by A. D. Ryan
Blue mooN
-book three-
A.D. RYAN
Copyright © 2015 A.D. Ryan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical terms, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Ryan, A.D.
Blue Moon / A.D. Ryan
(Blood Moon Trilogy ; 03)
ISBN 978-1497377929
Text and Cover design by Angela Schmuhl
Cover Image: Shutterstock, © djile
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
―Haruki Murakami
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m not sure how so many authors can express their gratitude without being completely redundant, but they do.
As usual, there are so many important people who deserve a big round of hugs and kisses and thanks for making this novel possible.
My amazing street team, who’ve all been so kind as to share the love and spread the word on my novels. You guys are amazing, and I appreciate all that you do.
Lynda and Tiff, my two amazing editors who always go above and beyond the call of duty; this book would be full of strange comma placement and the occasional spelling error that my computer tried to blame me for if it weren’t for you and your ever-vigilant eye. You’ve been with me every step of the way, always ready to lend an ear when I have a strange thought or idea. Thank you for EVERYTHING.
For always teaching me to shoot for the stars to achieve my dreams and encouraging my love of reading and story-telling, my incredible parents deserve a special shout-out. They’ve inspired me in more ways than I can count.
To my girl, and the other half of “Marngela,” you’ve been so INCREDIBLY supportive of my journey into the publishing world, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all your input and advice. One day, we’re going to have to team up and write all those stories we’ve been talking about for years…
And finally, to my husband and three remarkable children. Ryan, the patience and support you’ve all had while I chase this crazy dream has been just what I needed. I love that you always seem genuinely interested, asking questions or are willing to listen to me ramble on about my work. It’s helped pull me out of the occasional bout of writer’s block on more than one occasion.
Kids, while you’re still a little too young to read these stories, I absolutely LOVE that you ask for me to read them to you at bedtime. Know that this request isn’t going unheard, and I have a few very special ideas in mind for some stories we can enjoy as a family one day soon. You’ll just have to continue to be patient and understanding.
I love you all to the moon and back.
Cheers,
Angela
Prologue | captive
She slept for several days. The sedative in the tranquilizer dart she’d been shot with had been strong enough to take down an elephant, so it was no surprise, really. It wasn’t the most restful sleep; she tossed and turned, often crying out for someone to help her. In her unconscious state, she didn’t realize that her incoherent rambling was futile.
Several of the lower ranks had clothed her shivering body upon arrival. They left food in her cell, only having to remove it when she didn’t wake. There was a plan in place for her, and dying of starvation wasn’t part of it.
Within hours of her arrival, the scratches covering her body healed. The break in her leg took a bit longer once the bone was set. It was fascinating to watch, and only made her captor more anxious for the same ability. Perhaps then the burns he’d acquired in the fire would heal. The left side of his face, neck, and upper body had never quite been the same.
It had taken years, but Gianna had finally figured it out. She’d experimented for well over a century, but could never make it stick. So many of her recruits died as she tried to find the answers. Eventually, she got smart and started using them to test on. No one would miss the mutts, and she needed to keep her army strong after rebuilding, just in case the Pack located her compound.
Not that they would. They’d been successful in staying hidden for decades.
Turned out, the answer had been in front of her the whole time: blood. It made sense that the one thing that kept them alive was what could set them free. It was so mind-numbingly simple—something you’d see in movies and scream at the screen because it was so damn predictable—which was why it wasn’t even a possibility. Hidden in plain sight.
Slowly, her arm slid across the floor. She pressed her palms flat, and her limbs shook as she pushed herself up. Her red hair, greasy and dingy from days of not bathing, hung like a stringy curtain in front of her face as she lifted it.
Her breathing was uneven, and her heart rate increased as she realized where she was…or more accurately, where she wasn’t.
She pressed her hand against her eye, likely fighting the building pressure from her increased pulse. He could hear it. The steady thrum of her blood pumping through her veins. If her blood didn’t taste so foul, he’d consider taking a taste. He was tempted, regardless, knowing what it could do for him. But he knew he had to wait until he was certain it wouldn’t kill him. One success didn’t mean they all would be.
Something surprised her suddenly, and her head snapped up, eyes darting around her prison. With each alarming discovery, she gasped and became more frantic. Taking a few deep breaths, she was able to calm herself. It became obvious she was seeking a familiar scent. She wouldn’t find one.
The salty scent of her tears mingled with the water that trickled down the stone walls. She made a move to stand, hissing in pain when she moved her left leg. Realization registered in her wet eyes, and she pulled her pant leg up to inspect the bloodstained bandages that concealed the healing scars around her lower leg.
She knew as well as anyone that she should have lost the leg when it got caught in that snare, and she sobbed.
The toes of her bare foot wiggled, causing her shoulders to relax with relief, but then another worry plagued her. It wasn’t obvious to someone on the outside, but her increasing anxiety filled the confines of the cave once more.
She twisted her neck to look around some more, but stopped, her hand coming up and touching the heavy iron collar that had been placed around her neck. When she touched the spikes the collar had been lined with, she sulked.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, favoring the left and keeping as much pressure off of it as possible as she hobbled around in circles until she spotted her cage doors. The bars sizzled, singeing her skin upon the brief contact she made with them.
Watching her yank her hands back and ball them into fists was enjoyable. The coven never would have thought to make the cage doors with silver-infused iron. Being captured all those years ago paid off in more ways than one.
Footsteps forced the observing party to stick to the shadows. He didn’t want his captive to be alerted to his presence as she was served her first meal.
She cringed as another vampire came into view, probably having smelled something more foul than her own odor. The lower level lackey stepped forward into her direct line of sight.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment, neither one making any other moves until she asked, “Who are you? Why am I here?”
Knowing better than to converse with their prisoner, he simply smirked and sli
d the two dishes through the hole in the bottom of her cage. It angered her when he turned to walk away without answering her.
“Hey! Don’t you walk away from me, you spineless piece of shit! Get back here!” She hit the bars over and over again, not seeming to care about the pain from the silver on her perfect golden skin.
The first crack of her bones alerted the observer to her change, and it caused him to panic, because it wasn’t part of the plan. He needed her to comply or all of this would have been for nothing.
He was about to step from the shadows to distract her—even though it wasn’t time to reveal himself to her—when suddenly…
“I’d stop that if I were you.”
The voice that echoed off the cavern walls was soft and airy, and one he’d heard almost every day for the better half of a decade.
When she was first taken, he never expected she’d last this long—no one had—but she’d actually proven quite useful in their quest.
Their friendly exchange wasn’t exactly scintillating, but it was amusing to watch the wheels in Brooke’s head turn as she came to the stark realization that she was speaking to someone whose disappearance had rocked the very Pack she’d allied herself with.
A smile came to the lurker’s face as he listened to their conversation. Little Cordelia had been alone for so long; perhaps with some company, Brooke would cooperate.
If not, at least they finally possessed some leverage to force it.
Chapter1 | caged
They say that some people have this uncanny ability to predict when change will happen. That there are some clear signs that tell them when their path is about to veer off in another direction or when the ground is about to shift beneath them. I’m not one of those people; the ground doesn’t just shift beneath my feet. It is often ripped right out from under them.
Like right now.
I stumbled back from the bars, disoriented. Was I still asleep? This had to be a dream. Cordelia had been missing for the better part of a decade. There was no way these parasites would have kept her alive all this time…but if they had, and I wasn’t dreaming, what could be their purpose?
Her hazel eyes were wide as she stared at me across the narrow corridor. She kept a safe distance from the bars, and having just burned my hands on them, I understood why. She watched me as I tried to separate fantasy from reality. I still couldn’t be sure what was real.
One minute, I was with Nick in our bedroom. We’d…we’d made love. It had been spontaneous and loving. We connected on a much deeper level than I’d ever dreamed possible after everything we’d been through.
Seven years of being apart should have driven a wedge between us, and it had, but it wasn’t permanent…just complicated. I’d moved on. After several years of grieving the loss of my brother, who’d been murdered on our twenty-first birthday, and trying to get over the fact that my fiancé left me without an explanation that made sense, I’d met David.
We worked together on the Scottsdale Police Department. He was a detective when I was an officer, and we’d worked a few cases together before my promotion. That’s where our relationship started; innocent and professional.
We’d hung out a few times before falling into bed together. It was a silly fling at first, because I felt that was all I was capable of, given my history of emotional instability, but eventually it evolved into more.
When Nick showed up again, on the night of my twenty-eighth birthday, he brought with him the memory of what we’d shared. I felt confident that these old feelings couldn’t usurp my current ones for David, but it was definitely a confusing time, and I fought the rekindled attraction tooth and nail…
Until the night I’d been attacked while investigating a strange murder and was turned into a werewolf.
Everything sort of snowballed after that night. I became the main target for a vampire coven, for reasons I wouldn’t learn about right away. I was sought out because Nick had killed the coven leader’s progeny…a man who I had thought had been killed seven years earlier.
Bobby. My brother.
I found out that Bobby hadn’t died that night in the alley. Well, he had, but he was then reborn several days later when he clawed his way out of his grave.
He and Gianna had wreaked havoc wherever they went, and Nick, who’d been bitten and taken into the Pack while investigating Bobby’s death, had hunted and destroyed a large part of their army. Bobby had been one of them, and Gianna had promised her revenge, threatening to take my life the way Nick had taken her mate’s.
Nick found me and helped me through the transition. He warned me about what I’d become and how it was dangerous to those around me, but I refused to listen. I wanted to make it work, because I truly loved my life and the people in it. Grudgingly, he accepted my wishes, but it was too late. I returned home to apologize to David after a particularly ugly disagreement and found a vampire in my home—Samantha Turner, the woman whose death David and I had been investigating the night I’d been bitten. She attacked me and was hell-bent on killing me when David showed up, and she killed him instead. She picked him up like he was nothing more than a dirty sock and tossed him aside.
He told me to go after her, so I did, but by the time I’d returned, he was already dead.
I blamed myself. I wondered if things could have ended differently had we not fought, had I not left to go see Nick, had I stayed instead of going after the monster that hurt him…
It was hard for me to accept, but Nick had really stepped up and taken care of me in my time of need. He was there for me, helping to ease me through this major transition in my life.
After disposing of Gianna, I decided to move with Nick to Canada so I could stay with the Pack. He assured me that I would be safe…
That was when the attacks started happening. First, a dead wolf on our doorstep, a dead woman who bore a striking resemblance to me hanging from a tree in the woods, death threats, and a full-on siege on the cabin we were staying in over the holidays. We met each altercation head-on and succeeded, every conflict bringing Nick and me closer. We’d entered the manor pretending to be together, but with every day that passed, our relationship changed, evolving naturally.
I accepted the events that had brought us to this point in our lives. I knew that David would want me to remember him and how happy we were, but he wouldn’t want me to dwell on how we ended, and I was ready to move on with Nick.
Not only had our hearts reconnected, but our baser instincts were satiated, as well. The wolves had claimed one another just as prominently as we had.
That was why his betrayal had stung the most; after everything we’d overcome, he’d been lying to me from the beginning.
My stomach flipped and turned with nausea again when I recalled the reason I flew out of the house: Nick had been the one to bite me. Worse, he kept it from me for months and let me believe it was Jackson.
I’d been through so much as it was, so learning that he was to blame for what happened to me cut deeper than the day he left me over seven years ago. I didn’t think I could hurt worse. I was wrong.
Still, I’d give anything to have stayed and talked things out. While I felt I needed space and time to digest the revelation, being lured into a trap by some lower-level rejects of Gianna’s was not amongst my top ten moments.
“Are you okay?” I asked without realizing I wanted to. I felt the sting of the silver spikes against my neck and winced.
Cordelia wrapped her arms around herself, appearing somewhat timid. “I’m fine, Ma’am.”
“Brooke,” I urged softly. “My name is Brooke. I-I know your parents. They miss you very much.”
A hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips before she forced it away, likely out of habit. “They think I’m dead. They didn’t even look for me.”
I rushed forward, anxious to tell her that wasn’t true, but hissed when I grabbed the bars again. “Of course they did,” I assured her. “They searched for years. The entire Pack did.” I l
ooked around at our cold, dank stone prison and shivered. “This place is beyond their reach. Nick and I—”
Cordelia’s eyes brightened. “Nick? You know Nick?”
“I do.” I paused, deciding not to tell her our relationship status considering even I didn’t know where it was at.
Smiling, she dropped her gaze to her toes. “I remember him,” she whispered. “He was nice.”
I reached for the bars again, wanting to be close to her as the wounds of her abduction were reopening, but I pulled back at the last second. “He is. He told me about you…” I bit my lip, uncertain if I should carry on. I figured that by forcing her to relive it, I might gain an ally in here. She might know of a way out or at least the parasites’ routines. “About the day you were taken…by Bobby.”
Her gaze snapped up to mine, the inner circles of her eyes glowing bright. Steam rose off her body, and her breathing deepened.
“Hey, hey,” I said gently, trying to soothe her. I hadn’t meant to bring on any stress that might cause a shift, and with two cell doors between us, I wasn’t sure how to fix this. “Cordelia, take some deep breaths. Please, you need to calm down.” I was starting to panic, the tension filling my body until my skin felt too tight. “Remember what you told me about the collars?”
This got her attention. She held her hands out and looked down at them as she took several deep breaths. When my gaze followed hers, I noticed her hands were already changing, her wolf claws having broken through the tips of her misshapen fingers.
I called her name again, hoping to be able to calm her further, and when she looked at me, I was startled. I’d seen someone shift before, but this was…something else. Perhaps it was from being held here and forced to wear that collar, but Cordelia’s face was somewhere between human and wolf.