Hidden Moon (Hot Moon Rising #4)
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Authors: Afton Locke
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Hidden Moon
Copyright 2016 by Afton Locke
ISBN: 978-1-68361-001-4
Cover art by Mina Carter
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Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Table of Contents
~ A Note from the Author~
Dear Reader:
When Desiree Holt invited me to be part of her Hot Moon Rising series, I was honored
and excited. I’ve been to Florida several times, and Moonlight is the perfect setting for a
wolf pack. Learning about her admiration of wolves has helped me understand them
and love them more, too. Writing in a shared world is challenging and exciting, and it’s
fun to belong to a “pack” of authors.
Like Alan, the hero in my story, I don’t always fit into the everyday world. I know how
difficult and painful that can be, especially when one has escaped the problem for a
while, only to be dragged back into it when least expected. Love heals all differences—
economic, racial, political, health-related, or even a wolf-shifter mutation.
I love hearing from readers, so please contact me at
: [email protected]
Links:
Newsletter:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thelovechronicle/
Web site:
http://www.aftonlocke.com
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https://www.facebook.com/AftonLockeAuthor
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http://twitter.com/aftonlocke
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/Afton_Locke
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: http://www.youtube.com/user/aftonlocke
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st: http://www.pinterest.com/aftonlocke/
The Hot Moon Rising Series
Wolf Moon by Desiree Holt
Venus Moon by Desiree Holt
Blood Moon by Desiree Holt
Hidden Moon by Afton Locke
Coming Soon
Moonlight Danger by Tina Donahue
Silver Moon by Merryn Dexter
Hunger Moon by Merryn Dexter
Also by Afton Locke
Alpha in Disguise
Rebel’s Claw
Hidden Moon
Alan Shifflett left his old pack due to an inherited mutation that makes him a violent
freak. He lives a dull life farther north, suppressing his shifts. But when his father can no
longer run Moonlight Diner due to failing health, Alan is compelled to rejoin what’s left
of his pack in Florida and face his weakness.
Shelley Fields, once a spoiled high school beauty queen, has dedicated her life to helping
her pack. In public, she ridiculed Alan because of peer pressure, but secretly, she longed
for her mate. When he returns, she confesses her true feelings, but Alan has no intention
of staying where he doesn’t belong.
Meanwhile, Curtis—his rival—has a score to settle, and threats from a rival pack are
standing everyone’s fur on end. Terrified of the beast inside, Alan is desperate to return
to his safe life, but is leaving his mate, kin, and pack in danger worth the price?
Hidden Moon
Hot Moon Rising Book 4
By
Afton Locke
Moonlight Wolf Pack
Charlie Aquino (human) - Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County
Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Jesse Farrell.
- Mate: Liana Cosa
Liana Cosa Aquino – Refugee from a different pack. She works part-time as a waitress at
Moonlight Diner.
- Mate: Charlie Aquino
Alexa Martin Farrell – Left her pack over a disagreement with her alpha. She moved to
Florida and helped the pack find a small community of cottages in Moonlight, Florida.
She works as an Internet researcher and gets jobs through her online website. She also
does research for The Defenders.
- Mate: Jesse Farrell
Jesse Farrell (human) – Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County
Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Charlie Aquino.
- Mate: Alexa Martin (who saved him when on assignment he was attacked by a gang)
Riesa Marlowe (human) – A psychic who helped locate Hannah Raines.
- Mate: Derek Sawyer
Hannah Raines Molina – She was kidnapped and saved by Jesse and Charlie with the
help of Riesa Marlowe, a psychic. Works as Alexa Martin’s research assistant.
- Mate: Rand Molina
Rand Molina - Derek’s second-in-command in the Moonlight pack. Partners with Derek
Sawyer at The Defenders, a private security agency.
- Mate: Hannah Raines
Derek Sawyer – Alpha of a small pack, most of their original clan was destroyed when
developers took the land they were living on and many of their pack were killed by
hunters. They hid in an abandoned orange grove until Alexa offered them the bungalows
in exchange for their help. He and the others have embraced Jesse & Alexa and Charlie
& Liana and given the female shifters a new sense of belonging.
- Partners with Rand Molina at The Defenders Agency, a private security and bodyguard
agency.
- Mate: Riesa Marlowe
The Defenders Agency - A private security and bodyguard agency formed by Rand and
Derek once they were established in the little enclave of cottages. It provides good
income for the pack. A majority of the pack is involved in the cases they take.
Jesse and Charlie are their contacts with the sheriff’s department and also refer many
cases to them.
1
Reston, VA
“I see you skipped lunch again. Would you like an orange?”
Alan Shifflett looked up from his computer monitor and the zillion lines of code he’d
wrestled with all day. His fingers, stiff and cold on the keyboard, needed a break. These
damn northern winters never seemed to end.
His co-worker looked easier on the eyes than logic statements, but her long, dark hair
and form-fitting blouse—unbuttoned a little too low—did nothing to warm him up.
“No thanks, Pam. I hate oranges.”
The expectant glow in her eyes snuffed out like a candle. How long would it take her
to realize he didn’t date? Not even blondes like…. No, he wouldn’t go there. Shelley was
a schoolboy fantasy. A dream-turned-nightmare.
Seeing couples in the street got to him sometimes, reminding him what he missed out
on. On nights of the half-moon, he wrestled the sheets, desperate to shove his aching
cock into a hot body. Hers. He dreamed of closing his teeth around a soft neck in the
mating bond. Marking his stamp on a woman. Making her his.
Luckily, those moons only happened once a month.
Most of his co-workers suspected he was gay, but he didn’t care. At least they were
smart enough to leave him alone. He came here to get a paycheck, not hang out at the
water cooler and eat sickening-sweet donuts.
In his high-rise apartment down the street, a huge porterhouse steak waited for him
in the fridge. He looked forward to cooking it medium-rare and gulping it down with a
glass of Merlot. He had a simple life, all right, but most of the people here, hunched over
their keyboards in their cubes, thrived on the same thing.
How do they stand it?
he’d wondered when he’d first arrived five years ago from
Homeland. The small town in southern Georgia—spitting distance from the Okefenokee
Swamp—was the complete opposite of this place. Suppressing the urge to shift had
2
driven him crazy, but working out at the gym, freezing his ass off, and being away from
his old pack had washed the urge right out of him. As long as he stayed alone in his
apartment on nights of the half-moon, nothing happened.
Luckily, he resembled a regular guy in human form. To blend into the corporate
world better, he’d shaved off his shaggy, rust-brown hair and tamed his beard into a
neat goatee. Because he didn’t shift anymore, the scabby patches on his face from his
sharp teeth had cleared up.
No one would ever suspect he was a shifter with an inherited mutation that made him
ugly and violent. If anybody saw his snaggly ass in wolf form roaming the streets, he’d
probably never even make it to the pound. He’d be shot on sight.
Eventually, he’d figured out if he stayed here, away from his old pack and his
homeland, he was normal. Living the life of a boring human was a small price to pay for
it.
Stretching, he focused on the computer code again. Only two hours until quitting
time. He lived by the clock here. It dictated when he ate and slept. No more running wild
through the swamp with sandy dirt under his paws. Not in this place. His car sat in a
parking garage, and he had to take an elevator down seven floors to get to it.
When a new email arrived, he hoped the testers hadn’t found another software bug.
The subject line,
Your Father
, gripped his heart with an icy fist. He didn’t recognize the
email address of the sender, but he didn’t exactly keep in touch with the pack. Or his
father, either, for that matter.
The ornery cuss called him a coward, and good riddance, for leaving. A month later,
he’d called Alan once, in the wee hours of the morning.
“Dad? Do you know what time it is?”
“I did not call to find out what time it is. I called to talk some sense into you and get
you back home where you belong. But it’s probably no use.”
Then he’d hung up.
The email message came from Shelley Fields, the only woman he’d ever seen as a
potential mate. That alone sent the blood draining from his head.
She must not have
married, either.
Alan, a lot has happened since you left the pack. About three years ago, we were
3
attacked by a rival pack led by a vicious alpha. Many were killed, but some of us fled
from Georgia to Central Florida to live off the land. Six months ago, we finally moved
into homes and named our little town Moonlight.
Your father fixed up an abandoned building and turned it into a restaurant like the
one he ran in Georgia. Last month, he found out he’s suffering from heart failure and is
now too weak to run Moonlight Diner. Please come as soon as you can.
The rest of the email provided addresses and travel directions.
Oh my God.
So much