Promise the Moon (Lorimar Pack Book 1)

by Hailey Edwards

  He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

  I couldn’t have stopped her from bounding over to him if I’d offered her a side of beef and promised she didn’t have to share.

  His broad fingers sifted dust as the joints bent, and the touch of his rock-solid flesh shocked me with its gentleness as he scratched behind her ears.

  “There’s my girl,” he rumbled with affection.

  The hollow maw that opened in my middle drew the wolf’s attention. Her warmth suffused me as clear as any hug, and she left Isaac kneeling in the grass to give me the space I needed to gather my focus.

  “This is it, kids.” I rose in the wolf’s mind. “Hold on to your butts.”

  Not a single wolf cracked a grin. Maybe they were nervous. No Jurassic Park fans? Who doesn’t love a good rampaging dinosaur movie?

  On soft paws, we picked our way through the pasture, down the incline and…we pulled up short.

  “The house is gone.” My head drooped on my neck. “Glamour. The girl concealed them using glamour.” Gods only knew what else they might be hiding. Weapons. Monsters. Dirty-diaper grenades. “And the one guy who can see through glamour doesn’t speak wolf.”

  The ground rumbled under my feet as the stone goliath came to a stop near my shoulder.

  “Can you see the house?” His whisper was the grating of sandpaper against metal. He waited for me to shake my head. “There are two young fae standing out front. I see children through the windows.”

  I bumped his elbow with my nose and regretted it an instant later when it smarted.

  “There are no weapons or wards I can see,” he said, gauging my expression to see if that’s what I meant. “From here, it looks like the two of them mean to take us all on.”

  I bobbed my head since I lacked the appendages to manage a thumbs-up.

  “Those kids are survivors.” Zed jostled me with his shoulder. “It won’t be that easy.”

  “Nothing ever is.”

  With our witch burned out, we had no way of cracking the glamour. That meant the kids inside were off-limits, and so were the prince and his girlfriend unless they stepped out of the protection of the spell. I was willing to bet that same protection wouldn’t stop the boy from using his power. Unless maybe…

  “We need to draw them out.” The pack listened with rapt attention while my wolf coiled with eagerness. “We can’t touch them inside the wards. We need to egg them on until they come out and fight us.”

  Breathing past the fear, I sank deeper into the wolf’s mind and let her take control. Her nostrils widened, and a canine grin spread her lips. We had left a trail yesterday, and it was an easy thing to follow. The heavy thud of Isaac’s next footfall landed on my heels. I whirled around and snapped at him. He rocked back. I started forward, he followed, and I bit the air near his ankles.

  “I guess I’ll wait here then,” he rumbled.

  The guy deserved a cookie. Too bad I didn’t have any. And honestly, after that earlier crack about the dark side, I would have eaten them already if I had. I’d been burning through calories at an alarming rate this week. My pants were looser, meaning I was expending more energy than I was replacing. I had to fix that, but not today.

  First we returned the prince to sender. Then I could eat my weight in hamburgers and chili cheese fries.

  Leaving Isaac behind set off a twinge in my chest. He was a big boy, though, and could take care of himself. Right now his stone exterior made his skin impenetrable, which was a far cry from vulnerable warg hide. We might have super healing on our side, but you had to be alive before that was effective.

  The perimeter of the glamour sliced my scent off between one breath and the next, and the push of its compulsion was a physical shove against my senses.

  Turn back. Go home. Save yourselves before it’s too late.

  The pack fanned out around me, sniffing their way along the invisible border. After trotting a few careful circles, we had a trail marked that we could follow without the risk of ramming into the barrier. Now it was time to get busy.

  “Draw them out.” I whirled in a tight circle. “Watch your backs.”

  The bruised sky overhead boiled, a cauldron ready to bubble over onto us at any moment.

  Minutes ticked past as the wolves rounded the house, howling, snarling and snapping. The fae hidden inside remained that way. None of them rose to take the bait. The sun sank lower, and the sick realization dawned that this had to be wrapped up before nightfall. Running errands for the Seelie today wouldn’t earn us sympathy from the Unseelie tonight.

  Abandoning the front line, I dashed into the grass and lured our secret weapon onto the playing field.

  An audible gasp rose over my head—way, way over my head—when Isaac tromped along beside me, sparkles flecking his skin.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I lifted my head and sniffed the air. “They’re evacuating the kids.”

  “How do you figure?” Zed trotted up next to me. “They can’t get past us.”

  “What do you think a siren is?” I flicked my ears forward.

  The scrawny wolf cocked his head toward me. “A badass mermaid who sings men to their deaths?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought too.” I gazed skyward. “Except they’re not. They’re half man or half woman and half bird. Same goes for our princely alkonost.”

  “Shit on a shingle.” His head tilted back, and his nostrils flared. “The girl is casting glamour over the boy while he flies the kids out of harm’s way so we can’t track them.”

  “That’s my guess.” I huffed out a breath. “Isaac doesn’t speak wolf. I’m going to have to shift and talk to him.”

  “You’re burning yourself out,” he warned. “You may not be able to shift back.”

  “Don’t worry. I have an idea.” More dangerous words I had never spoken.

  Curling in on myself, I let the change sweep me away on the tides of pain as magic shoved me back into my human skin. I gritted my teeth and fought off the agony tingling in my limbs to sit up faster than I should have. My head sloshed, and I would have fallen over if not for the mountain at my back.

  It said a lot about how all-consuming the change was that I hadn’t heard his approach. Having your skin inverted while every bone in your body breaks will do that.

  I was still panting when his rough fingers spread his flannel shirt across my shoulders. “Th—” I clamped my mouth shut before I thanked him yet again. Seriously. Did fae have to adhere to such bass-ackward rules of engagement? “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem.” His moss-and-earth fragrance surrounded me. Nice, but not as soothing as the smell of smelting metal. “I’m guessing you figured out what he’s doing.”

  “You knew?” I glared up at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “He was careful.” Isaac pointed at the tree line beyond the house. “He flew low and straight into the woods. From this angle, I couldn’t see him at first. I had just spotted him when you started screaming.” The grating sound of his hand forming fists drew my attention. “You’re wearing thin, Dell.”

  “I’m—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re fine,” he snarled as viciously as any warg. “The change hurts. I get that. I wish to God I could fix it for you, but I can’t, and you wouldn’t want me to anyway. But this? You’re burning your candle at both ends, and you’re almost out of wick.”

  “Tell me when the boy circles back.” I eased my tender arms through the sleeves of Isaac’s shirt and buttoned it over my chest. Couldn’t have the wild, naked woman scaring the kids, could we? “We can’t keep chasing our tails.”

  A few minutes later, Isaac grunted. “He’s landing on the roof.”

  “Good.” I stood. “Time to go stir the pot.”

  “Dell…”

  “We need him to expose himself or this is never going to work.” I jogged toward the track the wolves had flattened with their pacing. “Hey, you. Prince Tiberius. I know you’re there, and I kno
w what you’re doing. You might as well come down here so we can talk like civilized people.”

  Isaac trudged to my side, softly documenting the prince’s movements under his breath so I could keep track of what I couldn’t see.

  “You’re hardly civilized,” a richly accented voice called from a great height. “You’re a beast in woman’s clothing.”

  “Now, now.” I clucked my tongue. “Let’s not resort to name-calling, particularly since I am half wolf and don’t really care what half a Thanksgiving turkey thinks of that.”

  “Why did you have to do this? Why can’t you leave us alone?” He sounded more tired than angry. “Forget you found us. We’ll go. All of us will be gone before nightfall.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.” I worried one of the buttons on my shirt. “You barbequed half the town and kidnapped innocents. I can’t let that pass.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Necessary, huh?” A great many evils had been committed with nothing but that whisper-thin reasoning shoring up the horrifying acts that followed. “Want to explain how you managed to target those locations with precise lightning strikes?”

  “No,” he clipped out without hesitation.

  So much for the easy way. The prince had opted for the hard way. “Your aunt, Rilla, visited us earlier today.”

  The prince waited so long to speak I had Isaac confirm he hadn’t flown the coop before continuing.

  “She wants you to come home. She’s threatening to harm me and mine if I don’t turn you in. Once we’re out of the way, she plans to come for you herself.”

  “Rilla is not my aunt.”

  The urge to roll my eyes was strong. “Sure, kid.”

  Wishing away relatives didn’t work. If it did, I’m pretty sure people would be vanishing left and right like one of those Left Behind movies.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Isaac murmured. “Can you distract him?”

  “Give me a minute.” I raked the hair out of my eyes. “He’s about to get so pissed he can’t see straight. You can make your break then.”

  “Don’t get yourself killed.” His fingers brushed mine, warm and soft. He had released his magic and his grip on his stone façade since brute force was getting us nowhere.

  “Same goes for you,” I grumbled. “Cam would slay me if you got murdered.”

  Losing Isaac meant dealing with this kid blind, which was not my favorite way to conduct business by a long shot.

  “Why did you do it?” I indicated the house and the pasture. “Why leave Faerie for this?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Did your family not approve of your choice in girlfriend?”

  “Leave her out of this,” he hissed.

  “She wasn’t good enough for the Seelie prince, was she? She’s nobody, and you could be king of Faerie one day.” Sooner rather than later if his family had any say in the matter. “You had to know they wouldn’t let you two skip off into the sunset together.”

  “We escaped. I carried her through the portal to safety. We were building a life here. A new life, free of the houses and away from the courts.”

  “They let you go.” My heart broke for him. “They wanted you to sow your wild oats, but things got too serious. Right? You’re bonding to your girlfriend. They won’t let that happen.”

  “She’s a better woman than I deserve.” The strength of his conviction pounded against my eardrums.

  “Your aunt doesn’t seem to think so.” I hated poking the kid, but I had no choice. “She wants the relationship to end. Like yesterday.”

  “No.”

  Warmth trickled down my neck, one eardrum blown from the force of that one word. My fingers came away crimson when I dabbed at my throat. “You’re royalty. You don’t get a say. You were born into this.”

  “What do you know of life in Faerie, dog?” he snarled. “Your world is free. Your people are free. You lack imagination sufficient enough to render Faerie in all her clarion glory in your worst nightmares. You will never understand what it is to be born common and raised to great heights. I was not born for this. I was made into this.”

  “I understand better than you might believe.” Not so long ago, I was just another wolf in the pack. Now I had a title, power, and all the burdens that went with them. “Okay, so you were elevated in the ranks. That means you had to have fought for your position. You must have wanted it. You had to have understood what would be required of you.”

  “I thought gaining power meant earning the right to make my own decisions.” His voice went soft, a single note of agony that shredded my soul. “I was wrong, and she will pay the price for it if you don’t allow me to remain by her side.”

  A woman’s high shriek rent the air, jagged lightning forking across the sky in a furious blast, and the glamour burst like a bubble, exposing the stone house and the half bird, half man perched on the roof. The circling wolves froze midstep to gawk up at him.

  From the waist down, Tiberius resembled a golden eagle, complete with feathers covering his muscular haunches and vicious talons capping the ends of his wide, scaled feet. He was man from the navel up, all rippling abs and rock-hard pecs, but he sported great brown wings threaded with gold instead of arms, and each appendage was longer than I was tall.

  “Leandra,” he breathed and launched into the sky.

  “Isaac has the girlfriend,” I told the pack. “This is about to get ugly fast. Do not attack without provocation.”

  I set off at a run through the grass, wolves on my heels. I shoved the brush aside and stumbled into the forest onto a scene that dropped my gut down into my toes.

  Gone was Isaac’s human face. In its place, a granite likeness stared down the prince with flat eyes that gave away no emotion. One gray hand wrapped around the girl’s throat. He could crush her neck with a flex of his fingers, and Tiberius’s utter stillness confirmed his fear Isaac might twitch.

  I gestured the pack back into the pasture to keep tensions from rising any higher.

  “Release her,” Tiberius pleaded. “I will do anything, grant you any boon. Don’t harm her.”

  The monolith’s expression softened as much as it was able. “A drop of your blood. Give me that, and I will release her.”

  “Done.” Tiberius wet his lips, gaze darting to Leandra, then went to greet Isaac with his arm extended. “Take all you need.”

  Gemini, being long gone from Faerie, weren’t a thing the prince should be familiar with. He must have thought Isaac was a gargoyle or other shifter with a stone heart. But he was wrong. And I think he realized that too late to stop Isaac from extending his spur and piercing the meat of the prince’s palm. The scent of bright pennies teased my nose as Isaac released both the girl and his monolith aspect in tandem.

  Leandra flung herself into the prince’s winged embrace, and he cradled her against his chest as though she were the most precious thing in the entire world—both of them.

  “You have to go home,” I told him gently. “My job is to prevent war between Earth and Faerie, and that means sending you back where you came from.”

  “You can’t stop what’s coming.” He spoke against Leandra’s hair. “No one can.”

  “I kind of figured. That won’t stop me from attempting to hold back the tide. I’m sorry.”

  The girl turned sad eyes on me. “So are we.”

  The not-so-happy couple vanished right before my eyes. Gone in a blink. Damn it. Dirt and leaves churned on the forest floor as the prince blasted—invisible—through the canopy.

  Over our heads, thunder rolled in what sounded like deep-throated amusement.

  That was not natural.

  “I don’t get paid enough for this.” Isaac grunted. “Stand back.”

  I whirled on him and gaped at his transformation. Wings in place of arms. Talons in place of feet. Feathers covered him from the waist down, raising all sorts of interesting questio
ns I would never ask out loud.

  Air churned by his wings blasted debris into my eyes and sent my hair flying as Isaac leapt for the sky. I brought my fist to my mouth and bit down until I tasted blood to keep from calling him back. Fear had me tasting bile. How easy it would be for that turbulent storm to strike him down for good. How quickly I could lose him again. For good this time.

  “How long can he keep that up?” Zed leaned his weight against my thigh.

  “I don’t know.” Isaac was famous for his stunning recalls, the details he drew from the blood of his donors, but borrowed magic only lasted a short while, and he had already held the monolith’s form too long for this to be wise on his part. “We have to be ready if…”

  If he fell.

  Forcing my body to shift hurt like hell, and I blacked out for my trouble.

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but Zed stood watch over me until I could stand on shaky legs.

  “You’re an idiot.” He bared his teeth. “You’re going to get yourself killed being stupid one day.”

  “I love you too.” I bumped my head under his chin then turned toward the pack. “Nathalie and Aisha, keep an eye on that house. Don’t let anyone in or out, no matter how rosy their cheeks.” I glanced at the others. “Job and Moore, you’re with us.” I locked gazes with Abram. “Head home. Fast. Get the exam room prepped, ’cause we’re gonna need it.”

  The wolf pressed down on me, shutting me up and taking over with tracking instincts sharper than I could ever hope to possess. We ran in the direction Isaac had gone until the breath sawed from my lungs, and a pain in my side made each stride a challenge. There was no scent trail to follow, and they had a head start. I couldn’t see them. I’m not sure how the wolf knew where to go, but I didn’t question her. I didn’t have any better ideas anyway.

  Miles glided past under my paws, and I kept pushing despite my heart’s efforts to beat out of my chest. I didn’t spot the quarreling alkonosts until after I heard their piercing duet. Meaning at some point the aerial skirmish gaining amplification had short-circuited the prince’s glamour.