Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) Read online

  Stephanie took the new witches downstairs to the cellar to talk, and Abel decided to avoid them, since Brianna’s presence meant that he didn’t have to be Scott’s errand boy anymore. He was bent on talking with Rylie—whether Seth wanted him to or not.

  He found Rylie with his brother in the orchard. They were sitting on a bench, staring out at the trees, and separated by about six inches of space and radiating awkwardness. Seth looked up when Abel approached. “Hey.”

  “Don’t stop the party on my account,” Abel said, leaning on the nearest tree. “What’s with all the joy and laughter?”

  Neither of them responded. Rylie looked drained and sad, and it put a dent in Abel’s usually impenetrable sense of humor.

  “I’ll let you guys talk,” Seth said, and he went inside.

  “Okay, what’s with that?” Abel asked as soon as he was gone.

  Rylie blew out a sigh. It was cold enough that her breath billowed around her face. “Seth’s trying to talk me into using a bodyguard.”

  He laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. The new pack member has a background in ‘personal security,’ and Seth arranged for him to watch me.” She groaned and covered her eyes with a hand. “I don’t want to be watched. I don’t need to be protected. I am not going to have some scary biker wolf lurking everywhere I go.”

  “I’m scary,” Abel said.

  “Not to me.” Her hand slid off of her face, and she gave him a pathetic smile. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Yeah, you sound glad.”

  “I just found out that I’m going to have twins, my fiancé is trying to attach a biker security detail to me, and Levi is stomping around like he runs the ranch. Should I be in a good mood?”

  “Sure,” Abel said, “because now I’m back.”

  The corner of Rylie’s mouth twitched. “We need a game plan. Pyper and Daven are starting to treat Levi like he’s the Alpha, so he’s getting traction. But he won’t be able to challenge us if you start controlling the pack’s transformation on the moons. Levi can’t do that yet, so no amount of blustering is going to help if you do it first.”

  “I don’t need to know how to change the wolves if I just punch Levi’s face in.”

  “But you’ll also be showing that you can only lead with force. This is a lot better, trust me,” Rylie said. “I can show you how to do it. It’s easy.”

  “For you.”

  “And it will be for you, too.” Her voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “Once you can change yourself at will, I’ll show you how to use it on other wolves. Okay?”

  “You’re awfully bossy for a fragile little flower that needs a bodyguard.”

  “Shut up or I’ll bite you.”

  He grinned. “Any time, Rylie. Any time.”

  NINE

  The Real Alpha

  Weeks passed without Abel and Rylie getting a chance to speak again. Despite Brianna’s help, Scott kept Abel busy running errands, and winter started turning into spring. Moons came and went. March approached. And Rylie kept growing.

  He finally caught her doing dishes one night after dinner. Her stomach was getting in the way, and there was a big wet patch where she had been leaning against the sink.

  “So when are you going to teach me to change?” Abel asked.

  Rylie handed him a wet plate and a dishtowel. “I don’t know. I’m always so tired. Seth and I have been going to bed early every night.”

  “You can stay up just this once,” he said, running the towel over the plate and dropping it on the counter. “Unless a late bedtime is too rough on the Alpha?”

  A small smile touched her lips, but it was interrupted by a yawn. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  It felt like eons until “tomorrow” arrived. It started snowing again, and it looked like a nasty storm was brewing. The air was thick with anticipant silence.

  Abel met Rylie by the pond after dark. She was wearing Bekah’s puffy white jacket and snow boots. He hadn’t bothered putting anything on over his jeans, though. If he was going to be changing into a wolf, then his clothes would only get shredded.

  Suppressing a shiver, he paced along the shore of the pond to keep himself warm.

  “Tell me what to do, sensei,” Abel said.

  Rylie considered him with her hands tucked underneath her arms and her bottom lip worried between her teeth. Her cheeks were pink with cold. She looked like a snow princess. “How does it feel before you change? Is it like the wolf gets big inside of you?”

  “Uh…sometimes?”

  “Do you get antsy and feverish?”

  “No,” Abel said.

  Rylie twisted her lips in thought. He found himself staring at her lips and thinking of kissing her again. She smelled amazing, even wearing another girl’s clothing, and it was hard to be alone with her.

  “Doesn’t it ever feel like you’re on the brink of losing control?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said, voice low and gravelly.

  She must have known that he wasn’t talking about the wolf. Her cheeks reddened further. “I can change on command because it always feels like I’m about to shift,” Rylie said, talking a little too fast. “It takes a lot of self-control for me to stay human, sometimes, so when I want to change, all I have to do is…let go. Maybe we just need something to pull your wolf out.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged. The snowflakes were catching in her hair, and one was stuck to her eyelashes. “It happens to me when I get angry or scared, or when I see a prey animal, like rabbits and deer. Do you get all excited about deer?”

  “I only get excited about the two-legged does,” he said with a grin. He loved seeing how pink her cheeks could get.

  “We have to focus, Abel.”

  “I’m focused all right,” he said, reaching out to touch a snowflake over her ear. It melted at his fingertips. She gazed up at him with equal parts embarrassment and amusement, and it was amazing to him that she could meet his eyes without flinching. She was one of the only people who never seemed bothered by his scars. “I’ve never been more focused.”

  “Focused on changing?” She gently pushed his hand away. “Please.”

  “All right, all right.” Abel faced out into the snowy night, shut his eyes, and tried to relax.

  But he didn’t know what he should “let go” of, exactly. He didn’t feel like he was hanging onto anything. Definitely not his human shape. Whatever problem Rylie had with her animal side, he didn’t share it.

  After standing around with his eyes closed for a full minute, he just felt kind of stupid.

  “Nothing?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay. Then try imagining yourself changing. Think about having paws and a tail.”

  Abel tried not to laugh. Instead, he closed his eyes again and imagined being a wolf. But he couldn’t really remember ever being an animal. Whenever he woke up on the mornings after his transformation, it was as though he had just suffered through a long, restless sleep, filled with violent dreams he couldn’t recall.

  He flexed his hands and tried to imagine the way the bones would snap as they shrunk into paws. He twisted his head on his shoulders and thought about the extension of his spine into a tail. But even all of that was hard to remember. Abel knew the transformations hurt, yet by the time the next day rolled around, it was all just a foggy, unpleasant memory.

  “It’s not happening,” he said, facing her again. Her obvious disappointment chipped away at his confidence.

  “There must be a way to reach your wolf without my help. That’s just what Alphas do. I can’t believe nothing gets your wolf excited.”

  “Well, there is one thing,” Abel said. “My wolf obviously finds your wolf awfully exciting.”

  She lowered herself onto one of the rocks by the pond. “There’s nothing exciting about me now,” she grumbled, rubbing circles on her belly. “And my wolf is out of the question.”

  He sat beside her. “
Then I just can’t do it. Also, it’s cold as balls out here. We’re doing this at a sunny beach next time.” Although there was no way a sunny beach could be quite as comfortable on sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Rylie. She was glowing in the dim light of evening, and he thought he had never seen her looking so beautiful.

  Before he could think better of it, Abel reached out to touch her stomach. His hand covered hers.

  “Do you feel them move yet?” he asked.

  She bit her bottom lip, and the motion drew his gaze to her mouth. “That’s not why we’re out here, Abel.”

  “But Seth gets to be there for the appointments. I don’t even get to touch you? These are my babies, Rylie. I know it.”

  Rylie ducked her head. She hadn’t moved her hand from underneath his.

  “They move a lot at night,” she said softly.

  He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. Her face was so close to his, just inches away. Abel couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the pink curve of her lips. All he had to do was lean forward a little bit—

  Something cracked, echoing through the night.

  Rylie’s head whipped around so that she could stare at the silhouetted cluster of trees. It sounded like someone had stepped on a fallen branch. “What was that?” she whispered.

  He stood, putting himself between her and the trees.

  “I don’t know,” he said, scanning the horizon.

  Between the new werewolf and the two witches, there were a lot of unfamiliar smells around the ranch these days. But the smell he was getting off the wind wasn’t a smell of wolves or witches.

  It was the smell of oil and gunpowder.

  There was suddenly nothing Abel wanted more than to hide Rylie away, somewhere that nobody could find her. “We need to get inside,” he said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked in a growling undertone. Her eyes were filled with gold fire, and her fingers dug into his bicep. There was blood spotting the edge of her first fingernail.

  “Don’t change,” he said, steering her away from the pond without dropping his eyes from the trees. “You have to stay human.”

  Her voice deepened further. “But there’s danger.”

  Abel spun her around and seized her chin so that she had to focus on him. “You will not change, Rylie. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Hear me?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded.

  He marched her toward the house with his heart thudding. The wind picked up and blew more smells toward him. Abel pulled Rylie against his chest and muttered nonsense to her in a soothing tone, trying to remind her not to change, even as he sped his pace. Her Alpha energies swept over him, surging and receding like the tide was shaped by the moon.

  A shadow stirred in the trees—a shadow shaped like a man.

  Abel shoved her behind him just as the gun fired.

  He wasn’t sure if he imagined the bullet whizzing over his head, or if he really felt the burn of silver passing him at impossible speeds. It struck the side of the house, and wood cracked.

  The screen door whined open. Gwyn jogged outside holding her shotgun. The wind blew her hat off, dangling over her back by a string.

  “Get down!” she shouted.

  Abel shoved Rylie to the ground. A shotgun blast split the air.

  Their attacker was too far away for spraying pellets to be effective, but Abel heard a distant, satisfying cry of shock.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking at Rylie underneath him. Her blond hair fanned over the ground. Her lips were pale, her eyes were wide, and her irises blazed with the light of the moon.

  He almost missed the stain of red on the snow.

  “He hit me,” she whispered, lifting her arm. There was a hole in the sleeve where the bullet had grazed her. The burning red stripe wasn’t healing as fast as it should have.

  Their attacker was using silver. He was trying to kill Abel’s mate.

  A surge of wolfish fury filled him. For an instant, Abel felt like he might shatter, as though his bones and muscles had become too big to be contained within his body. Skin ached, forehead throbbed, teeth loosened, fingernails itched. The heat was too much, even among the snow and cold air.

  The wolf seized him, driving away his human mind.

  Someone is hunting my mate.

  Rylie lay beneath him, flattened to the snow, as he changed. She gazed at him with an expression that made no sense to the mind of the wolf. It had no interest in human thoughts or human feelings. All that it cared was that Rylie was his to protect, love, and care for—her and their unborn children.

  He was furred and fanged within moments. He swung around to face the shooter and roared.

  Abel bounded toward the trees, swifter than the wind, more powerful than a cascading waterfall, and he reached the trees in three long leaps. The shooter darted around a tree and fired blindly over his shoulder. Every single shot missed. Bullets sent bark exploding through the air, and the stinging smell of silver only fed the wolf’s fury.

  His prey ran across the hill, pumping his arms and legs, but he tripped on a jutting rock. The man landed on his side, rolled, and came up with a gun in both hands. He fired off two shots. The first one buzzed over Abel’s shoulder. The second hit the snow by his rear paw.

  He didn’t get a chance to fire again.

  Abel plowed into him, and there was no time for him to consider that they might want to keep the man alive. He clamped his jaws on the throat of his prey and jerked back. The taste of blood filled his mouth.

  He bit again as the man’s gurgling screams reached a pitch.

  Then the screaming stopped entirely.

  But the night wasn’t silent after he died—someone was crying.

  Abel whirled, facing the house again. Rylie was crouched over someone. Her aunt?

  Abandoning the body, he rushed back to her side. Gwyneth was on her knees, the shotgun forgotten, and her hands were clamped over her gut.

  “Let me see,” Rylie begged. “Just let me look.”

  “Babe, I don’t know if you should—”

  “Please!”

  Reluctantly, Gwyn opened her hands. One of the bullets that had missed Abel had drilled straight into her chest. The front didn’t look too bad; it was just a hole the size of a dime over her heart. But when Abel glimpsed the damage at the back, he lost control of his wolf.

  Abel shifted back. He was human again in seconds, naked and steaming and silent with shock.

  The hole in Gwyn’s back was the size of a dinner plate, and it bared her ribs and spine and everything underneath. It didn’t glisten or bleed. She had been dead too long for that. But her heart was pulverized, and her lungs…dear Lord, Abel could see her lungs, and they were shredded.

  “I’m okay,” she said, taking Rylie’s hand. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  Tears cascaded over Rylie’s cheeks. “But Scott can’t fix you now.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Gwyn repeated, softer than before.

  Seth emerged from the house, looking groggy and confused. “What’s going on out here?” His eyes swept over the shotgun, to Abel seated beside Rylie. Gwyn turned enough to expose her back to Seth.

  He couldn’t seem to respond once he saw that.

  They took Gwyn to sit inside the house, then Abel, Rylie, and Seth all went to the hill to examine the shooter’s body. The snow around him was the color of hard candy, slick and red, and his skin was beginning to turn blue. Everything from chin to chest was a mess of ripped flesh.

  Seth kneeled to pick up the gun, scanning the footprints and trees.

  “I think he was watching us,” Abel said. “He wasn’t ready for a fight.”

  “Union?” Seth asked.

  “Everything he’s wearing is black. I’d definitely say so.”

  “Look at this,” Rylie said, scooping a Bluetooth headset out of the snow. The light on the side was blinking blue.

  Abel took it from her and placed the speaker against h
is ear. Voices chattered on the other side. “This is control. Come in, John. Report.” He dropped the headset on a nearby boulder, picked up a rock, and smashed it into pieces.

  “How much do you think he told them?” Rylie asked, voice trembling. Abel couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or fear.

  “No way to tell. We have to clean this up before someone comes looking for him. With everything the OPA has been doing…” Seth shook his head. “I’ll grab shovels.”

  “I’ll put on pants and meet you back here in five,” Abel said.

  He dressed and went back to the kitchen. Aunt Gwyneth was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a hole in her back. He had never seen her smoke before.

  At his look, she said, “I quit fifteen years ago. Doesn’t taste as good as it used to.”

  “Does it really not hurt?” he asked, zipping up his jeans.

  Gwyn took a drag on the cigarette and blew it out. “It hurts like hell.”

  TEN

  Recruitment

  Seth and Abel dug the Union hunter’s grave together, and they mostly worked in silence. It was hard to penetrate the icy ground, even for a werewolf; by the time they stood in a hole that was six feet deep, Abel was covered in sweat and had stripped down to nothing but his jeans.

  “What were you doing outside with Rylie last night?” Seth asked.

  They hadn’t spoken for so long that the sound of his brother’s voice surprised him. It took a second to think of a properly annoying response. “We were making hot, passionate love in the moonlight,” Abel said. Seth actually lifted his shovel a few inches, like he was going to attack. “You wanted me to come back so I could be Alpha. Rylie’s helping me figure it out.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Aside from the hot sex,” Abel said. Every muscle in Seth’s body tensed, but Abel ignored him to plant his shovel in the ground. “Think this is good?”

  “It’s probably deep enough that a playful werewolf shouldn’t dig up any bones.”

  Abel climbed out first using the strength of his arms alone. Once he was on top of the hill again, Seth held up a hand for help, and Abel briefly considered burying his brother with the body, too. It would have solved a lot of problems. Rylie didn’t have to know where Seth had gone, after all.