“Oh stop. Trent’s the best,” I said.
“He is indeed. But our lovely Dark Swan has taken to showing him how to fight vampires. I suspect he will be quitting his job soon and assuming his position as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” He rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t fooling me. If Winter was teaching Trent how to protect himself and them, it was a good thing. It lifted a burden off me.
“How long will we have guards? I think we are going to die of liver damage before another vampire attack.”
“I already told you, there is no way you are going to be able to hold your own drinking with us. Stop it, because I’m not sharing my liver with you,” I teased.
“Can that be done?” He seemed genuinely curious, and I didn’t answer. After what had happened with Dexter, I really hoped not. I wouldn’t put it past him to create were-animals for parts and black-market organ trafficking.
I shrugged and pushed the thought out of my mind. I planned to drink and be merry with the two best people to do it with.
“I get to see where you tucked away the old boyfriend.”
“Once again, he wasn’t my boyfriend. He was my housemate.”
He made a face. “You have limitless control, cupcake.”
Of course. Because we can’t have one night without me being a sweet carbohydrate.
“So, Ethan has moved in?”
“No, he’s just staying with me until his ankle heals.”
“How did he hurt his ankle?”
A million excuses went through my mind. The guilt that I had about plunging David into a world where he didn’t belong still bothered me, and I knew he worked effortlessly to try not to behave like it was disturbing to him. I wasn’t about to tell him we periodically had death matches to determine rank. “He broke it.”
Surprise. “Really? I thought you all were indestructible.”
“We break just like everyone else, but we heal faster.”
As I turned down Steven’s street, I tried to get past a crowd of cars that had stopped or pulled over to look at something. A knot of people had gathered around Steven’s home. The flashing lights of four police cars lit up the street. A sharp breath caught in my throat and my heart raced erratically. Had something happened to Steven? I stopped the car and jumped out with David right behind me.
Most of his neighbors were out being smartphone journalists as they filmed Steven walking out of the house, his head down, his hands held up in surrender. He dropped to his knees. The police descended on him, uniformed in body armor with their guns trained on him. The cameras flashed, and the neighbors whispered in ardent fascination as the officers cuffed him and pulled him to his feet. Frightened olive-green eyes found mine amid the crowd. With his hair short again and the beard removed, he looked younger than his twenty-one years, docile and innocuous.
The news cameras arrived in time to record the solemn Steven as a police officer put him in the back of a patrol car. The cherubic face and supple ruby lips automatically tugged at your instincts that he was innocent of whatever he was accused of. If he was playing it up for the cameras, then he was winning, because he looked out of place shackled in handcuffs. The various looks on his neighbors’ faces supported my thoughts. Their concerned stares were directed at him—an assumption that he was a victim of circumstance or wrongly accused.
“What happened?” I asked a neighbor.
She shrugged. “I don’t know, we just saw a bunch of police cars driving down our street and were surprised they stopped here. He’s so nice. I can’t imagine he’d done anything that would warrant this.” Her hand swept over the spectacle. I wanted to believe that.
I backed away toward my car, keeping an eye on the patrol car as it drove away. Once I was in my car, I saw a familiar face several feet away. Dexter. He turned, making sure I got a good look at him, then he smiled, nodding his head in my direction. He dropped into his car.
David scrolled through his phone.
“I wonder what happened?” I said out loud to myself.
“This,” he said, and he turned his phone to me. There was a video of Steven in front of four men that I didn’t recognize. He was talking but kept his eyes on the one who was creeping to the side. One of the men took a swing at Steven. He blocked it, returned it, and spun around in time to block the other. The third guy took an elbow to his throat. He dropped down to the ground. To a casual observer, it looked like a man heaving for a breath, but he was actually readying himself to change into his animal form. Steven lunged, kicking him over, slinking around him until he had him in a hold. A rough jerk and a were-animal with a human head was twisted to the side.
I closed my eyes for a moment, imagining other people seeing this without knowing anything about us, the pack, and the dynamics. It was hard to look at the rest of the fight, but it ended with two deceased bodies and one severely injured and looking off to the side. The camera footage faded to black for a moment, and then the final shot was of Steven standing over what looked like a big dog but I was sure with closer examination one could make out either a coyote or a small wolf. The video faded to black again, cutting off the part where the animal shifted back to human form, which happened to were-animals upon death.
My phone buzzed; I picked it up to hear Ethan. He sounded the way I felt. “We are about to be outed,” he said.
MESSAGE TO THE READER
Thank you for choosing Moon Cursed from the many titles available to you. My goal is to create an engaging world, compelling characters, and an interesting experience for you. I hope I’ve accomplished that. Reviews are very important to authors and help other readers discover our books. Please take a moment to leave a review. I’d love to know your thoughts about the book.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I don’t think I will ever be able to thank my family and friends enough for all their help and support throughout the process. I hope you all know I couldn’t do it without you. I would like to personally thank Vanessa A. Rodriques, who helped me with the Portuguese translations. I really appreciate it.
I would like to offer a special thanks to my wonderful and helpful editor, Luann Reed Siegel, who treat each project as if it’s her own.
Last, but definitely not least, I would like that thank my readers for giving me the opportunity to entertain you with my stories.
Moon Cursed (Sky Brooks Series Book 5) Page 32
