Moonbound (Moonfate Serial Book 1)
Read Moonbound (Moonfate Serial Book 1) Online
Authors: Sylvia Frost
Tags: #dark romance, #bbw, #Shifters, #Paranormal Romance, #Werewolves
Moonbound
Moonfate Serial - Part One
by Sylvia Frost
All characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to persons, events or locations is only coincidental.
Copyright © Sylvia Frost 2014.
All rights reserved.
No part of this text may be reproduced in printed or electronic form without prior permission, unless used for review purposes.
Cover by Sophia Feddersen
Edited by Joshua Essoe, Ashley Davis, and Carol Davis.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks go to many people, but most of all to the incredible community of writers at Kboards.com and V.M Black who showed me that I could do this. Like it or not, this book is for you.
The Moonfate Serial
Moonbound (September 30th, 2014)
Huntbound (October 31st, 2014)
Bloodbound (November 30th, 2014)
Heartbound (December 31st, 2014)
For more information on the Moonfate serial, sign up for my newsletter
here.
Contents
Chapter One
“Can a monster love?
This question haunts every account, every myth, every dream humanity has ever had about the creatures known as werebeasts. Even our very first story—the tale of Adam, Eve and the shifter named Lucifer—is plagued by this mystery.
Was Lucifer a demon determined to ruin Eve and spawn a species of monsters? Or was he a fallen angel so in love with a human woman he destroyed paradise for a kiss?
We will never know. And perhaps we shouldn’t ask why Lucifer tempted Eve at all, but another question:
Why did she give in?”
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
When I was fifteen, I swore I’d never buy a gun. Mom and Dad believed weapons only made problems worse, and after the attack I wanted to honor their memory. But it’s been seven years of running since then, and I think if I ever want to stop, I’m going to have to admit that my parents’ view of the world may have died with them.
So here I am waiting at the counter of Edward’s Arms and Ammo, mustering the courage to ring their customer service bell. Its curved surface warps my reflection so my face flickers between Marilyn Monroe look-alike and chubby twenty-something and back again as I shift from foot to foot. Looking at it makes me wish I could be one of those girls whose biggest demon is her dress size.
Ding.
Two minutes lurch by, then three, and my only company remains the stuffed wolf’s head snarling at me from above the cash register. I don’t feel alone, though. I never do. Not when I know that somewhere out there is a beast searching for his one true mate. Searching for me.
I worry the bandage on my wrist and try again.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“Heard ya. Just cleaning out the back.”
I jump.
A middle-aged man wearing red fatigues and holding a box of magnets emerges from the shadows. “Scared ya, didn’t I?” He smirks to himself.
“No, it’s fine,” I say, even as my skittering heartbeat disagrees.
The shopkeeper steps behind the counter and drops the box onto it. A magnet jumps out and spins across the counter toward me. Instinctively, I pick it up and start to hand it to him. Then I see what’s on it.
Oh.
A shard of longing pierces my gut, and the edges of the world seem to fade and twist until the image on the magnet fills my whole sight. It’s something I haven’t seen in seven years. My parents’ faces.
The picture is from Christmas. Dad’s wearing a goofy smile, Mom’s trying to pose glamorously in front of the tree, and thirteen-year-old me is grinning, oblivious to how frizzy her blonde hair is and the fact that her Gryffindor t-shirt is inside out.
I stroke the magnet’s cool, smooth surface with my thumb. I never thought I’d see this picture again. The Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigation confiscated everything after the attack. As I caress it, my thumb moves from the top of the magnet to the bottom, and I notice a sentence written above our heads that I didn’t see before.
May the Williams family be always in our prayers and may justice rain down upon their killers.
Holy shit. This shopkeeper has turned my parents’ murder into some kind of anti-were movement centerpiece and is using our old Christmas card picture as propaganda for the cause.
“Where did you get these?” I thrust the magnet into the shopkeeper’s face.
“Made ‘em myself.” He grins, exposing his tobacco-stained teeth. “Found the picture online from a news story and added the words. Magnets were a big seller for a while, but they’re just takin’ up space now.”
I clench the magnet in my fist until it hurts.
“Pisses ya off, too, doesn’t it? What those monsters did to that poor family?” His nametag glints. Edward.
“Edward—"
He holds up a hand. “I know what you’re gonna say. I think we shoulda rounded ‘em up, and their dirty mates, too. Put ‘em in camps. Not just tagged ’em. But that’s why I sell these.” He pats an antique show-rifle hanging behind him. “And these.” He motions to the junk around us: silver crosses dangling from chains, shelves overstocked with liter after liter of scent-suppressant spray, reprints of werehunting manuals centuries out of date, earplugs for avoiding the power of a werebeast’s call. And magnets. Of my parents.
“You can’t do this,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“That’s somebody’s life. Somebody’s family.”
“
Was
somebody’s life.” He shrugs. “Newspaper that ran the story is out of business, the parents are dead, and everybody knows the girl’s been missing for years. Read even the aunt’s gone now. Who’s gonna complain?”
“No one,” I mutter bitterly as my anger fizzles. I certainly have no right. I stayed in a tent while werebeasts murdered my parents, too scared to do anything but hide. And I’ve been hiding ever since.
Edward crosses his arms and sucks his teeth. “Can I help you with somethin’?”
“I need to buy a gun.” I push the magnet back against the cash register with my left hand, my right still behind my back.
“Worried ‘bout the full moon and all them new weres around, huh?”
“Something like that.”
He pulls out a stack of paperwork from underneath the desk. “I don’t know anybody that believes them government lies. So what if they haven’t done anything since the first attack? So what if they’re all tagged? They’re monsters. Monsters kill.” He licks his dirty thumb and leafs through a couple of forms before sliding them over the counter to me.
“Just fill these out and give me your ID. No license to carry required anymore.”
I dig into my purse and practically fling the plastic card toward him.
He holds it up, scanning for a moment before his face goes slack with surprise. “Hot damn.”
I flinch. How did I not see this coming?
He lowers the paper and gestures with his head to the magnet. “You’re her. You’re Artemis Williams.”
“I try to keep a low profile.”
“No shit.” His gaze jumps between me, my state ID, and the magnet in rapid fire.
I steel myself for all the typical questions. Why did you run away? What are you doing now? And, most of all, why do you think they did it? Why did werebeasts emerge from a hundred years of supposed extinction just to kill your parents?
But when he hands me back my ID, all he asks is, “Why ya back here, then?”
It’s not the worst of questions, so I answer as I pocket the card. "My aunt left me my parents’ old house.” It’s true, but not the whole truth.
Edward’s brows furrow in what would be sympathy on a less grizzled face. “Sorry tuh hear that.”
I wrap my fingers around the bandage.
Before my aunt left me the house, I’d always run whenever too many weres showed up in town or my identity leaked, or even if the wind blew the wrong way. Not because I was worried someone would attack me, but because of the matemark.
The white crescent of fur appeared on my arm a month after the attack. At first I tried to deny what it was, but once the nightmares started, I knew that like Eve, Psyche, and Belle before me, I was doomed to be the mate of a monster. Forced to carry their spawn. Except not really forced. Because all a werebeast has to do is touch their mate to set their bodies on fire. A gun seems like a paltry weapon in comparison, but the threat of a silver bullet is the only thing that can scare a werebeast.
“Well, seems like you’re all grown up.” Edward looks me up and down, his eyes lingering on my ample chest before he says, “Let’s get you a gun.” He squats and reaches for a shiny pistol at the front of the case. It looks out of my price range.
“I was thinking something more used.”
“No way I’m giving our Artemis Williams anything but the best.” He lays the pistol on the counter gingerly. “You ever shot a gun before?”
“Yes,” I lie. My heart beats harder as I stare at the trigger.
“‘Course you have. Bet you got yourself a collection already.” He pulls the gun apart, taking me through a whirlwind tour of all of its special chambers, features, and specs. I tell myself I don’t need to know how it works, that it’s just a prop. If my mate finds me, I won’t kill him, just force him to leave.
“How ‘bout this one? She’s a hundred fifty, but for you I'll make it a clean hund-o and throw in some silver bullets too, unless you want somethin' fancier?”
“I—” I twist a hand into my blonde curls, trying to soothe the anxiety burning in my chest. A hundred dollars will mean I eat ramen for the rest of the month. “This one’s fine.”
He threads his fingers through the loops of his tattered khakis. “You gotta fill out the paperwork first.”
I take a deep breath. “Do you have a pen?”
He nods to a jar on the other side of the magnets. I stretch to pick one out, and a second too late I realize I’m using my right hand. He can see my bandage.
Shit. I scramble back to the paperwork. He stays silent. It’s only at the end, after I’ve paid with my almost-overdrawn debit card and he’s finished packing up the gun, that he opens his mouth.
“Whatcha gonna use it for?” He closes the gun case with a snap.
“What do you think?” I blink at him innocently. My ample boobs, curved belly and ampler ass are usually catnip to creeps like Edward.
“I don’t know what I think.” His lips tighten. “All I know is that you got a bandage ‘round your wrist and that I had a cousin once whose daddy beat her and she had a bandage ‘round her wrist, too.”
I stiffen. If he finds out I’m matemarked, there’s no way he’ll sell me the gun.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “She had lots of bandages. Lots of tiny cuts, until one day she got a big one.” He holds up his wrist and draws his knobby finger over it in a sharp line. “Like this.”
“You think I’m going to hurt myself?” I ask slowly.
He raises his wiry eyebrows.
I give a long sigh, unable to hide my relief that he hasn’t guessed what’s really underneath the bandage. Although he’s not entirely wrong, either. When I was fourteen, before I met my best friend Lawrence and we ran away, I thought about killing myself. Pills, though. Not a gun.