Shoot for the Moon (Black River Pack Book 2) (2 page)

“I didn’t mean it that way, Eliza. I’ve been fighting my attraction to you since we first met. You’re a pack member. It would only cause complications further down the line when I find my mate.”

It killed me to hear more proof that Spencer didn’t feel the same pull to mate with me as I felt for him. I knew he was right—I would be devastated if I had to watch him mate another woman.

“I know.”

“Unless we go into it knowing this will only be casual,” he muttered under his breath.

“What?” I asked.

“We could limit the damage if we both went into this thing between us knowing it would only last until one of us decides it’s over,” he explained.

He might have said “one of us,” but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d never be the one to end it.

“Is that what you want?” I questioned.

His eyes flared with lust before he trailed his gaze down my body. “A no-strings-attached affair between us might not be the best idea I’ve ever had, but my desire for you doesn’t seem to be going away no matter how hard I fight against it.”

It wasn’t the romantic offer my heart yearned for, but it meant I would have some good memories to carry with me when Spencer found the woman he wanted to take as his mate. But could I really say yes?

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Say yes,” he urged. “Let me have you, Eliza. Stop drinking yourself to sleep. Let me fuck you into exhaustion instead.”

I knew what lay ahead for me—my destruction at his hands—but I couldn’t resist the temptation he represented. Even though I knew this thing between us wouldn’t last and I wanted him in my life forever as my mate, I still said yes. So my affair with Spencer began with my heart broken before we’d even slept together that first time.

Chapter 1

Spencer

As I waited for Hunter just outside Grace’s motel room, my mind was focused on how to keep my brother’s mate safe from harm. Watching him with her this past month, I knew she was his mate, and a part of me was jealous that he’d found her. Even though she was human and clearly running from something, I was confident Hunter would make things right and claim Grace as his own. He was lucky to have found her already. I could only hope my mate would place herself in my path the way Grace had with Hunter.

Oddly enough, with that thought, a vision of Eliza drifted into my head, the she-wolf who’d been sharing my bed for almost a year. It was the longest affair I’d ever had, but I wasn’t ready to let her go yet. I knew it wasn’t fair to her since she wasn’t my mate. Even though she called to me like no other woman ever had, she couldn’t be since she didn’t walk in dreams like my grandmother had told me so many years ago.

Hunter startled me out of my thoughts when he waved me into the room. Inhaling deeply in an effort to catch the scent of the culprit who’d invaded Grace’s space, I was stunned when I recognized it as belonging to Eliza. My wolf pushed against our bond when anger coursed through my veins at the thought of Eliza betraying the pack this way.

“Why would she do such a thing?” Hunter asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer him since I had no idea why Eliza would target Grace. I glanced around the room, searching for something, anything, that would give me a hint as to what was going on around here.

“She wouldn’t. Eliza has nothing to gain from hurting Grace.”

“And yet the proof is right here under both of our noses,” he growled at me, his anger etched on his face as I saw his wolf staring at me from his eyes. “There is no reason for Eliza to come to Grace’s room. She has no connection to the motel. She’s only met Grace in passing at the bar.”

I knew he was right, but I still felt compelled to defend Eliza. I might not know why she’d broken into Grace’s room, but I couldn’t believe she’d wanted to hurt her. She was too gentle for that.

“Everyone in the pack knows she is yours. We all know you would protect her with your life. Our pack mates know Parker and I would protect her with ours as well. Maybe Eliza was here in an attempt to protect Grace from something else?”

“What danger could there be to Grace that I wouldn’t already know about?” he retorted. “When I’m not near, either you or Parker are watching over her for me. The only time she isn’t within one of our sights is when she’s here in this damn room at night, and even then we have someone stationed outside to safeguard her.”

My wolf was straining against his bonds, leaping to defend Eliza so fiercely that it amazed me.

“I don’t know, dammit!”

“There’s only one way to be certain,” he said, and I knew he was right.

We needed to go see Eliza, and we needed it to do it right now.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and sent her a text message.

Spencer:
You home?

It seemed like forever as I stared at the screen, waiting for a reply, but it only took seconds before the beep alerted me to her response.

Eliza:
Yes. I’ll be waiting.

“She’s at home,” I told him before stalking out of the room and over to my truck.

Hunter took his damn time following me, and when he finally got outside, he had Grace’s suitcase with him. Then he tossed it in the back of the truck and glared at me when he saw me watching him with raised eyebrows.

“You’re moving her in with you, then?” I asked.

“I’m not going to let this opportunity pass me by,” he replied. “There’s no place safer in all of Wolf’s Point for her to be. And one thing that was made clear tonight is she’s in danger of some kind.”

“Her reaction was a bit unusual,” I muttered.

“She shouldn’t have had anything to react to in the first place. There’s no way Grace should have known that Eliza had been in her room. She couldn’t have smelled anything out of place like we did. Her senses aren’t strong enough for that.”

Hunter was right. How in the hell had his human mate even known that someone had broken into her room? Neither of us saw any visible signs of a break-in. It was only through the ability of our wolves that we had known Eliza had been there.

“Then she must have had a warning system of some kind in place to let her know when someone invaded her space.”

The frustration rolling off my brother was palpable. “Why would she do that unless she’s guarding against something? Parker and I both sensed that she was in trouble when she first arrived in town,” he huffed.

“And we’ve made sure she was safe right from the start,” I reassured him, knowing he was beating himself up for the break-in and the fear Grace was feeling. “Every wolf in town knows she falls under your protection.”

“Then why did one of my own risk my wrath tonight?” he asked in a deep growl.

My brother had asked the question burning in my brain. Eliza had to know what she’d been risking when she’d entered that room. She had only joined our pack a couple of years ago, but Eliza knew the rules just as well as anyone else did. Hunter was a fair alpha, but every wolf in our pack was aware of what would happen if they harmed his mate. It didn’t matter who the culprit was. Even if it had been me instead of the she-wolf warming my bed, the punishment would be swift and brutal.

I drove as quickly as I could to Eliza’s small house on the outskirts of town. Although she had joined our pack, she still held herself a little separate from everyone else. Even me.

The porch lights were on and she was waiting for us in the rocking chair. Through my windshield, my eyes locked with hers, and for a moment, it felt as though time held still. The wind blew her long, caramel-brown locks away from her lithe body as she sat huddled in the chair with a blanket tightly wrapped around her.

When we exited the truck, Eliza stood and watched us as we walked towards her, the blanket dropping to the ground. Her light-brown eyes held sadness as she looked at me, and my wolf whined in my head. She seemed to shake it off as she shifted her gaze to my brother. There was no mistaking his anger, but she didn’t look scared. No scent of fear drifted towards me as we drew nearer, which gave me a moment of hope that this could be cleared up without Eliza being hurt.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Hunter hissed after he stalked up the stairs.

Eliza was tall, even for a she-wolf. But Hunter towered over her. As I followed him up the stairs, I could feel the dominant waves of his alpha wolf pouring off him. My own wolf growled again when Eliza lowered her eyes and bared her neck in an instinctual submissive response. The beast inside me wanted to leap between them and protect Eliza regardless of any possible wrongdoing.

When I saw the fear that entered her eyes as she raised them to look at Hunter, I almost couldn’t control my wolf. Struggling to gain control, I almost missed her answer.

“She’s in danger and I needed to get closer so I could try to figure out where it was coming from.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. We had been together last night. If she’d known about a threat to Grace, why hadn’t she told me about it then? I wasn’t just the man in her bed—I was also the pack enforcer. All the wolves knew they could come to me with any issues that affected the pack’s safety.

“And how would you know of a risk to my mate when I didn’t?” Hunter growled at her.

Eliza’s gaze briefly darted to me before returning to Hunter. “I dreamed of her last night.”

I had woken up when she started to toss and turn. Just as I started to reach for her, a yell was wrenched from her lips and she had leapt from her bed. I tried to calm her down but she had practically kicked me out of her house before I could argue.

“Your nightmare,” I gasped out, the implications starting to take hold in my brain. “The one that woke you up screaming? The one you refused to discuss with me? It was about Grace?”

Eliza’s eyes remained locked with my brother’s as though she couldn’t bear to look at me right now.

“Answer him,” Hunter demanded of her.

“Yes,” she replied. “Grace was in my nightmare. I couldn’t tell who it was, but she was being chased through the forest at night. The moon was full in the sky, and the pack raced to try to catch up with her.”

“And when we found her?” Hunter asked.

Eliza lowered her eyes again, but not before I felt the bolt of fear pass through my brother. “She was dead.”

My wolf was fighting for control, demanding I protect Eliza. The scent of her sadness pulled at me as I tried to wrap my brain around what she was telling us.

“And you expect me to believe that this dream sent you to her motel room today?” my brother asked, sarcasm heavy in his voice.

“Yes, alpha. I expect you to believe me because it’s the truth,” Eliza insisted, determination evident in every line of her body as she stood boldly in front of her alpha.

Hunter inhaled deeply, trying to scent her sincerity. “Why didn’t you simply tell my brother about this dream when he asked you last night?”

“I’ve learned the hard way that most people aren’t willing to believe,” she replied.

Eliza’s answer saddened me even as my heart leapt with hope.
Is it possible? Does Eliza walk in dreams?
If so, why didn’t she share her gift with me before?

“I’ve never given you any reason to doubt me,” I muttered.

“Not now,” Hunter barked at me, anger coloring his tone. “Focus on what’s important first—my mate’s safety. You can deal with your hurt feelings later.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I knew he was right. If Grace was truly in danger, it was my role as pack enforcer to help him resolve the issue.

“Why would you hide this dream from me and sneak into Grace’s room?” I asked Eliza.

“Because it wasn’t just a dream. It was a premonition of what’s coming for her.”

My knees went weak with her answer, and my wolf settled as realization rolled through me. Then my heart stopped, and it felt like fire had lit my veins. And all of my senses seemed to go on overload as one thought pounded through my brain. Eliza was my fated mate. Eliza was the dream-walker our grandmother had spoken of with a faraway look in her eye so many years ago.

She had taken us in when our parents had died in an attack against our pack. Our numbers had been smaller back then, and the alpha from the pack closest to us had wanted to claim our land as his. He’d killed our mother in an effort to weaken our father, whose response had been a swift attack that had resulted in both of their deaths. His second, the pack enforcer, had stepped up to lead us until Hunter had been old enough to take our father’s place.

The loss of both of our parents so close to each other had sent Hunter, Parker, and me reeling—until our grandmother had taken us aside one day and explained the mating bond and how much pain they would have felt if only one of them had lived. We still missed them each and every day, but we were less angry that they had died together. In that speech, she’d also given us something else to focus on—the idea that we would find our own mates one day.

The mate who was stalked by danger would be Hunter’s.

The mate who walked in dreams would be mine.

And the mate who was discarded by her family would be Parker’s.

When Eliza had come to Wolf’s Point, she’d been leery of interacting with our pack. Over time, she’d slowly developed some friendships with the other she-wolves, and they’d convinced her that Hunter was a good alpha—that the Black River Pack would be a safe place for her.

I’d been attracted to Eliza the moment I’d met her, but I hadn’t acted on the chemistry between us. Our grandmother had just died, and before she’d passed, she’d lamented my man-whore ways, so I’d backed off quite a bit. In turn, I’d avoided her and the temptations she’d represented. After some time had passed and I’d realized the attraction was still there, I’d decided it couldn’t hurt anything to burn off the chemistry between us before I found my mate.

I finally realized what a fucking idiot I had been. Eliza had been there, right in front of me, for years and I’d refused to consider the possibility that she was the woman I’d waited years for. So when I’d finally given into my desire for her, I’d told her point-blank that I wanted her to warm my bed and nothing else. I hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that I hadn’t wanted anyone else in all the time since I’d met Eliza. I hadn’t asked her any questions to try to determine if she could be the woman who walked in dreams, the one my grandmother had spoken of. And for the first time in my life, I’d ignored my wolf and allowed the human part of me to rule my decisions completely.