by Michelle Fox
Moon's Law (New Moon Pack Book 2)
Michelle Fox
Copyright 2015. All Rights Reserved.
Moon's Law: What strengthens one, strengthens all. What weakens one, weakens all.
Once you've been bitten, there's no going back.
Kane Martin has a reputation as the tough-guy, sex-stud sheriff of Glen Vine Michigan, but becoming a werewolf has rattled him. Forget partying, hooking up with girls, and locking up the bad guys, he's got bigger problems. Like dealing with locals taking potshots at his pack, and howling at the moon in his spare time...whether he wants to or not.
And there’s this girl, Charlotte. She’s totally not his type, but she smells so good Kane’s not sure he can resist.
Curvy Charlotte Wills was supposed to be getting engaged and finishing up a degree in library science, but instead she’s been dumped and turned into a werewolf. In the middle of trying to get her life back on track, the last thing she needs is a distraction like Sheriff Kane Martin.
But life has a funny way of going sideways when you least expect it.
Especially when you’re a werewolf.
Rejoin all your favorite characters from First Moon and find out what happens next. This book is a stand alone sequel. While it’s more fun to read First Moon, it’s not required.
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Disclaimer
All events depicted are fictional. Characters are consenting adults. Any resemblance to places and persons, living or dead, is unintentional coincidence.
Every effort has been made to provide a quality reading experience, but editors and technology are fallible. Please report typos or formatting issues to [email protected]. You’d tell a girl if she had lipstick on her teeth, right? Please do the same for typos and formatting flubs.
Chapter One
Friendly werewolf in search of a job. Does not howl out of turn. Charlotte worried her bottom lip as she scanned the classifieds in the Glen Vine Gazette, doing her best to will the perfect job into existence.
She sat at a small, wobbly table in Java Jump—the only coffee shop in Glen Vine—a caramel latte steaming at her elbow, and sighed as she finished reading all five ‘help wanted’ ads in the little paper. Tuning out the hustle and bustle around her, she read them again hoping to find something, anything to put some cash in her pocket, but it was a no go.
Charlotte was a can-do kind of girl. She could change a tire, assemble IKEA furniture like a pro and wasn't afraid to get dirty, but driving a semi wasn’t going to work with her new ‘turn furry at the drop of a hat’ lifestyle. And while the house-winterizing gig looked good, the word around town was the owner had a drinking problem—the kind where sometimes the staff didn't get paid on time. The other ads were all ‘get rich quick’ or weight loss scams. While she wouldn't mind getting rich or losing some weight, she knew the Gazette wasn't the place to find either of those. Let alone a job, apparently.
She sighed and sipped at her latte as she stared out the window. It had rained all night, scattering yellow and red leaves on the wet pavement like confetti. Pickings were slim in Glen Vine now that autumn colored the trees. The small town existed only to serve tourists, and once summer ended, work dried up. Businesses weren’t hiring, they were saying ‘goodbye, see you next year’ to their staff.
Staff made up of college kids on their way back to school. Unfortunately, school was no longer an option for her. No, she’d been dumped in the most humiliating way by her ex-boyfriend, Colton, and left in the wild to be bitten by a werewolf. She’d put college on hold to get her head straight, both about Colton and the whole ‘turn furry and howl at the moon’ thing.
Bells jangled as the door to Java Jump opened and then closed, announcing the arrival of new customers. It was what passed for rush hour in the no stoplight town of Glen Vine. Commuters—mostly headed for Traverse City—were stopping in for a quick caffeine fix before hitting the road. Charlotte looked up to see two men clomp into the coffee shop, their footsteps heavy on the floor. Each man wore construction crew gear: Steel-toe work boots, worn overalls with grungy t-shirts underneath and bandanas on their heads. Neon orange safety vests hung out of their back pockets. They smelled like tar mixed with sweat and stale tobacco. She wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant aroma.
"Damn wolves were howlin’ up a storm last night." The man who’d spoken had straw blond hair and faded blue-jean eyes. He contemplated the menu with a frown. "They woke me up three times. I finally went outside and started shootin’ at ‘em."
Charlotte cringed. She and her fledgling pack mates—all bitten by the same psycho werewolf—had gone for a run the night before, wanting to spend as much time as possible outside before winter buried the area in snow.
"My dad’s sending a petition to the capitol to approve hunting so we can cull the pack. Winter’s coming and they’re going to be hungry," said his companion, this one with light brown hair and dark eyes.
"Where’d all these wolves come from anyway?" The blond snapped his fingers. "One minute there’s nothing, the next we’ve got almost a dozen people bit and so much howling at night, OSHA would make us wear ear gear to protect our hearing."
Charlotte Wills slouched in her seat and pulled the Gazette up to cover her face as her cheeks burned. Oops. Had they been that loud last night? She couldn’t remember. Her wolf memory was a little hazy. She recalled the cold air smacking her nose, carrying tantalizing whiffs of rabbits, squirrels, the smell of pine needles and the way the wind blew through her fur, but not how loud they’d been howling.
Oblivious to her reaction, the two men placed a to-go order for large coffees and even larger cinnamon buns, and then resumed their conversation while they waited for their food.
The blond made a gun with his fingers and took aim at the coffee cup display on the counter. Pretending to shoot them he said, "I don’t want to wait on the politicians. They’ll take forever. I thought I might sit up in the deer blind on Friday night and see if I can get rid of a few of them. You wanna come, Stan?"
The brown-haired man gave an enthusiastic nod. "Hell yeah, Dylan. I’ll bring the beer if you get the wings."
"And ammo. Don’t forget the ammo." Dylan took his coffee from the server and stirred in some sugar. "If you want, I’ve got some traps we can set up, too."
Charlotte gasped. Shooting at them was bad enough, but traps? She started to say something. To tell these two yahoos the wolves weren’t going to hurt anyone, but then she clamped her mouth shut, because she couldn’t say anything without telling them the truth.
Those aren’t wolves. They’re werewolves.
There was no way disclosing that would make things better.
I’m a monster. A freak of nature.
Hand trembling, she sipped her latte, trying to distract herself. Her wolf prowled under her skin, pricking her from the inside with fur ready to burst through. She ran her tongue over her teeth, grimacing as it verified her fears; her canine teeth were growing. Her emotions were stirring up the beast she now shared a body with. Charlotte took several deep breaths. She needed to calm down or she would shift right then and there.
Tao, the leader of their little pack, and a werewolf since birth, said they would have more control as they gained experience, but that wasn’t going to help her now.
Naturally, the men kept talking, rubbi
ng salt in the wound.
"Ah, hell yeah. Let’s trap some of those fuckers." The two men fist bumped, both smiling widely.
"I wouldn’t mind stuffing a wolf head and hanging it over my fireplace." Stan gave a harsh laugh.
"Oh, that would be badass," said Dylan.
Charlotte growled and then clapped a hand over her mouth. The men, along with the cashier behind the counter, whipped their heads around to look at her.
"Excuse me," she said with a weak smile, playing it off as a burp. Grabbing her purse, she didn’t stick around to see if they believed her and hustled out of the coffee shop. Hair sprouted from her skin like a lawn overdosed with Miracle-Gro, and her body suddenly felt like a water balloon wrapped around bones that were in the process of melting.
Shit. She was going to lose it.
Outside Java Jump, she broke into a run. She had no doubt the construction workers carried guns in their vehicles. If she shifted right in the middle of Glen Vine, she’d end up dodging bullets. While she’d been told werewolves were harder to kill and healed faster than humans, she didn’t want to test the theory personally.
Lengthening her stride, she whipped around a corner in the hopes of making it to the line of trees that ran behind Glen Vine’s small business district. There would be cover there, a place to hide where no one could see her doing the werewolf walk of shame home, carrying her purse in her mouth.
Unfortunately, instead of making it to safety, she slammed, face first, into a hard, unyielding surface. There was a stunned moment where time froze and then she was falling. Apparently, whatever she’d hit wasn’t as unyielding as it felt because it toppled backward, taking her with it.
She landed on top of it with a loud ‘oof.’ To her surprise, someone else echoed her ‘oof’ followed by a groan. Not an it—a him. She’d run into a guy.
Charlotte blinked and her vision, shaky from the pre-shift adrenaline surging through her, managed to make out that she’d taken down another person. A man, to be exact. The sheriff to be even more precise.
Oh, good, she thought with relief.
The sheriff was a werewolf, bitten same as her. He could help her hide her out-of-control shift, maybe even hold onto her clothes.
The sheriff craned his neck up off the sidewalk, his dark eyes meeting hers. "Everything okay, Charlotte?"
"Ah, yes," she said her voice a little breathier than she would’ve liked. Kane wasn't just a werewolf, he was also scorching hot with a hard-as-steel chest and high cheekbones a girl could cut her heart on if she wasn't careful. She'd admired him from afar for years, but had never actually touched him before. "Just feeling a little shifty." Although, the impact of hitting him had caused her wolf to recede a bit. She filed that tidbit of information away for future use. The next time her wolf was about to break free, maybe she could stop it by running into the nearest wall. It was worth a try.
He nodded and made a non-committal ‘mmm’ sound.
Her nose twitched. He smelled kind of nice, like sandalwood and fir trees mixed with coffee and something cinnamon-y. "You stop at Java Jump today?"
"Best coffee and cinnamon buns in town," he said with a smile.
"The only coffee and cinnamon buns in town," Charlotte corrected him. For the first time, she registered exactly how hard the firm length of his body was pressed against hers and it sent a jolt through her. Oh, God she was touching him. Panic filled her along with the unwelcome urge to grind her pelvis into his. She jumped to her feet, which, thanks to her new werewolf strength, she could do with the power and grace of an Olympic gymnast, and backed the hell away from Sheriff Studly.
The reason she'd only ever watched him from a distance? The guy liked waifs with big, fake boobs. And the only thing Charlotte had in common with waifs was...nothing, actually. It was a blessing, though, because Kane got around. He seemed like a nice guy, as far as she could tell, but he never stuck with one girl, and flings weren't her style.
As if she hadn't already had enough fun, her wolf surged back to the fore, the familiar prick of hair under her skin starting up again. Damn it. Was she doomed to do the shift of shame today? She rubbed her arms, but that didn’t help. So she rubbed them faster and eyed the copse of trees standing at the end of the block. No one would see her shift back there.
The sheriff clambered to his feet, taking the time to make the movement look human and pausing to pick up his hat, which had fallen off when they'd collided. Dusting off the brim and setting it back on his head, he asked, "Everything okay, Char?" He watched her carefully.
"They want to shoot us, you know." She edged toward the trees and the sheriff followed. "I heard them talking."
"Them?" He arched an eyebrow.
She waved her hand toward Java Jump. "You know, humans. They think we need to be culled." Swallowing hard, she said, "They came into Java Jump talking about mounting my head on a wall. Killing me, stuffing me, like my life doesn’t matter."
"They threatened you?" The sheriff's brow furrowed.
"It was implied. Very strongly implied," she said. "If their bullets found me, I would be their newest wall hanging."
She shuddered at the thought of a taxidermied afterlife. Hair burst through her skin again and her body began the process of rearranging itself. She was going to shift. Right there on Glen Vine’s main street, in front of the ice cream shop. Thankfully, the street was empty and the shops closed. In the off-season, nothing opened early except for Java Jump and the gas station.
Charlotte dropped her purse and closed her eyes, preparing for the inevitable. I feel like a toddler who can’t figure out potty training. I hate not having control.
A warm hand closed around her wrist and gave her a firm squeeze followed by the low rumble of the sheriff's voice. "No, Charlotte. Don’t."
Just like that, her wolf backed down. Charlotte hadn’t felt so human in weeks. She opened her eyes wide in surprise and stared at the sheriff. An unseen yet palpable strength emanated from him in waves, washing over her and cowing her wolf.
Well, that’s new.
Chapter Two
Sheriff Kane Martin looked down at the woman in front of him. Her brown eyes were wide and wild, and her chest heaved with exertion, as if she was sprinting to the finish line instead of standing still. He tried not to stare down the v-neck of her pink t-shirt, but her cleavage swayed with her breathing in the most tantalizing way. She also smelled good, like caramel mixed with…he sniffed, trying to decide what the other scent was, and decided it must be a perfume. Something floral.
Charlotte Wills was easy on the eyes and the nose.
Kane blinked and shook his head at the thought. What was wrong with him? Curvy girls weren’t his thing, never had been. Charlotte, with her flared hips and generous breasts, wasn’t his type, but yet there he was, fixated by her presence. He wanted nothing more than to dig his fingers into those hips as he filled her. He shook his head again, trying to clear his mind. Where the hell had those thoughts come from?
He’d sworn off women anyway. Thinking about sex with anyone was off limits as far as Kane was concerned. Becoming a werewolf had ruined his sex life. A beast lurked inside him now, hungry and too strong for even Kane’s iron control. He couldn’t be sure of what he might do under the influence of lust, so he’d kept to himself ever since his first shift. Just watching poor Charlotte struggle with her own wolf proved he was right to be concerned.
But as he watched her breasts go up and down in her soft, feminine pink shirt that stretched tight across her chest, he reconsidered. Maybe celibacy had been a mistake. Maybe he was actually losing control by depriving himself of female company, because at the moment, he kind of wanted to rip off Charlotte’s shirt and fill his hands with her breasts. Would he have more control if he gave in to his urges? He pondered the idea of having taken the wrong approach to the werewolf sex thing so deeply, he failed to realize Charlotte had started crying.
But his nose quivered, alerting him to her distress. Smelling emotions was t
he weirdest thing Kane had ever experienced. So far, he’d worked out that anger was bitter, fear was sour and any kind of upset had a salty tang, almost as if the salt in their tears had become airborne. More positive emotions lightened a person’s scent, like bubbles in champagne.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Come on, don’t cry."
She hiccoughed. "I hate this. I can’t even stay human."
"It will get better," he said, pulling her into a full hug.
"How do you know?" She wailed the question into his shoulder.
"Because Tao, Leo and Kai don’t hate who they are. We’ll get there, Charlotte." His hands started to slide down her back to cup her backside and he abruptly brought them up to a more appropriate area of her anatomy. What was wrong with him? She smelled good, so what? That didn’t mean anything. Pizza smelled good, too, but that didn’t make it a health food. "Calm down," he said as much to himself as Charlotte.
She sniffed one last time and the intensity of the feelings in her scent eased a bit. Kane relaxed a fraction, too.
"Thanks," she said. "If I hadn’t run into you, I’d be wolfing it home. Then I’d have to walk back and get my car once I became human again."
"Glad to help."
"Sorry I took you down." A flush reddened her cheeks.
"Better you than a tweaker, trust me." He grimaced remembering a raid a few years ago. The people running the meth lab had been higher than kites and armed with semi-automatics. One particularly big guy had slammed into Kane with the force of a tank and knocked him clean to the ground, where he stayed for the entire bust, fighting to breathe.
"A tweaker?" She looked at him, confused.
"A meth addict," he said.
Charlotte eyes widened. "Yeah, I guess I would be better than that." She sighed. "Well, I'm going to go back to Java Jump and get my car. I want to get home before this wolf of mine loses it. Thanks, again."
Kane raised a hand in farewell. "Anytime." He watched her walk away, transfixed by her round backside. A picture flashed in his mind of his hands gripping the flesh there, urging her to take all of him inside her. He rubbed his forehead, trying to get his mind out of his pants.
