Tangled Moon

by Stocum, Olivia

  Tangled Moon

  Tangled Moon

  By

  Olivia Stocum

  Copyright © 2016 by Olivia Stocum TangledMoon Books

  All rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Praise for Olivia Stocum’s novels:

  “The research was impeccable and the story is lovely and compelling. I found the relationships well thought out and believable. This type of writing deserves to go on for longer than a single book. I’m looking forward to her next novel.”

  ~Ionia Martin, book reviewer for Readful Things http://readfulthingsblog.com

  "Olivia has crafted an adventurous love story with two unforgettable characters. Her vivid descriptions paint an epic journey of boundless love between two souls who must become one. Her tender and poetic prose reminded me of the book, “Cold Mountain.”

  ~Stan Bednarz, award winning author of Miracle on Snowbird Lake.

  “What do you get when you add the beautiful 1600s Scottish countryside, men in kilts, and the women who love them to a story that features a virile, cloaked defender known only as Blackhawk? An exciting, captivating page-turner by Olivia Stocum, that's what! DAWNING has a home on my 'keepers' shelf!”

  ~ Loree Lough, bestselling author of 100 award-winning books.

  Novels by Olivia Stocum:

  Historic Scotland ~

  Dawning

  Moonstone

  Starlight

  Historic England ~

  Enduringly Yours

  A Worthy Opponent

  Tangled Moon Werewolf Series ~

  Tangled Moon

  Intertwined (October 2017)

  Dedication

  To Steele.

  Chapter One

  Danielle Howard surveyed her new domain.

  Another fixer upper.

  Who was she trying to kid? It was a dump.

  She ran her fingers along a wooden window ledge in the main room of the hunting cabin she and Lothar had just purchased cash in hand. Peeling paint disintegrated into a shower of dust on the boot trodden wooden floor. She peered through a cracked windowpane. Things could’ve been worse. At least the ramshackle hunting cabin was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by virgin forest.

  It was perfect.

  Danielle smelled pine in the air, damp vegetation, and the musky scent of warm blooded animals. She breathed deeply, scenting out a buck to the north. Focusing, she could hear him drinking from a stream.

  Who needed electricity anyway?

  Danielle turned from the window. “I’m going out.”

  Lothar Ludvitski, her hunting partner, set aside the cardboard box he was carrying and straightened his long, lean body.

  “I buy you steak for lunch, is not enough?” he said, English rolling off his Lithuanian tongue exotically. He could read several languages, but he only pronounced one correctly.

  “Never enough.” Danielle smiled. He knew full well she could only pick at human food.

  “You will leave me to clean this?” Lothar’s brows arched over brown eyes as he glanced around the cabin with its sagging cupboard doors.

  Even after having known him for years, she wasn’t immune to his old world charm. He was the kind of man who defined tall, dark, and handsome. She wondered if he had any idea what he did to her insides, just by being near her.

  Probably not.

  “You could go with me,” she said. “No one’s stopping you.”

  “Ne, I work. You go play, Darling,” he enunciated his name for her, his r rolling longer than necessary, even for him. “Someone has to make dump good for you.”

  “Hot water would be nice.”

  “I get to it.” He bent over his box and pulled out a mini-fridge they could plug into a generator.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Danielle walked past Lothar and toward the open door.

  “Be careful,” he said, his tone changing from joking to dead serious.

  She glanced over her shoulder. He was forever her protector. They had first met when she was seventeen. She’d been floundering in her new existence when he’d come into her life. She’d had no awareness of her potential at the time, and had hated herself for the monstrosity she’d become. Lothar had opened the doors of magic within her. Now he was her best friend, her hunting partner, her everything but . . .

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “We have not scouted perimeter. If you do not return in hour, I come for you.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.” She sprinted away.

  Danielle pulled off her boots and padded through the forest, pine needles springy beneath her bare feet. Her blood pulsed hard through her veins. Hunting wild game wasn’t as gratifying as hunting vampires, but at least it filled her stomach with fresh meat. Steak? It had nothing on wild game.

  Lothar had embraced every facet of his existence. Human and wolf, balanced and equal. He could just as easily enjoy fillet mignon as he could raw elk or deer.

  Not her.

  She had what werewolves called, Arrested Development. Due to her mortal upbringing, she was trapped between two worlds, with little hope of equilibrium.

  She unwound the elastic from her hair and shook it free, then peeled off her lavender v-neck sweater. She shimmied out of her jeans and tossed aside her bra and hip huggers.

  Danielle let free the growl vibrating in the back of her throat. And shifted.

  A sensation similar to an electric shock pulsed through her. If she didn’t embrace it, shifting would hurt, like it had when she’d fist started morphing into a wolf. Her growl changed, deepened as she accepted the impossibility of what she was and what she could do.

  Danielle’s paws hit the earth with a sound like thunder in her hypersensitive ears. In human form, her senses were acute. Like this, they were on fire. It took her a moment to adjust to the change. She sorted through sounds, smells, and sensations. Pine and spruce trees were fresh in her nose and sweet. Damp earth was heady.

  This was freedom.

  This was where she belonged. The only way she belonged.

  Her nails scrabbled as she slid to a halt at the edge of a ravine. Her growling had frightened her prey, and now he splashed through the water below, white tail flicking behind him. Her stomach clenched with hunger and her mouth watered. She heard the sound of the buck’s racing heart. Danielle paced, whining, watching the white-tailed deer crash into the forest beyond the foaming creek bed. She examined the rocky wall. After deciding on her course, she backed up, took a running start, and sprang off the ledge.

  Her paws gained purchase on an outcropping of rock on the opposite side. From there it was a series of leaps from ledge to ledge until she splashed down. Water beaded on her dense brown coat as she waded through cold peaks.

  She shook herself and lurched after the stag crashing through underbrush, instinct driving him on long, supple legs. His breaths were heavy, his heart a thrum in her ears. His antlers rose and fell as he leaped over the uneven ground. Sniffing the air, she threw back her head and howled.

  Danielle scrambled onto a fallen tree trunk.

  And launched herself at her meal.

  * * *

  If one could count on anything in life, it was death.

  The funeral service was over. The remains lowered into the g
round.

  And now, he was supposed to move on.

  Somehow.

  Nick Shepard scanned the crowd gathered in his parents’ living room, and realized his sister-in-law wasn’t there. He left the chaos and followed the smell of sauce and cheese. Where there was food cooking, there was Kendra.

  Nick stopped at the doorway to the kitchen, saw Kendra holding an apple pie balanced in each hand. He took them from her, setting the pies on the counter.

  Her sleepless eyes were bloodshot. “Get the lasagna out of the oven, will you?” she said, shaking back her blonde hair.

  “Go sit down.”

  “I can’t.” She took up two potholders and opened the oven. “Too many people to feed.”

  Nick urged her aside, then took the potholders from her and the pan of lasagna out of the oven, sliding it on top of the stove. By the time he’d finished, she was already cutting a pie.

  “Stop,” he said.

  He took the knife carefully from her slender hand and set it aside. Nick leaned against the white marble countertop, blocking her from both pies and knife. He crossed his arms over his dress shirt. His paisley tie was choking him and he wrenched it loose, tossing it across the kitchen.

  Kendra’s fingers gripped the marble ledge next to him. “What do you expect me to do?” Her voice wavered. “This is what I do every day. Day in and day out.”

  “This is not your life.”

  “I meant the Robin Diner. My cooking is all I have left.”

  “It’s not all you have. You have us.”

  “Nick.” She wiped her eyes. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and this will all be over, but it just keeps coming. I only slept an hour last night. I dreamed Jason was lying next to me.”

  Nick and Jason had been adopted together. Jason was the responsible twin, the small town sheriff. A regular Andy Griffith. Nick was the careless one. He’d served in the Air Force in special ops. After the military, he’d joined the NYPD, first as a police officer, then moving up the ranks to homicide detective. He was good at his job, because he took risks.

  Jason was good at his job, because he didn’t take risks. Jason wrote out traffic tickets and went fishing on the weekends, and he always came home to Kendra.

  Until now.

  As soon as Nick had gotten the call about Jason, he’d packed a bag and climbed into his ’86 Chevy pickup, driving through the night to reach his home town in the Adirondacks. He’d been too late to investigate the scene of Jason’s death. The body had been removed. Nick’s parents had made the decision to cremate the remains quickly, deciding it would be best for Kendra.

  Nick wished he’d had the chance to examine the scene himself. Not that he wanted to see his brother that way, but the detective in him needed to put Jason to rest in ways lasagna and apple pie never would.

  Kendra took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “I hate this.”

  “I’ll get to the bottom of it. I promise.”

  “It was a bear. Everyone said so.”

  “No. Jason knew that forest and what lives in it better than anyone. It couldn’t have been a bear.” Nick wouldn’t let this go, not when his instincts told him otherwise.

  “Nick?” he heard another voice from the doorway.

  It was Greg, Kendra’s little brother, in a yellow dress shirt and sneakers. His tie was loose and his curly blond hair ruffled.

  “The wildlife people are here,” Greg said. “They came to pay their respects. I thought you might want to talk to them.” He followed all this with a pleading look.

  With Jason gone, Greg was acting town sheriff. Poor kid wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility hefted onto his shoulders. The faster a replacement could be found for Jason, the better. Then Greg could slip gratefully back into his role as deputy.

  “Yeah, I’m coming.” Nick turned to Kendra. “Let someone else do this.” He took the knife out of her hand.

  Her jaw flexed. “Just let me work. I have to, or I’ll lose my mind.”

  He struggled for something to say, looking into her pale blue eyes, feeling responsible for her now. Maybe she did have a point. They all had to deal with Jason’s death in their own way.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll check on you later.”

  Kendra and Jason had been high school sweethearts. They’d married six months after graduation. Kendra was like a sister to Nick. Still, it was hard to know what to do, because he’d never had a real sister, and it had always been Jason she’d relied on. Nick was treading on fresh ground.

  He followed Greg through the living room, past his parents on the couch with his aunt and uncle, then out the open front door. Indian summer was in full swing. Nick rolled up his sleeves as they crossed the front lawn. Practically the whole town was there.

  There was only one person Nick didn’t recognize. He summed the man up; a skill he’d picked up in the military that had grown into a long term habit. The man was thirty, give or take, six foot two, dark hair. By the serious look on his face and the fact that he wasn’t making an effort to talk to anyone, Nick assumed he was a no nonsense kind of guy.

  “That’s him. Ludvitski’s his name,” Greg said. “Well, one of them anyway. He’s Russian or something. Then there’s his partner.” Greg glanced around. “Not sure where she went. Wait ’till you get a look at her. She’s hot.”

  Nick almost asked Greg if that was all he thought about. But he knew better. Greg was twenty-four. And male. Of course he’d thought about it.

  Ludvitski looked up as they approached. “Detective Nick Shepard,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  Not Russian, judging by his accent. Ukrainian maybe, or one of the smaller countries, like Romania. He and Nick stood eye-to-eye. Nick had the heavier build.

  “Lothar Ludvitski of Ludvitski Wildlife Specialists,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.

  Nick shook it, something about the man immediately putting him off.

  Lothar smiled with false sincerity and withdrew his hand as if in mutual dislike. “Rest assured we will find animal that did this and safely remove from area.”

  “What makes you so sure it was an animal, Ludvitski?”

  “I know this is hard to accept. It is not first time we have had to handle aggressive bear that has lost fear of humans.”

  “Lothar,” called a ringing voice. A young woman with a riot of brown hair crossed the street toward them. She smiled at Lothar. There was a hidden warning behind it and the man relaxed his stance.

  She handed him a phone. “You left it in the van.”

  “Thank you.” He tucked it in the back pocket of his black dress pants.

  Greg stuck out his hand before Nick could introduce himself. “I’m Greg Connors. The deputy.”

  She took his hand, her brow creasing in confusion. “We already met.”

  “I know.” Greg slipped Nick a quick glance.

  “It’s nice to meet you again Deputy Connors,” she said.

  She was American, from the Northeast. About twenty-four. Same age as Greg, who was still holding her hand, a stupid grin on his face. She pulled free and tucked both hands behind her back. Nick didn’t even know the woman, but for some reason he wanted to tell Greg off just for making her uncomfortable. Not that he could blame the kid for drooling. Her charcoal sweater dress was an eye lure. She looked everywhere but at Greg, as if she had no idea why he was staring.

  She greeted Nick with an awkward smile. “I’m Danielle Howard.”

  “Detective Nick Shepard,” Lothar answered first. He exchanged a protective glance with Danielle. She withdrew her hand from anything resembling an invitation to shake it.

  Either the girl and Lothar were partners in more than one sense of the word, or Lothar was seriously hoping. Nick took another look at Danielle. She was probably five to seven years younger, but maybe she liked it that way. Some women did.

  Which, come to think of it, boded well for Nick, since he wasn’t exactly
wet behind the ears. Maybe he could do some investigating and find out just what she did like.

  Wait, what was he thinking?

  He’d come home for one reason. Jason’s death. He’d extricated himself out from under his ex-girlfriend, Genevieve’s, manicured fingernails when he’d left the city. The last thing he needed now was another entanglement. He tried to ignore Danielle, but sensed her presence anyway.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind my keeping an eye out, just in case your bear causes trouble,” Nick said.

  “Animal is dangerous,” Lothar countered. “You should leave it to us. We would not want anyone getting hurt.”

  Was that a threat? The cop in Nick was immediately on edge.

  “It isn’t safe, Detective,” Danielle added. “Do us a favor and warn everyone to stay off the trails until we can tranquilize and relocate it.”

  So much for ignoring her.

  “If the forest is that dangerous, maybe you should stay out.” Nick was aware of how sexist he sounded, but she was a full head shorter than him, and looked too soft to be wrangling angry bears for a living.

  Her face lit in an amused grin. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and moved a little closer. “A word of advice, Shepard.” Her voice deepened. “When the wolves howl at night, lock your doors and stay inside.”

  She breathed in a long, slow pull, as if reading Nick through his scent. He couldn’t help but to breathe her in too. It was involuntary. She smelled as good as she looked, but he couldn’t place the scent. Not a chemical perfume. Not a flower. Not vanilla or sandalwood, or anything else he could think of. She smelled like some rare and expensive spice. Sweet. Exotic.

  Danielle’s brown eyes darkened to black, and a low growl vibrated from deep in her throat.