Blue Moon

by Angela Colsin

  Grumbling, Cade added, “I only saw him briefly before he took off running when I showed up and Brady tried to turn his gun on me.”

  Leo thought about that for a moment. “You get a scent?”

  Like wolves, lupines had enhanced senses, and that of smell was no different. “Yeah,” Cade replied, “but I'll have to come back later because I can't catch it now. Too much . . . blood.”

  He couldn't help the way he'd spoken the word because a good bit of that blood was his father's.

  Leo nodded, glancing over at the body of the big, blonde haired Alpha, and he let a feral growl. “Brady, you stupid fuck.”

  Then he looked at Cade and asked, “You shoot him?”

  “Yeah. Dad was already down, and Brady caught wind of me too late. He turned around and aimed, but I tackled him to the ground before he could fire. We struggled, and I got the gun and turned it on the son of a bitch.”

  Leo gave an approving nod. “How'd you find out about him anyway?”

  “Overheard Brandon talking to Hobbs at The Brickhouse.”

  Realization dawned on Leo's face when he asked, “Didn't Brady owe Brandon money?”

  “Yeah, and he was pissed, so I heard every word he said. He told Hobbs that Brady got shitfaced drunk and started promising he'd pay what he owed as soon as he could win his money back, but it might take time with that Hodgins asshole sniffin' around. Brandon didn't know what that meant, thought it was just drunken gibberish.”

  Leo began to nod, his expression a mix of anger and grief over the discovery, gaze turning out across the scenery.

  Braddock's Field was a part of an old estate that used to be a plantation during the early nineteenth century. Now, it was mostly fields with an old mansion settled at the northern most corner of the property which had since fallen into disuse.

  It was a wide open space well suited for a lupine interrogation—or a murder.

  As Cade continually went over everything in his head again and again, trying to figure out what he could've done right to save Henry, Leo mentioned, “I wouldn't be surprised if the lupine Henry brought up here was in line with Brady all along, Cade, that he led your father to Brady on purpose.”

  The suggestion only redoubled Cade's anger as he promised, “When I find him, he pays in blood.”

  Leo nodded in approval just as a police officer stepped over toward them. Cade didn't look up at the human, more interested in considering his vengeance as the officer addressed him.

  “We need to ask you a few questions before too much longer, sir.”

  Cade didn't give any confirmation that he'd even heard the officer. He only turned to his side and pushed himself up from the grass. Leo followed, standing while Cade finally responded on a gruff tone of voice.

  “So ask.”

  A while later, Cade was standing next to his father's truck. The coroners had arrived and were loading the body bag carrying Henry Hodgins into the back of their van while Cade watched silently.

  He couldn't feel anything in that moment. Somehow, it was more like someone else was in the bag, not his father. Things still hadn't settled in completely, but he knew they would the moment he brought this news home to his family.

  He stared down at the phone in his hand. Cade hadn't even tried to call them due to a single thought chilling his blood.

  Many lupines became ill and died when they lost their mate. Would Cade have to endure loosing his mother too?

  Leo was giving him a concerned look from where he stood on the dirt path nearby. Cade knew he was there, but he hadn't said more than two words since the police had asked their questions.

  Every officer at the scene was human, and for that reason, Cade and Leo weren't as forthcoming with their story as they may have been otherwise. But Leo himself was retired from the force, and there were lupine officers still working that he knew personally.

  He'd get into contact with one later and give a more detailed description of the events if only so anything suspicious could be hidden more easily. If it weren't for having some of their kind in high places, it would be much harder for the pack to exist in a human society.

  After so much silence passed between them, Leo finally spoke up. “I wanna be there when you tell your mother about this. Hell, I introduced Rose to Henry to begin with.”

  “I'm going over to see her first thing,” Cade replied. “You can follow me there.”

  “All right,” Leo agreed, then asked, “but what about you, Cade? Can I do anything for you?”

  “You can back me up.”

  “Back you up?”

  Cade faced Leo, a determined look in his steel blue eyes. “I'm gonna take up the role as Alpha of Arkin City. Then I'm gonna find the bastards running those fights and stop them.”

  Leo seemed to approve completely, reaching out his hand without hesitation. Cade looked down at it, then grasped it in a firm hold.

  “You and your siblings have always been like my own,” Leo informed him. “You know that. So I'll back you up no matter what, Cade. I swear it on the sake of the pack.”

  Though he'd just been betrayed by the Alpha, Cade knew Leo's words weren't empty. He would support Cade the entire way.

  Cade killed Brady, even if it had been with a cowardly gun—a weapon their kind disliked using because it made things too easy. But no matter the means, it was Cade's rightful place to take up the role of leading the pack now.

  He would do it come hell or high water, regardless of who challenged him for the position—if any did. Then he'd find those responsible for the fights that Brady was betting on and put them under too.

  They'd pay for everything.

  Chapter 1

  Highway 33, South Carolina

  One Year Later

  “I think it's official, Ashley. You've entered the boonies.”

  Ashley Passmore was on her way to Atlanta in a two door sedan with a few bags of luggage packed into the trunk. It was getting close to sunset on a long stretch of two lane highway leading through Nowhere, South Carolina as she'd come to call it.

  Originally from North Carolina, Ashley was hoping to start some place new, or more specifically, a place where her father couldn't interfere in her life. She was optimistic about it—well, until she'd taken a wrong turn after leaving a fast food joint that evening at least. Sadly, my sense of direction is stereotypical of a woman.

  Thankfully, her phone was GPS capable, but that wasn't helpful when she wound up losing her signal, which the device was now stubbornly displaying.

  Groaning, Ashley settled it in an empty cup holder and started watching the signs on the road. The last she'd checked, the highway she was on would lead her into Georgia near a few small towns, so at least she was heading to the right state.

  The countryside road offered nothing to look at, just trees on both sides for as far as the eye could see. Here and there, she drove over a bridge that allowed passage across small streams, and finally, passed a sign that read Morgansville – 5 Miles and Burston – 7 Miles.

  “Hopefully they have coverage from my provider,” she muttered, figuring she was just about to cross into Georgia. Then she heard her phone beeping, and glanced down.

  “Oh, they do!” she exclaimed in a mock fashion, lifting the device.

  Ashley watched the road while simultaneously eyeing the map. Her car began to slow as she worked to plot the course, hoping the route wouldn't be too complicated.

  As the phone brought up the directions she needed, Ashley began to look for a place to pull over on the side of the road so she could read them. She spied a good spot up ahead on a bit of grass, and began to slow down.

  Just as she was coming toward it, several large canines came running from the woods and onto the roadway in front of her car. What the hell?

  It happened too fast to get a proper look, allowing Ashley just enough time to grab the wheel in both hands and turn to avoid hitting them, moving too fast to hit the brakes alone.

  The car began to jerk, and she
felt a hard bump in the road—or was she on grass now?—and what happened next went by in the blink of an eye.

  Hitting the brake, the sedan spun off the road, and the passenger's side slammed into the stump of an old tree trunk jutting up from the ground just a moment later. The impact caused the small car to flip over onto its hood completely with a loud crunch of metal, glass shattering everywhere.

  It tilted to the right after landing, and finally settled back down on its hood. Everything went from loud and chaotic to quiet and still in the blink of an eye.

  The next sound heard was a sudden intake of breath.

  Ashley was so shocked by what happened that she didn't even realize what she was doing until she'd pulled herself halfway out of the driver's side window. Somehow, she found herself on the ground with her phone in hand, a wet warmth rolling down her cheek. Blood?

  Adrenaline pumped through her, slowly realizing she'd survived as she crawled out of the car. Nothing seemed to be broken, and she shifted just to make sure, but experienced no pain.

  Still in a stupor, Ashley rolled over onto her back, the world turning right-side-up again. Panting, trying to recover from the harsh scare, she gazed upon her turned-over car, eyes widening over the extent of the wreckage as she slowly sat up.

  The sight was bad enough that she double checked herself for injuries, but once again, everything seemed to be fine. I'm fucking lucky . . . and stranded. Well shit.

  Reality finally began to surface through her adrenaline induced daze. The only thing Ashley could recall seeing before the wreck were dogs on the road. Huge dogs.

  This wasn't exactly the kind of thing she thought would happen when she tried to move to start a better life. But Ashley figured she should be grateful that she was actually alive and in one piece after such an accident anyway.

  She'd have to call someone to come out and help while praying she had the money to cover it. With the thought in mind, Ashley remained sitting because her legs felt too shaky for her to trust yet, and began to use her phone. Please let it have a signal.

  As she lifted it to check, she heard growling coming from behind her, and looked back quickly to spy five canines about fifteen feet away. They must have been the same animals she'd swerved to miss, but these weren't just dogs, they were wolves.

  Neither of them looked very friendly.

  All of them were huge.

  Ashley froze up, her fear redoubling. She found it ironic that she'd just wrecked her car to avoid hurting these animals, and now they were snarling at her with their ears folded back and teeth bared. So much for gratitude.

  Tension permeated the air between them while Ashley could only hope that maybe they wouldn't—

  One of them took off toward her without warning.

  “Shit!” she cussed, scrambling to get to her feet as swiftly as possible. But no sooner than she'd started moving did she feel herself being knocked forward, pitching face first into the grass. No, no, no!

  The wolf stood upon her back and mercilessly snapped its fangs down to pierce the flesh at the right side of her throat, blood streaming down her skin. Ashley screamed, continuing to struggle as pain ripped through her neck.

  But the wolf held on—oddly without further assault. Fear coursed through her, but furthermore, something she didn't expect rose up with it, something wild and uncontrollable raging to life inside of her.

  It was feral, confusing, and consuming her so quickly that she nearly forgot she was about to be brutally torn apart by the same animals she'd tried to avoid hurting. Her insides felt as if they were on fire, fear for her life overwhelming her just as rage crashed down like a tidal wave.

  That was when she blacked out completely.

  Ashley didn't expect to wake up at all.

  Arkin City, Georgia

  10 Days Later

  Using the intercity bus always seemed somehow degrading when you had a car of your own.

  Leo tried not to think about it as he boarded the public transport vehicle, passing the other passengers settled in their seats. His truck decided it needed a new starter that rainy October night, and he just wanted to go home and ignore thoughts of watching his cherished Chevy towed off to Hodgins’ Auto Shop where it could be fixed.

  Though Caleb and Conner Hodgins would have it ready in little to no time at all, taking a bus home in the rain was still irritating.

  But Leo briefly wondered if one of Cade's brothers might offer him a discount on the repairs. They were all close, claiming that Leo was more like an uncle than a family friend, and after their father died a year ago, their bonds had only strengthened.

  Henry's death was a matter that Leo didn't like to consider very often. He still missed his late friend, and visited his family whenever possible—especially Cade, the pack's new Alpha. Their relationship was as close as it'd always been.

  Cade took leadership of the pack just as he'd promised he would, but sometimes, Leo worried about him. He was a damned good Alpha, but he hadn't done anything to make himself content since his father was killed.

  Leo took a seat near the center of the bus while in thought over the matters. He wondered if something could be done for Cade to help, when he picked up the unique scent of a passenger not too far away.

  Looking in the direction of the source, he noticed a young lady sitting across the aisle and a few seats ahead. Though her scent was rain washed, it was like a neon sign flashing over her head, easily revealing to him that she was a lupine.

  But that wasn't the reason he'd taken notice. More specifically, she was one he wasn't familiar with, a woman who wasn't a part of his pack.

  It wasn't common to find a stray wolf in the territory without hearing of someone having a visitor coming, which Leo hadn't. In fact, he hadn’t picked up on any strays in Arkin City in a long while now, and wondered where she could've come from.

  More of her fellows had to be running around the city. She looked too small for any pack to allow to travel alone in good conscience. But here she was, and the other three people on the bus were human, including the driver. Strange.

  She looked to be maybe eighteen, his youngest daughter’s age. On top of it, she was dirty in a ragged sense of the word. Her wet hair was a dark brown that hung not far past her shoulders, and her clothing, being a gray jogging suit that needed cleaning, was too big for her.

  But more than that, he noticed a black eye from the profile view he had of her face, suggesting that someone had struck her.

  Maybe that had something to do with why she was here, sitting on the bus. Had one of the people in his pack gotten hold of her? That seemed unlikely to be the case in his estimate as Leo couldn’t think of anyone in his pack who’d strike an outsider like that, at least, not without a good reason. Even then, Leo didn’t think she’d look as beat up as she did.

  After a moment, he also noticed some fading scratches on her neck that were healing up, three light red streaks across her fair skin.

  Claw marks. So she'd been attacked by a wolf as well?

  Why would someone hit her, then turn into a wolf and claw her? Very strange.

  The last thing Leo could tell was that she was nervous as hell. The scent of fear was coming off of her in droves, as thick as a perfume. He watched her while thoughtfully rubbing his jaw.

  Any lupine, newborn or not, wouldn't be senseless enough not to notice the scent of another nearby, so he knew this young woman was ignoring him, continually staring ahead. Why? She should know she could turn to him to ask for help if she were in trouble, and the fact that she didn’t was bothersome.

  Leo knew he couldn’t let this go. If he reported to Cade that there was a stray in town and he hadn’t approached her to find out what she was doing there, he would get into trouble.

  So he turned and sat forward when she refused to look back at him, asking softly so that only she could hear, “Miss?”

  When she didn’t acknowledge him, he went on, using a bit of coded wording that she might understand in order to a
sk if she had more packmates in the area—not an uncommon question for an outsider to get when they were in another wolf's territory.

  “You travelin’ alone?”

  Slowly, he watched the young woman turn her face to look over at him, and he had to stare. Damn. Not only did she have a black eye, but her lips were split on one side as well, a wound that looked to be at least a day old.

  One answer he got from looking her over was that his pack hadn’t done this. The scratches on her neck were older, healed up a bit, and Leo would've heard the story already if someone had gotten into a fight. Gossip traveled through a pack like wildfire after all.

  The beaten woman stared at him blankly as he assessed this, then glanced around and asked him just as softly, “No one else is here with me, is there?”

  It was Leo’s turn to draw a blank, wondering why it was that she didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. Apparently, she thought he'd meant to ask if she were traveling with anyone on the bus, but any lupine should know he'd meant in the city where the territory was drawn.

  So he explained it to her. “I meant in town. You got anyone in town you’re travelin’ with?”

  Leo suddenly felt like the creepy stranger that asked those uncomfortable questions, but he had no choice. All he could do was hope she wouldn't get offended.

  She gave him a look that said she was uncertain, but whether it was of what he meant or what he was asking wasn’t clear. Her hesitancy made him decide that he should get up to have a little talk with her, especially because he didn’t want to be overheard.

  The bus was stopping, with two of the three passengers getting off, further leaving them to talk without much worry. So Leo stood and walked over to the young woman’s seat.

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she drew out, keeping her face downcast.

  She was still nervous. Leo decided to scoot past her legs despite her answer, sitting down next to her. Once he was comfortable, he glanced in her direction and apologized.