Cole’s hands clenched into fists.
“I thought I taught you this lesson. You’re mine, Cole, and everything you think is yours is mine. Or have you forgotten Tasha?”
Cole’s whole body went rigid. When he spoke, his voice was a snarl. “I think I had a response to what you did to Tasha, didn’t I? Maybe this time, it’s going to be me who teaches you a lesson.”
Dana was lost. She had no idea who this Tasha person was.
Jimmy glared at him. “I wanted to wait until the morning to do this, after I’d gotten some rest. I don’t know how much strength I have. And I need to keep myself together to lead the Pack in this troubling time. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“And I’m just broken up about that,” said Cole.
Jimmy sadly shook his head. “At one point, I had hoped that you would be the man who took over for me in the event of my death. When you were young, you had so much promise. But you spit all over everything I taught you—”
“You didn’t teach me anything—”
“Because you refused to learn. You turned your back on your family and your legacy. And you threw it all away for that.” He pointed at Dana.
Dana felt even more confused. How did he figure that Cole had thrown away his family for her?
Cole turned to look at her and then back to Jimmy. “Maybe you’re making her more important than she is, Jimmy.”
“I tried to teach you that celibacy would help you avoid forming damaging sexual obsessions, but you didn’t listen. You can tell me all you want that she’s not important, but she is the most important thing to you on earth, and we both know that. And she’s going to destroy you, boy. I warned you not to let yourself give in to those base lusts—”
“That is such bullshit, coming from you.” Cole waved his hand around, a gesture encompassing the whole farm. “This whole place, your entire worldview, is based on your fucking base lusts.”
“No, it’s not,” said Jimmy. “Believe me, I wish that I had not been the chosen one. You have no idea what a burden it is to be the man who must serve all these women. You will never understand the pain and agony that I have been through—”
“You?” The back of Cole’s neck was getting red. His whole body was taut with frustration. “The people in agony are not you. Those girls you bring here are in agony. The ones who’ve run away from home, who’ve been selling themselves on street corners, who can’t tell how badly you’re abusing them, because they’ve been abused their entire life and, to them, this seems like some kind of paradise. The girls who are relieved, because here they only have to spread their legs for one middle-aged pervert instead of dozens. And you’ve got them so twisted around, they don’t even know it.”
Dana put a hand to her mouth. She had no idea that was the way things worked here. It was awful.
Jimmy didn’t move for minute. Then he put his feet on the floor, one after the other, moving deliberately. He stood up. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and soothing, in stark contrast to Cole’s. “You don’t understand, boy, and you never have.” He walked over to Cole and turned him so that they were face to face. He touched Cole’s chest with one finger. “You think that because you have disgusting and filthy urges that everyone else has them too. But you don’t know a thing about me or what I have with each and every woman that the moon gives me to protect. So don’t presume to call me names and insult me in my own house.”
Cole licked his lips.
Jimmy turned to look at Dana. His dark eyes were so similar to Cole’s. “Tell me something, Dana. Do you love him?”
Dana opened her mouth and shut it.
“Dana,” said Jimmy. “Now I am talking to you, and now I do want your answer. Do you love my son?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said hoarsely.
Cole’s jaw twitched.
“You think you could?” Jimmy said.
She looked at the floor. “No.”
Jimmy turned back to Cole. “So, let’s look at the situation, shall we, Cole? You’ve given up your family and your heritage because you are obsessed with a woman who you have manipulated, lied to, attempted to kill, and harassed. And I have an entire farm of women who I have fed and clothed and sheltered and loved and who love me in return. But I’m the pervert?”
Cole’s shoulders slumped. He looked down at his shoes. He didn’t respond.
Dana wanted to say something. She wanted to tell Jimmy that he wasn’t exactly being fair. Not that she was defending Cole. There was no defending Cole. But her own feelings for him were complicated. She didn’t love Cole, but she did feel… well, something. And Jimmy had clearly brainwashed all the women on the farm. They weren’t even themselves anymore. Cole hadn’t done that to her. She was completely in control of her own thoughts.
But then Avery’s words from the other night came back to her, echoing in her brain. What if he fucked you up worse than you know?
She shivered.
“Turn him around,” said Jimmy to the guard.
The man took Cole by the shoulders and turned him so that his back was to his father. Cole didn’t resist. It seemed that his defiance had been drained out of him somehow.
Jimmy put his hand on the back of Cole’s neck. “I won’t need to make you shift, will I, boy?”
“Don’t,” said Cole, but his voice was quiet.
“Submit to me,” said Jimmy, digging his fingers into Cole’s flesh.
Cole’s body went limp.
Jimmy’s fingers dug in tighter, and now it almost seemed that he was holding Cole up by the scruff of his neck, the way a mother would carry a cub.
Jimmy let out a satisfied sigh. “That’s right, boy. Come back to papa. You’re mine. I’m your alpha. I always will be.”
Cole’s body convulsed once.
Jimmy let go of him.
Cole collapsed to the floor in a heap.
Dana chewed on her lip. What had just happened? Had Jimmy made Cole a beta wolf too?
Jimmy nudged Cole with his foot. “Get up.”
Cole managed to stand, but he kept his head down. He looked beaten.
Jimmy inspected his fingernails. “I don’t want Cole’s little girlfriend in the trailer anymore. It’s too tough to guard. Chain her up downstairs in one of the punishment rooms.”
Cole slowly lifted his head. “What?”
Jimmy smiled at him. “Did you think I was just going to leave her out there so that you could have your way with her whenever you wanted?”
“It’s only that she didn’t do anything,” said Cole.
Jimmy turned to Dana.“Sure she did.” He sneered at her. “You tempted my boy, you tramp. You ruined him. You see what he’s become, and it’s all your fault. I don’t even know if the power of the moon’s enough to save him, and I don’t know how much time I have left.” He looked down at his wound.
Tempted Cole? What? What was he talking about?
“Don’t put her in one of those rooms.” Cole was pleading.
“Get her out of here,” said Jimmy.
The guard tugged on her arm.
“Damn it,” said Cole. “Dana, I will get you out of here.”
But his voice faded as they pulled her out of the room and down the hallway.
* * *
By some miracle, they hadn’t yet taken Cole’s cell phone. He was shut up in a room in the back of the house. It had been his old room for a brief period of time—at the end, when his mother had kicked him out of her trailer. Back then, he shared the room with his younger brother, Rusty. Now he seemed to have it to himself. He’d seen Rusty, though. Rusty was now one of Jimmy’s guards. Cole hadn’t seen him since he was a little boy. It had been quite a long time. He was a little bit sad that the kid hadn’t made it out of here.
He had his phone to his ear as he paced the length of the small room.
“Randall?” Avery’s voice on the other end. “What the hell? Why are you calling me? I thought you were breaking Gray out.”
�
�Yeah, I kind of fucked up.” Cole paced faster, angry with himself, angry with his father, angry with the situation.
“What do you mean?” Avery was angry too. “What happened to her?”
“She’s fine for now,” said Cole. “But she’s locked up someplace it’s going to be hard for me to get her out of.”
“Well, that’s great. That’s just great. You know, Randall, I already have people breathing down my neck because I let you in there in the first place.”
“I don’t care about your problems.” Cole stopped pacing. “I’ve got enough of my own in here. My father’s made me a beta too. I’m back in this damned pack.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means that Dana and I can be called by Jimmy and that he can make us shift whenever he wants.”
“So, even if we get her out of there, then she’s going to be screwed up in some wolf way?”
“She’s not screwed up. She’s still herself. But it could be problematic.”
“You know, before you walked into our lives,” said Avery, “nothing was this fucking confusing or complicated.”
“Our lives?” Cole snorted. “You don’t share a life with her, Brooks. I’ve known her for a lot longer than you have.”
“She says you guys didn’t know each other in high school at all.”
Is that what she said? Well, it would be, he supposed. He’d spent a lot more time noticing her than she had noticing him.
“Whatever you think you feel for her, it’s nothing more than something pathetic that she will never return, you know that, right?”
Cole sat down on the bed in his room. “You don’t understand anything about what Dana feels for me. You never have, and you never will.”
“She hates you.”
“Maybe,” said Cole. “Maybe that’s part of it.” After all, he hated her too. That was part of the reason he’d tried to kill her. But there were other feelings he had for her as well. Stronger ones. Compelling ones. He and Dana Gray were linked in a way that defied reason, but that didn’t make their connection any less powerful. “She wants me, though. She’ll never want you the way she wants me.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
That was strange. Cole had expected Avery to lash out, to deny that Dana had any interest in him at all.
Avery spoke again, his voice quiet. “You found her, didn’t you? That night? You’re the one who killed Hollis, not her.”
Cole smiled slowly. “She lied about seeing me that night?”
“Shit,” said Avery.
“I didn’t figure she’d tell everyone what we did after I snapped his neck, but I’d didn’t know she’d write me completely out of it. I guess she didn’t want anyone to wonder why she let me go.”
Avery’s voice was tight. “You want me to ask you what you did with her, don’t you? Well, I’m not going to. It’s not nearly as important as the fact that she let you go. You don’t deserve to be free, Randall.”
“Why not? Because I killed some werewolves? How many people did you kill the first night you shifted?”
A heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “You know what, let’s drop it.”
“Oh, you don’t want to talk about that, do you?” Cole found that his mood was improving. Talking to Avery was actually a good bit of fun. “I looked it up, though. You were a very naughty little wolf, weren’t you? You’ve killed more people than I have.”
“You know what?” said Avery. “As much fun as I’m having here, I’m going to have to cut things short. See, the reinforcements from the SF have just rolled in. I’ve got actual work to do now. I’ve got to find a way to get Gray out of there, considering you can’t do it at all.”
“I’m working on it, Brooks.”
“Well, I can’t count on you, can I? But I should have known that. I don’t know why I bothered with trusting you in the first place.” He hung up.
Cole tucked his phone back into his pants pocket. Was he supposed to be upset by the fact that Avery didn’t trust him? Because he wasn’t. He didn’t care what Avery thought about him. Not one teeny, tiny little bit.
He got up, strode across the room and tried the door.
To his surprise, he could actually open it.
He peered outside into the hallway. It was empty.
Huh.
Wasn’t Jimmy worried that he was going to try to free Dana again? Why wasn’t he being guarded?
He stepped outside, softly closing the door behind him. The punishment rooms were in the basement, and there was a set of stairs off the kitchen. It was very late—or very early, depending on one’s perspective. The sun wasn’t up yet, and it was dark outside, but it was only a matter of hours until it was morning.
He made his way down the hallway, over the hard wood floors, past the blank walls.
The kitchen was only a few doors down from his room.
He made it there, quickly, and turned inside.
Damn it. There were people in here.
Two women. One man.
They all looked up at him.
The man got to his feet, and Cole realized it was his brother Rusty. “Cole. Damn it, I thought you were asleep.”
“Not asleep,” said Cole.
“Can you go back to the room?” said Rusty. “Father doesn’t want you out and about.”
Cole strode inside. “What if I said no?”
One of the women raised her eyebrows. “Are you hungry?”
“Well, that is one reason that a person might come to the kitchen.” Cole cocked his head. “Rebecca? That you?”
Rebecca smiled. “Yes, it is.”
He looked at the other woman. “And… Gail?”
“Hi, Cole,” she said.
He sat down at the table with them. “Well, then, this is like a family reunion, isn’t it?” They were all his half-siblings. Gail and Rusty were full brother and sister. They had the same mother. But Rebecca had a different mother entirely. Rebecca was closer to his own age, while Gail was just a few years older than Rusty.
“You’re not part of the family anymore,” Gail said. “You ran away, and Father told us that you were dead to us.”
“Except I’m back in the pack now,” Cole said. “Didn’t you tell them that, Rusty?”
“You’re also a prisoner.”
“Who you were watching like a hawk,” Cole said.
Rusty sighed. “Yeah… well, I guess I was feeling like everyone was taking things a little out of proportion. But you know Father. He has a dramatic streak.”
Cole raised his eyebrows. That was interesting. That may have been the closest thing he’d heard to a negative opinion of Jimmy uttered by any member of the Pack. “Not going to lock me back up right away, then?”
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” said Gail, getting up.
“We just ate,” said Rusty. “I’ll watch you eat yours and then I’ll escort you back to your room.”
Cole nodded. He wasn’t actually hungry… Well, maybe he was. He hadn’t eaten in a long time, that was for sure.
Rebecca pursed her lips at him. “You came back because of that Dana woman, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Cole didn’t see much point in hiding it.
“What is she to you? Your girlfriend or something? Your wife?”
Cole looked at the table. “Not exactly, no.”
“Isn’t that why you left?” said Rebecca. “You wanted that, didn’t you? You thought that the way that Father forced all of us to live in celibacy was cruel and impossible.”
Cole sighed. “Well, it’s one thing to want something. It’s another thing entirely to figure out how to do it. It’s easy for the people who weren’t raised in this place. Everyone else in the world doesn’t have a problem getting married or settling down. But… I don’t know. I just… couldn’t.”
“Is that why you started killing people?” Gail asked from across the kitchen.
“You know about that?” Cole said. Jimmy
didn’t allow the outside world to intrude here. Even the news. The wolves were all cut off from everything. Of course, Cole was fairly sure that edict didn’t apply to Jimmy himself. From time to time, Jimmy seemed to have somehow picked up certain things about current events.
“We have an internet connection, actually,” said Rusty. “Cable, so no phone lines or anything. I convinced him to let us do it.”
Cole was surprised. “Really?”
“It’s not in the main house,” said Rusty. “It’s out in a trailer. It’s a bitch to get to in the rain. And I’m the only one who’s allowed to use it. I’m only supposed to use it for getting information for Jimmy. But… well, what Jimmy doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him.”
Deceiving Jimmy? Was there a tiny little rebellion going on here? Cole really hadn’t expected this.
Gail set down his sandwich in front of him. “You haven’t answered the question. Did you kill people because Dana wouldn’t marry you, or what?”
He looked at his sandwich. He let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did you ask her?” said Rebecca.
“Of course not.” Cole took a bite of the sandwich and chewed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about this.
Rusty leaned back in his chair. “We had theories, you know? Our brother Cole Randall, who left the farm so that he could get laid, suddenly goes on a killing spree. We thought maybe Father was right, and all those base, lusty thoughts and acts had seriously screwed you up.” His tone was light, but Cole knew that he was serious. The three of them wouldn’t be here, doing what Jimmy said if they didn’t still fear the consequences of disobeying him.
Cole set down his sandwich. “That’s not why I left. It wasn’t about sex. Jimmy always wanted to make it about that, but that’s because Jimmy is obsessed with sex and won’t admit it to himself.”
“So, why did you leave?” said Rebecca.
“Because he’s an asshole.” Cole shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich.
“Hey, now,” said Rusty.
Rebecca’s hand snaked across the table to touch his arm. “I know he was hard on you, Cole. But deep down, he really does mean well. He’s… he thinks he’s infallible, but he does make mistakes. I think he doesn’t know how to admit it.”
Bad Moon Rising (Cole and Dana) Page 12