Birthright (Pale Moonlight Book 1)

by Marie Johnston

  The man assisted the girl to her car, helping her into the backseat. Maggie broke into a run, slamming him into the door, using his body to shut it.

  Porter jumped out, rushing to the scuffle.

  A sickening thud rang through the night. The guy’s head rebounded off the car. He tried struggling, but was no match against another species. Maggie dragged him off the car and slammed him to the ground. She waited until he tried to rise to aim her boot for a kidney shot.

  Porter winced; the man groaned. He scanned the parking lot, but Maggie had moved fast and efficiently. Her and the male were hidden between two vehicles.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Porter skidded to a halt behind Maggie.

  Her head whipped around. “I don’t believe it,” she hissed.

  Looking into the car, he saw the young girl in a passed out heap across the seat.

  “He was going to rape her,” Maggie answered.

  Porter jerked his attention back to Maggie who held the man down, stuffing a rag into his mouth. “And you know this how?”

  Yanking the man’s head up, she firmly gripped his hair. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He tried shaking his head, but Maggie reached deep between his legs, grabbing a fistful of man junk. “He hunts them, searching for the ones who are alone. After he slips something into their drink, he waits for them to decide they don’t feel good and need to go home. Then he abuses them and they rarely remember. If they do, they have nothing to tell the cops.”

  She squeezed her hand and twisted. The guy squealed. Porter closed his stance like he needed to protect his own package.

  Leaning down, she twisted his hair in her fist, whispering in his ear. “Guess you’re not getting away with this one.”

  A snap of her other fist into his temple and he hung limp.

  Porter stood, dumbfounded. His protective instincts held him in place, masking her so passersby didn’t witness her violence.

  Maggie pulled out the man’s phone and dialed 9-1-1, leaving the phone open, not answering the dispatcher’s questions. She ripped open his shirt and produced a black marker from her hoodie.

  “What are you doing?” Porter exclaimed. He hadn’t sensed crazy from her, but he didn’t know how else to categorize what he’d just seen.

  She threw him a dirty look over her shoulder. “Why’d you follow me?”

  “I wanted to make sure you got home okay.” Not a total lie.

  Speaking around the marker cap she held between her teeth, she said, “I will once you go away.”

  She scrawled “I drug girls and rape them” over the man’s chest.

  Succinct.

  “Not a chance. I gotta hear this story.” Her precise, determined scrawls…he believed the guy had done exactly what she wrote.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Maggie opened the car door and checked on the girl’s breathing before closing her back in. Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “That’s my cue to get out of here.” She pulled her hood farther down and trotted back to her car.

  He kept pace. “How many times have you done this and what about the cameras?”

  “I repeat, none of your business. As for the cameras, they’re pretty sketchy. Details are hard to read. All they know is two dudes jumped the pervert and beat him until police arrived. The police will half-heartedly investigate because they’ll discover much more interesting evidence on Wally Donaldson.”

  “No way anyone’s going to believe you’re male. If your sweater covered your ass, maybe, but your thighs inspire men to think about…things…”

  Maggie’s step stalled when she caught the meaning behind his words. She recovered, apparently unconcerned about her disguise epically failing. “It won’t matter.”

  She jumped in the driver’s seat and pulled away. He stood, waiting. When her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, he grinned and waved. The engine roared as she stepped on the gas.

  If Maggie thought she was getting away that easily…

  Porter ran to his car, and like before, he tailed her home.

  ***

  Her thighs inspired him. Maggie harrumphed. Her thighs.

  She wasn’t dying to know if they conjured the same passionate images in him as his hard body in those loose carpenter jeans did for her. She wasn’t.

  Just like she wasn’t parked in her spot at her apartment building, staring at the steering wheel, pondering what Porter imagined her thighs doing to him.

  Enough of this!

  Grabbing her clothing, she climbed out and headed for the stairwell.

  And stopped.

  She sniffed.

  Shifters. Male.

  Not Porter. Where his scent curled around her belly, igniting a fire in her nether region she’d never experienced, this scent robbed her of heat. Filled her with dread—and fear.

  The underground parking garage set up the perfect environment for hiding. She’d never worried before. All the complex’s occupants were human. Very few humans overpowered a shifter, even one who literally didn’t know her own strength.

  The stairwell door flew open and a hulking form barreled out—straight for her.

  Maggie tossed her armload in his face and kicked out. Her foot nailed his abdomen, earning her a grunt from the giant male. His forward momentum continued, but she danced out of his way…into another solid body.

  Instinct snapped her elbow up into the male’s face. He sputtered and gagged; he was so tall, she’d nailed his Adam’s apple.

  The first assailant landed a blow to her stomach. She cried out, but couldn’t double over because, despite her brutal hit, the second giant held her ponytail in his steel trap of a grip.

  “Signal Dugger to bring the van around.”

  Maggie’s organs throbbed. How large was that male’s fist? She writhed, thrashed, screeched. A hand clamped over her mouth and she took great pleasure in biting a finger to the bone, blood pooling in her mouth.

  “You bitch!” The hulk shoved her into the other goliath who grabbed her by the forearms. Maggie sprayed him with her mouthful of blood.

  He yanked her close to rasp in her ear. “You’ll regret that.” He stiffened, as if suddenly aware of something. She used the opening to fight with every muscle fiber she had. It did no good. He was giant.

  The shifter with the ravaged digit stilled. “Denlan.”

  With a sudden spike of hope, she sensed him, too. A barreling force of rage shoved into the man holding Maggie captive, throwing them both forward several feet. She fell free and rolled away.

  Wrestling between the two giant shifters was a flurry of sheetrock mud-stained clothing.

  She never thought she’d be grateful the insistent male followed her. As ferociously as he fought, he was outnumbered, wasn’t going to last long against the two shifters. As broad and cut as his body was, he was outmuscled.

  Maggie waited, prepared to make her move. Porter ripped off one assailant, who stumbled back.

  She jumped behind him and slammed her hands on each side of his head, a brutal double blow to his sensitive shifter ears. He yelled out, throwing his hands to his head, but she jerked him back, using the same move she’d used on Wally.

  Head met car frame.

  Unlike with Wally, she used her full strength. A knock on the head won’t kill her kind. The shifter slumped against the window and slid to the ground. Maggie stomped him in the face—just to be thorough.

  Porter sat astride the second assailant, fists wailing, getting bucked around like he was on a prizewinning bull. The other shifter was too brawny for Porter to knock him out before he was overpowered.

  Maggie raced behind Porter, placing a well-aimed kick on the prone male’s testicles.

  The howl of agony straight from a werewolf horror movie ricocheted off the concrete walls. Porter hugged both arms around the male’s thick neck and yanked to the side. Bone-cracking gave way to spooky silence, except for Maggie’s jagged breathing.

 
Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod. Two bodies sprawled like they were dead. Their heads were still attached; they’d heal.

  Porter jumped up and grabbed her arm, dragging her behind him. “They were sent by Seamus.”

  She pulled against him. “There’s a…a Dugger somewhere still around.”

  “Not anymore,” Porter said grimly.

  “Oh. Okay…Did you kill him?” Would she care?

  In the dim lighting, Porter’s masculine, harsh features appeared deadlier than the two hulks who attacked her. Hulk Squared. Or would it be cubed? She hadn’t the pleasure of meeting Dugger.

  “No, but all three of them deserve it. I recognized the van from Seamus’ team. He didn’t notice me until I punched through the window and clobbered him. You were correct about my weapons. A hammer worked just fine.” Porter’s triumphant snicker…turned her on. Now was not the time.

  Porter dragged her out into the night. A white van with a shattered driver’s window idled in front of the closed garage doors. Dugger spilled into the passenger seat, a thick shoulder visible above the window. Porter reached in and grabbed his trusty hammer. His beat-up single cab pickup was parked down the street, and they quickly made their way to it.

  “What did they want with me?”

  “To kill you, probably.”

  She squeezed his hand tighter, the news of a kill order out on her stifled her fierce independence. Wally had nothing on even one of her three attackers. Porter stroked her palm with his thumb. It was both reassuring and sensual. She didn’t want him to stop.

  “Shouldn’t we behead them or something?” Maggie hopped into the passenger seat and locked the door as soon as Porter shut it behind her.

  Killing a living, breathing body while it lay unconscious did not sit well with her code of ethics. But getting chased by three Hulks was not what she wanted to experience. Then there were her instincts screaming at her to do something to keep them from attacking another innocent again. She knew the feeling well; it propelled her after sexual predators like Wally.

  Porter slid into his seat, draped an arm over the wheel, and faced her. “Have you ever killed anyone before, Maggie?”

  She shook her head.

  “Even if we could behead them and load their dead bulk into their van before any one of them regains consciousness, it’d be difficult to do without being noticed.” He punched the truck into drive and sped away. “And I don’t care to have a price on my head. Killing three shifters from Seamus’ pack would be more than enough reason for him to justifiably be rid of me—and be the hero for it.”

  “What’s the whole colony-clan thing? Is Lobo Springs a clan or a colony?”

  Porter took his attention off the road to gape at her. “You really were raised human.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “That’s why I said it.”

  Porter maneuvered through traffic until he found a quiet street and parked. He turned to face her. “What do you know about shifters?”

  Embarrassingly little, and Maggie had hoped to avoid revealing her lack of knowledge of her own species. “We’re stronger, faster, our senses are acute. We can be killed by beheading, burning, or silver, otherwise we can live centuries.”

  Maggie’s mom was already making plans for them to move, fretted they had stayed too long. Since money didn’t grow on the lilac bushes in her mom’s backyard, it was easier said than done. Maggie couldn’t claim to be helpful. She didn’t want to leave.

  His dark gaze bored into her. “Anything else?”

  Lost in his captivating eyes, she blinked. If he was searching for more, he was only going to be disappointed.

  His voice dropped an octave. “What do you feel around me, Maggie?”

  “Forward much?” she huffed. Like she was going to tell him that the word horny was an understatement as soon as she’d met him. “I only met you a few hours ago; why would I feel anything?”

  Laugh lines that didn’t get much use crinkled with smugness. “It’d only take a second to know.” He leaned across the console. “Tell me what you felt when I walked into the store.”

  She should cringe back against the window, but to her horror she drifted toward him, mesmerized by his lips. They were moving, but she didn’t hear him. Blood pounded between her ears, screaming “kiss me!”

  Then three words broke through the din. “You’re my mate.”

  Maggie reared back, knocking her head on the passenger window. “Ouch! What?”

  Porter chuckled ruefully. He was one of the lucky ones to find his mate so early. At only fifty-four, he was quite young in shifter years. Maggie sat next to him, proof that going feral from a lack of the mating bond wasn’t in his future. He wasn’t going to turn into Seamus, calculating and cruel.

  “Mate?” She sputtered, shaking her head like he was insane.

  “You felt it. If I did, you did.”

  “And then what? I’m supposed to rush off and marry you because you said we belong together?”

  Fuuuck. The urge to shake Armana was unrelenting. She was Maggie’s only connection to their world, and she’d failed to school Maggie on any of it.

  “Yes,” he said, evenly. “Shifters don’t marry. Mating is so much deeper.”

  He stopped at Maggie’s snigger. “I’ll bet. Deeper.”

  His pupils must’ve flared at the image she conjured for him because she fell silent.

  “Shifters can go crazy and die if they don’t meet their mates. We call it going feral. Our mates are our world. Without them we cannot live.” He let his words sink in.

  “I’m not in the mating mood.”

  He leisurely inhaled and cocked a brow. Her face flushed red.

  “You know what I mean. I’m not thinking about mating, or anything else,” she shot him a pointed glare, “until I’m not being hunted.”

  Fine. If she wanted to avoid the mating topic, he’d let it drop. Porter studied his mate. “I have no idea what Armana was thinking when she took off with you, when she failed to teach you our ways.”

  If Maggie had been in her wolf form, her hackles would’ve raised. “She was thinking of keeping her surviving son and daughter alive.”

  “Ignorance does not protect.”

  “Says the male here asking for my help, the girl who was raised human.”

  Touché. He pulled back into traffic, heading nowhere, but a moving target was harder to hit. “Did Armana at least teach you that females respect their males, obeying them explicitly?”

  “Now I know you’re full of shit. There’s no way Ma was a good little housewife.” Her voice held more than a touch of fondness.

  He couldn’t help but smile, something he seemed to do frequently around her. “I’m joking, but only about that. To answer your question, packs are like families that make up clans; clans form a colony. It was basically whoever could get along together built their houses around each other, forming a town. Lobo Springs has six clans. A small town among human standards, but a sizeable congregation of shifters.”

  Maggie nodded as if she’d think about it later and switched topics. “Where are we going?”

  “To find a place to catch some sleep.” The adrenaline rush from discovering Dugger to Maggie’s attempted abduction had faded. The previous day had been long and tiring: his profession and friend threatened, fixing his tire, tracking down Maggie. She was in his truck, safe for now, and he wanted only to curl up with her. Not that she’d allow it judging from her reaction to the news she belonged to him.

  Maggie gasped, looking around. “My purse! Do you have a phone? I need to call Ma. I’ll give you the address, you need to head there.”

  “Sorry, Maggie. If they found you, they know where she is and could be waiting for us.” He tossed her his phone. “Call and warn her, but we can’t go over there.”

  Maggie stared blankly at the phone. He sensed her worry. She keyed in her mom’s number, and waited tensely.

  “Ma,” her relief was palpable. “Listen, some shifters tried to kidnap me. You n
eed to find somewhere else to stay for a while.”

  Porter picked up her mom’s calm words. “Tell me everything.”

  Had she been expecting it, thought it was inevitable Maggie would get dragged back into their world? Or was she a cool duck under pressure, like her daughter?

  “Three huge shifters were waiting for me at home after work.” Interesting. Did Armana not know about Maggie’s extracurricular vigilante activities? “No, we didn’t kill them.”

  “We?” Armana picked up on that right away.

  “Denlan. Porter Denlan helped me fight them off, says they’re from Lobo Springs.”

  There was silence on the other end before her mom acquiesced. “The Denlans were a good pack, came from a good clan.”

  “Ma?” Maggie glanced at him, then tilted her head down, like it would keep him from hearing her next words. “He says he’s my mate.”

  More silence. Served Armana right for keeping her daughter in the dark.

  “Go with your gut, Maggie.”

  Go with your gut? She keeps Maggie’s biology and birthright from her and then says that? What the fuck?

  “Be safe, Ma.”

  “I got away once, I’ll get away again. Maggie…stay away from Lobo Springs. Only death waits for you there.”

  “Armana,” Porter raised his voice so she heard him clearly, “Jace is with the West Creek Guardians. Go find him and start talking.” Especially about why she fled. Her ominous warning to Maggie suggested it was more than from losing her mate and child and being in mourning.

  “Jace is a Guardian?” Armana sounded stunned…and proud.

  “West Creek is just across the river.” Maggie held the phone out so they could have a shifter conference call. “Even if they follow you, these Guardians won’t allow them to hurt you, would they?”

  No, but if Porter was Jace, he might let them.

  “I will go. Denlan.” Armana barked, her voice full of authority. “You will take my daughter there.”

  “Lobo Springs needs her, Armana. Your sudden departure left the colony open to a hostile takeover.”