by S. M. Reine
Abel turned to Bert. “Is there a way out through the back?” Abel asked.
“Just past the bathroom,” Bert said, raising a shaking finger at the short hallway beyond his desk. It was concealed by the fronds of a huge fern and an Asian-style room divider.
“There’s no point in running,” Rylie said. “They’ll follow us.”
“Unless they catch the werewolf,” Jessica said.
Abel stiffened. “Not happening.”
Jessica set down her purse and took a deep breath. “You were identified off of surveillance footage. That’s what he said, right? You and I are practically twins, sweetheart. A few years won’t be distinguishable through low-quality video. I’ll go out there.”
“You could be arrested,” Rylie said. What she didn’t say was, You could get shot.
Her mom seemed to understand both. She blew out a long, steadying breath. “They won’t hold me for long. They’ll realize I’m human soon enough.” She pointed at the hall. “Go.”
“No,” Rylie said, but Abel was already dragging her away.
He gave Jessica an appraising look over Rylie’s head. Her bigotry aside, he seemed to approve of what he saw. “Thanks,” he said, and then he turned to Bert, scooping up Rylie’s copies of the paperwork. “We paid you. The papers are signed. That land is ours, and you’ll turn nothing over to the OPA, or I’ll eat you.” He punctuated that statement with a flash of his very white teeth.
Bert nodded frantically. Anything to get them out of his office.
“You can’t do this,” Rylie said to Jessica.
“I’ll see you soon, sweetheart,” she said, hand on the doorknob.
Abel’s arm was an iron bar around Rylie’s waist. Even twisting with all of her werewolf strength, it wasn’t enough to break free.
He hauled her down the hall and out the back of the building.
The air was silent on the street behind Bert’s office—weirdly calm, after the tension inside. People were wandering between restaurants and shops, chatting quietly. Clouds drifted in the sky.
Rylie tensed, prepared to hear the gunshot that would mean her mother had been killed.
It never came.
EIGHT
RYLIE WASN’T BRAVE enough to pick her mother up from the Office of Preternatural Affairs’s detention center, so Summer volunteered for the job—maybe a little too enthusiastically. There was a weird glint in her eye when she left. Rylie had a feeling that Jessica was about to “meet” her granddaughter, with total honesty this time. And she was really grateful she wouldn’t have to be there for that conversation.
She sat on a tree stump with her knees hugged to her chest as Abel erected a tent-cabin nearby, waiting for word from Summer. Watching her mate work shirtless in the sun was enough to make the most impromptu camping trip interesting. She had been hiding on their new property since Friday afternoon. Rylie had been tense the entire time, expecting the Union to find her at any moment. But they hadn’t. It had been silent. Even peaceful.
Their new property was perfect: two thousand acres of wilderness surrounding a supposedly uninhabitable valley of the Appalachian Mountains. Rylie hadn’t seen the entire thing as a human yet, but she had spent three days exploring its boundaries as a wolf, and the wolf was very satisfied. Dense trees, a river, cliffs, a hundred caves—she suspected it would take years to see every inch of her new property.
Developers would arrive soon to build real cottages, set up generators, and dig wells. Until then, Rylie and Abel would live in a tent-cabin—better than sleeping on the grass under the empty sky.
She blushed as she watched the flexing muscles of Abel’s back. Of course, there were worse things than sleeping with his arms as her only shelter.
The clearing that they had chosen as home was bordered on one side by cliffs, and on the other by a small lake. A huge waterfall fed into it. Its top was so tall that the water misted before it reached the surface, leaving Rylie’s hair pleasantly damp when she stood on the shore.
Soon, that little clearing would be occupied by Seth, by Summer and Abram, by the pack. For now, it was just Rylie and Abel and the trees.
Even with her mom arrested by the Union, life was pretty good.
Abel buried a final stake into the ground. “There we go.” He stepped back and dusted his hands off on his jeans. “Look good to you?”
Rylie watched the flex of his abs, the twist of his shoulders. The remaining scars on his chest only served to accentuate his muscles. The ridges were as fascinatingly labyrinthine as the forest, and as interesting to explore.
“Yes,” she said.
He gave her a sideways grin. “I worked up a sweat. Need to wash it off. Want to swim?”
“In that?” Rylie eyed the lake. “It’s all ice melt.”
“I’ll keep you warm,” Abel said. He dropped his jeans, baring the vee of his Adonis belt, his muscular thighs, and…everything in between. Her face started burning all over again.
It took her two tries to speak. “I don’t know…”
“Did I just hear a ‘yes’?”
Abel’s hands clamped down on her arms. He hauled her off of her feet.
“Abel!” she shrieked.
In a flash, he flung both of them into the water. Rylie barely had enough time to suck in a lungful of oxygen before she was slapped with frigid water. Her skin prickled and burned. Her dress was sodden, tangled between her legs.
She hit the sandy bank and pushed up, but Abel was in the way, all hot flesh to make up for the cold water.
His mouth claimed hers. She parted her lips more in shock than invitation, but he took advantage of it, tongues tangling and teeth nipping. Rylie tasted melted frost, the meat on his breath, the very masculine and animal and so completely Abel flavor of his lips.
When they crested the surface, it was together. The water sloshed around her shoulders. Abel didn’t let her break away. He pulled her hard against him, biting her bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood.
“This is ours,” he growled.
It took her way too long to understand what he was saying. “The lake?”
“Everything. Yours and mine.” Abel pulled her legs around his hips, forced her head back so he could bite under her chin. “And since you belong to me, too…”
At another time, Rylie would have happily argued with him about who was more Alpha, and which of them belonged to which, but she had much better ideas for their mouths. When his lips returned to hers, she bit back. And she didn’t do it gently.
“Mine,” she said.
Someone cleared her throat.
Rylie broke away, feet dropping to sink into wet sand. Her head whipped around.
Summer stood beside the tent cabin, grinning an impish, embarrassed grin. She politely looked at her feet. “We’re here,” she said. Her arms were wrapped around Sir Lumpy, who seemed content to survey his new territory from the vantage point of her chest.
“Shit,” Abel said.
“We?” Rylie asked, leaning around to look behind Summer. Jessica was trudging up the path in the same impractical heels that she had worn on the day of her arrest. She didn’t seem to have noticed Rylie and Abel yet.
Rylie turned to tell Abel to hide, but he had already dipped under the surface, swimming for the opposite shore with long strokes. He was a great swimmer. He disappeared in moments.
She tugged her dress into a more modest position as she trudged out of the water.
“Hi, Mom,” Rylie said brightly as Jessica approached.
“Lord in Heaven, what happened to you?” Jessica asked by way of greeting.
Her cheeks burned so hard that she thought they might catch fire. “I went swimming.”
“Fully clothed?”
Actually, Abel had managed to strip her underwear at some point, while they were underwater. He was talented like that. But Rylie nodded her agreement, casting a surreptitious glance at her body to double-check that everything was hidden. “Yeah, only way to enjoy the la
ke. It felt…refreshing.”
Summer snorted indelicately, setting Sir Lumpy on the grass. He darted into the bushes.
Time for a quick change of subject.
“You survived,” Rylie said, taking a visual assessment of her mother’s condition from head to toe. Her hair was limp, her shirt was wrinkled, and she wore no makeup. But she looked to be fine otherwise. Not even bruised.
“I was questioned thoroughly. They didn’t get anything out of me.” Jessica smirked. “Being clueless is helpful.”
“How did you explain the werewolf rescuing you at the airport?”
“He kidnapped me, the ravenous beast,” she said. “I was a victim.”
Well, not exactly the best way to give werewolves a good reputation, but it would work. Rylie couldn’t exactly nitpick the methods her mother had used to save her from incarceration—or worse. “Thank you,” she said. “Really.”
Jessica nodded. “It’s the least I could do. I haven’t been doing my job lately. I’ve missed…a lot.” She said the last with a glance at Summer. She had definitely heard the entire story.
Summer grabbed the pile of Abel’s clothing. “I’m going for a walk around the lake,” she said. “Be back in a minute.”
As soon as she was gone, Jessica let out a sigh and embraced Rylie’s damp shoulders. “Oh, sweetheart. It’s even worse than I thought. I can’t believe everything you’ve been through.”
Rylie hugged her back tightly, chin trembling. It felt like the first time that someone had acknowledged what she had suffered through for the last couple of years: shouldering the responsibility of the pack, breaking up with her fiance, having and losing twins, being hunted mercilessly by the Union. Having her mommy’s sympathy was almost enough to make her melt down on the spot.
“It’s kind of sucked,” she said. Her voice quavered.
Jessica leaned back, wiping the tears off of Rylie’s cheeks. “Is there no cure?” Rylie shook her head. “Can you control it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty well.”
“Then you’ve always got somewhere to hide when you need to,” Jessica said. “Visit me in the city. Get away from it all.”
It was kind of funny—the idea that she could get away from “it” by taking a vacation. But her mom meant well. The gesture meant more than Rylie could say.
She forced a smile. “Am I still invited to be your maid of honor?”
“Absolutely.”
“Great,” Rylie said. “I’ll do it.” Sure, it would mean having to face her mom’s fiance—but at least she wasn’t dating anymore. Getting used to one guy would be a lot easier than dealing with the rotating boyfriends. And Abel was right. Her mother deserved happiness.
“I love you, sweetheart,” Jessica said. “No matter what.”
Rylie sniffled. “I love you, too.”
Jessica turned, head tilted back to look at the trees, the cliffs, the waterfall. “This is the property you bought with your trust fund, I take it?”
“Yeah,” Rylie said. “It’s kind of hard to access without a lot of hiking, so you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that it’s fantastic. Unless you feel like a very long walk.”
Her mother silently deliberated for a moment, then kicked off her heeled pumps, dropping them beside the tent cabin.
“I want to see it,” Jessica said. “I want to see it all.”
Jessica rescheduled her flight back to the city. It was the first full moon that the pack would get to enjoy at the sanctuary, and she stuck by Rylie’s side as everyone arrived: Trevin, Crystal, Pyper, almost a dozen members of the pack. Jessica handled the overwhelming number of introductions with the grace of an experienced CEO. She even seemed to remember everyone’s names.
Night was already falling by the time that they reached the valley, so they didn’t have much time to socialize.
“You don’t have to watch,” Rylie said, standing in front of the tent-cabin with her mother. “It looks painful. It’s very messy. I won’t blame you if you don’t want to see it.”
Jessica was watching the pack strip out of the corner of her eye. Most of them weren’t as modest as Rylie, and preferred to welcome the change naked. “Sweetheart, I’m ready to be part of your life. I’ll accept all of it. Even…this.” Her face brightened when Trevin dropped his shirt.
Rylie rolled her eyes. “We’ll be out all night, so don’t stay up for us.”
“Have fun,” Jessica said. To her credit, she only sounded a little nervous.
Abel joined hands with Rylie, drawing her into the pack as the energy of the moon swept over them. The huge, silvery sphere hung over the ridges of the mountains, turning the trees into blue shadows and making the waterfall sparkle.
“Ready?” Abel asked.
Rylie tilted her face toward the moon, drinking in its rays, spreading her energy through the pack.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She allowed all of her wolves to change at once, drawing their pain away so that they could shift effortlessly into their second skins. Fur blossomed like flowers facing the sun. They were a dozen different shades of gray and brown and gold—huge, beautiful beasts that Rylie could never see as monsters.
Rylie and Abel changed last. He was black, and she was gold. Together, they were the sun and the night, yin and yang.
She was afraid to face her mother, afraid to see Jessica’s reaction. But she wasn’t going to try to hide from her mom anymore. Rylie turned to her proudly—Alpha of the pack.
Jessica’s hands covered her mouth, eyes filled with tears. “You’re beautiful,” she said.
Rylie’s heart swelled. Abel rammed his face into hers, as if to say, I told you so.
The pack ran into the night, and Rylie was home.
DEAR READER,
THE Cain Chronicles is over, but Rylie’s story is not. All of your favorite characters will return in the The Ascension Series, beginning with Sacrificed in Shadow, which is a crossover with my other urban fantasy novels. This series will conclude Rylie, Abel, and Seth’s journey—and I can already tell you, it’s pretty epic. Book one is slated for an August 2013 release.
If you’d like to know when Rylie’s next book comes out, visit my website to sign up for my new release email alerts. I’ve also put “liner notes” for Alpha Moon on my website, in case you want a behind-the-scenes peek into the thought process behind writing this episode. By which I mean, my crazy ramblings. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
Happy reading!
Sara (SM Reine)
http://authorsmreine.com/
http://facebook.com/authorsmreine
Table of Contents
Title page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Dear Reader...
