Moon Dance (13 page)

Cole nodded once. He turned
and started back the hallway.

Dana shot a glance at her daughter, who
was engrossed in her blocks, not paying either of them a bit of
attention. Then she went after him.

She caught him by the
shoulder and tugged him into the open bedroom, out of Piper’s
sight.

He was confused. “What are
you—”

“
Just once, and then you
go,” she whispered.

She kissed him.

Hard, fast, quick—just a
taste of his lips and tongue. Then she pulled back, her fingers
going to her mouth. What the hell was she doing?

Cole made a strangled sound in the back
of his throat and reached for her again.

But she pushed him away.
“No, don’t. Just
once
. Now, leave.”

His jaw worked. “Dana…” His
voice was a rasp. “
Are
you happy?”

“
I…” She dragged her hands
over her face. “Yes. I think so. If… if I’m not, then it’s not his
fault.”

“
What does that mean?” Cole
said.

“
I don’t know.”

Neither of them said
anything.

He massaged the bridge of his
nose.

She picked at her thumbnail.

He took a step back. “You
wanted me to leave, right? I’m leaving.”

“
No,” she said. “I don’t
want you to leave.”

“
Dana—”

“
I’ll help you. Tell King
I’ll help you. Tell her I’ll play whatever games you want me to
play. But it doesn’t mean… It doesn’t mean that I’m not still with
Avery, you know?”

He looked confused. “Your
daughter—”

“
I can get a babysitter. I
mean, how long do you think it’ll take anyway? A few
weeks?”

“
Less,” he said. “Probably
only a few days.”

“
Well, see, that’s nothing
then. Someone else can watch Piper, and I can… I can help the SF. I
need to do something, Cole. I can’t just sit around here anymore.
And it has nothing to do with us. It’s only about wanting to
help.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Okay.”

“
Good,” she said. “So, go
talk to King, all right? Get it all set up.”

“
Dana, this could be
dangerous—”

“
You wouldn’t let anything
happen to me,” she said. “Would you?”

He rubbed his chin, almost
as if he missed his beard. “You might trust me, but I don’t think
Brooks will.”

“
Let me deal with Avery.”
She tried to smile, but inside her head she was panicking. What the
hell was she getting herself into?

* * *

Avery was sitting on the
couch in the living room. He looked beaten, as if someone had taken
all the fight out of him.
“You’re not
really doing this, are you?”

It hurt Dana to see him this
way. She shouldn’t be doing this. She was tearing him apart. And it
didn’t make any sense. She should let Cole go. Why couldn’t she let
him go? What the hell was it about that man? Why did she always
choose to ruin her life for him?

She reached across the couch
to touch Avery’s leg. “I have to help stop any more people from
being killed.”

Avery moved away, not
letting her touch him. “Fuck that, Dana.”

She put her hands in her lap and looked
down at them.

“
I told you that if you went
off with him, it would be the end of us. Did you hear me when I
said that?” His voice cracked.

“
You’re overreacting, baby.
It’s not like that. It’s just a mission for the SF, that’s
all.”

He shook his head. “You’re
not listening to me.”

She chewed on her lip.

“
Things are different than
they were,” he said. “It’s not like before, when you and I were
just occasional fuck buddies. It ripped me up when you were
sleeping with him back then, but I didn’t even know… Dana you are
my wife. You are my mate. You are the other part of me. You can’t
do this. Please.” Tears were glittering in his eyes.

Shit. What kind of monster
was she? “I’m not doing anything with him. Just working with
him.”

“
No,” he said. “You can’t
expect me to believe that. I know how you are with him. If you go
away with him, you’re going to fuck him. You’re going to fuck him,
and you’re going to break me.”

“
Avery, I’m not.”

Tears started spilling over
his cheeks. “You are.”

She didn’t think she’d ever
seen him cry before. It made something in her break loose too, and
tears were starting to form in her eyes as well. “I’m sorry, baby,
but it’s not about sex. Really. It’s about… I just feel like I lost
myself somewhere.”

“
What are you talking about?
How does Randall help you find yourself?”

“
It doesn’t have to be him.
I need—I need to be doing something besides staying home with Piper
all day. I need to do something important. I need to see other
grownups. I need time to take a shower. It’s like I’m not even a
human being anymore. I have to do this, because I need to be
working for the SF again. That’s who I am, and I need to do it to
be me.”

Avery scrubbed at his face
with the heel of his hand. “Fine. Fine, then. You can go back to
work. We’ll make that happen. Don’t go away with Randall, though.
Please don’t do it.”

She massaged her temples.
“But the SF is in danger. If Cole and I don’t find the people who
are trying to hurt us and stop them, I’m not going to
have
a job.”

“
You don’t know that. Hell,
you don’t know he’s not making all of this up.”

“
He’s not making it up. The
thing in California—”

“
Maybe he doesn’t know
anything about that. Maybe he’s just using it so that he can take
you from me.”

“
He’s not taking me from
you. I’m coming back.”

“
No.” He shook his head.
“No, Dana, I can’t. I can’t let you have some little tryst with him
and then have you come back to me like nothing
happened.”

“
I can’t have a tryst with
him,” she said. “I’m mated to you. Remember? It would hurt
me—physically hurt me—to be intimate with him.” Of course the kiss
earlier hadn’t hurt, but it usually took a few minutes for the pain
to kick in, if she remembered correctly.

He sank his hands into his
hair and stared up at the ceiling. “Come back still mated to me,
and we’ll see. We’ll see.”

“
Okay,” she said. Good. He
was being a little more reasonable.

He got up off the couch.
“But you won’t, though. You’ll come back mated to him.”

“
No, Avery—”

“
Every time you see him, you
end up mated to him.”

“
I… I won’t this
time.”

He planted his hands on the
breakfast bar and bowed his head. “You’re lying to yourself about
it. And that will make it easier for you. Because when it happens,
you can pretend like it was some big accident, like you didn’t mean
it.”

She stood up too and went to
him. Her voice was soft. “Avery, I swear to you that—”

He whipped up to face her.
“Don’t make promises like that. Don’t make promises you can’t
keep.”

She bit down on her bottom
lip. She wasn’t sure what to say.

His eyes flashed. “You’re
not taking Piper away from me, no matter what happens.”

She furrowed her brow. “Why
would you even say that?”

“
You think I’m an idiot?” He
was angry now. “You think I don’t know that she’s not
mine?”

She swallowed. “Avery, of
course she’s—”

“
It’s like all
you
do
is lie to
me.”

She twisted her fingers
together. “I didn’t lie. I just… I wasn’t sure. She could have
been… I was with both of you…”

“
She looks like him.”
Avery’s voice was a sob. He turned away and pressed his fists into
his eyes.

She reached out, tentatively
placing a hand on his back, right behind his shoulder blades. “We
don’t know anything for sure. She could be yours. I want her to be
yours.”

“
She is,” Avery
muttered. “She’s my little girl.
I’m
her daddy. And if you mate with
him, even if he becomes the alpha for my little girl, I’m not
giving her up.”

“
I’m
not
going to mate with
him.”

He chuckled bitterly. “I
wish I could fucking believe you, Dana.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cole lounged against the
wall in Ursula
’s office. Ursula was sitting
behind her desk, and Dana was sitting on the opposite
side.

“
So, if they think that
you’ve captured Gray, then they’ll believe you’ve chosen their
cause over your feelings for her, and they’ll let you back in?”
Ursula asked.

“
That’s the plan,” said
Cole. He wasn’t sure any of this was a good idea. When he’d walked
into Dana’s house and seen her daughter, seen how everything was
different, he’d realized there was no place in Dana’s life for him
anymore. He was ruining things. But God help him, he didn’t seem to
be able to stop himself. “Maybe it will go down easy. Maybe once
they see her, they’ll text me their location. If that’s the case,
I’ll turn that over to the SF, and this will all be
over.”

Dana glanced at him, and
then looked away. “And if it doesn’t go down easy?”

“
Well, they’ll probably want
proof. They’ll want to see you,” he said.

“
I need to be sure that
Dana’s life isn’t in danger,” said Ursula. “They wouldn’t want to
kill her, would they?”

“
I wouldn’t let that
happen,” said Cole.

“
Well, to be sure,” said
King, “I wonder if it isn’t a good idea to have a team following
you. They can hang back and stay out of sight—”

“
That’s probably too
dangerous,” said Cole. “No offense to the SF, but surveillance is
not exactly your strong suit. You guys are trained to hunt down
rogue wolves, not stick to the shadows.”

Ursula sighed. “I guess
you’re right.”

“
You can have a team ready,”
said Cole. “That way if I call, you can send people if things are
going south. You’ll be able to track our phones, right?”

“
Right,” said Ursula. “What
about if you don’t check in for a certain amount of time, I send
out the team to the location of your phones?”

Cole nodded. “That
works.”

“
Okay,” said Ursula. “So, I
should hear from you… what? Every two hours?”

“
Make it an hour,” he
said.

Ursula scribbled some notes
down. “Look, what we’re doing here is pretty unconventional, and
I’m only authorizing it because these people are a threat. We don’t
have a lot of resources here in terms of protecting ourselves. We
have guards, but they’re all armed with tranq guns. We have a
fence, of course, but I can’t imagine that anyone would refuse to
unlock it with a gun to his head. I’m hoping we could keep them out
of the building, but we do have lower level apartments with
windows, and I… We need to stop these people, or else I’ve got to
try to turn a building full of office workers into fighters, and I
don’t know if I can do that.”

“
I’ll get their location,”
said Cole. “Either they’ll give it to me, or they’ll take us there.
And once I’ve got it, I’ll let the SF know where they
are.”

“
Good,” said Ursula. “With a
location, we can work with law enforcement to take them
down.”

“
Honestly, locking up Enoch
would probably stop the entire thing,” said Cole. “That’s who I’m
going to be looking for. He probably won’t have his entire force
with him. He communicates with like-minded individuals, and they
all gather to carry out actions like what happened in California.
The rest of the time, they’re scattered all over the place. I
think, in this case, it’s probably a matter of cutting the head off
the dragon.”

“
Well, that’s good to know,”
said Ursula.

Dana nodded as well. “So,
when do we start this thing?”

“
As soon as possible,” said
Ursula.

“
Tomorrow?” said
Cole.

“
Okay,” said
Dana.

Cole watched her. She wasn’t
looking at him. It was as if she was deliberately keeping her eyes
off of him. Maybe that was the best. He couldn’t help but remember
the kiss. The quick kiss in the bedroom that she shared with Avery,
her mouth on Cole’s.

Damn it, what the hell was
he doing?

There was a time, back in
Brockway, when he’d thought he could do the domestic thing, as long
as it was with her. He thought that maybe, if he was free from the
SF, he could settle down with her. Back then, it had seemed like it
would be as natural as breathing.