Jamison collapsed. Naomi dropped the shotgun and caught him in her arms, kneeling with him in the snow. He was bleeding from many wounds, but his eyes were clear and alert.
“I’m all right,” he rasped. “A lot of scratches and bites, but nothing too deep.”
“You’re a good fighter, Jamison,” Coyote said above Naomi. “No wonder he was afraid of you.” Naomi turned toward Coyote then immediately whipped away when she saw the man’s very long, flaccid c**k hanging right next to her.
“He’s a skinwalker,” the male bear Changer snarled. He limped toward them, supporting the woman, who was pale but upright. “All this time. We will tell the pack, choose a new leader.” The woman looked at Jamison with narrowed eyes. “Do you wish to challenge for Alpha?” She spoke with an accent that told Naomi English wasn’t her first language.
Jamison shook his head. “I’m staying here.” He glared up at Coyote. “Why did you send me to be trained by a skinwalker?”
“I didn’t know. I never met the man until today.” Coyote gazed off into the woods where the Alpha had disappeared. “He must be a damn good skinwalker if he fooled you all for so long.”
“He will not be allowed to return to us,” the man vowed. “We will retreat, and I will care for my mate.
We have no quarrel with you, Jamison.”
Jamison sat up, brushing the snow off his body. Like Coyote and the other two, he didn’t seem to notice the cold. “Then why did you attack me?”
“On the orders of our Alpha,” the man said. He spat into the snow. “But we take no orders from skinwalkers.”
Without another word, the man and woman turned and walked together into the woods, each supporting the other.
“Will they be all right?” Naomi asked.
Coyote grunted. “They’re Changers. They’ll heal quickly, and the skinwalker will be more interested in coming after Jamison.”
Naomi looked at him in fear. “But I wounded him. I drove him off.”
“Temporarily,” Jamison said. “We’d better go.”
He started to climb to his feet, and Coyote and Naomi grasped his arms to help him. Coyote didn’t have a scratch on him, though the hair on his chest was damp with sweat.
Jamison walked to the truck without limping, leaving large footprints in the snow. He opened the passenger door and reached for his clothes.
Coyote pulled jeans and a flannel shirt from under the tarp in the truck bed and started dressing without hurry.
“Were you riding back there this whole time?” Naomi demanded.
“Yep.”
Naomi’s face went hot. She’d let herself scream without restraint when Jamison went down on her, and then she’d happily sucked Jamison off, thinking they were cut off and alone. From the grin on Coyote’s face, he’d heard everything.
“I figured you’d need me,” he said, his yellow eyes dancing with amusement. “You mind giving me a lift back to town?”
“Do I have a choice?” Naomi glared at him. “And wipe that disgusting look off your face or I’ll charge you for the gas.”
SEVEN
He would be coming. Jamison knew that as they drove out of the mountains, following the flashing yellow light of the plow. By the time they reached lower elevations, the snow had gone, and bare desert greeted them under blue sky.
Coyote rode in the truck’s cab with them, squishing Jamison between himself and Naomi. Jamison didn’t mind sitting right next to Naomi, where he could rest his hand on her thigh. She was scared and angry, and he wanted her so much he could barely sit still.
She’d leapt to his defense, damning the rules of Changer combat to protect her mate. The bonding ceremony the Apache had done might have been bogus, but Naomi possessed the courage of a true mate. He’d find a way to bind her to him in the Changer way. He had to.
They arrived in Magellan as the sun set, the tattered clouds to the south streaked brilliant red. The Ghost Train celebration would begin in a few hours. All businesses in Magellan closed for it, including Hansen’s Garden Center, so the parking lot was deserted when they reached the house.
Coyote went straight to the refrigerator and started rummaging around until he came out with a can of beer.
“You’re staying?” Jamison asked him.
“You need me to.”
“I know.” Jamison stripped off his shirt as he went into the downstairs bathroom. Naomi followed.
Her worried look turned to one of surprise when she saw that Jamison’s torso had almost healed. The long scratches on his skin already had closed and scarred over. Jamison dabbed off the remaining blood with a washcloth.
“Why do you and Coyote think the skinwalker will come back?” Naomi asked him. “We defeated him, didn’t we?”
“Not quite. He wasn’t fighting to kill. He was fighting to see what I could do. What I would do.” Jamison dried himself and twined his loose hair into a braid. “And now we know his secret. He’ll have to return and kill us.”
“Why? If he disappeared, how would we know how to find him? Who would we tell?”
“The Alpha, or whoever he is, is crazed about honor. You and I and Coyote made him lose face as well as control over the pack.” Jamison nodded grimly. “He’ll recover, and then he’ll come.” Naomi slid her arms around him, and Jamison pulled her warm body close. “I never realized what you went through,” she said softly. “Thinking of what they did to you makes me so angry.” Jamison buried his face in her neck, kissed her skin. He knew he’d never have survived without the memory of her. He’d think of how good she smelled when she first woke up, warm and sweet, her sex juices scenting her from whatever arousing dream she’d been having. Making love to her in the morning had been the best thing in the world.
The idea that, after he’d left, some other man might have made love to her as the sun rose, had also kept Jamison alive in the cage and determined to get back to her. To fight for her, if necessary. Two years hadn’t made much difference in the savage possessiveness that spiked in Jamison every time he saw her.
“I kept going because I wanted to come back to you,” he said. “Whether you were waiting for me or not, I wanted to see you again.”
Coyote darkened the doorway, and Naomi broke the embrace. Jamison didn’t want to let her go, needing the feel of her body against his.