Moon Bound

by Stephanie Julian

  “I know I’m to blame for this.” His voice barely shook. “I’ll take care of it. But that—”

  “No way,” Cole said. “Don’t even think about—”

  “That’s definitely not the way to handle this—” Dorian said.

  “—doesn’t change the fact that Bella needs a guard, preferably grigorio or praetorian,” Steven finished.

  Bella couldn’t help but roll her eyes as they all talked over one another. And since none of them wanted to listen to her, she didn’t bother to interrupt again. She’d learned at an early age to let everyone else make plans and when they finished, she’d do what she wanted.

  “Steven, there’s no way I’m gonna let you do this on your own.” Cole shook his head. “You think I want to lose anyone else—”

  “Oh hell.” Steven sounded brusque but she could see he was touched. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’ve been taking care of myself for years.”

  Cole snorted, his mouth twisting in a snarl. “Yeah, and look how well that turned out. You’re working for the fucking enemy and you didn’t even know it.”

  She gasped as Steven’s face paled and even Dorian raised her eyebrows and stared at Cole in disbelief.

  “Shit.” Cole bit out the curse, slamming his hands on his knees. “That didn’t come out right. Vaffanculo. I’ve been so fucking worried about you for so many years. You’re so damn stubborn, I don’t know—”

  “Stubborn? I’m stubborn?” Steven’s voice sounded incredulous. “You told me to stay away. You ordered me to stay away.”

  Uh oh. They’d started to gesture with their hands. When they’d been kids, that usually meant blows would follow.

  “I was angry and you knew it.” Cole’s index finger came dangerously close to Steven’s chest. “You should have come back, you bastard.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you ask me to?” Steven bit off each word.

  “Because you broke her heart and she nearly killed herself!”

  And that was her cue to put a stop to this. Leaning forward, she set one hand on either man’s chest and pushed them back into their seats. “That’s enough!”

  They didn’t even glance at her.

  “I was trying to protect her,” Steven shouted. “Do you think I wanted her to die? Don’t you know I would give my life for her? Or for you, you fucking idiot.”

  Okay, that was nice but the choked sound of Steven’s voice ripped at her heart. “Steven! Cole!” She shoved at them again. “That’s it. Stop it. Right now. Or I’m heading back to Philly on the next plane.”

  Ah, now she had their attention. Their faces held almost identical expressions of anger tinged with fear as they turned to look at her.

  “You are going nowhere—”

  “You’re not going anywhere—”

  She whipped one hand in front of each man like a traffic cop. “I’ll go if I want to and neither of you will have a damn thing to say about it.”

  That shut them up.

  “You.” She pointed to Cole. “My accident wasn’t Steven’s fault. If you had listened to me when I talked to you afterward, you would’ve known that.” She turned to Steven. “And you…you should have known better than to think Cole wanted you gone. You should’ve stuck by us.”

  Steven’s jaw clenched. She could tell he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure it wouldn’t dig him in deeper.

  She took a deep breath. “Now, if you two are done, we’ve got things to discuss.”

  Cole turned to Dorian. “I want Matt.”

  Shit. Cole had immediately returned to her situation about a bodyguard. And there was no freaking way she would put up with grigorio Matt Tedaldi. Not for all the chocolate in the world. She opened her mouth to protest but Dorian answered first. “He won’t come. He’s dealing with family issues. It’ll have to be someone else.”

  Matt had family?

  “Who’s closest?” Stephen asked.

  Dorian’s brows rose. “Luca. He came with me.”

  Bella tried to hide her smile but couldn’t. “I can live with Luca.”

  “Oh, no way in hell,” Cole said. “She’ll walk all over him. Shit, Dori, you know how he is.”

  Just as she’d hoped, Dorian went to bat for her younger cousin. “He’s been training for this his whole life, Cole. Don’t you dare say anything—”

  “Oh, please, you know what I’m talking about. Don’t twist this—”

  “—about my cousin being unable to take care—”

  “—into something it’s not.”

  “—of his charges. He knows what he’s doing.”

  While Dorian and Cole continued to face off across the car, Bella caught Steven staring at her, shaking his head, his expression grave.

  “I’ll stay,” he said.

  Elation lit her smile though she tried to hide it.

  “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Steven. I don’t want you here if you don’t want to be here.”

  And she meant that. She wanted him to want to be here. Wanted him to want to stay with her. She could manipulate him into staying, work on his guilt until he cried uncle and gave in. But it wouldn’t mean a damn thing if he didn’t want to be here.

  His expression solemn, he gazed into her eyes. “You know damn well I’m exactly where I want to be and why this is the place I should be farthest from.” He held up his hand when she would have protested. “Don’t. Just don’t. I’ll stay. For now. And you’ll still have Luca stuck to you like glue. Got it?”

  She nodded, her smile fading. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  The atmosphere in the car was so loaded with tension, Amy Jo swore she could feel it crawling over her skin like ants.

  She sat in the front with Diego, needed to sit in the front because she got violently ill if she sat in the back. Motion sickness sucked.

  Marco hadn’t given her a fight, had simply climbed into the backseat and turned his head to look out the window. Neither brother had said a word to the other since they’d left the hotel.

  After an hour of trying to draw one or the other into conversation, she gave up and tried to take a nap.

  That lasted all of about an hour, leaving another five hours of driving time, according to Diego’s calculations.

  They could’ve cut down on that time if they’d flown, but of course, they couldn’t risk a commercial flight with her.

  She sighed. Life sucked.

  Although…last night certainly hadn’t.

  She slid a look at Diego then couldn’t force herself to look away. The man seemed to have gotten more gorgeous in the hours between last night and right now.

  Of course, the great sex might’ve had something to do with that.

  “Amy Jo.”

  Oh, hell, she even liked the way he said her name. His voice was husky and hinted at dark secrets.

  “Amy Jo.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re staring.”

  “So?”

  His eyebrows rose into arches, so different from their normal straight slash. “Why?”

  Her mouth tilted into a smile. She’d learned a little bit about this man in the past hours, enough to know he didn’t like to be the center of attention. He liked to be the one who watched. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  She shrugged. “Tried that already. I’m too wound.”

  “Then find something else to stare at.”

  “Y’know, you really are too masculine to be pretty, but I gotta say, your hair is much prettier than mine. Do you curl it or is it just natural?”

  In the backseat, Marco snorted, exposing his sleep as a fraud. Diego shot her a look that was part embarrassment, part bemusement.

  Lucky for her, she’d gotten used to that as one of the only kids in her high school who’d actually enjoyed learning and had been determined to go to college. All the others just wanted to get a job or find a man.

  “No, I don’t curl
my hair. Do you say everything that comes into your head?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, mostly. Bad habit I’ve picked up since I gained fangs and a new fur coat.”

  That sent the mood in the car plummeting again as Diego stiffened, his knuckles going white as he clenched the steering wheel, and Marco drew in a short, sharp breath.

  Damn, she should’ve kept her mouth shut. Again. When the hell was she going to learn?

  “Turning furry every month is a shock to the system, especially for those who don’t ask for it,” Marco said from the backseat. “Don’t beat yourself up over what you can’t control.”

  She turned her head as much as she dared—the motion sickness was a real bitch—to look at Marco.

  “I try not to, but it’s hard, ya know?”

  Marco actually cracked a smile. “Yeah, I know.”

  Amy Jo’s lips curved and she felt a short sharp tug in her middle that felt a hell of a lot like attraction.

  Wow. Was it just because he looked so much like Diego?

  Although, the more she time she spent with the brothers, the more different they looked.

  Both were wildly attractive. So much so, Amy Jo found it hard to breathe.

  She’d never been attracted to two men at the same time, especially not brothers. God, she could just imagine the mess that would make.

  She’d slept with Diego last night, for Christ’s sake. How stupid was she to smile at Marco this morning?

  Dropping her gaze, she turned around, catching Diego’s thoughtful expression.

  Did he know what she was thinking? He’d probably be furious with her if he did. Marco and Diego had a rocky enough relationship without a woman getting in the middle of them.

  Although, what woman wouldn’t want to be in the middle of those two—

  Jesus, what the hell was wrong with her? Had she become a sex maniac in addition to a werewolf?

  Blinking, she turned to stare out the front window. She vaguely heard Diego say something to her and forced herself to ask him to repeat.

  “I’m amazed you managed to come through those first months with your mind intact,” Diego said. “How did you learn to handle it?”

  She shrugged, almost ashamed to admit that part of it had been sheer stubbornness. “I immersed myself in research. Anything and everything I could get my hands on about werewolves. There’s a lot of superstition out there but a lot of truth is hidden in all those old tales. Besides, I knew I didn’t want to slit my wrists, so I had to find a cure.”

  Diego paused. “And now that you know there is no cure?”

  His softly spoken words gave her goose bumps but it was his hand, which he’d slid across the seat to squeeze her knee, that made her stomach twist in on itself. She wanted him to leave it there, wanted him to put his arm around her shoulders and draw her against him.

  When he withdrew, the warmth remained for a few seconds.

  “I…haven’t really thought about it.” Which was true, but now that he mentioned it, she knew she wouldn’t be able to let go. There had to be a cure. She couldn’t live like this for the rest of her life—

  “Do you have any questions you want to ask us, questions you weren’t able to find answers to?” Marco asked.

  Try hundreds. “Actually, I do.”

  “Then ask,” Diego said.

  “Yeah, we’ve got nothing else to do for the next four-and-a-half hours,” Marco agreed. “Shoot.”

  She had so many, she didn’t know where to start. So she asked the one uppermost in her mind. “Is it really magic?”

  Diego grinned and she snuck a peek at Marco and found the same expression on his face. She went hot all over and her sex ached. Man, she really needed to get her hormones under control.

  “You turn into a wolf three nights out of every month and you still don’t believe in magic?” Diego said.

  Okay, she sounded pretty damn naïve when he put it that way. “But how does it work?” she continued. “There has to be some mechanism involved, something you can explain.”

  “Magic just is.” Diego said. “Energy exists in every living thing on earth. Some of us can channel that energy, that magic, and bend it to our will. My parents weren’t…receptive to questioning and my tutors were even less so, so maybe Marco can tell you more about the mechanics.”

  “You didn’t go to school?”

  Diego shook his head, staring straight ahead. “I lived on an estate in West Chester County, New York, as a child. I was not allowed to leave the grounds without an armed guard. I had a tutor for academics and another for grigori studies.”

  His cold words held a world of hurt that Amy Jo knew had to be eating him alive.

  “You didn’t have any friends?”

  “Not allowed. I occasionally met other children when my parents entertained hereditary families, but that wasn’t often.”

  “Is that how you met Bella?”

  “Yes, we met before her parents were killed.”

  “Sounds like a lonely way to grow up.”

  He shrugged then stiffened at Marco’s editorial snort from the back seat. “Though you might not believe it,” Diego directed this over his shoulder, “you had the easier time of it, Marco. Our father could be a vicious bastard.”

  “That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, aren’t you?” Marco’s voice was a low growl. “I don’t know why you continue to shit on his name—”

  “He was a master manipulator, Marco. He never did anything without a reason. He was never going to legitimize you. Never. It wasn’t in his plan.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.” Marco’s voice started to get louder. “He died before he could.”

  “Then why the hell did he wait so long? Control, Marco. He could control you, but he was never going to legitimize you because of your mother. She was—”

  “Don’t go there, Diego—”

  “—a wonderful woman, but Father always said she was nothing more than a piece on the side and you were little more than a toy.”

  The flat tone of Diego’s words held the weight of truth and Amy Jo wanted to disappear into the seat. The emotion in the car had risen along with the men’s voices. Diego’s complexion darkened and his hands clenched around the steering wheel. She was afraid to look back at Marco. The two men seemed to be screaming in pain, though they did it with words.

  “You bastard.” Marco growled.

  “Damn it, Marco. When are you going to realize our father was a prick and stop worshiping the asshole?”

  Silence fell. And it was worse than the fighting.

  She heard both men breathing as if they’d just run a marathon. Diego’s intense gaze focused on the road as if he were trying to burn a hole through the windshield. She snuck a peek in the rearview but could only see the side of Marco’s face, his jaw clenched tight.

  She didn’t know how long they drove like that but suddenly Diego swore under his breath and yanked the wheel to the right.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I’ve got a meeting, Bella” Cole said. “And I want you there.”

  Bella rolled her eyes and flopped down on the bed in her room at the Hotel Nuit sans Lune. Steven had the room next to hers. Cole was across the hall as was Dorian. Steven had gone to take a shower and that’s what she’d intended as well, until Cole had followed her into the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Cole, you know I hate meeting with your council.”

  Cole shook his head. “This isn’t a meeting with the council. This is something else. Something you’re going to want to hear.”

  Sitting up on her elbows, she watched her brother pace. Cole only paced when something bothered him. Not that he didn’t have enough on his plate with congress. And Steven.

  But this was something else.

  “Who are you meeting with?”

  “I think it’s probably better if you just…go into the meeting with an open mind. I want you to give me your opinion afterward.”

  “You want
my opinion on your meeting?”

  Her incredulous tone made Cole grimace, something he seemed to be doing a lot of lately. Cole rarely asked for her opinion. Probably because she’d never expressed much of an interest in the legion. Which made her a pretty shitty sister.

  And an even more shitty royal wolf.

  What would her parents have thought?

  “Of course I want your opinion.” He stopped pacing to stand at the bottom of the bed and gave her his serious face. “You’re good with people, Bella. You pick up on things other people miss. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

  Praise from her brother made her heart swell and she smiled, forcing back tears that would have made Cole shake his head. But the fact that he wanted her opinion meant the world to her. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Cole nodded and held out his hand to help her off the bed. “Come on, then. We’re meeting downstairs.”

  In the hall, Cole knocked on Dorian’s door and waited for her to join them. As they passed Steven’s door, Cole paused for a brief second before continuing.

  In the lobby, a few people lounged in the seating area. Bella recognized most of the faces, all of them versipelli. She didn’t know all their names.

  And she should.

  Just another way in which she’d shirked her duties as a royal daughter. As her parents’ daughter.

  Her parents would have known every name. Cole knew all their names.

  She’d let the men in her life—

  No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Cole’s or Steven’s or Michael’s fault. She’d allowed herself to fall out of the loop, to withdraw from her society.

  Her family—Steven, Cole and her—had fallen apart and she’d allowed it.

  Damn it. No more.

  Following Cole, Bella thought they’d head for the meeting rooms she’d noticed to the left of the registration desk. Instead Cole turned left and pushed through a door marked Employees Only.

  Several doors lined a hallway and Cole pushed through the second on the right. Bella stopped short when she saw three women sitting at the board table. They all looked up with polite smiles when she walked in. She smiled back, nodded then smacked a kiss on the cheek of the lanky blonde standing behind the women.