Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4)

by McKenzie Hunter

  “Yep, weird. Nothing about this”—I moved my hand back and forth between the two of us—“is normal. It is weird.” I hate that I couldn’t think of a word more fitting. Yep, weird is all I have. Sitting across from him in a fancy restaurant with a songstress baring her soul was weird. Behaving as though this was just a casual dinner between friends was weird.

  “We needed to talk.”

  Here it comes. I am about to get my “talking to.” Before he could start the homily I blurted out, “She—”

  “She started it,” he interjected, his chiseled features slowly giving way to a smirk.

  “No, she was on my property and I had the right to react the way I did.” I had moved past “she started it” and right on to self-righteous indignation.

  He nodded his head slowly but remained quiet. He was silent until the server brought our food. I pushed the dessert aside, took another drink from my glass, and then started to eat. Sebastian ignored his food. “Ethan feels that because of your friendship, you are being more resistant to his advice,” he said.

  Friendship? Whoever is responsible for the rumor mill is really bad at their job. Ethan and I weren’t friends. We were two people bonded by our mutual oddities, forced to deal with each other in order to survive. He yelled, I yelled—it was our thing. He threatened, I rolled my eyes and moved on. We dealt with each other and continued to irritate each other. That wasn’t the foundation for a friendship but the beginning of a cage match.

  “Michaela can be difficult to deal with,” he acknowledged, taking a bite from his steak.

  Is that the euphemism we are using for crazy and insensate? “She isn’t difficult to deal with. She is coddled and excused for behavior that would cause others to be punished for.”

  “She is the Mistress of the Northern Seethe,” he reminded me in a low voice.

  “And?”

  How quickly the soft, warm gaze could switch to stone with just a blink. “That isn’t an ‘and’. That has meaning. We will not start a war with them over a crush.”

  “It’s not a crush.” But defining my obtuse relationship with Quell was always difficult.

  “I don’t care what it is, Sky, but it is a problem and it shouldn’t be.” Usually his deep baritone possessed a mesmerizing lilt that made my name sound musical, but not now.

  Maybe it was the topic or the dessert but I couldn’t eat any more and pushed the plate aside. When Sebastian became preoccupied by something behind me I didn’t have to look. I knew what or rather who had distracted him. A brunette, two tables over with her friend. The sleek black dress she wore didn’t leave anything to the imagination, and if your imagination failed you, her plunging neckline would kick start it. I glanced over, and she looked at Sebastian and smiled.

  There wasn’t any denying it, he was a very handsome man who wore the assurance of command as easily as he did the mint green button-down and dark brown slacks. I had become immune to him, or as immune as one could be; but the woman in black was just as enthralled as I was when I first met him. That diametric feeling of fear and attraction was something hard to ignore.

  He excused himself to go to the bathroom, and I wasn’t surprised when the lady in black excused herself from her friend and went to the bathroom, too. He better not leave me for Ms. Oh-is-my-cleavage-showing-in-my-absurdly-low-cut-dress.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. Steven had left me twice for some scantily clad woman at a bar. He often said he had a hard time controlling his primal urges no matter how hard he tried. It’s funny how those primal urges never run the show when a single sexy grandma is near. It seems to only overtake them when a hot thing with questionable morals comes into view. When I’d pointed this out, he’d simply chuckled and said, “Well, they always turn me down politely, telling me that I remind them of their grandson.”

  Sebastian was gone for nearly ten minutes, and when he returned he was ready to end the dinner sooner rather than later.

  “I thought you were going to ditch me.”

  He grinned.

  Yeah, I get it, you’re hot. There’s no need to make a big deal out of it.

  “Because your admirer seems to want to spend the rest of the night with you,” I pointed out, looking over my shoulder at her, and as I suspected, she was still eyeing him.

  His attention slipped in her direction, a lascivious smile stretching over his lips. “Well, what a dilemma I have. Should I stay and finish dinner with the smart-mouth, snarky brunette who gets in more trouble than she can handle or go with her?” he joked.

  Alpha and comedian, he sure has a lot on his plate. “I’m going to guess smart-mouth, snarky brunette. Is that wrong?

  He laughed, a sound that quickly dissolved any feeling of apprehension I had.

  “We’re having dinner. Tonight my time is yours. She can wait.”

  Wow, should I be flattered that the Alpha of the most powerful pack in the country set aside a night just for me?

  He leaned into the table, his eyes narrowed. “Has someone left you before?”

  “No,” I lied, refusing to admit to the I had to catch a cab home.

  His eyes narrowed further at the lie.

  “I can take care of myself.” Then I put my hand to my head in overacted gesticulation, like in the old movies when a woman was overtaken by a fainting spell. “I declare even with my delicate woman sensibilities I’ve managed to call a cab or Uber driver to help me find my way home.”

  He was frowning when I finished with my little performance. Hard crowd. I made my voice serious. “Sebastian, I can take care of myself. You all seem to forget that.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s a principle. You don’t leave someone behind.”

  “Yeah, in battle. I think I’m okay around a bunch of inebriated people.”

  Sebastian had strangled me, locked me in a cage and a room, and often lied to me—or rather “got me to see the reality that he wanted me to see”—on many occasions, but I guess he would be damned if someone would leave me at a club. He was a very unique white knight; well maybe he was a gray knight. Depending on who was telling the story, he could very well be the black knight. I had gotten used to the blurred lines that surrounded Sebastian and the Midwest Pack.

  Over the past few months Sebastian’s protection of and interest in me had amped to a new level. I couldn’t help but wonder, Has he found out something he wasn’t sharing?

  I leaned in and hit him with a very maternal tone. “For the record, a woman like that, who has little concern that you are already here with someone, is nothing but trouble. Be careful.”

  His eyes held a miscreant twinkle. “That is wonderful advice. I will consider it. Will you now take my advice?” He drained his glass, chewed the last bite of his steak, and then relaxed back into the chair. The stone cold gaze held mine. “Stop screwing with Michaela. Quell is hers. Period. If I need to make this easier for you, I will. You want to save Quell, walk away from him. Don’t force my hand on this. If he continues to be a problem, then I will make sure he stops being one.”

  Unable to hide my irritation, I wrapped it around my words. “You mean you would dare to upset Michaela.”

  He responded with a stern silence. I realized the consequences of me killing Michaela in a fight and Sebastian getting rid of a vampire that had become a pack problem were two different things. I understood the politics, but it didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  “She’ll be angry that I destroyed her little plaything, but I assure you it will occupy her mind for mere moments. Do what you need to—but end it with Quell.”

  It seemed like he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t have a response.

  I nibbled on my food—it had lost all flavor. I needed to talk and think about something else. “What are we going to do about Kelly?”

  “Kelly?”

  “I don’t know if Gavin is overreacting. Maybe we should be concerned that she just disappeared. Is it really like her to do something like that?”
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br />   Dismay was something that I’d never seen on Sebastian’s face and it looked odd now. “She’s such a wild card, I don’t know how to predict her behavior. If she left, it is understandable; she went through a lot.”

  Kelly wasn’t really a wild card—I got her. Her emotions and sensitivity made her vulnerable to making decisions that the pack didn’t like, and she seemed to always be at odds with Sebastian. I still didn’t quite understand why a person who was wholly human chose to work for us, but I knew it had a lot to do with her curiosity about us and her adoration of Dr. Jeremy. She was ours to protect, and I felt like we were failing.

  “I just think she would have said something to us, even if it was to tell us to screw off.”

  “You can’t judge her actions by what she would have done before we nearly killed her.”

  Is that a smile? No, my bad. Tilting my head, I waited for it again. She did have that effect on a lot of people, her ebullience something that was appreciated more often than people would admit. Josh referred to her as a “pint-sized menace,” and her tenacity was entertaining, especially when it was directed at someone else, more often Sebastian.

  “If she did leave, she left some things behind that seem odd.” I wasn’t sure if telling him about the purse would make sense to him. It wasn’t that it was a purse she wanted, but because it was given to her by Dr. Jeremy. “And it wouldn’t hurt to look into her leaving, maybe even question Sable,” I offered.

  His brows rose. “Sable?”

  I nodded my head. “She threatened to kill her. She thought that Gavin was spending too much time with her.”

  “Why is this the first time I am hearing about this?”

  “It didn’t seem relevant. I may be way off. Who among us hasn’t been threatened by a vampire? He made Sable promise that she wouldn’t hurt Kelly.”

  “A promise from a vampire not to do any harm, especially Sable, means nothing. He should have told me this,” he snarled. Sebastian was worse than Ethan when it came to the need to have all information.

  He pulled out his phone and pressed a number. “Demetrius, I need to speak with Sable,” he said in a low voice into the speaker. Like most things it had too much of a command to it, and I knew it wouldn’t be well received by Demetrius.

  I could imagine the insolence on Demetrius’s face. His silence stretched from seconds to close to a minute. It was so long that I thought he’d hung up. That wasn’t below something he would do if he felt affronted by Sebastian. It wasn’t until I heard the noise on the other end that I knew he was still considering the request for longer than he had to just to annoy Sebastian.

  He finally spoke, his voice crisp and urbane, with an accent that I still hadn’t placed over the years. “Very well, but I will need to speak with Skylar as well. She has been quite busy disrupting things in our Seethe and it needs to be addressed.”

  Dammit.

  Sebastian glanced in my direction, considered it for a fraction of the time Demetrius had, and finally agreed.

  There were many things I would have preferred to a meeting between Sebastian and Demetrius, two men who hated each other and make no attempt to hide it. Both had immense power and the type of will that could stop a truck, which they didn’t mind asserting. The venomous glares, subtle threats, and displays of impudence ever present whenever they were in the same room—there wasn’t a way to ignore it because you found yourself drowned by their animosity and power. It was hard to withstand and even harder to disregard.

  Demetrius answered the door of Sable’s home. His odd black opal eyes regarded me for a long time before he directed them toward Sebastian. Demetrius opened the door wider to let us in but seemed reluctant to offer us a formal invitation, his irritation apparent as he drew his lips into a tightly fixed line.

  Each time I found myself in a vampire’s home, which happened more than I wished, I was always impressed with the elegant design that was often more contemporary than I expected. There was always an anachronism oddly placed, but it added charm, a reminder that most of them had been alive for more than a century. Sable was young, changed when she was just nineteen, but had been a vampire for a little over twenty years. Her home was everything I’d once expected—walls painted a muted red, textured to look aged. Black curtains were pulled back to reveal floor-to-ceiling windows and a perfect view of the large trees that surrounded her home and obscured the moon. They were closer than what would be acceptable for most people. Her home was bare, except for a brick-colored sofa and matching ottoman and two black leather chairs. Everyone had some kitchen appliances, although they didn’t need it; but Sable decided not to put up such pretenses and instead had left an empty space where they should have been.

  She sat on the sofa and was genuinely disinterested, exanimate. She didn’t acknowledge our presence until Gavin, whom I didn’t know was behind us, moved farther into the house.

  We really need to get him a bell to wear.

  She approached us, her piercing gaze focused solely on Gavin. Each time I encountered her, it was hard to believe that she was the girl who made the headlines for weeks after she brutally murdered the family and friends of the assailants who had killed her family during a home invasion. She made the invaders watch while she did it, and then she executed them in front of neighbors and sat next to their dead bodies and waited for the police to show up.

  A broken young woman who was made into a broken vampire. Wide-eyed and round-faced, she had soft, placid features that were a contrast to her personality and reputation. She walked slowly around us, and even Sebastian tensed, ready to engage if necessary. In silence she studied everyone, her tongue running over her fangs. Every once in a while she drew her lips back, exposing them like weapons. In her own little world, she refocused her attention back on Gavin and seemed to forget anyone other than him. She didn’t hear Demetrius when he called her name and didn’t respond until he said it again. His sharp hiss jerked her attention from Gavin to him.

  Her face and eyes were blank, as though if they couldn’t focus on Gavin she wouldn’t bother to focus on anything. I still didn’t understand her obsession with him. She considered him beautiful—that is the extent of what I knew of their odd, sordid dealings. She had started to take on the characteristics of her creator, Gabriella, another unconscionable vampire. Her midnight hair was bone-straight, wisped just above her shoulder, with pastel pink and lavender hair extensions underneath. I could see the disgust on Winter’s face if she were here and she most certainly would have muttered what she always does, “They are weird for no damn reason.” It was a comment some she always spouted about Gabriella and her partner, Chase, who must have spent a great deal of time getting pierced, tattooed, and changing their hair in unique and eccentric ways.

  “Yes?” It was a weak, distracted sound as she split her attention between him and Gavin. Like her creator, she had an odd affinity for feeding from were-animals, although they didn’t offer any nutritional value.

  She finally took up a position next to Demetrius. Forcing focus, she kept her eyes trained on him, attempting to give her undivided attention.

  “Sebastian has some questions for you,” he said.

  With much effort, she looked at Sebastian.

  “Have you seen Kelly?” Sebastian asked.

  Slipping her gaze to Gavin for a second, she quickly returned it to Sebastian. “Your human pet?”.

  “Yes, the woman that works for us,” he said.

  “Is she missing?” she asked in a low, despondent voice.

  “Yes, have you seen her? It’s been brought to my attention that you threatened her. Did you hurt her?”

  Sebastian finally garnered her attention. She tilted her head, the wilted deviant smile a reminder of her past as the psychotic woman who killed several people in cold blood, who was nothing more than a ball of unfettered violence.

  “No, I didn’t hurt your pet.” She dismissed him with a roll of her eyes before returning to her seat on the sofa as though we had d
isappeared.

  “Did you have anything to do with her being missing? Have you had contact with her since the last time you visited our house?” Sebastian asked.

  She turned, barely. A hapless glare rested in our direction for a moment, her voice soft. “I don’t allow others to do my work for me. If I wanted her dead, I would have done it. If I wanted to hurt her, that too is something I would have handled. I don’t see the purpose of abducting if it isn’t to kill.” Once again, she had withdrawn from the conversation and focused on the television in front of her, which wasn’t turned on.

  “You have your answers, but if I hear anything, I will let you know,” Demetrius said, ending the interrogation. One of the more favorable qualities about vampires is that they didn’t lie. Their narcissism and egos gave them a sense of entitlement that makes them feel and act as if they are exempt from consequences for their actions. And they felt that everyone else should take that stance as well.

  “Now may I ask my questions, Skylar?” My name rolled off his tongue in a velvet-soft seductive drawl. He wasn’t asking permission; he never did, for anything. It was a simple courtesy that he offered.

  “It is a pleasure seeing you again.” He took hold of my hand, then he brought it to his face, a gentle, smooth movement as he inhaled, his nose barely touching my skin before his cool lips did. Demetrius was beauty and seduction, violence and sin, treachery and torture wrapped in a beautiful package. Everything about him was a warning and I didn’t trust him past the front door just four feet away.

  “I have a couple of questions for you, Skylar.”

  He was so close that all he had to do was just bend down and his lips would have easily touched mine.

  “I have some questions of my own, do you mind if I ask them first?” I countered.

  I appraised him for a long time, then looked down at his hand, now holding mine. Demetrius’s attractiveness disguised his cruel proclivities. He was dangerous, and no amount of gentle reassurance and touching would ever make me forget it.

  He inched closer, amused by my attention. His head tilted with a look of intrigue and curiosity, so I finally asked my question.