Blood Moon Harvest (Seasons of the Moon) (7 page)

“What does it say?”

Seth gave her a long look. His gaze was almost pitying. “In traditional pack structure, there are two Alphas—a male and a female. It’s a matriarchal structure. The female who runs the pack chooses her Alpha by mating with him.”

Rylie’s stomach dropped out. She wavered.

“Oh.”

“It’s supposed to be for the good of the pack. She picks the strongest man and… well, you know.” He shrugged. “Alphas are a weird thing with werewolves anyway. They only start popping up when the pack is in duress. You were chosen because werewolves were about to go extinct anyway, so your job includes the… expectation… that you’ll help repopulate the species.”

She clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails bit into her palms. “I won’t bite anyone. I’m not turning anyone else into a monster.”

“That’s the thing.” He blew a breath out of his lips. Stared at his feet. “My dad’s research said that werewolves can be born, too.”

“
What
?”

He held up his hands and took a step back, like her shock was a physical force that had shoved him. “There were no references cited on his research. There’s no way to verify that it’s true.”

Rylie let the words sink into her.

Werewolves can be born.

She crossed her arms over her stomach. “So… if I had a baby, it would be a werewolf?” Her cheeks heated, and her vision blurred. “So you and me… we can’t ever…?”

He sank onto the bed at her side.

“We don’t know that yet.” Seth pulled Rylie against his chest and buried his face in her hair. His breath was hot down the back of her neck.

So her wolf’s attraction was worse than she expected. It wasn’t just something wildly out of her control—it was a drive to breed a species of monsters.

Rylie thought she was going to throw up.

“I’m not doing that,” she said. “I would never.”

He rubbed small circles over her back. “I know.” His chest rose and fell under her cheek. “You don’t have any control over what’s happening between you and Abel. This is a werewolf thing. The wolf choosing Abel as her mate isn’t your fault any more than the wolf killing all those people years ago.”

Tears burned paths down her cheeks.

“But it
is
me,” Rylie said. “I kissed Abel.”

“Because the wolf took control of you. Hey, look at me.” He took her by the arms and fixed a serious gaze on her. “You are not the wolf. The wolf is not you. I love
you
, Rylie Gresham. We’re stronger than this. And I’m not giving you up to some ridiculous werewolf mythology without a fight.”

She hung her head, unable to meet his eyes. “I love you, Seth.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You know that. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you at camp. That won’t ever change.”

“Then that’s all that matters,” he said. “We’ll get through this together. Okay?”

She nodded and leaned against his shoulder. He held her tightly and didn’t let go all night.

T
EN

An Answer

The drive wasn’t as tense
the next morning. They kept the windows rolled down, even though the air was cold. It felt good whipping around Rylie’s face.

They arrived at Seth’s old house by late afternoon.

It was at the end of a long, empty road that had no name, and it was so isolated that Rylie thought it might have once been a hunting cabin. Yellowing trees crowded around it on every side. Her feet crunched on leaves as she got out of the Chevelle.

“Is it abandoned?” she asked.

Seth took his rifle out of the car and slung the strap over his shoulder. “You tell me.”

Rylie tilted her nose to the air and sniffed. All she smelled was rotting leaves, squirrels, and the droppings of deer that had passed by the previous week. “Humans haven’t been here in a while.”

“Good.”

The front door wasn’t locked. Seth pushed it open, and the hinges gave a protesting whine.

The curtains were drawn, so the living room was dark. Half of the furniture was missing—there was still a coffee table and couch, but judging by the discoloration on the walls, shelves and paintings had been removed.

Aside from the dust, it looked like a family easily could have lived there just the week before. There were even photos over the fireplace.

Rylie stepped in behind Seth, taking another short sniff.

Old smells lingered in the air—smells she couldn’t place. Animals, maybe.

“So this is where you grew up,” she said, trailing her fingertips over the mantel. Her skin came up covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt.

She brushed the glass over a photo clean. There were two smiling faces underneath—little boys with broad grins, big eyes, and coarse black curls that stuck out in every direction. They were hugged by a man with blue eyes and brown hair. He had the same lopsided smile that Seth did, and Abel’s lips. It had to be their dad.

Her heart fell looking at the picture.

“What was your father like?” she asked, picking up the frame to rub off more dust.

Seth stuck his hands in his pockets and glared at the house. Even if he looked happy in the photo as a child, he didn’t seem happy to be there now.

“I don’t remember him very well, but I know he was driven. He was pretty funny, I guess. He laughed a lot.” He scrubbed a hand over his stubble. “He yelled a lot, too. Mostly at my mom. But Eleanor gave as good as she got.”

“I believe that.” Rylie showed Seth the photo.

His eyes raked down the image. “That was a few weeks before Dad died.” Seth opened his mouth, like he was going to say something else about it, but then his jaw clapped shut.

He took the picture from her and set it on the mantel again.

Seth moved into the kitchen, leaving Rylie alone.

A chill settled over her as she stood in the middle of the ghost of Seth’s childhood. The dusty furniture, the dirty photos, the dark room—it suddenly had the feeling of a mausoleum.

She cracked a window to let in the breeze. Light splashed over the room. The sun warmed her face. “I don’t think Cain has been here,” she called into the kitchen.

No response.

She opened another window to let in more light, but it didn’t help much. Everything looked more miserable with better lighting, from the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling to the tattered rug in the hall.

There was a notebook on a table next to the couch. She opened it to the first page.

Seth had been practicing his handwriting. His name was written on it in a dozen different sizes, with the occasional backwards letter. Seth and Abel had been kept out of school for most of their childhoods. He’d had to teach himself to read and write.

She closed the notebook again.

A breeze fluttered through the curtains, and the faint smell of flowers reached her. It smelled like roses.

Had there been any roses outside?

“Weird,” Rylie muttered, following the faint smell of flowers outside.

It was the wrong time of year for anything to be blossoming. The only thing growing in the flower beds were weeds and grass.

Rylie circled around the back.

There was that flower smell again. It caught her nose, and she turned to look for the source in the trees.

And then she heard it—the crunch of feet on fallen leaves.

Rylie turned too late.

Something whistled through the air and connected with the back of her skull. Stars flashed in her periphery. Her vision faded at the edges.

She hit the ground. Dirt impacted her cheek and nose.

Her head swam, and Pagan’s shuffling footsteps sounded distorted, as though she heard it through rippling water.

Rylie was stunned, but the wolf wasn’t.

Move.

She rolled onto her side. An instant later, a silver knife whistled through the air and plunged into the dirt where she had been laying.

Pagan jerked it free of the ground.

Rylie turned inward, focusing on her wolf.
Help me!

Something buried deep in the wolf’s instincts recognized Pagan’s black irises, the pale skin, the sour smell.

The demon swung the knife again. The wolf lifted Rylie’s forearm to protect her face, and Pagan’s wrist struck her on the elbow.

Rylie lifted her feet, planted them in Pagan’s stomach, and kicked.

Her attacker soared through the air. Struck the tree with a cry. Dry leaves showered around them.

Rylie rolled onto all fours, and her hands were bloody. It wasn’t an injury—her fingernails had fallen out when she wasn’t paying attention. They had already been replaced by fresh, glistening claws.

Pagan lunged for her, and Rylie swiped. Her claws raked through the air.

The demon leaped out of the way just in time.

But the wolf anticipated that, just as it anticipated that she would attack again from the left. Her eyes and the tension in her muscles gave her away.

Rylie drove her elbow into Pagan and threw her to the ground.

The demon didn’t attempt another attack. Her eyes focused on something in the distance.

“Cain! Help!” Pagan shouted.

Cain
?

Rylie turned. But before she could see who was attacking, something struck the back of her skull, in the same tender spot that Pagan had beaten earlier.

She blacked out before she hit the ground.

Seth wandered through the house
alone, gazing at everything his family had left behind.

The front bedroom had belonged to Abel, and there were no toys in it—even as a child, he had been more interested in knives and handguns. His bed had plain sheets. The walls were bare.

How many hours had the brothers spent in that room, making up stories and wrestling on the floor? He couldn’t begin to count them.

The next bedroom had belonged to Seth. It was barely bigger than a closet, but it had been his kingdom. The only place he was safe when his parents argued.

He didn’t open the door to look inside.

Seth went to his mom’s bedroom and stood in the doorway.

Once, Eleanor had thrown him over that chair in the corner and whipped him when he made a mistake.

Then there was the time she punched a hole in the wall when she was aiming for his head. It used to be hidden by a desk, but that piece of furniture was gone now. The hole remained.

Her straightening iron was on the table under the window—he didn’t even want to remember what she had done with that.

Yet those were still the friendliest features of the room.

Eleanor had been obsessed with what she called The Process: a methodical way of identifying werewolves so that she could kill them as soon as they changed. But she had gotten The Process from his dad. And he had been the master of it.

Their bedroom walls were covered in corkboard, and every inch was layered in maps, handwritten notes, news articles, and receipts. It seemed his dad had been hunting an entire pack of werewolves the last time he had been in the house—probably the pack that eventually killed him.

It used to make him so angry to think about what the werewolves had done to his dad. To his family.

But now he saw the names and pictures of suspected werewolves in the pack, and it made him angry in an entirely different way. Each face belonged to a human, not a monster. A brother, a mother, a girlfriend, a son. Family.

No wonder they had killed his dad. He had been killing everyone they loved.

Something green and square under the bed caught his eye.

Seth dropped to his knees and pulled it out. It was a metal case with a padlock, and a label affixed to the lid that said, “Eleanor.”

His mother had threatened him every time he approached the lockbox as a child, like it was filled with dangerous explosives. But there was no way she had been worrying about his safety. That wasn’t her style.

She must have been hiding something from him.

Seth found a hammer in his dad’s toolbox and broke the lock open.

He lifted the lid, and the smell of a hundred memories swept over him. Some herbs, her favorite lotion, mothballs. There was a switchblade in the box, a locket with some hair in it, and a diary.

He remembered his mom writing in a journal frequently when he was young. Her entries had served to catalog their most recent kills; she hadn’t considered them private or tried to lock them away. What made that diary different?

He sat with his back against the wall to read it.

The dates on the entries were old—well before he was born. Seth skimmed the early entries. She had grown up in the city, and it talked a lot about her time working at a diner. She wrote a lot about one particular customer. A handsome, unnamed man. Was that where she had met Seth’s dad?

Aden. She called him Aden.

Seth read on in sick fascination as a teenage Eleanor wrote about her developing relationship with Aden. They started dating. Then they started sleeping together. She shared way too much information about that—he skipped those parts.

And then she wrote about discovering that Aden was a werewolf.

Seth stared at his mom’s handwriting.

His mother had dated a werewolf before she married a werewolf hunter?

He realized that the house was awfully quiet. Rylie hadn’t followed him back into the bedrooms, and it had been several minutes since he heard from her.

“Rylie?” he called.

No response.

He got to his feet and took the diary with him as he searched the house. The kitchen and living room stood empty.

Seth stepped out the back door. “Rylie?” he called. “I think I’ve found something.”

The air was still and silent in the clearing behind his dad’s house. Leaves drifted from the skeletal branches overhead.

He checked around the side of the house, but the Chevelle was where they parked it, and none of their bags were missing.

Where could Rylie have gone?

A soft, feminine voice called to him from the woods. “Seth?”

“Rylie?” he responded, following the sounds into the trees.

Someone was standing in the shadows behind an oak, but it wasn’t his girlfriend. It was a tall, muscular woman shrouded in filmy black material. Her curls hung loose around her shoulders.