Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) (3 page)

None of that happened. Scott did hold a small animal skull in one hand, but aside from that, all he did was sit with his eyes closed.

His eyes opened in two seconds. “I can’t do it.”

“Are you even trying?” Abel asked. “You’re just sitting there.”

Scott glared at him. When his forehead wrinkled, it made the gunshot wound on his forehead pucker. “Witchcraft is subtle. I must be able to access a wellspring of power within my core to do any magic, but even though I can feel that it’s there, I cannot reach it.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Being dead probably doesn’t help.”

“I think I might be able to channel my abilities with the help of a strong witch.” Scott faced Stephanie. “If we could speak to Cain, maybe he would know someone else among the Apple—”

“No way,” Bekah said.

“I agree with her,” Abel said. “Guess it had to happen eventually.”

Scott scuffed part of the circle on the floor, then started putting things back onto his altar. He slammed the mortar and pestle on a shelf. “Do you want me to come back to life or not?” he snapped.

Stephanie took a bottle from him before he could strike that against something hard, too. “You can’t talk to Cain or anybody with the Apple, and that’s that. Now stop being so dramatic.”

“Dramatic?
Dramatic?
She
shot
me!” He pointed at Gwyn, who gave him the kind of look that said she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

“Why can’t you do it?” Bekah asked the doctor. “You cast the circle.”

“She’s too weak,” Scott said, yanking the bottle out of her grip.

Stephanie didn’t look offended. She picked up the remaining crystals and the animal skeleton and set them on his altar. “It’s true. I’m fine with ritual, but my abilities in magic are very limited. If we need a powerful witch…” Her hands stilled over the grass figure of the Horned God. “Well, I might have an old friend that could help us with that.”

It took Rylie a long
time to fall asleep after her appointment with Stephanie. Seth stayed in bed with her until her breathing grew deep and even. Then he extricated himself from the sheets, grabbed his cell phone from the desk, and slipped outside.

Seth hesitated on the snowy front step. Most of the wedding massacre had been cleaned up, but the gazebo was still standing, and the fairy lights they had used to illuminate the aisle were still glowing. It was bright enough that he could see the places they had tried to shovel snow over the blood stains.

He wandered down the aisle, clenching his cell phone in his fist.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see Rylie in her wedding dress with the long white train, the red highlights, and her hair done in curls. She had been more beautiful as a bride than he had ever seen her before. Seth hadn’t been happy ever since Cain came into their lives, but in that moment…everything had been perfect.

And then his brothers ruined everything.

Seth passed the gift table that he had toppled while fighting Cain and sat down on one of the few chairs that was still upright. He took several deep breaths to calm himself before speed-dialing Yasir.

Two rings, and the answering machine picked up.

“This is Seth,” he said. “I watched the speech tonight. I think—I think I saw Cain there. I don’t know if I’m imagining things or if something has gone wrong. I need you to check and see if he made it into the Union’s prison. Give me a call back.”

He hung up and pocketed his phone. He had barely pulled his hand away when his pocket buzzed with a responding text message.

The number belonged to Yasir, and all it said was, “
Cain is secure in prison
.” That was fast.

If it hadn’t been Cain behind Secretary Zettel, that was one problem he wouldn’t have to worry about. But it still left him with the issue of what to do about his other brother, his fiancée, and a world that suddenly knew werewolves existed. Yasir’s confirmation didn’t make him feel any better at all.

Seth heard a creak, and he realized that the cellar door had been opened. Pale yellow light splashed onto the snow, broken into halves by the shadow of someone tall emerging.

Abel.

The sight of him choked Seth with a powerful mix of anger and jealousy, so strong and sudden that he felt like he had a monster of his very own living in his chest.

Abel strode toward the Chevelle, and Seth moved to intercept him.

“Hey!”

His brother turned at the sound of his voice, but when he saw Seth, he rolled his eyes. “What now?”

“What were you doing in the cellar?” Seth asked.

“Trying to fix the zombies.”

“I probably wouldn’t call Scott and Gwyn zombies.”

Abel snorted. “You also wouldn’t call me your competition, but just because you don’t want to say something doesn’t mean it’s not true.” And there it was, laid out in the open. Abel continued walking, crunching through inch-deep snow, and Seth hurried to catch up with him.

“You really think that you’re my competition?”

“No, not really,” Abel said. He smirked. “But I’m trying to be fair to you.”

Seth clenched his jaw so hard that it felt like his teeth might crack. “We have a new werewolf coming soon. I want you to pick him up from the airport.”

“Why? So you can get me out of the picture?” He didn’t wait for Seth to respond. He flung open the driver’s side door of the Chevelle. “I’m not doing it this time. Tell the newbie to rent a damn car.”

Abel sat at the wheel, but Seth grabbed the door before he could close it. He had been trying not to talk about Rylie, but it all came spilling out before he could stop himself. “You need to stay away from Rylie. Don’t talk to her, don’t
look
at her, just—don’t go anywhere near her. She doesn’t need the stress right now.”

“Fine,” Abel said.

Seth had been braced for a fight, so the response shocked him. “Fine?”

Abel’s lips peeled back. It almost could have passed for a grin if his golden eyes hadn’t been gleaming with barely-restrained anger. “I won’t
have
to go anywhere near her. She’s my mate. She’ll come looking for
me
.”

He wrested the door from Seth’s grip, slammed it shut, and peeled down the road.

T
HREE

Beta

The entire pack treated Rylie
differently once they knew she was pregnant. Whenever she stepped into a room, the conversation died off instantly. People stared at her stomach. And none of the wolves seemed to want to talk with her except Bekah.

“They’re just worried about what this will mean for the pack,” she explained a few days later while they took an easy walk along the highway. “They’re worrying that you won’t be able to control everyone on the full and new moons while you’re pregnant.”

Rylie somehow doubted that was the only reason they stared at her, but it was still a legitimate worry. She had been kind of freaking out about it herself. “It
shouldn’t
change anything,” she said, rubbing her arms to warm them. Now that the morning sickness was starting to subside, she always felt weird and prickly, like the wolf was restless inside of her skin. “I’m still the Alpha.”

“So maybe you should tell everyone that. I think everyone could use a pep talk after the wedding, and the whole Office of Whatever the Crap is Going On.”

Give a speech? In front of a bunch of werewolves that thought she was a philandering fiancée? Rylie would have preferred to bury herself in a snowdrift without food of water until the spring thaw.

“Maybe,” she said.

Even though neither of them was winded, they kept the walk short. Werewolves could run for hours without getting tired, but Rylie was avoiding the town. She had gone to sleep one night looking bloated and woke up the next day with a big belly. It was like the baby had turned around to jam its feet against her navel. There was no mistaking her bump for anything but a pregnancy now, and she didn’t want to have to explain it to anyone. Especially not when Tate’s speech was still being played nonstop.

After just an hour, they returned to the ranch. Rylie’s mind spun with thoughts of speeches and cheating and failed weddings.

Levi was on the hill outside the house, and he had an audience. Analizia, Pyper, and Daven watched with rapt attention as he paced in front of them. “We’ll have to band together to survive this,” he said, speaking so loudly that Rylie could hear him from the mailbox by the gate. She had never seen him so animated before. “It’s more important than ever that our pack be united and strong.”

The onlookers shifted, and Rylie realized that Trevin was among them. Her heart plummeted. He was one of the only wolves she was certain to be loyal to her.

Bekah caught Rylie’s expression. “He’s just talking to them.”

“Yeah, like how a general ‘just talks’ to his troops before marching to war,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Rylie picked up her pace as she headed for the front door, hoping to pass by Levi’s speech without attracting notice. It totally failed. Every single head turned toward her as she passed.

Bekah got to the door first and held it open for her. “I’ll be inside for yoga in a few minutes,” she said.

Rylie never made it to the shower. Instead, she paced in the living room, fuming silently.

Abel had warned her that Levi was getting big ideas about what role he played in the pack, but Rylie had assumed that he wouldn’t challenge her authority while she was around.

Rylie ran a hand over the lump below her navel. She had a feeling she knew exactly what was making Levi bolder.

The door opened, and Crystal walked in, making Rylie’s day instantly worse.

“How was your walk?” Crystal asked. She was a leggy, dark-skinned girl who only ever wore tiny shorts and tank tops that flashed way too much cleavage. And the way she pronounced her name was irritating: Crys
tal
, emphasis on the last part, as if she was a fancy drink.

“It was fine,” Rylie said, folding her arms over her own modest chest.

“Great. So you gonna go kick Levi’s ass or what? He’s talking to the pack like he owns it. You need to show him that he’s not the boss.”

Rylie’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re on my side?”

“I’m sure as heck not on Levi’s. Do you know that he threw out all of my books at the other sanctuary and claimed it was because of
toxic mold
?
Can you believe that?” Crystal shot a nasty glare at the door, as if she could see Levi through it. “Five year old paperbacks don’t get freaking toxic mold!”

“You’re siding with me because of…books.”

“I’m siding with you because you’re the Alpha, and Levi’s a dillweed. But just because someone bestowed you with magical wolf powers doesn’t mean that the pack can’t be taken away from you. Go talk with him.”

The thought of publicly confronting Levi was too much. A wave of sudden, powerful nausea surged in Rylie.

She grabbed a trashcan and threw up every bite of the balanced, nutritious breakfast that Gwyn had forced her to eat that morning.

“Oh, jeez,” Crystal said, hovering a few feet away. “Should I get Stephanie?”

Rylie was saved from having to answer by Bekah’s entrance, which was accompanied by a blast of cold air and snow flurries. “He’s done,” she announced, tossing her gloves on the couch. “I told him to bug off and pull the dictator crap somewhere else.” Bekah finally noticed that Rylie was on the floor. “Are you okay?”

She got to her feet with the help of the coffee table.

“I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” she snapped.

Rylie stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Bekah didn’t speak to Rylie
again for a few days. Rylie hadn’t realized how much everyone was avoiding her until Bekah was, too, and it was very lonely being in a house full of people where only Seth and Gwyn would talk to her. She desperately wanted to hang out with Abel, since he had become her go-to guy for relaxing while Seth was at college, but he was nowhere in sight.

So Rylie begged morning sickness for a week and hid in her bedroom to avoid dealing with Levi. Unfortunately, boredom only made the loneliness worse. When Bekah showed up with exercise mats and a book on prenatal yoga that weekend, Rylie was actually happy to see her.

“Have you been thinking about names yet?” Bekah asked, folding her legs underneath her in the lotus position.

Rylie followed suit. “Not yet.”

“Oh yeah? That’s kind of weird. I picked out names for my future kids in middle school.”

Considering that Rylie had spent middle school panicking over the idea of getting her period in phys ed and looking down on boys that hadn’t hit their growth spurts yet, she was pretty sure that Bekah was the weird one in this conversation.

“What names did you pick?” Rylie asked.

“If I have a boy, I’m going to name him Cole. I think I’d want to use Raven for a girl. Don’t use either of those, okay?”

Cole and Raven? No chance of
that
happening.

“Okay,” Rylie said.

Bekah turned the page on the yoga book. “Let’s try this position.” She lifted her arms in a graceful arc over her head, touching her fingertips together and leaning to one side. Rylie mimicked the position.

“Is it working?” Rylie asked, bent so far to the side that her hands almost touched her bedroom window.

“You should be breathing, not talking.”

“I can’t talk without breathing, Bekah.”

The other girl rolled her eyes and dropped her arms. “You’re not into this at all, are you?” Rylie smiled sheepishly in response, and Bekah snapped the book closed. “Okay! So are you hungry?” Bekah whipped the aluminum foil off of a tray that she had brought with her, revealing enough cold chicken and boiled eggs to feed the entire pack—or one pregnant werewolf. “Look good? It’s all the essential proteins a growing puppy needs.”

Rylie winced as she grabbed an egg. “Don’t call it a puppy. That’s creepy.” She toyed with her food for a minute without biting, even though her stomach was growling. “What should I do about Levi? He’s making a play for dominance, and I can’t just let him take over.”