by Reine, SM
Praise for
Six Moon Summer
“This was a fantastic werewolf tale from SM Reine. Packed with tons of adventure, teen angst, a touch of romance, and twisted with paranormal, it makes for a perfect read!” —Coffee Table Reviews
“Reine has made her own rules about the werewolf mythology; it's unique and refreshing. This is a great book for all you YA lovers who are looking for something totally new to read.” —Coffeemugged
“Just when you think that there isn't another twist in the werewolf story, along comes Six Moon Summer... This is a solid debut book for writer SM Reine. Fresh and fast paced.” —Me, My Shelf, and I
“Amazing.” —EJ Stevens, The Spirit Guide Series
Other Books by SM Reine
SEASONS OF THE MOON
Six Moon Summer
All Hallows’ Moon
Long Night Moon
Gray Moon Rising
THE DESCENT SERIES
Death’s Hand
The Darkest Gate
Damnation Marked
The good girl has become a very bad werewolf...
Rylie survived her transformation. She moves to her aunt’s ranch in the hopes she can enroll in a new high school and quietly continue her life-- except that she transforms into a monster every new and full moon and struggles to control her murderous urges.
Without many werewolves left, it’s hard to stay in hiding. A family of hunters—Eleanor, Abel, and Seth—recognize the signs and follow Rylie to her new home. They want to stop her before she murders someone, and the only way to do it is with a silver bullet. Seth soon realizes the werewolf is Rylie, the one monster he failed to kill. Worse yet, he’s still in love with her.
Torn between family and love, Rylie struggles to reconcile her feelings and control the wolf within while Seth fights to do what’s right. But what is right—obeying desire or duty?
Prelude
The Cage
The werewolf should have dominated the night, but humans had taken charge with guns and silver. The beast was cut off from the moon by iron bars and helpless to fight. Few human things made sense to her primitive mind, but one thing stood out above everything else: She had been caged.
The wolf thrashed, shrieking when her flesh touched upon silver-laced iron. She tried to jerk away, but there was nowhere safe to flee. The hunters had placed her upon a bed of wolfsbane.
A pair of legs moved into view, and the wolf smelled the familiar odor of leather. It would have been comforting if he hadn’t been aiming a rifle at her face. She whined.
“Do it already, Seth,” snapped a woman. “I will if you won’t.” The wolf’s strength waned, and she flung herself at the cage one last time. Her flesh sizzled. She collapsed.
The rifle swayed as Seth knelt beside her.
“Shoot it!”
“I’m sorry, Rylie,” he whispered.
And then he squeezed the trigger.
One
Homecoming
When the sun sank beneath the hills, the trucker turned on his headlights to illuminate the road. Night fell quickly in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any streetlights for miles, much less city, so he knew it would be black in minutes.
His passenger bounced her knee and drummed her knuckles against the window. She was fixated by the passing landscape even though there was nothing to look at but long grass and the occasional tree. Her blond hair was pulled into a messy bun and her fingernails were chewed so short that her thumb bled.
The trucker watched her from the corner of his eye. She was starting to tremble.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded a little too quickly. “Yeah. Sure. I’m fine. Is this as fast as we can go?”
He chuckled. “I’m in a hurry too, sweetheart, but I’ve gotta go the speed limit. Another speeding ticket could make me lose my job.”
“Going slow could make you lose more than that,” she muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
A rabbit bounced past the headlights, and her head whipped around so she could stare at the place it vanished. There was something unnatural about the way she moved. It was like everything startled her. The trucker wondered if she was on cocaine or meth or something else. Nobody acted like that unless they had taken drugs—or if they were nuts.
He suspected there was something wrong with his mysterious passenger when he picked her up at a truck stop two states back. How many cute teenage girls hitchhiked on semis? Just prostitutes. But this kid was no hooker, and the trucker wouldn’t have done anything if she was. He had a son her age back home. His picture was taped to the dashboard.
The girl seemed pretty normal for the first few hours—quiet, but normal—but she got more nervous as time went on. Now her skin was flushed and her pupils were too wide.
“You ever going to tell me your name?” he asked. It was the first time he’d tried to talk with her since Colorado.
“Rylie. My name’s Rylie.” She raked her fingernails up and down her shoulder, leaving red tracks on tan skin.
“Pretty name. I’ve got a niece named Kiley. She’s in the chess club at school, and...” He trailed off as she shuddered, hugging her backpack against her body. “You okay?”
“Moon’s coming soon.”
“Yeah?” He leaned forward to look at the sky. All the trucker could see were clouds. “How can you tell? Won’t there be a new moon tonight?”
“I’m in a hurry. There aren’t going to be any cops out here. Can’t you...?”
“Relax,” he said. “We’ll get there when we get there.” He watched her from the corner of his eye. “How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?” She didn’t respond. “Drugs seemed like the cool thing to do when I was your age, but they ruined my life. I lost my family and spent years in rehab. Addiction is brutal.”
Rylie looked startled. “I’m not addicted to drugs.”
“I didn’t think I was addicted either, but—”
“No, I mean, I’m not taking anything. Okay?”
“Okay, okay. You’re not addicted. Then what are you running from?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m going to live with my aunt. She moved out here from Colorado a couple of months ago, so I’m going to work on her new ranch.”
“And your aunt lets you hitchhike?”
She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Nobody lets me do anything anymore.”
“Uh huh.”
She wasn’t going to talk to him about her problems. No big deal. The trucker remembered being in her place years ago. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it all that much, either. Getting past his denial was the first step to recovery.
They drove on in silence, and she kept scratching herself. Probably meth. It looked like meth.
Even though he knew he couldn’t help her until she was ready to help herself, he had to try. “I could drop you off at a hospital if you want,” he suggested.
“I’m not going to a hospital!” she snarled. Her eyes flashed a reflective gold, like an animal.
“Holy mother of—”
Rylie looked out the window again, cutting him off with a slam of her knuckles against the glass. “My friend Tyler says speed limits are suggestions.” She had calmed down and sounded normal. Not growling. Not like...
He was imagining things.
He patted his pocket in search of caffeine pills. The trucker hadn’t slept in over a day, and now he was hallucinating. But his pockets were empty. “Maybe I’ll go a little faster,” he muttered. He’d get the kid to her aunt and pull over to catch some sleep.
The trucker rolled down his window, letting the cold air slap him in the face. When the clouds parted, there was no moon. It was a dark night.
Rylie groaned
and doubled over.
“Hey there,” he said. “You okay?”
Her fingernails dug into her sides. “I’m—ugh—I’m fine.” Rylie shoved her backpack to the floor of the truck and pressed her forehead to her knees.
She arched her spine. It ridged under her t-shirt like it could tear the fabric.
“You don’t look fine.”
“I need out. Stop the truck!”
“What? But—” A sign whizzed by, indicating that the next town wasn’t for fifteen miles. “There’s nothing out here. I can’t drop you off; you’d get eaten by—”
She lifted her head and slammed it down again. Something made a popping sound, and it reminded the trucker of the time he caught his arm on a passing trailer and wrenched his shoulder from the socket.
Rylie snapped her head to the side. Her bleeding gums stained her teeth and the skin around her nose was stretching—her nose was breaking—
“Jesus Christ!”
“Stop the truck,” she growled. “Now.”
He swerved and tried to press himself against his door to get away from this thing—it wasn’t a teenage girl, not anymore, her blond hair was falling out in huge clumps on the seat—but the huge cab of the truck was suddenly too small.
She threw her head back as she screamed and dug her nails into his dashboard. They weren’t fingernails anymore.
He threw the brake even though they weren’t on the shoulder of the road. They weren’t even on the correct side, for that matter. He didn’t care.
Something snapped and cracked. Rylie’s jaw unhinged and slid forward. She spit blood onto her jeans.
The trucker’s hand fumbled for the door. Locked.
“Oh no—oh God—”
She flung herself against the dashboard, and then arched in the other direction, straining her feet and head back like a bow. Something was wrong with her knees.
Yeah, but what isn’t wrong with this thing?
“Get out!” she shrieked, and flecks of bloody spit slapped against his face.
Rylie lunged for him, claws flashing.
His finger caught the lock. The door fell open.
He fell onto the pavement and slammed the door behind him. The trucker couldn’t think straight, because every time he tried to broach the idea that some poor hitchhiking kid had turned into something—something not human—he felt a level of panic very close to insanity.
The cab rocked back and forth. He couldn’t see what was inside from this angle, but he could hear shrieking and howling. Those noises couldn’t come from a human mouth.
Because she’s not human.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he said.
Fear wheeled through his skull. Management would have everything from the neck up if they found out he abandoned his truck. And the goods, the electronics he was supposed to be getting to that warehouse—
Something slammed into the windshield. The safety glass spiderwebbed.
Forget management.
The trucker ran as fast as he could, rolling his tubby body along at a speed he hadn’t managed since he was two hundred pounds lighter and twenty years younger.
Howls followed him into the night.
Rylie awoke to a cool breeze playing across her skin and a feeling of dread.
Oh no. Not again.
She opened her eyes. A tiny black bug crawled along the grass by her head, and a thin layer of mist hovered over the ground. Her skin felt soggy.
Shutting her eyes, Rylie tried to force memories of the previous evening to emerge. As usual, she couldn’t remember what happened after she... changed. But she remembered a trucker. Nice guy. Smelled like gas station bathrooms and tobacco, but nice.
Her mouth was sticky, and there was a warm, sated feeling in her stomach that she recognized. It was the same way she had felt after killing a deer over the summer.
She wiped a hand over her mouth, and her fingers came away bloody.
Was the trucker... alive?
Rylie sat up, scrubbing a hand over her chin to clean it. The damp grass made her shiver. Ants marched along her knee.
She lifted her head and sniffed. The smells of the pasture splashed through her mind: meat and blood, soil and grass, honey in the comb, and a musky, chemical scent meant to mimic flowers. It was her own smell. She had picked the weirdest perfume she could find at the drug store so it would be easy to track.
Trailing the perfume down the hill, she found shreds of cloth tangled in the barbed wire fence. She suddenly recalled agonizing pain scraping down her back as her fur stuck on something—but it was gone as soon as it came. She never remembered her time as a wolf once she turned back.
Rylie picked the remains of her clothes out of the wire. There were more holes than cloth in her t-shirt, and the seams had burst when she changed, too. But it covered the important parts. It was better than nothing.
Her jeans were a little further down the hill, and in even worse condition. Rylie had to hold them over her hips as she plodded toward the road. She had no idea how to explain this to her aunt. She needed to buy new clothes before showing up at her door.
She stopped at the bottom of the hill. There were lumps all over the pasture in front of her, but it was too dark to make out any detail. Rylie approached the closest one with fear twisting in her stomach.
It was—or at least, it used to be—a cow. But the only way Rylie could tell was because of its distinctive odor, like manure and hay. The thing on the ground didn’t look much like a cow. Neither did the other three carcasses, either. She had a feeling she knew what had happened.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Something clicked twice, chick-chuck. Rylie had seen enough action movies to know the sound of a shotgun being pumped.
“Hands up. Turn around. Slowly now—nothing sudden.”
Rylie obeyed. Her heart skipped a beat.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been at gunpoint, but it was just as scary this time as it had been the last time, so it took her a moment to realize who was aiming at her. A gray-haired woman with hard lines framing her mouth braced the butt of the shotgun against her shoulder, and a cowboy hat hung down her back by a bolero tie.
“Aunt Gwyneth?” she gasped.
The shotgun dropped. “Rylie?”
Two
The Suspect
“I’d say you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, but I hate to state the obvious.”
Aunt Gwyneth sat on the edge of the kitchen table with her shotgun leaning against the counter. Rylie cupped a mug of coffee between her hands. She didn’t like coffee, but it was all her aunt had to drink other than dirty well water, and she desperately wanted the heat.
She pulled her feet under her on the chair and wrapped the blanket around her legs like a protective shield. She was wearing sweat pants and a shirt borrowed from her aunt, but she still felt exposed.
I got bitten by a werewolf at summer camp and now I’m a monster that goes into murderous rages on every new and full moon. How are you doing, Aunt Gwyn?
Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over well.
“Coyotes,” Rylie said.
Gwyn raised an eyebrow. “Coyotes?”
“They attacked the cows.” Her voice was tiny.
“Coyotes are cowards, honey. They eat rabbits and house cats. They don’t go after the herd.”
Rylie smiled feebly. “Crazy rabid coyotes?”
Her aunt’s eyes narrowed. “I might buy an animal going nuts and killing my cows, but that doesn’t explain how you ended up in my field this morning with your clothes shredded. What the heck is going on? You told me you had a ride here.”
“I did. I caught a ride with Frank.”
“Frank?”
“He drives a semi,” Rylie said.
“What?” It looked like Gwyn was in pain. “Let me get this straight. You told me you had a ride here, but you hitchhiked instead? Babe, you could have been seriously hurt. You could have been killed. Is this ‘Frank’ why your cloth
es are torn?”
“No! No, Aunt Gwyn, it wasn’t like that at all. He was really nice.”
“Then what happened?”
Rylie braced herself for the lie. She sucked at lying. “He let me off on your road. I thought I’d get in earlier, but I ended up walking late last night. I saw some coyotes go after the cows. They came after me too, but I jumped through the fence and escaped. I fell down the hill, though. That’s why everything is torn.”
“And then you went back to look at the cows,” Gwyn said.
“I was lost.”
“So you’re telling me you didn’t bring anything with you? Not even another outfit?”
She took a sip of coffee to give herself time to think. “I forgot my backpack in Frank’s truck.”
Her aunt pinched the bridge of her nose. “You can tell me the truth, Rylie. I know you didn’t kill my cows—I saw the wounds. It was some kind of animal. So whatever you did that you’re not telling me, I’m not going to get mad at you.”
“That is the truth,” she said.
“It’s a pretty tall tale you expect me to believe.” Gwyn shook her head. “Are you okay?”
Okay? No. Definitely not okay. “I’m not injured.”
“I guess that’s something.” She refilled Rylie’s empty coffee mug. “I thought Jessica was going to bring you out here.”
“My mom’s been busy since I let her take over dad’s business.” The mention of Rylie’s dead father—her aunt’s brother—was enough to kill the conversation.
“All right. Follow me.”
Gwyn led her from the kitchen. The ranch house was small. There was no formal dining room, and the three bedrooms were lined up on one side with a single bathroom. It was much more modest than her aunt’s last place, which had always been filled with workers and friends. Everything here was lonely and quiet. Rylie wondered what changed, but was too afraid to ask.