Sage's Mystery (10 page)

“Come on, slim. We have a lot of work that still needs to be done.

We have things to talk about as well.”

Yeah, William knew they had plenty to talk about, but he was too busy enjoying the warmth of Sage’s body. They could talk about mating and werewolves, and biting,
oh my
, later. Right now he wanted to stay snuggled close to the man he had fallen in love with.

William sighed in frustration when Sage pulled up from the floor, taking his body heat with him. He rolled over and admired all the sun-kissed flesh that was exposed to him. Sage was one hell of a man.

His body was ripped and well honed. He had an eight-pack sporting on his abdomen and thighs that looked like they could crack walnuts.

“We’ll have plenty of time for that later,” Sage said as he grabbed some clothes from his duffel bag.

How the hell did he do that? His back was turned to William.

Reluctantly, he rolled to his knees and got up. William swayed and then fell, thankfully being caught by Sage before he crashed to the floor.

“Easy, slim.”

Yeah, easy. He needed to remember that next time.

Sage’s Mystery

77

Sage helped William down the steps as his eyes scanned the downstairs. It was daylight, but he still felt ill at ease after last night.

He needed to find answers to a lot of questions he had concerning the werewolves that had been in his town last night.

He definitely wanted answers about the one who bit William. He rolled his left shoulder, feeling stiff from the fighting last night and from the fact that one of the bastards had bit him. Thankfully the bite was harmless to him. A werewolf couldn’t be converted into a werewolf.

Although the bite did hurt like hell.

“About damn time,” Jeremiah snapped when Sage and William walked into the living room. “I was beginning to think you were going to stay locked away all day.”

“Right between the eyes,” William grumbled as he walked in behind Sage. He chuckled softly as he looked around the room. The place was a bigger mess from his fight with Jeremiah. He was going to have to repatch a wall that he had already repatched.

“We have a lot of work to get done. The days are getting colder,”

Sage said as he grabbed his tool belt from the floor and wrapped it around his waist. His body was killing him and the need to rest was riding him hard, but they had work to get done. The winter wasn’t going to wait until Sage readied the house.

“Are you going to give me a bedroom to sleep in, or am I relegated to the living room?” Jeremiah asked as he looked around like the dust mites were going to jump out and attack him. Sage rolled
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his eyes at his best friend as he bent down and grabbed his hammer, shoving it in his tool belt.

“There’s one right down the hall from us. It has a great view,”

William said as he grabbed the broom and dustpan. Sage burst out laughing as he kissed William on the head. Leave it to William to offer Jeremiah the room with no wall.

“Thanks, I think,” Jeremiah said as he looked around the living room. “So you really are going to try and fix this place up?”

“It’s my home now, J. Now are you going to tell me how you got away from my father in only a week’s time?”

Jeremiah averted his eyes as he kicked at one of the bags of plaster. “Things are a little crazy there right now. As soon as you left, everything went to shit quickly. It seems the pack is divided now. A lot of people disagree with what your father did.”

“That still doesn’t tell me how you got away.”

Before Jeremiah could answer, the front door swung open. Sage grabbed William and thrust the small man behind him, ready to take down whoever was stupid enough to just waltz right into his home.

His jaw dropped when he saw his childhood friends step through the door. There was no way all of them were here.

“Are you sure we got the right place?” Monterey asked as he walked in. His nose crinkled as he looked over the house as if he weren’t really seeing it correctly.

“It’s the directions Jeremiah left for us,” Patrick said as he walked in behind Monterey. “But I may have taken a wrong turn somewhere back in bum-fucked country land.”

Sage watched as Mercy and Isaac walked in behind the other two.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed his friends until he saw all four of them standing there looking at his house as if it were a monstrous sight.

“You’re in the right place, dickheads,” Sage said from the living room. He stood straight, grinning widely as the four men snapped their heads in his direction.

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“Then your brain must have taken a wrong turn when you bought this piece-of-shit town,” Monterey said as he crossed the room and gave Sage a hug. “How the hell are you?”

“Good, but what in the hell are all of you doing here?”

“Visiting grandma’s house, what do you think? And who in the hell decorated in here? It’ll take me weeks to get an idea of what’s needed to spruce the place up. You know how to hand a guy a rough job, Sage,” Patrick complained as he looked around with a grimace.

“I’m not even sure
I
can decorate in here. Where should I shop, the junkyard?”

Sage chuckled as he hugged Patrick. “It’ll look great when we’re done, Pat.”

“I hope so,” he said and then shivered. “I think I’ll sleep in the truck.”

“Hell, no,” Monterey barked. “You drool.”

“I do not!”

“Can someone tell me how all of you got away?” Sage asked as he looked around at his five friends. Jeremiah was leaning against the wall, a shitty-ass grin on his face.

“We just up and left,” Patrick sniffed. “It wasn’t the same without you. And who is the little hottie behind you?”

Sage growled as he narrowed his eyes at Patrick. “My mate.”

“Fuck, man. We leave you alone for a week and you go and mate?

Can’t take you anywhere.” Monterey snorted as he looked closer at William.

Sage’s neck hairs stood on end as he eyed each and every one of his friends. He knew they wouldn’t harm his mate, but all of them were big enough to scare the shit out of William. Well, except for Patrick. He was a little on the feminine side. He and William would probably get along fine.

“So you just left?” Sage asked, ignoring Monterey’s outburst.

“And did none of you think that my father was going to go apeshit and call a hunt on your heads?”

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“He didn’t follow us,” Mercy said quietly from the doorway. “We took extra precautions.”

“Why do you think it took us so long?” Patrick asked. “These three insisted on circling back around and then going a different route.

My ass is sore from sitting in the damn truck for so long.”

“Your ass is sore from that guy at the last truck stop,” Monterey said as he ducked Patrick’s fist. It was good to have his friends with him, but Sage worried that his father would be on the warpath now.

Of course, the alpha would have to find them first.

Life just kept getting more and more interesting by the day. “Fine.

Everyone grab something and get this place in living order.”

“I vote we get a bulldozer and start from scratch,” Patrick said as he took the broom and dustpan from William. “Come on, shorty.

Let’s see if we can’t Martha Stewart this place.”

William looked at Sage helplessly as he followed Patrick into the kitchen.

“What the hell!”

Sage chuckled at Patrick’s outburst from the kitchen. The room really was a mess.

“Where’s the damn refrigerator?” Patrick called to them.

“Some things never change,” Sage said as he turned back to the other men. “Let’s get started.”

* * * *

William scooted closer to Sage as the men sat around the fire in the backyard with full bellies, talking to Sage as if he were the leader.

William knew Sage was a manly man, and hearing these men defer to him only solidified his belief.

He snuck peeks at everyone sitting lazily in a circle. They might be sitting leisurely, but William could tell these men would be ready in under a second if something were to jump off. They all looked like rebels, but Sage was the personification of the definition.

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Okay, so William was attracted to the rebel in the man, but it ran deeper than that. Sage watched him from across the room, winking at him when no one was looking, making his heart burst with joy all day.

He was gentle with William when he looked anything but.

“So you had an outbreak of werewolves?” Monterey asked. “Huh, that’s odd.”

“It’s more than odd,” Sage said as he leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees. “One of them purposely came after my mate and bit him.”

Curses rang out around the fire as each man sat up a little straighter. “Was he already your mate when the wolf did this?” Isaac asked with steel in his voice.

Sage shook his head. “No, I had to finish the conversion. Whoever it was had bitten William with force, putting him in ultimate pain.”

“Brody,” William said in a shaky voice as he scooted another inch toward Sage. He didn’t like any attention on him, especially from this group of men. He didn’t want to seem clingy. And he didn’t want to embarrass Sage in front of his friends by begging for the man to give him some attention.

He knew he should man up and act like he had a lick of sense, but Sage called to him like no other, even more so since the biting thing.

He wasn’t sure what it was, but ever since last night, William had this deep ache inside of him for the rebel, ten times worse than before.

“Did you just say Brody?” Sage asked with malevolence in his voice. William decided to scoot the other way as he nodded. “He said,

‘Welcome to our world. Tell Sage that Brody said hello.’”

“Well, fuck me,” Isaac cursed. “That little weasel just keeps cropping back up like a fucking disease.”

“Who’s Brody?” William looked around the group before settling his eyes on Sage. He watched as Sage traced the scar on his face, his eyes distant, cold.

“He’s an outcast. He was thrown out of the pack for being a traitor. He tried to set the alpha up to our enemy pack.”

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“Alpha?”

Sage sighed as he pulled William close. William glanced around to see if anyone was watching them. They all were. He swallowed hard and then looked up at Sage, concentrating on him.

“We are a pack of werewolves. Not the kind that run on four legs, but two. We descend from Romania. On the full moon, those who aren’t mated have no choice but to shift. Once mated, we can control it, shift at will. Our alpha, or leader of the pack of werewolves living in the same area, leads us.”

“Are you the alpha here?” William asked and then curled his lips in when Sage gave a low growl. Maybe he should just listen and not talk. He was out of his depth here. No need to make the nice werewolves mad.

“I’m no one’s alpha. My father made sure of that when he gave me the sign of an outcast.” Sage once again traced the scar on his face. As William looked closer, he noticed that the scar resembled four slash marks. His fingers itched to reach out and trace the scar with his fingers. He was fascinated by it.

“Will I turn into a werewolf?” William asked. He knew he should just be quiet, but he needed to know. That bite hurt like a bitch, but there had to be a reason behind it, behind what happened to him.

“Yes,” Sage said after a moment of silence. “You are mated, so you’ll only have to go through one uncontrollable shift.”

Gee, now didn’t that sound like something he should look forward to. William glanced down at the ground, feeling as though his entire world had just turned upside down…again.

He was a werewolf now. All day he had pushed the thought of what happened the previous night from his mind, but now he had no choice but to deal with it. He shuddered at the idea as images from his past began to play through his mind.

“Will I kill anyone?” he whispered to his hands.

“Not unless your life is threatened.”

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William leaned forward and picked Terror up and sat her in his lap as he petted her. No one said anything as William silently fell apart. He could feel Sage watching him. All of them were watching him. He wiped his eyes and then nodded. “Okay.”

Sage stood, pulling William to his feet and leading him toward the house. “Put Terror down.”

William set Terror down and then followed behind Sage. Once they were in the kitchen, Sage turned and faced William. “I didn’t want this for you. You have to know that. I had to mate you in order to save you from the fire burning inside of you.”

That didn’t help William one bit. Sage was standing there telling him that he was forced to mate William. He just told him that he didn’t want him to be a part of his secret little club. William should have known. It had all seemed too good to be true, being mated to Sage.

William staggered back and then ran from the kitchen and up the steps, throwing himself on the pile of blankets in his and Sage’s bedroom.

Would he ever fit in anywhere? This had all been a mistake. Sage never really wanted him. William knew he should have left when Sage had gotten moody with him a few days ago. Now he had fucked around and fell in love with the rebel.

He could feel his heart breaking in two as he lay there.

And worst of all, he was going to become the very creature that had haunted his dreams since he was a child.

* * * *

“He’s going to screw it up,” Patrick said from around the circle as he leaned back. “I’m surprised he doesn’t have a boot permanently sticking out of his mouth.”

“Ease up, Pat,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve never seen him this way before. I think William is exactly what he needs.”

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Patrick wasn’t too sure about that. Sage was one hell of man to try and rein in. He wasn’t sure William had it in him. Not that he had anything against the short man, but Patrick had grown up with Sage.