Blue Moon Saloon Box Set 1

by Anna Lowe

  Other than the fact that he’d ushered an innocent man to his death?

  “Did you get hurt in the fight? I mean, the fight in the saloon that night?”

  It took his mind a second to jump from bull riding to the night she and Jessica were held up by those thugs. The night he’d helped Janna out of a pickle and ended up thrown into a wall.

  “Been thrown worse than that.”

  “I mean, cut.”

  “No,” he said, rubbing his arm, then hiding the motion.

  Too late. Janna pulled his arm toward her and tugged his sleeve up.

  “It’s nothing, Janna.” He pulled back but stopped when she gasped at the pink swelling.

  “No…”

  Kind of overreacting over a tiny scratch, wasn’t she?

  Her gaze snapped back to his eyes, studying him as if for some sign.

  “It’s fine,” he insisted.

  “Did this happen that night?”

  “It’s fine. Been a little slow to heal, that’s all.”

  Even as he said it, it sounded like a lie.

  Not just a scratch, a raspy inner voice warned. Never going to heal…

  He yanked the truck door open.

  Need her. Need our mate, the voice said, more insistently every time, until it wasn’t telling or asking but demanding and flooding him with dark images again. Of grabbing Janna and exposing her neck. Baring his jaws wide and biting right into her flesh…

  Mine! Mate!

  He shook the horrifying image away and closed the door between them, trying to keep her safe. That voice was evil. He had to keep Janna away from it. Which meant keeping her away from him, for her own sake.

  “Gotta go,” he mumbled, pushing the key into the ignition.

  “Wait, Cole!” Her voice was so sharp, so uncompromising, that he obeyed. She pulled the red bandana from her neck and tied it around his. “Here. Take this.”

  “But…” He didn’t promise, but he couldn’t bring himself to snatch it off, either.

  He shook his head, more at himself and the voice inside that was also yelling, But! But! There was no but. Another minute listening to that voice and he’d throw Janna into the back of the truck and make off with her. Take her somewhere quiet and do who knows what to her.

  “A little reminder of me.” Her worried smile was forced.

  “Gotta go,” he murmured and fired up the truck.

  He didn’t want to go, but he sure as hell couldn’t stay. So he drove. Somewhere. Anywhere. Staring straight ahead to avoid the image of a forlorn Janna in the side mirror, and his own reflection in the rearview. He took the first left he could to break the contact and only released his white-knuckled grip on the wheel to punch the dashboard. He drove too fast, then too slow, utterly without direction or a sense of time. He ducked his head to scan every part of the daytime sky for a hint of the moon. Although it was nowhere in sight, he could feel it lurking out there, ready to leap out and toy with him again. The very thought made his skin tickle, his nerves crawl.

  On instinct, he tugged Janna’s bandana up to his nose and inhaled. Her scent settled him, a teensy tiny bit. He sniffed it like a drug and drove a little more. A lot more, actually, on a loop of the whole damn county until he found himself pulling into his parking space at Rosalind’s place. He stalked toward the barn, ignoring the dog scrambling away and the horses pawing the ground.

  Rosalind was across the way, showing a couple of newcomers around. A vacationing family come to stay at the little studio apartment Ros rented out, judging by the clothes, the camera, and the heap of luggage. There was a dad, a mom, and two squirming little kids. Normally, he’d go over and introduce himself, but hell, in the state he was in, he’d probably scare them away.

  He stomped to the work shed, grabbed a hammer and a can of nails, and set out to mend the broken paddock on the far side of the property — the far, far side. Banging at metal with metal suited his mood right now just fine. But even the din he made didn’t squelch the voices in his head.

  Must have my mate! Must, or I’ll die!

  He shook his head hard enough to rattle the voice away. Wondered if it was true. Wondered how much he’d mind dying. Maybe that was the best way out. He looked up and across the valley to where the abandoned train tracks lay. It didn’t take much to imagine an old-time locomotive rushing along, blowing a trail of steam. He imagined balancing on his toes on the tracks and watching it sweep closer, head on. The whistle would scream, the rails would vibrate, and it would be right on top of him, until, bam! The end.

  A fly buzzed past his ear, and he went back to hammering. Wishing. Wondering.

  Chapter Six

  Janna shook all the way back to the saloon, and when she grabbed for the coffeepot to make another round of the customers, she made such a clatter, everyone in the saloon looked up.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, trying desperately not to turn around and chase Cole down for a second time.

  Mate! Must help our mate! her wolf shrieked, clawing wildly at the door of the mental cage she kept it locked behind.

  She ground her teeth and took a deep breath. Cole needed some time, and holy cow, she did, too. She’d caught a glimpse of his eyes before he hurried away, and the gray-on-gray storm clouds she loved gazing at had bolts of lightning in them now. The classic sign of a Changeling, or so she’d heard.

  Cole. Changeling. Wolf?

  Mine! Mate!

  She closed her eyes, trying to process it all. It wasn’t withdrawal that had made Cole moody these past few weeks — it was the Change happening inside him. Slowly perhaps, due to the small size of the scratch, but inexorably. And now, the transformation was accelerating.

  No wonder her wolf had suddenly gone bonkers for him. As long as Cole was fully human, fate could keep her mate disguised. But now that he was turning into a shifter, his scent had intensified. Magnified. Maximized, so there was no mistaking it.

  He was the one! Hers! Her destined mate!

  Her heart pounded in her chest, so fast and hard, it felt like her ribcage might crack. She grabbed at the edge of the counter, fighting the overwhelmingly giddy feeling of it all.

  Jesus, it really did happen. Destiny, bringing two souls together. Forever.

  Her heart skipped, but her stomach lurched, remembering the way Cole stood beside his pickup. She’d cringed when she saw what he’d unconsciously done as she approached — namely, testing the air with his nose. Swinging his head left and right like a wolf following a faint trail. Tipping his chin up.

  When his eyes met hers, the storm gray was lit with tiny flashes of green and brown. A telltale indicator of a Changeling — or man going slowly mad.

  She wanted to grab him by the hand, race to her car, and drive far, far away.

  As if that would work. As if she could outrun fate.

  Her wolf raised its nose and let out a long, mournful howl.

  Humans wounded by shifters usually died a drawn-out and painful death. Only a tiny minority survived, and most of those went slowly mad. Only the tiniest fraction survived — like Kyle Williams, the Twin Moon wolf who worked as a state cop. He and Rick Rivera, Tina Hawthorne’s mate, were the only two survivors Janna knew of. Women bitten by male shifters had a much higher survival rate because their bodies didn’t fight the Change the same way. But men… The stronger the man, the more his body would resist the Change. The more he’d struggle to his own death.

  And Cole… Her eyes slid to the rodeo still running on the TV. Jesus, if ever a man was a candidate for driving himself mad, it was Cole. A man already carrying way too many ghosts and too much guilt.

  “Hi, Janna,” a voice called from the door.

  Her chin snapped up as she forced a smile on her face.

  Stef, a lean, lanky she-wolf from Twin Moon pack, stood at the door with her mate, Kyle.

  Janna stared for a moment, because Stef had once been all-human herself, just like her mate, Kyle — another human who had survived the Change. They ambled in like
it was just another sunny day in northern Arizona, swinging a baby carrier in which a tiny little bundle slept.

  Janna grabbed her drinks tray and hurried over to the side booth they took, trying to exude a calm she didn’t feel. Shifters could see — and more importantly, smell — right through each other’s guises, so she had to cloak her feelings well.

  “Can I get you the lunch menu?” she asked, studying Kyle out of the corner of her eye.

  Plenty of women did that on account of the way the man looked. Fine, mighty fine, she’d heard more than one woman sigh whenever the cop shifter stopped by the saloon. He came by often, on and off duty as a state cop, and always on duty as a leading member of Twin Moon pack — the pack that leased the saloon to the Voss brothers and wanted to make damn sure it didn’t become a magnet for shifters of the wrong type.

  Kyle’s eyes were firmly on Stef’s. His hand clasped hers tightly, and the love pulsing between the two of them might as well have been a glowing neon light.

  “Just a piece of pie for me.” Stef smiled.

  “And you?” Janna asked, sneaking a peek at the open collar of Kyle’s shirt, where the red edge of one of his scars barely showed.

  As a human, Kyle had been mauled by a rogue shifter. That was years ago, but Janna had heard the stories of how hard his body had fought the Change and how close he’d tiptoed to death. But Kyle had had his happy ending. He’d found his place in the pack, met his destined mate, and settled down with her in every sense of the word.

  If he could do it, so could Cole, right?

  She held her breath, hoping for some voice to rise out of the desert and whisper an affirmative response.

  Kyle had come that close to death because his wounds had been so severe and the Change came over him suddenly, unlike Cole’s slower transformation, right?

  Right? she wanted to scream, cueing the answer she craved. Right?

  She strained her ears but didn’t hear a peep.

  “Just coffee for me,” Kyle said.

  “Nothing for baby?” she managed a feeble joke.

  The two shifters turned to the baby carrier with the happy grins of proud parents and peered in at their sleeping little boy.

  “I think he’s good,” Stef said.

  He’s perfect, Kyle’s proud daddy eyes said.

  Janna heaved a huge inner sigh and turned for the kitchen. Kyle was living proof that a man could survive the Change. And Tina’s mate Rick had survived it, too. Two perfectly good examples of why she needn’t fear for Cole.

  She racked her mind for more and came up painfully blank. All she came up with were a dozen ugly examples to the contrary. So, Jesus, what should she do?

  She glanced through the serving window from the kitchen to the saloon. Theoretically, she ought to inform the wolves who owned the saloon and oversaw this area of the Southwest when it came to shifter matters. But the Twin Moon alpha, Ty Hawthorne, could be a downright terrifying man to confront.

  Janna considered approaching Ty’s sister Tina but discarded it almost as quickly. Tina had a soft spot for wayward shifters, but the saloon had already brought trouble too close to Twin Moon pack, and her patience had to be nearing an end. And with a human mate of her own, Tina had to be just as wary of the Blue Bloods as Janna.

  No, she couldn’t tell anyone. Not yet.

  Mate! Needs us! her wolf whined inside.

  The pull toward him was like a physical thing, a stretch of every nerve in her body. Another hour without him and she’d go nuts.

  She slumped as soon as the word crossed her mind. Going nuts. That fate awaited Cole if she didn’t do anything to help. But what? There were no recipes for seeing a Changeling through the transformation. Nothing but hope and faith — two things she’d been awfully short of ever since fleeing Montana.

  That thought tipped her from desperation over to anger. She’d done enough running, not enough fighting. And she’d had enough.

  Enough! her wolf agreed, baring its teeth. No more running!

  She had to get to Cole. Had to talk to him and try to explain. The full moon was only a few nights away, so she had to do something fast.

  But she couldn’t exactly run off after Cole at the beginning of her shift, and it would kill her to wait. That problem had to be solved first.

  She delivered the pie and coffee to Kyle and Stef, then hustled to the café door and yanked off her apron.

  “Jess!” she called into the café next door. “Can you cover for me for a while?”

  Jess made an unhappy noise. “I’ve got so much to do…”

  “Kyle and Stef are here with their baby. Their cute, adorable—”

  Jess came speeding out the door and into the saloon, grinning ear to ear. “Baby? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Janna trotted off for her car, shaking her head. Problem one was solved. Problem two…

  She steeled her shoulders and picked up her pace.

  Chapter Seven

  Cole spent a sweaty hour repairing the fence, alternating between hammering and sniffing from Janna’s bandana. That and the clean scent of pine that started where the property merged with the forest made him feel a little more sane.

  Rosalind put the guests’ kids on a pony and led them around the ring while the parents snapped pictures, but he kept his distance, just in case. Kept his head and eyes down, too, so they’d know to leave him alone.

  But then a truck pulled into the paddocks adjoining Rosalind’s place and slowly backed up to the gate. When human voices mixed with animal bellows drifted to his ears, he couldn’t help but look up.

  The trailer the truck had hauled in rattled and shook with the sharp bang of hooves. Something very big and very ornery wanted out of that trailer, bad.

  “Moo!” One of the little kids, fresh off his pony ride, ran over to the fence. The sound of his voice carried. “Moo!”

  “Big moo,” the dad said, watching three men tilt the trailer’s ramp down.

  Cole’s ears twitched. Could he really hear their voices from so far away?

  “Hmmf.” That was Rosalind, who rented the spare paddocks to stock traders on occasion. She sure didn’t look happy at what they had unloaded this time.

  “Hey! Hey!” One of the handlers whistled and yelled, and the spotted rump of a huge bull appeared.

  It bellowed, twisted, and banged away, taking one step forward for every two back. One of those ornery Longhorn-Brahman mixes that liked to fight every inch of the way. The inexperienced handlers were making things worse, too, riling the beast up more than settling it down.

  Cole shook his head, watching the men force the beast down the ramp with a whip and a prod. No wonder the bull was so pissed off.

  With a snort, the animal clomped down the ramp and trotted across the paddock, bucking and kicking at an invisible foe.

  Cole squinted into the sun to watch it in spite of himself. He studied how the bull dipped its shoulders before lifting its hips, and how it twisted to the right. Getting a feel for the animal’s patterns out of sheer habit.

  The bull was huge. Angry. Wild. A product of overly aggressive breeding practices was Cole’s guess, because big money called for ever bigger, meaner, wilder bulls to challenge riders. Breeders were succeeding, too, because the percentage of riders completing eight-second rides had dropped dramatically in recent years. Some bulls were downright unrideable, and it wouldn’t surprise Cole if this was one of those.

  “Bad bull,” Rosalind told the little boy in the red T-shirt and brown overalls. “You stay away.”

  Cole contemplated the fencepost in front of him for a long time. He’d stayed away, all right. Practically run away from anything to do with cattle, even though it was in his blood. He’d grown up on a ranch, got his start bullfighting on a ranch, spent his whole life doing what he loved best, until…

  Yeah, until last year.

  He glanced up at the bull huffing and puffing at the far corner of the enclosure and imagined those wide, red-ringed eyes up close.
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  It wasn’t bulls that scared him. It was fate, swooping down out of nowhere to grab one life and send the soul of another spiraling into an abyss.

  Everyone said it was best to get back in the saddle after a fall, but he hadn’t gotten around to that. He doubted he ever would, because what if something he did led to another meaningless death?

  Something on the breeze mocked him. Maybe you are just scared.

  He grimaced and went back to hammering. Missing twice for every hit, cursing every time.

  The dust trail of an approaching vehicle came down the drive, and he wondered who was coming now.

  Mine! Mate!

  He jumped to his feet as he recognized the battered little Mitsubishi Janna was so proud of.

  Janna! Janna! his soul sang as she pulled in.

  Part of him wanted to run straight to her and pull her into his arms; the other wanted to run for the hills. What if that inner voice got out of control again? What if he went too far and hurt her one day?

  Would never hurt my mate, the voice growled back.

  She got out of the car and looked around briefly before turning exactly in his direction. It was as if she’d sensed him the way he’d sensed her coming down the drive. She was a good quarter mile away, but even so, that feeling of standing barefoot in a mountain meadow trickled slowly into his soul.

  She’d come to see him! His heart thumped inside his chest. She wanted him. Maybe even needed him the way he needed her.

  Rosalind had once boarded a fancy Arabian mare with a long, glossy mane for a week, and the way it pranced around the paddock put all the other horses to shame. That’s what Janna looked like, gliding across the way. Never mind the dust, the beat-up cars, and peeling paint of the barn: she rose above it all, shining like a jewel amidst pebbles. Making the whole place classier just by being in it, the way she did at the saloon. But she fit in at the same time, like a princess who’d been mixed up with a cowgirl at birth and had grown up working a ranch.

  He entertained himself with silly notions like that as she started up his way. It was a good, long way, and that was fine with him, because he could relish the moment longer, watching her smile, her springy step, her easy, flowing gait.