Kissed By Moonlight

by Adrianne Brooks

“This is dumb.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “My life never used to be this hard before I met you.”

  “Says the domestic terrorist.”

  “Even that was partially your fault,” I pointed out, but not like I was angry about it or anything. He conceded the point with a stiff nod of his head. “But before all of this, before Hell Hounds, and werewolves, and werewolf hunters, my life was pretty simple. It was pretty bitchin’ actually.”

  Confused, he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Bitchin’?”

  “Yeah. You know. Bitchin’. Good. Awesome. Rad. Cool. Can be used as an adjective or noun. Bitchin’.”

  “Oh.” A beat of silence. “It’s a strange phrase.”

  “I like it. It gets the point across. Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I never wanted any of this. I never wanted to participate in a death match—”

  “It’s not a death match. Officially anyway.”

  “—with a werewolf who wants to get in your pants,” I continued, ignoring him.

  “Yvette doesn’t want to get into my pants.”

  “Yvette wants in your pants so bad the seams of your jeans are melting. If glances were touches, she’d be pregnant with your puppies by now.”

  He burst out laughing, but I was too busy sulking to enjoy it.

  “Will you promise me something?” I asked finally.

  “Anything,” he said, and he sounded more serious than I’d expected.

  “On my tombstone, make sure my epitaph reads ‘Here lies Phaedra Conners. She didn’t choose the Thug Life. The Thug Life chose her.’”

  He mulled over this for a full minute before asking quietly, “The Thug Life. Is that like ‘bitchin’?”

  My lips tightened. I felt very gangsta in this moment. Not sure why, since I was pretty sure I was about to get my ass handed to me. Literally and figuratively.

  “The bitchinnest,” I answered and he nodded, albeit doubtfully.

  “As long as it fits, it goes on there,” he assured me. “And even if it won’t, we’ll circle the rest around the sides and back or something.”

  “Or buy a bigger headstone. I don’t want a ghetto headstone.”

  He didn’t argue about being the one delegated to handle my funeral arrangements. He simply grunted an agreement.

  “No ghetto. It’ll be made of marble. Or maybe quartz.”

  All I could do was look at him and blink.

  Then, shaking my head, I turned away.

  White people.

  Excluding myself of course. I was a pretty awesome white person if I did say so myself.

  Belatedly, I realized that it was probably this kind of behavior and thinking that kept me from having friends. That and my overpowering need to antagonize old Asian women. I was trying to decide whether or not I was a closet racist when Yvette Reed finally walked into the center of the clearing.

  Short notice had naturally dictated that we hold the trial in the same place they’d held the meeting. I suppose it made sense. At least they wouldn’t have to travel far before burying my body in some remote location.

  We were surrounded by remote locations.

  In all honesty, they’d tried to be as fair as possible. Yvette, the woman I was supposed to fight, was the only member of the pack who was both my height and weight. Gabriel had taken things a step further and forbidden Yvette from shifting into her wolf form, so when I looked over at my opponent it was to see a blonde-haired woman of medium build with pretty blue-gray eyes. The eyes and the sassy bobbed haircut were the only soft things about Yvette, however.

  Whereas I’d dedicated a fair portion of my 150 pounds to body fat, she’d obviously decided to turn hers into human-shredding muscle. She looked like she could crack me over her knee if I got too close, and mentally I counted all the stories I’d ever read in which a werewolf still possessed super-human strength even while in human form.

  The final count was all of them, in case anyone was wondering.

  Not for the first, or last, time I glared daggers in Gabriel’s direction. I was feeling a lot more inclined to tell him about Marcus at this point, but knew it wouldn’t change anything if I tried to point fingers now. Why was telling the truth always so hard?

  The only thing that made me feel better about this was that Gabriel was the one standing beside me. The rest of the pack had grumbled angrily at this show of obvious support, but had grown silent with a well placed glance from their Alpha. He was so sexy when he went all head werewolf.

  Anyway, here were the rules of my “unofficial” death match.

  Death Match Rules (Amended for Humans)

  1.Stepping out of the “ring” (circle of spectators) was a foul, and the offender would be forced to continue the fight while suffering a penalty of some kind.

  2.The fight cannot be stopped by an outside party.

  3.An outside party cannot assist the fighters in any way.

  4.The winner, if a Were, was allowed to eat the loser.

  5.The winner, if a human, was allowed to leave with his/her life.

  6.If it came to choosing whether one of the fighters lived or died, the Pack would decide their fate. (Sort of like how the Gladiators used to do it.)

  7.Otherwise, the winner is determined by whoever was left alive by the end of the fight.

  Brutally simple. I liked how they didn’t give me the option of eating Yvette if I won. I thought that sort of thinking was a little narrow-minded, but I hadn’t made the rules. I also noticed that they didn’t give the female Were a handicap in light of my bad arm. It wasn’t as if I could have won the fight with two working arms, but still.

  Now that Yvette had come forward, I suppose that was my cue to step out as well. Nervous, I looked over at Gabriel. Hands at the small of his back, he didn’t look back at me, but instead seemed to sense my attention on him.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, as confident and self-assured as always.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel it. The Hound in me tells me so. No details. Just that you’ll be all right.”

  It was odd, but this actually calmed me. I suppose when you saw a man rip apart a spirit from the underworld for you, then you pretty much trusted his word when it came to this sort of thing.

  Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and walked forward to meet a leering Yvette. As soon as the rest of the Pack had finished surrounding us, silently marking out the perimeters of the arena, Gabriel nodded his head at the two of us.

  I think that meant “start.”

  I looked over just in time to see Yvette come for me. Body laid low to the ground, she moved with a lithe grace and animal-like intensity. She hit me hard and low, and I came off my feet with her arms wrapped around my knees. She lifted me up and I waited for her to slam me back on the ground, but she never finished the move. In fact, she let me down and set me gently on my feet. Then she stepped away, hands in the air. I blinked, stunned at this sudden turn of events. Then I followed her gaze and saw that she was staring at her Alpha.

  His eyes had bled over with Amber fire and he was letting loose a low, continuous growl. When he realized everyone was looking at him, he glanced around, obviously confused by the sudden silence.

  “What?” He looked at Yvette and frowned. “Why’d you stop fighting?”

  Yvette cleared her throat, shifted her feet, and sent me a quick glance from beneath her lashes.

  “Well?” Gabriel asked, impatient with the delay.

  After a brief hesitation, she nodded and came for me again. I stood in place, knowing I couldn’t get out of the way in time, and tensing as I watched her arm come back, claws sprouting from human fingers like blades.

  Her claws were an inch from my face when the growling started up again. She pulled back instantly, her momentum driving her past me in a swirl of blonde hair. Together, we all turned to look over at Gabriel. He was glancing around, looking at the sky, the trees, his own feet. Anywhere but at us. Even if it had been bel
ievable, the fact that his eyes were still fully amber would have given him away.

  Considering, I looked between him and Yvette, and a grin spread across my face. Suspicious, the other woman scowled at me as if she already knew what I planned. Walking up to her, I grabbed her by the chin, turned her face first this way and then that, and then slapped her across the face. Her head whipped to one side and her lip split. Eyes blazing, she turned back on me in a flash, canines growing in her human mouth and a snarl rippling through her body like tremor.

  She barely got within an inch of me this time before Gabriel barked a vicious warning.

  Screaming in frustration she turned away, hands fisted in her hair and rage making her body shake. The pack, meanwhile, was having a heyday, making their own displeasure obvious. I saw Marcus walk over to Gabriel and whisper something in his ear.

  A moment later Gabriel’s face morphed into a picture of outrage and his voice rose in disbelief.

  “Impartial? I am impartial.” Marcus leaned in, whispered something else, and Gabriel crouched where he stood and sulked. “Fine.” Waving his brother away, he spoke without looking at any of us. “Yvette you’re allowed to lay hands on the human.”

  Taking a deep breath, Yvette smiled, inclining her head in thanks to her Alpha. I was probably the only other one besides Yvette that saw Gabriel look at her and very slowly, very deliberately, bare his teeth in warning.

  Clearly flustered, Yvette faced me once again, hands loose and ready at her sides. I met her eyes, and for the life of me, I couldn’t help but laugh. I tried, but I couldn’t stop the laughter. It took me over, filled my chest, and made my stomach ache with the force of it.

  The laughter surprised her at first, and I could see her face work as she tried to stay angry and willing to fight, then she snorted. The snort became a chuckle, and then she was bent over and cackling there beside me.

  Our mirth was contagious, and soon more and more of the Pack were lost in amusement. Marcus looked at all of them, and his mouth tightened in anger. He pushed through the men and women that stood around him, coming towards the two of us as if he were more than willing to do Yvette’s job for her.

  I straightened, body going rigid. Before he could reach me, a shot rang out and the dirt around us exploded in a shower of grass and rocks. Another shot split the air, and I looked up in time to see one of the Weres collapse, the bullet ripping through one side of his head to come out the other. Some of the pack were already taking off, the others morphing from their human forms to move more easily through the woods.

  I was still stunned by what had happened when Gabriel came up from behind me, grabbed my arm, and jerked me into a run all without breaking stride. I heard engines rev and more gunfire as we both darted through the stand of trees. Around us, wolves were escaping in leaps and bounds, their bodies nothing but streaks of color through the foliage, their steps silent but for the occasional rustle of leaves on the forest floor. The trunks of the trees around us exploded with gunfire, the bark ricocheting through the air.

  My breath came hard and fast and my chest ached. It was obvious that I was slowing Gabriel down. The rest of the pack was barely visible through the trees ahead now. I could hear cars crashing through the brush and every now and then the pained yip of a wolf reached my ears.

  I stopped, yanking my arm out of Gabriel’s grip and struggling to breathe past the terrible pain in my chest.

  “Can’t. Keep up,” I gasped, hands on knees. I waved him off. “I’ll hide. You run.”

  His jaw clenched. Bouncing on his heels he looked between me and back where we’d come from, where the sound of engines was quickly growing louder and louder.

  Lips tight, he shook his head.

  “Won’t work. They’ll catch you.”

  “They wo—”

  “They will,” he spoke, tone implying that he would brook no argument.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, lamenting my awful lack of upper, lower, or mid-body strength. I sat at a desk all day. Who the hell actually expected me to outrun men with shotguns and semi-automatics? “They probably will.”

  “Come here.” Pulling me towards him, he looked down into my eyes and kissed me. It felt oddly businesslike, and when his tongue brushed against my own something sizzled on my skin. It felt like I was being bitten by thousands of tiny little mouths, like I was bathing in liquid flame. It ended as quickly as it had begun, and when he stepped back, my eyes widened and I gasped on a tide of smoke.

  I felt like an actress in a winter fresh gum commercial. All tingly and refreshed. My arm even felt better. As if it had been healing for months rather than a few days. I felt like I could run a marathon, hunt some bison, or come up with a cure for cancer.

  I grinned at him, fairly fizzling. “Wow. What did you do? Am I high?”

  His smile was easy, despite the rising cacophony that now surrounded us. I knew I should be worried, the cars were practically on us now, and I could hear the voices of our attackers as they marched through the woods. But for whatever reason, I just couldn’t care. I only had a wild joy in my heart and all my attention was focused on Gabriel.

  “I mark you,” he said, voice growing urgent as men I could only assume were Huntsmen stepped into view. His hands gripped my forearms and tightened, forcing some of the euphoria back so that I could focus on what he was saying. “Before Pack and man alike, I mark you. From this moment forward, my enemies are your enemies, my allies your allies. When you raise your voice in need or loneliness, in joy or sadness, the Pack will come. Do you accept your place as my mate?”

  In the back of the crowd, I saw Agent Liam talking to the woman I recognized as Jessica Pearson, the Huntsmen ringleader and I made a terrible realization.

  The werewolf hunters and the government were working together, and Marcus had used my footage to lead them both to the Pack and to Gabriel. That knowledge brought me down to earth as nothing else could have.

  When I was silent for too long he shook me, nails digging into skin while men and women in army fatigues surrounded us and attempted to pull us apart.

  “Do you accept? Phaedra,” he breathed, pressing me close, “I can’t do anything for you if you don’t. I can’t keep you safe. Not against this.”

  “I accept,” I sobbed as the soldiers finally managed to rip him away from me. My arms were jerked behind my back and one of them pressed their knee in the back of mine, so that my legs buckled. I was brought to the ground and cuffs were slapped around my wrists.

  Beside me, I watched the people dressed in camo (obviously not military) begin to beat Gabriel to the ground. His skin started to soften around the edges, his wolf coming to the forefront, but with a soft buzz Jessica Pearson pressed a stun again against the side of his neck. She shocked him twice more while I struggled in my own bonds, and when the Alpha had finally been brought down, she looked over at Marcus and smiled.

  “Good work, Evans. I knew we could count on you.”

  Marcus smirked, and for the first time I wished that I could shift into a wolf, if only so that I could rip him to shreds.

 

  “A curse. Sometimes, that’s all it is.”

  —Patrick Knowls

  Chapter Thirteen