Mind Mates (Pull of the Moon Book 2) (13 page)

Headed their way.

Chapter Twelve

Emma trudged up the asphalt driveway to her mother’s neat little bungalow, one in a row of neat little bungalows along East Main.

Her feet dragged more with every step. She wanted to blame it on the clown shoes but they weren’t the problem. Even after all these years, the memories held terror. The high sharp edge to her mother’s furious scream, the horror on Shalla’s face, staring at her daughter.

Both mother and daughter drenched in blood.

Reaching the stoop, Emma scented the air, telling herself she was simply being cautious smelling for Noah or Ryder, not procrastinating. Only the usual homey odors reached her nose, her mother’s perfume and the faded musk of her brother, gone these two months. She raised her hand to knock and hesitated, acid churning in her stomach. She wasn’t sure she could face Shalla’s unwitting revulsion.

Ever since the night the family left Scottville, whenever her mother thought she wasn’t looking, Emma had glimpsed the loathing—although, hell, it only echoed the self-loathing in Emma’s heart.

Her fist dropped from the door, and she closed her eyes.

Eight-year-old Emma had been happy and carefree. She lived in the Sharpclaw pack as the favored daughter of a talented iota who was also the alpha’s favorite lieutenant.

Dickie Bloodfang and his thugs changed all that.

Dickie waited until the pack was logy from a night celebrating the summer solstice in Manistee woods to challenge a very hung-over Liam Sharpclaw. Nobody could prove Dickie cheated, but when a young Bruiser came along years later and insisted on a nude challenge, Dickie proved easy to defeat.

The day Dickie took over Liam’s pack, the backstabbing, lying son-of-a-molly slaughtered any wolves who might be competition by dredging up the deplorable archaic ritual of
accompagner à la tombe,
literally sending the alpha’s lieutenants to the grave with him. Emma still remembered the horrified pack watching Dickie and his cronies execute every able-bodied male with ties to the old alpha.

Including Emma’s sweet-natured father.

Nobody carried out the murders more enthusiastically than Dickie’s brother and beta, Delmar Bloodfang. When he was done, he was soaked in her father’s blood and Emma was vomiting.

Ezra Singer’s family went from revered to pariah in a day. Emma’s mother Shalla seemed to wither within hours of her mate’s death. Her brilliant emerald eyes dulled, and she got thinner and thinner. Emma’s brother got surlier. Emma clutched her only keepsakes from her father, his antique leather-bound journal and the crystal-studded piggy bank he’d made for her, and cried.

Maybe two months later, Emma came home from school and heard her mother screaming.

Emma dropped her schoolbooks. Heart thudding, she ran upstairs.

Her mother was in the bedroom, naked and covered in blood, Dickie’s hated brother Delmar atop her. Shalla had captured the he-wolf’s legs and hips with her thighs, but he held her by the wrists, beating her.

So much blood. Emma flashed back to her father’s execution—her father’s murder.

Delmar’s killing my mother.

Emma’s heart, already thumping, erupted into a cataclysm of rage and terror. Her boiling blood ignited.

Her iota talent manifested for the first time.

Red, pulsing blood pounded in her vision. Time fragmented, like frames in a movie.

Her hands, covered in fur, reaching for Delmar.

Claws like knives, on her fingers. Sinking into his back as if his flesh were butter.

His body arching, his jaw dropped on a high shriek, strangely muffled.

Her mother’s face, white, horrified, revealed beyond the agonized arch of the he-wolf.

The film fast-forwarded. She slashed, again and again. Her claws rent flesh, blood splashing, landing hot and salty in her mouth. Her iota talent reveled in it, howling like a depraved monster. Her mother was screaming
stop
and trying to pull her away from the body. Her brother’s hands joined in. The two shook her until her head rattled.

Until her berserker’s claws let go of its prey.

She came to herself groggily, like waking from a bad dream. She was on her knees on the bed, her body covered in cooling, crackly blood. Her mother shrieked in her ear, her brother shouted in the other, their claws digging into her as they pulled her off Delmar.

Who lay on his face on the mattress beside Emma’s knees, back a mass of meat.

Not moving. Not breathing.

The moment her claws fully retracted, her mother turned Delmar over. His throat had been ripped out.

I’ve killed him.

Emma shuddered. She’d killed a man.

“You fucking
beast.
” Shalla twisted a hand into Emma’s shirt collar and yanked her off the bed.

Not simply killed.
Slaughtered.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing? I was
this
close to getting us some status.” Shalla shoved pinching fingers in Emma’s face. “A place in the new hierarchy. You ruined that, missy,
blew
it. You batshit insane
brute.
” Her mother’s voice trembled with anger but also with fear.

Afraid of me?

“But Mother…” The words hurt Emma’s throat, the first she realized how sore it was, the first she realized she’d been screaming the whole time. “He was hurting you.”
I was afraid he would kill you.

“Imbecile bitch.” Shalla slapped her. “He was being a man. Elroy, how fast can you pack? We need to leave. Now, before Delmar recovers.”

Delmar is still alive?

“Five minutes or so.” Emma’s older brother cocked a mean smile at her. “Nice job, Mouseturd.” He backed off the bed then sauntered for the door.

Emma blinked. Hot tears overflowed onto her face. She touched trembling fingers to one cheek, surprised to find it wet, as if she’d been crying for some time.

She glanced at Delmar. His face was so white…but his throat might have been a little less torn. Her head seemed stuffed with wet concrete, because she couldn’t quite get the thought through. “He’s not dead?”

Elroy turned in the doorway with a sneer. “Better if he were. Damned iota ‘talent’. Now we have to run. This is
your
fault. You cunt.”

“Language, Elroy. Emma.” Shalla shoved her into motion toward the door. “Grab whatever money you have and meet us at the car.”

Numb, Emma did as she was told, snatching her crystal-studded dragon piggy bank and her father’s journal before heading for the car.

As she came out of the house, her mother, already in the driver’s seat, looked up. The windshield magnified her expression. Emma could tell her mother didn’t think she could see.

Shalla was angry. Disgusted. Afraid—no, terrified.

Terrified of her own daughter.

Her mother’s lips moved. No sound, but the words were clear. “
Fucking beast.
”

Emma’s gut went cold. She ran to the car, offering her beautiful dragon to make things right.

Her mother’s disgust blanked then was replaced by determination. “Good. We’ll need every cent we can get.” She took the sparkling ceramic bank…and smashed it against the steering wheel. Dollars and coins fell in her lap.

Emma stood outside the driver’s window in white shock.
Dad made that for me because I loved dragons…
She clutched her father’s journal to her chest. It was all she had left of him now.

All she had left of a life that had been happy.

Shalla was counting the money. “Twenty-five dollars and thirty-five cents. Starvation is no fun. I hope your brother can do better.” She heaved a breath. “Well, come on. Get in.”

Emma realized later her mother and Dickie’s brother had been having sex, if a very bloody kind. Her father’s body barely cold, and Shalla was cementing their new position in the pack by seducing the beta. Emma hated her for it.

She hated herself more.

Beast. This is your fault. Insane brute.

She left that day with her mother and brother, but something fundamental was broken. Herself, the family, she wasn’t sure. Between the sideways glances and the aborted whispers, it isolated her.

Her own family was afraid of her power—which made her scared to death of it.

She’d vowed that day,
I’ll never give in to the rage again.

But the damage was done. She’d worked hard to make up for that horrible day, to atone, but while her mother
seemed
to go back to normal, Shalla had never really forgiven her.

Emma straightened, shuffling numb feet on the hard stoop. Clown cars didn’t have much arch support. And with Ryder and an angry Noah out there somewhere, in a town that was maybe seven blocks long, she couldn’t stand on the stoop forever.

Heaving a sigh, she knocked at the door.

“Coming,” Shalla sang a moment before the door swung wide.

A slim brunette faced Emma, mid-forties in appearance. Despite the late hour, her mother was not only awake but dressed, immaculately put together in a lilac cotton sheath belted by purple leather dyed to match her shoes. A gorgeous, brand-new amethyst necklace crowned the ensemble.

Standing before her perfectly dressed mother, Emma felt even more like a stranger in her tent and clown shoes. “Hi, Mom.”

“
Emma?
” The surprise in Shalla’s green eyes confused Emma.

Who was she expecting with that cheery “Coming”?

“Why aren’t you in Michigan?” Shalla glanced over her shoulder at the desk where Emma knew she kept the bills. “How will you send cash if you’re not at work?”

“It’s a long story. Can I come in?”

Shalla’s gaze swung momentarily toward the kitchen. “Well…”

“Please? I won’t stay long, I just want the box I sent you for safekeeping, and a change of clothes—”

“They’re gone. I sold your things.”

Shock speared Emma, almost puncturing her lungs. She’d never even considered the possibility. She wheezed, “What?”

Shalla gave an irked shrug. “You’d made a new life in Michigan, and I needed the money for groceries. You don’t make as much as your brother did.”

“I do the best I can.” Didn’t stop the words from skewering Emma with guilt and shame. Her shoulders hunched, and she nearly turned and left.

But she hadn’t been gone long—if Shalla sold the journal locally, it was probably still in Matinsfield. Emma could buy it back. A new goal drove her, a quest for more information. “Can I at least come in for a minute?”

“I suppose.” Shalla pointed toward the couch as Emma crossed the threshold. “Have a seat. There’s cake. I’ll get us some coffee.” She trotted into the kitchen.

“Mom, I can’t stay long…”

But Shalla had already disappeared. Eager to get away? Or was there something else?

Stomach roiling, Emma perched on the couch. She considered the cake on its silver pedestal, three delicate dessert plates at its feet. Her mom was a great entertainer, always a dessert ready for company.

A generous wedge of cake was already gone, crumbs decorating two of the three plates, as if her mother had expected two guests and had recently entertained one. Emma took a delicate sniff. The scent of male werewolf dusted the air, too strong to be a memory.

Had
a guest…or
still
had one?

The roiling in Emma’s stomach increased. But there was no panic on the air, only that masculine odor—smelling oddly like her brother, though Elroy was in prison.

She scolded herself. Her mother was entertaining a gentleman guest, so what? At least Shalla wasn’t lusting after a wizard prince.

Gabriel, pressing that single hot finger against my clit…
Swallowing hard, Emma cut a sliver of cake for herself, putting it on the empty third plate, and slid a wedge for her mother onto one of the crumb-decorated plates. Then she folded her hands over her crossed knees and waited. And waited.

And waited.

Good grief. Two minutes with Gabriel blew my mind. If I had this long to writhe under his hands…

“So when are you going back?” Shalla finally appeared carrying a silver and bone china coffee service. She set the tray on the table and took a chair opposite Emma.

Or maybe Mom was simply making coffee.
Cursing herself for being a paranoid idiot…
Gabriel would use one of his cute swears like idiot-over-easy…
damn…she said, “Um, I’m not sure. Things happened. Look, I can’t stay long—”

“You got fired, didn’t you?” Her mother stopped mid-pour and gave her a disgusted look. It wasn’t a question.

“No! No, of course not. Dr. Light likes my work. He even said he’d give me a great recommendation if I ever needed one. But Bruiser—”

“You disappointed your alpha?” Shalla sighed as she continued to pour. “Oh well. No more than I’d expect of an iota.” She clunked Emma’s cup and saucer before her.