Moon Dance (41 page)

Dana looked down at the
floor.

“
Deedee, I know you cared
about Enoch,” Cole said in a quiet voice.

“
You shut up,” she snarled.
“I’m old enough to remember what you did to Tasha. I saw
it.”

Cole flinched. “Jimmy
made
me—”

“
You didn’t try to
fight it,” said Deedee. “This is what you’ve always been, Cole. You
wanted us all to turn into animals, but that’s only because
you’re
an
animal.”

“
Deedee,” said Cole, “tell
us where Piper is. Tell us now.”

“
No,” she said. “I took her
someplace safe.”

“
She wasn’t gone that long,”
said Dana to Cole. “Piper has to be close by. We can find her.
Maybe we can track her.”

“
You leave that
innocent child
alone
,” screamed Deedee. “The two of you will
destroy
her.”

“
She’s our daughter,” said
Cole, “and you don’t have any right—”

“
I want both of you out,”
interrupted Deedee. “I want you gone. I can’t look at
you.”

“
Fine,” said Cole. “Then
tell us where Piper is.”

Deedee yanked her phone out of her
pocket, and she began dialing. Her eyes were wide.

“
What are you doing?” said
Dana.

Deedee put the phone to her
ear. “Oh, hello. I’m just calling to report the fact that I know
where your fugitives are…. That’s right. Cole Randall and Dana
Gray.” She started rattling off the address of Cole’s
house.

Cole yanked the phone away
from her. “You called the SF? You hate the SF.”

“
I hate you
more
,” said Deedee. “And
besides, without Enoch, the SF isn’t going anywhere, so you’ve
ruined all of that too. You know no one else can organize this the
way Enoch did. Maybe you could have, but you chose to betray us.
And I hope the SF hunts you down. I hope you two are miserable for
the rest of your lives.”

“
Deedee, please,” said Dana.
“Tell me where my baby girl is.”

Deedee laughed. “You better
get out of here. They’re coming for you. The SF will be here before
you know it.”

Dana started to sob.

Cole put his arm around her.
“Come on, let’s go.”

She looked up at him. He was
covered in blood too. They
did
look like monsters. If Piper saw them this way,
what would she think?

“
We’re going to find her
again,” said Cole. “We will.”

EPILOGUE

It took months to find
Piper.

Months of near misses with
the SF, which wasn’t about to let them go. They were still public
enemy number one, their faces plastered all over the news and the
Internet. Though the SF had been dealt a crushing blow by the
actions of Enoch and his followers, the SF was still a powerful
force. In fact, it seemed as if Margaret Patton had a personal
vendetta against the two of them. Since Patton was running the SF
these days, it meant there was nowhere to hide.

Nearly anytime they went anywhere
public, they were recognized. The SF was after them almost right
away. Gas station clerks knew who they were. Waitresses did.
Cashiers did too.

They scrambled. They stole. They
ran.

They spent weeks in wolf
form, where they were safe, moving through the woods together,
hunting and sleeping. It was only during those times that Dana felt
truly at peace. Being the wolf was a sweet relief from the rest of
her life. Wearing the wolf skin, she felt as if she’d found her
place in the world.

Everything was simpler and easier.
Nothing but hunting, running, and howling at the moon.

When she and Cole were
wolves, she felt closer to him as well. They couldn’t speak to each
other, but the longer that they stayed in animal form, the more she
felt that they were communing somehow, almost merging. She didn’t
need to speak with him, because she could sense what he needed and
wanted.

They mated again.

They never talked about
doing it, not when they were back in their human forms. When it
happened, it seemed right and natural, the way things were meant to
be. And it only served to strengthen their connection, to make
Cole’s thoughts and desires so close to hers as to be her own. Cole
was the other part of her, her partner and her ally.

When they were in wolf form,
they didn’t bother to have sex. It wasn’t necessary, and they
didn’t feel the urge for it. Unlike natural wolves, werewolves
didn’t go into heat, so all of their sexual appetites were
relegated to their human form. With the exception of initial
mating, of course, which established the bond between
alphas.

But in human form, they
sometimes made love—if only to feel the closeness of each other.
Shifting back to human form always made Dana feel strangely
disconnected to Cole, like she had lost some vital part of herself,
and the only way to feel vaguely whole was to couple with
him.

Whenever they did, things
were different. Their love-making was sweet and soft, like a
rolling meadow in springtime, green hills lapping up to cup their
bodies and enfold them in perfection.

At first, they attempted to
find Piper through Enoch’s network of wolves. But without Enoch,
the wolves had scattered. They weren’t working together anymore,
and they had very little connection with each other.

She and Cole even managed to
find one of Enoch’s camps at one point. Angela was there, and so
were a few of the other men. They lurked in the shadows, still in
their fur and claws, not approaching, just listening. They learned
that the women that Enoch had kept captive from the SF had been set
free, that Angela had moved on to a relationship with another of
Enoch’s men, and that none of them were in contact with Deedee. In
fact, Angela seemed to blame her sister for Enoch’s death, since
Deedee had brought Enoch to Cole. Because of that fact, none of
them would have any idea where Piper was.

Eventually, they stopped trying to
follow human leads.

Because, as their wolf bond
grew, so did their sense of Piper. They were alphas, and she was
their pup, their pack. They both could feel her, and the longer
they stayed in wolf form, the stronger that feeling got.

Finally, it was that strong sense that
led them to her.

They found her in a tall and
stately house on wide and expansive grounds. They watched the
little girl play on a swing set in the back yard, screaming in
laughter as a woman pushed her higher and higher into the
air.

They crept closer to the
house in the night, stepping through the darkness on their paws,
crouched close together and moving as one.

They peered in the windows, honed their
sensitive ears to listen.

They heard Piper playing.
They heard her singing. They heard the deep rumble of a man’s voice
as he read stories to Piper before bed. They heard the voice of a
woman whispering to Piper that she was blessed to have her, that
she loved her, and that she never wanted to let her go.

Dana thought they both made
the decision at the same moment, but she shifted back into human
form anyway to talk to him.

The two of them crouched
naked in the woods. Even now, when they shifted back, it sometimes
felt strange to stand upright. If they could help it, they stayed
low to the ground. It was safer that way. It was more…
right
that
way.

“
We shouldn’t take her,”
Dana murmured.

“
No,” said Cole. “I don’t
think we should.”

“
We still don’t have
anyplace for her. Not anyplace safe,” she said.

Cole looked back at the
lights of the house. “She can’t shift. If she could shift, we could
take her. We could protect her then.”

They were quiet.

“
It’s my fault,” said
Cole.

“
What?” she said. “No. It’s
the way it has to be.”

“
No, I’ve taken everything
from you,” he said. “I’ve taken your work, your home, your
daughter, your husband. You can’t have any of that back
anymore.”

She remembered that long
ago, in some other time, when the human form felt more real to her,
she’d cared about those things. Now, even thinking about them made
her feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t imagine being human all the
time, the confinement of clothes, the harsh agony of so many
emotions. No, she far preferred to be a wolf, where everything was
simple bliss.

She crawled forward and rubbed her face
into his shoulder.

He sighed, nipping at her
neck.

It was better here, them touching. As
humans, touching seemed to be the only way they could be close. But
even so, it was nothing like the closeness they shared when they
were wolves.

“
I want her to be safe and
happy,” said Dana. “She is. I can’t give her that. Not
now.”

His voice was low and deep.
“Don’t you blame me for that?”

“
What’s the point of blame?”
she asked. “We are what we are, Cole. You showed me my wolf. You
showed me my true self.”

“
We
are
wolves, aren’t we?”
he breathed.

“
Yes,” she said. “We
are.”

* * *

They stayed close to
Piper
’s home. The tall and stately house
sat just on the edge of the woods, and the woods were teaming with
prey and the shelter of trees. It seemed as good a place as any to
settle. They woke to hunt, and then they crouched in the woods,
waiting for a glimpse of the small child.

They spent hours watching her careen
through the back yard. They listened to her babble and
sing.

Seasons passed.

One autumn, they found Piper
playing by herself in the woods, speaking in a tiny little girl
voice to the fallen orange leaves. She saw them coming for her, but
she wasn’t the least bit afraid.

They circled her, staring at her, this
human-child they had made in another life.

It had been a long time
since they’d shifted into human form. They barely remembered it.
Sometimes they even doubted they ever
were
human. But they knew that Piper
was important, that she anchored them to the human world, and they
stayed close to her.

The little girl reached out
to run her hands through their fur, laughing.

They nuzzled and licked her, tickled
her tummy, and wrestled with her small form while the gold and red
leaves swirled around them.

It wasn’t the last time that
they got that close. She began to come looking for them, and she
would wander in the woods, calling for her wolves. When they came,
she would sink her tiny hands into their pelts, wrap a small arm
around both of their necks and hug them close.

The wolves loved that feeling, and they
loved the small girl.

But as time passed,
sometimes they struggled to remember why. They knew they were tied
to the girl, that they had a bond drawing all three of them
together. But none of it made sense. How could they be bonded to a
human? They were wolves.

Occasionally, they had hazy
and imprecise memories of their own human lives, but their wolf
minds could hardly make sense of them, and they dismissed them
without too much thought. Their world was one of survival, of each
other, of bounding through the foliage, taking down deer and
rabbits, tasting blood and flesh, curling close to
sleep.

They chose to focus on the brightness
of the present, not the dimness of the past.

And they began to wander father and
farther away from the stately house, from the little girl who was
growing and maturing.

Sometimes, they didn’t even
think of her.

They hunted deep in the woods, running
far from the house and the girl.

Sometimes, they were gone for
days.

And then it was weeks.

And then months.

But there was still a bond
between them and the girl, and the bond always brought them back.
They were tied to the girl by the strings of the pack—though they
couldn’t understand it anymore—and this girl belonged to
them.

One day, when they were out
on one of their excursions, far from the house and from the little
girl who had grown so much in the ensuing years, the tie they felt
to her snapped.

The wolves didn’t understand
it. They panicked, because they thought that the little girl had
been hurt or killed. They raced back to the stately
house.

When they arrived, the little girl was
fine, however. She was playing in the back yard with her
dolls.

If the wolves had still been
human, perhaps they would have reasoned that the little girl had
been given another alpha werewolf. That was why the bonds had been
broken and why the girl was unharmed.