The Defiant Claim - The Claim: Book 2 [LGBTQ+]

Mik’s past flashed before his eyes—catching up with him. Mara jumping from the cliff and his father running to the edge and looking over it.

While he stood back and said nothing. Felt nothing.

Shouting brought him back to the present as a shudder shook him from the memory.

“Sam!” Cameron shrieked as he scrambled forward to where Sam was once standing.

Sam? Confusion swirled around Mik as he leaped forward. Renewed strength and energy rushed him to Cameron’s side where he yelped and scrambled to keep from falling off the cliff. He shifted back into his human form on all fours as he clutched the rocky ledge with both hands and looked down at the rocks below. Small waves crashed over, but they weren’t strong enough to move Sam’s still body, spread-eagle on his back on the biggest, flattest one. Red tinted the foam that swirled around him.

Horror seized him as he stared, wide-eyed, below, his muscles locking up. Not moving, not breathing. He couldn’t even think. He just stared. A numbing coldness swept over him as his vision blurred.

“Sam!” Cameron yelled again before grabbing Mik by his neck and snarled. “This is all your fault! You killed him! He wouldn’t have jumped if you had been fucking loyal!”

“He’s not dead yet.”

He stared at him in disbelief. “What? How do you know?”

“I’m not in crippling agony, am I?”

“No, but... You guys didn’t seal the bond.”

“I’d still know, wouldn’t I? I’d feel something, right?”

Cameron narrowed his eyes and shoved him away. “You better be fucking right.”

Shifting back into his wolf, Cameron threw his head back in a howl that alerted the pack of the emergency before darting past Mik to climb down the rocky ledge toward the beach town in the distance.

Following, Mik shifted into his wolf and made his way down as quickly and carefully as he could. Peering over the edge every minute to make sure Sam was still there. No longer were the waves red that splashed around him, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Sam was okay. He had fallen from a great height... He should be dead...

Shaking those thoughts from his head, Mik continued his descent.

The rocks became smaller until they were replaced with soil as trees sprang up and a dense forest grew along the edges of the slope. When their descent became only a few feet from the edge of the water, they jumped down to the shoreline lined with small flat rocks, perfect for skipping across the water on a calm day.

He could hear a commotion in the distance, a boat at the dock of the beach town with people scrambling aboard. He ignored the sounds behind him as he and Cameron ran across the rocky shoreline back toward the cliff.

As the ridge grew higher, the rocks grew larger and the water lapped across their paws with the uneven surface. Within minutes of drawing closer to the peak, the motorboat pulled up as close as it could get to them. Cameron shifted back into his human form and hollered to the people on the boat where to go, pointing to the cliff and the rocks below it. It set out ahead of them and threw out an anchor, twenty yards away from the rocks clustered around Sam’s unmoving form.

Mik shifted back into his human form before the rocks turned to jagged slabs, grasping them with his hands and pulling himself forward. The shoreline was swallowed up now in large uneven rocks with shallow water below. The waves crashed against him and Cameron, threatening to push them over. More than once, Mik scraped his knee or cut his flesh against the rough and sometimes sharp edges of the rock as his pace slowed to ensure his own safety on the wet and algae lined rocks.

Cameron reached Sam seconds before him and heaved a sigh of relief. Mik could hear Sam’s heartbeat over the sounds of the water and motorboat and see the steady rising and falling of his chest with each breath he took. As would be expected, he was out cold and not responding.

The people in the motorboat set out a small, bright orange, inflatable boat. A man jumped off to guide the boat through the waves and rocks toward them.

Cameron slipped his arms under Sam’s neck and knees and carefully lifted him up as the water splashed and sprayed against him.

Mik rose to his feet next to him and reached out his hands. “Give him to me.”

Cameron snarled and turned his body away. “Fuck off! You did this to him!”

Mik cringed before fight mode kicked in. “Me? And who told him? Who arranged to bait me for that matter?”

“He had a right to know! I wasn’t expecting him to take off and catch you for himself!” Cameron spat. “And all Nikki had to do was be there and keep an eye on you and report back. Play along with your game and let you lead where it went. She was instructed not to initiate, and she didn’t, did she?”

Mik growled. While he foolishly let his guard down to let Nikki in, he had been the one to initiate and set the pace. She never made the first move. He started it. He was responsible for his own actions. Whether Nikki got physically aroused by him or not, it didn’t matter.

Nothing else mattered now.

The guy with the inflatable boat reached them now and was struggling to hold his position against the rocks with the waves threatening to rip the boat away. “Come on, guys! We ain’t got time for this! You can fight later! Let’s go!”

Growling at each other, Mik slipped around the rocks to help steady the boat from the other side. It was small, too small to hold them all and not strong enough to withstand against the waves and the rocks.

Cameron gently placed Sam on the boat and stepped back. The man pushed the boat away from the rocks, guiding it toward the motorboat and fighting against the waves. They all worked together to pushed the orange boat towards the larger one, battling against the current and struggling to maintain balance on the uneven and sometimes slippery rocks.

Finally, they reached the motorboat, having to swim the last few feet against the small waves as no one could touch the bottom there. They attached some hooks to the inflatable boat and pulled it up with some pulleys on the side while the three of them climbed onto the motorboat.

A pair of swim trunks were thrust into Mik’s hands and he pulled them on to cover himself. There were two children clutching their mother at the front end of the boat—werewolves who were at the beach and the first to hear and respond to Cameron’s call for help. The captain of the ship, however, was human.

Mik stared at him for a moment as the male wolf who helped them pulled up the anchor and the captain pulled them away from the rocks. An elbow in his back made him snarl at the male as he turned to lower the inflatable boat on the cramped space behind the captain’s chair.

“Stop glaring at my father-in-law.”

“Mik’s got an attitude like that,” Cameron told the male as he helped unhook the clips from the inflatable boat.

Soaking wet now, an autumn breeze nipped at Mik as he watched the two males work together to make Sam’s limp form comfortable. They called for blankets and the woman at the front dug one out from a storage compartment and passed it to them.

Mik couldn’t help but take in Sam’s physique before he was covered. He had an unusual form. His long, lean figure had long, thin arms and legs and a short torso. It reminded him of a pup on the cusp of his first shift. Only Sam wasn’t a pup. He should be filling out like an adult male. His shoulders should be broader. Even with minimal exercise, his muscles should be larger. Why was everything about him different? He didn’t have a normal male scent. His voice wasn’t as deep as most adult males. And maybe it was because of the freezing cold water, but his male anatomy was abnormally small too—not that he looked too hard. He only had a glimpse before the blanket was laid and tucked in around him.

The unnamed male was on his phone as soon as more blankets were handed out to them. A pickup truck was already on its way from the pack house and should be there within five minutes of them docking.

They pulled up to the small town Sam had taken Mik before—he already forgot the name of it, if he’d been told the name of it at all.

It struck Mik hard in the chest.

Sam called it Freedom.

Sam had tried to free himself. Tried to free himself from their unbreakable bond. Tried to free himself from someone who couldn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved.

Mik didn’t blame him. Sam didn’t deserve this. Sam was a good male with the biggest heart Mik had seen. He knew he’d hurt Sam one day—he just never expected this.

As they drove to the dock, a numbness filled him as the chatter around him faded to a mindless buzzing. He huddled close to Sam’s side, ignoring everything around him and focusing on the rising and falling of Sam’s chest.

How was he still alive? That fall should have killed him. That fall would have killed anyone—man or wolf.

When they got to the dock, the boat was tied securely and Sam was carefully lifted out on the inflatable boat and moved to a grassy spot beside the water. Mik remained at his side, snarling at anyone who tried to pull him away.

He felt compelled to be as close to Sam as possible. The matebond pushing him closer, to cling, to brush his fingers across Sam’s forehead as he brushed his wet hair out of his face. An ache filled him. He wanted Sam to wake up. To open his blue eyes and smile at him. Tell him that it was a joke. He was just playing games. Hell, he could open his eyes and spit in his face and tell him he was screwing around—that it was payback for cheating on him. Sam would forgive him because that was his nature.

But Mik knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness.

And as much as he thought Sam should reject him and find someone else worthy of his love, Mik was filled with jealousy and an urge to kill anyone who came near him.

You can’t have it both ways! He snarled at himself as a pickup truck pulled up and the pack doctor—whatever his name was—and some other guy jumped out. They strode toward him to get Sam and instinctively, he jumped to his feet and snarled at them to get away.

The doctor held up his hands to show Mik he was no threat, while the other male snarled back in challenge. Doctor What’s-His-Name told them both to stand-down as another car pulled up. Noodin climbed out of that one and when their eyes met, Mik was thrown to the ground.

The air rushed out of his lungs with the impact before he began thrashing about. Cameron was on top of him—he could smell him. But Cameron was stronger—dammit!

“Mikwam,” Noodin stated calmly in a loud voice for all to hear. While Cameron pinned him down with his body and held both his hands in his, he used his other hand to pull Mik’s hair so that he could face Noodin as he made his pronouncement. “Your actions have caused one of mine to be harmed. As long as he lives, so you too shall live. But you will never see the light of the moon again.”