by Anne Douglas
“Thirty-seven years ago, I met a young woman who literally blew me off my feet. I was, of all things, at a traveling carnival with a date ‑‑ Lydia, actually ‑‑ when this slip of a girl came flying out of a fortune-teller’s tent as if her pants were on fire. We ended up in a heap on the ground, me winded and head ringing, and your mother straddling me, mumbling about the Moonstruck Prophecy.”
A feminine voice interrupted. “What he’s not telling you is that their meeting could grace the pages of a romance novel. They took one look at each other and sparks flew, quite literally, in fact; big blue ones. I figured at that point that our date was a bust and graciously conceded the field.” The smile Lydia wore and laughter in her voice surprised Pearl. “I have to say I didn’t lose out, though. I ended up with two wonderful friends and a beautiful goddaughter.”
A quick, fond look sizzled between Lydia and Pearl’s father, and Pearl thought there was a possibility that they’d picked up where they’d left off all those years ago. Pearl had been trying to slyly suggest that her father needed to get out and date. Her mother had been gone five years now, having succumbed to her second battle with breast cancer.
“Lydia’s right, love at first sight, for all that it’s a cliché.” The creases around his eyes looked a little deeper than usual, his eyes tired as he remembered the girl he’d fallen in love with and had lost. Pearl felt for him keenly, having felt love of her own for her mother.
“I already knew about Were-kind ‑‑ I’d managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and wandered into the middle of a Pack celebration just as they all changed. I was sort of adopted by the Pack, and in the end, they offered me a scholarship to go to law school and become one of the humans that ran interference between Were-kind and humans. But your mother was a surprise again.”
There was a polite knock, and Geoffrey’s entrance into the room gave them all a moment to pause and gather their breath. Lydia rose and went to the trolley Geoffrey had pushed into the room, and began to serve.
“What do you mean, Mother was a surprise?”
“Grace was a Were, too, but she was different than anyone I’d met before. You see, her family line floats in the ether that lies between human and Were-kind. Genetic misfits. Not human, but unable to release the beast caged within. They hear the call of their beast, but can’t call forth the magic to turn. Moonstruck, they’re called.”
“I’ve heard of them. They’re quite the conundrum, especially if you believe that pure magic is what rules Were-kind, not science in any form.” There was a healthy dose of curiosity in Rex’s voice.
Lydia then weighed in, handing Pearl her cup of tea, then giving a quick squeeze to her shoulder to let her know that all would be okay. “Yes, quite the puzzle. Moonstruck family lines have always been on the verge of ridicule, pitied for not being able to run under the moon and hunt with their Packs. But they made the best of what they had ‑‑ becoming the most upright of citizens, stalwart members of society who showed everyone, human and Were-kind alike, that they were every bit as good as them. Slowly, Were-kind came to trust in them as their guardians, and they became the obfuscators, protecting our Packs the best way they knew how ‑‑ by being human.
“They are not the strongest of the Pack physically, but their strengths lie in their perceived normality. The Moonstruck became the stopgap between the two races, protecting one from the other, although the humans in general don’t know it.” Taking the last cup as her own, Lydia took her seat again. “Then, of course, there’s the prophecy, and the whole reason why your mother and father ran into one another that night.”
“A prophecy? What, like ‘the child born with two heads shall lead us to victory’ type of thing?” All of them smiled, appreciating Rob’s attempt at lightening the mood.
Her father sobered again. “I found out later, once your mother explained it to me, that there has been a prophecy handed down amongst the Moonstruck families that said, and I quote, because Grace made me memorize it: To one struck by the moon shall be born a girl. She will be the first. She and those like her will become the rescuers of those who walk on four and stand on two, whose line flickers and wavers like a candle before it’s snuffed.
“Magic will lead their way to new life. It shall burst on them like a flame, blazing blue as it burns brightly, and they shall take it into their bodies and from them we shall bloom.
“Teach your sons and daughters wisely and well; make them sure of their place in the world, for time may come to pass where one of the Moonstruck may lead us all.”
Pearl’s father blinked as he finished, and the sheen that had glistened across his eyes was gone as he pulled himself together. “It’s been years since I’ve recited that,” he said with a wistful sigh. “God, it seems so long ago that a girl with skinned knees and the most beautiful big eyes I’d ever seen knocked me to the ground, and then told me the wackiest tale of how the fortune-teller had insisted her daughter would be the first Moonstruck to live the prophecy.”
“Got to love the whole ambiguous prophecy line ‑‑ how the hell are we supposed to know what any of that means?” Rob’s affability was slowly eroding, and he stood and began to pace the room. “I’ve heard about Moonstruck Weres, but I didn’t know there were any of that line in the Huntingdawn Pack. I’m the Alpha, for Christ’s sake. How can I run a Pack when information like this is being kept from me by the Elders?”
“Grace was the last of her family line, Rob, and Pearl has never exhibited any of the full moon effects any of the other Moonstruck have ‑‑ we assumed the old woman was wrong, just a kooky old lady. Though it’d always been in the back of Grace’s mind and the reason why she was so insistent on raising Pearl so strictly and so properly, even though she chose not to tell her of the hidden side to her family tree. She’d told me that if she was wrong, she wanted to make sure her daughter would be able to stare adversity in the face. But other than proving the first line correct by having a girl child, we didn’t know really where the rest of it would lead, if anywhere at all.”
Pearl looked at Rex as the last notes of her father’s voice echoed around the room, and saw that he had connected some of the same dots about the prophecy. A chesty “humph” came from Rex, and both men turned to him. “Care to share something, Rex?”
Pearl nearly laughed when Rex colored up a more reddish shade than his usual tan, and fidgeted. “I…um, that is…we…”
“I think Rex is trying to say we know what at least two of the lines mean, and they were real, not just imagination.”
“Oh?” Rob questioned them, but her father looked curious as well. She figured he’d lived with this for nearly forty years; his interest would be well and truly piqued.
“I believed myself to be the last of my beast line ‑‑ I’ve search for other Ursus, and been unsuccessful. I could only hope that if there were others, they’d seek me out. So I think that where it says ‘flickers and wavers like a candle before it’s snuffed,’ it refers to family lines where only two or three remain.”
“Why two? Why not one?”
“Genetically speaking, and as the Grande Dame suggested to me, if there were not more than one alive, where would my children find mates? I can only assume the magic means to repair my family line ‑‑ if it gives me a mate, but none for my children, what’s the sense in that?”
Rob chuckled. “Ever the logical scientist, aren’t you, Rex? Magic is not necessarily reasonable; in fact, it can be downright irrational most of the time. What makes you think this time it is?”
Rex shrugged and his lips crooked into a wry, sad smile. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just living on a hope and a very nonscientific prayer?”
Every person in the room knew exactly what emotion motivated Rex’s hopes ‑‑ who would be so selfish as to hope for their own salvation, only to pass on their nightmare to their children with no hope of a cure of their own?
“And the other? Pearl, you said you understood more?”
“Umm�
�yes.” Oh Lord, all of this, and now she had to discuss sex, of all things, with her father? “When, ah…Rex and I were…umm…together, shall we say…” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rob bite his lip as if to hold back his response, and on her other side a strangled groan came from Rex. He was embarrassed? She should hand the explaining over to him, and watch him go down in a highly combustible pile of flaming cow patties.
“It’s okay, honey, I know what you mean.” Even her father said it with a twinkle in his eye. Was there no one who didn’t think this was a great joke at her expense?
“Well. Anyway, there was a point where a blue, and for the want of a better word ‑‑ aura ‑‑ surrounded us. I figure that’s when the ‘taking into her body and bloom’ part happened. That’s when all this magic stuff happened, and I became a full Were.”
“So, you’re telling me the prophecy came true?” Her father leaned forward in his chair, projecting his disbelief. When she nodded, he sat back with a thud and a slack face, and muttered, “I’ll be damned. Grace was right after all.”
A snigger to Pearl’s right had her glaring at the man who was now considered her Pack leader with her hackles rising.
“Blooming, is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Chapter Fourteen
She’d been the one to start the teasing earlier, but at the evening’s surprising revelations on her family history, lust had taken a backseat ‑‑ until she’d gotten back into the car and her new senses had decided to kick into high gear when Rex took his seat. The seductive smell of leather, cologne, and virile man had her trapped with nowhere to go. Prophecy be damned, she couldn’t change anything that had happened to her tonight, and she was horny as hell. There was no way Rex was going to get a chance to leave her at the doorstep with a polite kiss goodnight.
Caught in her own game, Pearl hooked her fingers in Rex’s waistband and dragged him over the threshold into her house. She reached around him and shoved on the front door, slamming it in Vlad’s face. She didn’t need a canine cheering squad tonight, and she figured he’d come in the back doggy door once he’d gotten over his Napoleon complex-sized pique at being locked out in favor of the big hunk of man who could do a whole lot more than just keep her feet warm in bed.
“Rex?” Metal pinged as she worked her way down his shirtfront, nibbling and licking her way to his navel, then ripping the remainder of the shirt free from his pants. Thank God he hadn’t been wearing a cummerbund and bowtie to go with the tux ‑‑ too many hooks to have to fight through. Though a nice image of Rex in nothing but a bow tie popped into her head, and made her already thumping heart race like Seabiscuit going for the finish line. The one small part of her brain that hadn’t switched across to “got to get me some now!” mode wondered if that was how guys felt when it came to bra hooks ‑‑ difficult, and a total waste of time that could be better spent getting your jollies.
A big hand reached out, fingers sliding under her chin as he tilted her face up to his. “Pearl, if you don’t stop this, I swear, I’ll take you on the hall table.”
Those big, rough fingers that did such delicate surgery shook, and the tic in his jaw was back and working overtime. Daring him, she stared into his eyes, never once losing contact. With a lazy lick of her lips, Pearl slid her tongue from her mouth and along his nipple. Mmm, tasty!
There was a long, hanging pause as Rex preternaturally stilled, then a flurry of action as she was bodily moved, her skirt shoved to her waist and the brief lace of her panties torn away as he set her on the table.
“Has no one ever told you baiting bears is bad, Pearl?” His roughened voice worked over her skin, making her shiver as he wrenched her legs apart and forced his way between them. “Taunting the wildlife will only get you bitten.”
Pearl’s stomach clenched at the sound of the zipper in his pants being jerked down, and when he tugged her butt to the edge of the hall table and tested her readiness with a slow moving thumb and a primal growl, he found her wet and wanting.
“What’s the matter, Rex? Has Goldilocks gotten one over on Papa Bear?” Not letting him get the best of her with his superior strength, she teased him further. Leaning back on her arms, she tilted her head back and looked at him with hooded eyes.
The deep, dark rumble in his chest and the twist of his hips as he thrust into her made her scream. He was so thick and hard, the silken skin of his cock burning molten hot as he brutally pounded into her. Instinct had her reaching out for him. She wrapped her legs around his waist as the table rocked against the wall, and the small metal plate she used for her keys crashed to the ground with a resounding clang.
“Don’t start what you’re not going to be able to finish, Pearl.”
Moving harder and faster still, Rex drove into her, the scratch of the fabric of his pants and the zipper in his fly stinging against her inner thighs. What little there was left of her sanity said ouch, but the rest of her body and beast purred, enjoying the little bite of pain as it was deliciously pummeled by the being it had taken to mate.
Her stomach twisted tightly as her release raced up on her, and her breasts ached behind the pretty lace of her dress, unable to be eased. Big hands clenched into the flesh of her buttocks, the thick finger pressing against her anus sending more sensations spiraling through her system.
“Ready to come for me yet, Pearl?” The slurred heat in his words made her look up; Rex was having trouble speaking around a long pair of canines, his face pulled into a grimace of desire as he tried to keep a hold on his beast and still chase his own orgasm. Caught in his stare, beast to beast as their animals fought to come forth, she didn’t have a chance to deny him, to make him work harder for her release. Her back bowed, and the ripples of her orgasm shook her spine as she screamed; her nails elongated and raked through the thin cotton of Rex’s shirt, ripping the fabric and scoring him as the next wave hit her.
Rex powered through it all, his hips twisting and angling, hitting every hidden spot of pleasure in her pussy as he thrust and parried the roll of her hips. Moments later, the pain of his teeth sinking into her shoulder as he came sent her spinning back into the high that she’d hadn’t yet left behind.
Rex violently pushed himself away from her, and she gasped at the loss. Hurt rushed in, replacing desire as he swore vehemently and a cloud of blue sparkles surrounded him. In seconds, the man who’d just fucked her nearly into oblivion was gone, and in his place stood a very large, dark bear, rendered inky black in the dim hall lamp she left on to welcome her home when she went out at night.
“Rex?” The bear raised its nose and sniffed the air, and Pearl snapped her legs shut as he turned toward her with a grunt.
Mine! whispered through her brain ‑‑ she was certain she hadn’t said it, and a bear sure as hell couldn’t talk, so that left her with one option. Well, one option her post-sexual, hazed brain could come up with.
“Rex, can you talk to me in my mind…telepathy or something?” The bear nudged at the hall table and sent it rocking again, and Pearl grabbed hold with an anxious squeak.
Mine! This time the fluttering word was stronger, louder, more direct. The bear went back onto its hind legs and bracketed her the same way Rex just had. Mine! This time it was a veritable shout, and she winced.
“Okay, I get it, Rex, yours, okay? Yours.” A clammy nose, on top of a mouth of long, sharp teeth, sniffed its way up her shoulder, bullying its way into her hair and resting, cold and damp, behind her ear.
Take mine!
It took a second to register what the beast meant. “Ewww! Hell no!” Her loud shriek made Rex’s beast rear back, falling to four legs in the hallway again. “No way, Rex. No freaking way! I can get over the whole turning furry deal, I can get over near enough to Immaculate Conception, but there is no way on God’s green earth I’m doing an animal!” Pearl slid to the ground and held her hand out as Rex moved toward her again with a loud coughing grunt. “No, Rex. Nowhere, no way, no how. Never.” The bear took a step fo
rward, and she a step back. “N-E-V-E-R, Rex, never; do you hear me?”
The bear kept coming, and she kept time with it, one step backward to his step forward. Intense eyes bored into hers as the beast stalked her.
Mine!
When her legs hit something wooden with a thump, she tore her gaze away and started ‑‑ he’d herded her all the way into her bedroom and run her into the bed. A wet nose along her thigh got her attention back to where it shouldn’t have left, and with a yelp, she backed up onto the bed.
The bed creaked and groaned as Rex, still in his bear form, followed. Thankful that she’d forked out the extra cash for the solid wood antique, she kept moving back until she was pressed along the headboard.
Protect mine!
With that last thought, the bear slumped down beside her, his body effectively trapping her against the headboard so she couldn’t leave without him knowing about it.
Five minutes later, a loud grunting snore started up. Bears snored ‑‑ who knew?
Rex’s beast didn’t seem to be out to hurt her, but Pearl figured she was stuck for the duration. She managed to wiggle herself out of her pretty dress and draped it over her headboard; the delicate dress was a little worse for wear, but not damaged.
Trapped with nowhere to go until Rex’s beast let her, Pearl’s mind wandered as she drifted toward sleep, and her fingers twiddled in the fur that brushed against her, finding it silkier than she’d expected. All the while, the bear snored on. Typical bloody male; dead to the world after they get theirs, leaving us staring at the ceiling.
Pearl twisted herself around a little and snuggled into the furriest blanket she was ever likely to sleep against. I wonder if Rex snores when he’s not furry?
Good Lord, the father of my baby probably snores!
I can’t say I pictured that when I was imagining the Prince Charming who’d come and sweep me off my feet.
Damn, he’s noisy…can I live with a man that snores?
