lot more.
The large coyote in front shifted. He was almost as tall in animal form, odd for coyote shifters. He snarled, revealing brown teeth that most likely mirrored the color they were when he was a human. He walked forward almost lazily as if murdering Caleb was something that he didn't expect would take much effort. Caleb leapt forward, catching the coyote off guard. He landed on his back and bit down on just about any spot he could. The coyote writhed and howled beneath him, bucking like a bull at a rodeo. He ran up to the tree Caleb had been hanging from and slammed his back into the trunk. Caleb lost his hold and his breath. He scrambled to his feet but the moment he did, his body began to spasm almost out of control. The mating heat was back and with a vengeance.
The coyote made a chuckling noise as he watched Caleb try to get his footing. He took a step forward when a chorus of growls sounded from the woods as the wild wolves leapt in front of him, their bodies low to the ground, their ears flat and their teeth bared at the approaching coyote.
He pulled up short and looked back at his pack as if to ask, "Are you seeing this?"
The largest wolf, the female, shot out alone, instead of going as a team as they usually did. The other two stayed back to protect Caleb. Caleb knew right away that the wild wolf would be no match for the coyote shifter, especially one so large. Caleb lurched forward, blocked by the two that had stayed behind. He didn't see what happened but heard the female wolf yelp.
A cracking noise echoed in the air, like concentrated thunder. Caleb didn't recognize it as a gunshot until the second shot rang out. The coyotes scattered instantly, including the one that had been dispatched to kill him.
Caleb flopped to the ground, exhausted and in pain. He hoped that whoever had the gun wasn't also there to kill him, but if they were, there wasn't much his body would let him do to stop them.
Caleb shifted he was so relieved when Asher stepped through the clearing. His eyes fell on Caleb and he ran to him, lifting Caleb's body into his arms.
"I heard your howl, what happened, baby?" Asher's panicked words were like a blanket over his frozen soul. His mate never suspected that Caleb had doubted him, that is reason for coming down was anything but an emergency. Caleb searched for the wild wolf. An unfamiliar man knelt beside him. He was a bear of a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
"He's alive, but I want to get him to my clinic," he said to Asher.
Caleb tucked his face away, unable to look his mate.