Haunted Sanctuary (Green Pines Sanctuary)

by Moira Rogers

  Mae looked like she wanted to be doing anything else. Eden and Lorelei led her away from the open grave as Jay picked up a shovel.

  When the first clump of dirt hit the wrapped bundle at the bottom of the grave, a sob tore through the night. At first, Jay thought it was Kaley, but her features were set in a grim, determined mask as she worked. It echoed again, decidedly feminine—and too close to be any of the other women. Jay froze, but no one else seemed to have heard it.

  He was losing his fucking mind.

  Colin hesitated, his dirt-laden shovel hovering over the grave. “You okay, Ancheta?”

  Stress, nothing more. “Yeah, I’m square.”

  Colin didn’t seem to believe him, but he returned to shoveling. With five werewolves working in focused silence, the grave filled quickly. Eden reappeared when they were half-done, her bare arms pale under the nearly full moon. She’d stripped off her jacket and filled it with dozens of moss-covered rocks of various sizes. “Mae wants to build something to mark the grave.”

  Jay’s protest caught in his throat. Marking the grave made it recognizable, suspicious.

  Shane leaned on the handle of his shovel. “I bet Stella can add redirection to the wards. Make it so people who don’t know this place is here just won’t notice.”

  “If it could be safe…” Eden’s eyes held a quiet plea. “She can say goodbye in her own way.”

  Jay relented. “It’s fine. Does she need help?”

  Eden glanced at the grave and shook her head. “It’ll take a few more trips this way…but that’s all right. You’ll be done before she gets back.”

  And they were. As Fletcher and Shane rounded off the mound of dirt, Kaley rubbed a grimy hand across her forehead and knelt to help Mae sort through the rocks she’d gathered. Jay collected the shovels and headed back toward the barn.

  They didn’t need him to construct a cairn for their friend. It wasn’t his place.

  “What’s this?” Shane asked, blocking out the moonlight as he loomed over the fire pit.

  Jay placed one last log. “Didn’t want to be in the house just now. Thought I’d build a fire instead.”

  Colin appeared at Shane’s side. “Mind some company?”

  “Depends,” Shane said as he settled next to Jay. “Did you bring beer?”

  “Better.” He pulled a flask out of his jacket. “Moonshine. Seems fitting.”

  Jay snorted. “If you want to go blind, maybe.”

  “Only temporarily.” Colin took a sip before offering the flask to Shane. “Can’t get a buzz off beer, and tonight I could use one.”

  “That’s what this is for.” A crate of bottles rattled in Stella’s arms as she rounded the growing fire. “I heard there were dry counties in this godforsaken state, so I brought my own. Tonight’s as good a night as any to drain it all.”

  Colin choked on his moonshine and coughed. “Damn. Gotta love a woman who brings her own liquor cabinet wherever she goes. How’d you become friends with a stick-in-the-mud like Shane?”

  “He saved my life, that’s how.” She retrieved a sleeve of red plastic cups from the crate and waved them. “Who wants one?”

  Jay held out a hand. “Got any bourbon?”

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

  “I should think not,” Eden murmured from behind Jay. She slid to the ground next to him and snuggled into his side. “How undignified for the Pope.”

  “Maybe if he’s camping.” He wrapped an arm around her. “Everything okay inside?”

  “I think so. I made sure all three of them got something to eat.” She turned her face to his shoulder and closed her eyes. “That’s all I can do, isn’t it? Give them time.”

  Impossible to know for sure. They’d only just met—even Eden and her cousin, in a way—and their only option was to rely on instinct. “We can be here if they need us. That’s it.”

  Eden ignored the whispers from the other side of the fire and slipped her hand into Jay’s. “It doesn’t feel like enough.” Unspoken was her obvious grief—for Quinn, it hadn’t been enough.

  “It isn’t, but our only other choice is to force them. They’ve had enough of that.”

  “I know, you’re right. They need—” She cut off as the back door swung shut with a soft thud. The porch stairs creaked under Mae’s slow, wary steps. Eden shifted as if to stand, but after a moment settled back against Jay’s side and clutched his hand as they waited for Mae to come to them—on her own terms.

  Stella turned, following their gazes, and held up a bottle. “Want some?”

  Mae hesitated for an awkward moment, her gaze taking in the wolves around the fire. Jay couldn’t tell if it was the woman or the wolf who took the first step, but it was a submissive in desperate need of pack who edged into the spot Stella made for her. She accepted the bottle with a shy smile. “Thanks. I could use a drink.”

  “You and me both, sister.”

  Mae took a swig from the bottle and stared into the fire. “I just wanted to say…I know you guys tried. Are trying. Thanks for helping us.”

  Shane stared down into his cup. “I want to know something about Quinn. Anything.”

  “Quinn was…” She picked at the edge of the label on the bottle. “He was funny. Witty. He had this dry, sarcastic sense of humor. Half the time, people weren’t sure if he was serious or making a joke.”

  “He played guitar.” Lorelei stepped out of the shadows near the corner of the house. “For a while, he wanted to go to Nashville. Be a star.”

  Instead, he’d wound up getting the shit kicked out of him in Memphis. Jay drained his drink and leaned over to pull a new bottle from the crate next to Stella’s feet.

  “He used to tease us by writing silly little songs.” Mae shifted aside to make room for Lorelei. “I always loved everyone else’s and groaned through mine.”

  Lorelei dropped beside her and sniffed through a laugh. “Remember when he was writing the one about Zack and spent a week trying to think of something clever that rhymed with surly buttface?”

  Mae’s lips twitched. “And Kaley and I kept trying to help him, but he didn’t like twirly mutt race or girly smut phase.”

  The back door slammed again. “That’s because we’re horrible lyricists.” Kaley stepped off the porch, a cardboard six-pack of beer in one hand. “Then again, so was Quinn.”

  Eden nudged Jay to make room for Kaley, completing the ragged circle around the fire. “What did Quinn do when he wasn’t singing?” she asked as she accepted a beer.

  “Before everything went to hell?” Kaley asked. “He made everyone laugh. After? He kept his head down and tried not to make trouble, just like the rest of us.”

  Mae protested with a soft noise. “He didn’t just keep his head down. He could have, and they might have left him alone, but he did what he could. Checked up on me. Made sure I was okay, even when it put him in danger.”

  Kaley didn’t answer, and a closer look at the girl’s slightly out-of-focus eyes told Jay plenty. The six-pack might’ve been her second of the night already, even the third.

  He topped off his drink. “A toast?”

  Lorelei lifted her cup with a smile. “For Quinn.”

  “Quinn,” Mae whispered, her voice hoarse. The others followed suit, sipping from glass bottles and plastic cups and Colin’s silver flask. The fire crackled, sending sparks up into the sky, and that warm air ghosted across the back of Jay’s neck again.

  At his side, Eden shivered, and he tightened his arm around her. “For Quinn,” he said.

  Zack was nowhere to be found, and a single light burned in the bedroom Fletcher had claimed in the little house. They both had their reasons for not joining the pack around the fire, reasons no one could argue with or counter.

  All the rest of them could do was be there.

  Chapter Ten

  Eden woke to the sun slanting over her face at an odd angle and her pulse kicking viciously inside her skull. She was sprawled on top of the blankets but half
under Jay, the illicitness of their tangled limbs undercut by the fact that they were both fully clothed.

  Her mouth tasted like cotton. Her body tingled. Opening her eyes increased the throbbing in her head, so Eden clenched them shut and burrowed farther under Jay, all too ready to hide from the morning.

  It was totally unfair that werewolves could get hangovers.

  His arm tightened around her waist, steely and immovable. “Too early for squirming,” he growled.

  Eden stilled as her wolf rose, swift and hungry, as enraged by Jay’s gruff command as she was seduced by his show of strength. This wasn’t a spike of unbridled power that could spill down their bond and dissipate. The urge to challenge him lived in every atom of her being. It was her.

  Snarling, she whipped her head around and bit his shoulder.

  “Ow.” He laughed and rolled to his back, rubbing his shoulder. “Feeling feisty, honey?”

  Eden surged over him, straddling his hips before bracing her hands on either side of his head. Her disheveled hair fell around both of them, a blonde tangle that smelled of last night’s bonfire. The fire was still burning inside her, smoke and flame and everything wild. “I feel—” What word encompassed this? What could?

  His amusement faded as he stroked his hands up her thighs. “You’re already feeling the moon.”

  “Am I?” She scraped her nails down the bronze skin of his arm, pressing harder until white lines rose in the wake of her fingers. Marks. Possession. “I don’t know if I want to fight or—” At any other time she might have blunted the truth, but today only one word fit. “Fuck.”

  “Or both?” He flipped her suddenly, pinning her to the mattress with her hands above her head. “Can you even separate them right now, with the moon so close?”

  No. It was too terrifying to admit, too alien. She bucked up with all her newly won strength, and it wasn’t a game. She wanted to twist free, wanted to rake her nails over his skin and bite him again, wanted him to tear open her clothes and shove her against the bed—

  She whimpered and tried to force the lurid fantasy from her mind. “This is kind of perverse.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead, he bent his head to hers, nuzzling her cheek and the spot just below her ear.

  Gentle and soft. A trap, and she tumbled into it, craning her neck back in silent encouragement. “My skin is too tight. My clothes are too.”

  His soothing hum vibrated against the sensitive skin at the base of her throat. “We have a bond now. Give a little of it to me.”

  “I don’t think she wants me to.” She tugged at his grip, wriggling her wrists as irritation and arousal rose in equal measure. “Can you take it?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” He gripped both of her wrists with one hand and lowered the other to her cheek, brushing her tangled hair back from her face.

  His eyes glowed. Gold, beautiful, flaring with the same fire that licked inside her skin. Power curled around her, pressing in as her wolf struggled out. As fierce as she felt, the unshakable strength inside him burned brighter. Hotter.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes, so she squeezed hers shut as Jay stroked over her, around her, inside her. A touch beyond that of flesh, and her wolf yielded with an irritated murmur, leaching the tension from Eden’s body. “Oh…”

  “See?” Just a whisper, softer than the power that encircled them both. “We don’t take. We give.”

  Yesterday, she’d sprawled on this bed and worried about the supernatural senses of the men sleeping upstairs. Now, with her wolf so close to the surface, modesty seemed a foreign concept. “But I want you to take me.”

  A tiny shudder ran through him, and he captured her mouth with a low groan. Thrilled by the fracture in his self-control, Eden licked his lips and tangled her legs around his, using the only leverage she had with her hands still pinned.

  His tongue rubbed over hers, a gentle tease, and his groan was more growl when she opened wider to let him in. He rocked his hips against hers, reached down to grip her leg and pull it higher on his body.

  The wolf struck without warning, taking advantage of Jay’s moment off balance. Eden slammed her heel into the bed and rolled them both as hard as she could, fighting for the top, for dominance, for that thrilling moment of hovering over him—

  Only a moment. Momentum propelled them in a tangle of limbs, and Eden choked on a startled shriek as they tumbled to the floor.

  Jay gasped and shook, his eyes squeezed shut. After a heartbeat, his suppressed laughter bubbled out in a breathless chuckle. “Well. That didn’t exactly go as planned.”

  Eden rolled off him and scrubbed a hand over her face. Her body still throbbed, but she couldn’t tell if the need riding her would be satisfied by sex—at least, not by the sort of sex she was used to having. “I want to…” His chuckle dwindled, and she missed it. Craved it. “I want to play.”

  He propped his elbow on the floor and rested his head on his hand. “That’s what the full moon is for. We’ll run, play. It’s about the wolf, the pack.”

  “The needs are getting all mixed up.” Facing him, she traced a finger down the row of buttons on his plaid shirt. “That’s just because it’s you, right? I like everyone else, but I don’t want to play the same kinds of games with them.”

  “I hope not.” He caught her hand and held it, even as he slipped free the button under their fingers with his thumb.

  Eden pushed herself to her knees with a grace she was starting to enjoy possessing. It made her feel more seductive as she inched down his body until her head was even with his hips. “Are you going to let me play games with you?”

  Someone pounded on the door, followed quickly by Colin’s voice. “Everything okay? I heard a crash.”

  Groaning, Eden dropped her head to Jay’s stomach. “I hate life.”

  Jay drove his hands into her hair with a sigh. “First full moon with new alphas? It’s a big day. They’re going to need us.”

  Colin obviously agreed. He cleared his throat loudly on the other side of the door. “Okay, I take it you’re both fine. There’s coffee in the kitchen and I’ll get out of here, but people are already up and moving at the big house. Fair warning.”

  “We’re on our way,” Jay called. He climbed to his feet and helped Eden up. “Breakfast, or Advil and water?”

  Her stomach rumbled, and her head still hurt. “All three, I think.”

  He grinned. “Something tells me there’s going to be a lot of that this morning.”

  She scrunched up her nose and tried for an expression of annoyance, but God knew he was right. Colin had started sharing his teeth-fuzzying moonshine between the stories about Quinn and the tears, and everyone had had enough of it to blunt the edges of pain.

  Everyone except Zack.

  Willfully pushing aside her worry for her cousin, Eden straightened her clothes and ran her fingers through her tousled hair, trying to comb it into something respectable enough for breakfast. “My hangover’s fading pretty fast. It’s the rest of it I’m worried about. Sniffing people is bad enough. I don’t want to start pouncing on people just because my wolf’s feeling…frolicsome.”

  “You’ll get straight soon enough.” Jay buttoned his shirt and grabbed his boots from the foot of the bed. “Come on. I think I smell pancakes and sausage.”

  She could, too, but faint enough that it had to be coming from the big house. She found her sneakers where Jay had dumped them the night before and followed him out of the bedroom, then through the French doors in the kitchen.

  The main farmhouse rose up against the bright morning sky, less ominous in the daylight than it had been last night, when liquor and darkness had combined to bring ghosts to life. She’d gotten more than one chill when ghostly fingers shivered up her spine or she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Easily blamed on the moonshine…

  And yet.

  Eden’s foot came down on a twig with a crack that startled her back to the present. Shivering, she wrapped an arm through J
ay’s and pressed closer to his side. “I guess I proved one thing last night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you were right,” she said softly. “I’m strong enough to do this. If I made it through yesterday…I think I can do this.”

  “Good.” He kissed the top of her head. “Because I wasn’t kidding. They’re going to need you.”

  The words felt right. They resonated with a part of her that was already too comfortable back on the farm. “You’ll have to help me figure out the day. What do the alphas do for the pack during the full moon?”

  “Keep everyone safe while they let loose for a little while. Show them that they can let loose.”

  “So we run and we play?”

  “The flip side of banding together for protection and survival. Another benefit of social structure.”

  It sounded better than she’d expected, like coming home to a place where she belonged, with people who understood her. After a lifetime of judiciously editing the truth about her family and her childhood, it sounded like freedom.

  “You haven’t had any of that.” Eden stopped short of the steps leading up to the wrap-around porch and peered at Jay. “Was it hard, living without it?”

  He looked away for a moment before finally meeting her eyes. “It’s harder and it’s easier. Hard to have to keep to yourself all the time, hide the reality of who and what you are. But being with other wolves—unless they’re absolutely, without a doubt, the right ones… It’s impossible to make it work without everyone understanding what’s right, what their place is and accepting that.”

  Zack hadn’t been the only one to avoid the gathering at the fire last night. “Fletcher can’t stay, can he? He won’t fit.”

  A flash of pain clouded Jay’s eyes. “No, we’ve been through it before. Eventually, he’ll have to go.”

  Eden smoothed her hand over his cheek, protectiveness blooming inside her until it overtook the itch of the moon. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. It just is.”

  It felt a little bit like a warning, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. She was too afraid the conversation would lead to Zack. Broken Zack, who couldn’t survive the way he was, but might not fit if he became whole again. “It doesn’t matter today,” she said, half-begging him to agree.