Like the whole building was in disguise or something.
Oh, hell, no. Do not let yourself think that way, Sienna.
If I started thinking like that, before you knew it, I’d be talking about my ancestors, the frickin’ werewolves.
Nope. Just keep moving forward. Sell the bar, make a mint, buy a house.
Speaking of bears, the large man standing in the threshold was hairy enough to be one. He was dressed in leather shorts and a mesh shirt with leather straps. As I reached out my hand to pull the door handle, he tilted his head to look at me with narrowed eyes and shifted his weight just enough to keep me from opening the door.
“Can I help you?” he rumbled.
“Yes. I’m supposed to be taking a look around today?” I hated that the upward lilt in my voice turned it into a question. If I was going to sell this place, I needed to be self-assured enough to actually be the owner.
The Bear-Man stared at me hard for another second.
“I’m Sienna Luna,” I said as if that would clear it all up.
Bear-Man gave me a one-shoulder shrug. “We’re not open yet.”
I finally let my voice show some of the irritation I was beginning to feel. “I know you’re not open. I am the new owner. I’m here to inspect the property. Move out of my way and let me in. Now.”
Being direct with a Bear-Man. Smart.
By the end of my mini-tirade, Bear-Man’s eyes had grown wide. When he responded, he sounded almost terrified. “You’re the new alpha?”
I rolled my eyes. “Apparently so.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, his rumbling falling to the wayside in his haste to make it up to me. “I didn’t realize you were coming today, and you don’t smell like an alpha. I mean—” He stumbled over his words.
I didn’t smell like an alpha. Great.
Apparently, he was as deluded as my parents.
“Don’t worry about it.” I waved my hand in front of my face and spoke as airily as I could possibly manage, trying not to roll my eyes.
Bear-Man didn’t even manage to introduce himself, he was so flustered. He did, however, open the door for me and usher me into the dim, cool interior.
I blinked several times to let my eyes adjust. Even for a bar, it was dark. Black shadows gathered in the corners and even after my eyes adjusted, I couldn’t really tell what might be going on back there.
“Let me show you to the alpha’s table,” Bear-Man said.
Of course, my uncle had an alpha table.
“The manager was supposed to meet me to show me around? Please tell me he’s not late. I hate tardiness.”
“He’s somewhere close by.” Bear-Man nodded. “I’ll give him a call and make sure he knows you’re here. He’s usually here by now, but he’s not a born wolf, you know.”
Not a born wolf. That was something my parents had said, too. I wasn’t entirely certain what they meant, so I simply nodded.
“Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” he asked.
“Just a Coke, please.”
Bear-Man hustled away and brought one back quickly, then moved off, whispering urgently into his phone.
I sipped my drink and looked around my new acquisition.
I had half expected it to be filthy when I came in, but it had been scrubbed down, as far as I could tell in the semi-darkness. I tapped my blood-red fingernail against the table of the round booth where Bear-Man had seated me.
The wood looked rough—carvings of initials, curse words, and odd stick figures stood out—but it had been varnished over, so the carvings weren’t new. Just preserved.
The whole place seemed designed to look less appealing than it could be—to look as if it were falling apart when in truth, the closer I looked, the better shape everything seemed to be.
“Seth says he’ll be here in a minute.”
“Why don’t you grab a drink, too, and sit down with me.” My suggestion seemed to carry the weight of a command. Bear-Man hunched his shoulders up around his ears, as if anxious to be following my rules, but he slipped behind the bar long enough to get a drink and moved around to sit across from me, albeit as far away from me as he could get in the circular booth.
His bulk made it difficult for him to sit in such a confined space, I realized. I almost suggested moving to a table, but finally decided it would be better to keep him off-balance. He might let his guard down that way and tell me more than he might otherwise.
“Tell me a little about yourself,” I said. “How long have you worked here? How well did you know my great-uncle?”
“Well, I’ve known Desmond since I was just a pup. I mean, he’s the alpha. Was the alpha.” He ran a hand across his forehead, and I realized he was sweating. Poor guy was legitimately worried about talking to me. I felt the sudden urge to put him at ease.
“You’re not in any trouble, you know.” I tried to reassure him, but something about my statement bothered him so much it caused his eyes to roll back in his head, showing the whites at the bottom under the brown irises.
This was weird as hell.
“How long have you been working here?”
“Since I was nineteen,” he said, with the air of someone facing an interrogation that might end in torture.
“How many other employees are there?”
He frowned. “Well, everyone works shifts sometimes. We all know we need to be ready, just in case.”
Okay. Everyone was the starting place, I guessed. “How many others are there?”
“Only the adults work here, course. It wouldn’t be right to have the pups doing anything with humans—not the born ones, anyway.” His voice turned earnest. “They don’t have the natural social skills for it.”
“Or the approval of the alcohol control board licensing, I suspect.” I spoke dryly, with a half-smile, but Bear-Man—who, I realized, still had not actually told me his name—didn’t seem amused in the least.
“There are a hundred and forty-two in the pack, all told.”
Wait.
What?
I repeated the number to him. “Are you sure?”
“Of course, only about half of them are active—a lot of them moved off to other places, sometimes to join other packs, but mostly they stay affiliated with the SoMa pack—Desmond was one of the few Alphas who actually allowed that. It’s why your parents didn’t ever have to check in.”
One hundred and forty-two. There are that many people who share this weird-ass wolf delusion?
I realized that we hadn’t said the word. Might as well go ahead and try it on for size. “There are that many people in the werewolf pack of which I am now the alpha?”
Bear-Man nodded. “Yes, ma’am. One hundred forty-two. That’s how many.”
I was still staring at Bear-Man when an odd scratching came at the back door. Bear-Man stood up and moved to open it as if there were nothing unusual about it.
When he opened the door that let out into the alley, an enormous animal trotted in as if it owned the place.
I blinked against the darkness, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t seeing what I beheld. But even the darkness couldn’t disguise this.
At first, I thought it was a giant dog.
No, that cannot be a dog.
I would have thought it was a giant dog, except for the fact that I had just been discussing werewolves with Bear-Man.
My first thought, out of any I could have had, was, “Werewolf!”
That thought faded to a kind of gibbering inside my mind when the wolf in front of me stopped, stood up on its hind legs with its front paws in the air, and with the strangest sound of cracking bones and ripping skin, flowed upwards, growing taller, until it became a man.
Three
A naked man.
A tall, muscular, gorgeous naked man.
As I stared with my mouth hanging open, he gave me a little nod of greeting, and nonchalantly strolled behind the bar, where he pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt with
the bar’s logo. I snapped my teeth together as I closed my mouth.
The Moon Moon. I still can’t believe the bar is named after a joke.
I also couldn’t believe my mind was wandering in that direction—I must have been in shock after having watched the man in front of me shift from wolf to human.
I was no genius, but I’d passed high school biology with a solid B minus. Whatever had just happened in front of me was not possible.
Not possible. Not on this planet.
He came out from behind the bar as if everything were perfectly normal and stuck his hand out to shake mine as he introduced himself. “Owen Blakesley.”
“Sienna Luna,” I said weakly, reaching out to take his hand.
If I’d had any sense, I would’ve been terrified. But instead, an odd thrill ran through me when he took my hand. And yet I managed to play it cool, using my other hand to indicate his clothing. “No leather for you?”
He didn’t smile, but the corners of his eyes crinkled up in the beginning of a grin. “Not really my style.”
He glanced at Bear-Man. “Thanks, Jamie. I’ll take it from here.”
I would have never guessed that Jamie was Bear-Man’s name. I would’ve bet on something much less civilized.
Jamie nodded and made his way back to the door while Owen sat in his vacated seat at the booth. He leaned forward on his elbows, his gaze serious. “How much do you know about this fairy situation?”
My mind scrambled off in another odd direction. A werewolf walks into a leather bar on Folsom and asks about fairies…
Another bad joke.
Right?
Despite my attempts to remain expressionless, Owen must have seen something in my face that gave me away.
Or maybe he smelled it.
How did werewolves get information, anyway?
“Ah, shit. No one briefed you on the fairies?” He ran his fingers through his hair, inhaled deeply, and dropped his hands back to the table. “Okay. I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning.”
Oh, dude. You have no idea.
I didn’t say that out loud, though.
“No. No one has briefed me on anything.” Something in my tone must’ve given me away because Owen flashed a surprised glance at me.
“It might be better if you told me what you do know,” he suggested.
“I know that my uncle Desmond died and, in his will, he made me the owner of this bar—” I circled my finger around over my head to indicate the building we were in, “—and he named me alpha of a werewolf pack.” To my credit, I managed not to laugh or shake my head or break down crying when I said the words “werewolf pack.”
Still, Owen narrowed his eyes calculatingly. “How old were you when you first shifted?” he asked.
I chewed on my bottom lip for a second, then decided he would find out eventually one way or another, so I might as well tell him. “I have never shifted. Until last week, I did not know that my parents were part of a werewolf pack. Until five minutes ago, I didn’t believe it when they told me they were genetic werewolves.”
Owen’s face grew paler and paler the longer I talked. By the time I finished speaking, both his palms were flat on the table, fingers spread wide, arms fully extended and straightened out as he pushed back, clearly as stunned by my revelations as I had been by his.
“You’re not a born wolf?”
“If that’s what I think it is—a wolf who can shift from birth without being bitten? Is that right?” I continued at his tense, white-faced nod. “Nope. I’m not a born wolf.”
“And you’ve never been bitten?” his voice went hoarse.
I shook my head slowly. “No.”
When Owen pushed himself to his feet, the table creaked in protest. I got the feeling it was much sturdier than it looked—Owen was putting a lot of pressure on it.
Werewolf strength.
The thought kind of worried me.
He disappeared into the back of the restaurant through a swinging door, then reappeared seconds later. “I need to call the comitatus.”
“The what?”
“Comitatus.” He spelled the word out for me. “Sort of the werewolf version of a war council. It’s a really old word—” He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. Basically, there are three of us right now who are—were—your uncle’s betas. Seconds-in-command.”
“You’re talking about it like it’s an army.”
Owen ran one hand through his hair again. “It might come to that if we’re not careful.” With that cryptic statement, he ducked behind the bar to grab a cell phone. Probably they kept one back there for wolves who shifted in the middle of the bar.
They kept clothes on hand for the same reason, apparently.
Because in The Moon Moon, wolves turn into sexy naked men.
I shoved the thought away. Focusing on the gorgeous human version of Owen was a bad idea.
I wasn’t trying to listen, but I caught a few words in the series of phone calls Owen made. Phrases like, “I think we’re fucked, man,” and “she doesn’t know anything,” along with “never shifted” and “not born, not bitten.”
A part of me was glad to know that the werewolves were every bit as unhappy with my uncle Desmond’s decision to put me in charge as I was.
At least I wasn’t alone in that.
“What can you tell me while we’re waiting for them to get here?” I asked as Owen disconnected from the last call and made his way back to stand by my table.
“I’m starving,” he announced. “Come back to the kitchen while I make some burgers, and I’ll do what I can get you up to speed.” The headshake he gave as he led me to the back, however, suggested he didn’t think I would really be getting up to speed anytime soon.
Unlike the rest of the bar, the kitchen was up-to-date and gleaming. I glanced around and made my way over to the stainless-steel counter. I pulled myself up onto it, crossing my legs so that my feet dangled several inches above the floor.
Owen’s trip back here moments before had apparently been to turn on the grill and fryer. Now he pulled out all the ingredients for cheeseburgers and tossed a couple of patties onto the grill. Then he reconsidered and pulled out six more. I can only assume they were for the other wolves who were on their way.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “I was worried when Desmond chose a woman as his successor, especially one who hadn’t participated much in pack life.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, but I clenched my teeth and held my tongue. I could let him know what I thought of his casual misogyny later. And I would.
“But that’s nothing compared to choosing a genetic werewolf who has never shifted.” He shook his head in amazement.
“Is it better or worse that I didn’t believe in werewolves until I saw you shift today?”
Owen groaned. “Whatever you do, please do not tell Dean that part of the story.”
“I assume Dean is one of the guys you just called?”
“Yeah. He’s part of the comitatus.” He dropped a basket of fries into the heated grease.
“And who is the other guy? He said there were three, right?”
“Liam.”
“You don’t think it will be helpful for them to be aware of just how little I know?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” His rising anxiety thrummed through his words. This line of conversation was making Owen more and more uncomfortable.
“Okay. We can get me caught up on werewolf etiquette and history later. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with the fairy you mentioned earlier?”
Inhaling deeply, Owen nodded. “Okay. The problem is the king of the Winter Court.”
“Are all the courts named after seasons?” I asked. My mind flashed back to a fairy tale book I’d had as a kid. I’d loved the illustrations of the seasons, with winter dressed as a bearded man in a light blue cloak, blowing the winter wind from the top corner of the page into the center where huddled children walked in the snow. “Li
ke in books?”
“Yeah. But the other three are involved in some kind of treaty that got set up by a local hunter.”
“I need a background note—what’s a hunter?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. Hunters are people who track down rogue supernaturals—those of us who get too carried away killing humans or are bringing the supernatural out into the open too much.” He dropped a basket of fries into the hot grease.
“Wouldn’t that be helpful, though? Not killing, I mean, but getting human help? If you have a problem with the Winter fairy-king, wouldn’t it be nice to hand it over to the police?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized how illogical my logical response sounded. What can I say? I’ve been a law-abiding human for a long time.
Owen huffed a laugh. “Maybe, but I think the consensus is that the potential for humans panicking is much more dangerous than any benefit we would get from them knowing about us.”
I nodded thoughtfully as I took in all the information. “Okay. There’s a hunter who has the other courts in hand.”
“Right. Rumor has it that’s kind of literal—I’ve heard that she’s taken the three other courts’ princes into her bed.”
I raised my eyebrows.
Three fairy princes in her bed? Interesting.
“Why can’t we ask this hunter—” I waved my hand as if asking him for a new word.
“Cassidy Irons,” he supplied.
“Why can’t we ask this hunter, Cassidy Irons, to help us with the Winter Court? Maybe ask if she’ll, I don’t know, take that prince, too?”
“The prince of the Winter Court isn’t particularly interested in a human hunter, apparently.”
“So much for that plan,” I muttered. “Okay, then, what’s our problem with the king?”
Owen plated the burgers and fries and handed me two. “Let’s go wait for the guys.”
Just as we placed the four plates on the table, each with two burgers, plus a heaping pile of fries, the back door opened, and two more unbelievably gorgeous men strolled in.
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