by Kele Moon
“You have no idea, Angel.” Desmon groaned and released her to look away as if he were trying to gather his strength. “I ache for you until it hurts. In a year and a half, on your birthday, I’m going to come for you and take you to our home.”
A warm, hopeful excitement spread over her in a way that was both foreign and wholly addictive. “That’s amazing. I wish I could see where you live.”
“No, it’s too dangerous right now to take you into pack territory, and I won’t risk your life.” He looked genuinely regretful to disappoint her. “I told you that my people would hurt you if they knew about our relationship, just the way your people would hurt me. When we finally mate, my people will accept you. It’s a natural law, once you’re mature in your world, and our leaders, even the corrupt ones, are forced to obey any law governed by nature. We just have to wait a little longer. My mother was like you before she met my father, and my people loved her. I promise, once you’re eighteen, we can be together every day.”
“I don’t even know what you are,” she said hesitantly, because she hadn’t known his mother was human—or used to be.
He quirked a dark eyebrow at her. “Does it matter? Will a label change how you feel about me? About us?”
“No.” Amber shook her head. “I love you. Whatever you are, I still love you.”
He nodded, before he winced in disappointment. “I have to go.”
“So soon?” She hated when he left, saying goodbye was torture. “You just got here.”
“I know, but they’re having a special ceremony for my birthday.” He didn’t look very excited about it. “I have to be there before the sun goes down.”
“What kind of ceremony?”
“I don’t know. It’s been kept a secret.” He avoided looking at her, as though he was suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m a little different from most of my people.”
“How?” Amber gave him her best pleading look and batted her eyelashes, knowing how he would react. “Can you at least answer that?”
“All right.” He laughed, making Amber feel trusted when he told her, “My father was an alpha, and I’m his only pup. He wants my loyalty to keep the peace, and I have a lot of good reasons to resist giving it to him. So, it’s probably something to do with that.”
She stared at Desmon’s wide shoulders. He stood at just over six-foot-three and was easily over two hundred pounds of muscled, wide-shouldered male. She thought he’d been a few grades higher than her when they’d first met, but he had just been a really big kid.
It was difficult to take in that he wasn’t done growing yet, since that was obviously what he meant about the maturity thing. “Can you sneak away before the end of the month this time?”
“I’ll try.” He paused, still looking miserable. “The alpha has had his men keeping watch on me. I had to lose five other wolves in the woods to get to you. Wherever I go, they attempt to follow.”
Amber hesitated, and then leaned forward. She stole a kiss, but it was innocent, just her lips brushing against his warm cheek. “Happy birthday, Des.”
He closed his eyes, inhaling in her scent, and softly growled. “Too close.”
“You always say that.” She pulled back, even if everything in her protested it. “When we were kids, you used to let me climb all over you, and you used to let me to curl up with you, too.”
“When we were kids, I didn’t have the strong urges I do now.” His blue eyes noticeably darkened. “You wouldn’t want to cuddle with me if you knew what I wanted to do to you.”
“I know about sex, Des.”
He growled again, and anger suddenly tightened his features. “Did a male touch you?”
“No. The only one I want is you, but we have television.” She shrugged, feeling her cheeks heat from the low growl of possessiveness in his voice before she added, “And I read books.”
“I’ve never touched a female because I only want you.” His body relaxed, as if the thought alone was enough to calm his wild side. “Will you promise me the same? Will you save yourself for me?”
Amber gave him a smile. “Yes.”
Desmon breathed a deep, heavy sigh of a relief and smiled back at her.
“I love my gift.” He cradled the wood carving in his palm. “I have to go. The sun is setting, and I have miles to run.”
She nodded. “Go.”
He left as quickly as he’d arrived. She waited about five minutes and then walked to the tree across the old road. Desmon’s discarded clothing waited there, as always, but the carving wasn’t on the ground. She grinned and hoped his wolf teeth didn’t damage the wood when he ran home.
She bent, folded the pants and shirt, and then returned his clothes to the bag she used to protect them from the forest. She moved the rock, hid the bag inside the hole she’d dug, and pushed the rock back into place. The next time he came, they would be waiting for him.
She grinned with the knowledge that Desmon wanted to marry her. As soon as she hit eighteen, she was going to start a new life with him.
That was all she ever wanted.
She turned—and her heart nearly stopped in terror when she found herself staring at three naked men standing silently in the woods within ten feet of her.
They didn’t look similar to Desmon with their fairer skin tones and lighter hair, but she knew what they were.
They were like Desmon.
She swallowed hard. The one closest to her sniffed, grimaced, and narrowed green eyes at her. “Human.”
“Is he toying with her?” the one to his left grunted.
“She doesn’t smell of him.”
“Albert will want to see her. He’ll want to know who she is and what Desmon was doing with her.”
She was in trouble, and Amber knew it. She didn’t need animal instincts to sense the danger. Her heart pounded as she took off, sprinting for the road.
One of them grabbed her painfully around her waist before she could get far, hauling her up off her feet with a furious snarl.
The sound terrified her more.
“Where do you think you’re going, rabbit?” His sharp teeth threatened her skin as he dragged his mouth over her throat, drool dripping on her from his parted lips. “Mmmm. Too bad we can’t just kill her now. After Albert is done, I say we play with her. I love the taste of their blood. It’s fun watching them die.”
Amber opened her mouth and screamed.
1
The Present — Fourteen Years Later
Amber jerked into a sitting position in the bed, panting. It took a while for her to realize she was safe. Even after she did, she kept taking deep breaths, trying to slow her heart rate while cursing to herself.
She hadn’t relived that day in years.
The bedroom door jerked open, spilling light into the room when her younger half-sister Beatrice rushed in. “Are you all right?”
“Shit. I screamed, didn’t I?”
She nodded. “What is it? Did you see a spider? I hate those things.”
“No. Sorry.” Amber shoved the covers off. “I had a nightmare.”
Bea gave her a strained smile. “It must’ve been epic.”
“Yeah. It was pretty bad.” Amber turned on the bedside lamp and took note of the time. “How’s Mom?”
“The nurse still has her pretty drugged.” Bea lowered her head, looking more overwhelmed and sadder than a seventeen-year-old girl ever should. “I was actually about to wake you up. I don’t think she’s going to make it through the night.”
Pain lanced through Amber. She’d arrived the day before to the childhood home she swore she’d never return to, after getting the call letting her know that her mother had been sent home from the hospital to die in her own bed.
Amber just nodded. “Okay. The three of us will sit with her then until the end comes.”
“Katie isn’t here.” Bea paused. “She’s not answering her phone, either. I know where she is, and I called like a thousand times, but they won’t put her on. Just told me to text her.”
“What do you mean they won’t put her on the phone?”
A blush rose up on Bea’s cheeks. “She’s at The Barn. Her boyfriend hangs out there, and he enjoys it when she’s with him. He probably told the bartender to hang up on me, so she won’t leave.”
“The Barn? Isn’t that the bar at the base of Hollow Mountain?”
“That’s where she hangs out.”
“She’s not twenty-one yet.”
Bea shrugged. “They don’t care.”
“What do you mean by that? Aren’t they worried about their liquor license?”
“No.” Bea snorted like the idea was ridiculous. “If Roni were at work, she would kick Katie out like she usually does, but it’s her night off. I have her personal number, and I texted her, but she didn’t answer. She’s probably out on a date or something.”
“I’ll call the bar.”
“The bartender got sick of me and took the phone off the hook. I even had the operator try, and she confirmed it.” Tears filled Bea’s eyes. “Katie won’t be here when Mom dies, and she’ll never forgive herself.”
“I’ll go get her.”
Bea hesitated. “Um…”
“What?” Amber walked over to her open suitcase placed on the chair and grabbed a pair of jeans.
“It’s kind of a rough place. There are a lot of bikers there.”
“Then Katie definitely has no business being there at eleven o’clock at night, or at any time, for that matter. Mom allowed that?”
“Yeah, but you know how bad Mom’s drinking has been.”
“Not really.”
“After Daddy moved out and took up with that new woman, well, drinking is all she does. She didn’t really care what we did as long as she had booze.”
Rage boiled under Amber’s skin, making her face feel flush. She tore off her nightgown and dressed quickly. “I’ll go get Katie. I remember how to get to the bar. Your dad used to get shitfaced there sometimes and we’d have to go get him.”
“Ams, it’s rough.” Bea sounded far too worldly wise for a teenager. “I mean, some of the men who hang there are criminals—for real.”
“I spent eight years married to Jeff.” She smirked. “Trust me. I know all about those types.”
“He introduced you to his clients?”
She shrugged as she slipped on a pair of heels to give her height and hopefully make herself a little more intimidating. “Socializing with clients is part of a defense attorney’s life. Sometimes we had parties, and I had to meet a few of the men he represented. It was my duty to entertain them.”
“I really hated Jeff. He treated you as though you were his slave instead of his wife.”
Amber grabbed her purse and met her younger sister’s eyes. “We all make mistakes. I thought he was someone he could never be, and he thought I’d put up with anything he did.”
“I’m still glad you screwed him in the divorce settlement.”
“The judge presiding over our case didn’t feel too generous toward him when it came out that he had four girlfriends he supported in those so-called rental properties.”
“You never suspected?”
“He worked all the time. I believed him, until I found out he’d gotten a woman pregnant.”
“Was the baby his?”
Pain still burned in her chest over the betrayal. “He’s paying child support, so I assume it is. He refused to allow me to have a baby. He kept putting me off when I begged him to start a family, but then he goes and knocks up one of his legal secretaries? I guess he put in more than overtime at the office.”
“I’m sorry,” Bea said earnestly. “And I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to The Barn.”
Amber shrugged. “I’m past the pain and anger stage with Jeff. Now I’m in the ‘so over it’ stage. Good timing. I can handle some small-town punks. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for fourteen years.”
“Okay.” Bea looked less than certain. “Please be careful, Amber. Remember that if they look mean, and they act mean, they are mean—so stay away.”
Fifteen minutes later, Amber pulled into the parking lot of The Barn. She glanced at the motorcycles, tricked-out trucks and muscle cars around her. She sighed loudly and unfastened her seat belt. Then she leaned across the center console and opened her glove box. She wrapped her fingers around the mace, straightened, took a deep breath, and then climbed out of her car.
Twenty-year-old Katie was in that bar, and fury went a long way toward Amber finding the courage to march into the large old building.
Music loudly thumped as she stepped inside and let her gaze sweep the room. To the left sat a bar being tended by a long-haired man in a tank top with tattoos showing down both arms. He looked up and their gazes locked. She frowned at him, and then her attention moved on.
Tables were filled with mostly men. The dress code seemed to be jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets. Great, she thought. A wannabe biker bar in the middle-of-nowhere, Northern California.
One of the women dancing in front of a table drew her attention, but she was older, a brunette, and definitely not Amber’s baby half-sister. The skirt the woman wore rose so high, the lower line of her ass showed as she wiggled and bent while moving to the rock tune.
Two more women were in the back near the pool tables. A third woman was pinned behind a big man in a black metal band t-shirt. Amber couldn’t see much of her since she happened to be heavily making out with her partner. The huge man dropped his arm and reached down to grab the woman’s jean-skirt-clad ass.
Amber saw the short blonde hair—and anger surged through her as she stormed over to her sister.
A guy at a table stood from his chair and stepped in her path. She froze, stared up at him, and suddenly felt tiny at five-foot-four in her two-inch heels. He was a big son of a bitch, a beefy man with a lot of facial hair.
He smiled. “Hey, baby.”
Amber nearly stumbled back from his whiskey-soaked breath.
“Excuse me.” She tried to step around him, but he moved in her path. “I’m here for someone.”
He grabbed her arm. “I’m someone.”
“Someone else,” she clarified with an unimpressed look.
“Now don’t be a bitch.” His smile broadened, showing off straight white teeth that were surprising, considering how rough around the edges the rest of him looked. “Or be a bitch. I do like them.”
Men nearby laughed, and Amber had to force herself to push down the fear. She lifted her chin, leveled her coldest glare at him and jerked her arm free.
“First off, I hate that term. It’s rude. Second, if you touch me again, you’re going to regret it. Now, please move out of the way while I collect my sister.”
He cocked his head, staring at her, and then glanced over his shoulder. He faced her again. “Who’s your sister?”
“Katie.”
His eyes widened, and he slowly gave her a once-over, from the high heels she wore to her face. “You got the looks.” He grinned. “She’s taken, but you’re not.”
The biker poster child reached for her again.
Amber raised her arm, showing off the small canister in her hand, and gave him a pointed look. “See this? It’s mace. Back off and get out of my way.”
He frowned but took a step back. He leaned forward and sniffed the mace curiously, which was odd, but nothing about him seemed normal in the first place. Amber moved, heading quickly for the couple still making out in the corner. She was shocked as she watched the guy lift her sister and pin her to the wall, before he slid his hand between their bodies.
“Katie!”
Her sister jerked in the man’s arms and turned toward Amber. Astonishment transformed Katie’s features instantly and her mouth hung open in shock. “Ams? What in the hell are you doing here?”
Drawing to a halt, Amber fought the urge to yell at her sister for making out with a guy in a bar in front of an audience. She tried hard to remember that her sister was over eightee
n, a perfectly legal adult, but her temper won.
“You need to come home with me now. Mom has taken a turn for the worse.”
Amber regretted just spitting that out when she saw her younger sister’s face pale.
“Let me down, Merl.” Katie pushed on his chest. “I’ve got to go.”
“No. You can leave when I’m done. I’m rock hard and I’m going to fuck you.”
Did he really just say that to my sister? Yes, he did. Amber’s mind worked but her mouth didn’t. She was stunned speechless.
Katie wiggled against the wall and pushed on his chest. “Not in front of my sister. Come on, stud. I’ll come back. You heard her. It’s my mom.”
The big jerk shook his head. “Now. Fuck first, then you can go.”
Katie bit her lip and turned her head, staring at her sister. “Go home to sit with Mom, and I’ll be there real soon.”
“Are you joking?” Amber’s eyes widened. “Come with me right now.”
“I can’t. I promised Merl some of my time. I’ve been ignoring him.”
Amber’s heart nearly stopped. “Is he…” Horror and dread washed through her. “Is he paying you?”
“No.” Katie genuinely looked offended. “I’m not a hooker. How could you think that?”
The man holding her sister chuckled. “She’s mine, and unlike the rest of your kind, she doesn’t care where I fuck her.”
Amber turned her head, gawking at the grinning men around them who watched the scene unfold as if it were amusing. She looked back to her sister and saw how much paler Katie’s face had become. She also saw guilt in her sister’s eyes.
“Katie?” She paused, getting a grip on her conflicting emotions. “You’re an adult, and I’m trying very hard to not freak out, but I am not leaving here without you.” She glared at the man pinning her sister. “Please put my sister down, or I’ll force you to.”
He laughed, glancing at Katie. “I like her. She’s funny.” His grin died as he shot Amber a glare. “I’m going to nail your little sis to the wall right here and right now. You look a little prudish, so maybe you can learn something when you watch me do it. Then maybe I’ll give you a chance to show everyone what you learned.”
