Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) (11 page)

James’s smile had grown to warm his entire face. “Feisty creatures.”

“You have no idea.” She gazed at him mistrustfully. He had leaned close enough that she could see white stubble on his jaw, the faint imprint of scars on one cheek, and slivers of a darker blue radiating from his pupils. He wasn’t quite so scary up close. The little flaws made him look more human. “Are you really going to be able to fix Gwyn and Scott?”

“If I can’t, nobody can,” he said, moving his hand to the other side of her stomach.

“Not much of answer.”

“I can’t make any promises. I’m sorry.” He laughed when a kick landed solidly in the middle of his palm. “I don’t think they like me.”

The cellar doors rattled.

Rylie started to stand, but he lifted a hand to stop her.

“Who’s there?” James called.

The doors shook again, and a muffled voice came from the other side. “Rylie?”

She was nearly overwhelmed with relief. “It’s Seth,” she said. “It’s okay.”

James passed his hand over the magically locked door, and Seth pulled it open from the other side. “They’re gone,” Seth said, sliding around James to grab her hand.

“What did they want?”

His jaw tightened. “They want the pack.”

E
LEVEN

Hometown Visitor

The next time the full
moon arrived, Rylie spent the entire day dreading it. It had been too long since she last bled her energy into Abel, so her wolf was aching to go for a run…and not on two legs. It wanted her to shift, flee into the hills with her pack, and howl all of her pain into the night.

She paced outside the back door of the kitchen, gnawing on her thumbnail as the sky darkened. Moonrise came earlier in the winter, so they were already just an hour from the change. She had to be prepared to help them. But the last couple of changes had been harrowing. When she walked among the wolves like she usually did, she had almost lost control.

How was she going to keep a grip on herself when she could barely stay human with the sun in the sky?

“Relax,” Gwyn said. She was sitting on the porch swing while Rylie paced in front of her. “You’re wound tighter than the strings on a fiddle.”

“I am relaxed. I am exactly as relaxed as it’s possible to be right now.”

Gwyn sighed. It rattled in her shredded lungs. According to Scott, the fact that she could sigh at all was part of the same necromantic magic that kept the rest of her body functioning. “Maybe you should sit this one out, babe.”

“I can’t. What if the OPA comes back tonight? Who will protect the pack?”

“He can.”

She turned to see where her aunt was pointing, and saw Abel approaching at a jog. He only wore sweatpants and a sheen of sweat. If he had worn himself out, then he must have been running for quite some time.

“You look like you’re full of sunshine,” Abel said when he drew near.

Rylie flushed and tried not to stare at his chest and abs. “I’m fine,” she said, a little sharper than she probably needed to.

She expected him to tease her, but he only looked sympathetic. “The moon?”

“The moon,” she admitted.

“You can handle the pack on your own, right?” Gwyn asked in that
you better say yes
kind of tone.

He grinned. “Of course.”

“That’s what I thought.” She gathered the blanket around her body and stood. “Don’t let Rylie wear herself out.”

She ducked around Aden and Trevin as they emerged from the house, and then she disappeared into the kitchen.

“See you soon,” Trevin called to Abel as he ran off.

Everyone was spreading out that night to watch for Union members, although they were under strict instructions to capture, not kill. Rylie wasn’t optimistic in how well she thought that would work. Werewolves weren’t exactly the best at self-control.

Rylie glanced up at the sky. She couldn’t see the moon through the clouds, but she could feel it. “Ten minutes.”

What was she going to do?

Abel untied the string on his jogging pants so that they hung loosely around his hips. “The old lady’s right. You need to chill.”

“But you can’t take over for me yet. You can’t control the pack’s change.”

“And you can’t shift on command, either,” Levi said, rounding the side of the house. He was one of the pack members that was completely comfortable being naked before the transformations, but the air was too cold that night, so he wore a thick bathrobe. “You’re too weak. You’ll never be an Alpha wolf, Abel.”

Abel growled, but he fell silent as soon as Rylie touched his arm. His bicep was tense beneath her fingers.

“You want to be Alpha?” Abel asked, biting out each word. “Be my guest. Walk with the pack and change them. I’ll wait.”

Levi glared at him, then tossed his bathrobe to the ground and shifted without admitting that such a thing was beyond his power.

As a wolf, Levi was hard to distinguish from his sister. They had the same shaggy, honey-colored fur. The only real difference was that he was much larger. Maybe even large enough to take Abel down.

Levi took two steps toward Abel, as if considering exactly that.

“Get out of here,” Rylie said. Her voice was deepened by the power of the moon. She didn’t often force her will on the pack, but she was sick of Levi’s crap, and her stare was enough to make him back down. For now.

Bekah flashed through the nearby orchard, having already changed on her own. Levi gave chase.

The others were still spread out in human form—not far from the grove where they buried the Union soldier.

Rylie faced Abel. “If you are the male Alpha for the pack—if you are my mate—” She stumbled on that word. “You should be able to change them. Reach out with your inner wolf. Seize control of them and draw out the spirit of the beast.”

Abel didn’t have to respond for her to see the helplessness in his eyes. He didn’t even understand what she was talking about.

How could he ever be Alpha like that?

“Okay, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just watch me tonight.”

Rylie moved down the hill and walked among the wolves. A current of energy filled the ranch, twisting in the night air like the electricity that lingered after a lightning strike.

One by one, the wolves shifted, and it was painless under her watchful eye. Every yelp and shudder could be soothed with a touch.

Her wolf wanted to change with them so very, very badly.

When the rest of the pack had transformed, she returned her attention to Abel—still human, but not for long.

“Do it,” she urged him. “Do it without me.”

He balled his hands into fists. “I
can’t
.”

The urge to change was too strong to wait any longer. Rylie touched his hand, released her energy, and fed it through his body. It poured out of her to fill him. His eyes grew brighter with the brilliance of the moon.

He became a wolf and ran with the pack.

Rylie failed to get any
sleep that night. She stayed up to watch the wolves, terrified that Secretary Zettel would choose that night to return. But the hours passed quietly, and the sun rose on a sleepy ranch.

Once everyone was inside, she followed Gwyn into the cellar, where Scott was already waiting with James and Brianna. The witches had spent all evening trying to repair Scott’s body, but to no avail. James said that he didn’t have a big enough power source to channel the necromantic power, and nobody was hot on the idea of human sacrifice.

“We’ll figure something out. No rush. I’ve got all eternity, apparently.” Gwyn moved for the stairs again, but James stopped her.

“We should check your bandages,” he said.

“It’s not like I’m going to get an infection, son.”

“No, but you’re fragile now. One wound invites others. If we don’t protect it, you might begin…unraveling.” James didn’t look at Scott when he said that, but Rylie did. No hat could cover the deterioration on Scott’s skull now. The skin had peeled open all the way to his eyebrows, and his hair was falling out.

Gwyn dropped her coat and sat down so that James could inspect her wounded back. Rylie couldn’t stand watching it.

She fled for the surface and gasped for air.

When had everything gone so wrong? There was a body buried somewhere on the ranch. The Union wanted to take her pack away. A white-haired witch was trying to figure out how to resurrect the dead in her cellar. And Abel couldn’t seem to find his inner Alpha.

As if to remind her that things could still get harder, one of the babies gave a hard kick.

Rylie winced and headed inside.

Things were no more pleasant in the house. The pack was eating breakfast in the living room, and it seemed to have dissolved into an argument over whether or not they should join the Union.

“We might be safer that way,” Kiara said as Rylie slipped through the door. Kiara had headphones hanging around her neck with the cord vanishing into her jeans pocket, and the tinny sounds of treble whispered from the speakers. It underscored the conversation with a weirdly peppy beat. “You heard what he said. If we don’t sign up… What if we all get tagged, like wild dogs?”

Bekah moved into the center of the room. “Nobody is tagging anyone.”

“But they’re the government,” Trevin protested. “They’ve probably got our phones bugged and cameras everywhere!”

“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t mean that we should do what they say,” Bekah said. “We’ve dealt with them before. We can do it again.”

Levi had been pacing silently near the front door, but at this, he stopped and faced the pack. “We should strike first.”

Protests erupted throughout the room. Crystal’s voice was louder than the rest. “That’s suicide!”

“Better suicide than servitude,” Levi snapped.

Abel stood suddenly. Rylie hadn’t even noticed that he was on the chair by the window, but once he was standing, he was much too tall to ignore. All eyes fell on him. “We should hear what Rylie thinks,” he said.

So all eyes went to her, instead.

After more than two years leading the pack, it shouldn’t have made her nervous to have everyone looking to her for guidance. But it did.

Rylie folded her hands over her stomach and took a deep breath to brace herself.

“I’m not a dictator,” she said. “I’m also not a fortuneteller. I can’t see the future, and I don’t know what’s safest for us. Will we be okay if we band together and stand as a team? Maybe. But that might also mean that we’ll all get tagged or arrested or…I don’t know.”

Levi scoffed.

She went on. “We’re not just wolves, and we’re not just a pack. We’re humans. So I’m not going to tell you what to do. I can promise that everyone who stays will have my very best efforts to protect them, but this is big, and I can’t make any guarantees. If you think the Union can offer you something…” She shrugged.

Brody worked his mouth around, like he tasted something sour. “What is this Union, anyway? What can they do?”

“A lot. Some are witches, and some are natural born hunters—kopides, like Seth—and they all have a lot of guns. They’ve tried to exterminate us before,” she said.

“Being on the winning side doesn’t sound so bad,” Pyper said, and Kiara nodded vigorously along with her.

Levi gave Rylie a hard look. “An Alpha has the power to enforce his will over the pack. A
smart
Alpha could use that to protect his wolves.”

Another challenge. All it succeeded in doing was making Rylie feel acutely tired. “Then enforce your will. If you’re such an Alpha,
you
tell everyone what to do.”

“You’re not even going to try to fight back?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Bekah said.

The room erupted in voices—Levi yelling incoherently at his sister, Bekah attempting to soothe him, Kiara gesticulating wildly, and Aden and Trevin shouting. The muscles of Rylie’s abdomen tensed. Another contraction?

Rylie couldn’t stand to be in the room with Levi a second longer.

She limped into Gwyn’s bedroom and shut the door.

It was harder to make out the details of the argument with several walls between them, but she couldn’t tune out the voices entirely. Every time she heard Levi’s shouts, her abs tensed again.

Rylie sank to the bed and took deep breaths.

What had Stephanie said she should do if Rylie started having contractions again? Drink water? Go for a walk?

Fortunately, she had escaped the argument just in time. The cramps didn’t get any worse. But it did get the babies kicking. “I’m not happy about this, either,” she told her stomach, rubbing a slow circle over her womb. “I bet most pregnant women don’t have to deal with dominance fights.” She dropped her hand with a sigh. “I’m talking to my stomach.”

The door opened. Rylie tensed, but it was only Seth.

“You okay?” he asked. She glimpsed Brody in the hall before Seth shut the door again.

“Just trying to stay calm.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Abel’s reaming Levi right now, and the whole pack is watching. He’s doing exactly what you wanted.” Seth sat on the bed next to her and started massaging her lower back. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it. She was always so sore now. “Does that help?”

“A little,” she admitted. “Once I teach Abel to change on his own, Levi won’t be able to stand up to him at all.”

Seth’s fingers stilled. “I was talking about the rubbing.”

“Oh.” Rylie blushed, and she could tell that he was watching to gauge her reaction. “Yeah. That’s helping.”

She expected him to say something about Abel—something about how she should stay away from him—so she was surprised when Seth changed subjects. “You’re not wearing your engagement ring anymore.”

Rylie spread the fingers on her left hand out. “No,” she said, “I’m not.”

“Why?”

“My fingers get puffy sometimes. And…”

She hesitated. The truth was, she had only agreed to marry Seth in the first place because she had been certain that he was the one who had gotten her pregnant. But that was before Abel dropped the bomb and said they had been mating.

“We’re not going to get married, are we?” Seth asked.

She bit her bottom lip and looked down at her feet—what little of them she could see over the curve of her stomach. “Seth…”