Bound to Moonlight

by Nina Croft

  The howls cut-off abruptly, and the grip on her mind relaxed its fierce hold. She was on her feet and running in seconds. But something stopped her. A shiver in the air, like she'd never sensed before. She came to a halt as though some invisible force called to her. Turning slowly, she swallowed her fear. He couldn't be dead. Not this quickly.

  A gasp escaped her throat.

  He crouched on his hands and knees, his spine arched, head thrown back. As she watched, a change came over him and his form shimmered and shifted in the bright clear afternoon light. A moment later, he vanished, and a huge black wolf stood in his place. For long seconds, the animal stood, neck drooping toward the ground, his sides heaving.

  He raised his head and dark eyes, flecked with gold, gazed toward her. He blinked a couple of times as though to clear his mind and stared at her some more. Then he took a step forward.

  Keira had lost the ability to move. She stood, her feet fixed to the ground as the wolf padded across the distance between them. This couldn't be real. That was why she wasn’t running.

  But he was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, and he held her in thrall. He must have reached her shoulder, much bigger than a true wolf—further proof he couldn’t be real. Maybe her sad, pathetic mind had finally broken completely.

  She probed his brain, sensing the man still there beneath the much simpler animal brainwaves. But he felt hazy, cut off from her.

  Werewolf.

  The word flashed into her brain and she saw it for truth.

  He stopped only inches from her and studied her, head cocked to one side, eyes wary. She could see the understanding and caution in them. But no pain.

  Whatever he was, he was immune to her mind, and her lips tugged upward in a brief smile. Then she reached out a trembling hand and laid it on his head. The fur was silky soft beneath her palm.

  The wolf showed no fear. He took a final step toward her and nuzzled her with his cold nose, poking her in the belly, sniffing her fingers. A warm velvety tongue came out and licked her palm.

  And Keira sank down onto the coarse grass and burst into tears.

  She never cried. Well almost never. The last time had been when she’d finally accepted that her “mother” was never coming back, even though she’d known it was going to happen. That had been nearly six months ago.

  The wolf nudged her. She peered up through tear-drenched eyes as he lowered himself to the ground. Then she wrapped her arms around the huge warm body and cried some more. Finally, exhausted by the release of emotions she’d kept locked in tight, she closed her eyes and gave in to the sleep she usually found so elusive.

  Rain on her face woke her. The clouds had closed in and it had started to drizzle. She was warm and she realized her arms were wrapped around the most enormous dog she had ever seen. She breathed in the warm musky scent of wild animal.

  Werewolf.

  A sense of wonder filled her, but no fear. Maybe because she no longer feared death. Perhaps some part of her even craved the release.

  But if he’d been planning to eat her, she was sure he would have done so by now. He’d had plenty of opportunity. No, she felt safe and that was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  She reached out with the lightest of telepathic touches. His dark eyes narrowed as though he could sense her intrusion, and she backed off not wanting to risk causing him pain.

  He was different from the other animals she’d encountered on the moor. They had been her only companions for years, ever since her powers had grown too strong to contain, and she’d nearly broken her mother’s mind. From that point on, she had lived alone. Her mother had brought her food and clothing, had visited every couple of days and they had watched each other from afar, never daring to come too close. She still wasn’t sure she hadn’t contributed to her mother’s early death.

  She occasionally saw walkers from a distance but she’d perfected the art of disappearing. Until this man. She remembered the way he had sniffed the air. And then the incredible speed. He had raced across the moors far faster than even Dubh could ever go. As fast as a…wolf.

  She sat up, pulled away, and studied the great beast. He lay on all fours, his huge head resting on his front paws as he watched her out of cautious eyes. Keira scrambled to her feet uncertain of what her next move should be.

  The wolf watched for a moment longer and then rose gracefully to stand beside her. She marveled again at the sheer size of him. A shiver thrummed through the air around her, and her skin prickled with that same sensation she’d felt earlier—seconds before he changed, and it came to her what he was about to do. He was changing back. He couldn’t. This close she would blow his mind.

  She took an instinctive step away and shook her head, panic building inside her.

  “No, you mustn’t. Don’t change back. I’ll hurt you. Kill you. I can’t help it, I can’t control it.” She didn’t know if he could understand her, but he blinked once and dropped his head as though to agree to her demands.

  Relief flooded her mind as the tension in the air vanished. She stared at her feet. She had to leave. She knew that, but regret filled her as she contemplated the return to loneliness. Maybe it would be better if he did kill her. He could rip out her throat with one bite of those razor-sharp teeth. But even now, she realized she didn’t really want to die, she just wanted an end to this strange half-life she lived. “You must wait until I’m gone,” she said. “Do you understand? Wait until I’m…” She studied the surroundings and pointed at a clump of bushes about a hundred feet away from where they stood. “Wait until I reach those bushes, then you can change. You understand?”

  He nodded once.

  She turned to go, but then swung around and hugged the animal once more, burrowing her nose in the thick, silky fur at his throat. “Thank you for keeping me warm,” she murmured then forced herself to release him. “Goodbye.”

  This time when she turned, she kept walking, but after only a few steps, she halted and glanced back over her shoulder. The wolf was right behind her padding along on silent paws.

  Maybe she could have a little longer.

  “You won’t change back into a man?”

  He inclined his massive head.

  This was wrong. She knew it. She didn’t know who or even what he really was. How could she trust him? Nearly ten years had passed since her mother had helped her flee from the Agency laboratory where she had lived until she was thirteen. The Agency had wanted to terminate her then, and as far as she knew, nothing had changed. They still wanted her dead and her only hope was to hide, bury her secrets out here in the wilds of the moors with only the animals for company.

  Could he be from the Agency? But she didn’t believe that. She had seen briefly into his mind and sensed no taint of evil. Just a wildness at the very core of him. That would be the wolf. And a self-hatred she recognized as close to her own.

  She made a decision. “Come back with me. For a little while.”

  She turned toward the keep and then changed her mind and paused. When she’d first seen him, he’d carried a rucksack. He must have dropped it when he came after her. She started walking back the way they had come. The wolf stalked after her.

  Eventually, she found the bag resting among the heather. Picking it up, she slung it over her shoulder and headed toward home.

  The wolf kept pace behind her, his huge paws making no sound on the thickly grassed ground. Even while she couldn’t hear him or see him, each breath she took, saturated her nostrils with the wild warm feral scent. Not quite animal. Wolf tinged with human and a hint of something she had never encountered before. Magic maybe. She peered over her shoulder and found him watching her, intelligence staring out of his wolf’s eyes.

  Finally, she halted beside the walls of the old keep. They loomed dark grey above her, the base surrounded by huge rocks fallen from the walls. From the outside, the place appeared ruined, but she led him around the walls, then held back the branches of a rowan bush and gestured f
or him to enter. He gave her a narrow-eyed glance, then sniffed cautiously at the opening before he disappeared inside. Keira followed, letting the bush fall back behind her, hiding the entrance. Stepping past him, she led the way through a half tumbled arch into the room that had been her only home for the last ten years.

  ***

  Connor woke in the night. Moonlight spilled into the room from a window high up in the wall and deep inside him, his wolf stretched sleepily. His head pounded and he had a huge erection. Neither of which was a common occurrence for him these days.

  Werewolves didn’t get sick, though they did get erections. Except him. He’d been too pissed off with life lately to even think about sex.

  Now, he lay on his back on a makeshift bed on the floor of a ruined castle with a woman’s warm sleeping body draped over him, her arms wrapped around his middle, her head on his bare chest. He stayed very still as he remembered what had happened.

  The girl on the pony. Excruciating pain. The shift.

  She’d told him not to change back as she couldn’t control whatever it was she had done to him. Shit, it had hurt—as though his brain was melting from the inside. But obviously, she was no danger when she slept, as apart from the headache, he felt fine. Good really. And he realized, for the first time in years, he hadn’t awoken engulfed in the black hatred, which had so colored his life since the attack.

  He always shifted back to human when he slept whether he wanted to or not. Sebastian had told him that would change once he had more control, which he’d get if he gave in and shifted more often. He’d replied that he didn’t want to shift more and he didn’t want more control. What he did want was an end to the nightmare his life had become. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.

  But yesterday was the first time he’d shifted when it hadn’t been forced on him by the full moon. And she’d done it to him.

  Without moving, he peered down at where her head rested against him. A long tangle of dark hair framed a face with pale skin drawn too tightly over cheekbones and shadows beneath her eyes. He recognized the signs of exhaustion. Now she slept like the dead.

  He wished he’d paid more attention when Sebastian had told him why he was here—something about a huge black monster that could suck people’s brains from their heads. But they’d been chasing every rumor they heard which could in any way be related to Anya’s sisters and the Agency. Up until now, they had all proved to be nothing. He’d presumed this would be the same. Consequently, he’d been going through the motions. He’d supposed all he needed to do was turn up, prove the rumors were the usual load of crap, and then he could get back to being miserable in more congenial surroundings.

  Instead, he suspected what he was going to have to do was phone up Sebastian and tell him he’d found one of Anya’s sisters.

  Except his cell phone had been in his pants pocket when he shifted and presumably, it had vanished along with his pants. Lucky he had a spare pair of those if not a spare phone. He’d have to head into town and pick up a new one. In the morning though.

  Because he was also tired, and for the first time in so long, he could contemplate the idea of falling asleep and of waking up. He slipped his arm around the woman’s slender waist, closed his eyes, and drifted off into a deep dreamless sleep.

  When he woke the second time, he was alone.

  At least he hadn’t ripped her to pieces.

  About the Author

  Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia, which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain. Nina’s writing mixes romance with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

  http://www.ninacroft.com