Ethan
Moonlight Wolves Book 5
Sarah J. Stone
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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Also by Sarah J. Stone
Author’s Note
Wait! This is the second book in the Moonlight Wolves series, so you may want to read the first book before you continue. Although every book has a new couple and happy ending, some plot points will make more sense if you read them in order!
Here is the first book:
Lukas (Moonlight Wolves 1)
Kato (Moonlight Wolves 2)
Grant (Moonlight Wolves 3)
Finn (Moonlight Wolves 4)
Happy reading!
Sarah
Chapter 1
“There’s been a murder,” Hazel’s best friend, Lea, exclaimed as she burst through Hazel’s front door. Hazel was sifting through her mail, separating the bills from the random spam mail that she always seemed to get in bountiful quantities. That statement alone made Hazel stop her sorting and look up into the wild eyes of her best friend. Those blue eyes held fear and confusion, and Hazel knew that, as she processed the whole situation, hers looked the same.
“What do you mean?” Hazel asked, not exactly knowing what else she was supposed to say. She put down the mail, throwing it back down on the little accent table she had in the front hallway, and followed Lea as she walked deeper into her house.
Lea paced around the kitchen, and Hazel took that as her cue to pour her friend a drink of water to try to calm her down.
“Was it another rogue attack from Gabriel?” Hazel asked as Lea took a huge gulp of the water she handed her.
Hazel shuddered as she remembered what happened not that long ago to her packmates. A huge quantity of rogues led by the whisperings of Gabriel, a rogue Elder that wanted to destroy the shifter society and gain leadership, attacked the Moonlight Maine Pack one night. While no lives of any shifter were lost, and while they defeated the rogue shifters handily with only minor injury, the whole thing still set everyone on edge.
And the realization that it was a setup, a trick to get Michael, a leading Elder in the society, and Hann, the Moonlight Maine Pack’s alpha, off of Gabriel’s back so that he could meet with actual rogue leaders around the world and set up an actual uprising wasn’t much better. Everyone was on edge and just waiting for another attack or for a lone rogue wolf to waltz into town and attempt to bring carnage and destruction to their lives.
Life in Maine for any shifter had been crazy for the last few months.
And now, it seemed like life was just getting crazier and crazier.
And Hazel could barely stand it. She found herself twitching slightly as she waited for Lea to finish drinking that damn water and tell her what, exactly, was going on. The mystery and danger were eating her alive in her kitchen as she waited for the news.
“No,” Lea finally muttered, looking back at Hazel with those worried eyes. But there wasn’t much fear there. If a rogue had come to destroy the shifter community, Lea would’ve had a lot more fear in those blue eyes of hers. Considering she was on the receiving end of one of those rogue attacks last month, Lea would’ve been freaking out if there was another one.
“What do you mean, no?” Hazel asked, growing more and more confused as she stared at her friend. “So . . . it wasn’t a rogue? It wasn’t someone in the pack?”
“No, you’re not understanding,” Lea sighed, those eyes holding so much emotion. “None of us were injured. We’re all fine, and we’re all accounted for. It-it was a human. A human was murdered.”
“I’m confused,” Hazel admitted, sitting down at her kitchen table, her mind racing. “That’s horrible, I know. But . . . why are you looking like this? Why are you freaking out over a human death in town?”
“Because the death didn’t occur in town, Hazel.” Lea took a deep breath, shaking her head as if in disbelief. “The death happened in the forest. In our forest. More specifically, the forest that Hann owns, according to the United States government and every human around.”
Hazel instantly shot up in her chair, realizing why Lea looked so frightened and out of place. A human, dead in shifter territory? That wasn’t good, especially if the human was killed by a shifter. Hazel knew that the Maine police would come sniffing into Hann’s business, as well as the whole pack’s business. Humans didn’t know about shifters, and they wanted their secret to stay a secret. Having humans, especially detectives that questioned everything, all over pack territory wasn’t going to be good.
And Hazel knew exactly the kind of detectives and police officers there were in this little town. She worked for them.
And they wouldn’t stop until they got the truth about what happened.
“Tell me everything,” Hazel told Lea, a fierceness in her eyes as the need to know all about the murder kicked in. She needed to make sure that she protected her pack.
And she really hoped no one in the Moonlight Maine Pack was to blame. That wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“Hann found the body this morning when he went on his morning run with Ross,” Lea began, sitting down at the kitchen table across from Hazel. “They knew that they had to call the police, though, they had to go back to Hann’s, change into their human form and grab some clothes before racing back. By the time the police got to the scene, every shifter out had cleared the forest, per Hann’s request. That’s how I found out. I was out with Finn running to work out at the gym.”
Finn was Lea’s boyfriend, and Hazel almost envied how close those two were. They were adorable, and Hazel was happy that Lea had found someone as caring and loving as Finn to spend the rest of her life with. While Hazel was a bit shocked at Lea’s choice to be with Finn, she quickly realized that Finn was leaving all of his bad boy ways at home and supporting and loving Lea in every way she needed. They were the most stable couple Hazel had ever seen.
Hazel, on the other hand, was single. Other than an ex-boyfriend that constantly annoyed her and tried to make her jealous, she was getting no action. Other than when she and her ex-boyfriend accidentally fell into bed together, that is.
“What else do you know?” Hazel asked, jolting back to the present as she realized the danger that they could be in. If the humans in their little town figured out just what they were, all hell would break loose.
The pack really didn’t need this right now. With Gabriel trying to ruin their world, and with rogues attacking any chance they could get, the whole pack was on edge.
“That’s all I know,” Lea told her, sighing and feeling a little better now that Hazel knew what was going on. “Hann told everyone that he’d update the whole pack later when he knows more, but everything is up in the air right now. And, of course, the rumors are spreading even more than before.”
“Rumors? What are the rumors of?”
“Everyone wants to know how the human died. There are so many rumors about what really happened. Some say that it was an accident involving those teenagers that always come to hang out in the forest away from their parents, others say that it was a rogue that killed the person and is now trying to blame one of us. The rumors ar
e crazy, and Hann won’t tell anyone anything yet. Including the age or gender of the murder victim.”
“How do they know that it’s murder, though?” Hazel figured it could’ve just been an accident. Or maybe an older person was walking or running through the woods, resulting in a natural death.
Something else could’ve happened. Murder was a word that Hazel had a hard time speaking.
“According to Hann, he just knew that it was murder.” Lea had a look in her eye, and Hazel didn’t want to ask any more questions, though she couldn’t stop herself.
“So, it was obvious then,” Hazel sighed. “The body was obviously . . . well, it was obvious that someone killed that person.”
“Yeah.”
Hazel and Lea sat in silence, staring at everything and each other as they processed how crazy they knew their lives were going to be as the human police force combed through their woods, trying to find out what really happened. Hazel wanted to know what really happened, and she was sure Hann, her alpha, wanted to know what truly happened as well.
“Have you heard anything from work, yet?” Lea asked Hazel, to which Hazel shook her head.
Hazel worked as a secretary and administrative worker at the little police department they had in the small town of Jerome, Maine. With a small population, there wasn’t much crime in town, and the police were only ever called when teenage kids were causing issues every now and then. For the most part, though, the town was quiet and picture book perfect.
Until now.
“No, not yet,” Hazel sighed, grabbing her phone from where it was in the middle of the kitchen table and making sure she didn’t have any missed texts or calls. One glance and she saw that there were no unread texts or missed calls. She knew that once she got to work, though, the precinct would be a mess. There’d never been a murder in Jerome, or any of the tiny, tiny, towns surrounding Jerome as long as Hazel had been alive. She didn’t even think that there had been a murder in the last few decades.
“I can’t believe this happened,” Lea sighed, shaking her head in disbelief. Hazel couldn’t either. And she had so many questions.
Hann obviously knew that it was a murder, otherwise he wouldn’t have immediately called the police and told everyone to stay away from the area. Something was weird, that much Hazel knew.
And she knew when she got to work, she would figure out what really happened.
Hazel instantly felt the difference in the air when she got out of her car that morning. Dressed in her usual bland work attire, which consisted of plain black slacks and a white button-down shirt tucked into her pants, Hazel walked up to the front door of the police precinct.
And it was swarming with reporters who were shooting out questions to each and every person who walked in and out of the building, regardless of whether they were police or not.
Hazel quickly jogged inside amidst the shouted questions and continuous flashes of the cameras. She caught her breath as she found herself safely inside, immediately walking to the back room where administrative workers kept all their belongings in a locker. She guessed that each and every journalist and blogger in town was outside trying to figure out what happened. Considering that there were only two newspapers in the small town of Jerome, Hazel found the crowd outside quite big.
Inside the precinct, however, was no better than outside. People were rushing about, wild-eyed and crazy. More than one person almost barreled into Hazel, and her quick reflexes were the only thing that saved her from being knocked to the ground. Hazel could smell the distinct smell of cigarette smoke in the precinct, though, they weren’t allowed to smoke indoors anymore. She assumed some police officers were probably ignoring the rule for just today. She didn’t blame them.
After all, it wasn’t every day Jerome got a murder. And Hazel could see how crazy everyone was acting. She wondered how the townspeople would act once they all got up and turned on their phones to find out that someone was murdered in their very own town.
Hazel finally made it to the locker room in the back, sighing in relief as she slumped against the side of them. Today was already exhausting her, and it was only eight in the morning. It was going to be a hard day. She just had to get through it and help the precinct as much as she could.
And help Matthew in any way she could. Matthew, the lead detective. Matthew, her ex-boyfriend.
She sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning and started to put her belongings in her locker. She checked her phone to respond to a few of her friends in the pack that had texted her, wondering if she had heard about the murder in their territory. They were looking for answers, and they assumed that she had some since she worked at the police department.
She knew absolutely nothing, though. She was hoping that would change soon. She needed answers, and her inquisitive and constantly questioning self wanted to figure out just what had happened last night.
Hazel pulled her brown hair back into a messy bun on the top of her head. She didn’t even care if she looked like a mess. One look at everyone else working told her that she wasn’t the only one that was beyond stressed. Everywhere she looked, she saw the fraught faces of the men and women that used to work in a peaceful police precinct where the worst crime that happened was an unruly teen causing trouble.
Now, there was a murder.
“There you are,” Annaleigh, Hazel’s friend and human coworker, sighed when she saw Hazel. “It’s been crazy here since four in the morning.”
“You’ve been here since four?” Hazel asked, grimacing. Annaleigh, the head secretary of the whole department, must have been called in earlier when the body was first found. Hazel walked behind the main desk to join her friend, noticing the tired eyes and the sloppy low bun that barely contained her red hair. She looked like a mess, and Hazel instantly felt bad for her. It must’ve been crazy when news first broke, and it didn’t look like the chaos would calm down anytime soon.
“I got called in when they found the body,” Annaleigh told her, her green eyes wide with fear. Hazel grabbed her hand instinctively and squeezed, hoping that would comfort her friend in some kind of way. Annaleigh was always pale, being a redhead, but Hazel swore she looked like a ghost from the fear she was very clearly feeling.
“I can only imagine the hell that came with the murder,” Hazel told her, shaking her head.
“You know what happened, don’t you?”
“Actually, no,” Hazel shook her head, seeing the surprise in Annaleigh’s eyes. “I haven’t talked to anyone at work and only heard about it in passing with a friend this morning. I’m guessing the whole town knows, or will when they wake up. What really happened, though?”
“Well, I’m sure Matthew will tell you everything when he gets back.”
Hazel had to fight from rolling her eyes at the mention of her ex-boyfriend. They were currently in their off phase, even though they hooked up every now and then. Hazel really didn’t want to see him, though. She was quite sick of him, recently. “He’s at the morgue right now learning more, but he was the first to arrive on the scene. And as the only detective in Jerome, he’s working on the case.”
Calling Matthew a detective was a stretch; though, that was truly how everyone referred to him. He didn’t do any detecting really. Not because he was bad at his job, but because there was nothing to do in Jerome. He was called in to work on cases in the other towns surrounding Jerome, as well as busier cities, more than he actually worked in town. A full-fledged homicide detective in other parts of Maine and the country, Matthew, sadly, seemed to deal with kids acting out or drunken brawls more than anything in Jerome.
“Tell me what you know,” Hazel insisted. She didn’t want to wait until Matthew came back. She wanted to know now, especially if this was going to lead to the whole police force descending into Moonlight Maine territory with search warrants and a need to find a murderer.
Because there were so many bad things that could happen if things got that bad.
“Okay
.” Annaleigh took in a deep breath as if what she was about to say was a struggle. “It was the Phillips kid.”
Annaleigh paused, letting that sink in.
Hazel didn’t know what to say. She stood there in utter shock. She didn’t move, just stared at her friend in disbelief. She knew exactly who she was talking about. Everyone did. It was Jerome’s very own county sweetheart and golden child.
Camilla Phillips; eighteen years old and about to graduate from Jerome High School as valedictorian in a month.
Hazel breathed out all the air she was holding in her lungs, feeling like she was going to burst. Camilla Phillips was the last person she thought would be found dead in the woods surrounding Jerome. What was Camilla doing out there? And what exactly was going on?
“Her parents know?” Hazel asked Annaleigh, wincing as she realized the pain they must be going through. Camilla was their only child and a miracle at that. Her parents were told they couldn’t have children. Camilla showed up a surprise–but a pleasant one.
Annaleigh sighed, her eyes getting a bit watery. “They’ve been here all morning.”
Hazel sighed, her heart dropping in her chest. A wave of emotions hit her like a brick, and she tried her best to hold it all together. Hazel wasn’t like some of the other members of her pack who never went into town and pretended that the humans in Jerome didn’t exist. Hazel lived in town. She worked in town with humans and even had close friends that didn’t know who, or what, she really was.
Hazel didn’t know Camilla personally, but that didn’t matter. Every single person in town knew of Camilla, and everyone knew that she wasn’t a bad kid. She would never be caught hanging out in the woods in the middle of the night with the kinds of kids who normally did that. They were rebels. Addicts. Acting out.
Ethan (Moonlight Wolves Book 5) Page 1