Run with the Moon (5 page)

Valen stood and glowered at his brother. “Tell me again why I’d want you as my beta?”

Rivvie gave him a weird, fluttery-fingers salute then dashed toward the stream.

“I could walk.” Aaron made as if to rise to his knees then hissed and plopped onto his butt. “My knee. What did you do to me?”

“You fell out of a tree, and tried to turn yourself inside out rather than be held safely,” Valen felt obligated to remind Aaron. “You’ll have bruises all over.” Especially around his wrists. That smooth skin would be darkened with marks Valen had left behind.

Aaron averted his gaze. Obviously an apology for his unfounded accusation wasn’t forthcoming. They sat awkwardly in silence for several minutes. Valen kept sneaking peeks at Aaron. With his blond hair appearing silver in the night, he was simply stunning. Valen was intrigued.

“Here. I’m so smart.” Rivvie loped over and handed Aaron a crudely assembled cup made of woven leaves. “Drink fast. I can’t make these nearly as well as our sister Ashley can. The water will all leak out.”

Aaron took the cup and gulped the liquid down.

“I hope I didn’t use toxic leaves,” Rivvie mused.

“Ack!” Aaron spluttered, water flying everywhere.

Valen sighed and rubbed his temples. “He’s joking, Aaron. Rivvie knows what’s poisonous and what isn’t.”

Rivvie hummed in agreement before saying, “So if it
was
made out of toxic leaves then I’d have done it on purpose.”

“Rivvie!” Valen shouted, pointing beyond Aaron. “Go sit by the stream and count stars or something, and for shit’s sake, quit talking! Before you ask, yes, that is an order.”

Rivvie grumbled as he walked off. Valen waited until he deemed it safe then he spoke. “Rivvie likes to joke, and he also has trouble showing his anger outright. He’ll do it like that, picking and prodding at you until he feels like he’s gotten his revenge.”

“What did I do to him?” Aaron nudged the cup away with his foot.

“He’s my brother. You stole from me. Would you need to do anything else?” Valen studied Aaron. Humans looked just like shifters did when they weren’t in their animal forms. Except smaller, if Aaron and his accomplices were anything to judge by. “I’ve never seen a Human before.”

Aaron tipped his head up until he was finally looking Valen in the eyes. “You’re really not going to kill me?”

Valen couldn’t quite repress a sneer. “It isn’t shifters who destroyed the world with their aggression.”

Aaron’s cheeks darkened noticeably even in the moonlight. “I didn’t do it, either, but I get it. We didn’t destroy the world, just… Just most of civilization, I guess.”

And now shifters outnumbered Aaron’s kind. Valen wouldn’t point it out though because if humans didn’t know it, they didn’t need to. Finding out that they were a minority like that might incite some of them to attempt shifter eradication—something shifters used to fear much more before the End Times.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Valen said. He took his time looking Aaron over then frowned at the pants with their fur-trimmed pockets and foot coverings. “What kind of animal skin is that? Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”

“Uh.” Aaron scooted away from Valen. “It was too hot for a shirt.”

The scent of his fear hit Valen, the odor of it acrid and just wrong. There was also the hint of an untruth in Aaron’s answer along with a fierce blush on Aaron’s cheeks that spoke of embarrassment. Valen decided not to push on about the shirt. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Were all humans so fearful?

“You might when you hear my answer,” Aaron muttered. “It’s, um, I think it’s from a coyote— We didn’t kill it!” he quickly tacked on.

Valen squatted, hoping to ease Aaron’s fear somewhat if he weren’t towering over the man. “Wolves have been known to eat coyotes,” Valen said casually. “Not our favorite food, but it does happen. Wolves, not shifters, also have mated with coyotes at times. It’s an odd relationship the two animals have, I’ll admit. We aren’t friends, if that’s what you’re worried about. There are no coyote shifters.”

“We still didn’t kill it. Last month, Yasim—he’s my cousin—was looking for firewood and he found several fresh carcasses.” Aaron wrinkled his nose. “He skinned them, I guess, because he came back with the pelts instead of firewood. We don’t waste anything. That’s why I took the bag.” Aaron spoke earnestly, his expression matching his tone. “I should have waited and seen if anyone, or you, I mean, came back, I guess. I was scared too. We, um. We weren’t supposed to be out and I saw the leather bag. Leather is rare. No one was around. I thought— Well, I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t. I just took the bag. I wanted to make Walter and Anita proud.” He laughed bitterly, the tone wrong coming from him.

Valen wanted to wrap Aaron in his arms and keep him from ever sounding like that again. He even found himself reaching for Aaron before yanking his hand back.

Aaron didn’t seem to have noticed. He kept talking. “Then I saw you. I knew you were a shifter. Wolves aren’t that big. You were…magical, like the moonlight was even too in awe to touch you. It just kind of glowed around you instead.” Aaron groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Gods, it’s talking like that—it’s why Walter and Anita think I’m so useless!”

Valen was confused. “Why would they think you’re useless? Because you can put words together in a way that implies you have a talent for it? Are there no poets in your society?”

“Poets?” Aaron cocked his head and stopped covering his face.

“Wow.” Valen had to take a moment to organize his thoughts, because they’d kind of just been blown away. “A poet.” He was afraid to ask if Aaron really didn’t know what that was for fear of insulting the man. Valen was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that humans might have lost so much of their history.

Granted, shifters didn’t have much written down. They did have stories, songs and other learning they passed from one generation to the next verbally, and in other art mediums as well.

“I don’t know what a poet is. I like the word.” Aaron smiled and Valen’s entire body went tight with need.

Aaron didn’t seem to be aware of that. “What’s it mean?”

Valen gave himself a mental shake. “A poet is someone who has been blessed with the talent to understand the power of words, and can convey so much more with them than the average person does. It’s a gift, being a poet, and I think you have that gift.”

Aaron’s smile brightened then dimmed out altogether. “It’s a useless one. Does crap to help us survive.”

“There’s more to life than just survival.” Gods, how hard was life for humans now?

“Riiiight,” Aaron murmured. “Besides the dying and starving, the sickness, waking up at sunrise or earlier in order to attempt to find food or tend crops that keep dying, to haul water and hope something doesn’t kill you while you’re doing it. To keep a watch out for attacking villages and tribes. You know, just trying to stay alive. After that’s all done, then it’s one big celebration, right?”

“Oddly enough, sarcasm suits you,” Valen mused. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. I’d thought you should only have smiles and soft words coming from you. I like that show of spirit, Aaron Olsen.”

Aaron sucked in his bottom lip.

Valen desired to feel Aaron suck his cock in just as eagerly. Something was happening between them, something more than just attraction. Or if Aaron was attracted, he wasn’t willingly so.

“I told you my name because I thought it might make it harder for you to kill me,” Aaron said a minute later. He looked up through thick lashes at Valen.

Even squatting as he was, Valen was still taller than Aaron.

It was important to Valen that Aaron did not think badly of him, or at least not too badly. “I don’t kill for thrills. None of my kind do. We learned a long, long time ago not to be so foolish.”

Aaron inhaled sharply. “Like humans.”

Valen wanted to smack himself. “I didn’t intend to insult you.”

“Just to speak the truth,” Aaron grumbled. “We caused the destruction of most of our world. Can’t live in the remnants of the big cities for fear of catching whatever diseases it was that wiped out the billions. Did it affect shifters at all?”

Valen felt a chill of warning. He didn’t know Aaron or whom Aaron might speak to. “I can’t say how it affected other packs. Ours has remained the same size or close to it ever since our history can be recalled. It helps a lot that we are immune to diseases and illnesses, unlike your kind.”

“So the plagues that almost wiped us out didn’t affect shifters at all. That’s amazing, actually. And how do you recall it, your history?” Aaron leaned forward eagerly. “Do you have books?”

“No books,” Valen told him, hating the disappointment he saw in Aaron’s eyes. “We aren’t big on recording our histories like that, probably because at one point we had to seriously worry about being discovered and eliminated by mankind.”

“We would do something like that,” Aaron admitted. “Now it’s all we can do, in my village at least, to make it through to the next day.”

“It’s that bad for you?” Valen asked.

“For us, yes.” Aaron touched his knee and grimaced. “Anything can kill us, it seems. Immobility is dangerous.”

Valen had so many questions but he didn’t have the luxury of asking them. If he did so, he’d disclose things about shifters that he wasn’t certain humans should know. In fact, he didn’t think they needed any information about shifters. Valen switched tactics, because there was something else he wanted to ask, and Aaron seemed content to talk the night away.

“You want me,” he declared bluntly.

Another startled gasp from Aaron, whose mouth dropped open as he stared at Valen.

“I saw it. Felt the proof of it. Smelled your need.” Valen inched closer to Aaron. “There is nothing wrong with letting ourselves have respite from the harder aspects of life, is there? No reason I can’t touch you, or you can’t touch me.”
Speak positive
, he scolded himself. “I can make you feel so good, and—”

“I can’t,” Aaron rasped. “I— I’m not—”

Valen smiled as seductively as he knew how. “Oh, you are, and so am I.”

Chapter Four

Uh-oh.
There was no pretending he’d be forced into anything now, and still he wanted Valen with every particle of his being.

Aaron forgot to worry that he was going to die from some kind of weird knee injury. His thoughts scattered as he stared into Valen’s eyes.

“Uh-oh?” Valen asked in a silky tone.

Aaron jolted. If he blushed any harder and hotter he was going to be incinerated from embarrassment on the spot. “D-did I say that out loud?”

Valen’s smile was illuminated beautifully in the moonlight. “Yes, and I have to say, it’s the first time I’ve ever gotten that particular reaction. Somehow it doesn’t seem to be a bad one.”

Aaron didn’t know what to say. His body was rioting on the inside for what Valen was promising. Every word Valen spoke floated over Aaron and touched him almost as effectively and erotically as an actual touch. At least, he thought it did. Honestly, Aaron didn’t really know what Valen had in mind specifically.

“I’d start by touching you,” Valen said, moving closer. “Your arms, to chase away the chill bumps on them. To see if you quiver or tense when I’m touching you for pleasure instead of in combat.”

Combat? I was involved in combat?
Aaron’s pulse raced. He’d never been made to fight or hunt, and he’d never wanted to. The slingshot was something he’d taught himself to use because he’d figured he should have one way of increasing his survival skills, and even so, he couldn’t hit a dang thing with it.

“Then I’d…” Valen inched forward. “I’d like to kiss you. I don’t kiss, generally. Once or twice to see what it’s like. Most of the time it’s all been about getting off. Your lips, however, they’re definitely made for kisses. I’d take my time, and get us both off all night long. I’d move your pants out of the way, push them down after I opened them so I could feel your cock in my hand.”

Aaron licked his lips, trying to imagine living a life where he could have such freedom.
I could have one night. One night of letting go of the worries and responsibilities. No one will come looking for me yet. Not until morning. Not when word gets back that there are shifters out here. They’ll want daylight to hunt for me in.

Valen frowned. “Do humans still have a stupid hang-up over same-sex breeding?”

“Breeding?” Aaron squeaked. “You can’t— I can’t get pregnant!”

Valen snickered, at the same time cupping Aaron’s chin. “It’s a figure of speech. Breeding, mating, fucking, having sex, it’s all the same thing to us. Unless humans have changed a whole lot in the past two hundred years, then no, you can’t get knocked up.”

“Men can’t,” Aaron clarified. “I don’t know about anywhere else, but for my people, um, sex is for procreation only until we’ve contributed children to the village population. Men and women have a duty to ensure the survival of our species.” It was the way it’d been for them ever since Aaron had been aware of it, anyway.

Valen released his chin and sat back before propping an arm on his elbow. “Duty, huh? This is going to be interesting.”

Aaron didn’t want to explain it. He felt unaccountably ashamed of the rules he’d been taught to live by. He looked at Valen, wondering how to make him drop the conversation. There was a way, Aaron suspected, and it’d be violating one of his people’s rules.

Wasn’t that part of why he was out snooping around in the first place? “I’m so tired of rules and being scared.”

“You don’t have to be scared, not of me.” Valen reached for him again, and this time he moved until he was very close. He cupped Aaron’s face in big, rough-skinned hands. “Not of me. Stay here with me tonight. Tomorrow I’ll make sure you return to your home.”

Aaron stopped worrying. It was only a few hours, after all. No one else ever had to know. “Okay.”

Valen had told him not to be afraid, yet it felt like fear that poured into Aaron. Then it wasn’t fear at all. It was shock and lust as Valen pressed his lips to Aaron’s.

Aaron opened for Valen. He placed his hands on Valen’s biceps and held on while trying to keep up with the kiss.