Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6)

Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals, Book
6)

Zoe Winters

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 © Zoe Winters

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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please purchase your own copy. Respecting the hard work of this
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Publisher's Note:

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

Unleash The Moon Description:

…
Can two souls trapped in separate cages
ever find each other?

Twenty-six years have passed since the link
between heaven and earth was severed and all hell broke loose. The
fighting raged until the human magic users took over the cities,
driving most of the preternaturals into hiding.

This is the world Sydney Burgess has grown up
in, locked inside her father’s compound. As the daughter of a human
mother and a vampire king, she has all the weaknesses of a vampire
but none of their strengths. Anthony keeps her on a tight leash,
ever-vigilant against the constant imagined threats to her safety.
But all she wants is to break free and start a real life.

Noah Riley has lived in captivity for the
past twenty years, so long he barely knows how to be a werewolf
anymore. Even with a photographic memory, most of his past before
the facility feels fuzzy at best. His strongest memories are of the
little girl he protected during his childhood: Sydney. When he
reaches his full power on his twenty-eighth birth moon, he’ll have
a chance to break free to find her and finally reunite with his
family.

But vampires and werewolves are mortal
enemies. Even if Sydney is Noah's true mate, the vampire king would
kill him before he ever let a filthy werewolf near her, especially
one of questionable sanity.

For Lesley P.

Here, have some more werewolves. :)

Chapter One

26 years in the future.

The reinforced steel made an ominous sound as Sydney
slammed the door. Her room was windowless, but that might be
because it was underground. Not much of a view except for the
earthworms. A moment later the door opened again, and her
father—the vampire king—stood framed in the doorway, eyes glowing
in what she was sure he felt was an ominous threat. She’d seen it
so many times the effect had blunted.

She was too old for this fight. Instinctively she
knew it. She’d become emotionally-stunted at adolescence, but he
would never set her free. How could she discover who she was or how
to be anything other than a child if she never left home?

“
Dad! I’m twenty-seven. You can’t
keep me locked away in your creepy compound for the rest of my
life. However long that turns out to be!”

She might be immortal or she might have a normal
human lifespan. They didn’t know. She was an oddity in the vampire
world: born, not made. Her mother was human and the vampire king’s
claimed mate. The claiming was the thing that made Sydney’s bizarre
existence possible. She wished her parents had thought to use birth
control because she had all the weaknesses of a vampire and none of
the strengths.

Anthony growled. “I am trying
to
protect
you. It’s not safe out there! You know it’s not
safe.”

“
Just get OUT! And send Jacob in.
I’m hungry.”

The blond vampire’s hands clenched and unclenched at
his sides as if he wanted to throttle her but feared he’d kill her
if he ever gave in to temptation. “I don’t like you alone with him.
He could hurt you.”

They’d had this conversation for nearly ten years
now. Yet another stale script.

Sydney rolled her eyes. “Then
maybe you should have let
me
claim him instead of one of your
minions.”

“
I won’t allow my daughter to be
mated to something so pathetic. He couldn’t protect you from a
horsefly let alone a genuine threat!”

It wasn’t as if the vampire suitors were lined up
down the streets. She’d never find a mate locked up here, that was
for sure. And living here forever with her parents was just too
humiliating. Practically every vampire left standing after the war
wanted her dead because she was so weak. And they didn’t like for
weak things to live.

Anthony disappeared down the hall and returned
minutes later with Jacob in tow.

The human was Sydney’s age, one of many boys brought
in for her to feed from over the years—just another thing that made
her entire existence ghoulish. A five-year-old girl sucking the
blood from a similarly innocent boy’s throat was disturbing in the
extreme. She was glad she could barely remember it. She’d blocked
out many of those she’d accidentally killed over the years.

Since the preternaturals lost the war and humans
were protected in their magically warded cities, stray humans had
become harder and harder to come by. It was necessary now to secure
a permanent food source and lock it in through a mating. There was
no more free range feeding unless it was wildlife in the forest,
and that could only take you so far.

When Sydney was seventeen, it was decided that she
should have a single, safe food source who wouldn’t die from too
much blood loss.

Elise, a vampiress in the king’s employ had been
ordered to claim Jacob as a mate and allow Sydney to feed from him.
It was a mating of convenience—or by royal decree. Elise, not
wanting to lose her safe resting place inside the vampire compound,
had reluctantly and bitterly agreed, knowing she could never claim
nor be claimed by another if she ever found real love.

The bitch hated Sydney for it, and the feeling was
mutual. If Anthony was so concerned for her safety, maybe he should
get rid of Elise instead of worrying so much about the human.

“
Well,” Sydney said, “are you
going to just stand there and watch? Can I just say, gross?” While
it hadn’t been that way in the beginning, once she’d become a teen,
her feelings about feeding had shifted. It had become something her
parents were not welcome to observe. She needed privacy.
“Go!”

“
If you hurt her…” Anthony growled
at the human.

“
I’d
never
hurt her,” the man
said.

Sydney thought Jacob was half in love with her. He
was a good-looking man, but the feeling wasn’t reciprocated on her
part. Even if it had been, it would be too weird that he was
another vampire’s mate, even if in name and mystical link only.
Sydney couldn’t let herself get attached.

“
Dad, get out. I swear to you I
will intentionally starve to death if you keep standing
there.”

Anthony’s eyes flashed red, but he grumbled
something incoherent and left, shutting the door behind him.

When she and Jacob were alone, Sydney deadbolted it.
Her father could invent a reason to bust in, but at least she’d
have a split second of warning first.

Jacob inclined his head. “Princess.”

“
I’m not a princess, and you know
it. And my father isn’t really a king. Kings need subjects, and in
case you haven’t noticed, there are less than twenty of us in the
compound. And Cary Town is a ghost town. Those days have been over
for a long time.”

Cary Town wasn’t even protected anymore. The city’s
protections and organization had broken down in the fighting, and
no one had bothered to put the wards back up. It was something
about how too much of a magical signature might draw the magic
users back. Now only a few places were protected, not the whole
city. The compound was one of those places.

She’d heard the stories of her father, decades ago,
how ruthless he’d been. How he’d ruled over hundreds of thousands
of their kind and even therians—the shapeshifting races, striking
fear into the hearts of any who would dare go against him. Now most
of the vampires were dead, and those remaining had scattered, with
only the most loyal few staying behind with the royal family.

Jacob peeled his shirt off so it wouldn’t get blood
on it. “So, what’s your pleasure today, Syd? Arm? Neck?” He winked
at her. “Something more risque?”

She crooked a finger at him. “Come here.” Sydney sat
on the edge of the bed, and Jacob joined her. She wished she felt
that way about him. It would be so simple. He was attractive and
kind. Even though he wasn’t strong like a preternatural, she
believed he would give his life to protect her. And not out of some
misplaced loyalty to her dad.

“
This is so wrong,” she said. The
past few months, the weight of what they were doing hung over her
like a heavy fog.

Jacob pushed the long wavy blonde hair out of her
eyes. “I love these freckles on your nose.”

Sydney scrunched her face in annoyance. She’d gotten
those freckles from her mother, and she wasn’t nearly the fan of
them Jacob seemed to be, which was another point in favor of him
being smitten.

“
Are you listening to
me?”

“
Yes,” he said. “What’s so wrong?”
But she knew he was playing dumb and just wanted to avoid the
conversation altogether.

She waved her hand around. “This! Me feeding from
you. It’s just… I’m using you.”

He pressed a kiss against her throat. “So? Use me.
I’m here at your disposal and pleasure. You have to eat, Syd.”

“
And then what?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
I’m always going to be this weak
abomination that other vampires want dead. I’m always going to be a
liability. What if I’m effectively immortal? Am I going to be
locked away in this compound for hundreds or thousands of years?
What’s the point of living that way? What’s the point of living at
all?”

She wondered if she’d be stronger if she drank
something stronger. Perhaps therian or guardian or magic user. But
therians were well-hidden these days, and her father didn’t have
the power to capture one against their will for her feeding needs
anymore. Guardians, too, had deserted. Ever since the link between
heaven and earth had been severed, the fallen angels no longer
feared retribution from heavenly spies for banding together. So
they had.

They still guarded and took odd jobs in the
preternatural world, but they only did exactly what they wanted,
and their price was always high. And they absolutely refused to
work for her father for any reason or price even if he had it.

Her father used to have an army of guardians that
watched over her and her mother. But after the link was severed and
after the war, they’d deserted, no longer fearing the king’s
retribution. Nobody could get fangs into a guardian without their
permission, anyway.

That left magic users, but nearly all of them had
stuck with their own kind—other humans—and now lived in the
well-guarded human cities, ruling over the normals with their
enhanced powers. The few magic users nearby all had mates, and
Sydney highly doubted their mates would appreciate some weakling
half-breed feeding on them.

Humans were all that was available, not that she
didn’t enjoy drinking from Jacob. He tasted like home and
comfort—or what she imagined home might be for a normal person in
another time. Not this cold, sterile compound she was kept in like
some lab animal.

“
I’d be really upset if you
weren’t here.” Jacob’s hand was on her shoulder. God, he was so
nice, so… everything… except that he didn’t make her feel that
thing she thought she was supposed to feel for a man she was
sleeping with.

Yeah, she was sleeping with him. If she was to be
locked up like a princess in a tower, she hadn’t been about to be a
permanent virgin. And it wasn’t as if her overprotective father
would allow anyone else near her for a proper romance to bloom. One
took what one could get.

She swiped at a tear as it escaped down her cheek.
“You know I don’t love you.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I don’t care.
It’s enough just being here with you.”

“
It’s okay with you that you live
with vampires? That you lost your human family? That you’re my
dinner and after-dinner amusement? Really? That’s okay with you?
Because it isn’t okay with me. I’m getting out of here. This is
nonsense. I should have left a long time ago.” She went to her
closet and started tossing clothing out behind her. Jacob sat
immobile as pants and tops landed on him.