Moonlight Betrayal: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 5)

by K. R. Alexander

  It took me a moment to realize Jed had called my name and I went back. I crossed my arms and didn’t say anything.

  He mumbled something that I couldn’t catch above the babbling beck.

  “What?”

  “Isaac.” Still not looking at me. “He’s up on the trails. He’ll be making his way back by now. Coming in past the boulders.”

  I nodded.

  After a pause, he mumbled, “Min polaan.”

  “Thank you for saying so.”

  Jed glanced up, startled, and I knew he’d not imagined I might know what that meant. But I was already turning away, heading north to meet Isaac.

  Yes, I knew some Lucannis words and a couple phrases. Mostly thanks to Kage. Teaching me vocabulary while I was teaching him magical theory. The wolf who wanted to be a caster. Though … maybe not anymore. Which would be as well since getting what we wanted wasn’t coming easy to this pack.

  Jed was correct: Isaac was coming along the path beside the dry stone walls when I reached the near hills to start up them.

  He saw me and I stopped at the bottom. I remained silent, waiting for him to make the first move. He didn’t apologize or try to justify or anything else as he reached me, though.

  He said, “Cassia? I know who we should talk to next about the shifters.”

  Chapter 25

  “Foxes?” Kage sneered. “You want us to run with bleeding foxes?”

  “You don’t need to dig a den with them for a conversation,” Isaac answered, calm.

  “Still, he’s right it might be a bit of an effort,” Zar said. “Hardly as if a fox will give us an honest answer, or even spare us a chat normally.”

  “These will because I know them,” Isaac said. “I told you.”

  “Right,” Andrew said, tone not far off from Kage’s. “And you don’t even know where they are.”

  “That’s not a lost hunt either,” Isaac said. “Leum will return my call. Sooner or later. For now, we have to assume they’re in Edinburgh. That was the last I heard from her. Since we’re so close already, it seems foolish not to go up there.”

  It was 11:00 a.m. Wednesday and the whole pack was crammed into what had been Andrew, Jason, and Kage’s room.

  Jason lay on the one bed with a cold cloth over his eyes. Andrew sat cross-legged in the middle beside Jason. I sat back against the headboard with my legs out next to Andrew, glancing often at Jason. He shivered while sweating under a blanket, not joining the conversation.

  Not only Isaac, but Kage and possibly Jed also still appeared to be running low-grade fevers on closer inspection. After his exercise that morning, shirtless in the cold, clear air, Isaac had been perspiring as much as Jason. If he’d been human, I’d have thought less of this, but their stamina was usually outstanding.

  He’d put a shirt on and, standing at the closed door, now looked, if not normal, at least in far better condition than Jason.

  Kage sat near him in the room’s only chair, glaring down at its arm so as not to look at anyone. This totally uncharacteristic stance from his usual challenging stares was due to him being unable to look anyone in the eye. Light, dark, shapes, basics of where things like doors, gates, and trees seemed to be as far as his vision was getting him.

  And what if they were wrong? What if it didn’t get better? Mostly blind for the rest of his life? Because he saved mine?

  The idea left me nauseated—and I hadn’t been feeling my perkiest anyway.

  Across from where Isaac stood and Kage sat, on the other side of the bed, Zar leaned into the window frame, alternately gazing outside or around at someone who was speaking. He chewed his lip, frowning slightly, black hair falling in his face, thinking.

  His brother stood in the bathroom doorway, placing himself as far from us as he could. Scowling at the bed post, he had his arms crossed and wasn’t saying much aside from a few digs about foxes. That left arm of his, I wasn’t so sure about. I didn’t ask.

  “So you’re meaning to drive to Edinburgh, half a day away, on the off hope of meeting a scheming fox who’s number you already have?” Kage demanded. “Can’t ring her up and ask if she knows about shifters offing each other?”

  “I’m sure Leum will talk with me by phone,” Isaac said. “But that doesn’t help if she has suggestions to follow up around Edinburgh. It seems worth going in person, we’re so close already, and making inquiries. Anyway, it would be much better to see her and her sister in person simply because they’ll be more forthcoming. Just like the rest of us, they prefer a face-to-face.”

  “And you’d trust—?” Kage started.

  “You’re biting a bone and expecting blood to come out, mate,” Andrew said. “If he wants to sniff through Edinburgh, let him go.”

  “It’s not him,” Kage snapped. “It’s all of us. That’s what makes it sharp ice.”

  Andrew snorted. “Hardly. You and Jay can’t drive. The stranger shouldn’t be driving, and Belle can’t. Snowy has eyes. He’s not saying we all go.”

  “We’re a pack, Switch,” Jason mumbled for the first time. He turned over the cloth on his eyes, still shivering. “We don’t hunt alone.”

  “We’re a bloody dysfunctional sideshow attraction,” Andrew said. “Total wolves would be ashamed of us.”

  “We have to go somewhere,” Zar said. “All of us. Gillian needs the room for reservations. She’s booked tonight—only giving us until noon.”

  “I’m right enough,” Jason was answering Andrew at the same time. “Just need a minute.”

  “It would be best if we stayed together,” Isaac said. “But the pack’s big enough we don’t have to. Some need to go home. Some can go to Edinburgh—”

  “Because it would be easier for them to drive south than north right now?” Andrew threw out his hand toward Kage.

  “We should have brought the caravan—” Isaac started.

  “But we didn’t.” Andrew’s voice was growing more and more hostile. Usually, he got on relatively well with Isaac. “We don’t have the caravan, we don’t have the Jeep. We’ve got our bags and bikes and our carcasses to move. We’ll have to find another room—within the next forty-five minutes—and move ourselves there somehow. Then spend another night and hope it’s enough for everyone to get the bounce back in their pounce before we start home. You go to Edinburgh and chat up your foxes if you want.”

  “No one should be off alone,” Zar said. “That’s true at home and true here.”

  “It’d make the maggots chuffed to see him, though, wouldn’t it?” Kage asked. “To have lone, willing victims showing up at their doors?”

  “These foxes are not doing this, Kage.” Isaac sounded very tired.

  On our way back into The Gables before, he had offered me only a terse, “I’m sorry about earlier, Cassia.” Not even mentioning Andrew’s name. I, in turn, had said I was sorry. Not what about. The terseness had continued as he hadn’t said much else to me either. He’d never been like this to me before.

  But I wasn’t all that worried about Isaac. Though the violence, as always, got to me, I was too distracted by Kage and Jason. Forget a different bed and breakfast; they needed a hospital.

  Strange, I’d wanted to have a real meeting between all of us, talk over the case. Now I could hardly pay attention. This, somehow, was not at all what I’d thought.

  Amidst the bickering, Jason murmured something again that no one noticed. He pulled away the cloth on his eyes, wiping his sweaty face, and sat up, easing back against the headboard like myself, with Andrew between us—though he sat forward. Jason looked sideways at me and smiled.

  “Are you all right?” I whispered and offered my hand.

  He took it on the pillow. “Only spent. It’ll wear off.” He spoke as quietly as me, under Kage snarling more fox insults and Zar proposing he go with Isaac. “Cassia? ‘Wolf sings and wolf listens. Silver sings and pack listens.’” He rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. His hand was burning. “Don’t forget who you are.”

  But who, J
ason, are you? Truly? What lies at the heart of a dark star?

  Only Andrew had noticed us, glancing around at Jason, then over his other shoulder to me. Then I saw Jed was also watching me. But maybe he had been most of the time. He certainly hadn’t been looking at the others. Isaac and Zar noticed and looked around as well. Kage paused, listening, and turned his head toward me for the first time.

  The room fell silent. Jason still held my hand, blinking drowsily down at it, shivering a bit.

  I thought of the horror of the hospital for him. I thought of our first trip out to Cornwall and those nights together. And of Jed and how he wasn’t the same wolf between skin and fur. Skin was not fur. And fur, no matter how badly it may be needed, was a privilege, a luxury, in populated England. Not a right.

  Then I thought about who I was, and who was listening.

  A minute passed without the proverbial pin ever dropping. No one moved. They just watched me and waited.

  I thought of Diana. Of the vow they had done for her, and for me.

  I leaned my head back against the wood and shut my eyes.

  “Isaac?” I spoke as softly as the hushed room and the ears around me demanded. “Do you happen to have access to a photograph of your friend in Edinburgh? Or anything she ever had or touched of yours? Or does she have an online presence? Facebook? Anything she does that would have her picture or profile or a bio?”

  Isaac hesitated, then, “They have an Etsy store. They make art with repurposed materials. Twin sisters.”

  “Will you pull up the page on your phone, please? What are their names?”

  “Leum and Dannsa.”

  I opened my eyes and reached for the phone when Isaac had the page loaded. Withdrawing my hand from Jason’s, I drew up my knees, then wrapped both hands around the phone, scanning over the images of Bohemian, recycled art and information about its makers.

  “Sing for me, please,” I said as softly. “Maybe you could all chant The Thirty Day Prayer?”

  I didn’t mind one way or another if they sang or not. But they needed to. And they did. Voices hushed, a rocking, repetitive tempo, their beautiful voices blending in the chant as if they’d never heard of an argument.

  I shut my eyes again and opened my third eye to the twin artists.

  Guide me to their path: Leum and Dannsa. Show me where they are. Take my steps where they step, my eyes where they see.

  The twins walked hand in hand through a vivid, bustling, bursting crowd, dodge and motion, sizzling meat, pastries on tables, displays of postcards, antique cameras, and leather-bound journals at a corner before a thousand stalls stretched away before them. Light in step, spry and giddy, they moved like ballerinas and dodged among the crowd like smoke. A great banner stretched between lampposts they passed under.

  Thank you.

  I drew back. Plenty.

  But I didn’t open my eyes or break from the trance. I just sat there for a long time listening to their six voices, soft and endless.

  Moon whole

  Moon fade

  Moon half

  Moon claw

  Moon dark

  Moon fang

  Moon half

  Moon grow

  Moon whole.

  Guide my steps

  Guide my breaths

  Guide my spirit.

  My steps are yours

  My breaths are yours

  My spirit is yours.

  So I follow you

  So I hold you

  So I love you.

  So you follow me

  So you hold me

  So you love me.

  Love. I love you. In the midst of pain, of betrayal, of struggle, that was where we needed to be. The heart, the light, all it represented. Was that who I was?

  I opened my eyes, handed Isaac back the phone, and the prayer faded.

  “No one has to go north. Not today,” I said quietly. “They’re not in Scotland. They’re at the Portobello Road Market in London.”

  Silence as six wolves stared at me.

  “And we don’t need to find another room. It’s not healthy for you. And that’s what we need right now. A night for your health. All of us. We can’t take care of the Sable Pack, or the South Coast Cooperative, or all shifter kind, if we don’t take care of each other. We are in a beautiful natural place and the only reason you have all been trapped together in these rooms for three days is me. If I weren’t here, you’d never have booked and had the expense and frustration of a bed and breakfast at all. You’ve been suffering through that. Now I can come stay with you for a night. It’s not exactly Canada, but we can find a quiet spot for another night and take a holiday from ourselves. I’ll ask Gillian about parking the bikes here overnight. We have the village pub for dinner. Then it’s just picking out a lonely place in walking distance.

  “Tomorrow, Moon willing, we’ll be able to drive home. Hopefully Isaac can talk with his friends, and, coming from Brighton, we’ll meet them if we have a chance. We can talk to Diana. I’ll call Rowan again also—let him know what’s happened and see if they have any new thoughts. For right now, let’s get the bikes and our things squared away. Jason? Will you please stick with Andrew. I know you’re all right. Just a little extra support while you’re dealing with the fever. Kage? We’ll have a long walk. Would you please stay with Zar? Then hopefully by morning your eyes will be a lot better.

  “Okay? Thank you for looking after each other.”

  So we went camping again. Wolf style. Which was how we saw the faie.

  Chapter 26

  The arguing stopped, fighting stopped, tensions melted into the fell-side like snow on a warm day. Outside, at night, in a quiet space in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, at the edge of sprawling gorse brush and away from dry stone walls, with me there among them, my pack seemed to heave a collective sigh. No longer confined and forced to room together, removed from scenes of recent frustrations, with nothing on the immediate agenda besides making full recoveries, they went so far as to do something I’d never seen them do as a group before: they played.

  Andrew started it. While I made “camp” for myself with a nest of their rucksacks, clothes, bike jackets, and myself in layers with hoodie and jacket, I tossed away the yellow ball I’d brought from the field by The Gables. It rolled gently down our slope, visible by moonlight on the clear night. Andrew pounced on it, slamming into it with both forepaws like a fox, then snatched it in his jaws, shook his head, spun, dropped it, caught it again as it rolled away, and again shook it.

  Zar, who I’d seldom seen in fur, and never up close, was first to trot over and investigate what this tantalizing object might be. Zar was a handsome, classically marked Eurasian wolf, not unlike Kage. Somewhat smaller than Kage, he was also softer in contrast. French grays predominating, though still with the black-tipped guard hairs and clear face mask. Like Kage and Andrew, he had pale eyebrow spots that lent extra expressiveness—not to mention adorableness—to his face.

  As he tried to have a sniff at the ball in Andrew’s mouth, Andrew growled and leapt away. Even to my ear it was a totally different growl than the ones they used to warn each other. Where the usual food or personal property growl was low and menacing, this was a … frisky growl.

  Zar followed him, craning his neck, unsure what Andrew had.

  Jason, who had been lying beside me on the ground ever since changing, roused himself and walked over, wagging his tail at Andrew.

  Andrew tossed the ball in the air and caught it with a flick of his neck. He jumped to Zar and Jason, dropped his elbows to the grass, and spun his tail like a helicopter. In the next second, as Zar and Jason bounded at him, Andrew was off like a shot.

  The feel of wilderness in this place was just that: a feel. We’d agreed to a couple ground rules about staying within sight of my camp spot and keeping the noise down. Not only were there livestock out here, but we remained a stone’s throw from human habitation in all directions besides up into the fells looming above us.


  Even so, they knew how to make the most of a small space from their own pack’s territory at home. Andrew made a great circuit, running maybe fifty yards before starting to weave about and form a figure eight. He also slowed down. On his first burst, he’d left Zar and Jason so hopelessly behind they weren’t putting much effort into the chase. He clearly knew this, however, and slowed to an easy lope so they could catch him. Or almost. His tail always seemed to flash just out of their reach—until Jason predicted a turn and cut him off. Andrew crashed into him and the ball went flying, Jason leaping to snatch it first, then also racing away.

  Jed, sitting on the slope just below my feet, watched with interest. Then looked away as if catching himself at it. Then watched again.

  Kage, who’d been lying a little away from me, got to his feet to pace carefully out into their uneven, hillside playground. I wasn’t sure how well he could see them in the dark, but he certainly heard and smelled them, ears following and twitching to each motion, nose lifted.

  Jason was having a hard time making his escape, Andrew repeatedly tripping him, then Zar knocking into him, trying to get the ball. When he spotted Kage moving toward them, Jason ran for him. Kage backed uneasily as he was mobbed, turning to the noise when Jason tried hiding behind him.

  It was no good. Andrew and Zar piled into him while Kage was still trying to pin down their exact locations. There was a scramble, growling, a yelp, a scuffle, then Zar burst out of the tangle, presumably with the ball in his mouth: all three chased and tackled him again.

  “Go on.” I shifted down in my lackluster effort at a sleeping bag to shove Jed’s hip with my double-socked foot. “Go play.”

  Jed quickly looked away, gazing up to the moon, then to the valley of farmland. As if he had no idea what I was talking about.

  “They’re your family, Jed. Why won’t you play?”

  He twitched an ear. Then, after a pause, got up and turned to sniff his bag—which was by my head. He pawed the canvas.