The Children of the Moon

by Yvonne Robertson

  That brought a smile to her lips, “Then I will need to run every morning to get rid of my aggression.”

  He couldn’t stop the grin that split his face and she looked at him curiously, “Running is great...but sex is the most effective way to get rid of pent up aggression Imogen. A week or two locked away in a mountain cabin with me should turn you into a sweet, purring kitten,” he teased and she burst out laughing but the wave of heat that washed through her body turned her face pink and he fell back on the bed, pulling her on top of him,

  “I can hardly wait,” she whispered as he kissed her and her heart took off like a runaway train.

  Everyone was in place and it was time to leave. The mutt’s fresh scent was all around the woods. He had watched the partygoers do their worst on his phone and Kandis deserved an Oscar for her performance with Liam and the other wolves. Their staged fight was believable and they packed up the other tents, with Kandis refusing to budge, insisting she would stay there tonight on her own. Liam had thrown the equipment angrily into the truck and sped off leaving her there alone...it was perfect.

  Seann pulled Imogen towards him and kissed her lightly on the lips, “We think he will wait for a couple of hours to make sure the coast is clear and then he will make his move,” The compound is well patrolled and there will be two guards stationed outside the Den until we get back, Roisin will be here with you and India too, do something to keep your mind occupied, I promise we will be careful and I will let you know the minute it is over.”

  She had told him about the feelings of foreboding she sometimes had and was glad when he didn’t dismiss them out of hand. He promised to be extra careful and also to introduce her to an older pack member who rarely ventured out of her cabin now since her mate was killed a decade ago but who also used to have similar ‘visions’ of the future.

  “Do you know how to use a gun,” he asked suddenly and she nodded.

  “Yes, my father taught us when we were younger, just target practice but I know how to use it. My sister does too but India has an aversion to firearms.”

  He reached into a drawer on his nightstand and loaded a new clip into the 9mm pistol, clicked on the safety and handed it to her.

  “Just in case,” he kissed her again and was gone.

  She put the gun in her nightstand and went downstairs. India and Roisin were cleaning up the table from dinner and they waved away her offer of help.

  “I think I might bake to keep busy and kill time,” Imogen pulled out her mixer from the pantry and tied an apron around her waist.

  “Brownies?” India asked expectantly.

  “Sure, why not,” she smiled.

  An hour later she had two trays of cookies and a lemon sponge cooling on wire racks and slid two trays of brownies into the hot oven. She wiped the flour from her hands and washed them in the kitchen sink, calling over her shoulder to her sister.

  “India, I’m going upstairs to clean up a bit, keep your eye on the brownies, they should take about thirty minutes to cook.”

  “Sure, I’ll make some hot chocolate too,” she replied and Imogen went up to her room to change her shirt.

  She washed her face and discarded the floury t-shirt and opened her drawer to get another one. Her hand touched the pistol as she reached inside and she closed her eyes and wished that Seann would call or text to tell her it was over. The feelings of doom were stronger than ever and she pulled the clean shirt over her head and reached back into the drawer for the gun. She turned it over in her hand and knew she had to go find them. This feeling was just too strong to ignore.

  She hurried back downstairs and tucked the gun into her boot and took her jacket from the hook by the front door and zipped it up, pulling the collar up around her neck. She went into the kitchen, glad to see India was alone and whispered to her sister so that no one else in the house or the guards outside the door would hear her.

  “I’m going to find them, India. I need you to distract the two guard dogs so that I can sneak out the back door.”

  “No!” India raised her voice, “It’s too dangerous Imogen,”

  “Shhhh,” she put her finger to her lips, “I know in my gut something really bad is going to happen, the feeling is getting stronger by the minute, I need to warn them I think it could be a trap.”

  She raised the leg of her jeans to show her the pistol and India sighed but said nothing.

  India was torn but she trusted her sister’s instincts and took two mugs of hot chocolate and some cookies out onto the front porch for the guards to keep them away from the back of the house for a few minutes while Imogen made her escape.

  She crept around the side of the garage and across the grass at the rear of the Den as quietly as she could until she reached Roisin’s house. Her car was parked in front and like everyone else in the compound, her keys would probably still be in the ignition.

  Imogen said a silent prayer of thanks as her hand hit the jangling keyring and she released the parking brake and slid the car into neutral. She pushed the car down the slope away from the Den and Roisin’s house and jumped inside and closed the door as it gathered momentum. She waited a few more seconds and then gunned the engine as she reached the bottom of the lane and turned toward the exit.

  She had left her phone on the kitchen table, anyone would recognize the bright pink case and think she was nearby and she also suspected that Seann would have a tracker on it, it pissed her off but she understood he was only trying to protect her.

  She pulled her hood up and hoped the guards didn’t look too closely as they opened the gate. She didn’t recognize them and waved her hand as she passed through, hoping they would assume it was Roisin driving. She held her breath until she saw the gate closing again behind her in the rearview mirror and put her foot down hard as she raced toward the old campground.

  The fuel light flashed and beeped and she slapped her hand on the dashboard in frustration, she was almost out. She wriggled against the seatbelt and reached into the watch pocket of her jeans, pulling out a folded up twenty-dollar bill, her emergency stash.

  She turned off and drove at breakneck speed to the nearest gas station a few miles in the opposite direction. It was deserted apart from the young bearded cashier and she jumped out, leaving the door wide open and threw the twenty through the hatch and ran back to the car to begin pumping. The pump seemed to be mocking her as it turned slowly and she gave up after ten bucks worth and hung up the nozzle and jumped back in the car and swung out onto the road as she fastened her seatbelt. He got a good tip tonight.

  She passed the turnoff to the compound and pushed the pedal flat to the floor as she sped into the night, hoping she wasn’t too late. With no other traffic on the roads, she made it to the turnoff in under twenty minutes. She pulled over onto the side of the road, killed the engine and got out, she would walk the rest of the way, she wanted to be behind anyone that could be watching Kandis. She knew Seann and the others were around too but on the opposite side of the woods from where she was now.

  She crept through the thick foliage and knew she was going in the right direction as she could smell the campfire in the distance. Her enhanced sense of smell was a blessing but it was still too dark out here to use her superior eyesight or to hear from this far away.

  She heard the crunching twigs and swung around but she was too late to grab the gun and raised her hands to protect herself as the dark figure clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound as she instinctively called out for help. She struggled to get free, despite the futility of her situation as she was swung from side to side like a rag doll as he ran back towards the road with her held in one hand, the other hand clamped over her mouth.

  He dumped her in the trunk of a car and she saw a glimpse of teeth as he grinned and she started to scream. He was huge and she couldn’t see him properly in the dark but she didn’t recognize him but she knew instinctively that he was the mutt they were all out hunting for, she had just handed herself to him on a platte
r.

  ‘Imogen what have you done?’ She berated herself for foolishly coming out here against Seann’s wishes and screamed until her lungs hurt.

  She heard him curse as he opened the trunk again and as the weight of his fist hit her jaw and exploded in pain, her head spun and she closed her eyes willing herself not to pass out. She felt in her boot for the gun but it was gone.

  “Scream like that again and I will snap your neck,” he grabbed a handful of her hair and threw her back against the floor of the trunk and slammed it shut again and they started to move. She could hear him talking and realized there were two of them, she strained to hear what they were saying but the volume was cranked up on the radio and it drowned out their voices.

  ‘Think Imogen!’ She tried to ignore the pain in her jaw but she suspected it may be broken. She needed to leave clues for Seann and the other wolves but how.

  She rolled over onto her side and felt around the brake light housing, it was sealed but she needed to try and bust the casing. She wriggled around until her feet were pressing on the plastic shell and brought her foot up and kicked as hard as she could, it didn’t budge. She kicked it over and over again, each time a shooting pain in her face would leave her gasping but she kept on kicking until she felt it give way and the trunk was flooded with light as the plastic casing broke. She wriggled around again until she could get her hand inside and pulled the rest of the casing off. One more hard kick and the light went out as the bulb broke and the outer lens landed somewhere on the road.

  She pressed her face to the opening but everything was a dark blur. The driver didn’t seem to notice his lack of a tail light but he would when they stopped the car, she needed to think fast. She wriggled out of her boots and took off her socks, pushing one of them through the hole, Seann would pick up her scent easily but she only had one more sock and no way to know how long they would be driving.

  She felt in her pockets but the only thing there was Roisin’s car keys. She opened her jacket and pulled at the hem of her t-shirt, piercing it with the keys until she made a hole and then pulled with all her strength to rip a strip from the bottom. She bit on the piece of fabric until she ripped it into smaller pieces, rubbing them over her body to make sure her scent was strong and threw another one out of the hole every few miles.

  When the car slowed down to make a left turn she threw the car keys out onto the road pulled her boots on and zipped up her jacket in the limited space available. She was tossed around in the small space and knew they were on a dirt track somewhere with the bumps they went over. She threw out her second sock and her last lifeline and lay flat on her back to await her fate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Seann

  Kandis was still alone at the site and he had a terrible feeling in his gut about it. The mutt should have made his move by now. He shut off his phone and stripped off his clothes, he needed to do a perimeter run and see if he could sense anyone else out there. Why wasn’t he taking the bait?

  “Liam, go to the campsite and bring Kandis to meet the rest of the pack, the rest of you, let's check out the surrounding area for a couple of miles, something stinks around here and there is no sign of the mutt. Hope, Bree come with me, you two are our best trackers, let’s see what you can find.”

  The wolves stripped and shifted quickly and went tearing through the woods. They spread out in a ‘V’ formation with his sisters at either tip of it. He passed the outskirts of the campsite and a mile further out picked up on the mutt’s scent, he had been right here not too long ago, what made him change his mind? Did he sense the trap they had set for him or was he disturbed? He followed his scent as it got stronger and the moment he got a whiff of another scent he pulled up and raised his head high and howled.

  “Imogen!”

  She had been here only moments ago. What the fuck was she doing way out here in the woods and why!

  His sisters were by his side instantly and he could tell they picked up on her scent too.

  Kandis and Liam came through the clearing in human form and Seann shifted back quickly to explain but Kandis cut him off.

  “I can smell her, she was here until a few minutes ago with two others, both men,” she said as Seann snatched her phone from her and called the Den.

  Roisin answered tearfully on the first ring and he closed his eyes as she confirmed that Imogen had taken her car and gone looking for them. India had confessed to Roisin when she said her car had been stolen from her house.

  Why couldn’t she do what she was fucking told, just once!

  They found the car a mile further along the road but the keys were missing.

  Seann roared in anger and frustration and changed back in a flash and took off down the road like a demon-possessed. The other wolves followed suit and Hope and Bree struggled to keep up with their brother but he needed their tracking skills if they were to find her quickly.

  Bree picked up her scent in the middle of the road and followed closely, nose to the ground as she found first her sock and then a few miles later, a small scrap of fabric that reeked of Imogen, Hope picked up the second one and they took off down the road, clever girl, she was sending them a trail of crumbs to follow. They found a few more scraps and then the road forked off to the left. Did they keep going straight or did they follow the dirt track to the left? It was too dark to see tire tracks and it had started to rain meaning her scent was fainter here.

  Sniffing around, Bree found the keys and they took the left fork onto the dirt track road, seeing it as another sign and when she found the other sock ten minutes later, they knew they were on the right track.

  They regrouped under the cover of trees and four of the younger wolves stayed in wolf form to guard the others as they changed back to formulate a plan.

  Seann was furiously angry at his mate but he pushed it aside for now as his fear was greater still. If anything happened to her...he couldn’t finish the thought as the pain ripped through him.

  “Bree, Hope, go with Liam and track her scent, there are only a few cabins dotted around here, I suspect she is in one of them, stay back, we don’t want to alert them, report back as soon as you have something.” He was all business but his sisters could see his struggle and without comment they shifted on the fly and took off running, leaving Liam to follow behind them. If they encountered any trouble, Liam was one of his best fighters, he would keep his sister’s safe.

  “You two, go back to the campsite as fast as you can and bring back Roisin and Kandis’ vehicles here,” he said to two young men standing beside Kandis, “She may be hurt and we will need transport to get her back to the Den quickly.”

  They took off swiftly through the trees without another word and Seann turned back to the rest of the pack.

  “As soon as we have a location, I want you to spread out around the area, form a circle so that they can’t escape us. A few of you will come with me to rescue her but we need to know how many we are dealing with first, we don’t need any more surprises.”

  Bree was back within minutes and shifted back as she stopped in front of them.

  “They are in the first cabin on the other side of the small creek, there are three men inside, one of them is definitely the mutt but I don’t recognize the other two. Liam and Hope are watching to make sure they don’t leave. Imogen is in the trunk of the car parked outside, they have only been there for a short time but they may not be planning to stay around or they would have taken her inside.”

  His heart clenched and relief flooded through him, she was still alive for now.

  “Bree go back and keep watch, I will join you in a few minutes,” she changed mid-run and he couldn’t help but think his sister liked to show off her shifting speed when she was around the others.

  “You all know what to do, surround the building but stay back so that you don’t alert them. I will give you a few minutes to get into place and we will attack back and front door at the same time, take them alive if you can, but it’s not a priorit
y, kill to protect yourselves or other pack members but they are outnumbered by many, it should be straightforward.”

  Garrett placed a hand on his arm and they shared a moment before he broke the silence, “She will be okay, Seann,” he said under his breath and Seann nodded but his gut was twisted in pain.

  “She has to be, Garrett, I just can’t bear to see it any other way.”

  He clenched his jaw and barked out orders as the pack members dispersed and he turned back to Garrett, “Join Liam and guard the back door, my sisters will guard the only two windows on the sides of the cabin in case any of them try to escape that way and Kandis and I will take the front door.”

  Kandis grinned joyfully and shifted as she somersaulted through the air and Seann hoped he was making the right decision, she could fight better than most of his men and he suspected he may have kept her at a distance from the role she deserved because he didn’t like her, that wasn’t fair to her position in the pack.

  He shifted and they made their way stealthily down the hill to the cabin, ‘I’m coming for you Imogen, hold on just a little longer baby,’ he said silently and his wolf growled his approval, his wolf was in agony, his wolf was in love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Imogen

  Something jabbed her between the shoulder blades and she rolled over and reached for it, hoping it was something else she could push out of the light hole. Her hand closed around the pistol and she could have wept with relief, it must have fallen out when he tossed her in here. She tucked it back into her boot as the car slowed to a halt and the music abruptly stopped and two car doors opened and closed. She didn’t want to fire wildly; she would get her chance now that they had stopped.

  “She busted my fucking light,” she heard the second one say as the trunk opened and the first one reached in and grabbed her with one hand, pulling her out as if she weighed nothing.