“We should go now,” he said. “But you need better clothes.”
Go. Yes, they needed to do that. She and Cole would leave, and they’d tell the SF about Enoch. The SF would come and get him. She’d go back to Avery…
She felt ill. She didn’t want to think about Avery. If she did, she’d realize just how screwed up everything was. She knew what Avery would think of what had happened to her. If he knew, he’d kill Cole. Rip him into pieces.
It would have to be one more thing she never told him.
“Can we take the women?” she asked.
“What women?”
“The ones chained up in the basement of the burned-out farmhouse. They’re hurting them, Cole, and I told them the SF was coming—”
“Enoch got rid of my phone,” said Cole. “No one’s coming.”
She’d figured something like that must have happened.
Cole groaned, rolling over onto his back. “I fucked this all up so bad.”
She sat up. “We were both stupid about it. We wanted to be together. And King was desperate. That’s the only reason she would have agreed to let us do something so idiotic.”
He smiled at her wryly. “You wanted to be with me?”
“Always. Apparently, I’m a masochist.”
He sat up too. “What do you think it is, this thing with us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah.” He studied his hands. “I don’t know either.”
They were silent.
Cole cleared his throat. “We can’t take the women. I don’t know how we’d get them all out. The best thing we can do is get word to the SF as soon as we can. They’ll save them.”
She guessed she’d figured that would be the case too. She nodded. “Okay.”
Cole got up. He opened up a small closet next to the bed and began pulling things out of it. Bed sheets. Towels. Several mens’ t-shirts. “There’s no fucking clothes in here, and you need something else. You don’t even have shoes.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said.
“Damn it.” He turned back to her. Caressed her face.
She flinched. The wolf bond had flared a little bit.
He pulled his hand back. “Sorry.”
The bond was so inconsistent. She remembered that from when she was mated to Cole and trying to make out with Avery. Sometimes certain actions triggered it, sometimes they didn’t. Why a caress did, when cuddling with him on the bed didn’t, she wasn’t sure.
Cole turned away, clenching both his hands into fists. “I really am sorry, Dana. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
She believed him. It didn’t matter, anyway. Even if he had wanted to hurt her, it wouldn’t have changed things. She climbed off the bed.
“You can’t go without shoes,” he said.
“I can’t stay here,” she said. “God knows what else you’d do to me if I did.”
His turn to flinch. There was a cubby above the bed. He yanked that open and began to pull things out of it, too. He tossed out a first aid kit, then a string of interconnected condoms.
She made a face.
Cole looked at them. “Look, don’t worry. I didn’t—”
“I know,” she said. She would have felt it if he’d come inside her. He hadn’t.
She remembered being angry with him before, yelling at him that he never used protection when they had sex. She’d been worried about getting pregnant, and the ironic thing about it was that it had happened. Wolves almost never got pregnant, and she and Cole had one bareback ride on a counter in a trailer—her in a flimsy white robe, him with his pants unzipped—and it had happened.
It was kind of a running theme for them, wasn’t it? She was always hardly dressed, and he was always forcing himself on her.
He pulled a pair of flip flops out of the cubby. “I guess these are better than nothing.”
She took them from him and put them on her feet. They were too big. But he was right. Better than nothing.
“I’m sorry you don’t have pants,” he said. “Do you want… do you want my boxers? Just so you’re not… bare down there?”
She thought about it. It might be nice, actually. She wouldn’t feel so exposed. But if Cole was going to do that, then he’d have to take off his pants, and then—
“It’s fine,” she said.
Cole squared his shoulders. “Stay close to me, okay?”
She nodded. Did he think she was going to run off from him once they were out of the trailer? If she had any sense, she would. But she didn’t. Have sense, that is. Cole made her stupid.
He opened the door of the RV.
She waited behind him. She could hear insects in the distance, smell the grass and night air.
He crept silently down the stairs.
She followed.
Outside, it was dark and still. The RVs were all dark. A fire pit in front of one of them glowed faintly with dying embers.
Cole shut the door to the RV.
She heard it click shut and waited to see if the sound was loud enough to bring anyone.
But their voices inside the RV had probably been louder than that click.
Cole stole forward, staying close to the RV.
She went after him, her flip flops slapping against the ground. They were loud! She tried to move more quietly, but that only seemed to make them slap louder.
If Cole noticed, he didn’t let on. He walked around the nose of the RV.
The grass under her feet didn’t even look green in the darkness. It was almost black. She could barely make out the individual blades.
She and Cole moved past the RV. Now they were outside the semi-circle of the camp. Ahead of them, a dark plain stretched out. Far in the distance, she could see trees. Maybe it was a forest. Maybe it was only a strip of foliage.
They started to walk.
She stared ahead at the trees, willing them to get larger. Stubbornly, they stayed tiny and distant.
They walked. Her next to Cole, the breeze blowing underneath the t-shirt she wore, dancing against her inner thighs. She wished she’d taken Cole up on the offer of boxers after all.
The insects sang to each other. The stars twinkled above them. The grass rustled in the breeze, still green-black and indistinguishable.
And they walked.
It seemed like they walked for hours, but it couldn’t have been that long, because occasionally, she looked over her shoulder and saw that the RV camp wasn’t that far back.
No matter how far they walked, it barely seemed to make the trees look closer.
She began to wonder if that was because she was staring at them the whole time, so each change in perspective was incremental. The trees were getting slowly closer, but because she was watching, she couldn’t tell.
She tried to stop looking at them. She looked at her feet instead, at her toes against the dark grass. The grass was getting taller, she noticed. This grass must have been trampled down by cars or feet. But as they were getting further away from the camp, the grass was getting taller. Soon, it would cover her feet, and she wouldn’t even be able to see her toes.
Crack!
The sound of a gunshot, echoing through the night air.
“Cole!” screamed a male voice behind them. “You fucking bastard traitor!”
She and Cole both whirled.
Enoch (at least she thought it was Enoch. It was dark and tough to tell) was standing at the edge of the RV camp, a shotgun in one hand. His chest was bare, and it gleamed in the moonlight. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he yelled.
Cole was stripping off his shirt. “Shift, Dana. Shift.”
Dana yanked her own t-shirt off, letting the wolf scramble up her spine and down over her body. The change flowed over her like a waterfall. Her wolf muscles sprang to life, her paws hit the ground.
And she was running.
She could smell Cole—sense Cole. He was a wolf too, and he was running with her.
Gunshots behind them, sa
iling over their heads.
They dove into the taller grass, and it brushed against their pelts. If they put down their heads, it closed over them as they ran. The breeze picked up, rustling the grass, hiding their movements.
They were free.
And they were part of nature, which was part of them, secreting them away from Enoch, obscuring them and swallowing them up.
Dana’s heart swelled, and she sprinted through the grass, feeling Cole beside her.
She’d never felt more at home than at this moment.
* * *
They ran under the moon, darting between trees, under branches, through bushes, and Cole felt free and alive—at peace. It had been quite a long time since he’d been the wolf, and it was good now, like being back to his true self.
Enoch sent wolves after them. Cole could hear them in the distance behind them, howling and barking, crashing through the grass.
But he and Dana had a head start, and the other wolves were too human to be any match for them. There was something in the way they moved that betrayed it. They were using their human instincts to to pursue, and humans were no match for true wolves—pure wolves.
Back when Cole had still been working with Enoch, he had been a leader in the group, almost equal to Enoch. He’d tried to teach the wolves how to merge with their truest selves, but they were resistant. It wasn’t until he found Dana that he had his best pupil. She had truly made the transition. He could sense it from her as they moved together.
So, it wasn’t long before they had lost the other wolves, left them far behind.
But even with no one pursuing them, he and Dana still ran. Their sleek, furry bodies streaked through the silvery moonlight. They surged across the countryside, drunk on freedom, drunk on running, the movement in their muscles, the way they careened over the landscape. They ran and ran and ran.
Near dawn, they stopped—both at the same time as if by mutual consent. They were under the cover of trees, deep in the woods where it was still dark. But Cole could feel the sun coming up like an itch behind his eyes, and he knew Dana sensed it too.
They both halted, panting and grinning.
He rubbed his muzzle into her fur, taking in the scent of her.
It was pungent and overpowering. The Dana smell. His Dana.
Except she wasn’t his. Now that they were in wolf form, he could smell the other wolf on her—her mate. That scent was woven into her own. He didn’t like it. He wanted his scent woven in there. He wanted to claim her again. She belonged to him, after all.
The urge to mate with her came over him—strong and insistent. The wolf wanted her.
But human Cole had made promises. He knew that the wolf wouldn’t be able to resist her, however, not if he stayed in this form. So, he shifted back.
These days, it was always easier to go from human to wolf than to go from wolf to human. The former shift was so natural, a rippling change like sinking down into water. The latter change was more difficult. Forming back all his human features—his thumbs, his nose, his ankles—was more arduous. It took longer. It hurt.
Cole writhed on the forest floor, sucking back in the fur, feeling his bones shift and crack. He groaned. But it was only a minute or so before he was fully human again, bent down on all fours, totally naked. He rolled over onto his back, taking deep breaths. It still hurt.
Dana was still a wolf. She sniffed him, butting her head against him.
He reached up to run his fingers through her fur. He’d never touched her this way. Not with her a wolf and him a human. It was strange.
But then she was shifting too. Her change seemed to go easier than his—faster. Perhaps she was still more human than he was. Maybe he was slowly losing his humanity, vanishing into the wolf as time passed. If he was, he wasn’t sure he cared.
Dana collapsed next to him in human form.
She was breathless and smiling. “We got away.”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t help but smile too.
She rolled over onto her side to look at him. “It’s good to run.”
“Yeah.” He kissed her. She was beautiful in that moment, her skin flushed, joy radiating all over her, and he couldn’t help himself.
She responded eagerly for a moment, and then a tremor went through her, and she whimpered.
Fucking wolf bond.
He let go of her. He staggered to his feet. “We need to find someplace. We need clothes. We need shelter.”
She looked up at him. “Let’s just shift back. We can sleep here. Who needs clothes when you have fur?”
“No,” he said. “My wolf wants your wolf, and I’m not breaking your alpha bond.”
“Oh.” She sat up, suddenly drawing her body up to cover her nakedness, hiding everything from him.
It was funny, because until she did that, he hadn’t even really noticed her nudity as something sexual. It had just been something that existed, something natural and normal. But once she hid it, he was reminded that he was supposed to find it sexual, and so he did.
He sighed. “Come on. Let’s go look for some kind of shelter.”
She looked up at him. There was fear in her eyes.
The fear turned him on even more. He was starting to get hard, and there was no way to hide that. “Dana. We need to get dressed.”
She was staring at his thickening penis, and she still looked frightened.
“Dana, get up.”
“You liked it, didn’t you?” she said quietly. She wasn’t looking him in the eye. She was still watching his crotch.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I could hear it in your voice,” she said. “When you told Enoch that you wanted to hurt me. You liked it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to do it again?” She looked up at him then.
“No,” he said. “No, it was only because Enoch wouldn’t back down. I didn’t know how else to convince him and get the information.”
“You don’t care about the information. You don’t care about the SF.”
He licked his lips. “I’m not going to do it again.”
“I don’t know if I believe you. I think you liked doing it, and I think you used the information thing as an excuse.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t like it.”
She laughed harshly. “Stop lying to me, Cole.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” She was incredulous. She got to her feet and glared at him, eye to eye.
“It was the lesser of two evils. There was nothing else I could do. If I didn’t convince Enoch that I was on his side, then he would have done something worse to both of us.” He looked down at his feet. “It would have happened to you, anyway. But it would have been worse. There would have been more of them, and they wouldn’t have been me, and I… I tried not to drag it out, so—”
She slapped him.
He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t—”
And she looked afraid again.
He let go of her. He looked at his feet again. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that.”
“Because I am. I don’t like hurting you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I…” He lifted his gaze, and saw the fierce anger in her eyes. “Maybe I… Not that hurt, okay? I was scared afterward. I don’t like it when you cry.”
She took a deep breath. “You know what? Whatever. Let’s not do this. You’re right. Let’s find shelter. Maybe a phone. We need to call the SF. And I need to get away from you. Because you confuse the hell out of me.” She started off into the woods.
He waited for a couple of seconds, and then he went after her.
* * *
Walking through the woods in human form was not nearly as easy as in wolf form—especially considering she was barefoot and naked—and Dana found herself wishing that they’d just shift back already. She didn’t want Cole to mate with her, and she knew that his ex
cuse for staying in human form was a good one. But all the thorns and briars seemed attracted to her vulnerable flesh. When she was a wolf, she seemed to fit into the natural world better. She knew how to move amongst the foliage. As a human, she didn’t seem to feel that.
She found herself musing over it as she walked. Which had come first—civilization or humans’ weak bodies? Had humans adapted their environment to suit their vulnerabilities or had they simply lost their claws because they didn’t need them anymore? She had to admit her mind boggled at the thought of billions of years of adaptation and change. Where did werewolves fit into all of that? Had they simply always been? She knew that ancient societies had attributed the wolfmen to the meddling of the gods. In Greek mythology, Zeus had punished a man by cursing him to be a wolf. But she didn’t feel punished to be the wolf—not anymore. She felt blessed and eager.
And anyway, there were people studying the lupine virus—if it even was a virus. It was communicable, passed on by bites, by sexual contact, passed from mothers to their children. So that made it seem like a disease. But it didn’t quite behave that way. If it was a virus, it was invisible in blood. There were no tests for it. And why was it tied to the moon?
Luckily, she was saved from further thought when they found a hunting cabin. She wasn’t going to figure it out, after all. People had been studying it for the better part of a century, and no one had yet cracked the secret of werewolves. It wasn’t likely she was going to discover the secrets out here in the woods.
The hunting cabin was small. It was only one room. It had a bed and a rickety table. The wind blew in through the cracks in the wooden walls. But it wasn’t cold outside, so it wasn’t a hardship. Still, there weren’t any clothes. The bed had blankets on it, though. As the day wore on, it would get warmer, and the blankets wouldn’t be necessary, but for now, in the morning chill, Dana was glad of them.
She climbed into the bed, exhausted, and Cole came with her.
Of course he did. Cole wasn’t a gentleman. She was fairly sure that offering to sleep on the floor hadn’t even occurred to him.
She could insist on it, she supposed, but what did it matter? She didn’t mind his closeness, not truly.
Moon Dance Page 14
