ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (236 page)

“I don’t understand,” Brandi said. She was crying now. “I don’t understand why you haven’t told me before. Why did you lie to me?”

She was pulling away from me; I was losing her trust, I could feel it.

“I didn’t tell you because I got to know you to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Her eyes were wide now.

I looked down at my hands. None of this was going the way I meant for it to go. But how did you tell someone the truth, when it was so ridiculous you almost didn’t believe it yourself?

“They think you have it now,” I said. That was the only way I would be able to explain it without telling her the truth.

“But I don’t have anything!” Fear was apparent on her face now, her hands were trembling. She hadn’t been there that night, buts he carried the emotional scars of it just as much as I did. Only for much different reasons.

“Look, they’re going to come for you. Tonight. And I… hey, look at me.” She was starting to panic. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, okay?”

She nodded, looking at me. Her mind was spinning, I could see it in her eyes, feel it in my own mind. She was confused and scared. But I could feel the pieces clicking in to place. Yes, I wanted her to come to the conclusions herself. The more pieces of the puzzle she put together herself, the less convincing I had to do.

“How did you know they want me too? They think that I have it?”

I didn’t answer her. I just looked at her. Maybe she could answer that for herself too. I was here to look after her, because of what I knew.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she finally asked, and I felt like I was going to sag with relief. I nodded slowly.

“But I don’t want you to die. I’m here to look after you,” I said. She looked skeptical, and I could feel her suspicion, but that was something I could deal with. She nodded slowly, but she still wasn’t sure.

“Look, why don’t we just take some time to rest?” I said.

“Can I show you something?” she said suddenly. I was out of the blue, and I nodded, glad she wasn’t pushing me away. I followed her to her bedroom. She walked over to the dressing table and opened a jewelry box. From it she took a necklace and studied it, turned almost completely away from me. I only saw her reflection in the mirror.

I shuffled from one foot to the other. Something was wrong. My skin was burning, and my throat felt raw when I swallowed. It was different than I’d ever felt before, something strange and sinister. I strained my ears, but the house and surrounding property was quiet. I sent feelers out across the city. None of my pack were close by, and the were no foreign wolves around, either. If we were safe, with no wolves to threaten us, why did I feel like something was wrong? The night was already coming, the sun was sinking away. The moon would be up soon.

“My father gave me this a while before he died,” Brandi spoke, pulling my attention back into the room. She turned around and held her hand out to me, clenched in a fist. Out of instinct I held out my hand. “He said it would always keep me safe.”

She opened her hand and the necklace fell into my open palm. Immediately a force knocked me so hard I fell backwards, and the necklace in my hand burned into my skin, searing and sizzling. I shook my hand and it fell to the ground. It was silver.

That was what I had felt.

“Are you alright?” Brandi asked, rushing to me, but I backed away, scrambling across the floor. It wasn’t me. It was the wolf that was trying to get away from her. I looked at my hand. My palm had a loopy burn where the chain had touched my skin, and where my palm ran into my wrist was the shape of the pendant, the shape of a dagger.

“John…” she said, but I was fighting my wolf. The anger and rage was pulsing through my body, and I had to really fight to stay in control. How much of this would the pack feel?

Brandi didn’t try to come closer to me.

“What’s going on?” she asked. How much had Ernest really known? I’d thought he’d known nothing, it was what I had learned from the Alpha before he’d been taken out by another of our enemies. But if Ernest gave Brandi the silver to protect her?

“Why did your father give you that?” I asked.

“Because he said I wasn’t safe, because some people out there weren’t what they seemed. That was what he’d said.” She swallowed hard.

I opened my mouth to speak, but as I did a howl pierced through the night air. It was dark by now.

They’d felt it too. And they were coming.

5

Another howl sliced through the silence, and when I looked at Brandi, she was trembling.

“I’ll protect you from them,” I said.

“This can’t be real,” she said, and I knew that she knew. She may not have believed it before, but she knew just as well as I that there were no ordinary wolves around here.

“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “It’s going to—“ I couldn’t finish my sentence.

The moon was above the horizon. I could feel her calling to me. My wolf howled inside of me. An answer. And my skin rippled, a shudder traveling from my head to my feet. With it came a burning hatred, so strong it nearly pushed me over, and my teeth itched where they would elongate into fangs.

I fought the change, but the nails on my hands sharpened and lengthened. I wasn’t going to be able to stop it.

“Brandi, run!” I growled, curling into a ball on the carpet. Fighting the change on a night when the moon was full wasn’t only impossible, it was stupid. It was the kind of pain I’d never felt in my life. Brandi was rooted to the ground, gaping at me.

“I’m not kidding, get out of here!”

“John—“ she started towards me, but I produced a sound that was a mix between a scream and a roar.

“I’m going to kill you! Just get out of here.”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she asked. The change was upon me, and I could feel my bones slide into a different place and lock. I felt my teeth grow, my muzzle push out to accommodate them. It was the answer Brandi needed. When I looked at her, shock and horror filled her eyes, and she turned and ran.

I fought the change for as long and as hard as I could. The only thing I could do was slow it down. The moon was too strong. But I could feel Brandi, and she was a fair distance away by the time I finally let go, and I changed into wolf form.

The sound of glass breaking sounded, and two wolves jumped into the bedroom. The one was a golden brown, my second, and the other a young recruit with black fur and green eyes. My second’s eyes burned into me and said everything the wolf’s mouth couldn’t Where was she? How could the Alpha let her get away when she was a danger to us now?

I growled at him, my lips pulled up into a snarl, my teeth bare. Who was he to challenge me about this? No one. He had to remember who the Alpha was.

My second snapped his jaw toward the ground, anger but still submissive. The upside was that I was the only one that could feel where she was. It was my reaction to the silver that had called them, not hers. My right paw smarted even in wolf form, and I touched it to the carpet gingerly.

I could feel their bloodlust, the hunger in the two wolves in front of me, and the pull of the wolves that were coming to find us. The pack was on its way. Every wolf in town was heading towards this house. I sent my sensors out to Brandi again. She wasn’t close anymore. But how far was far enough? The world was a very small place for a woman with a death warrant above her head and werewolves that spread to almost every country on earth.

I didn’t know how I could stop them. How would I save her against a pack that I was supposed to lead to kill her? I would be killed if I wanted to save her. If I misled them, if I turned on them, if I ordered them to stand down.

One by one more wolves filled the room, until there were so many it was a crawling mess of furry bodies and bared fangs. There were twenty-three wolves in my pack, including the new recruits. Ten of them were my close hunting circle, and my second in the command controlled the rest of them when I didn’t have the time. This was trouble.

I jumped through the window and ran into the night. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I was buying some time. I didn’t try to look for her, I was scared I couldn’t trust my wolf and he’d kill her even though I didn’t want to. So I ran, and the pack followed. The moon called to the danger inside me, awoke my own bloodlust, and I howled as I ran. The other wolves joined until we were a creepy chorus that cried to the moon.

I ran until the muscles in the legs screamed. My lungs burned. I could feel the questions from the wolves behind me. Why hadn’t I found her yet? Where was I leading them? The truth was I didn’t know. I was running away from myself, from the wolf, and I was hoping and praying to whoever would listen that this would have a happy ending. No matter which way I looked at it, I could only see blood.

When I finally stopped, we were in a forest far outside the city. The trees were tall and foreign around us, and the night was black with the moonlight falling through the dense canopy of leaves above us. My pack circled around me, their eyes all on my, although none of them meeting my gaze.

Where was she?

I focused on the feel of her, the hum in my veins that shaped to her body. And my heart stopped.

She was very close. Somewhere right here, between the trees. How had this happened? Had my wolf gone to find her after all, even if I hadn’t focused? Or was it because I hadn’t been focusing that this had happened? I cursed myself, growling and snapping my jaws, shaking my head. It didn’t matter what I did. I would never be able to get away from my wolf.

My second came out of the circle and walked to me with his head low. His eyes shone amber in the night. He could sense her. It was beyond my feel for her because she was in my veins. She was close and it traveled through the trees like a pointer.

Like one the wolves swiveled their heads to the left, and there she was. She looked like a ghost. Her dark hair against her milky white skin, and her blue eyes deep pools of blue. She was beautiful in the dim light, a creature of night, too, in her own way.

My wolf growled, and the others joined in. It was a low rumble that shook through the trees. Brandi’s eyes were wide, and I could taste her fear, bitter at the back of her throat. Around her neck the necklace gleamed, a glint of hope in the black of night. I was glad that she had something at least, but with this many wolves I didn’t know if she would survive.

My own wolf was inching towards her. It was a constant struggle, and with every step I took forward, I forced myself to take a step back. I didn’t manage many times. I ended up right in front of her.

She looked down at me, and in her eyes I saw the woman I’d protected my whole life. The woman I’d fallen in love with, despite the fact that I’d vowed only to protect her. The woman I’d married. It was my fault this was happening. All of it.

I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. How much I really loved her. But my wolf lunged at her instead, my teeth bared, my eyes on her throat. I knew what her vein would feel like under my teeth, pulsing and throbbing, and then the pulse would die with her.

It happened in slow-motion. Her neck crawled closer. Her arms floated slowly up to stop me. I could feel the prickle of the necklace radiating off her.

And then I dropped to the ground. I hit the earth with a dull thud and all the air was forced out of my lungs. Something was wrong. I tried to get up but my wolf was weak, it felt like all the energy in my body was draining into the earth. I looked up. Was Brandi doing this?

But she stared at me, and then up at the other wolves. When I tipped my head back, I saw the rest of my pack lay on the floor, squirming and wiggling like wounded animals, not a pack of killers.

A shift pulled me out of wolf form. I couldn’t stop it from happening. I was the same as when the wolf pulled to the front and my human was pushed to the background. Except now it felt like my wolf had been shot with a tranquilizer.

When I was a human, I lay on the mulch looking up at Brandi.

“John?” she said softly.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, and looked around. My pack all lay in human form on the floor, some of them naked, others with ragged pants and torn shirts around their bodies. Some changes kept clothes, others ripped it apart. It was different with every wolf.

“What happened?” I asked. The last thing I remembered was the urge for her blood.

“The moon,” she whispered, and I looked up. Through a clearing in the leaves above, I could see it. It was full and round, and blood red.

Blood Moon. A lunar eclipse. I hadn’t kept an eye on the astronomy news like I usually did. This was the first lunar eclipse where the wolves and Hart’s were having a showdown in over a century. My skin broke out in goosebumps.

The blood moon pulled the strength of a werewolf. The wolves slept, their blood calmed by the lull caused by the moon in the earth’s umbra, and the sun, moon and earth were aligned.

I managed to get up. I swayed a bit and staggered towards the closest tree so I could keep my balance.

“We have to get out of here while they’re down,” I said.

“But they’re subdued now. They’re just people.”

“They won’t be forever. And when the wolves are back, they’ll find us.”