Free Jacks, Marcy - Eli's Reluctant Mate [DeWitt's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) by Marcy Jacks Page B

the only remotely safe place he could return to was that tiny little one-bedroom cabin that had been offered to him. He locked the doors and prepared to wait out a long night of making sure that no one busted inside to exact any revenge for a crime his brother had supposedly committed.
    He and Dean had never been close enough for Chris to think it

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    was worth putting up with all of this shit.

    66                            Marcy Jacks

    Chapter Eight
    For the second time in his life, Eli was jerked awake by the horrible sensation of melty ice splashing down on his head.
    He came up in a rush, still partly asleep and thinking that he’d fallen into the Arctic Ocean and was drowning or something.
    The sight of James’s enraged face made him wish that that had been the reality he was waking up to.
    James pointed his finger into Eli’s face. “You swore to me.”
    The light coming in through the window pierced his eyelids and went straight through his skull, giving him the worst sort of pulsing headache.
    He’d finally managed to pass out on the  couch, but only after depleting the last of his stock of booze. He pulled the thin sheet he’d been using over his head with a groan, but that barely did anything to shut out the painful light.
    James wasn’t having any of that, and he snatched the sheet out  of  Eli’s grasp and threw it away. “I’m speaking to you. What do you have to say for yourself?”
    Eli kept his eyes shut, holding his hands over the lids to keep all that awful fucking sunlight away from him. “That you told me you would banish me if I went down to the bars, not if I drank from what I
    still have here.”
    Another set of soft footprints came into the room, followed by heavier ones. “They all look empty. That should be the last of what he was hiding.”
    “I didn’t find anything either.”
    Old Maggie. The pack’s wise woman. Eli still had enough sense

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    in him to be ashamed of her having to see him like he was. As for  Andrew, well, he didn’t much care.
    Eli sat up, and he managed to do it well enough on his own. Most  of the alcohol must have gone through his liver already. He needed to  take a piss something awful though.
    “Ma’am,” he said.
    She pointed a wrinkled finger at him. “You do not speak to me in that condition,” she said, her aged face looking almost as mean as  James’s.
    Then she pointed to the bathroom.  “Go wash yourself. How do you expect to make a good impression on a human mate if you look like filth?”
    He needed a shower. He definitely agreed with her there. He
    nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
    She made a hmph sound and walked away, wrinkling her nose at every single dirty dish that he had laying around. Old pizza boxes on the floor from back when he was still trusted enough to go into town to order food. Ants and small vermin scattered as she kicked the
    box―Andrew jumped when a mouse scurried beneath his feet―and  then she turned to glare one more time at Eli.
    His face heated, and he had to look away. He turned to James real  quick. “Am I banished?”
    James looked like he was struggling for patience. Or that maybe  he was struggling to not just throw Eli’s ass out. This was the first  time James had seen the inside of Eli’s cottage, and now the other  man had a good idea of why none of the omegas wanted to be his
    roommate.
    “I did give you a pretty wide loophole, so no. But I want you  sober. If you need an escape or need to forget about the shit that’s  bothering you lately, either take up a book or go running, find a  hobby, anything. You are not getting drunk anymore while I’m in  command, period, and you’re never having anything with even the  least bit of alcohol in it for a year. Got it?”

    68