The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3) (7 page)

Nora inhaled, then slowly exhaled. She wiped another tear away and steeled herself for Rain’s response. Words meant nothing. Actions were what defined a man. She’d learned that the hard way.

She tugged at the cuff of her shirtsleeve and withdrew her arm, then slowly repeated the process with her other arm until she was completely naked for the first time in Rain’s presence. The tattoos she’d received when she and Paul had mated a year ago wrapped around her wrists, reminding her of what she’d lost.

She wore long sleeves every day, not only to conceal the marks from prying eyes, but also to hide them from herself. As if covering them up helped her pretend they didn’t exist.

His sharp intake of breath made her heart race. And he jerked his hand away from where it had been resting on her leg, like touching her now burned him, but to his credit he didn’t utter a word. Rain just waited, giving her time to collect her thoughts and tell him what’d happened.

“My father didn’t approve, and he had him murdered. It’s been nearly a year and I’ve disappeared into one man’s bed after another, looking for a way to escape the pain I hold in my heart.” Nora wrung her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t deserve a second chance, and I can’t bear the thought of living through a repeat performance from my father. Losing you. But I also realized this morning that I don’t want to leave you, either. The thought of being separated from you hurts.”

“You were going to leave me?”

The wounded tone in his voice crushed her. “To protect you from my father. Yes.”

Rain sat up crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the headboard. His blue eyes darkened in anger. “I don’t need you to protect me, Nora.”

His words cut deep and she cringed at the anger beneath the surface. She’d known he would be angry. How could he not? She’d been mated. She’d hid it. And now she was telling him she’d been planning to leave him. And she would’ve. To keep his identity hidden from her father and her pack. She would die to protect Rain. She wasn’t given that option with Paul, though she would’ve done the same for him.

“I’ve lived beneath his thumb for so long. You don’t understand what it’s like. Francis Dubois is nothing like Edward Cavanaugh. You have a pack that loves and cares for you. I have a pack that looks for ways to exploit and use others…use me for their gain. Whether it’s for power, money, or punishment.”

“Do you want to be with me Nora? To be my mate?”

“Yes.” She nodded as another tear burned its way down her cheek. “More than anything. But—”

“No buts,” he said, crawling closer to her. “I’m all in, but you have to be too.”

Tears poured down her cheeks and she sucked in a breath. “I want you, Rain. I’m all in.”

He slanted his mouth over hers and their magick swirled between them, alive with desire and passion. The intensity was heady, and she moaned into his mouth. His hands caressed her breasts, tweaking her nipples until they stood as hard peaks in the cool air.

Rap. Rap. Rap.

“Sorry to interrupt. Alex’s here with some priest.” Maggie’s voice carried clearly through the closed door. “I hadn’t heard you leave, so… We need you both now.”

T
he Miami wolf
paced back and forth near the door, and Rain tried to focus himself, amid the buzzing of electric magick that pulsed around him. Even with Nora sitting across the room, he couldn’t stop the feel, the pull.

He’d been just about to do it when Maggie came to the door. Bond. He was going to say the spell that would put those weird tattoos on his wrists—the ones he’d never thought he would ever have.

It was damn hard to concentrate on Miami, on Maggie, and this priest they’d brought him, when he just wanted to be touching Nora. But the look on Alex’s face when he’d found them in the same room had been enough of a deterrent.

Another knock at the door brought the rest of the team, and they’d all crowded into Nora’s room. The young priest sat on the bed, still silent, eyeing them.

“Okay. Everyone’s here.” Rain looked at the Miami wolf. “Alex, tell us what happened.”

“This guy was nosing around outside that building. When I came out of the door, he started babbling about some old priest and was I there for the book and shit.” He pointed at the man on the bed. “There’s something weird going on here.”

“I don’t think he speaks English,” Tomás said, parting the group so he could come forward and kneel on the floor in front of the guy. “Father, do you speak English?” he asked in Spanish.

The priest shook his head. “No, I never learned,” he returned in Spanish.

Nora raised an eyebrow at him and Rain translated. “It looks like there are enough of us here who speak Spanish, I think we can question him.”

There were a few nods in the group, and no objections, so Rain gestured for Alex to come to the front of the crowd. He put his foot up on the edge of the bed.

“Who sent you?” Alex asked.

“I wasn’t
sent
by anyone. I go to that building every week.” The young father didn’t cower, and he didn’t look frightened.

Rain had to give him backbone credit. Alex was a little terrifying to a civilian, all eyebrows and anger.

“Someone sent you,” Alex said. “You don’t just go to a place like that out of curiosity. Did you…” he trailed off, then growled, “Did you
patronize
that establishment? Were you looking for a piece of something?”

The priest crossed himself and Rain put a hand out to hold back the angry wolf.

“Why were you at the building, Father?” Rain asked.

“I told you, I go there every week.”

Tomás took a moment to translate for Maggie, who had her hand on his shoulder. The group took a collective sigh.

“You’re going there to check for new girls? Or what?” Alex leaned in to the priest’s face. “You like ‘em young, asshole?”

The priest recoiled, disgust on his face. “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Rain pushed on Alex’s shoulder and backed him up. In English, he hissed, “Will you stop? You’re not getting anywhere.”

Miami flexed his chest and looked down at Rain’s hand. “Get your hand off me, jackass.”

“Think about this.” He leaned in to his ear. “You’ve asked him all these questions already, haven’t you?”

Alex shrugged. “Yeah, but you might have to ask things over and over until they get that you’re not joking around.”

“Look, I’ve done enough interrogating to know. He’s being deliberately cryptic.”

Miami cocked his head to one side. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You asked him all this. Multiple times. He keeps giving the same answers. There has to be some reason he’s not giving up the information.” Rain stepped back. “Just let me take a shot at him.”

Alex pushed Rain’s hand off him and huffed back toward the door.

“You think he’s waiting for some kind of password or something?” The Professor said from behind the girls.

“That’s what it feels like.” Rain turned back to the priest. “I don’t think he was a patron.”

“What, you think you’re Mr. Criminal Minds or some shit?” Alex’s voice rang out from behind the whole group, but Rain couldn’t see him.

“No. But I am a Ranger. I’ve done this before. Plus, I’m the team leader, so what I say goes.”

“Yeah, you’re doing a great job leading the
team
.” Alex’s taunt hung in the air and no one would meet Rain’s eyes. “So far, all you’ve really done is fuck the boss’s daughter—the person who was put in charge by the alpha council, I might add.”

Rain made a move and Maggie had him by the shoulders before he could push his way through the group. But he wasn’t going to take the bullshit from them anymore. They were in the middle of a mission. They needed to be united.

“Just let me interrogate the guy,” Rain said. “And stop getting in his face because you’re pissed at me.” He called those last words over the heads of the group, but Alex didn’t respond. Rain knelt on the ground next to Tomás. “Look, Father,” he said in Spanish, “We’re here looking for the man who owned that building. We’re running into dead ends, and we mean to see justice done. So I need you to tell me. Why do you go to that building every week?”

The priest raised one eyebrow. “You know the man who owns the building?”

“We need to find him, so he can be brought to justice.”

“
Vengeance is mine
, says the Lord,” the priest said, his eyes low.

“So you do know something about that place?” Tomás injected into the conversation, his voice earnest.

“I know that Father Juan asked me to go there every week.” He looked from face to face, around the group. “Are you here for the book?”

Rain nodded. “We are here for the book.”

“Father Juan said, if I ever came upon anyone at the building, I should put the book in the wing of the Statue of the Archangel Gabriel in the west alcove.”

A quick translation later, and the entire group leaned in.

Nora’s face wore a tiny smile, and Rain wanted more than anything to ask her what she was thinking. Could she feel how close they were to the end? To finding this guy, to punishing him? To completing the mission?

“Why would you put the book there?” Maggie asked in English.

Tomás translated and the priest looked down at his hands.

“Father Juan told me the archangel would take a message to God, and the Lord would exact vengeance on the man who used that building for his sin.” His earnest gaze and raised eyebrows gave Rain a little hope.

“Do you know what he meant when he said that?”

“Only that men would come down from the mountains and bring with them the vengeance that would eradicate this man from the human race.” The priest nodded, as though he were actually imagining angels flying down mountains in blazes of fire and dragging this man to hell.

It was exactly what he deserved. But more than likely, there were men in the mountains who knew something of this man, and were waiting for his return.

“Can you take me to this statue?” Rain asked. “We’ll put the book in the archangel’s wing and see the men come down from the mountains.”

The priest nodded and stood.

Tomás translated for the group, but Nora cleared her throat and stopped them.

“Ask him what the old priest said about the men from the mountains, first.”

“Why?” Rain asked. “We can ask them ourselves when they come for the book.”

“How do we know these men are good men?”

The LA wolf chimed in. “She’s right, y’know. Who knows why this priest wanted to bring the men down from the mountains.”

The Professor nodded. “Yeah, I mean, this priest seems like a good guy, but you never know what the old priest’s motives were. Otherwise, why sit on it all these years?”

“Well, we can’t ask him,” Seattle piped up. “He’s dead.”

“Then we should take a look at the book.” The LA wolf crossed her arms and took a wide stance next to Alex. “Who knows whether he’s talking about the Bible or what. We need to get more information first.”

“No, we should bring these men down from the mountains,” Tomás said.

“Tomás is right,” said the mobster. “We need to talk to these mountain men.”

“Except, what if they’re wolves,” LA shot back. “Then, they smell us from a mile off, and we never get to talk to them at all, and now they’re not looking for the book because they know we’re here.”

Nora’s eyes drilled Rain, and with a small shake of her head, she seemed to be saying the same thing he was thinking.
This was getting out of control
.

Rain whistled over the din and held his arms out. “Okay, we go to the church and look at the book. Maybe it will give us some idea of whether these men can be trusted.”

To Tomás, he whispered, “And you keep talking to the priest. See if he’ll tell us anything else.”

Maggie pulled out her phone. “I’ll Uber this time. The cabs are slow as molasses.”

“We should’ve rented cars,” said the Professor.

“Why can’t we just take the bus?” Alex’s anger came through even the simplest sentence.

Rain waited for the group to file out of the room, Tomás and the priest last, talking back and forth in quiet Spanish.

“They are out of control,” Nora said when the rest of the group continued arguing about transportation out into the hallway.

He let out a sigh and slid one hand onto the back of his head, rubbing at his short hair. “I can’t lead a team like this.”

“No one trusts each other. They’re all enforcers. I think it was a mistake for the alphas to pick ten random people and send them on a mission together.”

Rain’s laugh echoed in the empty room. “I thought that from the beginning.”

“Well, you were right.” She hunted around for her other shoe. Nora had done an admirable job of dressing herself quickly after Maggie had knocked on the door, but there were details that still weren’t quite right.

Her hair was a little messy—which he loved, because it reminded him of the sex they’d had, and almost had—and one of her earrings was missing. She only had one shoe on, and she hadn’t buttoned the cuffs of her white shirt.

But he loved the reminders of the night they’d just spent, and the fact that each one of the missing pieces had a story that led back to him. He wanted her life to always be that way.

N
ora was doing this
. She’d told Rain she was all in, and she really was. If it hadn’t been for Maggie interrupting, they would probably already have done the bonding spell. Now she was excited and terrified at the same time. What was she going to do about her father? Where would they go? How fast could they finish this damn mission and disappear together? Would she get more tattoos on her arms? Would the ones she already had change?

“Nora?” His voice pulled her out of her worried haze.

She glanced up and started. He was standing outside the car they’d been riding in, waiting for her to follow. How did she miss him getting out? Of course, she didn’t remember much of the drive either.

Nora tugged the cuffs on her sleeves down to cover the edges of her tattoos before she took Rain’s offered hand and climbed out of their ride. Habit. She didn’t need to hide them anymore. Rain knew that secret. And he hadn’t cast her aside after hearing it. In fact, he’d only pulled her closer.

The whole group stood on the sidewalk. Even the priest gave her a once over. They all knew she and Rain had slept together.
Obvious
didn’t begin to cover it, but it was embarrassing to get a guilt-trip-frown from a priest. Who was he to judge her? He didn’t know her.

“Let’s do this,” she snapped, putting a little of her old attitude out there. They all already hated her because she was a Cavanaugh, because she’d been put in charge, and finally because she was sleeping with the man
she’d
put in charge. It was one gigantic topsy-turvy-clusterfuck. She was ready for it to be over.

Nora straightened her shoulders and flashed Rain a quick wink.

His features shifted from concerned mate to focused-soldier-face. “Where do we go, Father?” he asked in Spanish.

“I have it hidden. Please wait in the garden.” He pointed to an enclave with benches and a few green shrubs. Nothing was blooming right now. “I will bring it out to you.”

Rain nodded. “Thank you.”

Everyone moved toward the enclave, but no one sat down.

“So who thinks the priest is going to disappear into that cathedral and never come back out?” Dani asked, crossing her arms over her chest with a huff. “Someone should’ve gone with him.”

“It’ll be fine, Dani.” Maggie tapped away on her tablet. “Quit worrying so much.”

“We’re not really going to let him put it on the angel’s wing and call forth the mountain people are we?” The uptight Kentucky wolf shifted from one foot to the other.

“Of course not,” Rain growled. “No one is signaling anyone. We go on our own terms to find them. I do have a feeling they will be the key to finding the man we’re hunting.”

Nora turned at the sound of footsteps on the pavement behind her. The priest was crossing the courtyard, book in hand.

The whole group stood quietly, waiting. The priest handed the book to Rain and everyone held their breath.

Nora took a step closer, but still couldn’t see the opened pages.

“It’s written for only those who can read it,” the father stated. “Do you know what it means?”

Rain frowned and handed the book to Maggie.

She took it and flipped through a few pages. “It’s a coded ledger.” Maggie glanced at Rain, then at the priest. “We need to get this to the alphas and scanned into a computer to be analyzed and decoded. On first glance it looks like names and numbers. Could be johns and transactions.”

Rain nodded to the father. “Thank you for helping us. This book is exactly what we were looking for,” he said in Spanish.

“You can’t take it. I have to put it—”

Rain spoke calmly, assuring the priest they’d make sure the book went where it needed to go.

Nora nodded in agreement. She understood enough Spanish to get the gist. They needed the priest to believe them and let them take the book without a fuss.

Tomás stepped forward and backed up Rain, speaking faster than Nora could keep up with. But whatever he was saying, the priest seemed to be relaxing more.

Nora pulled Rain aside. “We have to figure out how to find these men, but you and I can’t keep going on this mission.”