Wolf Moon

by A. D. Ryan

  Nick and Jackson backed away, allowing me through. I looked around the body, eliminating their footprints from my mental evidence bank. However, there were so many other sets that I’d have to compare with anyone who’d been outside today. I smelled the air, the scent fading, but still there, even amid the blood. Marcus had a better nose for it though, because he followed it, telling us all to stay put. Nick seemed uneasy about this decision, and something told me it was because Marcus was the Alpha and he typically didn’t venture off without some kind of backup.

  No different than my dad never heading out on an investigation without a team. Strength in numbers was the only way to go.

  I continued to look around, not finding anything I could deem useful in tracking. Perhaps Nick was right; it was too soon. I really wasn’t ready.

  Just as I was about to admit defeat, a twig snapped in the trees to the left of the house. I took off toward it, knowing it wasn’t Marcus or any of the others based on the scent I caught. It was a vampire. Not necessarily the same vampire, though. Unfortunately, I was unable to tell because they all smelled the same: horrible.

  Nick and Jackson were hot on my trail as I whipped through the trees, pushing most of the reed-thin branches out of my way while the others snapped against my body painfully. I didn’t care though; I was on a mission.

  “Brooke!” Nick called. “Wait up! You don’t know what’s out there!”

  “Listen to him, kid!” Jackson agreed, but I couldn’t stop. My legs continued to move as though apart from my body. I was hunting.

  I fell to a stop where the rancid smell was most concentrated and looked around. There were no footprints besides those of a few animals—the Pack included—and the ones I just made in my mad dash to get here. So, what snapped?

  I looked up in the trees, moving in a slow circle, and when my eyes caught a flash of copper against the night sky, my stomach lurched, and I gasped, slapping my hands over my mouth in horror. Nick and Jackson caught up, noticed where I was looking, and followed my gaze.

  There, about five feet above us, was a red-haired woman, hanging from a tree branch with a noose tied expertly around her slender neck. She had been stripped of all her clothes and blood ran down her body, all the way down her legs until it dripped from her toes and onto the freshly fallen snow. I sniffed again, realizing in an instant that the blood didn’t belong to her. It was from the wolf we’d found in the driveway.

  As if the dead wolf wasn’t message enough to the pack, this little stunt was directed solely at Nick and me.

  It was obvious that the woman represented me, and someone was showing Nick exactly what they planned to do if they ever caught me.

  The two questions on my mind were: who and why? Gianna was gone. Had she left explicit instructions to carry out her sadistic plan in the wake of her demise?

  I was rattled. Chilled right to the marrow in my bones. All I could see was that poor woman, hanging by her neck in that tree, fresh red blood dripping down her naked body and onto the crisp white snow. I knew it was a message—a threat—and so did Nick. He’d told me only days ago that Gianna had promised revenge against him for what he did to Bobby and the rest of her ranks up in Alaska, and when she failed in Scottsdale, she somehow brought the fight here from beyond her grave.

  Right to the doorstep of the Pack.

  The wolf, while undoubtedly a declaration of war, was quite possibly also a diversion. As a cop, I recognized this as a way to separate us. Whoever planted it had likely banked on Nick going off on his own and finding this extremely personal message.

  And it pissed him off.

  I’d seen Nick angry before, but never like this. With a feral growl, he doubled over. The sound of his bones cracking echoed through the woods. I was so close, I could feel the heat radiating off of his body as the fever took over. I watched his skin ripple under his shirt as his bones realigned beneath it. The sweater he wore tightened over his expanding, then contracting, rib cage and he cried out with the first rip. His inhuman hands dug into the snow until they pulled up frozen earth. It sounded part painful and part wild, and before I knew what was happening, I was being yanked away by Jackson.

  “Get back!” he ordered firmly, shoving me behind him as Nick’s clothes shredded and fell from his transforming body.

  He was mid-transition when he turned to find us watching him. His body was darker and discolored, fur sprouting up in patches. His teeth had grown and were sharper, while the blue of his eyes had almost been completely overtaken by the amber rings around his pupils. He looked horrified with himself for having lost control. I wanted to comfort him, but Jackson turned us away, wrapping one arm around my waist and grabbing my bicep tightly with his other hand as he ushered me from the trees. As soon as we broke free of them, an anguished howl sounded, and my heart clenched. I couldn’t explain it, but my instincts wanted me to go after him…to comfort him. He needed me.

  “What happened?” Marcus demanded, coming from the other side of the house, his eyes wide and panicked. “I heard Nick.”

  “He…uh…he…” Shock had settled in now, my brain unable to form the explanation, and I continued to stammer. I looked back and forth between Marcus and the trees where we left Nick.

  “He shifted,” Jackson helped out. “Brooke picked up on something and tracked it to the trees over there.” He gestured in the direction we just came from. “There was a message for him from one of Gianna’s parasites.”

  Marcus looked at me, then Jackson. “Which was?”

  “A woman,” I croaked. “She’s dead. I-I think it was supposed to be me. Stripped, bleeding, and hanging from a tree.” Noticing the alarmed look on Marcus’ face, I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat, and my whole body shivered when I remembered Nick’s tortured cry. “I-I’ve never seen him like that before.”

  “C’mon, kid,” Jackson said. “I’ll take you inside and go look for him. I’m sure he’s just working through it.”

  My limbs moved as though trudging through molasses, my thoughts foggy and muddled, and Jackson really had to work to get me into the house and up the stairs. Outside, I heard another howl, recognizing it as Nick’s, then another I didn’t. I stopped in the middle of the stairs, my body tense before a tremble took over.

  Jackson ran his hand up and down my arm. “It’s just Marcus. Probably trying to locate him. Let’s get you settled in your room and I’ll go out too, okay?”

  Eyebrows pulled together with worry, I met his gaze and nodded slowly before we continued to ascend the staircase. We walked down the hall, my limbs moving as though disconnected from my body, slow and jerky, feet barely lifting off the floor.

  Once in my room, Jackson sat me on the edge of the bed and crouched before me. “Brooke?” I looked at him, but I didn’t really see him. My vision was clouded with fear. Fear for Nick. Fear for myself. Fear for the Pack I’d barely joined.

  “You going to be okay, kid?”

  Shaking my head to clear the murky confusion, I snapped myself out of it. “Yeah. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Miranda’s somewhere in the house. If you need anything, just call for her, okay?” I nodded again before he cupped my face to lock my gaze to his. “Stay here otherwise. I’ll bring him home in one piece.”

  Jackson left me alone then, and I waited. I didn’t know how long I waited, but I waited. I stayed on the end of the bed before my nerves got the better of me. Soon, I was pacing the room, biting my thumb nail—a nervous habit I’d given up in my late-teen years.

  Based on the alarm clock on Nick’s bedside table, more than an hour had passed. Though, to be honest, it felt like longer. When I saw a flash of light move in the yard, I sprinted across the room, pressed my palms flat against the windows—I’d worry about the handprints tomorrow—and strained my eyes to see if I could spot him.

  I couldn’t, so I went back to pacing. Back and forth, I moved in front of the large windows, occasionally looking out to see if they’d found him.


  Then the bedroom door opened suddenly, startling me, but not nearly as much as the sight of a very nude Nick walking back into the room. My eyes remained on his and not his lack of clothes as I took an awkward step forward. His posture was rigid. I sensed apprehension and fear as well as something else…shame? I continued forward, wanting to set his mind at ease, but he stopped me, turning toward his dresser where he grabbed a pair of black sweats and pulled them on.

  He turned again, but hesitated. His eyes reflected the shame I sensed moments before, and I still struggled to understand why.

  Then it hit me: he’d lost control, which was rare for him. But he did, and he lost control because I had been threatened. Whoever was responsible had wanted to confirm his weakness, and stringing up some innocent woman on our property had done exactly that.

  I could see he needed to be reassured that everything was fine, so I took another step toward him. “Nick,” I said softly. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  His rigid posture softened slightly, and he reached for me. Relieved, I fell into his arms, wrapping mine around his waist as he enveloped me entirely. He still smelled of the crisp winter air, mixed with the subtle notes of his recent shift, and I breathed him in, repeating over and over to myself that he was okay.

  He kissed the top of my head once before resting his cheek on it, and I let him without my guilt taking over. I suspected the reasoning for this was that my relief eclipsed it. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled. “You shouldn’t have seen that. I should have been better prepared to deal with that sort of thing. It isn’t the first time she’s threatened you. I should have known she’d have some kind of contingency plan in place should she not make it back here.”

  “I know.” I tightened my arms around him. “And it’s okay. You have nothing to apologize for.”

  Nick loosened his hold on me, bringing his hands to my cheeks and urging our gazes to meet. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen them, intense and searing. “I can’t remember the last time I lost control like that,” he confessed. “Marcus had trouble getting me to calm down enough to shift back.”

  “But you did,” I told him, wrapping my hands around his thick wrists as his thumbs moved over my cheekbones. “You were scared—so was I.”

  Nick inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against mine. “I won’t let her freak show of followers hurt you,” he promised.

  “And I won’t let them think they can,” I responded lightly. “You forget… I took out their almighty leader two weeks after my first full moon.”

  Nick laughed, and I felt his stress alleviate slightly as his fingers curled against the skin on the back of my neck. “How could I forget?”

  “You can’t,” I quipped. “I won’t let you.”

  “I wouldn’t expect any less.” His eyes opened, and while I could still see that glimmer of fear hanging on relentlessly, I also saw a desire that lit a spark in me, as well.

  Soon the aqua color of his eyes lightened to the ice-blue of David’s eyes, and it freaked me out. It was just a trick that my mind was playing on me, but it was enough to make me balk. I took several steps back, clenching my eyes shut as the guilt clawed its way back up from where it had been lying dormant the last couple hours.

  “Sorry,” he repeated. “Obviously I don’t expect—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I know, but everything is still so…screwed up in my head. All of this—the new house in a new country, what happened to David—it’s all just a little hard to sort out right now. I just need…I don’t know…time?”

  Nodding, Nick took my hand in his again. “I know. I really didn’t mean anything by it. I tend to get a little…worked up after I shift.”

  Heat filled my cheeks, and I tried to hide my embarrassment behind a smile. “Oh.”

  “Not that you’re not alluring any other time,” he rushed to elaborate, making me giggle. It wasn’t often he flustered himself. “Apparently I have a chronic case of foot-in-mouth syndrome afterward too. I blame the amount of concentration it took to shift back this time. Kind of disengaged my filter.”

  “It’s fine, really. I think I get it…or I will?” I was rambling like an idiot. How was one supposed to segue out of an awkward conversation? Was it even possible? Maybe I should just change the topic entirely.

  I cleared my throat, noticed the time on the clock read almost ten, and then turned back to Nick. “It’s been a long day,” I said. “You ready for bed?”

  Nick glanced at his enormous bed and nodded. “Yeah.”

  I grabbed some shorts and a tank top from my dresser and excused myself to get ready for bed in the bathroom. After I finished changing and washing up, I headed to the bed and pulled the thick duvet down before crawling beneath it while Nick finished his routine. When he emerged from the bathroom and approached the bed, he eyed it and me questioningly.

  I didn’t need to read his mind to know he was curious about the sleeping arrangements.

  I smiled, pulling the blanket on his side down. “I think in an effort to keep up the pretense, we should share a bed,” I whispered to keep anyone else from overhearing—that would be just what we needed right now: complications within the Pack.

  Nick joined me, and I lay down, turning my body to face his. I had both hands under my cheek initially, but when he relaxed next to me, I realized I needed to be touching him in some way. After our stressful first day here, I needed the comfort of his touch, and I felt like he needed the same from me.

  However, because I wasn’t ready for more, I only reached out and took his hand. He was okay with that.

  “Can you tell me about it?” I asked softly. He looked confused, so I tried to be a little more specific. “What you felt before you shifted out there. Can you tell me about it? I’ve only done it once by myself, and even then it was triggered by that scrap of cloth that was left at my house. Maybe I can learn from it.”

  Nick shuddered visibly, closing his eyes and grimacing. “It’s not something you want to learn from. I lost complete control of my emotions—of who I was. I was so angry about the wolf being dumped on our land by one of them, and then…to find that body in the woods, taunting me and reminding me that that bitch has been gunning for you for months…” His hand tightened around mine, and his skin heated up, but before he let it go any further, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and held my gaze. His eyes were intriguing; the aqua bright around the outer edge and that amber ring I sometimes noticed almost glowing around the pupil. It only did this when the wolf was on the brink of breaking through. A sign it was pacing at the surface of his control.

  “It pushed me over the edge. I don’t even remember the transition happening—and I haven’t blacked out in years, Brooke. It was unsettling after so many years of careful control.” He sighed, the look in his eyes simultaneously angry and ashamed.

  “And the body?” I asked carefully, hoping I wouldn’t upset him further.

  Nick exhaled heavily and closed his eyes for a moment. “They moved it off the property and called in an anonymous tip. We can’t have the cops sniffing around here.”

  “That’s probably smart,” I offered.

  After another excruciating pause, Nick’s eyes held mine. “I’m just glad Jax was there… If I’d have done anything to hurt you—”

  “Hey,” I said, scooting closer on the bed and slipping my hand from his to push his blond hair off his forehead. Our feet touched, and Nick brought one leg up, slipping it beneath mine for more contact. “Don’t even think about the what-ifs. Nothing bad happened, and nothing will.” He still seemed unconvinced, so I took a chance and leaned forward, lightly pressing my lips to his. It wasn’t a kiss borne out of passion and desire, but one of friendship and comfort.

  He sighed contentedly, his lips softening against mine as I kissed him once more, soft and sweet. “There…” I pulled back slowly, watching as his eyes fluttered open. “Go to sleep with a happy thought in your head instead, okay?”

  Nick�
�s smile widened and his eyelids drooped slightly as he dropped his hand to my waist and pulled me closer. “Remember how you said I kept your nightmares at bay?” I nodded, hoping that this would continue to be true. “Well, I wonder if that works both ways.”

  With our legs tangled beneath the blankets, my chest was flush against his, our noses barely an inch apart. I could feel his heart beat against my breast, and his fingers found the hem of my shirt. He toyed with it, lifting it an inch or two so he could run his fingers along the sliver of skin there—he did this for comfort; had ever since we’d dated years ago.

  Soon, our breathing patterns fell into sync, and we fell sound asleep. We’d face whatever hurdles life brought our way in the morning.

  Chapter 8 | ill-intent

  The sun crept along the floor that morning, stretching across the room with every passing minute. Soon our entire bed was bathed in it. I stretched my body lengthwise, reveling in the way various bones crackled and popped, and then an arm flew back around my waist. Nick grumbled something incoherent, pulling me back against him. I laughed as he pressed his entire body against my back, his grip unrelenting, and rested his head against mine. I could feel his warm breath wafting over the bare skin of my shoulder, and it tickled.

  “It’s too early to get up,” he mumbled. “Let’s just stay in bed.”

  “Oh, so the first impression I’m going to give off is that I’m a lazy hermit?” Nick nodded behind me, and I smacked his arm lightly. “I don’t think so.”

  I tried again to slip from the bed, but his hand ensnared my waist and turned me around until I faced him. His eyes were open, not looking the least bit tired, but mischief flashed in them. “You know,” he whispered, “everyone would probably buy our little back-story more if we stayed hidden in solitude all day. All newly-mated weres do.”

  “Ah,” I said, pushing his blond hair back from his face. “But you forget, Nick. We’re not exactly ‘new.’ Our honeymoon stage ended years ago.” I was just teasing him and he knew it, but he still growled and retaliated. He straddled my thighs, pinned my arms above my head with one of his monstrous hands, and proceeded to tickle me.