Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) Read online

  DeWitt’s Pack 5

  Eli’ s Reluctant Mate

  Eli Martin has sunk into a severe depression after the death of his brother. He hides his grief behind cheap liquor, and he hardly cares that his alpha is considering banishing him from the pack.

  Until he meets Chris Lefroy, the gorgeous man with the multi colored eyes who offers Eli some of his humanity back.

  Though Chris feels something for Eli, he is insistent that he is straight, and wants nothing to do with the dangers of being mated to a werewolf, while Eli is suddenly finding himself wanting to become the man he knows he can be, and whom he knows his mate deserves.

  Eli is forced to come to terms with the fact that Chris will be in constant danger if he stays, always a target of the wild werewolves. Eli struggles with the idea of whether or not it is responsible of him to convince Chris to stay, lest Chris pay the ultimate price.

  Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal,

  Vampires/Werewolves

  Length: 32,361 words

  ELI’S RELUCTANT MATE

  DeWitt’s Pack 5

  Marcy Jacks

  EVERLASTING CLASSIC

  MANLOVE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic ManLove

  ELI’S RELUCTANT MATE Copyright © 2012 by Marcy Jacks E-book ISBN: 978- 1-62241-519-9

  First E-book Publication: November 2012

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Eli’s Reluctant Mate by Marcy Jacks from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Marcy Jacks’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect

  Ms. Jacks’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

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  ELI’S RELUCTANT MATE

  DeWitt’s Pack 5

  MARCY JACKS

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter One

  The first rule of surviving as a werewolf was to stay away from all the normal people. Werewolves weren’t allowed to be overly social with humans beyond what was necessary. It created too many complications if some human got too close, too chummy with the werewolf in question, and they started to figure things out.

  The only reason for being in the same room with someone not of the paranormal variety for more than an hour was for the basics. Buying food, clothing, or if a mate was scented nearby.

  The second rule was that werewolves weren’t allowed to get drunk in bars, partly because it was linked in to the first rule, and alsobecause it called into question the behavior of the wolf getting wasted.

  Werewolves were fast healers with amazing metabolism, making it difficult to get drunk, but enough alcohol down the chute and anything was possible.

  It was a risk because of the way the alcohol impaired judgement and thinking. People did stupid things while they were intoxicated, and a werewolf could not afford to be stupid in front of humans.

  Last week, Eli, being too far gone to notice, had taken off his clothes and transformed into his wolf after last call had been

  8 Marcy Jacks

  announced and he’d been getting ready to head home sometime after midnight. He’d thought he was alone as he did it behind the bar, but had been too drunk to scent that kid nearby.

  Eli hadn’t even known about him until his alpha, James DeWitt, woke him up the next day with a bucket of ice over the head and a newspaper shoved into his face, telling the story of how a teen boy had cried wolf after getting drunk at the local bar.

  Luckily the writer had been more interested in putting the bar owner on the spot for selling to minors, and nothing else was said about the werewolf the drunk kid had supposedly seen.

  Eli had never seen James look so pissed, and with his scarred face, it wasn’t hard for him to appear angry.

  James had always been a softy, however, and Eli had been let off with a warning, which Eli was promptly ignoring as he downed the last of his Blue and signalled for another.

  The new bottle thrust into his hands was cold, and the beer went

  down his throat the exact same way, which was welcome on a

  scorcher such as this.

  It seemed the heat outside was doing its best to overthrow the power of that weak-ass air conditioner, because it was fucking hot in here.

  At least the heat was a better subject to think about than his dead

  brother.

  Oh Christ, he’d just thought of him again.

  Eric, I’m so sorry.

  Not nearly drunk enough. Eli threw his head back and let the beer slide down his throat. He’d need another one of these quickly if he was going to get hammered.

  The bartender came back and cleared away the empty bottles, shaking his head and muttering about where Eli put it all.

  The man had been a loyal servant as far as getting the drinks went, because Eli had always been quick to offer up the payment for what he consumed.

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 9

  Now, however, he’d long since ran out of any money he’d managed to save, and Isaac had refused to loan him anymore.

  Eli was on a bar tab, and he didn’t give a shi
t if he ever managed to pay it back.

  Something hard poked his shoulder.

  Eli ignored it and opened his next bottle with his teeth, spitting out the cap.

  At first he thought he’d imagined the tap on his shoulder, but then it came back, and he had to acknowledge the annoying feel of it.

  He tilted his head enough to see what was up behind him.

  The angry face of some guy Eli had never seen before glared down at him.

  Eli went back to his beer.

  “Hey! You look at me, you fucking freak.”

  Nope.

  The guy didn’t try to grab his shoulder or anything when Eli ignored him, but instead he went and sat down on the stool next to Eli’s.

  “My kid tells me you’re the guy who was getting undressed in

  front of him.”

  “Your kid’s a liar,” Eli said, unfazed. It had been forever since

  he’d bothered himself with taking anyone to bed, and never had he done it with someone who looked remotely underage.

  “You’re gonna regret saying that, you fucking pervert,” said the angry father. “Don’t know what you drugged him with, making him see shit like that, but he tells me you were taking off your clothes right in front of him.”

  Oh. That kid that Eli had accidentally transformed in front of.

  Well, shit.

  “The fuck is your problem?”

  “To be fair, I didn’t see him there,” Eli said, still not bothering to

  look at the guy.

  “You piece of shit.”

  10 Marcy Jacks

  Something hard smashed into the side of Eli’s skull. White

  exploded behind his vision and then colorful dots as he was thrown from his stool and landed on the filthy wooden floor.

  Maybe he was a littler drunker than he’d originally thought.

  The guy that punched him stood over him now, and Eli’s inner wolf didn’t even give a shit that he was being dominated by some

  pissant human.

  The bartender shouted something at them, but the aggressive human ignored him. “If I ever see your face around here, I’ll get a tire iron and some of my buddies and we’ll fuck you up.”

  Eli laughed. The spots had left his vision, and even though he was still the one on the ground, he didn’t so much as have a headache from the blow to his head. “I doubt you and your buddies could do more than tickle me.”

  He didn’t care that someone was trying to dominate him, but he did relish the idea of a fight. He could take this little weasel out back and tear him to pieces. He could imagine it was Deacon’s face on the guy’s head, the man responsible for killing Eric, one of the men responsible anyway, as he ripped the man’s arms from his sockets.

  The guy’s fists clenched up, and Eli could hear the way his heart starting beating in that erratic way that happened when adrenaline was pumping through his veins.

  He wanted a fight, too.

  That’s right, idiot. Come and get it.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  Someone, some skinny little idiot, actually ran between them, blocking the big guy from Eli’s view, and he could have killed the little bastard for that.

  The smaller man―and he barely looked like he was even that―held his hands up, trying to calm the bigger guy with his fists still clenched in front of him. “Come on, you don’t want to do this. The guy’s drunk and he’s down.”

  The angry father jabbed a meaty finger in the smaller man’s face.

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 11

  “Mind your own fucking business, you little weird-eyed faggot!”

  What?

  Eli shook his head, trying to clear it, his own adrenaline falling back to nothing now that a fight no longer looked imminent. He tried to get to his feet and failed spectacularly.

  “Look at him. He can barely stand. If you kick the shit out of him, you could get in trouble for that. You can’t exactly say you were defending yourself from him.”

  Eli saw red again at that comment. That little son of a bitch!

  Eli blinked a couple of times, trying to scowl up at the both of them, but instead he saw the disgusted look on the father’s face as he stared down at him, right before he spat on the floor next to Eli’s hand.

  “I ever see your face again, I’ll kill you,” he said, stomping off.

  Whatever.

  Eli turned his glare onto the young man who had come between him and a fight he really could have used, when his heart and lungs stopped cold.

  He blinked a couple of times, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands just to be absolutely sure.

  One eye was the darkest chocolate brown Eli had ever seen. The other was the deepest of blue.

  Now he understood why that angry son of a bitch had called him weird eyed. Eli inhaled the scents of the bar. They were weak. Probably because the alcohol was fucking with his nose, but he did smell it once he started looking for it. Beneath the stale scent of tobacco, wooden booths, alcohol, and sweat, was the sweetest thing that had ever wafted up his nostrils.

  The young man was beautiful, too. He looked like he was in his early twenties, with nice skin and dark-blond hair that was cut short with hints of gel-induced spikes.

  Eli had just found his mate, a man―a man!―and Eli was stumbling drunk, on his ass, and bleary eyed.

  12 Marcy Jacks

  “You know him, kid?” the bartender asked.

  The blond man shook his head, still looking down at Eli with that pity he was starting to hate. “No, never met him before. Do you want me to help you get home?” he asked, addressing Eli at that point.

  He was a little hero, too. Brilliant.

  “I’m fine,” Eli gruffed, pulling himself up to his feet. The stupid ground beneath him heaved, and he nearly keeled over. He would have had Blondie not grabbed him by the arms and pulled him straight again.

  They were nearly the same height, but Blondie was still just a little bit shorter. There must have been some muscle in that slim

  frame because he pulled Eli’s arm over his shoulder. “Take it easy.

  I’ll get you where you want to go.”

  “I’d be careful with that one, son,” said the bartender. “He’s been

  known to start up some trouble with other people as of late.”

  Eli was never tipping that man ever again.

  “I’ll be okay,” said Blondie, who, with some minor difficulty, fished his wallet from his back pocket and put some bills down on the bar.

  “Will that cover his drinks?”

  “I’ll put the rest on his tab.”

  Fucker was probably going to just pocket the money and put the whole thing on Eli’s tab regardless. Eli was going to have to have a conversation with this man, his mate, about not trusting people so damn much.

  Especially with eyes like those.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Eli could barely do anything but sag as he was led out of the bar.

  They walked for maybe ten minutes, which were excruciating on his eyes with the sun blazing down on them. Christ, he wished he could go back to the relative darkness of the bar so he wouldn’t have these needles piercing him in the corneas.

  Eli muttered directions, but they must not have been very clear

  Eli’s Reluctant Mate 13

  because Blondie ignored him and kept on walking.

  “Highway 22,” Eli said again, louder this time, and his ears hurt

  for it.

  “What?”

  “Drop me off there. I can get back home from there.”

  Thankfully, Blondie didn’t try to fight him on that. “If you say

  so.”

  “What’s your name?” Eli asked and then prayed he wouldn’t forget it. He would need to find this man again after he’d sobered up.

  There was a slight hesitation, and Eli feared that his mate wouldn’t want to divulge too much personal information to a drunken loser like him.

  Clearly, Blondie was a h
uman, but despite that, he must have been, at least on a subconscious level, aware of the strange pull between them, because he did answer. “Chris.”

  “Chris what?”

  “I’ll keep that to myself for now.”

  Fair enough. Eli had never seen Chris in town before, and he had been coming down here a whole lot more than was necessary, so he must be new.

  Still, small town like this, Eli had a first name and a description, that was all that he should need if he wanted to find him again after he

  sobered up.

  “You shouldn’t be walking around here by yourself,” Eli said, managing not to slur. “It’s dangerous.”

  Chris smiled at that. “So I’m told. But I’m a big enough boy, don’t worry.”

  Not big enough for the things that would be stalking him once any other werewolf or werefox or were-anything got a look at those eyes.

  Maybe he wasn’t born with them, though. “What happened to your eyes?”

  “Didn’t think you’d notice that,” Chris said. “They’re just like that. I can see just fine. I don’t know. I was born with it.”

  14 Marcy Jacks

  “Oh.” It was natural then, not some product of being blind in one eye or any such thing.

  Eyes like that, in the shifter communities, were considered extremely good luck. Not for the person who had them, but for the were who took the individual with the bicolored eyes as a mate.

  Of course, that wouldn’t stop other weres who knew they weren’t mated to him from trying to seduce him, if only to capitalize on that luck a little. It wasn’t exactly unknown for the more unfriendly were types to try and rape someone who had eyes like that either.

  And lately, this area was crawling with those types of weres.

  The town was small, and getting to the outside of it took almost no time at all. Five more minutes and they would be right at the turn that would lead then to Highway 22, and Eli could go down it, get to the hidden unpaved road that led back to his pack land, and then fall into bed. Sobering up shouldn’t take him very long. He’d nap for five hours and that should be more than enough for the alcohol to run its course through his system.