Chapter 41: Cormac

Cormac started to come back slowly. The shifters from the other pack were staying in wolf form but he knew that was most likely because they were horrified at what they just saw. Being in animal form is comforting; it made shifters feel like they were more in control than they were.

Isabelle was creeping closer and closer to Wes. He was staring back at her, the bluff of fearlessness in his eyes giving him away. When the gun was nearing his chest, he took a step away.

“You were really going to protect these guys, Wes?” Isabelle asked. “You were really going to make sure they were taken care of? Give them money?” She cocked her head to the side. “That doesn’t sound like the boss I know.”

“You’ve made your point, Isabelle. Put the gun down.”

Isabelle laughed, brought the gun further up and aimed it at Wes's face. “I haven’t even gotten to my point yet. In fact, you probably don’t even know what my point is.”

“Well?” Wes asked with a snip in his tone. Cormac was amazed that this man who reeked of mortal fear could still manage to be indignant. “What’s your fucking point?”

“What were you really going to do with this pack?” Isabelle pulled back the hammer on the gun. “And remember, I will shoot you if I think it’s a lie.”

“So then I have to say something that makes me sound like a terrible person, right? You’ll never believe that I might be a man of my word.”

“Tell me something surprising then, Wes,” Isabelle dared him. “Tell me something I would never believe.”

Wes’s irritating smile returned. Cormac wanted nothing more than to wipe it off his face permanently but instead, he stood perfectly still and watched Isabelle, wondering if she would let him speak.

“Fine,” he said, “you’re right. I don’t give a shit about this pack anymore than I care about your little boyfriend there. Like most things, I saw an opportunity and I took it.” He sneered at her then at Cormac. “Not much different from either of you.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Wes,” Isabelle said, stepping closer so the gun was practically touching him. “Consider this my two week’s notice.”

Cormac whistled, high pitched and attentive. When Isabelle looked in his direction, he shook his head. “Leave him to himself,” Cormac said. “No good comes from shedding more blood.”

Isabelle lowered the gun and joined the motley crew awaiting her by Cormac’s truck. Cormac pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her tightly. The heat of her, the weight of her, he was just relieved to feel it all again.

Wes dropped to his knees and snatched up his own gun from the dust. Speckles of blood were drying along his temples and forehead; with the gun in his shaking hand, he appeared ridiculous and frightened. Cormac would have laughed at the sight of it but he was too tired.

“Don’t even think of doin’ something stupid with that gun,” Cormac told him. He watched the shifters from the other pack starting to close in on Wes from behind. “I’m only prepared to be the bigger man for ya once.”

It was a long breath, a long pause, a drawn out second where everyone was frozen in a moment of action. A moment of decision. Isabelle’s hand circled his wrist but she held the gun close to her hip, business end pointing out. Wes didn’t need to see it to know they had the drop on him. His lined face hung long; he hardly noticed the crescent of shifters closing in around him. Everyone was falling into place for their next move once time returned to normal; once the decisions were put into play.

“Don’t think I've forgotten anything that’s happened, Cormac,” Wes told him as Cormac and his pack, which now included Isabelle, walked steadily backwards to the truck. None of them took their eyes off of Wes or any of the other shifters.

Tara tugged on Isabelle’s sleeve, urging her to climb into the cab even though Cormac had stopped outside the driver’s door. He had one last thing to say, one last thing to tell this hateful, confused man about his daughter. One last thing that he might not want to hear.

“Maxine loved me,” Cormac told him. He wasn’t yelling; he barely raised his voice. Each word came across the mottled dust, the kicked up battle remnants, of the plateau as crisp as the wind. “I might have loved her more but she did love me. You can be sure of it.”

Wes’s eyes darted askance as if he couldn’t stand to look at Cormac when he said such a thing. Cormac opened the driver’s side door, and climbed in next to Isabelle who had the gun more or less trained on Wes. In his general direction seemed to be doing the trick.

He expected to see Tara on the other side but it was Joey who shrugged and pointed to the flat bed where Tara and Clint were sitting close together, glowing and laughing like rowdy teens.

“It’s been a long time since either of them had a day like this,” Joey said, watching them with a rare light in his own eyes. “Clint shifted in a heartbeat. Like a young man.”

Cormac started the engine and started the truck down the tunnel. As the vehicle turned, Isabelle pivoted like a gunner on a tank, not relaxing even as the tail lights were flashing towards the scene of Wes’s last stand. They were heading towards the open of the tunnel when Cormac swore that in his rearview mirror, he saw a shifter leap onto Cormac from behind, sinking his jagged teeth into Wes’s shoulder. The two shots they heard in the tunnel, and all three of them let the sound wash over them without speaking. It could have meant more shifters were dead; it could have meant Wes was nearing his gruesome end. Either way, Cormac decided that it had nothing to do with them anymore.

“I don’t like leavin’ it like this, cuz,” Joey said once the ranch was in sight. “I didn’t say nothing back there because I just wanted it to be done but we should have made it more final, ya know?” He rubbed his hand across his face in a frustrated motion. “We should have at least made sure he was dead.”

“What about that other pack?” Isabelle asked.

“What ‘bout ‘em?” Cormac responded without taking his eyes off the view. It was still early morning, not quite dawn yet well before normal people were rising.

Isabelle made an incredulous noise in the depths of her throat. “You’re not worried they’re going to show up and mess with you some more?”

“They had no hand in that,” Cormac told the both of them since he could feel Joey thinking the same thing. “If it wasn’t for Wes, none of Maxine’s pack would be after me.” He cleared his throat, a lump of tears and memories momentarily choking him. “They hated what happened to her but they knew...they knew I would have done anything to change it.”

What had been a celebratory mood went heavy. The words had dropped out of Cormac’s mouth with a harder thud than he anticipated. It hurt him to say them; from the way Isabelle squirmed and twisted and smelled lightly of animal envy, he was aware that it hurt her too.

They pulled into the driveway of the ranch, and Joey piled out of the cab, cheering along with the others as soon as he set foot on the ground. Cormac was forever in awe of Joey’s ability to run so hot yet fall so easily into the mood around him. As worried as he was, and Cormac was positive that Joey was anxious as Isabelle about this situation, Joey was going to enjoy himself. If everyone else was having a good time, he was going to be having a good time.

Cormac and Isabelle remained inside the cab as the group paraded themselves onto the ranch. Tara called out something about cerveza for everyone; another bottle rocket of cheers sailed up, exploded, and faded in anticipation.

“A bit early for beer, I’d say,” Cormac said, managing to chuckle softly. Isabelle blinked in rapid succession, and didn’t answer. “I guess it’s going to be a different kind of day today. Not much work is gonna get done, huh?”

“I don’t want to be jealous of a dead woman,” Isabelle said. She didn’t seem to hear him. She spoke in hot spurts, aggravated and frustrated at herself. “I don’t want to think about how it would be different if she was alive or who you would go with if that question ever came up. I don’t want to think about it but I can’t stop.”

Cormac took her by the hands, forcing her to turn stiffly towards him. “Isabelle, listen: I don’t have any answers, alright? You’ve got some mighty big questions, hell we all do, but I don’t know anythin’ ‘bout anything.”

Isabelle smiled reluctantly. “Can I quote you on that, sir?”

“Everything I say to you is on the record,” Cormac said, sliding closer to her and tucking his hand under her chin. “But I think some of it’s going to be too dirty to print.”

It felt to Cormac like it had been years since they kissed. Each time they had before then had been frantic or rough or in a moment that neither of them thought should have been happening. This time it felt the way he imagined it felt when people got married: the first kiss of a new start, a new phase. He could smell her body relaxing into his hands while his body was drawn magnetically against her. This wasn’t the time or the place for it but he wanted her so badly, and her hand was resting against the outline of his cock in his jeans.

“What do you think they’d all say if they saw us fucking right now?” Isabelle asked, her tongue flicking against Cormac’s lips.

“As much as I want to, we can’t.”

Isabelle sat back on her haunches, her brow furrowed. “We can meaning that we can’t at all or we just can’t right now because fucking in a truck at seven in the morning while your entire pack watches is inappropriate?”

“A little of both, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

Cormac pulled her back against him. “It’s just that we have to do something first to be mated. Before we get intimate again. Shifters love rituals, and this is an important one.”

“There’s, like, a sex ritual?”

“Yeah, I guess you could put it like that.”

Isabelle looked down at her hand still drumming over the outline of his cock. “Does that extend to all sex or just the traditional kind?”

Cormac smiled in response; Isabelle slid her body long against the bench seat and lowered her mouth to Cormac’s fly. She released his cock from his pants, swallowing it down the second it breathed air. Cormac moaned, lifted his hips, tilted his head back. Her lips formed a perfect circle around his shaft, cleanly slipping up over the tip and before it all disappeared into her mouth again.

“You suck dick like you love it,” Cormac whispered, his heart beating so quickly that he was sure Isabelle could feel the pulse of it in her mouth. “I’ll bet you suck every guy you’ve been with like this.”

Isabelle propped herself upright, looked into his eyes with a puckish smirk on her face. “That’s right,” she said, sinking her teeth playfully into her lips. “Because I do love to do it.”

She went back to work as Cormac snickered to himself. The idea that she might be jealous of Maxine made him laugh. To Cormac, she was a worldly woman who knew a thing or two about getting dirty. He had been with only one other person besides her. She was experienced, savvy, and he couldn’t imagine how she didn’t see the ways that she outpaced him.

“Being with a shifter is intense,” he told her as the climax she was working out of him rose steadily in his stomach. “We don’t fuck nice and easy.”

“That’s fine by me,” Isabelle said in a brief moment that her mouth wasn’t full.

“So you won’t mind me telling you to get back to sucking cock, will you?”

Isabelle smirked again and lowered her open mouth to the head of his erection. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”

A spasm shot through Cormac when she said it. He very nearly came then and there. It took everything he had to wrench himself back from the edge and lift his hips towards Isabelle’s face a few more times.

Isabelle lapped at the tip of Cormac’s cock as he released into the air. His eyes shut tight and he couldn’t see what she was doing but he could feel her enthusiasm, her love and need for his cum. She drank it in, searching inside of it for a power, an epiphany, an answer. He hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed that it was merely him; he hoped she would consider that enough of a reason.